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‘What do you want to know? Actual numbers, like in that film—where I go through my conquests one by one and make you laugh?’
Laugh? He winced, knowing that the fierce stab of jealousy which shot through him was unreasonable—but then, he had never been accused of being a reasonable man.
‘No,’ he grated, and, unfolding his big, lean body, he got out of bed. ‘Let’s have a drink.’
Had he suggested that to distance himself? Because the conversation had taken a distinctly confessional turn? She watched while he went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of champagne, efficiently disposing of foil and cork before handing her a fizzing glassful.
Sorcha sat up in bed, sipping at the cool champagne while Cesare climbed back in beside her, thinking that she really ought to be enjoying this moment. Imagine if she wrote about it in a postcard home. In bed, overlooking Regent’s Park. Fabulous sex. Fabulous man. Fabulous wine.
So why was there this terrible ache of emptiness inside her?
‘It wouldn’t take very long,’ she said.
Cesare frowned as he took a long draught—he who never drank in the middle of the day, but who suddenly wanted something to take the edge off his heightened senses. ‘What wouldn’t?’
‘To list my lovers.’
‘I don’t want to hear about them, Sorcha,’ he clipped out.
‘Him.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘Him, not them. Singular, not plural. Just one. Before you, that is.’ She wondered why she was bothering to defend herself—because that was really what it amounted to. Why his opinion should be so important to her. Was it just that she needed him to know that she had acted in an extraordinary way with him—or rather reacted? And didn’t she run the risk of looking rather pathetic—like someone who was setting out her stall, saying, Look how relatively untouched I am?
‘One?’ he repeated incredulously.
‘That surprises you?’
‘Of course it does. It isn’t many for a woman your age.’
‘I didn’t realise I was defying some kind of national average.’
‘Why did you tell me?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘Why do you think?’ She clutched her glass in two hands in case she spilled wine all over the bed. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you imagined that I did…well, what I did with you…with lots of men.’
There was a pause, and he knew that in light of her honesty he had to be honest in return. ‘I didn’t think that, Sorcha,’ he said slowly. ‘There was such a…’ He shrugged. ‘That kind of combustive sexual chemistry is rare, believe me—I know.’
He put his glass down, took hers from her hands and placed it beside his, and then drew her into his arms and down onto the bed.
His mouth was cool and tasted of wine, and his body was warm, and Sorcha felt a sudden and overwhelming wave of real yearning which transcended mere sexual desire. She kissed him back, long and deep, and then she rolled out from beneath him, kneeling beside him as she bent her tongue to his nipple.
‘Sorcha,’ he groaned. ‘What do you do to me?’
She let her tongue slide all the way down his belly, along the thin line of hair which arrowed towards where he was hard, and she licked him tentatively, so that he groaned again.
His hands tangled in the silk of her hair as she took him into her mouth, and never had he felt more helpless and vulnerable as she rocked her head up and down. He could feel his climax building and building, and part of him wanted to stop her, to take control away from her and to thrust all that pent-up desire deep into her body.
But it was too late.
She felt the shudder which began to convulse the powerful body, heard an expression of disbelief torn from his lips and closed her eyes as she tasted him. Afterwards he pulled her back up the bed and cradled her in his arms—and that did feel like real intimacy.
But she mustn’t do that—perhaps that was where she went wrong? Thinking that it was more than it was—as if some fantastic orgasm would suddenly give him a complete personality change and he’d start opening his heart to her. But it was in her nature to try, and she wanted him to let her share more than just his body.
She pulled at his shoulder, knowing that it was the wrong thing to do but unable to stop herself. As if she needed to have it written in giant letters for her to finally get the message that he wasn’t interested in anything deeper than this.
‘Cesare?’
He sighed, knowing just from the tone of her voice what was coming. ‘What?’
‘Why did you come back?’ She met his eyes as he turned back to face her. ‘Oh, I know that you’re friends with Rupert, and you wanted to do him a favour, and you’ll probably make lots of money—but why was it so important for you to seduce me?’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Because you were the best sex I never had.’ He smiled, but it was a cold and thoughtful smile. ‘For years the thought of what I had missed out on ate away at me like a disease, so I wanted to do this—no, I needed to—just to lay the ghost of what has haunted me ever since.’
There was a pause. ‘I see.’ Sorcha let her eyelids close so that he would not detect the wavering hurt which was making her eyes shimmer with tears. ‘And now you have.’
But that was the trouble. Cesare narrowed his eyes.
He hadn’t.
‘We’d better get dressed,’ he said abrasively. ‘I have a flight to catch.’
‘A flight?’ she echoed blankly.
‘I’m meeting Rupert—we’re flying up to the North. The new factory is about to go into production. Remember?’
‘Yes, of course.’ What an idiot he must think her—they had talked of nothing else for weeks. Yet business couldn’t have been further from her mind—all her thoughts were full of him, and it was time she pulled herself together. One day soon Cesare would be gone, and she did not need her career to be left in tatters as a consequence of his going.
She stared up at the ceiling. ‘It’s such a gamble,’ she moaned. ‘Starting production before you know whether the new campaign will be a success. What if we manufacture loads of extra bottles of sauce and nobody buys them?’
‘Life is a gamble, Sorcha—and sometimes you just have to go out on a limb and take a risk.’ He stroked his finger over her face. ‘I’ll only be gone a few days. Will you miss me?’
Sorcha began to get dressed without answering—because what did he expect? Adoring compliments or declarations of affection? How egotistical was that? Especially as he had been so brutally honest about what she meant to him.
She bit her lip.
It wasn’t the most glowing testament in the world, was it?
She was the best sex he’d never had.
CHAPTER NINE
‘THERE’S a journalist outside,’ said Rupert. ‘And he says he wants to speak to Sorcha.’
All eyes around the table looked at her. The boardroom was packed with accountants, operations managers and sales reps, but all Sorcha was aware of was the piercing black gaze which seemed to be stripping her bare—or was that simply wishful thinking on her part? Oh, but she had missed him.
Cesare had been away for weeks. He’d flown straight from the new factory over to the States, and then back to Italy for the centenary celebrations of one of the di Arcangelo department stores. He’d been in regular contact—but you never really knew what was going on behind the scenes when you dealt in phone calls and e-mails.
He had arrived back to discover that a lot of the press interest seemed to be focussed more on the fiery-haired model than on the product—which was every marketing man’s idea of a nightmare. He had only calmed down when he had seen the sales figures, which had gone through the roof.
Across the boardroom he met Sorcha’s green eyes with soft fire—because even the supremely confident Cesare had been unprepared for the ripple effect of his original idea.
Nobody could have predicted the outrageous success of his revamped advertising campaign. As Rupert had said, products hadn’t just been flying off the shelves—they had been leaving them in whole squadrons!
‘So, are you going to talk to this journalist, Sorcha?’ Cesare questioned, his voice underpinned with silken sarcasm. ‘Or perhaps we should think about hiring a PR person especially for you, who could cope with all the interview requests!’
‘There’s no need to make it sound like something I’ve done, when this whole campaign idea was your suggestion,’ she retorted. ‘If you start rubbishing it now, then it doesn’t really reflect well on your judgement, does it, Cesare?’
They glared at each other across the room. Had he thought that his absence might bring him immunity from desire? He wanted her, he realised. He still wanted her. He had missed her like crazy. Crazy. His scowl deepened. ‘So, are you going to talk to him?’
She looked around the table. ‘I’m happy to take advice on it.’
Rupert shrugged. ‘Well, you know what they say—there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’
‘It’s certainly been good for Maceo!’ piped up one of the secretaries, who had been completely smitten by the Italian photographer.
The campaign had given Maceo’s retrospective exhibition an extra boost of publicity. The photos he had taken of Sorcha were absolutely brilliant, causing one of the broadsheet newspapers to wonder why he had given up taking photos professionally.
‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ said Sorcha, wishing that some of it might die down.
‘Are you being disingenuous?’ Cesare’s voice was withering as his gaze flickered over the giant poster of Sorcha sucking on a digit. ‘It looks like soft porn!’
‘Thanks!’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. You approved the original concept—remember?’
‘I was not expecting it to look like…like…!’ But that was not strictly true. He had known exactly what it would look like. He had underestimated the interest it would provoke, true—and he had also failed to take into account the fact that he would still be feeling this frustrating and pointless jealousy. Because none of this was working out as he had wanted.
He had planned to have cast her aside by now—instead of which, he had flown back hungry for more of her. And—damn it—he didn’t want to want her—not any more! Looking for something to focus his rage on, he looked again at the poster. ‘What was Maceo thinking of?’
‘Sales, presumably,’ she said sarcastically.
Now they faced one another.
‘The journalist is waiting, Sorcha,’ Rupert reminded her quietly.
Part of her wanted to go out and do an interview just to rile Cesare. But she knew that wouldn’t be the act of a mature person, and so she shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to anyone. Rupes, would you mind referring them to our PR people? Say that my contribution to the campaign was a one-off and that I shan’t be doing any more photo-shoots?’
Rupert pulled a face. ‘Crikey—are you sure, sis? Don’t you want to capitalise on this?’
‘There’s nothing to capitalise on.’ Sorcha met the mockery in Cesare’s eyes and hesitated. She wanted to say how much she had given up to go to college—but wouldn’t that be a revelation too far, especially now, here, in front of all these people? And especially in front of him. But there were other ways of saying that her education had been both important and necessary to her.
‘I didn’t work hard at university to see my entire career culminating in being the face on the front of a sauce bottle.’
Black eyes burned into her.
‘Yeah,’ said Rupert, nodding. ‘And we kept that other photo for over fifty years—so there’s probably no need!’
‘Rupert!’ said Sorcha indignantly. ‘That wasn’t why I said it! It’s a bit much to have my magnanimous gesture thrown back in my face!’
But to her astonishment everyone started clapping, and even Cesare was giving a grim kind of smile—and, oh, why should that feel like a far greater achievement than quadrupling sales?
Because she had missed him like mad, in spite of all the things he’d said to her in bed that afternoon in the hotel? Because she couldn’t sleep at nights for thinking about him and he was still obsessing her waking hours, no matter how much she tried?
Had she thought that he might come in here this morning and brush her lips with his when there was a quiet moment, murmur that he’d like to see her alone in his office? And what would she have said? Well, yes, obviously.
But she couldn’t have been more wrong.
He hadn’t made a single indication that he still wanted her. Not one. No accidental brushing against her arm. No manoeuvring to get them alone together. Nothing. Had he decided while he’d been away that it was better if the affair ended?
‘Well, I think that’s everything,’ Cesare was saying. ‘Enjoy Berlin, Rupert.’ He looked up as Sorcha stood up. ‘Would you mind staying behind for a moment, Sorcha?’
Her heart slammed against her ribcage and a wave of dizziness swept over her. ‘Of course.’ She waited until everyone had trooped out of the room and looked at him expectantly, wondering if her face hid her terrible fear that it was all over. ‘What is it?’
‘No ideas about what might be on my mind?’
She was about to say, I’m not really in the mood for riddles, when something in his eyes stopped her. ‘This is a…well, it’s a bizarre situation, isn’t it? You coming back after everything that’s—’
He cut across her words with a ruthless statement. ‘You still want me.’
It was not a question.
There was a pause as she looked at him.
‘Yes.’
‘And yet you do not take the initiative?’ He walked over to the window and leaned against it, his legs slightly apart, hands resting on his narrow hips. ‘You do not ring me while I am away, or send me a text. Or even come into work early this morning, knowing that I am back.’ Waiting for you.
His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘What’s the matter, Sorcha? For all your professed love of equality and independence are you really one of those little-girl lovers who have to be seduced? Perhaps to absolve them from any guilt that they might feel?’ His black eyes glittered. ‘So that if a man starts to kiss them and touch them they feign a little resistance—and when they can resist no more and give in…Well.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then they have no one to blame but the man.’
‘Who’s talking about blame?’ Sorcha shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not me.’
‘So how long are we going to keep up this ridiculous charade of pretending that we don’t want something when we’re dying to give in to it? You want me, Sorcha. So why the hell don’t you come over here and have me, before time runs out?’
‘Before time runs out?’ she echoed. ‘What do you mean?’
He laughed. ‘Are you crazy? Do you think that I’m going to carry on staying at that…hotel, keeping an eye on your little company, when I have plenty of my own to run? Do you think I’m here for keeps—to be your lover whenever the whim takes you?’
Sorcha winced. It was funny the games that your mind could play on you. She had always known he would go, and yet some part of her had imagined him staying here, frozen in some kind of time warp, until some kind of resolution had been made. Except that there wasn’t going to be a resolution. They were just two very different people who happened to be overwhelmingly attracted to each other.
The best sex he’d never had.
For Sorcha it was different, because she had grown to realise that Cesare meant more to her than that. He always had done. The love she had felt at eighteen had been real enough, but as fragile and as tender as her age. He had frightened her then, with his lack of emotion, and that was why she had hit out blindly and rejected him. Deep-down she had known that it had been the right thing to do—but hadn’t she always regretted that it had ended the way it had?
She knew that she had wounded his pride, and maybe he would never forgive her for that, and yet she wanted to get closer to him and didn’t know if that was possible. No one was saying they could go back—but couldn’t they build on the huge and obvious attraction between them? Didn’t men relax their guard when they had sex with a woman? Even a man as formidable as Cesare?
And now he had told her that his time here was limited—it was down to that old thing of choice again. Should she live for the moment and remain his lover? Or should she opt for her own kind of pride and withdraw gracefully while she still had the opportunity to do so?
