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And he did want to kiss her!
In fact, he wanted to do a lot more than kiss her...! Thank goodness he had been able to hold the white linen napkin in front of him when he stood up while the two women resumed their seats, otherwise the whole restaurant would have been aware of the complete betrayal of his body. He was behaving like a schoolboy with his first crush, damn it!
The man seated two tables away, although giving the impression of eating his own meal, was still watching Abbie, surreptitiously. And Jarrett, again like a schoolboy, he acknowledged angrily, wanted to punch him on the nose for just daring to look at her!
‘Are the ribs not to your liking, Jarrett?’
He looked at Abbie with completely blank eyes; even the husky tone to her voice was faintly erotic. Damn it, no woman should be this sensually beautiful. ‘What?’ he rasped aggressively.
The slight widening of violet-blue eyes was the only visible indication she gave of recognising his manner. ‘I merely wondered if there was something wrong with your food; you don’t appear to be eating it,’ she pointed out lightly.
He looked down at the untouched starter in front of him, across at the other three half-eaten plates of food on the table, forcing himself to relax, inwardly chastising himself for his lapse. The sooner he got this meal over with, the sooner he would be able to get away. From Abbie.
‘I’m sure the ribs are going to be excellent,’ he answered. ‘After all, this is a Sutherland Hotel, isn’t it?’ he added derisively. ‘Although,’ he continued, ‘it isn’t much of a recommendation for the place when the part-owner doesn’t even stay in her own hotels!’ He bit into his food, and, as he had already surmised, the ribs were mouth-wateringly delicious.
Sutherland Hotels were known worldwide for their welcoming service and excellent restaurants; everything about this hotel spoke of its exclusivity, from the reception to the beautifully furnished suites of rooms. But the woman who dominated the boardroom, Daniel Sutherland’s widow, never stayed in them...
According to Daniel Sutherland’s daughter Cathy, the eldest of two children from his first marriage, Sabina had been the daughter of one of her father’s employees. On her marriage to Daniel Sutherland, she’d very quickly learnt the advantages of having such a wealthy husband. Since his death two years ago, she’d never demeaned herself enough to stay in one of the family hotels, always finding private accommodation close by—on a grand scale!—when she was on one of her regular visits as guardian of the major shareholder in the family business. Sabina’s young daughter Charlotte was the real Sutherland heir; Sabina was merely a caretaker until her child achieved the age of twenty-one. But until that time the woman obviously intended to milk the situation for all it was worth!
It was all too easy to see why Cathy, and her younger brother Danny, resented the hold their stepmother had on their inheritance through her own daughter’s shares in the company. Daniel Sutherland must have been totally besotted with his second wife to have left his will in the way that he had—
‘You’re talking of Sabina Sutherland?’ Abbie prompted coolly.
‘Who else?’ he scorned. ‘She’s staying in a private ski-lodge somewhere up the mountain—’
‘And how do you know that?’ She looked at him frowningly.
He shrugged. ‘I asked around.’
Violet-blue eyes widened. ‘And someone here, at the hotel, told you where she was staying?’
‘Not here, Abbie.’ He gave a smile. ‘I’m sure giving out that sort of information about their employer is more than their job is worth! No, I asked around, discreetly, in London, before coming out here to Whistler.’
He had suffered several boring evenings listening to Cathy Sutherland’s bitterness about her stepmother, withstanding her more than obvious attempts to deepen their relationship to physical intimacy, attempts he had of course deftly outmanoeuvred—he never mixed business with his private life!—before he was able to find out that the Black Widow, as Cathy called her stepmother, would be in Canada the second week of January, skiing with her daughter, Charlotte.
There was obviously little sisterly love between Cathy and Charlotte either, Cathy referring to her half-sibling as ‘the brat’. There had to be an age gap between the two sisters, and at thirty Cathy was already starting to lose her bloom, her blonde beauty, after years of grievance, taking on a certain hardness that was far from attractive, so the existence of a young and probably pretty half-sister wouldn’t go down too well with someone like her. Besides which, having grown up in the lap of luxury, with a mother who was patently money-grasping herself, Charlotte Sutherland was probably a brat!
‘You’ve done your research on this woman, then, Jarrett?’ Alison prompted curiously.
He shrugged. ‘I’m only interested in her business life, not her personal one.’ Although Cathy would have been only too happy to go on for hours about the woman her father had married after the death of her own mother twenty years ago, if he’d let her! But as far as Jarrett was concerned it was just another example of why marriage wasn’t for him. He could imagine nothing worse than being married for his money. By all accounts, Daniel Sutherland had been an intelligent man, and he had still been fooled. For some years, it seemed.
‘You still haven’t told us what business you have with her?’ Abbie said casually.
He shook his head, leaning back in his chair, his expression closed. ‘I think I’ve said altogether too much on the subject already,’ he said firmly. ‘It must have been the champagne we drank earlier to toast your marriage.’ He addressed the other couple.
‘Talking of which...” Stephen signalled the waiter, requesting another bottle of champagne for the four of them.
Which gave Jarrett the few minutes’ respite he needed to gather his scattered wits together. He had said enough already, revealed more than necessary of himself and his reasons for being here in Canada. For a man who was usually private to the point of rudeness—even Cathy Sutherland, so free with the information about the stepmother she detested, hadn’t known why he was so interested in her!—he felt uncomfortable with the knowledge that he had been provoked into revealing that much to the three people present.
It was Abbie’s fault, of course. While giving every appearance of being open and beautiful, she had nevertheless managed not to reveal a single fact about herself, but had goaded Jarrett, he now realised, into talking about himself in an effort to get her to open up about herself.
He tried to think what he did know about her. She had once been a model—years ago, if they coincided with the period he had spent in Australia. She travelled a great deal, and not through choice, if her dislike of it was to be believed. If she didn’t like it so much, then why do it at all? She—
He was becoming obsessed with the woman, he realised angrily. And for a man who, at best, viewed women with teasing affection, and at worst with cold disdain, it wasn’t a feeling he was particularly comfortable with!
‘I think you have an admirer, Abbie.’ He dryly changed the subject.
She arched dark brows in cool dismissal. ‘But we hardly know each other, Jarrett,’ she returned just as dryly.
Golden eyes narrowed on the ivory perfection of her face; was she mocking him? ‘I wasn’t referring to myself,’ he bit back, aware that he sounded rude and disdainful.
She frowned as his meaning became clear to her, looking about them with apprehensive eyes.
And, as she did so, it suddenly hit Jarrett that this woman was running away from something. Or someone...
At the same time as he realised this, Jarrett felt a previously unknown protectiveness. Towards Abbie. A woman, as she had already said, that he hardly knew! But despite her previous cool assurance there was a vulnerability about her at this moment, an air of uncertainty as she worriedly searched the faces of the other diners in the restaurant.
Jarrett sat forward, his face on a level with Abbie’s. ‘He’s seated two tables away, to the left,’ he told her quietly. ‘And he doesn’t seem able to take his eyes off you. Not that I can altogether blame him,’ he added. ‘It can’t be every day that you see Cleopatra and Delilah all wrapped up in one deliciously feminine bundle!’
Abbie had located her admirer now, dismissing the young blond Adonis with one sweep of that violet-blue gaze.
God, she was a cool one, Jarrett acknowledged admiringly. The man who was watching her so intently had the sort of film-star good looks most women would drool over, and yet Abbie showed no feminine interest in him whatsoever, totally controlled again as her attention returned to their table, their main course now being served to them.
Stephen came into their conversation. ‘Cleopatra and Delilah were both scheming women...’
Jarrett grinned. ‘But beautiful, if history is to be believed—very beautiful.’
‘If you’ll all excuse me for a few minutes.’ Abbie spoke distractedly, seemingly unconcerned at the barb in Jarrett’s remark. ‘I have to go and make a telephone cali.’ She stood up as she excused herself, picking up her small clutch-bag, to walk across the restaurant and out into the lobby beyond, where public telephones were situated.
‘Was it something I said...?’ Jarrett asked his two remaining dinner companions.
‘I doubt it,’ Stephen replied. ‘Abbie probably does just have to make a telephone call.’
Maybe she did, Jarrett inwardly acknowledged, but the man who had been seated two tables away, the man who had been watching her so avidly through the meal, had obviously seen her departure as an opportunity to actually speak to her, getting up himself and following her from the room!
Jarrett’s eyes became golden slits as he watched the other man, whose hurried departure, so soon after Abbie’s, his meal half-eaten, couldn’t just be a coincidence. Despite Abbie’s air of cool assurance, there was also that vulnerability Jarrett had recognised in her earlier, and the delicacy of her tall, willowy body. The man who had followed her, so opportunely, was very tall and muscular, looked as if he worked out just for the hell of it!
He put his own snowy white linen napkin down on the table beside Abbie’s. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ he muttered, eyes narrowed purposefully as he strode out of the restaurant, uncaring of what Stephen and Alison thought of his departure.
It didn’t take him long to locate Abbie. Or the blond Adonis.
They were standing together across the lobby, nowhere near the public telephone booths, which were on the other side of the wide marbled hall. And even as Jarrett went to march across it and put a stop to the blond man’s intrusion Abbie reached up and put her hand on her companion’s arm in a gesture of familiarity, her smile warm and relaxed as she looked up into that handsome face.
Jarrett came to an abrupt halt, a knot tightening in his stomach while he watched the continuing conversation between the couple. Although she had given no indication of it earlier when he’d pointed the other man out to her, Abbie knew that blond giant! There was a familiarity between them that spoke of an intimacy of long standing; Abbie was looking quite animated now.
Jarrett felt a wave of temper sweep through him at the way Abbie was behaving with the other man. The two had behaved like strangers in the restaurant, no sign of familiarity between them, despite the fact that the man hadn’t seemed able to take his eyes off Abbie. What the hell was going on?
Whatever it was, Jarrett didn’t intend being caught standing here staring at the two of them like a gawking schoolboy!
Yet as their conversation continued he found he couldn’t move away. The two of them were very animated now, the man talking softly, but obviously slightly aggressively, while Abbie slowly shook her head in disagreement with what he was saying. The man broke off abruptly, and Abbie spoke to him now, that hand reassuringly on his arm once again. The man seemed to sigh his capitulation at what was being said, murmuring some sort of agreement, and Abbie nodded, a smile hovering about her sensuous lips.
The woman wasn’t just a mystery, she was an enigma, and Jarrett had too much else on his mind at the moment to try to get to the bottom of it. Maybe Abbie, for all she was such an old friend of Alison’s, was actually a high-class call-girl; it would certainly fit in with her reluctance to talk about herself, and the fact that she travelled so much without really enjoying it. It would also explain the single name of Abbie...
It did fit too, only too well, he slowly realised. A woman of Abbie’s undoubted beauty would be well sought after, could probably name her own price for the possession of that cool, elusive beauty, no matter how fleetingly.
Hell, he had probably spent the best part of the evening lusting after a woman who sold what he wanted from her! But he had never paid for a woman in his life—at least, not with cold, hard cash. Although expensive jewellery at the end of a brief relationship probably amounted to the same thing.
Oh, to hell with this, he inwardly cursed; if that was what she was he might as well have her himself for the night, and once he had he could get on with concentrating on the real reason he was here.
That decision made, he turned on his heel and walked back into the restaurant. Whatever arrangements Abbie was making to meet the blond Adonis later, she could damn well break. The only man she was going home with tonight was him. And it would be a night he intended them both to remember!
He watched her intently as she negotiated around the tables to where her party was seated, half expecting his desire for her to have lessened with the knowledge of what he now thought she was. But it hadn’t, the gently swaying hips, firm up-thrusting breasts, pert beneath the fitted sheath of her dress, only succeeded in evoking vivid images in his mind. Damn it, he had never wanted a woman as much as he now wanted Abbie—no matter what she was!
‘You shouldn’t have waited for me,’ she commented as she sat down, looking pointedly at Jarrett’s untouched steak.
His mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t. I’ve only just returned to the table myself,’ he added after a deliberate pause, observing her under hooded lids. And he wasn’t disappointed. She gave him a startled look, instantly wary, he realised with satisfaction.
‘Oh?’
She had to be wondering where he had been, to have just returned himself, must also be wondering if he had seen her talking to the blond Adonis. Well she could sit and wonder!
‘Successful telephone call?’ he said lightly before cutting into his perfectly cooked steak, seemingly uninterested in her answer. Because he knew she hadn’t made any telephone call!
‘Er—yes,’ she confirmed abruptly, still looking at him uncertainly.
‘Everything okay?’ Alison put in gently.
Abbie’s expression softened as she turned to her friend. ‘Everything is fine,’ she nodded warmly.
Were Alison and Stephen aware of what this woman did? Somehow he doubted it. Oh, Stephen was no angel, had been involved with lots of women before meeting Alison a few years ago, and Alison herself admitted to several relationships before Stephen. But what Abbie did was something else entirely, and certainly couldn’t be classed as relationships!
It was with a certain amount of satisfaction that Jarrett noticed the continued absence of the blond Adonis from his chair two tables away. The man, his business, he believed, successfully concluded, hadn’t even bothered to return and finish his meal. Well, he was going to regret later having missed out on his meal, and on Abbie—because Jarrett had plans of his own where she was concerned. And it was very rare for him not to get what he wanted!
The rest of the evening dragged as far as Jarrett was concerned, the exquisitely prepared food tasteless to him, his lack of contribution to the conversation drawing several veiled glances from those violet-blue eyes beneath long black lashes. Much to his satisfaction. He might as well be as much of a mystery to her as she was to him!
All the time his tension was rising, his anticipation of the night ahead making him completely introspective.
He had no idea how one went about paying a woman to go to bed with one.
But the blond Adonis had seemed to have no trouble arranging it, so neither would he!
CHAPTER THREE
ABBIE was all too aware of the brooding silence of the man sitting next to her, and of his steadily increasing tension.
But she had no logical explanation for his behaviour.
Oh, she had been a little concerned when he’d mentioned leaving the table at the same time she had, had wondered if he could have seen her out in the lobby talking to Tony. But, she had decided, even if he had witnessed that conversation, it would merely have looked as if the man who couldn’t ‘take his eyes off her’ had tried to strike up an acquaintance with her when he’d seen the opportunity of finding her on her own. And, as Tony hadn’t returned to his table, it would seem that he must have been rebuffed.
No, it couldn’t have been that which had changed Jarrett’s mood. Because it had changed. Unless his long silences were his way of sticking to his promise about keeping his cynicism to himself? She had wondered how he was going to manage that, when he obviously viewed life through such jaundiced eyes. Perhaps he had decided silence was the best course of action!
Not that she in the least minded his lack of participation in the conversation. She had been totally stunned earlier when he’d revealed that she—well, actually Sabina Sutherland—was the reason for his coming to Whistler. Although Alison had assured her, once they’d reached the powder-room, after Abbie’s choking fit, that neither she nor Stephen had been aware of Jarrett’s rea- son for being here, either. Nor did they know what business Jarrett had with Sabina Sutherland.
Jarrett was an entrepreneur—for that Abbie read opportunist! —with a finger in many pies. But as Sutherlands were also a multi-business company that told Abbie absolutely nothing. However, by the time Abbie returned to her private ski-lodge somewhere up the mountain, she should have all the information on Jarrett Hunter that she would need, in order to know whether or not she should see him as Sabina Sutherland...
She sincerely hoped the answer to that proved to be negative. Jarrett Hunter wasn’t a man she felt in the least comfortable with, and dealing with him on a business level would be like handling the unleashed tiger his eyes so reminded her of!
Eyes that watched her whenever he thought she was concentrating her interest elsewhere. And his interest was purely male, seeming to concentrate on each of her physical attributes in turn. She was sure she had been mentally stripped naked, and then reclothed, in the last hour!
‘Can I see you safely back to your suite?’ he offered smoothly later as they all left the restaurant together. ‘I’m sure Alison and Stephen are more than ready to disappear after this interruption to their honeymoon.’
Abbie delayed answering him as she smiled her thanks at the young man who had just returned her jacket and overcoat to her, the latter an expensive copy of a sable—she couldn’t stand the thought of wearing a real fur that had once covered some poor luckless animal’s body, but the icy Canadian winter called for warmth as well as comfort.
She wrapped the ankle-length coat about her before releasing her hair from the confines of its collar, turning to smile coolly at Jarrett. ‘As you can see by this coat,’ she commented, turning up the collar to keep her neck warm, ‘I’m not a guest at this hotel.’
He looked deeply irritated by this turn of events, scowling darkly. ‘Then perhaps I can see you back to the hotel you are staying at?’ he grated.
‘There’s no need,’ she dismissed, turning to hug first Alison and then Stephen. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you both. And dinner was lovely, too. I’ll return the compliment when we’re all back in London,’ she added, before at last turning back to Jarrett Hunter, holding out her hand in formal parting. ‘It was nice to meet you, Mr Hunter.’ Politeness demanded that she say at least that much!
His mouth twisted, the golden eyes full of scepticism as he took hold of the hand she held out so graciously. ‘Was it?’ he returned with dry derision, obviously not fooled by her politeness for a minute.
She gave a short nod of confirmation. ‘It’s always interesting to meet someone else from home on one’s travels, Mr Hunter,’ she returned noncommittally, pointedly removing her hand from his when he made no effort to release her.
He looked at her sharply. ‘If you miss home so much, perhaps you shouldn’t do so much—travelling.’
She met his gaze unflinchingly, not in the least sure what he meant by that remark—except that it had somehow sounded like a put-down! ‘I go where I’m needed,’ she clipped. ‘Now I really do have to go.’
‘I said I would like to see you home,’ Jarrett repeated with soft intent. ‘It’s late, and you shouldn’t go alone—’
‘But I’m not going alone, Mr Hunter, I have a car waiting for me outside,’ she said, the edge of the resistance she was feeling at his persistence creeping into her voice. For goodness’ sake, couldn’t he understand? She didn’t want his company, back to her hotel, or anywhere else for that matter!
His mouth tightened, a nerve pulsing in his jaw, his eyes suddenly pure molten gold. ‘In that case, I’ll walk you to your car.’ And without waiting for her agreement, or otherwise, he took a firm grasp of her arm, almost frogmarching her through the lobby.
Abbie turned briefly to give Alison and Stephen a last wave goodbye, Alison giving her a puzzled stare, Stephen frowning.
Which wasn’t surprising, when Jarrett was almost dragging her out of the hotel!
Abbie came to an abrupt halt on the pavement outside, her car already parked there waiting for her departure. ‘You’re behaving very—strangely, Mr Hunter,’ she snapped, releasing herself from his vice-like grip as she turned to face him.
‘I’m behaving strangely!’ he returned incredulously, eyes gleaming golden in the lamplight that shone from the front of the hotel.
Whistler was a small community that had grown into existence mainly because of the wonderful skiing conditions on Whistler Mountain, and its near neighbour, Blackcomb. The village itself had been designed more like a Swiss village, with double-storey chalet-type buildings. The hotels that thrived in the area had also been built to reflect this uniqueness, and at the moment Christmas lights still adorned trees and buildings. It was almost like a fairy-tale—and yet Abbie was starting to feel as if she was in the middle of a horror story!
‘I believe so,’ she answered slowly, watching Jarrett warily, but also aware that Tim, her dark-haired driver, was only feet away, seated behind the wheel of the car, if she should need his assistance. Which she sincerely hoped she wouldn’t. Being at the centre of a brawl, outside one of her own hotels, would not help in keeping the low-key existence she preferred to lead. ‘I have to go—’
‘You already said that,’ Jarrett rasped. ‘Several times, in fact.’ He looked past her to the parked, chauffeur-driven limousine, his expression instantly scornful. ‘He obviously has money,’ he drawled contemptuously.
Abbie frowned her bewilderment at the comment, starting to wonder if perhaps champagne didn’t agree with this man; he had seemed relatively comprehensible—too much so with regard to his opinion of women!—before he had drunk it. ‘Who does?’ she prompted dazedly.
