Page 26 of Emergency Engagement

They were breathing heavily as they broke apart.

‘Well...’ Sammy broke the silence but then stuttered to a stop because she had no idea what to say, nor why her fingers were still sifting through his hair.

‘Well.’ Rafael smiled slowly. His hands on the table were still caging her but then he raised one to delicately trail a finger along her cheek. ‘What are we going to do about this?’

‘Nothing,’ Sammy said quickly. ‘We... I... This shouldn’t have happened. We can just forget about it and carry on as though...as though...’ She yanked her disobedient hand away and sat on it.

‘Or...?’

‘Rafael, don’t...’

‘Up to you,’ he murmured, contouring her mouth in a sinfully erotic gesture. ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa until you command me to join you in bed. A gentleman couldn’t say fairer than that, could he?’

That damned smile! That unfair way he roused her, so that her nipples pinched and the wetness between her legs made her want to fidget and squirm!

She didn’t want the complication of this attraction! Sheappreciatedthat he was being a gentleman. She just wasn’t sure that a gentleman was what she wanted...

CHAPTER SIX

OUTOFTHEcorner of his eye, Rafael was aware of Victoria holding court with a couple of the partners. The partners looked a little alarmed. In a minute, he would think about rescuing them, because Victoria had obviously had a little too much to drink and the canapés had not even made their appearance. By the time dinner was served, who knew where she would be on the inebriation scale?

Clement was saying something about business and Rafael dragged his thoughts back in line. It was a little before seven and they were all milling around in the sitting room, which was spacious and kitted out with an assortment of chairs and sofas all in shades of creams and pale-gold. Everything was artfully arranged so that no one would be left out of any group conversations. Unless anyone wanted to lurk in a corner, they were compelled to sit in a sociable arrangement and chat. Excellent for fostering a cordial atmosphere amongst people who might not know one another that well. Staff had been hired for the week and champagne flutes were being refilled.

Clement had turned to Geoffrey, a dapper middle-aged guy who was desperate for his small company to be amalgamated under a bigger umbrella so that their software could expand. Clement was musing about the stock market and what might prove a good investment. Rafael wondered if he was aware of his girlfriend over-gesticulating in the background. It didn’t seem so. He was a talented businessman whose ability to focus was legendary. Victoria could have been doing cartwheels on the ceiling.

Rafael glanced at his watch and drained his glass—whisky, not champagne.

Where was Sammy?

She’d disappeared to the market first thing and since then he had only clapped eyes on her once, in the kitchen, where she’d been surrounded by mountains of fresh fruit and vegetables, and had shooed him out before he’d had a chance to remind her that she had to make an appearance in time for drinks.

Hell, was she even thinking of that kiss they’d shared? Because he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He could still taste it on his mouth!

Let the two sous chefs he had hired get on with the nitty-gritty, he had told her. They needed the practice before they took up their positions at his hotel, and he and Sammy had to keep up their charade.

‘I’ll be there, don’t worry.’ She had pushed him firmly in the direction of the door. ‘I haven’t forgotten our deal!’

He breathed in deeply and remembered those big, green eyes staring up at him with amusement, and those soft lips that had done too good a job of reminding him what they’d felt like against his.

Rafael wasn’t sure whether it was the novelty of their situation or the fact that there was history between them, but he was drawn to Sammy in a way that was confusing and a little unsettling. Where did that pull come from which made his mind wander off in the middle of back-to-back meetings; and which made him lose concentration until the only thing he could think of was seeing what she was up to? It had driven him to seek her out in the kitchen...because he just couldn’t put that kiss to the back of his mind.

He wondered whether maybe the stark contrast between Victoria and Sammy was somehow messing with his head even though it shouldn’t have, of course, because Victoria was anex and Sammy was... Sammy wasn’t evencurrentin the truest sense of the word.

Victoria was a reminder of his greatest screw-up when it came to any relationship he had ever had with a woman. He hadn’t so much as taken his eye off the ball as never had his eye on it in the first place. In the dying throes of their relationship, clinging and sobbing had alternated with threats of revenge, followed swiftly by tearful apologies and yet more clinging. It had been a mess.

Was his mind doing some kind of foxtrot between what Victoria represented and what Sammy represented, coerced into a phony relationship? Whereas Victoria had been an uncontrolled mess, Sammy couldn’t be more controlled. She was as cool as a cucumber. She had no idea how those passing, dutiful touches had turned him on the evening before, whether he liked to admit it or not. She was playing a game for his benefit, and only because the carrot he had dangled in front of her had been too tempting to resist.

For the first time in his life, he was with a woman who wasn’t chasing behind him and wasn’t after more than he was willing to give. She didn’t want to hear his back story so that she could get closer. In fact, she wasn’t that interested in his back story at all. Their paths had crossed briefly when they’d been teenagers, and the experience had left a sour taste in her mouth. Left to her own devices, there was no way she would ever have sought him out because she just didn’t like him very much. She wasn’t impressed by his money, even though it was thanks to his millions that she was being given a passport to everything she had ever wanted for herself.

Although, he grudgingly had to admit, it was also thanks to his money that she’d lost the space she’d banked on having for herself in the first place—swings and roundabouts.

Whatever was going on, he was still trying to make sense of it. Victoria and Sammy side by side... Was Sammy somehow benefiting from the comparison—was that it? He was always in control when it came to women, so what was happening here? It was puzzling but it was also...exciting...even though he knew that this kind of excitement wasn’t something he should be indulging.

His last brief fling had ended four months ago, with a striking model who had told him that he needed to grow up—by which she’d meant start committing to more than whatever lay a day or two ahead. He’d politely turned down the suggestion.

Maybe he was sick of models and was now vulnerable to falling for a feisty, down-to-earth girl from his past who didn’t think twice about laughing at him and couldn’t care less about commitment—at least, not with him. Was that it? He felt that, if he couldn’t make sense of what he was feeling, he couldn’t control it, which obviously wouldn’t do.

He was in the process of trying to juggle his thoughts with whatever conversation was going on with the two guys standing by him when he glanced towards the door and...there she was.

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