EXCLUSIVE! Tall, dark and handsome billionaire Ricardo Salvatore has proved he’s just as good at spending millions as he is at making them—and it’s all on a new woman…

She’s London-based party planner Carly Carlisle. And the pretty blonde has been on his arm at parties in St. Tropez, the Hamptons and a chi-chi French château. At every event they flew in on his private jet or his chopper—and stayed in exclusive private and luxurious villas near the party venues, no expense spared. Ricardo even splashed out nearly £10,000 in St. Tropez on designer frocks for Carly Carlisle, fuelling rumors that the rather shy (and allegedly virginal) Carly is now almost certainly his mistress.

All the society snipers are speculating that Carly is just another bimbo after his cash. After all, the St. Tropez shopping expedition was simply because Carly “lost her suitcase”—and they think that’s the oldest trick in the book. But my sources confirm that Carly Carlisle is actually very generous. And there is no mistaking the sheer lust between these two—we’re talking hot, hot, hot! And I say lucky you, Carly—Ricardo is a legend between the sheets….

PENNY JORDAN has been writing for more than twenty years and has an outstanding record: over 150 novels published, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honor and Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Penny Jordan was born in Lancashire, England, and now lives in rural Cheshire.

Penny Jordan
BEDDING HIS VIRGIN MISTRESS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

CARLY glanced discreetly at the small mixed party she was minding in her role as partner in one of the country’s most prestigious and exclusive event-organising businesses, and wondered how long it would be before she could leave. The event was a fortieth birthday party for a banker and he’d chosen to have it at the London Nightclub CoralPink. It would not have been the venue she would have chosen but in a business where ultimately the customer was always right that was not her decision to make.

Already, though, she could see that their client’s wife was beginning to look less than pleased at the amount of attention her husband was giving the upmarket eye candy on view. There were already half a dozen empty bottles of Cristal champagne on their table, and another of the men was chatting up a girl who had been walking past, inviting her to join them. Male libidos and wifely tempers were both beginning to rise ominously in the club’s hormone-drenched heat, Carly realised dispiritedly.

She had balked at this assignment all along, knowing it wasn’t her cup of tea. She preferred the kind of event she had supervised over the weekend—a jolly surprise eightieth birthday party held for a sharp-witted grandmother by her large family. It had taken some delicate finessing of finances on Carly’s part to ensure that everything they had wanted was achievable within their modest budget, and she had been justifiably proud of the end result.

Mike Lucas’s wife was going to explode in a minute if he didn’t stop flirting with the young girl he had grabbed. Carly swiftly got up and made her way towards him, intent on defusing the situation before it got out of hand.

Ricardo didn’t know why the hell he had allowed himself to be persuaded to come here. His appetite for the proposed business deal that had brought him here had already soured. The whole set-up was everything he loathed, and could best be summed up as rich, immoral men being pursued by greedy, amoral women, he decided cynically.

His attention was caught by the occupants of a table several feet away. A group of forty-something men, paunchy and sweating from a combination of the club’s heat and the effect of the skimpily dressed young women thronging the room. Their wives and partners might be younger than they, but they were nowhere near as young as the girls the men were watching—apart from one. She was younger than the rest but still a woman and not a girl, and as Ricardo watched her she got up from her seat and walked round to the other side the table, where one of the men had started to paw a giggling leggy brunette for whom he had just ordered a bottle of champagne.

‘Mike.’ Carly smiled as she leaned towards him, strategically placing herself between him and the unknown girl.

‘Hello, sexy. Want some champagne?’

Mike Lucas made a grab for her, pulling her down onto his knee and putting his hand on her breast.

Immediately Carly froze, warning anger zig-zagging through the glance she gave him, but Mike was too drunk to notice. Still grinning, he pulled the other girl towards him as well. Unlike Carly, she made it plain that she was enjoying the attention.

‘Look what I’ve got,’ Mike called out to his friends, one hand on Carly’s breast and the other on the other girl’s. He jiggled them inexpertly and boasted drunkenly, ‘Hey, what about this for a threesome, guys?’

Ricardo’s hooded gaze monitored the small unsavoury scene. The sight of women selling their bodies was nothing new to him. He had grown up in the slums of Naples, and these women—these spoiled, pampered, lazy society women, with their designer clothes and their Cartier jewellery—were, as far as he was concerned, far more to be despised than the prostitutes of the Naples alleys.

He pushed back his chair and stood up, throwing a pile of banknotes down onto the table. The man who had invited him to the club was talking to someone at the bar, but Ricardo did not bother to go over and take any formal leave of him before quitting the club.

As a billionaire he had no need to observe the niceties that governed the behaviour of other, less wealthy men.

Ricardo studied the newspapers the most senior of his quartet of male PAs had left on his desk for him. He read them as he drank the second of his ritual two cups of thick, strong black coffee. Some tastes could be acquired, but others could never totally be destroyed or denied. He frowned, a look that was a formidable blend of anger and pride forking like lightning in the almost basalt darkness of his eyes.

He was not a prettily handsome man, but he was a man who commanded and indeed demanded the visual attention of others—especially women, who were aware immediately of the aura of raw, challenging male sexuality he exuded.

He reached for the first newspaper, flicking dismissively and contemptuously through its pages until he found what he wanted. A smile, in reality no more than cynically bared white teeth against the warmth of the skin tone that proclaimed his Italian heritage, curled his mouth without reaching his eyes as he glanced swiftly down the newspaper’s much trumpeted, newly revised ‘Rich List’.

He didn’t have to look very far to find his own name. Indeed he could count on the fingers of one hand the names that came above his.

Ricardo Salvatore, billionaire. Estimated fortune…Ricardo gave a short, grim laugh as he looked at a figure that fell well short of his actual wealth.

Beneath his name there were also a couple of lines describing him truthfully as single and thirty-two years old, and untruthfully as having founded his fortune on an inheritance from his uncle. A further line offered the information that, in recognition of his charitable donations to a variety of good causes, it was rumoured that Ricardo Salvatore was to be given a knighthood.

Now Ricardo did smile.

A knighthood! Not a bad achievement for someone who had been orphaned by the deaths of his young Italian mother and British father in a rail accident, and who, because of that, had ended up growing up virtually alone in the worst of Naples’ slums. It had been a tough and sometimes brutal way to grow up, but occasionally Ricardo felt that he had more respect and admiration for the companions of his youth than he did for the people he now mixed with.

Family ties and close friendships were not things that had ever formed a part of the fabric of his life, but he did not feel their absence. In fact, he actively liked his solitariness, and his corresponding freedom from other people’s demands. He had learned young how to survive—by listening and observing—and how to make his own rules for the way he lived his life. He drew his strength from what existed within him rather than what other people thought of him. He had been just eighteen, fiercely competitive and ambitious, when he had gambled for and won the money that had enabled him to buy his first container ship.

He dropped the newspaper onto his desk, picked up the file adjacent to it marked ‘Potential Acquisitions’ and started to speed-read through its contents. Ricardo was always on the look out for promising new acquisitions to add to his portfolio, and Prêt a Party would fit into it very neatly.

The first time he had heard of the organisation had been when a business acquaintance had mentioned it in passing, commenting that he was a family friend of its young owner. In fact, knowing Marcus Canning as he did, he was rather surprised that a man as financially astute as Marcus hadn’t seen the potential of the business for himself.

He gave a small shrug. Marcus’s reasons for not acting on the potential of Prêt a Party were of relatively little interest to him. By nature Ricardo was a hunter, and, like all hunters, he enjoyed the adrenalin-boosting thrill of the chase almost as much as he enjoyed the ultimate and inevitable kill at the end of it.

Prêt a Party might only represent a small ‘kill,’ but Ricardo’s preparations for the chase would still be carefully planned.

The normal avenue of obtaining detailed industry reports was not one he favoured; for one thing it tended to alert every other hunter to his interest, and for another he preferred his own methods and his own instincts.

The first thing he wanted to do was find out a good deal more about how the business worked—how efficient it was, how profitable it was, and how vulnerable to a takeover that would be profitable to him. The best person to tell him that was, of course, the owner, Lucy Blayne, but she was hardly likely to equip a potential and predatory buyer with such information. Which was why he had decided to pose as a potential client. The kind of fussy client who wanted to know every single in and out of how things worked and how his commission would be handled before he gave it. The kind of client who insisted on seeing Prêt a Party’s organisa-tional capabilities at first hand.

Of course in order to have these ‘eccentricities’ catered for, he in turn would have to dangle a very large and very juicy carrot in front of Lucy Blayne.

And that was exactly what he was going to do.

‘Carly! Thank God you’re back! It’s absolute chaos here!’

Walking into Prêt a Party’s smart but chaotic office in Sloane Street, one of the most upmarket areas of London, Carly acknowledged ruefully that things must indeed be chaotic for her once schoolfriend and now employer—kind-hearted and sweet-natured Lucy Blayne—to be in too much of a rush to ask Carly how things had gone last night.

One pretty but terrified-looking young girl who was new was rushing around trying to cope with the nonstop ringing of the telephone, whilst a couple more, who weren’t new, were earnestly reassuring clients that, yes, everything was in hand for their big event.

‘We’re just sooo amazingly busy—that launch party we did for you-know-who, the It Girl of the moment’s new jewellery range, got a mensh in Vogue. Nick’s bringing us in so much new business,’ Lucy enthused.

Carly said nothing. She had done her best not to let Lucy see how much she disliked Nick, and of course there was no way she could tell her friend why. Lucy was deeply in love with her new husband, and Carly knew how much it would hurt her to learn that Nick had actually come on to Carly herself within days of Lucy introducing him into the business.

‘Oh!’ The pretty young girl looked shocked and almost dropped the telephone receiver.

‘It’s the Duke of Ryle,’ she told Lucy theatrically, in a cut-glass upper-class English voice. ‘And he wants to speak to you.’

Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t disappear, there’s something important I need to discuss with you,’ she told Carly quickly, before saying cheerfully, ‘Uncle Charles—how lovely. How is Aunt Jane?’

Smiling reassuringly at the flustered and flushed-faced young girl, Carly edged her way past the overflowing desks in the outer office and into her small private office, exhaling in relief as she stepped into her own circle of peace.

A note on her desk caught her eye and she grinned as she read it.

BEWARE—Lucy is in major panic mode—Jules

The three of them—Lucy, Julia and Carly—herself, had been at school together, and Carly knew that Jules,

like her, had been extremely dubious at first when Lucy had told them she intended to set up an event organisation company.

But Lucy could be very persuasive when she wanted to be, and since—as Jules had pointed out—neither of them had any other job to go to, and Lucy, thanks to her large trust fund, could afford to both set up the business and pay them a respectable salary, they simply could not refuse.

Now, three years later and much to her own astonishment, Carly had been forced to admit that Lucy’s business was beginning to look as though it had the potential to become a really big success. Just so long as she continued to insist that they kept a firm grip both on reality and their costings.

‘Come back!’

‘Jules!’

‘So, how did last night go?’

Carly grimaced expressively. ‘Well, let’s just say that the tabloid journalist who snapped Mike Lucas with one hand down the front of the Honourable Seraphina Ordley’s Matthew Williamson frock and the other gripping my far less worthy, five-year-old second-hand Armani silk-clad breast will by now have realised his mistake. “Thou shalt not photograph the niece of one’s rag’s major shareholder in a pose more suited to a failed contestant from Big Brother”.’

‘Ordley?’ Jules mused. ‘So she’s a Harlowe, then.’ As she was an earl’s granddaughter, Julia knew Burke’s Peerage inside out. ‘It has been said that the Harlowes’ motto should be “As in name, so in action”. It’s a Charles II title,’ Jules explained. ‘He handed them out like sweets to his cast-off mistresses. You aren’t smiling,’ she accused Carly.

‘Neither would you be if you had been there last night.’

‘Oh. As bad as that, was it?’

When Carly made no verbal response, but instead simply looked at her, Jules grinned. ‘Okay, okay, I apologise. I should have been the one to go with them, I know, and I backed out and left you to do it for me…Did he really grab your boob, Carly? What did you do?’

‘I reminded myself that the evening was making us a profit of £6,000.’

‘Ah.’

‘And then I dropped a full bottle of Cristal on his balls.’

‘Oh!’

‘It wasn’t funny, Jules,’ she protested, when her friend started to laugh. ‘I love Lucy to bits and most of the time I’m grateful to her for including me in her plans—like when she decided to set up this business. But when it comes to events like last night’s…’

‘It was one of Nick’s, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Carly agreed tersely.

‘And the weekend—did you manage to get time to see…them?’

Carly frowned. The three of them were so close that there were no secrets between them, but even so the habit of loyalty was ingrained deeply within her.

Jules—or the Honourable Julia Fellowes, to give her her correct title—touched her gently on the arm, and Carly shook away her own reticence.

‘It was dreadful,’ she told her simply. ‘Even now I don’t think they’ve really taken it in. I felt so so sorry for them. They’ve lost so much—the estate and everything that went with it—and the prestige living there gave them was very important to them. And now this.’

‘Well, at least thanks to you they’ve got a roof over their heads.’

‘The Dower House.’ Carly pulled a face. ‘They hate living there.’

‘What? When I think of how you’ve beggared yourself to get a mortgage and buy it from the estate for them—oh, honestly, Carly.’

‘I might not be able to afford a designer lifestyle, but I’ve hardly beggared myself. Thanks to you I’m living rent-free in one of the poshest parts of London. I’ve got a job I love, all the travel I could possibly want…’

She had balked initially at Jules’s generous offer that the three of them should share her flat—the three of them being Jules, Carly, and Jules’s notorious ‘I’m having a bad day and I need to shop’ habit. Other people ate chocolate, or rowed with their mother; Jules bought shoes.

But who was she to mock other people’s security blanket habits? Ever since she could remember she had saved: pennies, and then her allowance…comfort money. Not that it was bringing her much comfort now. Thanks to the needs of her adopted parents, her bank account was permanently empty.

‘…and a weight round your neck that no one should have,’ she heard Jules telling her protectively.

Ignoring her comment, Carly said, ‘I wish I could have stayed for a bit longer. I felt guilty leaving them.’

‘You felt guilty? That’s crazy. Carly, you don’t owe them anything. When I think of what they did to you!’

‘You mean like giving me a first-class education?’ Carly offered her quietly.

It was at times like this that she recognised the huge gap that existed between herself and the other two. Despite their shared education, they had been born worlds apart.

‘You’ve had to pay for it,’ Julia told her protectively.

Carly made no response. After all it was true—but not in the way that Julia had meant. The payment she found unbearable was the knowledge that she was destined always to be an outsider, someone who did not quite fit in—anywhere.

Julia gave her another hug.

Pretty, brunette Julia, and gentle, tender-hearted blonde Lucy—Carly had envied them both, just as she had envied all the other girls at school: girls who knew beyond any kind of doubt that they were taking their rightful place in their own world. Unlike her. She had known she had no right to be there in that alien, wealthy environment. Everything about her had screamed out that she did not and could not fit in. She had felt so out of place—a fraud, a pauper, a charity case, someone whose life had been bought! And, of course, very quickly everyone had known just why she had come to be there.

‘Sometimes I wonder what on earth I’m doing in this business.’ Lucy exhaled as she came to join them.

‘Only sometimes?’ Carly teased her.

Lucy grinned.

‘We’ve got a major client scenario about to take place. Nick is on his way over with him right now.’

Carly looked away discreetly as she saw a small shadow touch Julia’s eyes. It had been Julia who had introduced Nick to Lucy, and sometimes Carly wondered if Nick, with his flashy pseudo-charm which she found so unappealing, hadn’t perhaps made Julia as vulnerable to him as Lucy had been. Was she being overly cynical in worrying that Nick had married Lucy more for her trust fund and her family’s social position and wealth than because he had genuinely fallen in love with her? For Lucy’s sake she hoped it was the latter, but it had all happened so quickly—too quickly, Carly felt. And now here was Nick, a man she didn’t like or trust, taking a very prominent role in the business.

‘How major?’ Carly asked.

‘Jules, call over one of the girls, will you?’ Lucy begged. ‘I’m dying for an espresso! Absolutely huge. Apparently he knows Marcus—and you can imagine how I feel about that!’

Marcus Canning was Lucy’s bête noir: a family friend who was also one of her trustees and who, against Lucy’s wishes, had insisted on being kept fully informed of every aspect of the business before he would agree to Lucy investing her trust fund money in it. Personally, Carly thought that Marcus Canning, with his well-known reputation for astute financial dealings, was a good person for them to have on board, and she had felt both proud and pleased when he had praised her at their last financial meeting for the way she was running the administrative and financial side of the business.

‘And, of course, if he does commission us then we’re going to make a bomb!’ she heard Lucy announcing enthusiastically.

‘Who is he, and what does he want?’ Julia chimed in.

‘He’s Ricardo Salvatore. He’s mega-wealthy, and his story is real rags to riches stuff. There was an article in one of the Sunday supplements about him a couple of months ago. He grew up in Naples and he was orphaned very young. But he ran away from the orphanage when he was ten years old and ran wild with a group of children who existed by stealing and begging, generally blagging a living. He’s a billionaire now, and he owns—amongst other things—three top-of-the-market exclusive luxury cruise liners. What he wants is for us to organise private parties and that kind of thing for people on these cruises at several villa venues throughout the world. He also owns the villas—and in one case the island it’s on.

‘He rang earlier, at a very bad moment. In fact, while we were still in bed at home.’ She pulled a face and then giggled. ‘Poor Nick was…well…Anyway, Nick’s just phoned to warn me that they’re on their way over here. Ricardo’s told him that before he makes a decision he wants to observe a variety of our already planned events, as a sort of unofficial extra guest.’

‘What? You’re going to let him gatecrash other people’s parties?’ Carly demanded, shocked. ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’

‘I can’t imagine many of our clients would refuse to have a billionaire as an extra guest!’ Lucy told her defensively. ‘Anyway, Nick has already told him it’s okay, and the thing is, Carly, it makes sense if you are the one to accompany him.’

‘Me?’

‘One of us has to go with him,’ Lucy pointed out. ‘And besides…’ She bit her lip. ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’d have more in common with him than either of us, and he’ll feel more comfortable with you…’

It took Carly several seconds to catch on, and when she did she her face burned.

‘I see.’ She knew her voice was tense and edgy but she couldn’t help herself. ‘So what you’re saying is that he’s a self-made man, not out of the top drawer and not—’

‘Oh, rats. I knew you’d take it the wrong way.’ Lucy groaned. ‘Yes, he is a self-made man, Carly—and a billionaire self-made man at that—but that wasn’t what I meant! It isn’t anything to do with class! I want you to escort and accompany him because I know you’ll make a better impression on him than anyone else. Apparently he likes all that stuff you like—reading, museums, galleries. And it is desperately important that we do make a good him impression on him and secure his business.’ She paused, and then told them both, ‘I didn’t want to tell you about this, but the truth is that things haven’t being going as well as they were. We had that warehouse fire earlier in the year, which destroyed loads of our stuff…’

‘But we were insured!’ Carly protested.

Lucy shook her head.

‘No, we weren’t. Nick felt that the quotes you’d got were too high, and he asked me to hold off paying the premium until he’d checked out some other insurers,’ she told her unhappily. ‘I thought Nick had gone ahead and insured us with new insurers, but I’d got it wrong, and of course, unfortunately, the existing insurance lapsed.’

Carly frowned. Lucy looked and sounded strained and uncomfortable. She couldn’t help wondering if Lucy was trying to protect Nick by taking the blame for his negligence.

She ought to be grateful to this as yet unknown potential client for giving her the opportunity to escape—if only for a while—from her growing discomfort about the way Nick was using the business’s bank account as though it were his own private account. Since Lucy had made it clear that Nick was to have carte blanche to withdraw money from the account whenever he liked, there was no legitimate objection she could make. Nick had shrugged aside her concern about their growing overdraft by telling her that the deficit would be made good from Lucy’s trust fund, but to Carly it seemed shockingly unbusinesslike to waste money paying interest on an overdraft.

‘They’ll be here in a few minutes. God, I hope we get his business.’ Lucy yawned. ‘I am sooo tired—and we’ve got dinner with the folks tonight. How about you? Have you got anything on?’

‘Only my writing class,’ Carly answered.

‘I don’t know why you’re still going to that,’ Julia told her ruefully.

Originally they had decided to attend the writing group together, at Julia’s suggestion—mainly, Carly suspected, because Julia had been dating an up-and-coming literary novelist. But after a couple of weeks the romance had faded, and Julia had taken a period of extended leave to visit her sister in Australia, leaving Carly to attend the weekly meetings on her own.

‘Mmm…’

‘Well, it won’t hurt to miss one class, surely? Unless, of course, it’s Miss Pope’s turn to read one of her poems?’ Julia giggled.

Carly tried and failed to give her a quelling look.

‘They are pretty awful,’ she agreed, joining in her laughter.

‘What project has the Professor given you all to write about this time?’ Julia gave a small shudder. ‘It’s not litter again, is it?’

‘No,’ Carly confirmed carefully, ‘it isn’t litter. Actually it’s fantasy sex!’

It was amazing what the word sex could do, she reflected ruefully as both her friends turned to stare at her.

‘Fantasy sex?’ Lucy demanded. ‘What, you mean like…imagining sex with a fantasy man?’ She started to laugh. ‘Why?’

‘Professor Elseworth wants us to stretch our imagination and take it into a new dimension.’

‘Right now, any kind of sex is a fantasy for me,’ Julia remarked gloomily, before adding, ‘But I can’t imagine you writing about fantasy sex, Carly. I mean, you don’t actually do it at all, do you?’

Carly bared her teeth in a ferociously fake smile.

‘No, I don’t. And I won’t until I find someone worth doing it with!’

‘Well, okay—I mean, I don’t have a problem with that—but how on earth are you going to write about fantasy sex when…?’

Carly gave her a withering look.

‘I’m going to use my imagination. That is the whole point of the exercise,’ she told her with awesome dignity.

‘Rather you than me!’

‘No talking about sex during working hours,’ Lucy began mock primly, and then stopped as, to Carly’s relief, their newest recruit arrived with Lucy’s espresso.

In all honesty she would be only too happy to have an excuse to miss out on her writing class and its assignment. She certainly didn’t want to write about fantasy sex—or indeed sex of any kind. She knew there was a barrier between her and the potential enjoyment of her sexuality. But how could she ever give herself freely and openly, to a man and to love, when she could never imagine being able to reveal her emotional scars to him? How could there be true intimacy when she herself was so afraid of it? So afraid of being judged and then rejected? Didn’t events such as the one she had attended last night confirm all that she had always thought and feared? Giving yourself in and with love to another human being meant giving yourself over to being judged as not good enough, not acceptable, not worthy, and ultimately to rejection. And she had learned very young just how much that hurt.

Her game plan for her life involved focusing on emotional and financial security: building her career, enjoying the company of her friends, ultimately travelling—if she could afford to do so—but always ensuring that she never made the mistake of falling in love.

She had decided that she was only going to have a sexual relationship if she met a man she wanted physically with intense passion and hunger—a man with whom she knew she could share the heights of physical pleasure in a relationship that carried no health risks. A serial male sexual predator was not an option. And at the same time she would also have to feel one hundred per cent confident that she would never be at risk of becoming emotionally involved with him. Add to that the fact that she wasn’t even actively looking for this paragon, and it seemed a pretty foregone conclusion that she was likely to remain a virgin indefinitely.

Not that the prospect bothered her.

CHAPTER TWO

‘AND you’re sure my requirements won’t be a problem for you, Nick? I know you don’t have a large staff,’ Ricardo said blandly.

‘Absolutely not. Lucy said that Carly jumped at the chance. In fact she begged for it.’ Nick laughed. ‘And I don’t suppose anyone can blame her. After all, when you’ve been used to the best of everything all your life and suddenly it isn’t available any more, and you’re a decent-looking woman, I suppose you’re bound to look forward to spending time with a rich man.’

‘She’s looking for a rich husband?’

Nick grinned.

‘Who said anything about marriage? Anyway, come up to the office and I can introduce you to her.’

‘I think you said earlier that she is your wife’s partner?’

‘Employee. The three of them—Lucy, Julia and Carly—were at school together. Neither Julia nor Carly have put any money into the business, though.’

‘So financially the partnership is—’

‘Just me and Lucy,’ Nick informed him.

‘Carly normally does all the financial and administrative stuff, but to be honest I don’t think she’s up to the job. You’d be doing me a favour by taking her off my hands for a week or two, so that I can get the financial side of things sorted out properly. Lucy’s a loyal little soul, and devoted to her friends—you know the type, all breeding and no brains.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t want to say too much to her. Anyway, having Carly with you won’t be too much of a hardship—she’s a good-looker, and obliging too, if you know what I mean—especially if you treat her generously. Like I said, Carly has her head screwed on.’

‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’ Ricardo asked him dryly.

‘What? Hell, no. I’m a married man. But let’s just say she let me know that it was available if I wanted it,’ Nick boasted.

He was well aware that Carly didn’t like him, and it amused him to think of what he was setting her up for. Discrediting her wouldn’t do him any harm in other ways either, he congratulated himself. For one thing she wouldn’t be able to go tittle-tattling to Lucy.

‘Carly is very good at getting other people to pay her bills for her—as both Lucy and Julia already know. She’s even managed to blag a rent-free room in Julia’s flat. If she can’t find a rich man to finance her, then the lifestyle that working for Prêt a Party gives her is the next best thing. All that first-class travel and accommodation provided by the clients, plus getting to mingle with their guests.’ He winked at Ricardo. ‘Ideal for her type of woman. Once I’ve introduced you, I’ll get her to go through the list of our upcoming events with you so that you can cherry pick the ones you want to attend.’

‘Excellent.’ Inwardly, Ricardo decided that Nick sounded more like a pimp than a businessman. Or in this business did the two go hand in hand?

They had reached Prêt a Party’s office, and Nick pushed open the door for him.

‘Ah, there’s Carly,’ he announced. ‘I’ll call her over.’

There was no way she could pretend not to be aware of Nick’s summons, Carly had to acknowledge reluctantly, and she walked towards him. She was wearing her normal office uniform of jeans and a tee shirt—the jeans snugly encased the slender length of her legs but irritatingly, the tee shirt skimming the curves of her breasts had pulled free of the low waistband of her jeans. It was a familiar hazard when one was almost five foot ten tall, give or take one eighth of an inch, and it exposed the flat golden flesh of her taut stomach. Whenever she could, Carly ran—mostly on her own, but sometimes with a group of fellow amateur runners—and her body had a sensuous grace of which she herself was totally unaware.

Long thick hair, honey-brown, with natural highlights, swung past her shoulders as she walked calmly towards Nick—and then missed a step as she saw the man standing to one side of him.

If she were in the market for a man—sex-wise, that was, because she would not want one for any other reason—then this was definitely a man she would want. She could feel the power of his sexuality from here; she could breathe it in almost. And it was very heady stuff. Far more potent than any champagne, she thought dizzily.

A vulnerable woman—which, of course, she was not—would find it almost impossible to resist such a man. He was a living, breathing lure for the whole female sex. Except for her. She had exempted herself from such dangers.

Ricardo frowned in immediate recognition as he watched her walking towards them and coldly came to two very separate decisions.

The first was that he intended to have her in his bed, and the second was that she embodied everything he most disliked about her class and type.

She was stunningly beautiful and irritatingly confident. And he already knew from listening to Nick that she was a woman who judged a man by his wallet and how much she could extract from it. A gold-digger, in other words.

‘Hello, gorgeous. Let me introduce you to Ricardo—oh, and by the way, Mike Lucas rang me to tell me how much he enjoyed your company last night,’ Nick told Carly, as he put his arm round her shoulders and drew her close to his side.

Pulling herself free, Carly extended her hand to Ricardo and smiled at him with genuine pleasure. After all, he was going to be releasing her from the unpleasantness of Nick’s unwanted company.

Well, she certainly didn’t believe in wasting any time, Ricardo thought cynically as he took the hand Carly had extended and shook it firmly.

‘Ricardo wants to have a look at our upcoming events so that he can decide which ones he wants to attend. You can use my office, Carly,’ Nick told her benignly.

His office? Carly had to look away. ‘His office’, as he called it had, until he had come onto the scene, been her office. In fact it still was her office, she reflected, since she was the only one who did any work in it. Nick’s only appearances in it were when he came in to ask her to countersign another cheque.

Carly smiled as she led the way to the small sectioned-off cubicle where she worked. Ricardo had lost count of the number of women who had smiled at him the way Carly was doing right now—with warmth and promise—especially women of Carly’s type. Upmarket, privately educated pampered women, contemptuous of the very idea of supporting themselves, whose goal in life was to find a man to financially underwrite their desired lifestyle.

His gaze narrowed. Female predators were a familiar risk to any man to whom the press attached the label ‘wealthy’; he had discovered that a long time ago. He had been twenty-two and merely a millionaire the first time he had encountered the type of well-bred young woman who believed that a man like him—a self-made man who had come up from nothing—would be delighted to spend lavishly on her in exchange for the social cachet of being connected with her.

She had been the sister of the thrusting young entrepreneur with whom he’d had business dealings. Initially he had thought he must be mistaken, and that she couldn’t possibly be coming on to him as openly as she’d seemed to be. He had indeed been naïve. There had been an expensive lunch to which she had invited herself, he remembered, and an even more expensive afternoon’s shopping, when she had pointed out to him the Rolex watch she wanted. Like a besotted fool he had gone back to the shop and bought it for her the moment she had left him to return to her brother. He had then, even more besottedly, booked himself out of his hotel room and into a huge suite, had ordered a magnum of champagne and the most luxurious meal he could think of, and then wasted more time than he cared to think about dreaming of the pleasure that lay in store for them both. He would make love to her as she had never been made love to her before, and then, in the morning, he would kiss her awake and surprise her with the watch…

He had very quickly been brought back to earth when, instead of relishing his tender caresses, the object of his adoration had told him peevishly to ‘hurry up’, and then pouted and sulked until he produced her watch. The final blow to his pride, though, had been unwittingly delivered by her brother, who had informed him that his sister was as good as engaged to an extremely wealthy older man. Fortunately, although his illusions had been shattered, his heart had been left intact, and the whole experience had taught him what he considered to be a valuable lesson: the only difference between spoilt, pampered society women and the prostitutes of Naples was that the prostitutes had no option other than to sell themselves if they wanted to feed their children.

He had yet to meet a woman whose desire for him did not go hand in hand with her desire for his money, no matter how much she might initially deny it. Indeed, if he hadn’t been so fastidious he knew that he would have found it cheaper to hire the services of a professional than to satisfy the financial demands of the society women who had shared his bed. The discovery that the last one to do so had been contemplating being unfaithful to him with an elderly billionaire old enough to be her grandfather had confirmed his cynical belief that no woman was too beautiful or too well born to be above using her ‘assets’ to secure financial security.

He would take Carly to bed and he would ensure that both of them enjoyed the experience, and that would be that. Why shouldn’t he take advantage of what she was? She was a beautiful woman, and it was a very long time since he had last had sex, but her social standing cut no ice with him, and nor was he impressed by it—quite the opposite, in fact.

‘Here’s a list of our upcoming events and their venues,’ Carly announced a little breathlessly, after she had printed it off from the computer.

She hadn’t expected to be so acutely aware of Ricardo’s powerful and sensually invasive sexual aura. She wasn’t used to this kind of man, and there was an unfamiliar flutter in her stomach and a hyped-up sensation of excitement in her head. She felt both excited and apprehensive, as though somehow her whole body had moved up into a higher gear, a more intense state of awareness. It was simply her hormones responding to his hormones, she told herself prosaically. Her office was way too small for the two of them.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that he was removing his suit jacket, and she discovered that she was sucking in an unsteady breath of reluctant female appreciation. Beneath the fine cotton of his shirt she could see the muscular hardness of his body. She had recently read an article in a magazine about the new fashion for men to wax their chest hair. He obviously didn’t subscribe to it.

The author of the article had propounded the theory that women found the abrasion of male body hair unwelcome against their own flesh. Carly’s tongue-tip touched her lips. A fine mist of sensual heat had broken out on her skin. Beneath her tee shirt her bra-covered breasts suddenly ached, her nipples pushing against the restraining fabric.

How could she be having such intensely sexual thoughts about a man she had only just met? It must be because she had been talking about sex to Lucy and Jules. Yes, that was it; her mind was obviously more focused on sex than usual.

He was still studying the list she had given him, plainly oblivious to what she was experiencing, and of course she was glad about that—wasn’t she? After all, she had never been the kind of woman who felt piqued because a man didn’t show any interest in her.

Because until now she had not met the right kind of man?

‘Perhaps if you were to tell me what kind of event you are thinking of having I might be able to pick out the best events for you to attend,’ she suggested hastily.

‘I haven’t made up my mind as yet.’

Carly looked blankly at him. She had naturally assumed that, like their existing clients, he must have a specific event in mind.

Ricardo permitted himself a small cynical smile. If his plans went ahead as he expected, the first event Prêt a Party would be organising for him would be a party to celebrate his acquisition. But of course he wasn’t going to tell Carly that. She, he had already decided, would be one of the first surplus-to-requirements ‘assets’ of the business to be offloaded.

‘I understand you are responsible for the administration and accounts of the business?’

‘Er, yes…’

‘You must be very well organised if you can carry out those duties and still have time to accompany clients to their events.’

‘I don’t normally. That is, I stand in for the others sometimes.’

She was making it sound as though she had to be coerced into doing so, Ricardo thought cynically. Of course he knew better.

‘Carly, your mother’s telephoned. She wants you to ring her—Oh, I’m sorry.’ The young girl who had burst into the office came to an abrupt halt, her face pink, as she realised that Carly wasn’t on her own.

‘It’s all right, Izzie, I’ll ring her later. Thank you.’ But as she thanked the younger girl Carly’s heart was sinking beneath her professional smile. She already knew what her adoptive mother would want. More money.

Carly did her best, but the truth was that the woman had no real understanding of how to manage money. The fortune her adoptive father had once had was gone, swallowed up in lavish living and unwise investments. A stroke had made it impossible for him to do any kind of work, and so Carly found herself in the position of having to support them as best she could. But it wasn’t easy. Her adoptive mother ran up bills and then wept because she couldn’t pay them—like a small child rather than an adult. Their anguished unhappiness and despair made her feel so guilty—especially when…

She was so lucky to have friends like Lucy and Jules, Carly reflected emotionally. She might get on reasonably well with her adopted parents now, but that had not always been the case. Without Lucy and Jules what might she have done to escape from the misery and the wretchedness that had been her own childhood? Taken her own life? She had certainly thought about it.

Where had she gone? Ricardo wondered curiously, watching anxiety momentarily shadow her eyes before she blinked it away. He cleared his throat.

‘Right. Here are the events I wish to attend.’

Pushing back her private thoughts, Carly leaned over the desk to study the list he had tossed towards her.

He had selected three events: a private party in St Tropez on board a newly acquired private yacht, to celebrate its acquisition; a media event in the Hamptons to launch a new glossy magazine, to which old money, new names and anyone who was anyone in the fashion world had been invited and a world-famous senior rock star’s birthday bash at his French château.

Carly started to frown.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘The St Tropez yacht party is next weekend, and only four days before the Hamptons do. It might be difficult co-ordinating flights and all the other travel arrangements.’

She kept a tight rein on expenses—or at least she had done until Nick had started to interfere. They always booked cheap, no frills flights to overseas events if they weren’t being flown out by the clients.

Ricardo raised an eyebrow.

‘That won’t be a problem. We’ll be using my private jet.’ He gave a dismissive shrug of those powerful shoulders. ‘One of my PAs can sort out all the details. Oh, and they’ll need your passport, ASAP. I understand from Nick that your normal practice is to be in situ a day ahead of the actual event. That suits me, because that way I shall be able to see how things are organised.’

Too right he would, Ricardo decided.

He was standing up, and Carly followed suit. He was so tall—so big! She was suddenly aware of her reluctance to go through the doorway, because it would bring her too close to him. Too close to him? Get a grip, she mentally advised herself unsympathetically.

‘My PA will be in touch with you regarding flight times.’

She walked determinedly towards the door. She was almost level with him now. In another few seconds she would be through the door and safe. Safe? From what? Him pouncing on her? No way would he do that, she told herself scornfully.

And then she made the mistake of looking up at him.

It was like stepping through a door into a previously unknown world.

Her heart whipped round inside her chest like a spinning barrel. Against her will her head turned, her lips parting as her gaze fastened on his mouth. His top lip was well shaped and firmly cut, his teeth white and just slightly uneven, and his bottom lip…

His bottom lip. A smoky sensuality darkened her normally crystal-clear grey eyes as she fed visually on the promise of its fullness. How would it feel to catch that fullness between her own lips? To nibble at it with small biting kisses, to…

‘A word of warning—’ Ricardo began.

She could feel guilty colour staining her skin as her mind grappled with inexplicable thoughts.

‘It is imperative that full confidentiality as to the purpose of my attendance at these occasions is maintained at all times.’

He was cautioning her about the events—that was all! Carly exhaled in shaky relief.

‘Yes—yes, of course,’ she agreed quickly, as she finally made it through the doorway on legs that had developed a very suspicious weakness.

But she was unnervingly aware of him behind her.

‘And one more thing.’

‘Yes?’ she offered politely, automatically turning round to face him.

‘The next time you look at my mouth like that…’ he said softly, with a mocking smile.

‘Like what? I didn’t look at it like anything!’ Carly knew that her face was burning with guilt, but she had to defend herself.

‘Liar. You looked at it, at me, as though you couldn’t wait to feel it against your own. As though there was nothing you wanted more than for me to push you up against that doorframe and take you right here and now. As though you could already feel my hands on your skin, touching you intimately, and you were loving it. As though—’

‘No!’ Carly denied fiercely. And her denial was the truth—she hadn’t got as far as thinking anything so intimate as that!

To her relief she could see Lucy hurrying towards them to introduce herself to him.

It was over an hour since Ricardo had gone, and Carly was still thinking about him. But a woman would surely have to be totally devoid of any kind of hormones to remain unaware of Ricardo as a fully functioning man.

And that was her sole excuse, was it? She pushed back her keyboard and stood up. She was shaking slightly. Her face was burning and her body ached. She felt shocked. Guilty. Horrified, in fact, by the door she had unwittingly opened in her own head, and—even worse—was uncomfortably aware that she was physically aroused. Physically, but of course not emotionally—that was impossible. After all, she had sworn never to fall in love, hadn’t she? Never to fall in love; never to give herself emotionally to anyone; never to risk the emotional security she had given to herself.

She started to pace the small office. Her childhood had taught her all there was to know about the pain that came with being emotionally rejected. She had fought hard to give herself the protective air of calm self-confidence she projected to others, and for the right to claim their respect. The pathetic, needy child she had once been, desperate for approval and love, had been totally banished, and that was the way Carly intended it to stay.

So why was she thinking like this? No one was threatening her self-reliance, after all—least of all Ricardo Salvatore, who probably had the same loathing of emotional bondage as she did herself, if for very different reasons.

CHAPTER THREE

CARLY checked her watch—Lucy had given both Carly and Jules smart Cartier Tank Francaise watches for Christmas in the first year the business had made a profit—and then bent down and grabbed the handle of her case.

The car Ricardo Salvatore was sending to pick her up was due to arrive in exactly two minutes’ time. It was time for her to leave.

She heaved her suitcase off the floor, grimacing a little ruefully as she did so, remembering how Lucy had burst into the office the previous Thursday morning announcing, ‘Oh, my God, Carly—I’ve just realised! There won’t be anything in the Wardrobe that will fit you!’

The ‘Wardrobe’ was a standing joke between them all, and was in actual fact a small room in Lucy’s parents’ London home which housed the glamorous outfits Lucy and Jules, who were very much the same height and build, wore when they were ‘on duty’ at events.

The clothes—all designer models—were second hand, surreptitiously trawled from a variety of sources, and the subject of amused speculation between them.

‘Just look at this!’ Lucy had marvelled after their last expedition, as she held up what looked like a sequin-covered handkerchief with halter neck straps. ‘Who on earth would buy this?’

‘You did,’ Carly had pointed out, laughing.

‘Yes, but I only paid fifty pounds for it—it cost over a thousand brand-new.’

‘It’s very sexy,’ Jules had pronounced.

‘It’s repulsive,’ Carly had criticised. ‘Vulgar and tarty.’

‘Mmm…Well, Nick spotted it.’

But the Wardrobe contained nothing that would fit Carly, and so, that Thursday, Lucy had announced firmly, ‘Come on, Carly. We’ve got to go out on a trawl!’

Carly had tried to protest and resist, but Jules and Lucy had been insistent.

The result of their foray into the second-hand shops and market stalls of Lucy’s favourite haunts—which had emptied the clothes budget Carly had so carefully worked out—had been collected from the dry cleaners this morning and were now packed in Carly’s case, along with her own clothes.

Mentally Carly reviewed them—a white silk trouser suit which Lucy had cooed over, enraptured, pronouncing, ‘Oh, this is so retro—Seventies rock wife! And you’ve got the boobs for it, Carly.’

Maybe she had, but she certainly wouldn’t be wearing the jacket over bare skin and half open! There were also a couple of evening dresses, both of which were potentially so revealing that Carly had already decided she would be wearing a silk jacket over them.

She hadn’t been very keen on the designer swimsuit Lucy had found either. It was cut away in so many places that Carly feared it threatened to reveal more of her than the skimpiest of bikinis, but at least it had matching culotte pants and a jacket.

Her own classic casuals—the simple linen separates she favoured for summer and some up-to-the-minute accessories they had found in the likes of Zara—had all passed Lucy’s inspection and been declared perfect for the events she would be attending.

Dragging her suitcase behind her, Carly pushed open the door onto the street and stepped out into the late-morning sunshine.

Ricardo watched her from his vantage point in the back seat of the limo, as the driver moved the car out of the parking bay he had found further up the street.

Oh, yes, she was a typical example of her upmarket, ‘no expense spared but someone else pays’ lifestyle, Ricardo decided cynically as he watched her. Immaculate white tee shirt, perfectly fitting blue jeans, long shiny hair, minimal make-up, sunglasses, discreetly ‘good’ watch, penny loafers. The too-thin girl in designer clutter who was tottering past her on spindly heels, clutching a weird-looking handbag, couldn’t hold a candle to her. Because Carly had class.

What would she be like in bed?

He didn’t intend to let too much time elapse before he found out.

He thought of another society woman from his youth, one whom he had met when he was growing cynical but not yet completely hardened. Initially he had thought her pretty, but she hadn’t looked very pretty at all when he had flatly refused to meet her escalating demands—especially when he’d discovered they included a wedding ring in exchange for the supposed benefit of marrying into a higher social bracket. He’d told her that he preferred an honest whore.

Women like her, like Carly, might not openly demand money in return for sex, but what they were looking for was the richest and highest status man they could find—their bodies in exchange for his name.

It was a trade-off that nauseated him, as did those who participated in it.

He had no illusions about women or sex. He had lived too long and seen too much for that. His wealth could buy him any woman he wanted, and that included Carly. She had made that plain enough already, with the way she had looked at his mouth.

She hadn’t even tried to be subtle about it! She had stared openly and brazenly at him. If they hadn’t been in her office it would have been an open invitation to him to push her tee shirt out of the way and free her breasts to spill into his hands so that he could accept their flaunting invitation.

It had told him that he could have yanked down her jeans and explored and enjoyed her and she would not have said a single word in denial.

And then in the morning she would no doubt expect to receive her payment—a piece of jewellery, a telephone call from an exclusive shop inviting her to choose herself something expensive…

That was the way things were done in her world.

He was wasting too much time on her, he warned himself. His primary reason for what he was doing was the potential acquisition of Prêt a Party, not the inevitable sexual acquisition of Carly Carlisle who, although she did not know it yet, would be one of the first in line to lose her job.

Carly frowned as the large, elegant steel-grey car drew up alongside her.

A limo, Lucy had said, and she had pictured a huge, shiny black ostentatious vehicle, not something so supremely understated. But the rear door was opening and Ricardo was getting out.

‘Is this all your luggage?’

She gaped at him as he reached for her case, and then looked uncertainly towards the chauffeur.

‘Charles is driving. I am perfectly capable of picking up a case,’ Ricardo told her dryly, following her uncertain look.

‘The…my case is heavy,’ she told him, but he ignored her, picked it up and put it in to the boot of the car as if it was as light as a feather pillow.

He was wearing a black tee shirt and a pair of tan-coloured casual trousers, and the muscles in his arms were hardening as he lifted her case. He looked more like a man who worked outdoors than one who sat at a desk, she acknowledged, unwilling to admit to the response that the sight of him was eliciting from her own body.

After what had happened when she had given her imagination its head, she was now keeping it on a controlling diet of bread and water, and that meant no thinking about the effect Ricardo could have on her! So he had a good enough body to carry off the macho male thing—so what? she told herself dispassionately.

But the sight of his black-clad back, bent over the open boot, suddenly transformed by her rebellious thoughts into a totally naked back bent over her equally naked body, evoked such a powerful sensual image that she felt as though she were transfixed to the spot.

So it was true. You could go weak at the knees, Carly reflected several minutes later as she sat primly straight in the back seat of the powerful car, dizzily aware that her private thoughts were anything but prim. All those enforced deportment classes at school had definitely left her with an automatic ‘sit up straight’ reflex.

She was accomplished, Ricardo admitted to himself. That cool, remote pose she had adopted, that said Pursue me would certainly work with most men. Unfortunately for her, he was not most men. He opened his briefcase and extracted some papers.

As soon as they were free of the city traffic the powerful car picked up speed. Carly was pleased that Ricardo was engrossed in his work, because that left her free to think about hers, instead of having to make polite conversation with him.

Since their clients were using their own yacht as the venue for their party there was no construction work in the shape of marquees on the like for her to oversee. The client’s chef and kitchen staff were being augmented by a chef from the upmarket caterers she had sourced. They were already on the yacht. Menus had been agreed, floral arrangements decided on—she would be meeting with the florists, who had also been flown in from London.

The arrival and deployment of the hostess’s hairdresser, make-up artist, and a dresser from the couture house she favoured were also Carly’s responsibility, plus a hundred or more other small but vitally important arrangements.

She had an inch-thick pile of assorted coloured and coded lists in her briefcase, most of which she had actually memorised.

‘You’re so much better at this than me,’ Lucy had told her ruefully before she left.

Carly had smiled, but she knew that it was true.

Carly shifted her body against the leather upholstery. It was ridiculous that she should be so acutely conscious of Ricardo’s presence in the car with her—and even more ridiculous that she should be so acutely aware of the impact he was having on her physically. So much for the ‘bread and water’ regime, then!

The grand slam of his raw sensuality had sliced through her defences, leaving an alarming trail of female awareness in its wake. Her jeans, normally a comfortable easy fit, suddenly seemed to be uncomfortably tight, clinging to her flesh in a way she could only mentally describe as erotic, as though somehow she were being caressed by the lean, powerful male hands she couldn’t resist looking towards.

She could feel the heat expanding inside her, dangerous little languorous curls of it thrusting against her sensitive flesh. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them. Her arm accidentally brushed against her own breast and immediately she was aware of the hot pulsing of her nipples.

This was crazy. It felt as though somehow or other an unfamiliar and certainly unwanted very sexual alter ego had been released inside her. And, what was more, it seemed to be attempting to take her over! Or had it always been there and it had simply taken meeting Ricardo Salvatore to make her aware of it, just as her own senses were making her aware of him?

This was definitely crazy.

She realised with relief that they had reached the airport. The car slowed down and turned into an entrance marked ‘Strictly Private’.

A uniformed customs officer stepped out of a nearby office and came over to the car.

‘Your passport, please,’ Ricardo demanded, turning to Carly.

Foolishly, she had not been ready for this formality, and it took her several seconds to open her bag, find her passport, and then hand it over to Ricardo.

As he took it from her, her open bag slipped from her hand, showering the immaculate leather and the car’s floor with coins, her lipstick, her purse and several other small personal items.

Her face hot, she undid her seatbelt and tried to pick them up as fast as she could, but the lipstick rolled away out of her reach with the movement of the car as the driver set it in motion again.

To her dismay the lipstick had rolled along the leather and come to rest right next to Ricardo’s thigh.

She couldn’t retrieve it without touching him.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

‘Could I have my lipstick, please? It’s…You’re sitting on it,’ she told Ricardo.

‘What?’

The look he gave her was totally male and uncomprehending.

‘My lipstick!’ Carly repeated. ‘It fell out of my bag and now it’s…’

She looked meaningfully at the leather seat, somehow managing at the same time to keep her gaze off his thigh.

His sigh was definitely exasperated as he reached down and picked up the small slim tube.

It was a relief to release her own pent-up breath as he handed the lipstick to her. She reached out for it, too focused on what she was doing to be aware of a deep pothole in the tarmac, which the driver couldn’t avoid because of an oncoming vehicle.

The violent movement of the car flung her bodily against Ricardo, sending her slamming into his side. The air was driven out of her lungs by the force of the impact, leaving her half lying against him, her face buried in his tee shirt, her hand ignominiously clutching at his arm.

A shock of unfamiliar sensation hit her all at once, like a hail of sharp-pointed arrows. His personal man-scent, the texture of his tee shirt, the hardness of his chest beneath her cheek, the softness of something that she realised must be his body hair. The slow, heavy thud of his heartbeat…

Somewhere inside her head unwanted images were forming. A man—Ricardo—carrying her in his arms, his torso bare, his flesh warm beneath her fingertips. She could feel the heat of her own desire for him. Her fingers tightened automatically on his arm, her nails digging into his flesh.

Abruptly Carly snapped back to reality, and to the humiliating awareness of what she was doing. Her face burning, she released Ricardo’s arm and pulled away for him, refusing to look at him.

As she retreated to her side of the car Ricardo shifted his own position and turned away from her, to conceal the telltale thick ridge of flesh pressing against the fabric of his trousers.

He was beginning to realise that he had badly underestimated the effect Carly was going to have on him. It was one thing for him to acknowledge to himself that he was happy to have sex with her, but it was quite another to have to admit that his desire for her was far more urgent than he had planned for—and, even worse, that it was threatening to overwhelm his self-control. He simply did not want this fierce, thrusting surge of need, this urgent, compelling hunger to take hold of her and fill himself with the scent and the feel of her; the taste of her, to fill her with himself and to…

The ache in his body was intensifying instead of fading, and he had to resort to the subterfuge of opening his newspaper and busying himself re-reading it in order to conceal that fact.

‘Thank you, Charles.’

Carly had no time to do more than smile her own gratitude at Ricardo’s chauffeur before a smartly uniformed flight steward was escorting her up the steps to the waiting private jet, whilst Ricardo paused to speak with its captain—his captain, Carly realised.

She had often heard Lucy marvelling about the luxury of travelling in the private jets owned by some of their more wealthy clients, but this would be the first time she had experienced it for herself.

The interior of the jet had more resemblance to a modern apartment than to any aeroplane Carly had flown in. A colour scheme of off-white and cool grey set off the black leather upholstery of the sofas, and the steward discreetly indicated to her that both a bedroom and a separate shower room lay to the rear of the sitting area.

‘The galley is behind the cockpit, and there is another lavatory there as well—’ He broke off from his explanations, to say formally, ‘Good morning, sir.’

Carly turned round to see Ricardo standing in the open doorway.

‘Morning, Eddie. How are Sally and the new baby?’

There was a genuine warmth in his voice that touched a painful nerve within Carly’s heart.

‘They’re both fine. Sally was over the moon that you flew her folks here for the birth. She was resigned to them not being able to be there.’

Ricardo shrugged, and changed the subject. ‘Phil says that we’re going to have a good flight, both to Nice and on to New York.’ He turned to Carly. ‘I’ve got some work I need to attend to, but feel free to ask Eddie for anything you need.’

‘If you would like to sit down here, madam, until we’ve taken off?’ Eddie suggested politely to her, indicating a space on one of the sofas.

Obediently, Carly went and sat down.

‘Perhaps I could get you a glass of champagne?’ the steward said, once he had shown Carly how to use her seatbelt, and explained to her how to access the power and telephone lines for her laptop should she wish to use it. ‘We’ve got a very nice Cristal.’

Carly couldn’t help it. She gave a small shudder. ‘Water will be fine,’ she told him emphatically.

From his own seat at a desk on the other side of the cabin, Ricardo frowned. Why had she refused champagne? She certainly hadn’t been having any qualms about drinking it the night he had seen her in CoralPink.

Thanking Eddie for her water, Carly unzipped her own laptop. Ricardo wasn’t the only one who had work to do. Five minutes later, as the jet taxied down the runway, Carly was deeply engrossed in reading her e-mails—but not so deeply that she wasn’t acutely aware of Ricardo’s presence.

She couldn’t forget the disturbing effect those fleeting seconds of physical intimacy in the car had had on her. Her stomach muscles clenched immediately, as though in rejection of the response she had felt, her mouth going dry.

Eddie had said the jet had a fully equipped bedroom…The ache inside her sharpened and tightened and then started to spread.

The jet lifted off the tarmac and Carly held her breath, willing herself not to think about Ricardo.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about certain aspects of the way Prêt a Party’s business works.’

Dutifully Carly put aside the list she was studying. Ricardo was, after all, a potential client.

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