The Unlikely Mistress. Sharon Kendrick
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on her surroundings as they walked out into the sunshine. Yesterday the city had seemed like the most magical place on the planet, while today it was difficult to think about anything other than the man at her side.
At least she had some idea of what she was supposed to be looking at. She’d spent the preceding weeks reading every book about Venice that she could lay her hands on—it had been a good kind of displacement therapy—but Guy could more than match her.
‘Did you know that the humorist Robert Benchley sent a telegram when he arrived in Venice?’ Guy murmured. ‘Saying, “Streets full of water. Please advise.”’
Sabrina thought that his grey eyes looked soft, soft as the cream silk shirt he wore. ‘No, I didn’t know that. But Truman Capote said that Venice was like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.’
‘Oh, did he?’ He liked the quickness of her mind, the way her thoughts matched his own. Liked the fact that she’d researched the place so thoroughly. He felt his heart begin to pick up its beat as he stared down at her, at the strawberry-blonde hair which gleamed like bright gold in the midday sun and the slim, pale column of her neck. There was a fragility about her which was rare in a modern woman, he thought, and wondered what it would be like to take her in his arms. Take her to his bed. Whether she would bend or break…
He realised that they had spent the best part of two hours together and she hadn’t asked him a single question about his life back in England. And he noticed that she’d been quietly evasive on the subject of her own life.
But why not? he thought with a sudden sense of liberation. Wasn’t anonymity a kind of freedom in itself? Didn’t he live the kind of life where people judged him before they had even met him, depending on what they’d heard about him?
The bell of San Marco rang out twice, and Guy looked at his watch. ‘We’d better try and find a table for lunch while there’s still time.’
Sabrina stared up into dark grey eyes and felt her skin prickle in heated reaction. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Is that why you’re so thin?’ he demanded. ‘Because you skip lunch?’
‘Thanks very much!’
‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ he murmured, as his eyes drifted over her. ‘Your cheekbones are quite exquisitely pronounced and your legs are just the right side of slender. I suppose you have to work at it, the same as every other woman.’
Sabrina let her gaze fall from his face, staring instead at the pink-tipped toes which peeped through her strappy sandals, remembering how she’d forced herself to paint them, telling herself that out of such small, unimportant rituals some kind of normal life would be resumed.
‘Sabrina,’ he said softly. ‘What’s the matter? It was supposed to be a compliment. Have I insulted you? Embarrassed you?’
She looked up again. Now would be the perfect time to tell him that the weight had simply fallen away after Michael’s death. But tell him that and she would be back playing the unwanted role of the bereaved fiancée. Was it selfish of her to want to play a different part? To want to feel the sun warm and alive on her cheeks and see the unmistakable glint of appreciation in the eyes of the man who stood looking down at her? To feel alive again, instead of half-dead herself?
She shook herself out of her reverie and forced a smile which, to her suprise, felt as if it wanted to stay on her mouth. ‘By telling me I’m thin? Come on, Guy—did you ever hear of a woman who was offended by that?’
Her smile was like the sun nudging out from behind a cloud, he thought. ‘I guess not.’ Come to think of it, he didn’t have much appetite himself, and certainly not for conventional fare.
Instead, he found himself wondering how her lips would taste and what the scent of her breath would be like against his. He shook his head to dispel the sensual imagery. ‘Why don’t we have coffee and a pastry at one of these cafés in the square?’ he suggested steadily. ‘It’s warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine.’
They found a vacant table and ordered pastries with their coffee, the lightest and most beautiful cakes imaginable, and Guy thought that they tasted like sawdust in his mouth. And saw that Sabrina had taken exactly two mouthfuls herself.
‘It must be the heat.’ She shrugged in response to the mocking question in his eyes.
‘So it must.’ He echoed the lie, knowing that their lack of hunger had nothing to do with the temperature.
He marched her through the city like a professional tour guide, as if determined that he should show her everything. Sabrina wondered what had provoked this sudden, relentless pace, but she was too bewitched by him to care.
They stood side by side on the Bridge of Sighs and stared into the dark waters beneath.
‘Look down there,’ said Sabrina suddenly. ‘And think of the thousands of tourists who have stood here like this and been affected by this amazing city.’
His heart missed a beat as enchantment washed over him. ‘You mean the way it’s affecting us now?’
‘Yes.’ She told herself it wasn’t that remarkable for him to have echoed her thoughts, but still her voice trembled. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
He wanted her, he thought. And she wanted him. ‘Are you going to have dinner with me tonight, Sabrina?’ he asked suddenly.
She didn’t even stop to think about it, or bother to wonder whether she’d made it too easy for him. ‘You know I am.’
He nodded, the thrill of anticipation making his heart pick up speed. ‘Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll pick you up at eight.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
Her reluctance sharpened an appetite already keenly honed. ‘Oh, but I insist,’ he contradicted softly.
But pride made her match his determination. He must be some kind of hot-shot to be staying at that hotel. She didn’t want him seeing her humble little pensione, emphasising how great the differences between them. Just now they were as close to equal as they would ever be and she wanted to hold onto that. ‘I’ll meet you in the square. Honestly, Guy, I’m an independent woman, you know!’
‘Well, sometimes a man doesn’t want an independent woman,’ he ground out. He couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but he had. Or that he’d caught her by the arm to feel the soft tremble of flesh where his fingers burnt so delectably against her bare skin. ‘Are you always this damned stubborn?’
Something in the heated frustration of his question made Sabrina’s blood sing with a glorious inevitability, and she had the sense of being led towards something which defied all logic. It was liberation at its most intense and powerful, and she was no longer heartbroken, bereaved Sabrina. For one enchanted moment she stood poised on the brink of something magical.
She smiled. ‘Only if I need to be.’
There was a long and dangerous pause. ‘But I’m used to getting my own way,’ he told her steadily.
‘I know you are. It shows.’
She looked down at his tanned fingers which still lay against her white skin, and he let his hand fall, perplexed by his own actions. He was a man whose reputation hinged on being in control—so why was he acting as if he were auditioning for the leading role in a Western movie?
‘Was I being unbearably high-handed?’ he asked her, missing the satin feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.
She took one last look at him as she stepped into the water-taxi which had slid to a halt beside them. Not unbearably anything, she thought. You wouldn’t know how to be. ‘Only a little.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll see you tonight at eight.’
And Guy was left staring at the back of her bright blonde head, his heart thundering with a mixture of admiration and frustration.