The Reluctant Surrender

by Penny Jordan

  For a handful of seconds Saul tried to ignore the shrill demand, but the phone was in his jacket, which he had dropped on one of the chairs when they had first entered his private quarters, not close enough to hand for him to silence it without releasing Giselle.

  ‘You’d better answer it. It might be something important.’

  As she spoke Giselle felt as though she was breaking the protective bubble that had enclosed her, and now—sharply and horribly—she was acutely aware of her own nakedness and mortification. It was different for Saul. All he had to do was discreetly zip himself up as he reached for his phone. Giselle was thankful that at least he had his back to her as he answered it, thus giving her the chance to struggle awkwardly back into her own clothes, whilst she heard him speaking.

  ‘Yes, Aldo. Natasha did say that you were in the library. Yes, of course I can come down and talk to you now. Just give me five minutes and I’ll be with you.’

  The cruel lash of reality had stripped the warmth of sensuality and desire from Giselle as easily and no doubt as uncaringly as Saul had all but stripped her clothes from her, she acknowledged miserably, writhing inwardly. How could she have behaved like that? How could she have been so lost to everything she believed in about herself and about the way she had to live her life?

  ‘I’ve got to go. But first I’ll show you to your room.’ Saul didn’t dare allow himself to look at Giselle as he replaced his mobile in his jacket pocket. If he did then he didn’t know if he would be able to keep his promise to his cousin—because if he looked at her with his body aching for her in the way that it was he didn’t think he’d be able to walk away from her.

  How had it happened? How had he come to allow a woman to burn through his self-control and make him want her so intensely that nothing else mattered? How had he allowed it to happen? Saul grimaced. He hadn’t had any kind of control in the matter. He hadn’t been capable of allowing or not allowing anything. The truth was that he still wasn’t. One word from Giselle—one look, one small sound—that was all it would take for him to reach for her. And that was why he couldn’t trust himself to look at her.

  Silently Giselle followed Saul until he opened a pair of double doors that led into another room—a library this time. Saul strode through it so quickly that she didn’t have time to give it anything more than a cursory look. Saul was opening another set of double doors that led from the library into a rectangular hallway, with one flight of stairs going up from it, and another leading downwards. He hadn’t looked at her once as they had traversed the large, elegantly furnished rooms with their stucco-plastered and painted ceilings and their antique furniture, and Giselle told herself that she was glad that he hadn’t, ignoring the ache of unsatisfied desire eating into her that gave the lie to her mental claim.

  ‘This apartment has its own entrance,’ Saul was informing her, his voice clipped and formal, his manner towards her chillingly distant. ‘The doors on the opposite side of this hallway lead to a dining room, and beyond them is a kitchen. Like me, my parents also valued their solitude and their privacy.’

  Was that meant to be a warning to her not to read anything into the intimacy they had just shared? If so, there was no need for it. After all, she had her own reasons for knowing there could never be any true intimacy between them. No true intimacy, maybe—but, oh, how her body ached and, yes, screamed inwardly for the release and satisfaction it had been denied. A satisfaction that she would have had if only Saul’s mobile had rung a handful of minutes later, Giselle was sure.

  That she should have such thoughts was wrong, and surely shamed her, but her body was refusing to be shamed. It wanted her to close the distance between Saul and herself. It wanted—No. No, she must not let herself feel that way. Instead she should be relieved—glad that Saul had stopped when he had. Shouldn’t she? She was on the pill, after all, prescribed for her a couple of years ago for her erratic periods, and she had continued to take it even though there was no contraceptive need for her to do so. There was no danger of her conceiving. No danger of either of them creating a situation they didn’t want, since neither of them wanted any kind of commitment.

  Why couldn’t she have the appetite Saul had conjured up in her satisfied? Why shouldn’t she know his possession?

  Saul had started to climb the stairs, and was obviously waiting for her to do the same.

  ‘On the next floor there are four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. I’ve made arrangements for a guest-room to be prepared for you,’ he was telling her, still in that same clipped and distant voice that told her quite clearly how little he wanted to return to the intimacy they had been sharing.

  He was probably relieved and grateful that they had been interrupted, Giselle told herself as she reached the top of the stairs and a galleried landing with corridors running either side of it. Dutifully Giselle followed Saul down one of them to a door at the end which he opened for her.

  Taking great care to avoid coming into contact with him, Giselle stepped into it, her private misery briefly eclipsed by the discovery that the bedroom looked like something out of one of the National Trust houses her great-aunt had so loved visiting.

  A feminine-looking tester bed was draped with hangings in blue and cream patterned silk that echoed the colour of the patterned carpet and the painted panelled walls. Giltwood furniture decorated the room, and included a chaise longue at the bottom of the bed and a pretty desk and chair. Two rather more solidly comfortable-looking chairs were drawn up on either side of the fireplace, and either side of the bed was a pair of double doors.

  ‘The doors lead to a bathroom and a dressing room,’ Saul informed her, adding, ‘Dinner won’t be until ten, if you recall.’

  Giselle nodded her head, and watched as Saul turned and left the room.

  In London, even though he was the boss, the gulf between them hadn’t seemed anything like as huge as it felt right now, as she recognised how very different their worlds were. Not that it mattered, of course. How could it? Just because of…of what had happened, the sensual intimacies they had shared, it didn’t mean anything. Not to Saul. She already knew that. And the fact that she had enjoyed, even welcomed those intimacies did not mean anything either. It couldn’t and it mustn’t—not now and not ever.

  Only now could she relax and allow herself to breathe properly, let her body tremble with the need that still ached through her. Giselle sank down onto the bed. How could this have happened to her? Why had it happened? Why should life be so cruel to her? Hadn’t she already suffered enough? Hadn’t she already been punished enough? Dark thoughts of hopelessness and despair swirled dangerously inside her head—thoughts of there being no point to anything, not even her own existence. But she must not think like that. That way lay terrible danger.

  Panicking, Giselle got up from the bed. She must find something to do that would redirect and occupy her thoughts, restore them to…to…To what? To sanity? The sanity that had been denied her? But, no—she must not go down that route. Where was her laptop? She needed to work, to be professional, to think only about those things that did not involve her emotions.

  An exploration of the bathroom and dressing room revealed two rooms both larger than the bedroom in her flat. The bath, she’d discovered, was huge and traditional, with claw-shaped feet, and stood in dignified solitude in the middle of the white tiled and gilt mirrored bathroom.

  Someone had already unpacked for her, hanging the few clothes she had brought with her in one of the wardrobes that filled two walls of the dressing room. Her laptop case had been carefully placed on the dressing table stool, and Giselle seized on it with grateful relief, her hands trembling as she unzipped the case and removed her laptop.

  Work—work was the panacea and the cure, the antidote for the disease that was threatening her. How could she have let things get so out of control? Things? By things did she mean her own desire, her longing, her aching, her need for Saul’s touch, for his possession, for his…? Blindly pushing the l
aptop away from her, Giselle started to pace the dressing room.

  He might be listening to Aldo, but his mind wasn’t fully focused on what his cousin was saying to him, Saul knew. Instead his thoughts, like the ache that still tormented his body, belonged to Giselle.

  How had it happened? How had a woman who had begun by irritating and infuriating him somehow developed the power to infiltrate his thoughts and his senses to such an extent that her presence there overwhelmed everything else? What was she doing? Was she aching as much as he was? Was she thinking about the pleasure they would have shared if they hadn’t been interrupted?

  ‘Natasha’s father has offered me the opportunity to invest in a diamond mine he has recently added to his investments. If I can manage to get something back from this Ponzi scheme Natasha wants me to go ahead, but Ivan cannot confirm that the diamonds are being mined ethically,’ Aldo was saying.

  His comments caused Saul to grimace derisively to himself at the thought of Natasha’s father being involved in anything that was remotely ethical. Not for the first time Saul wished that his cousin had not fallen under Natasha’s spell.

  ‘I’ll provide you with enough money to cover all your outgoings,’ Saul assured Aldo. ‘I just wish you had consulted me before getting involved with the scheme.’

  ‘I was going to, but Natasha said that there was no need. Now, of course, the poor darling feels absolutely dreadful and is convinced that you will blame her. You mustn’t, Saul. If I was more of a man—more like you, more the kind of husband she deserves—then I would have realised the danger for myself. It isn’t Natasha’s fault that she is married to such a weakling and a failure.’

  ‘You are neither of those things, Aldo. You are a good ruler, a good husband, and when you and Natasha have a child you will be a good father, the best of fathers, because you will be here for your children.’

  When Aldo shook his head, Saul’s heart ached for him. A woman like Giselle would never shame and humiliate the man to whom she had committed herself and her future in the way Natasha was doing to his cousin.

  That knowledge, and just as shocking the thinking that lay behind it, froze Saul to his chair. What the hell was he doing, linking such thoughts together? The three words, Giselle, commitment and future, felt as though they were etched in fire inside him, producing an indigestible truth he didn’t want to acknowledge. Against all the odds, against everything that he had always promised himself, somehow a link had been made between Giselle and his emotions.

  That link must be dissolved and destroyed.

  Chapter Nine

  IT WAS no good her trying to work. She couldn’t. Giselle sighed in defeat. What had happened couldn’t be pushed out of her thoughts and under a carpet of other busy thoughts and actions, no matter how much she wished it could be.

  She looked at her watch. Nine o’clock. What was Saul doing now? Was he with his cousin? With Natasha? Jealousy as swift and sharp as any serpent’s fangs bit sharply into her heart. This was wrong, Giselle told herself. What she was feeling was wrong.

  A sudden knock on her bedroom door had her stiffening and staring at it. Saul. He had come back. To finish off what they had started? The emotion that flamed through her wasn’t denial or reluctance or any of the things it should have been. Instead it was yearning and delight and excitement.

  She was halfway out of the chair when the door opened—only it wasn’t Saul who had knocked on it, it was Natasha, and her appearance deflated Giselle’s emotions as effectively as a pin piercing a child’s balloon.

  The other woman looked as though she was already dressed for dinner, the red dress she was wearing a perfect foil for her olive skin and dark colouring. It clung so tightly to her body that it left little to the imagination. Were her breasts real? Giselle found herself wondering. Or had they been surgically enhanced, as her Jessica Rabbit-shaped body seemed to suggest? She was wearing a collar of rubies and diamonds round her neck that must have cost a fortune, and matching bangles on both wrists. Her hair was swept up to fall in perfectly coiffured curls, her make-up was immaculate, and her nails were painted exactly the same shade of scarlet as her dress.

  ‘I just thought I’d take the opportunity of having a word with you whilst Saul is talking to Aldo. You know, of course, that Saul will never commit to you and that you won’t have a future with him?’

  ‘Yes, I do know that,’ Giselle agreed. It gave her a certain amount of unsisterly satisfaction to see that her response had not exactly pleased the other woman.

  ‘And you don’t mind? You don’t care that he is only using you for sex, and that he will discard you once he grows bored with you? That he will never commit to you and most of all never, ever allow you to have his child? He wanted me for himself, but he felt obliged to step aside once he realised that Aldo wished to marry me.’ Natasha continued, without giving Giselle the chance to say anything. ‘Saul will never marry, you see. He will never marry and he will never have a child, especially a son, because he knows that his son will have to take second place to mine and Aldo’s son…when we have one.’

  She paused, a small hint of a frown marring her perfectly smooth face as though something displeased her, before continuing, ‘Just as he has had to take second place to Aldo. Of course his pride cannot bear that thought. Saul has to come first in everything. As a child, the eldest born of a second son, he grew up resenting having to stand in Aldo’s shadow. That is what drives him now. If I were you I would find myself someone else.’

  She had turned away and was opening the door before Giselle could say anything to her. Had she herself been someone who hoped for commitment from Saul, someone who desperately craved the joy of bearing the child of the man she loved, then Natasha’s cruelly calculated words would have destroyed her hopes and dreams. If she had been that someone. But she wasn’t, and instead Natasha’s assertion and the ring of truth it had held unleashed within her a potent mix of emotions and an intoxicating sense of being set free from the restrictions she had previously placed on herself.

  Although Natasha didn’t know it, what she had said to her about Saul made him the perfect man for Giselle. No. Not the perfect man, but the perfect lover. Now she could admit and accept the torrent of longing that was possessing her—now she could open the floodgates and let it surge and soar within her. Now, if Saul should approach her, she could surely allow herself to touch the fire and let it consume her without any fear for the future.

  It was past nine. Time she got ready.

  Once she had showered, Giselle went into the dressing room and opened the wardrobe, taking out the two evening dresses. Evening dresses provided and paid for by Saul. They weren’t anything like as provocative as the dress Natasha had been wearing, but they were stylish. They were dresses for a woman confident about herself, about her sensuality, and about the feelings of the man with whom she shared it. They were dresses that spoke clearly of personal pride and whispered of secret promises exchanged in private—which was initially why in Harvey Nichols she had wanted to reject them. And why she now wanted to wear them?

  Giselle looked at them assessingly. One of them was a fluid handful of dark green jersey, with long sleeves and a boat-shaped neckline, and a floor-length skirt ruched slightly at the sides. The other was black, again with long sleeves, and had a scooped-out back that looked as though it dipped right down to the waist. The fabric was a sheer black silk, over a skintone underskirt.

  Of the two, Giselle felt that she would be more comfortable in the green jersey. She looked at her watch. She hadn’t got time to dither.

  Twenty minutes later she was standing in front of the mirror in the dressing room staring at her own reflection. The dress fitted perfectly, and the colour was unexpectedly flattering for her skin tone, giving it a soft luminous sheen. Theoretically she was covered from her throat through to her wrists and her ankles by the jersey fabric, but somehow—unless she was deceiving herself because it was what she wanted to believe—the dress still managed to be ex
traordinary and very subtly sexy.

  There was a knock at the door and this time it was Saul, wearing a dinner suit and looking so very male and handsome that her heart literally somersaulted inside her chest wall as she contrasted the formality of the way he looked now with the intimacy of how she had seen him earlier. And how she wanted to see him later? Her heart somersaulted again.

  ‘I’m not quite ready, I’m afraid. I just need to brush my hair,’ she told him, trying to sound calm as he stepped past her and into the room.

  ‘Leave it. It suits you the way it is,’ he told her.

  Giselle looked at him with suspicion. She’d seen for herself that tendrils of hair had escaped from the clip she’d put in it, and were now curling softly onto her throat and the back of her neck.

  ‘It’s untidy,’ she protested. ‘It looks as though—’ She stopped abruptly, realising that she had been about to say that it looked as though she had just got out of bed.

  ‘It looks fine,’ Saul insisted, adding, ‘besides, we haven’t got much time. Don’t worry, though. I can promise you that Aldo won’t notice. He won’t have eyes for anyone other than Natasha, poor fool. Speaking of Natasha, though, I thought you might like to wear these.’

  As he spoke Saul was reaching into his pocket and removing a dazzling diamond necklace and a pair of diamond stud earrings.

  ‘They belonged to my mother,’ Saul added.

  ‘Your mother?’ Giselle shook her head. ‘Oh, no—I couldn’t possibly wear them.’

  ‘She’d want you to.’ As he spoke, Saul recognised to his own surprise that it was the truth. His mother would have liked Giselle. ‘You should wear them. Knowing Natasha, she’ll be decked out like a Christmas tree.’