‘WHERE exactly are we staying?’ Carly asked Ricardo, hoping that it would be within easy walking distance of the town and the harbour. She would need easy access to both from early tomorrow morning, so that she could liaise properly with their contractors and get to the bank, as she had promised her parents, plus somehow find time to replenish her wardrobe.
‘Villa Mimosa,’ Ricardo answered her. ‘It’s outside St Tropez itself, up in the hills overlooking the sea. I’m not a particular fan of over-hyped, supposedly in places. Invariably, every minor celebrity that TV and magazines have ever created flock to them for maximum publicity exposure, destroying whatever charm the place may once have had. I like my privacy, and personally I prefer quality to quantity every time.’
‘Oh, yes. Me too,’ Carly agreed immediately. ‘But I do need to be able to get into St Tropez quickly and easily.’
‘Ah, you’re thinking about replacing your missing clothes,’ Ricardo said affably.
Carly couldn’t help laughing. ‘That, yes—but I was thinking more of liaising with our contractors.’
‘Mmm. I thought the purpose of this trip was for you to liaise with me,’ Ricardo told her softly.
Damn and double damn. He cursed himself mentally as he saw Carly absorbing the subtle flirtatiousness of his remark. Why the hell had he done that? Why hadn’t he waited and let her come on to him? Now she knew he was receptive to her!
Ricardo had just flirted with her! A heady mixture of pleasure and excitement danced along her veins. Careful, she warned herself. Remember you don’t want to get into a situation you can’t afford. On the other hand, there was such a thing as being too cautious. After all, her common sense told her that a man like Ricardo would not be interested in anything more than the very briefest kind of relationship—a ‘no commitment of any kind’ type of relationship. The perfect kind of relationship, surely, for a woman like her, who did not want to fall in love but who secretly—even if this was the first time she had admitted it to herself—wondered what it would be like to have sex with a man all her instincts told her would be a once-in-a-lifetime lover. Why shouldn’t she live a little recklessly for once?
‘Well, I certainly want to do my best to please you.’
Carly could scarcely believe such words had come from her own lips. Words that, no matter how demurely she had spoken them, could surely only convey to Ricardo a very provocative message.
Ricardo turned his head to look at her. That was more like it!
The look in those dark eyes was quite unmistakable, Carly recognised, as her heart missed a beat and sweet, hot, sensual arousal poured through her body like warm honey.
‘We’re here.’
‘What? Oh. Yes.’
She had actually blushed, Ricardo marvelled as he stopped the car. And her nipples were standing out beneath the fabric of her tee shirt in flagrant sexual arousal.
Ridiculously, suddenly he was as hot for her as though he were a mere youth and this was his first time.
She might as well ask for his help and get it out of the way now, Carly decided. Because once they got inside…
Once they got inside what? Once they got inside she hoped he would take her to bed?
Her thoughts were leaving her torn between shock and delight. And urgency! Suddenly she wanted very much to get the matter of her need for a short-term loan and her discomfort about mentioning it to him out of the way.
So that she could be free to encourage him to flirt with her and ultimately—maybe—take her to bed without it hanging over her?
The unfamiliar recklessness of her own thoughts took some getting used to. But she wasn’t tempted to abandon them, was she?
So first things first, and then…
She cleared her throat and took a deep breath.
‘Ricardo…I…er…’
The husky little catch in her voice was very effective, Ricardo thought, as he waited for her to continue.
‘I feel very uncomfortable about this, but…’
‘Yes?’ he encouraged when she pretended to falter. After all, he reasoned cynically, the sooner he could get this farce over with, the sooner he could satisfy the itch to possess her that had now become an almighty, savage, unignorable ache.
Carly took heart from the kindness in Ricardo’s patient encouragement.
‘I need to replace some of the things that were in my suitcase. I don’t want to worry Lucy—it’s my job to deal with the accounts, after all—and…And I know this is…’ Her face had started to burn. ‘I was wondering if I could ask you to lend me some money—just temporarily, of course.’
Why had she ever thought this was a good idea? Carly wondered, feeling acutely embarrassed. Just listening to herself as she stumbled over her words made her go cold with horror at what she was doing. And if she found her request unacceptable, then what on earth must Ricardo be thinking?
‘I feel dreadful about this,’ she admitted honestly, ‘but I can’t think of what else I can do.’
Really? Didn’t she possess a bank account of her own? A credit card? A debit card? The ability to walk into a bank?
‘It would just be a loan. I would pay you back, of course…’
Indeed she would—and with interest.
Several different potential responses presented themselves to him, but in the end he decided that, since Carly was so patently thick-skinned, he might as well go for the oldest and least believable of all of them.
So he smiled at her, and then he took hold of her hand and patted it. And then he told her smoothly, ‘I shall be delighted to help you. How much do you think you will need?’
She was gazing at him starry-eyed, her face slightly flushed, her lips slightly parted, as though she could hardly believe her good fortune.
Such a heroic effort deserved a generous reward, Ricardo decided cynically.
‘Wait! I’ve had a better idea.’ But she, of course, had no doubt already had the same idea before him. ‘Why don’t we go into St Tropez together tomorrow and you can choose whatever you think you may need?’
For some reason she didn’t look as delighted as Ricardo had expected.
Ricardo had made her a wonderful offer, but she was not sure it was one she felt comfortable with, Carly reflected, as she thanked him.
‘That’s very generous of you.’
‘I’m delighted to be able to help,’ Ricardo assured her, before adding, ‘Come on, let’s go inside.’
Carly was used to staying in beautiful and magnificent properties, but the Villa Mimosa was truly breathtaking. Its setting alone—tucked into a hillside, overlooking the Mediterranean—provided a view that must surely always catch at the heart.
From the balcony of her bedroom she could look out over immaculate gardens and across a miraculous infinity pool to the horizon, and although it was a couple of hours now since they had arrived at the villa she still kept going to the balcony and gazing at the view.
The middle-aged Frenchwoman who had welcomed them had explained that she was the maid but that she did not live in. Cathy must have looked rather surprised at that, she realised, because after she had left them Ricardo had explained to her that he preferred to have his own personal staff on hand or do without.
‘My own people know how I like things done, and they know too that I like my privacy. It’s mid-afternoon now, and I have some business matters to attend to,’ he had told her, ‘so why don’t we agree to meet up on the terrace at, say, six? My choice would be for us to eat in,’ he had added suavely. ‘I can arrange to have something delivered.’
Carly had felt her heart miss a couple of beats at the potential implications of dining alone with him.
‘That sounds perfect,’ she had answered, and then worried when she had seen the gleam in his eyes that she had sounded naïvely over-enthusiastic.
Six o’clock, he had said. And it was five now. She might not have anything to change in to, but she certainly intended to shower and tidy herself up.
Half an hour later, showered and still wearing the thick towelling robe she had found hanging up in the bathroom, she was just brushing her hair when she heard a soft tap on her bedroom door. It opened and Ricardo walked in, carrying two well filled champagne glasses.
‘I’ve mixed you a Bellini. I hope you like them.’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, I do,’ she agreed.
Unlike her, he was fully dressed, in dark linen trousers and a white linen shirt, his bare brown feet thrust into soft plain leather sandals.
He came over to where she was sitting and put one glass down on the glass-topped dressing table, then held the other out to her.
‘Try it first,’ he urged her.
Sipping from a glass whilst he held it surely shouldn’t be such a sensually intimate experience, should it? And why couldn’t she stop looking at the long brown fingers curled round the stem of the glass? She tried to focus on something else, but discovered that the only other thing to focus on was his body, and that the place where the line of his trousers was broken by a telltale bulge was exactly on her eye line. And, what was worse, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from gazing appreciatively at it.
‘It’s lovely,’ she assured him hurriedly, taking a sip and then turning away. ‘I hadn’t realised that was the time. I’d better hurry up and get dressed.’
He gave a small shrug.
‘You might as well stay as you are. I hope you like lobster by the way.’
‘I love it,’ she told him truthfully.
‘And I also hope that the gourmet meals-on-wheels outfit who brought the food are as good they are supposed to be. I thought we’d eat outside on the terrace.’
He was obviously expecting her to go with him, Carly realised. A bathrobe wouldn’t normally have been her first choice of dinner outfit, but on this occasion it seemed she had no alternative.
‘I really am grateful to you for being so kind about the money,’ she told him.
‘Good. Maybe later you might find a way of showing me how much, mmm?’
Ricardo watched cynically as somehow or other she managed to summon a look of shocked bemusement quickly followed by hot excitement into the smoky darkness of her eyes. But his cynicism wasn’t stopping him from wanting her, was it? he reminded himself. In fact he had spent the last three hours thinking about very little other than satisfying that want. Which was why, in the end, he had given in to it and gone to her room.
Was Ricardo saying what she thought he was saying? Carly wondered dizzily. Or was she letting her own erotic imagination run away with her?
At least Lucy and Jules would be pleased to learn she was about to abandon her virgin status. Abandon…it was such an emotive word, such a sensual word. And, recklessly, she was already eager to abandon herself to the physical pleasure of Ricardo’s possession.
‘Or would you prefer to make a start now?’
Carly’s eyes widened as he came to within a few inches of her and bent his head toward hers, his hand resting lightly on the side of her face.
She had never been kissed like this before. There was no physical contact other than that of their lips and his fingers lightly caressing her face. His mouth moved more fiercely on hers and Carly responded instinctively, moving closer to him, leaning into him as his tongue drove deeper into the soft recesses of her mouth to take possession of it.
She started to raise her arms, wanting to hold him, but to her confusion he stopped her, gripping her shoulders and releasing her mouth to step back from her.
Whilst she looked up at him in confusion he untied the belt of her robe and then pushed it off her shoulders in one swift easy movement that left her totally naked in front of him. Her only covering was the hot wave of colour that beat up under her skin. His gaze dropped to her body with the swift descent of an eagle to its prey. It stalked slowly over creamy slender shoulders, down to ripely rounded breasts, softly heavy with sensual promise, silky pale skin contrasting with the darker aureoles from which her rose nipples thrust so eagerly.
Her ribcage curved into a narrow waist, below which her hips flared out again, and her legs were, as he had already known they would be, unbelievably long and perfectly shaped. A soft cap of downy dark curls formed a neat little triangle just above the delicately shaped outer lips of her sex, curled protectively over it.
A dozen—no, a hundred different sensations and desires struck him, which in the end were only one need, one desire, and that the most ancient and powerful of all male needs and desires.
His gaze was fixed on her as though her body was a visual magnet from which he could not look away.
He wanted her. He wanted her right here and right now. He wanted her as he had never wanted any woman before. His own flesh was so immediately and intensely aroused that it was almost painful.
He wanted to take her quickly, fiercely, hotly plunging his flesh within hers and filling her, as though in taking her he would somehow drive out his own need for her.
And yet at the same time he wanted to savour the experience of having her, to relish it and wait for it.
Carly felt like a…a houri in front of a sultan—aware of her own nakedness before him and in some weird way actually physically excited by the fact that he was seeing her like that. Because she knew that he desired her, and his desire for her gave her power over him? The telltale bulge had now become a definite and openly defined ridge of flesh she badly wanted to reach out to and caress. Carly touched her tongue-tip to her lips.
No man had looked at her in the way Ricardo just had. With such a blazing heat of desire that she could have sworn she’d actually felt its burn against her skin.
But then no man had ever seen her like this—stripped bare, vulnerable, the whole of herself revealed.
She could feel a small, excited pulse beating inside her body.
Ricardo was picking up her Bellini and handing it to her. Uncertainly she took it from him. ‘You have a beautiful body,’ he told her emotionlessly. ‘I’m tempted to tell you to stay like this, so that I can continue to have the pleasure of looking at it, but I’m not sure my self-control could go the distance.’
He bent down to pick up her robe and handed it to her.
When she learned forward to take it from him, he lowered his head and took one taut nipple into his mouth. Could those fierce pangs she felt deep inside her body really be caused by the fierce tugging of his mouth on her nipple? She heard herself moan and was afraid she might collapse. Her legs felt so weak. And yet when his mouth was no longer there she ached for its return, she realised, as he pulled her robe back on for her as unceremoniously and as swiftly as he had removed it.
‘More wine?’
Should she? Carly stared into her empty glass. ‘No. No more,’ she told him firmly, aware of how quickly what she had already had to drink had gone to her head.
It had been heaven eating out here on the secluded patio. The night air was soft and scented, the smallest of warm breezes was caressing her skin, and the moon was a fat yellow disc up above them.
She gave a small sensual shiver, acknowledging that the memory of those few minutes in her bedroom had left a very erotic imprint on her body.
‘More lobster?’
Carly shook her head.
‘No?’ Ricardo questioned softly. ‘You’re satisfied, then, in every single way?’
He reached across the table and took hold of her hand, caressing it lightly.
How on earth could Ricardo touching her hand cause her throat to constrict? Carly wondered helplessly as she gazed at him, unable to speak.
She was extremely clever, Ricardo acknowledged. She obviously knew from past experience that men liked to do their own hunting. She had let him know she was available, and now she was sitting back and letting him set the pace.
He released her hand and stood up. Carly looked up uncertainly. Ricardo smiled back at her and held out his hand. A little breathlessly, she pushed back her chair and stood up herself. Holding her hand, he drew her towards the low wall that separated the terrace from the rest of the garden.
‘Wait,’ Carly protested, just before they reached it.
He watched her as she wriggled swiftly out of the robe. She had been aching to do it all through the meal, unable to stop thinking about how she had felt and how he had looked at her earlier on. She had never previously given any thought to her own nakedness in terms of its erotic appeal, but now she was acutely aware of the warm touch of the night air on her skin, and the gloriously wanton feeling that knowing Ricardo couldn’t stop looking at her was giving her.
Ricardo felt as though the air was being ripped out of his lungs, whilst at the same time the darkest kind of male pleasure was exploding inside him.
He took hold of her, imprisoning her between his own body and a thick mass of geraniums tumbling over the wall, his hands at the curve of her waist, his mouth fastening on hers.
Carly melted into him, her lips parting eagerly in invitation, her arms winding round his neck. His tongue, deliberately pointed and hard, thrust against her own, its stabbing movement making her moan and shake with pleasure. She wanted him to give her more of it, to fill the hot, wet cavity he was pleasuring until she could take no more of him.
She whimpered in pleasure and arched her body into his, removing one hand from his neck to unfasten his shirt buttons.
She was just as he had known she would be! Just like every other woman who had looked at him and seen an easy future for herself, Ricardo told himself. But his hands were still sliding up over her ribcage to mould the warm weight of her breasts; his fingers were seeking the eager hardness of nipples as swollen and firm as small thimbles.
She moaned against his tongue as he played with them, caressing and rubbing them, and her own fingers struggled with his zip before she finally managed to slide it down.
He had expected her immediately to touch him intimately, but instead she moved closer to him, rubbing herself sensuously against him with a soft sound of pleasure.
Her height meant that she fitted him as perfectly as though they had been made for one another. He released her breasts and allowed her to rub their sensitive tips against his flesh, his hands supporting her back and then massaging it, shaping her spine and going lower, to cup the rounded curves of her buttocks, hold the bones of her hips. His hand slipped lower, his fingers finding the cleft between her legs. He might not be able to see the ripe readiness of her desire-swollen lips, but he could feel it. His fingers dipped seductively into the wetness of her sex.
She made a sound deep in her throat and moved eagerly against him, the movement of her body against him in time with the thrust of his tongue within the soft, dark cave of her mouth.
His body was straining against her, and the moment he moved she looked down, her gaze fastening on the swollen, darkly veined head of his sex.
His fingers stroked the length of her wetness, caressing her more intimately with each stroke until she felt hot and open, her eager moans inviting him to plunge deeper. Her fingertips were just skimming the hard outline of his penis, almost as though she was afraid to touch it. Or was she simply enjoying tormenting him because she knew how much he wanted her?
Perhaps he should punish her a little for doing that to him?
Punish her and please himself, he thought hotly, as his fingertip massaged the slick wetness of her clitoris and he felt her whole body jump and then shudder wantonly.
Her fingers were circling him, holding him, exploring him, her touch cool against his own heat.
He had to have her.
Carly made a small mewling sound of pleasure deep in her throat and reached out for him, cupping his face with her hands and pressing her mouth passionately against his. All she wanted—all she would want for the rest of her life—was this, and him.
Abruptly she pulled back from him.
Her heart was thudding unevenly with the shock of her thoughts and feelings. Her emotional thoughts, and her equally emotional feelings. She felt sick and shaky as reaction set in and she recognised her own danger. How had this happened? How had she gone from wanting to have sex with to him to wanting him?
‘What’s wrong?’
She was too engrossed in her own thoughts to hear the sharp warning of male frustration in Ricardo’s voice.
‘I’m sorry…I…I don’t think this is a good idea…’
Ricardo could taste the raw savagery of his own furious disbelief. How could he have been such a fool as to let her play him so cleverly? To let her arouse him to the point where nothing mattered more than him having her?
‘So what would make it a good idea?’ Ricardo demanded bitingly, gripping her arms and swinging her round so hard that she almost stumbled. ‘Or should I say how much would make it a good idea? Five thousand? Ten? Carte blanche on a credit card?’
Carly stared at him in bewildered shock.
‘And you can cut that out,’ Ricardo told her. ‘I’ve known what you are from the start. Nick Blayne made it plain enough—not that he needed to. It was obvious what you were from the night I saw you in that damned club, letting someone else’s husband paw you.’
A slow, achingly painful form of semi-numbness was creeping up over her body, paralysing her ability to move.
‘Well? Come on—answer me. Obviously the promise of a “loan” wasn’t enough. So what else are you after? A new designer wardrobe? A Cartier diamond? Nick told me that you were good at recognising how to get the maximum amount of financial benefit out of a relationship.’
Belated anger seared through her. ‘I’m certainly good at recognising what he’s doing to the business—and ultimately to Lucy,’ Carly told him hotly. Humiliation was scorching her skin as she absorbed what Ricardo had said to her—what he had said about her.
‘Well?’ Ricardo demanded again, ignoring her furious outburst. ‘How much?’
‘Nothing,’ Carly told him proudly. ‘You could have had me for nothing, Ricardo. For no other reason than that I wanted you, for nothing other than the benefit to me of having sex with you.’
‘What?’ He gave her a derisively cynical look. ‘We both know that that’s a lie, and it’s not even a good one. You are the one who called a halt.’
Yes, she had. But not for the reasons he was so insultingly suggesting. And she certainly couldn’t tell him now why she had wanted to stop.
‘You are so wrong about me. I would never—have never—’ She stopped as she saw the contemptuous look in his eyes.
‘What about the money you asked me for?’
The money she had wanted to borrow from him? Of course—in his eyes that had damned her.
‘You don’t understand—that was just a loan. I will pay you back,’ she told him quietly.
Ricardo was in no mood to be placated.
‘Oh, I think I do understand. Let’s see. You pretend to lose your suitcase, then you come on to me, expecting that I will take the bait. Then when I do you immediately back off, thinking that I’m going to ache so damned much for you I’ll do anything to have you. How complicated to understand is that?’ His mouth twisted in open contempt.
She had thought she knew what it was like to have her pride ripped from her, leaving her exposed to people’s contempt, but she had been wrong, she recognised through the blur of her shocked, anguished, furious humiliation. But what was even worse was that she now knew exactly what he had really been thinking about her.
Automatically she tried to defend herself, protesting emotionally, ‘You’re wrong!’
But he stopped her immediately, challenging her. ‘About what? You coming on to me?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Not that you didn’t get something out of it yourself, so don’t bother trying to pretend you didn’t. No woman gets as hot and wet as you did and—’
It was too much. Carly reacted immediately and instinctively, her pride driving her to react in a way that was pure, instinctive, emotionally wounded female.
She raised her hand, but before she could do any more Ricardo was gripping her wrist in a bruisingly painful hold.
‘If you want to fight dirty that’s fine,’ he told her softly. ‘But remember I grew up on the streets. If you hit me, then I promise you I shall retaliate in kind.’
When he saw her face he laughed. ‘No, I don’t hit women. But there are other ways of administering punishment!’
‘You are a barbarian!’ Carly whispered shakily. ‘And you have no right…You are totally wrong!’ Tears of reaction were stinging her eyes now, but no way was she going to let him see that. ‘I only asked to borrow the money because I didn’t want to worry Lucy.’
‘Yes, of course. Blame someone else. Women like you are very good at that.’
Carly had had enough. ‘You don’t know the first thing about a woman like me!’
‘On the contrary, I know a very great deal.’ Ricardo stopped her sharply. ‘I know, for instance, that you are the product of generations of so-called good breeding, that your parents are wealthy and well connected, but that you yourself do not have any independent means. You also went to one of the country’s top schools. In short, you believe you have an automatic right to the very best of everything and an even more deeply ingrained belief that because of what you are you are superior to those people who have not had your advantages. You expect to be granted a first-class passage through life, preferably paid for by someone else. You are a taker, a user—a gold-digger.’
Something—a bubble of either pain or hysterical laughter—was tightening her chest and then her throat.
‘And I know that you are a prejudiced, ill-informed misogynist. And—as I’ve already said—you know nothing about me,’ she told him shakily, before turning on her heel and walking away from him.
Alone in the safety of her room she gave in to the tremors of aftershock racking her body, holding onto the back of a chair to steady herself. One day—maybe—she would look back on this, on him, and what he had said to her, with irony and perhaps even amusement. Because he was so breathtakingly, hugely wrong about her.
But for now…For now she would be grateful to him for showing her how easily she could have slipped into the emotional danger she had always feared and for going on to destroy every single tendril of those tentative feelings. At least now she was safe from feeling anything for him other than furious outrage.
Were it possible for her to do so, she would leave the villa immediately. But she had Lucy and the business to think of, and Carly had been taught from a very young age to carry a dual burden of gratitude and responsibility.
She would have to stay, and she would have to remember why she was here and why he was here, and behave towards him with all the professional courtesy she could muster.
For the rest, she would rather go naked than ask him for so much as a rag to cover her—would rather starve than accept a crust from his table, rather die than let him see how very much he had hurt her and in how many different ways.
‘I know what you are,’ he had said.
But the truth was he did not know her at all.
The truth was…The truth was a secret, and so painful that she could not bear to share it with anyone.