Deal With the Devil--3 Book Box Set

Her fingers were circling him, holding him, exploring him, her touch cool against his own heat.

He had to have her.

Carly made a small mewling sound of pleasure deep in her throat and reached out for him, cupping his face with her hands and pressing her mouth passionately against his. All she wanted—all she would want for the rest of her life—was this, and him.

Abruptly she pulled back from him.

Her heart was thudding unevenly with the shock of her thoughts and feelings. Her emotional thoughts, and her equally emotional feelings. She felt sick and shaky as reaction set in and she recognised her own danger. How had this happened? How had she gone from wanting to have sex with to him to wanting him?

‘What’s wrong?’

She was too engrossed in her own thoughts to hear the sharp warning of male frustration in Ricardo’s voice.

‘I’m sorry…I…I don’t think this is a good idea…’

Ricardo could taste the raw savagery of his own furious disbelief. How could he have been such a fool as to let her play him so cleverly? To let her arouse him to the point where nothing mattered more than him having her?

‘So what would make it a good idea?’ Ricardo demanded bitingly, gripping her arms and swinging her round so hard that she almost stumbled. ‘Or should I say how much would make it a good idea? Five thousand? Ten? Carte blanche on a credit card?’

Carly stared at him in bewildered shock.

‘And you can cut that out,’ Ricardo told her. ‘I’ve known what you are from the start. Nick Blayne made it plain enough—not that he needed to. It was obvious what you were from the night I saw you in that damned club, letting someone else’s husband paw you.’

A slow, achingly painful form of semi-numbness was creeping up over her body, paralysing her ability to move.

‘Well? Come on—answer me. Obviously the promise of a “loan” wasn’t enough. So what else are you after? A new designer wardrobe? A Cartier diamond? Nick told me that you were good at recognising how to get the maximum amount of financial benefit out of a relationship.’

Belated anger seared through her. ‘I’m certainly good at recognising what he’s doing to the business—and ultimately to Lucy,’ Carly told him hotly. Humiliation was scorching her skin as she absorbed what Ricardo had said to her—what he had said about her.

‘Well?’ Ricardo demanded again, ignoring her furious outburst. ‘How much?’

‘Nothing,’ Carly told him proudly. ‘You could have had me for nothing, Ricardo. For no other reason than that I wanted you, for nothing other than the benefit to me of having sex with you.’

‘What?’ He gave her a derisively cynical look. ‘We both know that that’s a lie, and it’s not even a good one. You are the one who called a halt.’

Yes, she had. But not for the reasons he was so insultingly suggesting. And she certainly couldn’t tell him now why she had wanted to stop.

‘You are so wrong about me. I would never—have never—’ She stopped as she saw the contemptuous look in his eyes.

‘What about the money you asked me for?’

The money she had wanted to borrow from him? Of course—in his eyes that had damned her.

‘You don’t understand—that was just a loan. I will pay you back,’ she told him quietly.

Ricardo was in no mood to be placated.

‘Oh, I think I do understand. Let’s see. You pretend to lose your suitcase, then you come on to me, expecting that I will take the bait. Then when I do you immediately back off, thinking that I’m going to ache so damned much for you I’ll do anything to have you. How complicated to understand is that?’ His mouth twisted in open contempt.

She had thought she knew what it was like to have her pride ripped from her, leaving her exposed to people’s contempt, but she had been wrong, she recognised through the blur of her shocked, anguished, furious humiliation. But what was even worse was that she now knew exactly what he had really been thinking about her.

Automatically she tried to defend herself, protesting emotionally, ‘You’re wrong!’

But he stopped her immediately, challenging her. ‘About what? You coming on to me?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Not that you didn’t get something out of it yourself, so don’t bother trying to pretend you didn’t. No woman gets as hot and wet as you did and—’

It was too much. Carly reacted immediately and instinctively, her pride driving her to react in a way that was pure, instinctive, emotionally wounded female.

She raised her hand, but before she could do any more Ricardo was gripping her wrist in a bruisingly painful hold.

‘If you want to fight dirty that’s fine,’ he told her softly. ‘But remember I grew up on the streets. If you hit me, then I promise you I shall retaliate in kind.’

When he saw her face he laughed. ‘No, I don’t hit women. But there are other ways of administering punishment!’

‘You are a barbarian!’ Carly whispered shakily. ‘And you have no right…You are totally wrong!’ Tears of reaction were stinging her eyes now, but no way was she going to let him see that. ‘I only asked to borrow the money because I didn’t want to worry Lucy.’

‘Yes, of course. Blame someone else. Women like you are very good at that.’

Carly had had enough. ‘You don’t know the first thing about a woman like me!’

‘On the contrary, I know a very great deal.’ Ricardo stopped her sharply. ‘I know, for instance, that you are the product of generations of so-called good breeding, that your parents are wealthy and well connected, but that you yourself do not have any independent means. You also went to one of the country’s top schools. In short, you believe you have an automatic right to the very best of everything and an even more deeply ingrained belief that because of what you are you are superior to those people who have not had your advantages. You expect to be granted a first-class passage through life, preferably paid for by someone else. You are a taker, a user—a gold-digger.’

Something—a bubble of either pain or hysterical laughter—was tightening her chest and then her

throat.

‘And I know that you are a prejudiced, ill-informed misogynist. And—as I’ve already said—you know nothing about me,’ she told him shakily, before turning on her heel and walking away from him.

Alone in the safety of her room she gave in to the tremors of aftershock racking her body, holding onto the back of a chair to steady herself. One day—maybe—she would look back on this, on him, and what he had said to her, with irony and perhaps even amusement. Because he was so breathtakingly, hugely wrong about her.

But for now…For now she would be grateful to him for showing her how easily she could have slipped into the emotional danger she had always feared and for going on to destroy every single tendril of those tentative feelings. At least now she was safe from feeling anything for him other than furious outrage.

Were it possible for her to do so, she would leave the villa immediately. But she had Lucy and the business to think of, and Carly had been taught from a very young age to carry a dual burden of gratitude and responsibility.

She would have to stay, and she would have to remember why she was here and why he was here, and behave towards him with all the professional courtesy she could muster.

For the rest, she would rather go naked than ask him for so much as a rag to cover her—would rather starve than accept a crust from his table, rather die than let him see how very much he had hurt her and in how many different ways.

‘I know what you are,’ he had said.

But the truth was he did not know her at all.

The truth was…The truth was a secret, and so painful that she could not bear to share it with anyone.

CHAPTER FIVE

CARLY stood on the harbourside, her eyes shaded by dark glasses, as she and the chefs ticked off the items being delivered.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning and she had been up since half past five. Luckily she had managed to persuade a taxi driver to pick her up from the villa, despite the earliness of the hour, initially to go to the flower market with the florist, Jeff, and his team to ensure that the freshest and most perfect blooms were purchased for the party, and then to accompany the two chefs when they bought the fresh produce they needed.