‘I hope you didn’t mind me saying that—only she looked as though she was about to create a bit of a scene…’
‘No, I didn’t mind at all,’ Carly assured her truthfully. But she would have loved to see Ricardo’s face if Mariella had claimed ownership of her outfit when he had been in the middle of insulting it. Although he hadn’t merely insulted the outfit, had he? He’d insulted her as well.
She didn’t care what he thought about her, Carly assured herself. After all, she knew the truth and she knew that he was wrong. At least this way, even if she couldn’t deny or ignore the physical, sexual effect he had on her, she knew she would be safe from any risk of becoming emotionally attracted to him.
Not, of course, that she had been in any danger of that.
It seemed as if the evening was never going to end, Carly thought wearily. The last of the guests had finally gone, but she and the others were still cleaning up.
‘Look, why don’t you go? There’s nothing more for you to do here,’ Jeff the florist said in a kind voice.
‘It’s my responsibility to stay until everything is packed up,’ Carly told him.
‘You don’t think that anyone else would stay around this long, do you?’ He grinned at her and shook his head. ‘We’re perfectly capable of sorting what’s left, and besides…’ He was looking past her and she turned her head to see what he was looking at.
Her heart gave a sudden heavy thud as the door of the car which had drawn up a few yards away opened and Ricardo got out.
The last time she’d seen him he had been deep in conversation with a stunning redhead whom she was sure she had heard murmuring something about going back to her hotel suite with her. So what was he doing back here now?
Why should the fact that he was striding so purposefully towards her make her legs and her will-power quiver with weakness? He had insulted her in the most offensive way possible, and yet here she was letting his sexuality and, even worse, her own reaction to it, get to her.
Maybe she should adopt a different and more modern attitude. After all, she had heard plenty of women say openly and unashamedly that they were up for having sex with a man without wanting or needing any kind of emotional connection with him. Surely that kind of relationship was exactly what would suit her best?
‘It’s gone three a.m. and we leave for New York in the morning,’ he told her curtly.
‘You go, Carly,’ Jeff repeated. ‘We can easily finish up here now.’
It seemed that she didn’t have any choice. Turning aside, Carly went to retrieve the canvas hold-all she had bought earlier to hold her modest new purchases.
She watched with a certain sense of grim satisfaction as Ricardo frowned and took it from her.
‘Before you say anything,’ she warned him coolly, when they were out of Jeff’s hearing, ‘I didn’t have to sell my body to buy either the bag or its contents. What happened to the redhead, by the way?’ she asked unkindly as they walked back to the car. The fact that Ricardo was a potential client had been overwhelmed by her still smarting pride. ‘Didn’t she come up to your expectations—or was it you who didn’t come up to hers?’
‘Neither. She left with the man with whom she arrived—and even if she hadn’t I don’t take those kinds of risks with my health,’ Ricardo answered pointedly.
He was opening the car door for her, but Carly paused to turn round and demand angrily, ‘Meaning what? That I do? Isn’t the discovery that you’ve already made one offensive and insulting error of judgement about me enough?’
Without waiting for his response she got into the car, ignoring him as she reached for the seatbelt, and continuing to ignore him when he walked round the car, climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car engine.
They reached the villa. Carly opened the car door and got out without waiting for Ricardo to help her.
The pink-washed building was bathed in a soft rose glow from the artfully placed nightscape lighting, which illuminated both the villa and its gardens. Rose-pink—the colour of romance. A small, painful smile twisted her lips.
‘Carly.’
She stopped walking and turned to look as Ricardo caught up with her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that the outfit you were wearing belonged to Mariella?’
‘Perhaps I didn’t want to spoil your fun. You were obviously enjoying thinking the worst of me,’ she answered sharply.
‘You can’t blame me for making entirely logical assumptions. You’re a woman in her twenties with a career, therefore logically you must have a bank account. Having a bank account means that you have access to credit cards, bank loans, a wide variety of different ways of borrowing money in an emergency—as this—’ he indicated the bag he was now carrying ‘—proves. And yet you chose to ask me for a loan.’
‘Logical assumptions? You’ve already as good as admitted that the assumptions you’ve made about me, far from being logical, are based entirely on your own preconceived ideas and personal hang-ups. The truth is that you know nothing whatsoever about my life or my circumstances. If the women you mix with are the type who are happy to exchange sex for a few gaudy trinkets and a wardrobe of designer clothes, then I’m afraid that so far as I’m concerned it says just as much about your judgement and morals as it does about theirs.’
‘Really? Well, my judgement told me that you were more than ready to have sex with me until you found out that sex was all you would be getting. Miraculously, now that you know that, suddenly you have all the money you need to replace your stolen clothes. Oh, and a word of warning. That gang are notorious for wanting value for their money. They’ll pass you round from hand to hand and have all they want of you. You may not find it worth the pay.’
No one had ever made her feel so furiously angry. She was so angry, in fact, that for once she forgot her normal caution and instead burst out, ‘You are so wrong. The only reason I was ready to have sex with you was because I wanted you—but, luckily for me, I wanted to retain my self-respect more. And as for my bank account and my new clothes—I asked you for a loan because I have had to empty my bank account to…to make my parents a…a loan. I do not own a credit card, since I disapprove of their punitively high rates of interest, and there wasn’t time for me to realise any of my assets.’
Ricardo frowned. Surely no one could manufacture the level of fury Carly was showing? But he wasn’t simply going to give in.
‘But obviously somehow you managed to find some money?’
‘Yes, but not by selling my body, as you so obviously would like to think.’
‘No? How, then?’ The cynical disbelief in his voice infuriated her.
‘If you must know—not that it is any of your business—I pawned my watch,’ she told him flatly.
Ricardo discovered that a sensation akin to the slow, measured drip of ice being fed straight into his bloodstream was creeping up over him—a mental awareness that somehow he had got something very important spectacularly wrong.
He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had wrongfooted him, and the knowledge that it should be Carly who had done so sparked off inside him a very dangerous cocktail of emotions. He looked down at her bare wrist and then back at her face.
‘You said your parents needed a loan? Surely you could—’
; ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Carly cut him off quickly.
Ricardo frowned. Surely the kind of woman he had assumed her to be would have been only too eager to make much of the glow of virtue accruing to her from such selflessness. But Carly was turning away from him, quite plainly agitated and anxious to change the subject.
Why? Ricardo wondered. What on earth could there be about something as generous as lending money to one’s parents to spark off the hostility and fear he could see so plainly in her eyes?
She was starting to walk away from him. He looked down at her wrist again, and then back at her face.
He had always trusted his instincts, and right now those instincts were insisting that Carly had been telling him the truth. Therefore he was guilty of seriously misjudging her. And his body was telling him that, no matter what she was or what she had done or not done, he wanted her.
He strode towards her, catching hold of her arm.
Immediately her whole body tensed, and she demanded fiercely, ‘Let go of me.’
‘Not yet. You aren’t the only one who takes their moral responsibilities seriously. I obviously owe you an apology.’
Ricardo was actually apologising to her? He certainly needed to, she reminded herself angrily. And she needed to apologise to herself, for being so stupid as to actually still want him.
‘Yes, you do,’ she agreed coolly. ‘But I don’t want it.’
She watched his stunned disbelief give way to male anger.
‘No? But you do want me, don’t you?’ he taunted softly.
‘No,’ she began, but it was already too late. He pulled her hard against him and bent his head to take her mouth in a savagely intimate kiss before she could object. And, of course, the moment his mouth touched hers, her own helpless response betrayed her. She tried to pull away but he held on to her, and her eyes widened as she saw in his eyes the same hunger she knew was in her own.