There is something about her that is drawing me to her—something powerful, irresistible, overwhelming.
Something that was sending a pulse through him. Something that was engendered by that extraordinary pale, pure beauty she possessed—the turn of her head, the flawless translucence of her alabaster skin, the perfect features of her face, delicate and exquisitely cut, the clear, luminous grey-blue of her eyes.
He knew with absolute certainty that he had felt something when she had turned that gaze on him, fully meeting his own—it was a gaze whose very brevity had told him that whatever the cause of her insistence on walking away from him, which she had now exhibited twice—it was not because she was irresponsive to him.
It is the same for her as it is for me! I know it. The stillness, the betraying dilation of her pupils, the sudden intake of breath, the collision of her eyes with mine—acknowledges, confirms her reaction to me—
It had told him all he needed to know...
Whatever had made her walk away, it was not because she was immune to him. So why had she? An unwelcome explanation intruded. Was it because she was already involved elsewhere? A burning urge to find out consumed him. Yet he did not even know her name.
He inhaled sharply, pulling himself together. It would be easy enough to find out everything he needed to know about her. She was a model, she worked for an agency, and that meant the information was out there. And if the answer was the one he realised he wanted it to be more with every passing moment, then he would set out to woo her—woo her and win her.
His imagination raced ahead, vivid and eager.
In his mind’s eye he saw himself gazing into her eyes, clasping her hand, drawing her towards him, taking her slender, pliant body into his arms and lowering his mouth to her tremulous, tender lips, tasting their sweetness, seeking the nectar within, feeling her respond to his embrace, her body contouring against his with soft sensuousness, glowing with honeyed desire as her breasts peaked against him...
But imagination was not enough! He wanted the reality.
The reality of her pale, pure beauty, which was calling to him with a subtly compelling, insistent power that was impossible to deny.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU WANT MORE money to renew your contract. That’s it, isn’t it?’ Karl Reiner’s voice grated.
Celeste kept her expression fixed. Karl Reiner had demanded her presence at a dinner in a West End hotel hosted by a fashion magazine keen on retaining its share of the lavish Reiner Visage advertising budget. Since she was still—just—under contract, it had been impossible for her to decline.
She deeply wished she had. Wished she could just walk off the way she had when Rafael Sanguardo had made a move on her at the charity event the previous weekend.
Not, she found herself thinking, that anyone in their right mind would put Karl Reiner and Rafael Sanguardo in the same class. The difference was total. Karl’s stocky stature and slack belly were the complete opposite of Rafael Sanguardo’s tall, lean, honed physique—just as Karl’s pouched, close-set eyes were a million miles from the dark, hawkish eyes that had rested so disturbingly on her. And Karl’s receding dyed hair, swept back into a ponytail that he mistakenly seemed to think made him look creative and bohemian, had nothing of the feathered sable of the South American’s.
Yet again Celeste felt the disquieting quickening of her pulse as an image of Rafael Sanguardo took shape in her mind. It had been doing so repeatedly ever since the weekend. She had tried desperately hard to put him out of her mind but it had been impossible—just impossible! She could bewail it all she liked, try as hard as she could, but it was no good. That encounter, however brief, had imprinted itself on her. Why, she did not know—could not understand. Could not understand why her habitual immunity to men was failing her so pitiably when it came to Rafael Sanguardo.