And if he was generous by nature, as he clearly was, then he would probably travel around until the cash ran out before returning to whatever job he had had before. That was a small detail he had never filled her in on.
He’d warned her off reading anything into this dinner invitation but he was crazy if he thought that she wasn’t going to be impressed to death by his generosity and by the time and effort he’d put into sourcing this place for them. God only knew how he’d managed to wangle a table but she had seen, in his interactions with the people on the site, that he could charm the birds from the trees.
‘And you were telling me why it is that you care about what people think...’
Rose looked at him. He’d shaved but still managed to look darkly dangerous. There was a stillness about him that made her nerves race and brought a fine prickle of perspiration to her skin. Something about the lazy intensity of his eyes when they focused on her.
‘And how long did your mother go away for?’
‘Two years,’ Rose admitted, flattered at his interest.
‘Two years?’
‘I know in the big scheme of things it doesn’t seem like a lifetime but, believe me, when you’re a kid and you’re waiting by the window it feels never-ending.’
‘In the big scheme of things it bloody is never-ending, Rose, and to a kid... How old were you?’
‘Eight.’
* * *
‘Eight.’ Art was shocked. His father had lost the plot for very similar reasons, which pretty much said everything there was to say on the subject of love, but abandonment had not been an issue. ‘Where did you stay...at the age of eight...while your mother vanished on her soul-seeking mission?’
‘You shouldn’t be too hard on her. She was screwed up at the time. I stayed in the village, of course. Where else? I lived with the neighbours. I’m not sure whether they thought that they’d be hanging onto me for as long as they had to but they were wonderful. That said, I knew there was gossip and that hurt. I was saved from a much harsher fate when my mother started acting up because I happened to live where I did. In a small village that protected its own. I owe them.’
‘You owe them...the entire village...a sizeable debt. So...’ this half to himself ‘...that’s why this fight is so personal to you.’
‘Something like that. But you must be bored stiff listening to me rattle on.’
‘The opposite.’ Art forced himself to relax. All problems had solutions and he was solution-orientated. ‘I’ve wandered through the village,’ he said, adroitly changing the subject as he perused the menu without looking at her. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t thought to use a little bribery and blackmail with the developers who want the land you’re occupying...’
‘Sorry?’ Rose’s head shot up and she stared at him with a frown.
‘You recall I asked Phil to have a look at the paperwork? Not because I’m any kind of expert, but I wanted to see for myself what the legal position was with the land. Some of the protesters out there have been asking questions...’
‘You never mentioned that to me.’
‘Should I have? Passing interest. Nothing more.’ Art paused. ‘The land is sold and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.’
‘You’d be surprised how public opinion can alter the outcome of something unpleasant.’ Rose’s lips firmed. She wasn’t sure whether to fume at his intrusion or be pleased at his intelligent interest in the situation.
‘People might be open to alternative lines of approach,’ he implied, shutting his menu and sitting back.
‘You’re very optimistic if you think that a company the size of DC Logistics would be interested in anything other than steamrollering over us. We’re fighting fire with fire and if we lose...then we can make sure that life isn’t easy for them as they go ahead with their conscienceless development.’
‘Or you could try another tack. Apparently the local school could do with a lot of refurbishment. The sports ground is in dire need of repair. One section of the building that was damaged by fire last year is still out of bounds. Frankly, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. Ever thought that instead of threatening a company that has deeds to the land, you could always coerce them into doing their bit for the community?’
‘You’ve certainly been digging deep.’ Rose sat back and looked at Art. ‘Have you been discussing this alternative with my protestors?’
‘They’re not your protestors,’ he fielded coolly, meeting her gaze without blinking. ‘If you have deeper, more personal reasons for your fight, then they don’t necessarily share those reasons. They might be open to other ways of dealing with the situation.’
Wine was being brought to the table. He waited until the waiter had poured them both a glass then he raised his.
‘But enough of this. We’re not here to talk about the land, are we? That said...it’s just something you might want to think about.’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS THE best meal she had ever had in her life although, as she reluctantly left a morsel of the crème brulée in its dish because she physically couldn’t manage another mouthful, Rose had to admit that it was much more than the quality of the food that had made the evening quite perfect.
It was the fact that she was here with Arturo.
They had not had an opportunity to talk, to really talk, since he had moved in and for four hours they more than made up for that. He was fascinating. He knew so much. He could converse with ease on any topic and he had a wonderful knack of drawing her out of herself, making her open up in a way that revealed to her just how private she had become over the years.
He could be self-deprecating one minute and, almost without pausing to draw breath, ruin the illusion by being astoundingly arrogant—but arrogant in a way that somehow didn’t manage to get on her nerves. She couldn’t understand how that was in any way, shape or form possible...but it clearly was.
And he’d made her think—about the protest and other ways that might be found to bring about a positive outcome. He had touched only once more on the subject and the notion of inevitability had been aired—yes, it was inevitable that the land would be developed, but that suggestion he had planted in her head was beginning to look quite promising. She had certain trump cards and there was much that could be done to improve the village.
She was tipsy and happy as they stepped out into the velvety black night.
‘I haven’t had such a lovely time in ages,’ she confided as a taxi pulled to a stop as soon as they were outside. She waited until he was in the back seat with her before turning to him. The darkness turned his face into a mosaic of hard shadows and angles and, just for a few seconds, she felt a tingle of apprehension that warred with the warm, melting feeling making her limbs heavy and pleasantly blurring her thoughts.
She was smiling—grinning like a Cheshire cat—but he was quite serious as he looked at her.
‘You look as though you can’t wait for the evening to end,’ she said lightly, sobering up, smile wavering. ‘Don’t blame you. You must be accustomed to far more exciting company than me.’
* * *
Looking back at her, Art thought that she couldn’t have been further from the truth. He hadn’t sat and talked with any woman for that length of time for years. In the normal course of events, an expensive meal would have included some light conversation but the evening would have been overlaid with the assumption of sex and the conversation would have been geared towards that.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Something about you,’ Rose admitted truthfully. ‘You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before and if I can see that, then so can everyone else. You strike me as the sort of guy who’s never short of female company. Is that why you steer clear of involvement? Because you don’t see the point of settling down when there are so many fish in the sea?’
‘I steer clear of involvement because I watched my father ruined by too much of it.’
‘Oh.’ Rose pause
d. ‘How so?’ she asked seriously.
Art had surprised himself by that admission and now he wondered what to say. A series of divorces? A carousel of avaricious blonde bombshells who had been out to feather their own nests? A fortune depleted by the demands of alimony payments? Where to start?
Art had been defined by one disillusionment after another, from the isolation he had had to endure as a child when his father had retreated into himself after his wife’s sudden death to the abruptness of having to deal with boarding school, and all played out to the steady drumbeat of his father’s failed relationships and the consequent, expensive fallout.
He shifted, stared briefly out of the window then back at her. Her gaze was calm, interested but without fuss and fanfare—curious but not overly so.
‘My father had a habit of repeating his mistakes,’ Art told her heavily. ‘He was always quick to get involved, only to regret his involvement but then, just when he’d managed to free himself from one woman, he would repeat the cycle all over again. Your mother had her way of coping with losing her husband...’ His mouth twisted into a crooked smile. ‘My father coped in a slightly different way.’
‘But in a way that would have equally damaging consequences... We certainly didn’t strike jackpot when it came to childhood experiences, did we?’ She shot him a rueful smile and reached out, almost impulsively, to rest her hand on his.
The warmth of her hand zapped through him like a powerful electric charge, tightening his groin and sending a heavy, pounding ache between his thighs.
With relief, he recognised that the taxi was pulling up outside her house.
He was in urgent need of a cold shower. Maybe even a cold bath. Blocks of ice would have to play a part. Anything to cool the onset of his ardour.
‘All experience,’ he said neutrally, pushing open his door and glancing back at her over his shoulder in a gesture that implied an end to the conversation, ‘is good experience, in my opinion. But I’m very glad you enjoyed the evening.’
He all but sprinted to the front door. She fumbled with the front door key and he relieved her of it, acutely aware of the brush of her skin against his.
‘I don’t usually drink as much as I did tonight,’ Rose apologised with a little breathy laugh, stepping past him into the hall. ‘I’m beginning to think that I should get out more, live a little...’
‘All work and no play... You know the saying...’
* * *
For a few moments they both stood in the semi-darkened hallway, staring at one another in taut silence, and the breath caught in her throat because she could see the lick of desire in his eyes, a sexual speculation that set her ablaze with frantic desire because it mirrored her own.
‘Right, well...’ Rose was the first to break the lengthening silence. ‘Thanks again for a brilliant evening...’ She began turning away but then felt his hand circle her arm and she stilled, heart racing, pulse racing—everything racing.
‘Rose...’
With one foot planted firmly in the comfort zone of common sense and the other dangling precariously and recklessly over the edge of a precipice, Rose looked at him, holding herself rigid with tension.
‘It would be madness.’ Arturo looked away, looked back to her, looked away again, restless and uncomfortable in his own skin and yet powerless to relieve either discomfort.
‘What?’ Rose whispered.
‘You know what. This. Us. Taking this any further.’
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, then eventually she murmured, briefly breaking their electrifying eye contact, ‘I agree.’
‘You can’t even begin to understand the complications...’
‘Do I need to?’
‘Explain.’
‘We’re not anticipating a relationship.’ She tilted her chin at a defiant angle. Sex for the sake of sex? She’d never contemplated that. The urgent demands of lust, the taste of a passion that was powerful enough to make a nonsense of her principles...well, those were things that had never blotted her horizon. ‘We don’t have to think about all the complications or all the reasons why it wouldn’t make sense for us to...to...’ She reddened and caught his eye.
‘Make wild, passionate love until we just can’t any longer?’
‘You’re just passing through...’
‘Sure that doesn’t bother you? Because I won’t be staying. A week, tops, and I’ll be gone and that’ll be the last you’ll ever see of me.’
‘You wouldn’t be curious to see where the protest you joined will end up?’
‘I know where it’ll end up.’ He clearly didn’t want to talk about that. He raised his arm to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand, a light, feathery touch that made her sigh and close her eyes.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she breathed unevenly, her eyes fluttering open to gaze at his impossibly handsome face. She stepped back and took his hand. If this was wrong, then why did it feel so right? Before hitting the stairs, she kicked her shoes off and then padded up ahead of him, still holding his hand, glancing back over her shoulder twice, wishing that she knew what was going through his head.
She shyly pushed open her bedroom door and stepped in, ignoring the overhead light in favour of the lamp by her bed, which cast an immediate mellow glow through the room.
It was a large square room, with high ceilings and both picture rails and dado rails.
Arturo had not been in it before. He looked around briefly and then grinned. ‘I didn’t take you for having such a sense of drama...’
Rose laughed, walked towards him and linked her arms around his waist. ‘I’m sensible when it comes to pretty much everything but—’ she looked at the dreamy four-poster king-sized bed with floaty curtains and dark, soft-as-silk bed linen ‘—I used to dream of having a four-poster bed when I was a kid.’
‘Was that when you were waiting for your mother to reappear?’ Art murmured, burying his face into her hair and breathing in the sweet smell of the floral shampoo she used.
‘How did you guess?’
* * *
‘I’m tuned in like that.’ A memory came from nowhere to knock him for six—a memory of his mother leaning over him, smiling, with a book in one hand. Had she just read him a story? Was she about to? She was dressed up, going out for the evening.
He clenched his jaw as the vivid image faded. ‘Enough talk,’ he growled, edging them both towards the bed. Rose giggled as her knees hit the mattress and she toppled backwards, taking him with her, although he niftily deflected the bulk of his weight from landing directly on her. But he remained where he was, flat on his back next to her.
‘The canopy has stars,’ he commented, amused, and he heard the grin in her voice when she replied.
‘That’s the hidden romantic in me.’
Art turned his head to look at her and she did likewise.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ she said flatly, before he could jump in with another warning lecture on his nomadic tendencies—warning her off the temptation to look for more involvement than was on the table.
‘Worry about what?’
‘I may have the occasional romantic lapse, but I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to men, and latching onto a good-looking guy who has an aversion to putting down roots is the last sort of guy who would tick any boxes for me.’
‘I tick at least one box,’ Art murmured, smiling very slowly.
‘Well, yes...you tick that one box.’ Flustered, she held her breath as their eyes locked.
‘Never knock the physical attraction box. It’s the biggest one of all.’
‘We’ll have to agree to differ on that.’
‘Think so?’ Art grinned, settling on his side and manoeuvring her so that they were now facing one another, clothes still on and that very fact sending the temperature into the sizzling stratosphere. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t talk too fast if I were you...’ He slipped his hand under her top and took his time getting to her breast, waiting until her breathing had become
halting, her eyelids fluttering and her nostrils flaring. Then and only then did he touch her, cup her naked breast, feel the tight bud of her nipple. He’d spent the meal in a state of heightened awareness and the feel of her now was electrifying.
While he was busy telling her just how fast he could make her believe in the importance of sexual attraction because nothing was better than good sex, and he was very, very adept at giving very, very good sex, he was simultaneously on the verge of blowing it by getting turned on too quickly. In his book, speed and good sex rarely went together for a sensational experience.
He kept looking at her, holding her gaze, while he played with her nipple.
He wasn’t going to go a step further until he got himself under control.
But, hell, those sexy eyes that were just on the right side of innocent, however sassy she was, were doing a million things to his body.
‘You think you can convert me?’ Rose breathed, squirming with want.
‘No harm in trying.’ Art let loose a low, sexy laugh. In one slick movement, he eased himself up to straddle her prone body, caging her in with his thighs. He hooked his fingers under the top and began slowly tugging it up.
‘No bra,’ he murmured. ‘I like that.’
* * *
‘I...’ Rose gulped and wished that she hadn’t switched any lights on at all, although would she have sacrificed the joy of looking at him to preserve her modesty? She felt faint as her top rode higher and then the whisper of cool air brought goosebumps to her naked skin. Automatically, she lifted her arms to cross them over her bare chest and, just as fast, Arturo gently pushed them aside and stifled a primal groan of pleasure as his eyes feasted on her.
‘Beautiful,’ he whispered, circling one straining bud with the tip of his finger.
The Tycoon’s Ultimate Conquest Page 7
