Although that was probably being unfair to Chloe and Fergus; the other couple were interesting people in their own right, Chloe a fashion designer of some repute, Fergus an internationally successful author. And at any other time Sabina would have enjoyed talking to them. Just not this evening.
And not now. Now she just wanted to get away from here, back to the house where she felt safe. Away from Brice McAllister.
‘Maybe we can do this again some time?’ Fergus was the one to answer her smoothly.
‘I doubt it—my fiancé arrives back from New York tomorrow.’ Her smile was politely apologetic. ‘As I told you earlier, Brice was just taking pity on me by taking me out to dinner this evening,’ she added firmly.
‘That wasn’t true, you know,’ Brice told her once they were seated in the back of the taxi on their way to the home she shared with Richard. ‘What you said back there, about my taking pity on you,’ he added hardly. ‘Inviting you out to dinner had nothing to do with pity—I wanted to spend the evening with you.’
Sabina suddenly found the confines of the taxi claustrophobic, her breath constricting in her throat. And Brice’s closeness to her on the leather seat, his trouser-clad thigh brushing lightly against hers, his arm draped casually across the seat behind her shoulders, did nothing to help alleviate the situation.
He was just too close to her. Too forcefully male. Too magnetically attractive. Just too everything!
She turned to him in the semi-darkness, feeling compelled to say something, anything. ‘Brice—’
‘Sabina!’ he murmured raggedly before his head lowered and his mouth claimed hers.
This shouldn’t be happening! She was engaged to Richard. And maybe it was only a business arrangement, an ‘understanding’, but she still owed him her loyalty. Her gratitude.
As Brice continued to kiss her her body was suffused with a weightless lethargy, like a soaring bird, lifted high by the heated air beneath its wings, all sound stopped, everything but Brice ceasing to exist, only the feel of Brice’s lips against hers important.
She couldn’t have broken away from him if she had tried.
Not that she did try, pleasure such as she had never known existed coursing through her body, every part of her electrically alive now, her arms moving up about Brice’s shoulders, their bodies fused together from chest to thigh as she began to kiss him back.
‘That will be eight pounds fifty, guv.’
Sabina felt as if she had had a glass of cold water thrown over her, so instant was the shocked recognition of exactly what she was doing; instead of coolly repulsing Brice McAllister’s kisses she had been returning them with equal passion!
She pulled back from the close proximity of him, blue eyes huge in the semi-darkness of the taxi.
Brice stared back at her, his expression unreadable, eyes remote and unfathomable, only the tell-tale passion-induced flush to the rigid hardness of his cheeks to show for the minutes they had just spent lost in each other’s arms.
‘Sorry to interrupt, love.’ The taxi driver turned to speak apologetically to Sabina. ‘But we’ve been parked outside the house for about five minutes now.’
Outside Richard’s house. Her fiancé’s house. The house Sabina shared with him.
She drew in a deeply controlling breath. ‘That’s perfectly all right,’ she told the driver smoothly before turning to open the door. ‘No, Brice, please don’t bother to get out.’ To her chagrin her voice was much less controlled as she spoke to him; she was completely unable to look at him, either.
And she might as well have spoken to the door for all the notice Brice took of her!
She had hardly straightened from getting out of the taxi than he was standing beside her, having got out the other side.
‘Sabina—’
‘Please don’t say anything, Brice,’ she interrupted much more firmly than she actually felt, her head back proudly now in the darkness as she forced herself to meet his narrowed gaze. ‘I very much enjoyed meeting Fergus and Chloe this evening. And thank you for dinner,’ she added with a politeness she was far from feeling.
‘You don’t have to tell me that it will never happen again,’ he cut in harshly.
‘None of this evening will ever happen again,’ she told him in a steely voice. ‘Goodnight.’ She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving him to get back in the taxi, or not, whatever his choice might be. As long as she escaped his overwhelming presence, she didn’t care what he did!
Oh, God…!
Sabina leant weakly back against the solid oak front door once she was safely on the other side of it.
What had she just done?
What had they both just done?
More to the point, how did she explain to Richard, without actually telling him the truth, and totally null-and-voiding their ‘arrangement’, that she could no longer sit for Brice McAllister?
CHAPTER SIX
‘DINNER not to your liking, Mr Brice?’ Mrs Potter frowned at him as she cleared away his almost untouched plate of food.
‘Dinner was fine, Mrs Potter,’ Brice rasped. ‘I’m just not hungry.’
He was too damned angry to be hungry. With Sabina. With Richard Latham. With himself.
Most of all with himself.
It had been three days since his dinner with Sabina. Three long, frustrating, lonely days.
Strange, loneliness was something he had never known in his life before, not even when he’d been alone. In fact, solitude to him had always been something to be welcomed, enjoyed, savoured. But all that had changed three days ago. From the moment he’d kissed Sabina.
Something had happened to him as he’d held her in his arms, as his mouth had explored hers, as she’d kissed him back with equal passion. Something he still couldn’t put a name to. Something he didn’t want to put a name to. All he knew was that he now knew what loneliness was, that his own company was the last thing he wanted.
Because when he was alone all he could think about was Sabina. What was she doing? Who was she with? Had she thought of him at all the last three days?
His mouth tightened frustratedly as he acknowledged that even if Sabina had thought of him it would not have been in any sort of complimentary way. How could it be, when he had abused her trust in him by overstepping the line that should have divided them?
God, he disgusted himself, so how could he expect her to feel any differently towards him?
Sabina was engaged to another man!
Much as Brice hated it, much as he might wish it were otherwise, it was undeniably a fact. And Sabina could only despise him for choosing to forget that.
It had been a moment of pure madness on his part, a need, pure and simple, to hold her in his arms and kiss her. And now he would probably never see her again, was sure she would never agree to sit for him again.
Although the fact that Richard Latham hadn’t turned up on his doorstep demanding an explanation for Brice’s behaviour towards his fiancée seemed to point to her not having told the other man that Brice had kissed her…
So how was she going to explain to Richard Latham her complete aversion to even being in the same room as Brice? Maybe she wouldn’t be able to. Maybe—
Hell, he had to get out of here, do something—anything! His thoughts kept going round and round in circles, always coming back to exactly the same spot: his need to see Sabina, and the knowledge that he wasn’t able to.
How—?
Mrs Potter entered the room after the briefest of knocks. ‘Miss Smith is here to see you, Mr Brice,’ she told him warmly.
Miss Smith—? Sabina! Here to see him…?
Mrs Potter gave him a quizzical frown. ‘Shall I ask her to come in?’ she prompted doubtfully.
‘Yes! I mean, no. Oh, hell,’ he grated, running a hand through the thick darkness of his hair.
Hair that was already tousled into disarray by his agitated fingers constantly running through it all day. He hadn’t shaved the last two days, either. And, he realised as he looked down at the clothes he had on, this morning he seemed to have stepped straight back into the things he had been wearing yesterday, blue denims and black shirt, and they were both badly creased. In fact, Brice decided self-disgustedly, he looked a damned mess!
But with Sabina waiting outside in the hallway, he could hardly go upstairs, shower, shave, and change before inviting her in…
‘Yes, please ask her to come in,’ he instructed heavily, while at the same time his mind was racing. ‘Is she alone, Mrs Potter?’ He frowned, wondering if Richard Latham was with her.
‘Completely alone,’ Sabina coolly answered that particular question herself as she joined Mrs Potter in the doorway.
She looked sensational!
If Brice looked an unkempt mess, Sabina was glossily beautiful, wearing a glittering gold dress the same colour as that long hair cascading down her back and over her shoulders, her eyes luminous blue, lips painted a voluptuous red, long fingernails painted with the same colour varnish, her legs long and silky, delicate feet slipped into three-inch-high gold sandals. To Brice, she had never looked lovelier.
‘Thank you, Mrs Potter,’ he told his housekeeper harshly.
‘Would you like me to bring you anything? Coffee? Tea? Some wine, perhaps?’ Mrs Potter offered lightly.
‘That’s very kind of you—’ Sabina bestowed a glowing smile on the older woman ‘—but I won’t be staying long. I only called in on my way somewhere else.’