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Guy heard the incredulity in her voice and sizzled her a glance of mocking query. ‘You think I don’t know the way back to my own hotel?’
Sabrina compared it to the tiny, dark pensione she was staying in. ‘It looks more like a palace than a hotel!’
‘Mmm. I believe it was.’ He glanced down and saw that the walk had removed that ghastly blue tinge from her lips, and smiled. ‘A very long time ago.’
‘How long?’
‘Fourteenth century, would you believe?’
‘Good heavens,’ said Sabrina lightly, and the question came out before she had time to think about it. ‘How on earth can you afford to stay in a place like this?’
Years of self-preservation against women with dollar signs in their eyes made Guy reply, without missing a beat, ‘I’m lucky,’ he said coolly. ‘The company pays for it. Come on. You’ve started shivering again.’
As soon as they walked into a lavishly ornate foyer, she heard the faint buzz of comment. One of the men working at the reception desk, who looked handsome enough to be a movie star, fixed Guy Masters with an unctuous smile.
‘Sir? I trust you have had an enjoyable morning.’
‘Eventful,’ Guy murmured. ‘I’ll just have my key, please, Luigi.’
‘Certainly, sir, I’ll have someone—’
‘No, please, don’t bother. I’ll see myself up.’
In the mirror-lined lift, Sabrina saw how wet she really was.
The water of the lagoon was obviously much dirtier than its colour suggested, because there were tiny spots of mud spattering her T-shirt. And unfortunately there were two damp circles ringing her breasts, drawing attention to the outline of her bra which was embarrassingly visible. And so, too, were her nipples, tight and hot and aching. Turned on by a man she had only just met…
Appalled by her dark and unwanted thoughts, she quickly crossed her arms and clamped them over her bust. ‘That man at Reception gave me a very funny look.’
Guy felt a pulse flicker as he stared at her reflection in the mirror, noting the protective body language and working out for himself the reason for it. ‘Well, you must admit you do look pretty spectacular,’ he murmured. Like some glorious nymph who had just emerged from the water.
‘Mmmm,’ she agreed. ‘Spectacularly drowned.’
He narrowed his eyes. Her voice was unusually soft. As soft as her lips. The lift pinged to a halt. ‘Here’s my suite.’
Suite?
Sabrina thought of her own small pensione, where she could never find anyone on duty. Like last night, for example, when the water coming from the tap had been nothing more than a dark, brackish trickle. With the aid of her phrasebook, she had been forced to laboriously construct a note to the manager, requesting that he do something about the hot water. What if she’d gone back today, dripping from head to toe in filthy lagoon water, to discover that nothing had been resolved?
Thank heavens for the chivalrous Guy Masters, she told herself—but she felt a mixture of nerves and excitement as he unlocked the door to his suite.
He pushed open the door to let her inside and Sabrina had to stifle a small cry of astonishment as she walked into a high-ceilinged sitting room. Because, yes, of course, she’d known that places such as these existed, but it was something so outside her own experience that it was like stepping into a parallel world.
The room was full of furniture which even an idiot could tell was very old. Antique, in fact. And priceless too, she imagined.
Sabrina looked around her. The light was muted because all the shutters were closed, but that made the contents of the room stand out even more.
Silken rugs in jewel-bright colours were scattered on the marble floors, on which stood spindly-legged chairs and tables. There was a faded sofa of crimson and gold and a couple of chairs which matched, all strewn with cushions of the same rich colours. She slowly turned to see an oil painting of a long-dead doge, set against the timeless Venetian backdrop, one of many paintings hung on the crimson walls.
‘Oh, but it’s beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘So beautiful.’
Guy watched her slow appraisal, her uninhibited pleasure making her look curiously elegant, despite the damp and dirty clothes.
‘Isn’t it?’ he said softly, but he wasn’t even looking at the painting.
And the lack of light was far too intimate, he decided suddenly, striding over to the window to push open the shutters, so the reflected light from the Grand Canal gleamed and glittered back into the room at them.
A view like that was worth a king’s ransom, thought Sabrina, suddenly feeling as out of place as some scruffy urchin who had come seeking shelter from the storm.
It brought her quickly to her senses. She wasn’t here to enjoy the view. Or to make small-talk. She had better just clean up and be on her way.
She cleared her throat. ‘Could you show me—?’
He turned around, noting the sudden pinkness in her cheeks, the two high spots of colour making her look like some flaxen-plaited doll. ‘Sure. The bathroom’s that door over there.’ He pointed. ‘Take as long as you like. Oh, and throw your wet clothes out and I’ll send them down and have them laundered.’
‘Thank you.’
Sabrina was glad to lock the bathroom door behind her and peel off the freezing clothes from her shivering flesh. They smelt so dank!
The jeans were first, and then the T-shirt, and she dropped the sodden garments onto the marble floor. But her bra and panties were damp with canal water, too. Should she risk…?
Risk what? she asked herself impatiently. She couldn’t keep sodden underwear on, and this pair of sensible cotton briefs was hardly likely to have him trying to beat the door down!
Sheltering behind the screen of the door, she picked the bundle up.
‘Guy?’
‘Leave them outside,’ came a muffled sort of voice, and she did as he asked, quickly slamming the door shut and sliding the lock home before stepping into the shower, with its industrial-sized head.
Outside, Guy gingerly picked up the deposited items as if he were handling a poisonous snake.
Had it really been necessary for her to take everything off? he wondered uncomfortably, while asking himself why some women chose to wear knickers which looked as if they were armour-plated.
He knew almost nothing about Sabrina Cooper, and would never see her again after today, but what he did know was that she certainly hadn’t come to Venice with seduction in mind.
Not unless she was intending to appeal to the type of man who got turned on by the frumpy gym-mistress look!
Biting back a smile, he wandered over to the telephone and picked up the receiver.
‘Pronto!’ he drawled for courtesy’s sake, and then immediately switched to English, in which most of the staff were fluent. His Italian was passable—but in a case concerning a strange woman’s underwear he needed no misunderstandings! ‘How long will it take to get some clothes laundered?’
There was a short pause. ‘Certainly within a couple of hours, sir.’
Guy frowned. That long? And just what were they supposed to do while Sabrina’s jeans and T-shirt and bra and panties whizzed around in the washing machine? His time was precious, and his leisure time especially so. There were a million things he would rather be doing than being forced to sit and chat to someone with whom he had nothing in common other than that they both hailed from the same country.
Damn!
‘Let’s try for half that time, shall we?’ he suggested softly. ‘And can you have some coffee brought up at the same time?’
Bearing a tray of coffee, the valet came and collected the damp garments and Guy heard the sound of the shower being turned off. He walked over to the bathroom door.
‘I’m afraid your clothes won’t be back for an hour,’ he called.
‘An hour?’ Sabrina’s heart plummeted as she stood behind the locked door. What was she supposed to do in the meantime? Stay wrapped in a towel inside this steamy bathroom?
He heard the annoyance in her voice and felt like telling her that the idea pleased him even less than it did her. But he hadn’t been forced to bring her back here, had he? No, he’d made that decision all on his own—so he could hardly complain about it now.
‘Why don’t you use that towelling robe hanging up on the back of the door?’ he suggested evenly. ‘And there’s some coffee out here when you’re ready.’
Squinting at herself in the cloudy mirror, Sabrina shrugged on a towelling gown which was as luxuriously thick and fluffy as she would expect in a place like this. She slipped it over her bare, freckled shoulders, and as she did so she became aware of the faint trace of male scent which clung to it.
Guy had been wearing this robe before her, she realised as an unwelcome burst of sexual hunger grew into life inside her. Guy’s body had been as naked beneath this as her own now was. She felt the sudden picking up of her heart as the evocative muskiness invaded her nostrils, and she wondered if she might be going slightly mad.
How could a complete stranger—however attractive he undoubtedly was—manage to have such an incapacitating and powerful effect on her? Making her feel like some puppet jerked and manipulated by invisible strings. Was this what the death of her fiancé had turned her into—some kind of predator?
Guy glanced up as she walked in and his grey eyes narrowed, a pulse hammering at his temple. Maybe the robe hadn’t been such a good idea after all, he conceded. Because wasn’t there something awfully erotic about a woman wearing an oversized masculine garment like that? On him it reached to just below his knees—but on this woman’s pale and slender frame it almost skimmed her ankles.
‘How about some coffee?’ he queried steadily.
‘C-coffee would be lovely,’ she stumbled, suddenly feeling acutely shy. She perched on the edge of a sofa on the opposite side of the room, telling herself that she had absolutely nothing to worry about. The circumstances might be bizarre, but for some reason she trusted this man. Men of Guy Masters’s calibre wouldn’t make a clumsy pass at a stranger, despite that brief, hungry darkening of his eyes.
He poured them both coffee and thought that conversation might be safer than silence. ‘First time in Venice?’
‘First time abroad,’ she admitted.
‘You’re kidding!’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. I’ve never been out of England before.’ Michael hadn’t earned very much, and neither had she—and saving up to buy a house had seemed more important than trips abroad. Though a man like Guy Masters would probably not understand that.
‘And you came here on your own?’
‘That’s right.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Pretty daring thing to do,’ he observed, ‘first time in a foreign country on your own?’
Sabrina stared down at the fingers which were laced around her coffee-cup. ‘I’ve never done anything remotely daring before…’
‘What, never?’ he teased softly.
Sabrina didn’t smile back. Hadn’t she decided that life was too short to play safe all the time? ‘So I thought I’d give it a try,’ she said solemnly, and shifted her bottom back a little further on the seat.
Guy sipped his coffee and wished that she would sit still, not keep shifting around on the sofa as if she had ants in her pants. And then he remembered.
She wasn’t wearing any.
Dear God. A shaft of desire shot through him, which was as unexpected as it was inappropriate, and he took a huge mouthful of coffee—almost glad when it scalded his lips. He risked a surreptitious glance at his watch. Only forty-five minutes to go. Less if he was lucky. Much more of this and he would be unable to move.
‘So why Venice?’ he queried, a slight edge of desperation to his voice.
‘Oh, it’s one of the world’s most beautiful cities, and I—I had to…to…’
Something in the quality of her hesitation made him stir with interest. ‘Had to what?’
She had been about to say ‘get away’, but that particular statement always provoked the questions to ask why, and once that question had been asked then the whole sad story would come out. A story she was weary of telling. Weary of living through. She had come to Italy to escape from death and its clutches.
‘I had to see St Mark’s Square.’ She smiled brightly. ‘It was something of a life’s ambition. So was riding in a gondola.’
‘But not taking a bath in the Grand Canal?’
She actually laughed. ‘No. Not that. I hadn’t bargained on that!’
He thought how the laugh lit up her face. Like sunshine glowing from within. ‘And how long are you staying?’
‘Only a couple more days. How about you?’
He felt a pulse begin to beat insistently at his temple. Suddenly Venice was getting more attractive by the minute—rather uncomfortably attractive, actually. ‘Me, too,’ he said huskily, and risked another glance at his watch.
The room seemed much too small. Much too intimate. Again Sabrina shifted self-consciously on the sofa.
‘How old are you?’ he demanded suddenly, as she crossed one pale, slender thigh over the other.
Old enough to recognise that maybe Guy Masters wasn’t completely indifferent to her after all. The quiet, metallic gleam in the cool grey eyes told her that. But that wasn’t the kind of answer he was seeking.
‘I’m twenty-seven,’ she told him.
‘You look younger.’
‘So people say.’ She lifted her eyebrows. ‘And you?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘You look older.’
Their eyes connected as something primitive shuddered in the air around them.
‘I know I do,’ he murmured.
His words caressed her and Sabrina stared at him, unable to stop her eyes from committing every exquisite feature to memory. I will never forget you, she thought with an aching sense of sadness. Ever.
They sat in silence for a while as they drank their coffee. Eventually, there was a rap on the door and the valet delivered an exquisitely laundered set of underwear, jeans and T-shirt. Guy handed them over to her. ‘There you go,’ he said gravely.
She took them, blushingly aware that his fingertips had actually been touching the pressed cotton of her bra and panties. ‘I’d better go and get changed.’
And if he’d thought that she’d looked exquisite before, that was nothing to the transformation which had taken place when she emerged, shimmering, from the bathroom. Guy didn’t know what the laundry had managed to do with her clothes, but they now looked as if they were brand-new, and her hair had dried to a glorious strawberry-blonde sheen which spilled over her shoulders.
‘You’d better take this,’ he said as he dug deep into the pocket of his trousers and withdrew a wad of money, seeing her eyes widen in an alarmed question as he gave it to her.
‘What’s this?’ she demanded.
