She grabbed one of his hands as he repeated his tantalising journey down her body and brought it to her breast, pressing it to her so he could feel the bud of her nipple through the fabric of her clothes. His mouth kept feeding off hers, the deep sounds he was making telling her all she needed to know about how much he wanted her.
But then he gradually eased back from her, holding her by the upper arms as his gaze held hers, his expression twisted with ruefulness. ‘Maybe I’m more of a gentleman than I realised.’
Isabelle felt the sting of rejection all over again. It bruised her ego, mocked her sense of power over him. Crucified her confidence. ‘You don’t want me?’ She mentally kicked herself for sounding so needy. So disappointed. So vulnerable.
He drew in a breath and slowly released it. ‘I’d hate myself in the morning if I took advantage of you like this.’
She gave a choked laugh. ‘That didn’t stop you ten years ago.’
Something in his expression flinched, like a tiny muscle close to his left eye was being tugged beneath the skin. ‘I didn’t ply you with alcohol to get you into bed. I seem to remember you came quite willingly.’
Isabelle compressed her lips and turned away, crisscrossing her arms over her body. She was walking a fine line. She was tipsy and emotional. She wasn’t in control. She didn’t want to be reminded of how keen she had been in the past. Even though she had played hard to get at first, it hadn’t taken long for her to fall for his charm. Every moment she spent with him had seen her swept up into a world of romantic enchantment unlike anything she had encountered before, other than in a fairy tale. He had set about romancing her. It hadn’t felt like a seduction at all. It had felt as if he was falling in love with her.
Oh, how annoyed she was with herself for falling for it! It was her biggest bugbear. That she had been so naive, so ripe for the picking in her quest for a happy-ever-after she hadn’t seen how she was being played.
He hadn’t wanted her. Her body yes, but not her. She’d been a challenge. A quest. A mission. She’d been nothing to him, just a silly little trophy to collect, like a cheap holiday souvenir.
How could she not have seen through it? No man had shown much interest in her before then. Her cool standoffishness had always left her on the fringe. Her introverted nature made connecting with others difficult, awkward even. Unless she could talk about work she was lost for words. She was hopeless at small talk, hopeless at being the life of the party. To find someone like Spencer Chatsfield seemingly captivated by her had fed her ego. It had made her swell and blossom with pride that a man of his sophistication, of his education and background, was so intent on pursuing her.
Why, oh, why hadn’t she realised he hadn’t be genuine?
‘I’d like you to leave,’ she said through tight lips.
‘Not until I’m sure you’re all right.’
She faced him again. Defiantly. Proudly. Recklessly. He was looking at her with a stern expression like a parent does at a disobedient teenager. The planes and contours of his handsome face set in implacable lines. Why did he have to be so gallant all of a sudden? It was much easier to hate him when he was playing true to form. This was a side to him she hadn’t met since they had dated ten years ago. A protective side she found disturbingly attractive. ‘What are you going to do, Spencer? Tuck me into bed as if I’m five years old?’
He made an impatient sound through his nose. ‘Have you eaten?’
She wandered over to lift the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket. ‘I never drink on a full stomach,’ she said, giving him a deliberately cheeky look. ‘It spoils the fun.’
He was beside her before she could refill her glass. He took the bottle from her and ruthlessly upended it into the ice bucket. Isabelle didn’t fight him over it. She hadn’t intended drinking any more anyway. She stood with her arms folded, her mouth pushed out in a pout. ‘Spoilsport.’
His brows were jammed together over his eyes. ‘I never took you for a lush.’
She shrugged as if she didn’t care what he thought of her. ‘You think you know me but you don’t.’
‘Tell me why you’re doing this to yourself.’ His tone had gentled, his expression softened, no longer in harsh lines of disapproval or censure.
Isabelle could handle him when he was fighting with her...when he was angry with her. But this compassionate side was something that ambushed her defences. She didn’t want to like him. She didn’t want to respect him. She wanted to hate him. She needed to hate him, otherwise he would unravel her tightly bound emotions. She could not allow him close. To see the needs she had hidden for so long. She had to stay strong and invincible.
She tucked her hair back over her left shoulder with a sweep of her hand. ‘Please leave. I don’t want to talk to you right now.’
‘This isn’t just about the takeover, is it?’
She rolled her eyes as she turned away. ‘As if that wasn’t enough.’
He came up behind her and planted his hands on the tops of her shoulders. It was a gentle anchoring touch that made her want to lean back against him for the support she secretly, desperately craved.
But what if he had another agenda? What if he was only coming in close to exploit her further? Hadn’t he exploited her enough? He would woo her to his side, make her say and do things she might later regret. He might wangle her out of even more shares.
Isabelle knew her tongue was dangerously loosened by the champagne she’d drunk. Champagne? How ironic. It was the drink of toasts and celebrations, and yet, what had she to celebrate? Her beloved hotel was no longer hers. Her life was being taken over by a man she didn’t know how to handle. Had never known how to handle. He was too powerful. Too sophisticated. Too everything.
She held herself stiffly as she turned. Freezing him out with her gaze even though everything in her ached to feel his arms go around her and gather her close. ‘You know you could’ve really cashed in on that bet if I’d told you the truth about me.’
He frowned at her in puzzlement. ‘What truth about you?’
Fuelled by recklessness she knew she would probably regret later she said. ‘How high would the stakes have gone up if you’d known I was a virgin?’
His eyes flared in shock, his face draining of colour, and his whole body tensing as if turned to stone. ‘What?’
Isabelle dipped out from under his hold and brushed past him to put some distance between them. She didn’t trust herself not to reach for him, to lose herself in him. She had lost herself in him before. She couldn’t risk it again. ‘I wasn’t quite the girl-about-town I led you to believe,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ His voice was deep and raw and gravelly. ‘For God’s sake, I could’ve hurt you.’ He swallowed convulsively and added, ‘Did I?’
‘No.’
He scraped a hand through his hair. Swallowed again. Looked at her with a pained expression. ‘Are you sure?’
Isabelle affected a little laugh. ‘All those riding lessons my parents insisted I take when I was a child finally paid off.’
He was still frowning at her like a reproachful parent. ‘This is no laughing matter, Isabelle. You must know I would never have slept with you if I’d known.’
She gave him a pointed look. ‘What about the bet?’
His jaw locked for a moment before he let out a harsh-sounding rush of air. He dragged a hand down his face from his forehead to his chin, letting it hang uselessly by his side in a gesture of resignation. ‘I wasn’t responsible for that.’
Isabelle wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said that ten years ago but for some reason she did now. The gravitas of his tone, the flicker of pain in his gaze before it moved away from hers, made her believe his confession was genuine. He moved to the other side of the room to stand in front of the windows. He had done the same in his office. She wo
ndered if it was his way of gathering himself. Collecting his thoughts and feelings so he didn’t do or say anything he would later regret.
The silence stretched for endless moments.
She saw him brace himself to speak. His back and shoulders tightened before he turned to face her. ‘It was something two of my friends set up between themselves. I didn’t hear about it until just before you did.’
‘Then why not tell me?’
His expression had a shuttered look about it. ‘I figured you’d be moving back to New York in a few weeks so what was the point? We both knew our relationship had a use-by date.’
Did we?
Isabelle felt the familiar stab of pain at his cavalier approach to what they’d shared. He had reduced their relationship to a cheap fling. A throwaway item that wouldn’t be missed once it was gone. She had invested all of herself in their relationship. She had built her dreams on the foundation of it. A foundation she later found to be false—a joke between mates.
So what if he hadn’t been the one responsible for that stupid bet? He had still let her go as if she hadn’t meant anything to him. If he’d cared for her—loved her—surely he would have fought for her? But no, he had let her go without a fight, without a single word of protest.
Had she really meant so little to him?
She schooled her features into a cold mask. ‘So who was responsible for the bet?’
He looked away, a frown pulling heavily at his brow. ‘It was a mate of mine called Tom.’ He paused for a moment as if he found the disclosure painful. ‘He always was a bit of a pot stirrer.’
Something about his tone made her ask, ‘Was?’
His expression was as bleak as his voice. ‘He was killed in a skiing accident six weeks after we broke up.’
Isabelle captured her lip between her teeth for a moment. She understood grief all too well. The initial shock of it, and then the stabbing ache of it that caught one off guard even years on. ‘I’m sorry.’
He accepted her condolences with an on-off smile that didn’t make the distance to his eyes. ‘I hope he forgives me for ratting on him.’
Isabelle frowned. ‘You weren’t ever going to tell me?’
He lifted a shoulder in a shrugging movement. ‘I didn’t figure we’d cross paths again.’
And that didn’t bother you one little bit, did it? The words hovered on the end of her tongue. She longed to throw them in his face but to do so would be to reveal her heartbreak over the termination of their relationship. It was easier to let him think she agreed with him. What did she have to gain by revealing how much power he’d had over her back then?
Instead she chewed at her lower lip as she got her head around his revelation. She had fuelled her hatred of him with the issue of the bet well before she found out about her pregnancy. It was the one thing that had stuck in her craw—that he had used her in such a despicable way. It had hardened her heart until it was a block of marble inside her chest. It had made her bitter and resentful towards him. It had made her determined to resist any other man’s attempt to get close to her. She had cordoned herself off emotionally. She had spent the past decade proving to herself that she didn’t need intimacy—from anyone.
To suddenly find her anger had hit the wrong target was...destabilising. It made her feel the high moral ground she had been standing on all this time was now shifting beneath her feet.
Spencer came back to where she was standing. His expression was grave with concern as he met her gaze. ‘Tell me you don’t drink yourself into a stupor every night because of me.’
Isabelle laughed off the suggestion. ‘You would’ve had to have meant far more to me than a fling to have me resort to that.’
He took her chin between his finger and thumb, preventing her gaze from skittering away from his. She held her breath as his eyes went back and forth between hers. Searching. Penetrating. Uncovering. ‘You’ve never had a serious relationship,’ he said.
‘Is that a question or a supposition?’
He studied her for another couple of beats. ‘Most women your age are looking for the fairy tale. Why not you?’
Isabelle kept her mask in place. ‘I’m a career girl, that’s why. The hotel is my focus. I haven’t got time for anything else.’
‘And that fulfils you?’
‘Why wouldn’t it?’ she said, and pointedly removed his hand from her chin. ‘Your career fulfils you, doesn’t it?’
Something moved across his expression like a ripple over the surface of a lake. But then he covered it with a wry twist of his lips. ‘Touché.’
Isabelle moved back out of his contact zone. Her body had an annoying habit of being drawn to him like a magnet draws metal. His touch lit fires beneath her skin. She could feel the nerves twitching and leaping as if in search of more of his drugging caresses. ‘I love my job.’ She said it with as much conviction as she could muster. ‘I’ve aspired to run this place since I was a child. I hate it when people—men, mostly—assume I’m not one hundred per cent committed to my career.’
‘You don’t want a family one day?’
She kept her body language neutral. ‘Do you?’
That flicker went across his face again before he masked it. ‘I’ve thought about it but I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. It’s a lot of responsibility to take on.’
‘You’re not close to your father?’
A muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But then, I’m not close to either of my parents.’
‘At least you still have both of them.’
There was an echoing silence.
Isabelle wished she hadn’t disclosed her inner loneliness—the adult orphan with no one to watch out for her. The burden of responsibility she carried because there was no parent figure to share it with. What was it about Spencer tonight that made her want to unburden herself? She wasn’t one for sharing confidences. She kept things to herself, because she firmly agreed with the adage of less said soonest mended. She wasn’t the type of girl to lean on a man, especially as the men in her life had always let her down. Her father, her brother and, of course, Spencer himself.
He glanced at the sofa where Atticus was looking at him with an unblinking stare. ‘About the cat...’ He turned back but paused as if working his way to a decision inside his head.
‘You’re not going to make me get rid of him, are you.’ Isabelle framed it as a statement rather than a question in the hope she wouldn’t sound as if she were pleading.
A frown tugged at his brow once more. ‘Wouldn’t it be better for him and you to live outside the hotel?’
She straightened her shoulders. ‘This is my home.’
‘You don’t want more than...this?’ He waved his hand to encompass their surroundings.
She kept her expression blank. ‘What else could I want?’
His eyes studied hers for a beat or two before shifting away. But this time she got the feeling he was not so much trying to search for something in hers but to keep something hidden in his.
She watched as he moved to the door, his hand pausing on the doorknob for a moment before he turned it and left without even saying goodnight.
CHAPTER SIX
SPENCER LOOKED SIGHTLESSLY at the vista of New York City from his hotel suite windows. For all the glitz and flash and sparkle on show he could have been looking at a windswept desert. Isabelle’s revelation about her innocence had shocked him to the core.
Had he really been that insensitive back then? What sort of man had he been to miss something as significant as that?
His skin crawled with disgust and self-loathing. He’d been so intent on his mission to seduce the ice-cool socialite he hadn’t realised she was a virgin. It was a picture of himself he didn’t like. Couldn’t bear to examine. How could he have be
en so fixated on the challenge of bedding her he hadn’t sensed her inexperience?
What sort of man did that make him?
He thought back to their first time. His gut clenched with guilt—her first time. Surely if he’d hurt her he would have noticed? It worried him, sickened him, to think he might have missed it out of sheer arrogance.
He’d set his sights on her because she was different from his usual type, but he hadn’t realised how different until now. It had never entered his head she was inexperienced. He put her earlier reluctance to get involved with him down to her reserved nature, her cool collectedness that was so attractive to him because he was used to women throwing themselves at him.
Isabelle had class and sophistication in spades. She held herself aloft, looking down at him as if he’d crawled out of a primeval swamp. Behind that cool elegant poise had hidden a passionate woman who responded to him with red-hot enthusiasm.
He had ruthlessly pursued her. Not stopping until he had her exactly where he wanted her. But one night hadn’t been enough. Nor had two or even three. A week had gone past before he’d mentally taken stock. He didn’t do relationships. He avoided the commitment and responsibility. He liked the freedom to move on when he wanted to without regrets or recriminations.
But with Isabelle he had broken every rule. He hadn’t just seduced her. He’d dated her. Courted her. Showered her with gifts and taken her to places he had taken no other women. He’d enjoyed her company. He’d enjoyed her intelligence—that she could understand the world he lived in because she lived in it herself.
But what expectations had she brought to the relationship? She had only been two years younger than him but everyone knew women matured a whole lot earlier than men. Had she been looking for the fairy tale and envisaged him in it?
The thought sat uncomfortably with him. He wasn’t into fairy tales. Not then and certainly not now. He wasn’t even who she thought he was. He wasn’t truly a Chatsfield. He was a fake. A fraud. An interloper who could be ousted at any moment. It hung over him like the sword of Damocles, the thought that if someone outside the family cottoned on he would be exposed.
Chatsfield's Ultimate Acquisition (The Chatsfield: New York Book 1) Page 8
