скачать книгу бесплатно
He had begun speaking again. ‘And here.’ He moved his hand down to the soft flesh of her inner thighs. ‘Do you like them looking at you here?’ He moved his mouth to hers, speaking against it, so that she could feel the warm sweetness of his breath. He was deliberately insulting her, and yet he was making her so dizzy with longing that she had to grip on to the taut line of his shoulders, afraid that she might collapse into a heap at his feet. ‘Do you think they would like to do what I am going to do to you? Do you?’ And he slipped his fingers inside the swimsuit, to find her honeyed moistness, and she gave a strangled moan and flung her arms tightly around his neck.
‘Stefano!’ she cried brokenly into his shoulder, every vestige of reason gone, unable to relinquish one second of the sweet joy he was inflicting on her, her lips burying themselves helplessly into the soft shaft of his neck. ‘Stefano—no! We mustn’t. You know we mustn’t.’ It was a pathetic, half-hearted plea, and they both knew it.
He ceased the insistent movement of his hand, she was pushed away with a cool firmness, and she watched in total disbelief as he calmly walked over to the mirror above the washbasin, adjusted his tie, glanced at the expensive gold wristwatch and then at her, his eyes coolly mocking. ‘Most assuredly we mustn’t,’ he agreed. ‘I have a business meeting to attend to. A very important meeting—and one which gives precedence over what I believe you English call a ‘‘quickie’’.’
There was a second of shocked silence while her mind tried to assimilate what he had just said to her, and when she did her temper, fuelled by a deep self-loathing, erupted with a vengeance. With a cry she launched herself at him, her small hands beating ineffectually at the solid muscular wall of his chest.
‘How dare you?’ she demanded. ‘How dare you do that?’
‘What?’ he asked softly.
‘To come in here like that, and to—to—’
‘To touch you?’ he mocked. ‘To kiss you? To make you move beneath my fingers—your body telling me how much you still want me, even now?’
‘Why, you animal!’ she cried. ‘You low-down, no-good . . . ’
He was laughing, soft mirth lighting his eyes, as he caught her hands and looked down at her as though she were a very naughty little girl. ‘Ssh, cara,’ he murmured. ‘You should not call your husband all these names . . . ’
‘You won’t be my husband very soon!’ she howled in frustration. ‘I keep telling you!’
‘Tch, tch.’ He made a clicking noise with his teeth. ‘So stubborn. Stop worrying your beautiful little head. There is nothing wrong with wanting me to make love to you. It is perfectly natural.’
‘I’d rather burn in hell!’
He continued calmly, as if she hadn’t spoken, still with that confident smile on his mouth, the same spark of anticipation in the cold, glittering eyes. ‘I know you want me, and I want you. But not now. Or here. I don’t want it to be on the floor of your dressing-room, after so long. I want there to be a bed—a small bed will do, but a bed, most assuredly. And it will be all night. I’m going to make love to you all night.’
In a minute she would wake up, but while the nightmare was in progress she might as well have her say. ‘You are not going to make love to me! Get that into your conceited head, Stefano. You are not going to come anywhere near me, ever again. We are finished. Kaput. Finito.’
He looked at her with resignation, then shrugged his shoulders in that typically Latin way that she’d once found so impossibly endearing. ‘I still want you,’ he said.
‘Well, tough!’ she retorted, remembering, as if clutching on to a lifeline, his curiously old-fashioned loathing of slang.
‘And—’ another shrug ‘—you know me well enough, cara, to know that I always get what I want.’
She wondered fleetingly what kind of sentence she’d get for murder with this amount of provocation. ‘Not this time, you rat!’
His eyes widened. ‘I had forgotten just how much you could infuriate me. And, as I recall, there was only one sure way in which I could subdue your wildness.’
He made as if to move towards her, and she leapt back as if he were about to thrust a knife in her. If he touched her she would be lost.
‘Get out of here!’ she screamed, when there was a knock at the door. She closed her eyes in horror, then grabbed her kimono, pulling it over the bathing-suit and knotting the cummerbund tightly around her tiny waist. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she hissed.
An expression of sardonic amusement lit the dark eyes as he witnessed her obvious discomfiture, and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Surely you have had men in your dressing-room before now?’ he mocked.
Cressida directed her blackest and filthiest look at him as she pulled open the door. It was Alexia, Harvey’s—the producer’s—secretary, her expression of irritated surprise fading immediately into a dazzling smile directed at Stefano.
‘I thought I saw you come in here,’ she pouted.
‘Mr di Camilla just—er—wanted my—autograph,’ butted in Cressida, knowing, even as she said it, just how ridiculous it sounded.
And Alexia’s expression said it all—this man was not a stage-door johnny, hardly the type who would hang around asking actresses for their autographs. She turned china-blue eyes on him. ‘Justin’s waiting for you in the foyer,’ she said, putting her head to one side slightly so that a wing of golden hair fell alluringly over one eye.
‘Thank you,’ said Stefano formally, and then inclined his head in Cressida’s direction. ‘And thank you so much for giving me your . . . time, and your—er—autograph.’
He had managed to make a simple sentence sound positively indecent, she thought furiously. ‘Goodbye,’ snapped Cressida.
‘Addio,’ he murmured.
‘I’ll take you to Justin now,’ gushed Alexia eagerly, but he shook his head.
‘There is no need,’ he said firmly. ‘I know the way, and I am certain that you must have better things to do than to act as my guide.’ He smiled.
As if he didn’t know, thought Cressida, with an oddly painful pang, that Alexia would have stuck to his side all day like a parasite if he’d let her.
Both women watched as he moved away, the superbly cut loose Italian suit only emphasising the remarkably muscular body which it covered.
Alexia stared at Cressida curiously. ‘Did he really want your autograph?’ she asked disbelievingly.
‘Yes,’ muttered Cressida abruptly, thinking angrily that she still didn’t know why he’d been here. And what business did he have with Justin?
The older girl had mischief in her voice. ‘Strange then,’ she said innocently, ‘that you’ve got lipstick smudged all over your mouth!’
Giving a yelp of rage, Cressida grabbed a handful of tissues covered in cold cream and wiped her lips bare. She turned to Alexia reluctantly. ‘Better?’
‘Better. I take it you approve of our new angel?’
There was a long pause, and, not getting the expected response, she looked at Cressida enquiringly. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes,’ said Cressida slowly, ‘I heard.’ She had been thinking what an appropriate description of Stefano that was—yes, he had the face of an angel, a dark, mysterious angel. A cruel angel. But then the true meaning of the word sank in, with all its likely repercussions. ‘Angel’ was theatre slang for the financial backer of a play, with all the power and influence which that position merited.
She stared at Alexia in disbelief.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alexia chattily. ‘I thought that you hadn’t taken it in. He’s been having hush-hush talks with Justin for weeks now—because the other backers are dropping out. He’s a hugely rich Italian businessman, I gather—or perhaps you knew that already?’ she fished.
‘Why should I?’ asked Cressida guilelessly, amazed at the ease of her lie and hating herself for it, and yet not seeing any alternative.
Why? she thought helplessly. Why is he doing it? Stefano had never been involved in the arts before—the very opposite, in fact. She asked herself the question without really wishing to know the answer.
She wasn’t aware of the journey back to the flat, only of the taxi driver’s startled expression when he took in her half-made-up face and the stiff, lacquered hair-do. He looked as if he was about to make a joke, but something in her expression must have stopped him, and the journey home was completed in silence.
All she knew was that she found herself lying on her bed, tears staining the thick foundation on to the cotton pillow, her dinner date with David forgotten.
Crying, not because fate had brought Stefano back into her life, but because he represented a happier time, the time of her life, and she was reminded with heart-rending clarity of how it had once been between them, such a long time ago . . .
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_eeb5c7e2-5509-564d-a3c5-7da48f22609c)
IT HAD been the second hottest summer that century, and England seemed to have caved to a standstill. Everywhere the atmosphere was still and heavy as lead. Even breathing seemed to take the most enormous effort, thought Cressida, as she sucked the hot air down into her lungs.
She was walking towards the park, having arranged to meet Judy her flatmate from the drama school at which they were both final-year students. No one went into the canteen or to cafés in weather like this—they sought the shelter of the frazzled trees, or the light breeze which they prayed they might find near the large pond.
Cressida saw Judy in the distance, gave a languid wave, and walked towards her. Her dark red hair was already damp around her temples, the thin material of her cotton dress limp with the heat and clinging to her body like a second skin. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat—not, as so many of her peers did, for effect, but because it protected the fair skin which had remained pale all summer.
She reached Judy, who was lying on a beach towel spread out on the grass. She sat up and smiled as Cressida approached.
‘Hiya, Cress!’ she called. ‘Come and eat—I’ve made heaps of sandwiches. Ham and tomato, egg and cress. Cress! Get it?!’
Cressida’s shaded eyes were raised heavenwards. ‘Original sort of person, aren’t you?’ she teased, and shook away the foil-wrapped packages which her friend offered, wrinkling her nose at them. ‘No, thanks. I couldn’t face them. I don’t know how you can eat in this sort of weather.’
‘Oh, you just want to be thin, thin, thin,’ teased Judy as she flapped her hand in the air. ‘Go away!’ She swiped again. ‘Bother these wasps—there’s millions of them.’
‘Well, if you buy jam doughnuts, what do you expect?’ asked Cressida drily, and sank down on to the grass, pulling off the straw hat, so that her hair tumbled down the sides of her face.
Judy’s sandwich froze in mid-air. ‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘Hot!’
‘Too much mustard?’ enquired Cressida mildly.
‘Hotter than that. I’m in love!’
‘Where?’
‘Over there. Don’t look now. Oh, Cressida—now he’ll see!’
And Cressida saw him.
He was sitting across the grass from them, but his face was clearly visible. The thing that struck her first was how cool he looked, and how surprising that was in view of the fact that he was wearing more clothes than almost anyone else. Not for him the ubiquitous uniform of singlet and shorts—a lot of them worn by pot-bellied men who should have known better. This man was wearing a lightweight suit of cream, against which his olive skin contrasted superbly well. She found herself studying him closely, which in itself was unusual, thinking to herself that he, of all people, would have looked superb in some of the sawn-off denims which were all the rage that summer. The man had loosened his tie, and that was his sole concession to the day.
Dark brown velvet eyes met hers, and held them in a mocking gaze, one eyebrow raised in question, and she hurriedly looked away, taking a mouthful of the warm lemon barley beside her.
‘I didn’t get a look-in,’ said Judy in mock disgust. ‘He was too busy ogling you.’
Cressida blushed. ‘He wasn’t really.’
‘Yes, he was.’ Judy finished the last of her sandwich and rolled over on to her stomach. ‘Oh, well—I might as well tan the back of my legs. Do you want some cream?’
Cressida shook her head from side to side, trying to create some moving air, but it was no good. There was simply no cool to be found. ‘No, thanks—I’ll burn. I want some shade. I’ll wander down towards the lake.’ She stood up, in a fluid movement which was testimony to the years of ballet training. She tucked her copy of Antony and Cleopatra under her arm, and slowly walked across the fried earth.
She had found the welcome green umbrella of a horse-chestnut, when she heard a loud buzzing and a wasp danced infuriatingly around her face. She waved it away. ‘Off! Off!’
But the wasp was persistent, straying so dangerously close to her eye that her wild swipe at it sent her off balance, causing her to trip forward, one foot catching the jagged edge of an exposed tree root.
Down she tumbled to sit on the grass, seeing the sudden appearance of blood on her foot. The pain brought tears to her eyes, and as a shadow moved over her she looked up with over-bright eyes at the man in the suit.
‘Do not cry,’ he said gently, and she noticed that his voice had the slightest foreign inflexion. ‘Here. Let me see.’
And, before she could stop him, he had crouched beside her, gently removing her sandal and putting it aside, and then he was cradling her foot in the palm of his hands, examining it with long fingers which were both cool and firm. Bizarrely, she felt an electric tingling at the curiously intimate sensation of his skin touching hers, and in an automatic reflex she tried to withdraw the foot.
‘No, please . . . ’ she protested without conviction, her normal savoir-faire deserting her. She was transformed instead into a creature who was gazing up at him as if he could take the pain away by magic.
‘Yes,’ he insisted quietly. ‘I will dress it for you.’
She watched as he retreated to the tree where he’d been sitting to pick up a bottle of mineral water. He saw her bemused expression as he returned. ‘Not fizzy,’ he smiled. ‘Still water. And Italian—so it’s only the best, naturally, for such an exquisite foot!’
Involuntarily, she gave a slight shiver at the compliment he paid her, watching as he tipped the mineral water over a fine piece of linen which he produced from his jacket. He squeezed it out with strong hands and then, very firmly, tied it around her narrow foot.
The coolness of the makeshift bandage provided instant relief, but, perversely, she missed that contact with his hand as he had touched her bare flesh. She found herself looking at the line of his mouth, at the slightly mocking upward curve at each side—and began to wonder what it would be like to be kissed by him.
She shook her head to make the thoughts go away. Crazy thoughts! Summer madness. Heat-stroke. ‘I have to go,’ she said.
To her surprise he made no demur. He nodded. ‘Of course.’ And with the same delicate touch he slipped her bare foot back into the sandal, his dark eyes narrowed slightly as they looked at her with concern. Prince Charming, she thought suddenly, as he fastened the strap.
He sprang like a panther to his feet and, looking down at her, extended his hands.
She found herself reaching up her hands, and when he had grasped them he swung her up lightly so that she stood in front of him, looking up expectantly into his face. For a moment he frowned. He was very close. She could hear the humming of bees, and the longed-for breeze had just started. Her lips instinctively parted, and her green eyes were huge in her face.
And suddenly, he became very formal. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked courteously.
She felt as though she had snapped out of a dream. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said, very shaken, though less by the accident than by the realisation that she had been standing waiting to be kissed by a man who was a total stranger to her. And thank God, she thought, that he had not responded. She tried to move away, but he caught her by the elbow.
‘Let me help you,’ he insisted, in that mocking, accented voice, and slid his arm around her slender waist to walk her back to Judy.
And she allowed him to hold her in that familiar way, relaxing naturally against his strength. The short journey was heaven, but, too soon, they’d arrived. She saw Judy roll over from her prone position, rubbing her eyes, her expression of curiosity showing that she’d seen nothing of the incident. ‘I—tripped,’ Cressida explained, still weak from the effect that this man was having on her.
His hand dropped from her waist. ‘It will cause you pain for no more than a few hours, I think.’ He smiled. And then he looked down at a mute Cressida, cupping her chin between thumb and forefinger. ‘Ciao,’ he said softly, so softly that only she could hear, and then he walked away over the brown grass, the brilliant sunlight glancing off the dark hair.
There was silence for a moment. Judy’s eyes were like saucers.
‘Who was he?’ she demanded. ‘Close-up he’s even more of a hunk!’
It sounded absurd, even to Cressida. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘What do you mean—you don’t know?’ quizzed Judy.
‘Just what I say,’ replied Cressida, a touch querulously. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life, and all I know is that he tended to my foot.’ Her eye was caught by the linen handkerchief.
‘But did you see the way he was looking at you? Did you give him your phone number?’
‘He didn’t ask,’ said Cressida, trying, and failing, to sound annoyed at the implication that she might give out her phone number to a person she had just met. Because if she were perfectly honest, she would have given it—willingly.
Judy was looking at his retreating back-view just visible in the distance. ‘Well, that’s that, then. London’s a big place—you’ll never see him again.’
And that was what Cressida had thought, too, after a week of spinning ‘What if?’ fantasies.
What if he went there for lunch every day? Would it look too obvious if she went back there? And why should it? she reasoned—for all he knew it might be her regular lunchtime venue. Which might have been all very well in theory, had the weather not broken with a series of alarming thunderstorms which prevented her from re-visiting the park.
What if he worked near the drama school? Along with half a million others, she thought wryly. If he did work near by, she never saw him, even though she spent too much of her meagre grant on frequenting the many swish new sandwich bars in the vicinity, thinking she might spot him.
No, she decided, as she pushed the fine linen handkerchief she had carefully laundered and ironed to the back of her underwear drawer—it had just been a strange, one-off encounter, and she should take comfort from the fact that she had reacted so strongly to him, stranger or not, because hadn’t it worried her for long enough that she had seemed to share none of her peers’ urges for sexual experimentation? Hadn’t there been shrugs and whispered comments because she showed not the slightest inclination to disappear at parties—unlike the other girls, who were seen leaving the room with their current flames, usually in the direction of the bedroom.
