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She didn’t answer. Instead she rapped on the glass partition separating them from his driver. He caught her wrist and held on to it until she reluctantly met his eyes.
‘You headed straight over to my table,’ he said grimly. ‘You sat down uninvited until you managed to wangle dinner, and now here you are, in my car, heading back to my place... What’s a billionaire supposed to think?’
Susie yanked her hand away, stung, because what he said might make sense on the surface but was so far from the truth that it was laughable.
Sergio noted the glimmer of tears glazing her eyes and for a few seconds had some doubts about the conclusions he had drawn. She had squeezed herself tightly against the car door and he had the impression that if she could have made herself disappear in a puff of smoke she would have.
‘Well?’ he persisted roughly. ‘What am I supposed to think?’
‘You’re supposed to believe what I’ve told you.’
He laughed humourlessly. ‘Women have an unfortunate habit of acting out of character the second they’re exposed to a man with a lot of money.’
‘Do they? I wouldn’t know. I want to get out. I want to go home. I should never have agreed to get in this car with you in the first place. You think I’ve only done it because I’m after your money and you don’t want to believe me when I tell you that you’re wrong. Well, how do I know that you’re an honourable guy? How do I know that you’re not going to take me back to your place and...and...?’
‘Don’t even think of going there!’
Sergio was genuinely outraged that she could believe the worst of him but he grudgingly recognised the irony of the situation. He wasn’t prepared to believe a word of what she was saying so why should she believe a word of what he was telling her? He clearly had money, but that didn’t mean he was...an honourable guy...
He vaguely wondered what she’d meant by that anyway.
‘I don’t need to force myself on women,’ he said flatly.
Susie could believe that. He had a point. ‘So if I told you that I wanted to get out—right here, right now...?’
‘I wouldn’t try and stop you.’
He raked impatient fingers through his dark hair and shot her a fulminating look from under his lashes. Had he ever had so much conversation with any woman before getting into bed with her? Sure, he might discuss the state of the world, what was happening in the news, politics... The women he dated always enjoyed displaying the length, breadth and width of their intellect...
But feelings...?
He met her stubborn stare and sighed. ‘Why were you trying to find a man through the internet? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s not safe?’
Susie relaxed. He had meant it when he had told her that he would drop her off if she asked. She had seen it in his eyes. And she believed him when he said that he had no need to force himself on a woman. She imagined his danger was in trying to escape women forcing themselves on him.
He might be suspicious and downright offensive, but he was up front. And so, so exciting.
‘Have you any idea how hard it is, finding a date in London? When you don’t do the clubbing scene and don’t have a fancy, high-powered job where there are loads of unattached eligible males?’
‘No.’
‘Hard. I mean, I know a lot of guys, but my friends tend to be...well...’ She frowned. ‘They’re creative types. A couple of graphic designers who freelance... One makes amazing designs for wallpapers...three work in publishing...’
‘And eligible men?’ Sergio asked, moving the conversation along, curious in spite of himself.
‘Lots of men—but none of them are what you might call “eligible”. To be honest, quite a few of the guys I know are gay...so when one of my friends suggested I see what was out there on the internet, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea. Besides...’
She talked a lot, but strangely he didn’t seem to mind. He wondered whether it was the lingering effect of the red dress. Or the novelty of someone who didn’t see it as her duty to show him how bright she was and how many degrees she had obtained to get where she had. Or the way her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in unruly curls.
‘Besides...?’ he inserted encouragingly.
‘I have a wedding coming up.’
Sergio could smell a convoluted story in the making. For the moment, however, his initial suspicions about her were on the back burner. He hadn’t discarded them completely, but he wasn’t going to allow them to dictate the outcome of this very, very unusual encounter.
‘I’m boring you, aren’t I?’
‘On the contrary. You’re taking me down all sorts of roads I’ve never travelled before.’
‘Am I?’ Susie wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered by that or offended. She hesitated, distracted by what he had said. ‘What sort of roads do you normally go down with...er...women...?’
Sergio spread his hands wide and shot her a rueful, amused smile that did all those wonderful tingly things to her body. ‘The women I date are almost exclusively career women...’
‘Oh. Right. I see.’ Disappointment bit into her because it made sense. He was rich and he was smart. Of course he would be attracted to smart and probably rich women. Like always attracted like, didn’t it? ‘Career women...’
‘Big jobs...daily decision-making that in some cases can affect the lives of the people around them...packed agendas and hectic schedules...’
Saying it aloud made him wonder what he saw in those types, but that was just a fleeting thought because he knew exactly what he saw in them—just as he knew exactly the sort of women he had programmed himself to avoid like the plague.
Dominique Duval.
It was a name that didn’t often spring to mind. He had ruthlessly and successfully eliminated it from conscious thought. But vocalising the sort of women he dated had thrown up the comparison and his lips thinned with instant distaste. The past might be buried deep but it was never truly forgotten, was it?
‘What’s the matter?’ Susie leaned forward, startled by his darkening expression and immediately jumping to the conclusion that she was somehow responsible for it. And then almost as quickly she got annoyed, because she hadn’t said anything that could remotely be construed as offensive.
When it came to being offensive he was the one winning the race!
‘Just thinking back to a very significant person in my life.’ Sergio’s voice was cold and hard. ‘A delightful woman who has ensured that when it comes to any sort of involvement with the opposite sex I always make sure to steer clear of types like her. Learning curves...’ He was smiling again, the tightness around his mouth gone although his eyes were still cool. ‘I like to pay attention to them...’
‘Me too.’
Susie didn’t know what had just happened there. What she did know was that she wasn’t going to go down Confidence Lane and start telling him all about her family and her learning curves.
She was already reaching the conclusion that the only reason he had even glanced in her direction was because of her novelty value. If he only dated clever career women, someone plonking herself at his table with a long-winded tale of online dating mishaps would have been a shock to the system.
So who was this woman who had shaped his responses to the opposite sex and determined the sort of women he chose to date? She assumed some past love affair. Maybe he had fallen in love with the wrong girl? The fact that he had taken it so badly—badly enough to change the way he looked at his relationships—was telling. He had fallen in love and got burned.
Her thoughts rambled on until she surfaced to hear him asking her about the wedding she had mentioned.
‘Wedding?’ She gave an airy laugh and flapped her hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘What wedding?’
‘The one you have coming up... You were about to launch into a tale of young love and confetti...’
‘Wow. You live here? Isn’t this the most expensive place to live on the planet?’ She craned forward, squinting into the darkness and staring up and up and up at the spire of glass rising into the clouds.
As a diversion from a conversation she no longer wanted to have, it worked.
The apartment her parents owned was nice. No, it was better than nice. It was in a great location, and had been refurbished to a high standard, but this was the stuff of dreams—a place ordinary mortals never got to see.
She had genuinely forgotten the ‘wedding on the horizon’ conversation.
‘Impressed?’ Sergio was exiting the car and swinging round to open the passenger door for her, but she had already hopped out and was staring.
‘Very impressed,’ she confessed.
That came as no big surprise to Sergio. He imagined her place as somewhere small and damp and in poor condition, languishing in a fairly unsavoury location. Possibly directly under a flight path.
It had begun to rain—a fine, dreary drizzle. It was after ten on a dark, wintry night but there was the alluring promise of excitement within the walls of his massive apartment and he felt like a randy teenager at the conclusion of a first date with the hottest girl in school.
They were whooshed up to his apartment in a glass elevator and finally, as he pushed open the door to his apartment, she managed to find her voice, which had got lost somewhere between the vast foyer and the fifteenth floor.
‘This is...incredible—but I guess you know that already...’ She laughed nervously and stared around her at a marvel of modernism. Cool abstract paintings, most of which she recognised, were hung strategically on the walls and there was an awful lot of pale marble everywhere.
She was in his apartment...
There was nothing to be nervous about. She repeated that mantra to herself as he dutifully made noises about the layout of the apartment.
So many rooms... And whilst he was obviously accustomed to the artwork, to the vast scale of everything, the avant-garde kitchen where the marble gave way to wood, the sitting area which was dominated by creams and whites... Well, she was more and more impressed with every passing step.
She peppered him with questions. Asked him how long he had lived there, if he knew his neighbours—which for some reason he found very funny—wondered aloud what would happen if he spilled red wine over the white leather sofa...
She chattered ceaselessly—because whether or not she should be nervous, she was.
With all her online dates—three of them, because number four had bitten the dust before they could actually meet—she had ultimately been in control. Public places, superficial conversation, awkward goodbyes...
She had not, even in passing, been tempted to go anywhere with them except to the door, where they’d parted company in different directions.
And both her relationships had started life in the friendship arena and then progressed from friendship through to curiosity and into a relationship before morphing back into friendship.
This...was different.
‘Perhaps some coffee...?’ she said.
So she was looking for a relationship? Why hide from that? He wasn’t. And definitely not with someone like her. She wasn’t a career woman who could talk about business stuff. That were the sort of women he dated, went out with, would consider a candidate for a relationship. He had said so himself. She was a one-off.
And he was a one-off for her as well. He was...this was...lust. No more, no less. Heck, she was aware of him with every fibre of her being—could feel his presence like a forbidden thrill.
So they were even. Weren’t they?
Still...a cup of coffee might settle her nerves. She pictured them heading up to that split galleried landing straight to his bedroom...where he would turn to her, expecting her to launch herself into abandoned sex when in fact she might have had two boyfriends but she was woefully short on the sort of experience she figured he would be used to.
‘You want...coffee...? At this hour?’ Sergio leaned against the kitchen counter and looked at her evenly.
‘Maybe a nightcap...’ A strong dose of hard liquor would definitely steady her nerves. Or else knock her out completely. Both options were preferable to the frantic flutter in her stomach.
‘Sit down,’ Sergio told her gently.
He propelled her towards one of the black leather chairs at the kitchen table and then perched on the side of the table, which was a beaten metal affair the likes of which she had never seen in her life before. She stared at it fixedly and tried not to let her eyes wander to the strain of his trousers pulling taut across a muscular thigh.
‘So you want either a cup of coffee or a nightcap?’ he mused, tilting her face upwards so that she could look at him.
What was he to think? He didn’t know. They were in his apartment and she should be coming on to him. That was how the game was played. Was this some cunning ploy to hold his interest? He didn’t want to let go of his natural instinct to suspect the unexpected, but some other natural instinct inside him—one that had never surfaced before—was pushing him in a different direction.
‘Either or...’ Susie blinked and licked her lips.
‘Do you usually have nightcaps?’
‘Not usually, no...’
‘Only when you go on dates?’
‘I...I don’t really do a lot of dating, as it happens.’
‘Just random ones with strange men you meet on the internet?’
‘I would never have dreamt of having any sort of nightcap with any of those guys I arranged to meet,’ she told him truthfully. ‘They were pretty awful. Well, not awful. Just...boring and average...’
‘Is there a hidden compliment in there somewhere for me?’
‘You really are arrogant!’ But a little smile hovered on her lips and she relaxed fractionally.
‘And you’re very sexy,’ Sergio told her bluntly. ‘So why the hell do you think that the only way to meet a man is on the internet?’
‘You think I’m sexy?’
‘I think you’re sexy. Beyond that, I don’t know what to think—and, take it from me, that’s a first.’ He stood up and sauntered over to a complicated coffee maker. ‘Now, I’m going to make you a cup of coffee and then I’m going to get my driver to take you back to your place.’
‘No!’
She would never see him again. Thrown into a state of confusion by the tumult of emotion that accompanied that thought, Susie stared at him, dry-mouthed.
Sergio ignored her outburst. He wasn’t up for this—however intriguing it might be and however much it rescued him from his emotional torpor. This was a complication, and he could do without complications.
When it came to women, he liked to know what he was dealing with. He had no idea what he was dealing with here. Gold-digger? A sexy little number who wanted to press all his buttons and was doing so via a roundabout route? Or an up front and honest young girl who genuinely had no idea of her own sex appeal? And how up front and honest could she really be if she was out there, trawling the internet, advertising herself on the open market?
‘Look...’ Coffee made, Sergio sat next to her at the kitchen table. ‘Somehow I found myself in your company tonight. Not what I had planned on. In fact I had planned on working, having something to eat and coming back here on my own.’
His keen eyes noted the slight tremble of her hands as she cradled the mug between them. If this was acting, then she should be up for an award.
‘That said, I was more than happy with the change of plan. I have no idea who you really are, or what you really want from me, but like I said...you’re sexy. And I’ve been celibate for two months, which is two months too long for me. But I’m not interested in going round the houses to get there. Now, drink up and I’ll see you to the front door.’
‘What do you mean that you have no idea who I am or what I want from you...?’
Sergio gave a sigh of pure frustration. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much with a woman before sex.’
Susie blushed and hurriedly sipped her coffee, then cleared her throat. ‘You mean you just beckon a woman across, lead her to the nearest bed and...and...?’
‘Oh, we talk...’ Sergio laughed softly, enjoying the arousal that was making itself felt all over again, despite the fact that the traffic lights had turned red and he knew it was time to stop. ‘High-powered career women generally have a great deal to say. It’s all very civilised. We discuss the state of the world, and once that foreplay’s done we head to bed.’
