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Champagne Summer: At the Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding / Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper
India Grey


Tamsin and the Argentinean Tamsin’s ready to spend her summer relaxing and topping up her tan.Until Alejandro – the man who nearly destroyed her reputation – comes back into her life. Now his world of champagne and scandal awaits her once again…and Tamsin’s determined to make up for lost time. Sarah and the Italian Sarah’s summers are about spending time with her little girl.She never has a chance to think about herself. Then film director Lorenzo turns her life upside down. Thrust into a world of glitz, glamour and gossip pages, Sarah’s about to have the most exciting summer of her life.Enter the glittering celebrity world with two unforgettable summer stories












About the Author


INDIA GREY’s qualifications for a writing career include a degree in English Language and Literature, an obsession with fancy stationery and an inexhaustible passion for daydreaming. She grew up—and still lives—in a small market town in rural Cheshire with her husband and three daughters, loves history and vintage stuff and is a firm believer in love at first sight.

You can visit her website at www.indiagrey.com, check out her blog at www.indiagrey.blogspot.com or find her on Twitter.


Champagne Summer

Tamsin

Sarah

India Grey


















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Tamsin


India Grey


For my dad (1940–1981), who loved rugby so much, and for my mum, who supports me with the same unfailing enthusiasm as she supports Scotland.

With love and thanks.




PROLOGUE


TAMSIN paused in front of the mirror, the lipstick held in one hand and the magazine article on ‘How to seduce the man of your dreams’ in the other.

Subtlety, the article said, is just another word for failure. But, even so, her stomach gave a nervous dip as she realised she hardly recognised the heavy-lidded, glittering eyes, the sharply defined cheekbones and sultry, pouting mouth as her own.

That was a good thing, right? Because three years of adoring Alejandro D’Arienzo from afar had taught her that there wasn’t much chance of getting beyond ‘hello’ with the man of her dreams without some drastic action.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and then Serena’s blonde head appeared. ‘Tam, you’ve been ages, surely you must be ready by—’ There was a pause. ‘Oh my God. What in hell’s name have you done to yourself?’

Tamsin waved the magazine at her sister. ‘It says here I shouldn’t leave anything to chance.’

Serena advanced slowly into the room. ‘Does it specify you shouldn’t leave much to the imagination, either?’ she croaked. ‘Where did you get that outrageous dress? It’s completely see-through.’

‘I altered my Leaver’s Ball dress a bit, that’s all,’ said Tamsin defensively.

‘That’s your ball dress?’ Serena gasped. ‘Blimey, Tamsin, if Mama finds out she’ll go mental—you haven’t altered it, you’ve butchered it.’

Shrugging, Tamsin tossed back her dark-blonde hair and, holding out the thigh-skimming layers of black net, executed an insouciant twirl. ‘So? I just took the silk overskirt off, that’s all.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Well, I shortened the net petticoat a bit, too. Looks much better, doesn’t it?’

‘It certainly looks different,’ said Serena faintly. The strapless, laced bodice of the dress, which had looked reasonably demure when paired with a full, ankle-length skirt, suddenly took on an outrageous bondage vibe when combined with above-the-knee net, black stockings, and the cropped black cardigan her sister was now putting on over the top.

‘Good,’ said Tamsin firmly. ‘Because tonight I do not want to be the coach’s pathetic teenage daughter, fresh out of boarding school and never been kissed. Tonight I want to be …’ She broke off to read from the magazine. ‘“Mysterious yet direct, sophisticated yet sexy”.’

From downstairs they could hear the muffled din of laughter and loud voices, and distant music wound its way through Harcourt Manor’s draughty stone passages. The party to announce the official England international team for the new rugby season was already underway, and Alejandro was there somewhere. Just knowing he was in the same building made Tamsin’s stomach tighten and her heart pound.

‘Be careful, Tam,’ Serena warned quietly. ‘Alejandro’s gorgeous, but he’s also …’

She faltered, glancing round at the pictures that covered Tamsin’s walls, as if for inspiration. Mostly cut from the sports pages of newspapers and from old England rugby programmes, they showed Alejandro D’Arienzo’s dark, brooding beauty from every angle. Serena shivered. Gorgeous certainly, but ruthless too.

‘What, out of my league? You don’t think this is going to work, do you?’ said Tamsin with an edge of despair. ‘You don’t think he’s going to fancy me at all.’

Serena looked down into her sister’s face. Tamsin’s green eyes glowed as if lit by some internal sunlight and her cheeks were flushed with nervous excitement.

‘That’s not it at all. Of course he’ll fancy you.’ She sighed. ‘And that’s exactly what’s bothering me.’

Above the majestic carved fireplace in the entrance hall of Harcourt Manor was a portrait of some seventeenth-century Calthorpe, smiling smugly against a backdrop of galleons on a stormy sea. Across the top, in flamboyantly embellished script, was written: God blew and they were scattered.

Alejandro D’Arienzo felt his face set in an expression of sardonic amusement as he looked into the cold, hooded eyes of Henry Calthorpe’s forebear. There was no discernible resemblance between the two men, although they obviously shared a mutual hatred of the Spanish. Alejandro could just remember his father’s stories, as a child in Argentina, of how their distant ancestors had been amongst the original conquistadors who had sailed from Spain to the New World. Those stories were one of the few tiny fragments of family identity that he had.

Moving restlessly away from the portrait, he ran a finger inside the stiff collar of his shirt and looked around at the impressive hallway, with its miles of intricate plasterwork ceiling and acres of polished wooden panelling. His team-mates stood in groups, laughing and drinking with dignitaries from the Rugby Football Union and the few sports journalists lucky enough to make the guest list, while the same assortment of blonde, well-bred rugby groupies circulated amongst them, flirting and flattering.

Henry Calthorpe, the England rugby coach, had made a big deal about holding the party to announce the new squad at his stunning ancestral home, claiming it showed that they were a team, a unit, a family. Remembering this now, Alejandro couldn’t stop his lips curling into a sneer of savage, cynical amusement.

Everything about Harcourt Manor could have been specifically designed to emphasise exactly how much of an outsider Alejandro was. And he was damned sure that Henry Calthorpe had reckoned on that very thing.

At first Alejandro had thought he was being overly sensitive, that years in the English public school system had made him too quick to be on the defensive against bullying and victimization—but lately the coach’s animosity had become too obvious to ignore. Alejandro was playing better than he’d ever done, too well to be dropped from the team without reason, but the fact was that Calthorpe wanted him out. He was just waiting for Alejandro to slip up.

Alejandro hoped Calthorpe was a patient man, because he had no intention of obliging. He was at the top of his game and he planned to stay there.

Draining the champagne in one go, he put the glass down on a particularly expensive-looking carved chest and glanced disdainfully around the room. There was not a single person he wanted to talk to, he thought wearily. The girls were identikit blondes with cut-glass accents and Riviera suntans, whose conversation ranged from clothes to the hilarious exploits of people they’d gone to school with, and whom they assumed Alejandro would know. Several times at parties like these he’d ended up sleeping with one just to shut her up.

But tonight it all seemed too much effort. The England tie felt like a noose around his neck, and suddenly he needed to be outside in the cool air, out of this suffocating atmosphere of complacency and privilege. Adrenalin pounded through him as he pushed his way impatiently through the groups of people towards the door.

And that was when he saw her.

She was standing in the doorway, her head lowered slightly, one hand gripping the doorframe for support, giving her an air of shyness and uncertainty that was totally at odds with her short black dress and very high heels. But he didn’t notice the details of what she was wearing. It was her eyes that held him.

They were beautiful—green perhaps, almond shaped, slanting—but that was almost incidental. What made the breath catch in his throat was the laser-beam intensity of her gaze, which he could feel even from this distance.

His footsteps slowed as he got closer to her, but her gaze didn’t waver. She straightened slightly, as if she had been waiting for him, and her hand fell from the doorframe and smoothed down her short skirt.

‘You’re not leaving?’

Her voice was so low and hesitant, and her words halfway between a question and a statement. He gave a twisted smile.

‘I think it would be best if I did.’

He made to push past her. Close up, he could see that behind the smoky eye make up and the shiny inviting lip gloss she was younger than he’d at first thought. Her skin was clear and golden, and he noticed the frantic jump of the pulse in her throat. She was trembling slightly.

‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘Please. Don’t leave.’

Interest flared up inside him, sudden and hot. He stopped, looking down at her sexy, rebellious dress, and then let his gaze move slowly back up to her face. Her cheeks were lightly stained with pink, and the eyes that looked up at him from under a fan of long, black lashes were dark and glittering. Seductive, but pleading.

‘Why not?’

Lowering her chin, she kept them fixed on his, while she took his hand and stepped backwards, pulling him with her. Her hand felt small in his, and her touch sent a small shower of shooting stars up his arm.

‘Because I want you.’ She smiled shyly, dropping her gaze. ‘I want you to stay.’




CHAPTER ONE


Six years later.

LEANING against the wall of the players’ tunnel at Twickenham when the final whistle went was a bit like being trapped inside the body of a giant beast in pain. Tamsin hadn’t been able to face watching the game, but she knew from the great, roaring groan that shook the ground beneath her feet and vibrated through her whole body that England had just fallen.

St George might have slain the dragon, but he’d certainly met his match in the mighty Barbarians.

Not that Tamsin was bothered about that. The team could have lost to a bunch of squealing six-year-old girls for all she cared, as long as they looked good while they were doing it.

She let out a shaky breath, pushing herself up and away from the wall, and discovering that her legs felt almost too weak to hold her up. This was the moment when she had to find out whether all the work of the past few months—and the frantic damage-limitation panic of the last eighteen hours—had paid off.

Like a sleepwalker she moved hesitantly to the mouth of the tunnel and looked out into the stadium, which stretched around her like some vast gladiatorial arena. Heads bent against the thin drizzle, shoulders stooped in defeat, the England team was making its way back towards the dressing room. Tamsin looked anxiously from one player to the next and, oblivious to the dejection and bewilderment on their exhausted faces, felt nothing but relief.

The players might not have performed brilliantly, but as far as she could see their shirts had, and to Tamsin—designer of the new and much-publicised England strip—that was all that mattered. She had already been on the receiving end of numerous barbed comments about what a coincidence it was that such a prestigious commission had been landed by the daughter of the new RFU chairman, so any whisper of failure on her part would be professional suicide.

Wearily, she dragged a hand through her short platinum-blonde hair and rubbed her tired eyes. That was why it was kind of important that news of last night’s little crisis with the pink shirts didn’t get out.

At the entrance to the tunnel, the bitter east wind that had made kicking so difficult for the players all afternoon almost knocked her over, slicing straight through her long ex-army greatcoat to the flimsy cocktail dress she wore beneath it. She’d left last night’s charity fashion-gala early and gone straight to the factory, and hadn’t had time to go home and change. Ten hours, numerous therapeutic phone-rants to Serena and a lot of very black coffee later, they’d had just enough newly printed shirts for the squad, but she’d spent the whole match praying there would be no substitutions. Only now did she feel she could breathe more easily.

The feeling lasted all of ten seconds.

Then she felt her mouth open in wordless horror. Looking up at the huge screen at the top of the south stand, the air was squeezed from her lungs and replaced with something that felt like napalm.

It was him.

So that was why the England squad had lost.

Alejandro D’Arienzo was back. And this time he was playing for the opposition. Tamsin’s heart seemed to have jumped out of her ribcage and lodged somewhere in her throat. How often in the last six years since that wonderful, devastating night at Harcourt had she thought she’d seen Alejandro D’Arienzo? Even though in her head she knew that he’d gone back to Argentina, how many times had she found herself turning round to look again at a tall, dark-haired man on a London street? Or felt her pulse start to race as she caught a glimpse of a sculpted profile through the tinted windows of a sportscar, only to experience a sickening thud of disappointment and simultaneous relief when she’d seen that it was some less charismatic stranger?

Now, staring up at the vast screen, she knew there was no such respite, and no mistaking that powerfully elegant body, the broad, muscular shoulders beneath the black-and-white Barbarians’ shirt, and the arrogant tilt of that dark, dark head.

The crowd broke out in spontaneous applause as the TV cameras closed in on him, and the image of his beautiful, unsmiling face filled the screen, above the words Man of the Match. He was still wearing a gum shield which accentuated the sensual fullness of his contemptuous mouth—bloodied from the game—and the hollows beneath his high cheekbones. A red bandana held back his damp black hair, and for a second his restless, gold-flecked eyes glanced into the camera.

It felt like he was looking straight at her.

She wanted to take her eyes from the screen, but some inbuilt masochistic streak prevented her, and she was left staring helplessly up at him. Six years dissolved away and she was eighteen again, incandescent with fear and excitement as his eyes had met hers and he had walked across the hall at Harcourt towards her …

The England players had lined up on either side of the tunnel and were clapping the Barbarians in, but suddenly Ben Saunders, a young England player who’d been playing in the number-ten position for the first time, broke away and began to walk back across the field. Numbly Tamsin watched as he pulled his shirt over his head and held it out to Alejandro in a gesture of respect.

For a second the proud Argentinean didn’t move. A tense hush seemed to fall over the stadium as the crowd watched. It was as if they were holding their breath, waiting to see whether Alejandro D’Arienzo, former England golden-boy, would accept the shirt he had played in with such glorious finesse before turning his back on the team so suddenly all those years ago.

The cameras zoomed in, but the sinister stillness of his face gave nothing away.

And then a huge roar of delight and excitement went up as Alejandro took hold of the hem of his own shirt and brought it slowly upwards over his head. Every hollow, every perfectly defined muscle beneath the bronze, sweat-sheened skin of his taut stomach filled the huge screens at both ends of the ground. And then, as he pulled the Barbarians shirt right off, the crowd screamed and whistled as they saw the tattoo of the sun—the symbol on the Argentine flag—right over his heart.

Vaguely aware that her chest hurt with the effort of breathing, and her fists were clenched so tightly that the fingernails were digging into her palms, Tamsin turned away with a snort of disgust.

Sure, Alejandro D’Arienzo was gorgeous. That was indisputable. But so was the fact that he was the coldest, most arrogant bastard who had ever breathed. It was just that most people hadn’t been unlucky enough to see that side of him.

She had. And she still bore the scars. So why was she turning round again, and staring like some moon-struck adolescent as he walked back across the pitch, pulling on the white shirt? The crowd were on their feet, turning the stands into a rippling sea of red and white as they waved their flags joyously at seeing their unforgotten hero back in an England shirt.

And suddenly it hit her; the implication of what she had just witnessed finally penetrated her dazed brain.

An England shirt.

Alejandro D’Arienzo in an England shirt.

A precious, produced-at-the-last-minute, paid-for-in-blood-sweat-and-tears England shirt … One of the ones she absolutely couldn’t afford to lose.

‘No!’

With a horrified gasp, Tamsin leapt forward, her four-inch heels sinking into the mud as she desperately tried to push her way through the crush of journalists, coaches, physios and groupies to reach the mouth of the tunnel before he did.

‘Please, I have to …’

It was as if she was invisible. There were too many people, and the noise from the ecstatic crowd was too great. The moment he stepped from the pitch, journalists closed around Alejandro like iron filings around a magnet, and Tamsin was forced backwards by an impenetrable wall of bodies. Her heart was hammering, her body suddenly pulsing with heat beneath her heavy coat, and all thoughts but one had been driven from her shocked brain.

The shirt. She had to get the shirt back, or else …

With a whimper of horror, she tried again, taking advantage of her relative slightness to duck beneath the arm of a muscular ground official in a fluorescent jacket. Someone behind grabbed her coat and tried to pull her back, but panic gave her strength, and with a desperate lunge Tamsin broke free.

The England number two in front of her turned round and, recognising her, moved aside to let her through. At the same moment Alejandro finished talking to a journalist and stepped forwards.

There was hardly time to register what was happening, much less to stop it. Already unsteady on last night’s killer heels, Tamsin felt herself hurtling forwards into open space, where she’d expected to encounter a solid and immovable row of muscular bodies, but just as she was falling strong arms seized her and she was lifted off her feet.

‘Tamsin! Steady, darlin’.’ It was Matt Fitzpatrick, the England number five. He grinned at her good-naturedly, revealing a missing front tooth. ‘Don’t tell me—when you saw my glorious try in the first half you finally realised you couldn’t live without me?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m … I need …’ Her voice came out as a breathless croak, and she looked wildly around, just in time to see Alejandro disappearing into the tunnel. ‘Him,’ she said in a hoarse whisper.

Matt shrugged his shoulders and gave a theatrical sigh of regret. ‘I see. Can’t argue with that, I suppose.’ And with that he hoisted her into his muscular arms and pushed easily through the crowd before she could protest. ‘D’Arienzo!’

Horror flooded her and she let out a squeal, which bounced off the walls of the tunnel. ‘Matt, no!’ she shrieked, wriggling frantically in his giant’s arms, aware that her coat had fallen off her shoulders and the skirt of her tight black-satin cocktail dress was riding up to mid-thigh, showing the lacy tops of her stockings. But it was too late. As if in slow motion, she watched Alejandro stop.

Turn.

Look at her.

And then look away, without the slightest flicker of interest or recognition.

‘Yes?’

He was talking to Matt, his eyebrows raised slightly.

‘Someone wants you,’ grinned Matt, setting her down on her feet. Tamsin ducked her head. Her blood felt like it had been diluted with five parts of vodka as misery churned inside her, mixing uneasily with wild relief. He didn’t recognise her. Of course he didn’t—her hair had been darker then, and longer. She’d been younger.

And she’d meant absolutely nothing to him.

It was fine. It was good. The humiliation of facing him again if he’d remembered that night would have been terminally appalling. Some in-built instinct for self-preservation told her not to look up, not to meet the eyes of the man who had blown her world to smithereens and walked away without a scratch, to keep her head down.

Oh, God. Her self-preservation instinct hadn’t reckoned on the effect of looking at the length of his bare, muscular thighs.

‘Really?’ he said in a quiet, steel-edged voice. ‘And what could Lady Tamsin Calthorpe possibly want with me?’

Adrenalin scorched through her like wildfire, and she felt her head jerk backwards. Towering above her, he was smiling slightly, but the expression in his eyes was as cold and bleak as the North Sea.

She raised her chin and forced herself to meet his gaze. So he did remember. And he had the nerve to look at her as if she was the one who had done something wrong. Like what, for example—not being attractive enough? Pressing her lips together, she pushed back the questions she had asked herself a million times since that awful night at Harcourt and simply said, ‘Not you. The shirt. Could you take it off, please?’

Looking up into his face was like torment. She should have been used to it—she’d seen it in her dreams often enough in the last six years—but even the most vivid of them hadn’t done justice to the brutal beauty of him as he stood only a foot away. Bruised and bloodied, he was every inch the conquering Barbarian.

‘Oh, dear,’ he drawled. ‘What’s it been—five years? And clearly nothing’s changed.’

Oh, Lord; his voice. The melodic Spanish lilt that he’d all but lost growing up in England was stronger again now. Unfortunately.

Tamsin swallowed. ‘Six,’ she snapped, and instantly wanted to bite out her tongue for giving him the satisfaction of knowing that she cared enough to remember. ‘Anyway, I don’t know what you mean. From where I’m standing, plenty has changed.’

Like I’m not naïve enough any more to think that the face of an angel and the body of a living god make a shallow, callous bastard into a hero. She didn’t say the words, but just thinking them, and remembering what he’d done, made the strength seep back into her trembling body.

‘Really?’ He nodded slowly, reaching out a strong, tanned hand and smoothing it over the wing of pale-gold hair that fell over one eye. ‘Well, there’s this, of course, but I’m not talking about superficial things. It’s what’s underneath that I’m more interested in.’ Guilty, humiliating heat flared in the pit of her stomach as his gaze flickered over her, taking in the black-satin cocktail dress beneath the huge overcoat, and the muddied skyscraper shoes that clearly said she hadn’t been home last night. ‘I’m sure that line about taking the shirt off usually enjoys a very high success rate, especially since your daddy is now so high up in the RFU, but that cuts absolutely no ice with me these days. I’m out of all that—’ He broke off, and laughed. ‘Though, of course, I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’

She would not melt. She would not succumb to his voice or his touch, or his questions, or anything. Looking over his right shoulder at the red cross of St George painted on the wall of the tunnel, she affected a tone of deep boredom.

‘Whatever. I just want the shirt back, please.’

Wordlessly, as if he were weighing up what to do next, Alejandro took a step towards her, closing the gap between them. The other players were filing past them and the tunnel echoed with their shouts and the clatter of their studs on the floor, but the noise seemed to be coming from miles away. Tamsin felt her flimsy façade slipping. The physical reality of his closeness was acting on her senses like a drug, giving her a painfully heightened awareness of his broad, sculpted chest beneath the tightly fitting shirt, the scent of damp grass and mud that clung to him, and its undertone of raw masculinity.

‘I’m sure you do,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure the last thing your father wants is to see me back in an England shirt. After all, he tried hard enough to get me out of one six years ago.’

‘Yes, well, you have to agree that the Barbarians strip is much more appropriate, Alejandro. Given that you behave like one.’

A lazy smile pulled the corners of his sexy, swollen mouth. With a nonchalant lift of his shoulders, he turned and began to walk away from her, his massive shoulders filling the narrow space. He called the shots here, and he knew it.

‘Wait!’

Fury welled inside her and she ran after him, suddenly finding that without the distraction of his closeness she could think clearly again, and fuelled by a renewed sense of urgency to reclaim the shirt. Slipping past him, she placed herself defiantly in the doorway of the visitors’ changing room, blocking his way.

‘The shirt, Alejandro.’

She saw the dangerous gleam in the depths of his tiger’s eyes, and for a split second wondered if he was going to push her out of the way. Given the relative size of them, he’d hardly have to try, but something in him seemed to prevent him. If she didn’t know any better she’d think it was some sense of inherent chivalry, but that would be ridiculous, because she knew better than anyone that there wasn’t an atom of decency in the whole of Alejandro D’Arienzo’s magnificent body.

He stood back, raising both his hands as if in surrender, but his face bore a look of subdued triumph.

‘OK—go on, then. Take it.’

She cast a furtive look around. The tunnel was emptier now, but there were still officials, a few cameramen and journalists hovering outside the press room. ‘Me? Take it off you? Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t.

Alejandro gave a small shrug and dropped his hands. ‘I think we both know that you can, because you’ve done it before. But if you don’t want to …’ He came towards her and she found herself automatically stepping aside. ‘Obviously it’s not that important.’

‘It is.’

She spoke through gritted teeth, trying to keep back the scream of frustration and fury that was gathering in her chest. Alejandro’s hand was on the door and she reached out and grabbed his arm.

It was as if she’d touched a bolt of lightning. White-hot tongues of electricity sizzled up her arm and exploded inside her, simply from the contact of his body beneath the shirt. How come in six years this had never happened with anyone else, even when she’d wanted it to?

He stopped, then slowly turned round so he was standing with his back against the door. ‘OK, then. If it matters so much, you’d better take it.’

He was challenging her, she realised, and Tamsin Calthorpe was a girl who could never resist a challenge. Her eyes were pinned to his as she moved towards him, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. Just do it, she thought wildly. You’re a big girl now, not that gauche and gullible teenager. Show him that he can’t intimidate you …

She made a short exhalation of exasperation and disgust. Quickly, so he couldn’t see how much her hands were shaking, she took hold of the hem of the shirt and tugged it roughly upwards, while he stood unhelpfully motionless, his gaze fixed mockingly on her face.

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she hissed.

‘Being undressed so tenderly by a beautiful woman?’ he drawled with heavy irony. ‘Who wouldn’t?’

Viciously she yanked his arms up, standing on her tiptoes to pull the shirt over them, her breath coming in uneven gasps with the effort of manhandling his immensely powerful body, and of hiding the screaming, treacherous desire that it aroused in her. But as she reached up he made a sudden, sharp move backwards so that the door swung open and she fell against his chest with a cry of anguish and surprise.

A raucous cheer and a volley of wolf-whistles rang around the Barbarians’ dressing room. Tamsin froze in horror, her hands still entangled in the rugby shirt which was now midway over Alejandro’s chest, realising exactly how it must look.

Exactly how Alejandro had intended it to look.

‘Don’t tell me you’re not enjoying it too,’ he murmured. The amusement in his voice was unmistakable.

As she disengaged herself and stepped back, Tamsin felt an eerie calm descend on her. It was as if, in those few seconds, she was selecting an emotion from a range displayed before her: the murderous rage was tempting, or the cathartic, hysterical indignation … But, no. It might be difficult to carry off, but she was going to go for something a little more sophisticated.

She felt her mouth curve into a languid, slightly patronising smile as she took the bottom of the shirt gingerly between her finger and thumb, and pulled it disdainfully down, covering up the sinuous convex sweep of Alejandro’s stomach.

‘Cover yourself up, D’Arienzo,’ she said scathingly. ‘When I said “nice strip” I was referring to the shirt.’

The changing room erupted in whoops and whistles of appreciation as Tamsin turned on her heel and, casting a last, pitying glance at Alejandro, swept out. Her rush of triumph and elation lasted just long enough for the door to slam behind her, and then she collapsed, shaking, against the wall.

Suddenly the shirt seemed like the least of her problems.

Ignoring the boisterous cheers of his team-mates, Alejandro pulled off the shirt and tossed it contemptuously down on the bench before grabbing a towel and heading grimly towards the bathroom beyond the changing area. He felt none of the physical exhaustion that usually descended on him in the immediate aftermath of a game. Thanks to that close encounter with the High Priestess of Seduction and Betrayal, his mind was racing, his body still pulsing with adrenalin.

Adrenalin and other more inconvenient hormones.

The bathroom was a spartan white-tiled room with six huge claw-footed baths arranged facing each other in two rows, each filled with iced water. Research showed that an ice bath immediately after a game minimised the impact of injury, and shocked the body into a quicker recovery, but this didn’t make the practice any more popular with players. In the nearest tub the blond Australian giant, Dean Randall, sat still in full kit, grim-faced and shivering with cold. He glanced up as Alejandro came in.

‘Welcome to the Twickenham spa, mate,’ he joked weakly through chattering teeth. ‘I’d have kept that shirt on if I were you. It doesn’t make much difference, but, by God, anything’s better than nothing.’

Alejandro didn’t flinch as he stepped into the bath.

‘I think I’ll take my chances with the cold rather than wear an England shirt for any longer than necessary,’ he said brutally, closing his eyes briefly as the icy water tore into him like the teeth of some savage animal. For a second his body screamed with exquisite agony before numbness took hold, mercifully obliterating the insistent pulse of desire that had been reverberating through him since Tamsin had tried to strip the shirt from him.

Randall forced a laugh. ‘No plans to come back, then?’

‘No.’ Alejandro’s gritted teeth had nothing to do with the freezing water. ‘It would take a whole lot more than a fancy new strip to make me come back and play for England.’

Like an apology from Henry Calthorpe. And his daughter.

Randall nodded. ‘You came to settle old scores?’

‘Nothing so dramatic,’ said Alejandro tersely. ‘It’s business. I’m one of the sponsors of the Argentine rugby team.’

‘Los Pumas?’ Randall gave a low, shaky whistle of respect and Alejandro smiled bleakly. ‘I’m here because, with another World Cup looming, it’s time everyone was reminded that Argentina are major contenders.’

‘I wish I could argue with that, mate.’ At the physio’s nod the huge Australian stood up and vaulted over the side of the bath, wrapping his arms around his body and jumping from foot to foot to bring the circulation back to his frozen legs. ‘You certainly showed them today, at any rate. They’d have walked all over us if it hadn’t been for you. I owe you a drink at the party tonight. You’ll be there?’

Alejandro nodded. Just thinking about the last England team party he’d attended made the agony of the iced water fade into insignificance. He frowned, resting his elbows on the sides of the bath, and bringing his clenched fists up to his temples as unwelcome memories of that night came flooding back: the damp, earthy smell of the conservatory at Harcourt and the warm scent of her hair, the velvety feel of her skin beneath his shaking fingers as he’d undone the laced bodice of her dress.

‘OK, Alejandro, time’s up,’ said the physio.

Alejandro didn’t move. A muscle hammered in his cheek as he remembered pulling away from her, struggling to fight back the rampaging lust she had unleashed in him long enough to find someone to lend him a condom. Telling her he wouldn’t be long, he had rushed out into the corridor … and straight into Henry Calthorpe.

The expression of murderous rage on his face had told Alejandro instantly who the girl in the conservatory was. And exactly what it would mean to his career. In one swift, devastatingly masochistic stroke, Alejandro had handed Henry Calthorpe the justification he’d been looking for. An excuse so perfect …

‘You some kind of masochist, D’Arienzo? I said, time’s up.’

An excuse so perfect it was impossible to believe it had happened by chance. Alejandro stood up, letting the iced water cascade down his numb body for a second before stepping out of the bath. That explained the directness of her approach. He’d thought there was something honest about her, something refreshingly open, but in fact it had been exactly the opposite.

She had deliberately set him up.

Back in the dressing room, he picked up the discarded England shirt and looked at it as he brutally rubbed the feeling back into his frozen limbs. The new design was visually arresting and technologically ground-breaking, and, in spite of himself, he was grudgingly impressed. Impressed and intrigued. Applying similar design principles and fabric technology to his polo-team kit would make playing in the heat of the Argentinean summer he had just left behind so much more bearable. Thoughtfully he picked it up and was just about to put it into his kit-bag when his eye was caught by the number on the back.

Number ten.

It all came crashing back. For a moment he’d allowed himself to forget that this was so much more than just a cleverly designed piece of sports kit. This shirt, the England number ten, was what he had spent so many miserable, lonely years striving for. When it had felt like there was nothing else to live for, this had been his goal, his destiny, his holy grail, and through his own hard work, his own blood and sweat, he’d achieved it.

Only to have had it snatched away from him, thanks to Tamsin Calthorpe.

In one swift, savage movement he threw the shirt into his bag and swore viciously. So she wanted this back, did she? Well, it would be interesting to see how far she would go to get it this time, because Alejandro didn’t intend to relinquish it easily.

Tamsin Calthorpe had been directly and knowingly responsible for him being stripped of his England shirt six years ago. She owed him this.

And a lot more besides.




CHAPTER TWO


‘HUMILIATING doesn’t even begin to describe it,’ Tamsin moaned, clutching the phone and sinking down into the steaming bathwater. ‘I mean, it would have been bad enough if he hadn’t remembered me, but it was a million times worse when he did…’

Sticking a foot out of the water, she used it to turn on the hot tap with a dexterity born of long practice and added, ‘Obviously I can’t go to the party now.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Serena mildly. ‘You’ve got to. You can’t let him get to you like that.’

‘I’ve got a splitting headache, anyway,’ Tamsin said sulkily. ‘It’s probably the start of a really bad migraine.’

‘You don’t get migraines.’

‘Yes, well, there’s always a first time. Look, Serena, it’s all very well to say I shouldn’t let him get to me, but it’s a bit late for that, wouldn’t you agree? It’s not just about what happened today; it’s about the fact that Alejandro D’Arienzo got to me six years ago and completely—’

‘Exactly. Six years.’ Her sister’s calm logic was beginning to wind Tamsin up. ‘You were a teenager, for goodness’ sake—we all make mistakes and do things we regret when we’re young.’

‘You didn’t,’ Tamsin snapped, making islands of bubbles on the surface of the water. ‘You played it so cool that Simon was virtually on his knees with a ring before you’d kissed him. I, on the other hand, was so deranged with infatuation for Alejandro that I dressed like I was charging for it and didn’t even take the time to tell him my name before I threw myself at him.’

‘So? It’s in the past. Like I said, we make mistakes, and we move on.’

‘I know, but …’ Tamsin knew Serena was right. In theory. ‘Moving on’ sounded so simple and logical. So why had she never been able to do it? Even Serena had no idea of the extent to which what had happened that night had affected her in the years that followed. And was still affecting her now. ‘I can’t.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop you right there. I thought tonight was about your work not our sex life.’ Ouch. ‘I thought that you were going to the party to unveil the England team suits?’ Serena gave a breezy laugh. ‘Gosh, just think: all those people who said you were flaky and you only got the commission because of Dad will love it if you don’t turn up because of some bloke!’

Tamsin stood up in a rush of water.

‘What? Who said that?’

‘Oh, well, no one in particular,’ soothed Serena. ‘Not in so many words, anyway, although Simon said that article in last week’s Sports Journal sort of implied—’

‘God, I hate that!’ Snatching a towel, Tamsin stepped out of the bath and stormed into the bedroom, stepping over the chaos of discarded clothes and piles of magazines, and leaving a trail of wet footprints on her polished wooden floorboards. ‘How dare they say that? Don’t they do their research? Don’t they know I have a first-class degree in textiles, and that I was up against some of the stiffest competition in the business to get this commission? Don’t they know that Coronet won “best new label” at last year’s British Fashion Awards?’

‘I’m not sure, but I do,’ said Serena placidly. ‘It’s the press pack at the party that you need to be haranguing, not me. Although, of course, if you’re not there I don’t suppose you can. You’ll just have to let the clothes speak for themselves. The suits are exquisite, and from what I gathered from Simon the new shirts were very—’

Tamsin, who had flung herself down on top of the mountain of clothes piled on her un-made bed, gave a cry of dismay and slithered to her feet. ‘Oh, my God, the shirt! I’d almost forgotten about that. I have to get it back. If I don’t, by the end of tomorrow’s press conference my reputation is going to be toast, and on top of everything else that’s the last thing I need.’

‘How are things at Coronet?’ asked Serena carefully.

‘Bad. While I was dealing with the shirt crisis, Sally left a message on my answerphone to say that another buyer had pulled out because of loss of exclusivity, since the designs have been so widely copied on the high street.’

‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, darling,’ Serena said weakly. ‘And the shirt crisis wasn’t your fault. The factory messed up the dye process, and it’s entirely to your credit that you thought to test the shirts for colour-fastness ahead of the game.’ Serena giggled. ‘Otherwise England would have been playing in pink by half time.’

‘Given that the press are out for my blood already, I don’t think they’ll see it that way.’ Tamsin threw open her wardrobe and began to rifle through the rails. ‘Which is why I can’t afford for it to get out.’

‘What’s that noise? What are you doing?’

‘Looking for something to wear.’

‘Ah. Does that mean you’re going?’

‘Oh yes, I’m going all right,’ Tamsin said grimly, pulling out a sea-green silk dress, grimacing and putting it back. ‘I’m fed up of being taken advantage of. Alejandro bloody D’Arienzo picked the wrong day to mess with me. He screwed me up enough last time, and I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of doing it again. He took something that belongs to me.’ She paused, frowning. ‘And I intend to take it back.’

‘Are we talking about the England shirt now?’ said Serena gently.

‘Amongst other things.’ Let’s see: my pride, my sense of worth, my self-confidence … ‘God, Serena, when I think about that night—about how it felt when I realised he wasn’t coming back … I thought nothing could be worse than knowing that he found me so unattractive back then, but you should have seen the expression on his face this afternoon. It’s like he hates me, like he has nothing but contempt for me. Like I’m worthless.’

‘Don’t say that, Tam.’ Serena’s voice hardened slightly. ‘He was the one in the wrong back then. You’re brilliant. And beautiful.’

Tamsin stopped, catching sight of herself suddenly in the wardrobe mirror. Wrapped only in a towel, her newly washed hair was slicked back from a face that was flushed from the bath. So far, so OK, but her eyes automatically travelled downwards to her right arm.

She grimaced and turned away.

‘Yeah, right. And you’re clearly suffering from pregnancy hormones,’ Tamsin said with a rueful grin. ‘Go and eat another pickled onion and chocolate-spread sandwich and leave me alone. Don’t you know I have a party to get ready for?’

‘Not so fast. I need to know what you’re wearing first. You can keep your weird sandwich combinations; now that I know I’m condemned to spending the next six months in a maternity smock, my only craving is for tailored clothes, so I’ll have to indulge myself through you. You need something that screams “successful, glamorous, assured, mysterious, sexy, but completely unavailable”.’

Tamsin pulled out a narrow slither of light-as-air ash-grey chiffon and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘Exactly.’

‘You look lovely, darling,’ Henry Calthorpe said stiffly, barely glancing up from the evening paper in his hand as Tamsin slid into the back of the car beside him. ‘Nice dress.’

‘Thank you, Daddy.’

Tamsin suppressed a smile. She was grateful for the sentiment—sort of—but it would be great if for once he’d actually looked. Then he would have seen that the dress wasn’t nice—it was a triumph. It was her favourite design for the new season’s collection; the whisper-fine chiffon was generously gathered from a low V-neck, crisscrossed by bands of silver ribbon which fitted snugly under the bust and swept downwards at the back, giving the whole thing a slightly Greek feel. The long semi-sheer sleeves fell down over her hands, covering her arms. Of course; fashion wasn’t her father’s thing, but he certainly would have noticed if she’d left her arms bare.

‘Initial comment on the strip seems to be fairly positive, you’ll be pleased to know,’ Henry continued acidly. ‘It’s just a shame they didn’t manage to get a picture of one of our players wearing it.’

He closed the paper and put it down quickly, but not before Tamsin had caught a glimpse of a full-page photograph of Alejandro walking from the pitch in the England shirt beneath the headline: Barbarian Conqueror.

She picked up the newspaper and opened it. In the hushed interior of the Mercedes, her heart was beating so loudly she was surprised her father couldn’t hear it. Trying to keep her hand from shaking as she held the paper, she began to read.

Former England hero Alejandro D’Arienzo made a welcome return to Twickenham this afternoon in a closely fought match between England and the Barbarians. In a stunning display of skill, the Argentine Adonis helped the Barbarians to a surprise 36-32 victory, after which an outclassed Ben Saunders handed D’Arienzo his new shirt in a gesture of well-deserved respect.

The crowd were clearly delighted to see D’Arienzo back in the England number ten shirt, the position he famously made his own in his three years in the England squad. His international career came to an abrupt and mysterious end six years ago amid rumours of a personality clash with then-coach Sir Henry Calthorpe, and D’Arienzo returned to his homeland where he has earned a formidable reputation in the polo world, as both patron and player for the high-goal San Silvana team.

Both sides have always maintained a steely silence on events that led to this defection, but his dazzling performance today, coupled with reports that he is closely involved with Los Pumas, must make Calthorpe wonder if he would have been better swallowing his pride and keeping him on …

‘Utter rubbish,’ said Henry tartly as Tamsin folded the paper with exaggerated care and put it down on the seat between them. Picking idly at a bead on the sleeve of her dress, Tamsin kept her voice neutral as she said, ‘You never liked him, though, did you?’

Henry suddenly seemed hugely interested in the featureless black landscape beyond the car window. ‘I didn’t trust him,’ he said with quiet bitterness. Then, turning back to Tamsin, he gave a bland smile. ‘He was dangerous. A loose cannon. No loyalty to the team with that … that God-awful tattoo on his chest. The press conveniently forget all that now, don’t they?’

Tamsin felt the breath catch painfully in her throat as the image of Alejandro’s chest, with the Argentine sun blazing on the hard plane of muscle over his heart, filled her head. As a teenager she had cut a picture from a magazine that had showed him stripped to the waist during one hot summer training session for the World Cup. Even now, all these years later, she could still recall the sensation of terrible, churning longing she’d felt whenever she looked at that tattoo.

The car slowed, and a scattering of flashbulbs from the other side of the darkened glass told her they’d arrived at the very exclusive hotel where the post-match party was being held. Tamsin blinked, dragging in a shaky breath and forcing herself back into the present as the car glided smoothly down the drive towards a solid-looking, square stone house half-covered with glossy creeper.

Even before the driver had opened the car door, the noise of the party was already clearly audible.

‘After this afternoon’s shameful performance, heaven knows what they think they’ve got to celebrate,’ said Henry cuttingly, getting out of the car. ‘You’d better do the photo-call straight away while there’s still some hope of the team doing justice to your elegant suits. If you leave it any later, they’ll all be rolling drunk and singing obscene songs. Come on.’

Henry held out his arm. Absently, she took it. ‘Oh, dear, you’re right. And, since the photographer wants all those cheesy and predictable shots of the team holding me up like a rugby ball, I’d rather I was in sober hands.’

Instantly she felt Henry bristle. He stopped, and Tamsin instantly cursed herself for walking right into that one. It was all Alejandro D’Arienzo’s fault. She wasn’t thinking clearly, otherwise she would have been all too aware that her father’s legendary and highly annoying protective streak was about to reveal itself. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not having my daughter mauled around by the entire team like some Playboy bunny. I’ll have a word with the photographer and make it perfectly clear that—’

‘No! Don’t you dare! I got this commission on my own merit, and I’ll handle the PR on my own terms.’

For a second they glared at each other in the light of the carriage lamps on either side of the front door. Then Henry withdrew his arm from hers and walked stiffly up the stone steps into the brightly lit reception hall, the set of his very straight back conveying his utter disapproval. Left alone outside, Tamsin gritted her teeth and stamped her foot.

Hell, he was impossible. It was all right for Serena; she’d always been able to wrap Henry round her little finger with a flash of her dimples and a flutter of her big blue eyes. Whereas Tamsin had always argued, and—

She paused.

Then, running quickly up the steps in her father’s wake, she caught up with him in the centre of the panelled reception area.

‘Please, Daddy.’ She caught hold of his arm, forcing him to stop.

Picturing Serena’s lovely face in her mind’s eye, and trying desperately to assume the same gentle, beseeching expression, Tamsin looked up at her father. ‘It’s only a couple of photographs,’ she said persuasively.

It worked like a charm. Instantly she saw the slight softening in Henry’s chilly grey gaze, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘All right,’ he said gruffly. ‘You know best. I’ll let you get on with it.’

Relief flooded her, and impulsively she reached up to kiss his cheek. ‘Thank you, Daddy.’

Turning, she ran lightly across the hallway, just about managing to resist punching the air, but unable to stop a most un-Serenalike smile of elation breaking across her face.

Alejandro froze at the top of the stairs, his face as cold and impassive as the rows of portraits on the oak-panelled walls around him as he took in the touching little scene below.

He saw her cross the hallway in a ripple of silvery grey chiffon, her pale hair gleaming in the light from the chandelier above. He watched her tilt her face up to her father, looking up at him from under her dark lashes, and heard the persuasive, pleading tone in her husky voice as she spoke.

Please, Daddy … Thank you, Daddy … It was as much as he could do not to laugh out loud at the saccharine sweetness in her voice, but a second later his sardonic amusement evaporated as she turned away, and the melting look on her face gave way to a smile of pure triumph.

The calculating bitch.

Nothing had changed, he thought bitterly, carrying on down the corridor to his room. Not deep down, anyway. She’d cut her hair and gone blonde big style, but the glittering green eyes, the attitude and the rich-girl arrogance were still the same.

Back in his room he checked his watch and picked up the phone. It was just after five p.m. in Argentina, and the grooms would be turning the ponies out for the night. Two promising mares—a chestnut, and a pretty palomino that he’d bought last month in America for the new polo season—had been delivered yesterday and he was impatient to hear how they were settling in.

Giselle, his PA back at San Silvana, reassured him that the horses were doing fine. They’d recovered well from the journey, and the vet was happy that they would both be rested and ready to use on his return.

Alejandro felt better once he’d spoken to her. Nothing to do with the husky warmth in her voice, but simply because it was good to be reminded that San Silvana, with its rolling lawns, its stables, poolhouse and acres of lush paddock filled with ponies, was still there. Was real. Was his.

Coming back to England had dredged up insecurities he had long forgotten, he thought wryly, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror as he went to the door. He’d come a long way, but beneath the bespoke dinner suit, the Savile Row shirt and silk bow-tie, there apparently still lurked the displaced boy who didn’t belong.

Out on the galleried landing the sounds of the party drifted up to him. Glancing down on his way to the stairs, he could see the England players, standing shoulder to shoulder in identical dark suits as they lined up for a photograph. They had their backs to him, and were standing in two rows while a photographer wearing tight leather-trousers and an expression of extreme harassment tried to get them all to stop messing around and keep still.

‘Fifty quid to swap places with Matt Fitzpatrick!’ someone called from the back row, and there was a huge guffaw of laughter, followed by someone else shouting, ‘A hundred!’

‘Sensible offers only, please, gentlemen,’ grinned Fitzpatrick.

For a second Alejandro didn’t understand the joke, but then he moved further along the shadowed gallery and looked down, feeling his sore shoulders stiffen and ice-cold disgust flood him.

Tamsin Calthorpe, her cheeks glowing and her honeyed hair shining like the sun beneath the photographer’s lights, was stretched out horizontally in the arms of the front row of players, facing out towards the camera. Matt Fitzpatrick, exuding Neanderthal pride, supported her body, one huge hand cupped around her left breast.

The photographer’s flash exploded as he took a volley of shots. Her bare legs and feet, held in the meaty hands of one of the England forwards, looked as delicate as the stem of some exotic flower, and next to the coarse, battered faces of the players Tamsin’s skin gleamed like pale-gold satin.

‘How come you get the best position anyway, Fitzpatrick?’ shouted one of the younger players at the back.

Tamsin laughed, and to Alejandro the sound was like fingernails on a blackboard. ‘He’s more experienced than you, Jones. And his handling skills are better.’ As Jones blushed to the roots of his hair, the team erupted into more rowdy laughter and cheers.

So that was what she’d been asking her father for: permission to appear in the team photo. He remembered her soft, pleading tone as she’d put her hand on his arm and said ‘only a couple of photographs’.

Had she no pride at all? Alejandro’s face felt stiff with contempt as he leaned against one of the gallery’s carved wooden posts and watched. What was she, some kind of unofficial team mascot? It was perfectly clear that she knew all the players pretty well.

How many had she slept with?

The thought slipped into his head without warning, but he had to brace himself against the lash of unexpected bitterness that accompanied it.

There was much clapping and shouting below as two of the players, under direction from the photographer, lifted her onto their shoulders. Laughing, Tamsin tipped back her head and looked up.

He watched the smile die on her glossy lips as her eyes met his.

In that moment Alejandro realised who it was she reminded him of: the blondes who’d populated the rugby parties he used to attend. The girl he’d thought was so different had grown up into one of those women he’d so despised at the party at Harcourt. A polished, hard-society blonde whose satiny skin concealed a ruthless streak a mile wide. A professional flirt, a consummate party girl, a shallow, manipulative man-user whose every flattering word was meaningless and every smile was a lie.

And, judging from the look on her face now, she was all too aware she’d been found out.

No.

No, no no.

It couldn’t be possible. Even her luck wasn’t that bad. As the two props set her back on her feet, Tamsin shook her fringe from her eyes and looked back up into the minstrels’ gallery where a figure in the shadows had caught her eye. A figure she’d thought for one nasty moment was …

Oh, God. It was. Him.

He was leaning insolently against a carved wooden post, looking down. Though his face was in shadow, every line of his elegant, powerful body seemed to communicate contemptuous amusement, and she could feel his eyes searing her with their intensity and their disdain.

The photographer clapped his hands and trilled, ‘OK, people—are we ready? Now, if the two guys on either side of Miss Calthorpe could look down at her, please?’

Why? Why couldn’t he just go?

Dimly Tamsin was aware of laughing banter breaking out around her again, and of Matt pulling her towards him and making some joking comment to the player on her other side. But, as she looked up into Matt’s appreciative blue eyes, it was Alejandro’s cold, contemptuous stare that she saw.

The photographer’s flash exploded in her face as fury erupted inside her.

That was what he’d done to her that night.

‘That’s fabulous,’ gushed the photographer. ‘Really fabulous. Gorgeous, sexy pout, Miss Calthorpe. Now, shoulders straighter, Matt … Lovely.’

He’d broken something inside her, so that no matter how much men like Matt flattered her and flirted with her …

‘Tamsin, you’re looking delicious. Just put your hand on Matt’s chest … yes, like that …’

… she could never quite make herself believe that they meant it.

‘Now, let’s make sure we get the nice rose-patterned lining of the jacket in the shot. Just slip your hand underneath his jacket, and sort of half-push it off his shoulder. Yeah, like that. That’s gorgeous.’

Maybe it was time she proved to Alejandro Arrogant D’Arienzo, and herself, that not all men found her such a turn-off?

The shutter rattled like machine-gun fire. High on adrenalin, fuelled by fury, Tamsin let instinct take over. For six years she had surrounded herself with a forest of thorns, keeping men at bay with her endless succession of barbed comments and razor-sharp retorts, all because he had robbed her of the belief that she was desirable. But she would show him that she was attractive, she was sexy … Her spine arched reflexively as she slid her hand over Matt’s shoulder, but it wasn’t Matt she was thinking of. Turning her head towards the bright lights and the camera, lifting her chin in silent, brazen challenge, she looked into the shadows, straight into Alejandro’s eyes.

It was like a steel trap closing around her—cold, hard, unyielding. He was looking down at her, the lights from below accentuating the sharp planes of his face, which were wholly at odds with the sensual swell of his mouth. And then, as she watched, he shook his head in an attitude of incredulous, pitying amusement.

He turned and walked away. Just as he had six years ago. He walked away, without a backwards glance, leaving the hot throb of desire ebbing from her and nothing but icy desolation and humiliation in its place.




CHAPTER THREE


BLUE ball, top-left pocket.

With narrowed eyes Alejandro looked thoughtfully at the billiard table. It was a difficult shot, and in his own personal game of dare this was sudden death.

If he got it in, he would play on. If he missed, he had to go back out and rejoin the party. He had to go out there and watch Tamsin Calthorpe tease and flirt her way around the rest of the England team. And, he thought with a grimace of scorn, judging by her earlier performance, probably most of the Barbarians as well.

It was probably just as well he never missed.

Lazily he bent to line up the shot. From the other side of the massive polished-wood door he could hear the raucous sounds of the party. As a major investor in Argentine rugby he ought to be out there; after today’s game he was the man everyone wanted to talk to and he should be capitalising on that to get publicity for Los Pumas. That was, after all, what he’d come back for.

Unhurriedly he adjusted the balance of the cue. To even up the odds a little he closed his left eye, leaving only the bruised and swollen right one to judge the angle of the shot.

With a sharp, insouciant jab the blue fell neatly into the top-left pocket.

Alejandro straightened up, smiling ruefully as a sting of perverse disappointment sliced through him. He had no desire to go out there and mix with the great and the good of the rugby world, but there was a part of him that would have rather enjoyed the chance to watch the amazing Lady Calthorpe in operation some more, for no other reason than to marvel at how much more polished the routine had become in the last six years. Back then there had been a gawky awkwardness about her, a trembling sort of defiance, but it had affected him far more powerfully than tonight’s virtuoso display of sexual invitation.

Powerful enough to cloud his judgement and get beneath his defences, he thought acidly.

She’d upped her game considerably since then, and as a result it seemed that she was no longer kept in the background as a handmaid for her father’s sordid, secret schemes. Now she was much higher profile, which of course made perfect sense. Henry Calthorpe was now chairman of the RFU, and, judging by the photoshoot Alejandro had just witnessed, the organisation had become one big, indulgent playground for his spoiled daughter. He wondered how far her influence spread now.

With sudden violence he threw down the cue and went to stand in front of the fire.

Henry Calthorpe was obviously too important these days to invite the riff-raff into his own home, but the hotel had apparently been chosen to provide a very similar setting. The billiard room was a gentleman’s retreat in typical English country-house style, with leather wing-backed chairs and oil paintings of hunting scenes on the walls. The long, fringed lamp hanging low over the table made the billiard balls glow like jewels in a pool of emerald green, and firelight glinted on a tray of cut-glass decanters beside him.

He reached for one and splashed a generous measure into a crystal tumbler, and had just thrown himself into one of the high-backed chairs facing the fire when there was a sudden rush of noise behind him as the door opened and then closed again quickly. Alejandro didn’t move, but his hand tightened around the glass as, reflected in the mirror above the fireplace, he saw her.

She went straight to the billiard table and leaned against it, dropping her head and breathing hard, as if she was trying to steady herself or regain control. His first thought was that she was waiting for someone to follow her into the room, and he glanced towards the door again. But it stayed shut, and a moment later Tamsin Calthorpe lifted her head and he saw that the laboured breathing, the bright spots of colour on her cheeks, weren’t caused by desire but by anger.

Picking up the cue he had so recently thrown down, she barely glanced at the table before stooping, and, with a snarl of fury, took a vicious shot which sent the balls cannoning wildly across the table.

In the mirror Alejandro watched the white rebound off the top cushion, just missing the pink and the black and sending the brown ball cannoning into the middle pocket. Still completely oblivious to his presence, Tamsin punched the air and gave a low hiss of triumph.

‘Lucky shot,’ he said sardonically.

In the mirror he saw her freeze, the billiard cue held across her body like a weapon.

‘Who said luck had anything to do with it?’

Her voice was cool and haughty, but he caught the nervous dart of her eyes as she looked around to see who had spoken. Her blonde head was held high, her shoulders tense and alert. She looked oddly vulnerable, like a startled deer.

‘It was a difficult one.’ Alejandro stood up and turned slowly towards her, feeling a flicker of satisfaction as he watched her eyes widen in shock and the colour leave her face. She recovered quickly, shrugging as she walked towards the curtained windows.

‘Precisely. What would have been the point in taking it if it was easy?’

It was Alejandro’s turn to be stunned. As she walked away from him he saw that the dress that had looked so demure from the front was completely backless, showing a downwards sweep of flawless, peachy skin.

He made a sharp, scornful sound—halfway between a laugh and a sneer, which sent a tide of heat flooding into Tamsin’s face and a torrent of boiling fury erupting inside her. Her heart was beating very hard as she whipped round to face him again.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Frankly, no.’ He moved around the chair and came towards her. He’d taken off his dinner jacket and undone the top two buttons of his shirt. His silk bow-tie lay loosely around his neck, giving him an air of infuriating relaxation that was completely at odds with the icy hardness of his face. She was pleased to notice that there was a muscle flickering in the hollowed plane of his cheek.

‘You don’t strike me as a girl who likes to try too hard to get what she wants,’ he said scathingly.

The injustice of the statement was so magnificent she almost laughed. Pressing her lips together, she had to look down for a second while she fought to keep a hold on her composure. ‘Don’t I?’ Her voice was polite, deceptively soft as she met his gaze. ‘Well, may I suggest that your assumption says more about you than it does about me, Alejandro?’

He flinched slightly, almost imperceptibly, as she said his name, and for a moment some unfathomable emotion flared in his eyes. But it was gone before she could read it or understand its meaning, and she was left staring into hard, golden emptiness. It was mesmerizing, like meeting the eyes of a panther at close range. A scarred, hungry predator.

‘What does it say about me?’

He spoke quietly, but there was something sinister about his calmness. Above the immaculate, hand-made dress shirt his black eye and swollen mouth gave his raw masculinity a dangerous edge. Tamsin felt fear prickle on the back of her neck, and was aware that she was shaking.

Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t afraid of Alejandro D’Arienzo. She was angry with him. Clenching her jaw, she managed a saccharine smile. ‘Let me see,’ she said with sugared venom. ‘It says that you’re an arrogant, misogynist bastard who thinks that women are for one purpose and one purpose only.’

His mouth, his bruised, sexy mouth, curled slightly in the barest, most insolent expression of disdain. ‘And don’t you rather perpetuate that stereotype?’

Tamsin felt the ground shift beneath her feet. The panelled walls seemed to be closing in on her, leaving her no chance of escape, no alternative but to confront the image he was holding before her of herself the girl who dressed like a slut and had thrown herself at him without even bothering to tell him her name.

‘That was six years ago,’ she protested hoarsely. ‘One night, six years ago!’

‘And how many times has it happened since then?’ he said, draining his glass and picking up another cue.

Surreptitiously holding the edge of the green-baize table, Tamsin took a quick, shaky breath and made herself hold her head high as she gave a nonchalant shrug. The entire contents of the Cartier shop window wouldn’t induce her to let him see how much his rejection had hurt her, how far-reaching its consequences had been. She managed a gratifyingly breezy laugh.

‘I don’t know, it’s hardly a big deal. Don’t try to tell me you’ve lived a life of monastic purity and celibacy for the last six years?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘I’m not going to.’

‘Well, don’t you think it’s a bit much to expect that I have? What did you think, Alejandro, that I would have hung up my high heels and filled my wardrobe with sackcloth and ashes just because you weren’t interested?’ She laughed, to show the utter preposterousness of the idea. ‘God, no. I moved on.’

‘So I saw. A number of times, evidently,’ he drawled quietly, bending down and lining up a shot. ‘The England squad seems to be your personal escort-agency.’

Idly he jabbed the cue against the white ball, sending it hurtling across the table. Tamsin felt like it was her heart. ‘Wrong, Alejandro,’ she said stiffly. ‘The England squad are my clients.’

His eyebrows shot up; he gave a twisted smile. ‘Indeed? My mistake. I got it the wrong way round.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped. ‘They’re my clients because I’m the designer who handled the commission for the England kit. The new strip, the suits and the off-pitch clothing.’

Just for the briefest second she saw a look of surprise pass across his deadpan face, but it was quickly replaced by cynicism again.

‘Did you, indeed?’ he drawled, somehow managing to make those three small, innocuous words convey his utter disbelief. But before Tamsin had a chance to think up a suitably impressive response the door burst open and Ben Saunders appeared, swaying slightly. His unfocused gaze flitted from Alejandro to Tamsin.

‘Oops. Sorry … Interrupting.’ Grinning, obviously misreading the tension that crackled in the quiet room, he began to back out again with exaggerated care, but Tamsin leapt forward, grabbing his arm.

‘Ben, wait!’ she said grimly. ‘Tell him—’ she jerked her head sharply in Alejandro’s direction ‘—about the new strip. Tell him who designed it.’

Frowning, Ben looked drunkenly at her as if she’d just asked him to work out the square root of nine hundred and forty two in binary.

‘Uh … you?’ he said uncertainly.

Great, thought Tamsin hysterically. Brilliant. Hugely convincing.

‘Yes. Of course it was me,’ she said with desperate patience.

Ben nodded and grinned inanely, obviously relieved to have got the right answer. ‘And the shoots,’ he slurred, turning around clumsily to show off his suit, and almost overbalancing. ‘You did the shoots too, didn’t you? Lovely shoot.’ He beamed across at Alejandro. ‘Very clever, Tamsin. Very good at measuring the inside leg …’

Alejandro glanced at her, his face a study of sadistic amusement. ‘I’m sure,’ he said icily. ‘That takes a lot of skill.’

Tamsin clenched her teeth. ‘Thanks, Ben,’ she said, turning him around and steering him towards the door. ‘Now, maybe you’d better go and find some water, or some coffee or something.’ When the door had closed behind him she turned back to Alejandro with a haughty glance. ‘There. Now do you believe that I’m not just some airhead heiress with time on her hands?’

‘It proves nothing.’ Malice glinted in the golden depths of Alejandro’s eyes as he picked up his glass again. ‘I’m sure it makes great PR sense for you to be used as a front for the new strip, but surely you don’t expect me to believe that you actually designed it? Sportswear design is an incredibly competitive business, you know.’

‘Yes.’ Tamsin spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Astonishingly enough, I do know, because I got the job.’

Nodding thoughtfully, Alejandro took an unhurried mouthful of his drink. ‘And what qualified you for that, Lady Calthorpe—your father’s position in the RFU? Or your own extensive research into rugby players’ bodies?’

‘No,’ she said as soon as she could trust herself to open her mouth without screaming. ‘My first class honours degree in textiles and my final year project on techno-fabrics.’ Looking up at him, she gave an icy smile. ‘I had to compete for this commission and I got it entirely on merit.’

His dark brows arched in cynical disbelief. ‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘You must be good.’

‘I am.’

It was no use. If she stayed a moment longer, she wouldn’t be able to keep the rip tide of vitriol that was swelling and surging inside her from smashing through her flimsy defences. She put down the cue and threw him what she hoped was the kind of distant, distracted smile that would convey total indifference as she turned to reach for the doorknob. ‘You don’t have to take my word for it, though. If you look at my work, it should speak for itself.’

‘I have, and it does. For the rugby shirts, at least.’ He laughed softly and she froze, her hand halfway to the door as a bolt of horrified remembrance shot through her. ‘I have one, remember?’

Her fingers curled into a fist and she let it fall to her side, the nails digging painfully into her palm. She could have sunk down onto the thick, wine-red carpet and wept. Instead she steeled herself to turn back and face him.

‘Of course,’ she said, unable to keep the edge of bitterness from her voice. ‘How could I forget?’

He came slowly towards her, his head slightly to one side, an expression of quiet triumph on his face. ‘I really don’t know, since you seemed pretty keen to get it back earlier,’ he said quietly. ‘Obviously it can’t be that important, after all. To you, anyway.’

Tamsin swallowed. He had come to a halt right in front of her, and it was hard to marshal the thoughts swirling in her head when it suddenly seemed to be filled with him. She closed her eyes, trying to squeeze him out, but the darkness only made her more aware of his closeness, the warm, dry scent of his skin. She opened them again, looking deliberately away from him, beyond him, anywhere but at him.

‘It is important, I’m afraid. I need it back.’

‘You need it?’ he said softly. ‘If you’re the designer, you must have lots of them. Surely you can spare that one?’

‘It’s not that simple. I …’

The mirror above the fireplace reflected the broad sweep of his shoulders, the silk of his hair, dark against the collar of his white shirt. She stared at the image, mesmerised by its powerful beauty as the words dried up in her mouth.

‘No. I thought not,’ he cut in, a harsh edge of bitterness undercutting the softness of his tone, like a knife blade wrapped in velvet. ‘It’s not about the shirt, is it? It’s about the principle—just as it always was. It’s about your father not wanting the English rose on an Argentine chest, isn’t it?’

Argentine chest. Alejandro’s chest.

‘No,’ she whispered.

Gently, caressingly, he reached out and slid his warm hand along her jaw, cupping her face, stroking his thumb over her cheek. A violent shudder of reluctant desire rippled through her. She felt herself melt against him for a second before his fingers closed around her chin, forcing her head back so she was looking straight into his hypnotic eyes.

‘I hope you’re a better designer than you are a liar.’

‘I’m not lying,’ she hissed, jerking her head free. Her hand automatically went to the place where his had just been, rubbing the skin as if he had burned her. ‘This has nothing to do with my father. There was a—a problem with the production of the shirts. I only found out yesterday when I suddenly thought to test one, and found out the red dye on the roses wasn’t colourfast. I had to contact the manufacturers and get them to open up the factory and start from scratch on a new batch of shirts, but there was only time to make one for each player. That’s why I need yours back, otherwise on the photo-shoot at Twickenham tomorrow Ben Saunders will be half-naked, as well as hungover,’ she finished savagely, feeling her blood pressure soar as he gave a short, cruel laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘I thought you were supposed to be good: “I had to compete for this commission and I got it entirely on merit”,’ he mocked. ‘So who exactly were you competing against, Tamsin? Primary school children?’

‘Oh, I can compete with the best, make no mistake about that,’ she said with quiet ferocity, which melted seamlessly into biting sarcasm as she added, ‘Now, it’s been just fabulous to see you again, Alejandro, but I really ought to be getting back to the party. So if you could just give me back the shirt?’

She was walking towards the door as she spoke, but suddenly he was in front of her, blocking her path. Looking up, Tamsin saw with a shudder that all trace of amusement had vanished from his face. His eyes were as cold and hard as Spanish gold.

‘Sorry. The spoiled-diva routine won’t work with me.’

Misery and resentment flared up inside her, and for a moment she could do nothing but look at him. ‘What do you want me to do? Beg?’

Kicking the door shut, he took a step towards her and she shrank backwards, pressing herself against the billiard table. ‘It’s quite a nice idea,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But I think not, on this occasion.’ He leaned forward, as if he were about to touch her. She flinched away with a low hiss of animosity, but he was only reaching for something behind her.

‘So, you reckon you can compete with the best, do you?’ he said softly. ‘Let’s see if you were telling the truth about that, at least.’

He handed her the billiard cue he had picked up from the table. Hesitantly, Tamsin took it, looking up at him in mute uncertainty.

‘I don’t understand. What are you saying?’

‘You want your shirt back? You have to win it.’




CHAPTER FOUR


FOR just the briefest second he saw panic flare in her eyes, and felt an answering surge of grim satisfaction.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped, looking at the cue as if it was a loaded gun. ‘Play now? With you?’ She gave a harsh, scornful laugh. ‘Forget it.’

Chips of ice crystallised in Alejandro’s heart. He was offering her a chance to prove herself. She couldn’t hope to win, of course; he was far too skilled a player for that. But he would have given her credit—and the shirt back—just for trying.

And giving Tamsin Calthorpe credit for anything went very much against the grain.

‘Afraid of losing?’ he said scathingly. ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t suppose you’re used to it, and, believe me, I won’t make allowances for who you are—or who your father is.’

Brimstone sparked in the depths of her green eyes. ‘It’s not the thought of losing that bothers me,’ she hissed. ‘It’s the prospect of spending the next hour in your company.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, his voice a languid drawl. ‘It won’t take that long for me to thrash you.’

He was only inches away from her. Close enough to hear her little shivering gasp, close enough to see the instant darkening of her eyes as his words hit her and the flashing anger was swallowed by spreading pools of desire at their centre.

‘Thrash me?’ She gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘You’re walking away?’

‘Oh no,’ she breathed. Reaching out, she curled her fingers around the cue he held and for a moment came so close to him that he could feel the warm whisper of her breath on his neck. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not until I have my shirt back.’

Languidly she turned and walked away from him to the other end of the table. Alejandro frowned, feeling his chest, and his trousers tighten as he watched the sinuous movement of her bare back. He hadn’t expected this.

‘So, what are we playing?’ she said, whipping round to face him again. ‘Bar-room pool?’

The low light from the billiard lamp fell onto her short platinum-blonde hair, making her look like a rebellious angel. She was looking at him steadily, insolently, her head lowered slightly and her slanting green eyes unblinking.

‘If that’s what you want.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m easy. I just thought it might be what you’re used to.’

For a fleeting second Alejandro felt almost lightheaded with hatred at her casual, calculated viciousness. To her, he was still the boy from nowhere, the imposter in the charmed circle of privileged English youth that made up the team, and her social circle.

‘I can play anything, anywhere, Lady Calthorpe. Would you prefer English billiards perhaps?’

His voiced dripped with contempt and his eyes raked over her, cold and assessing. Holding the cue upright in front of her, Tamsin clung to it tightly, glad of its support. English billiards? How the hell did you play that?

‘No. Bar-room pool is fine with me,’ she said, trying to make it sound of little consequence to her, but secretly hoping that all those smoky afternoons spent playing pool in the student bar at college were about to pay off.

She was in danger of getting seriously out of her depth here.

With the lamplight casting hollows beneath his razor-sharp cheekbones and the bruising on his lip, he looked like some kind of avenging warrior, primed for battle. Her hands were damp as she watched him move easily around the table. I can play anything, anywhere, he’d said, and she knew with a sick, churning mixture of fear and excitement that he was right. He would be just as at home playing pool in the back-street bars of Buenos Aires as playing billiards in an upmarket gentlemen’s club in Mayfair. He exuded an effortless confidence that transcended all boundaries and singled him out as a natural winner.

Which was unfortunate, considering her reputation kind of rested on getting this shirt back.

‘You first.’

Placing her right hand firmly on the table, Tamsin hoped he couldn’t see how much it was shaking.

‘You’re left-handed?’

‘In some things.’

She took the shot, mis-hitting wildly so that the balls scattered crazily over the table.

‘You’re sure this is one of those things?’ Behind her his was voice cold and mocking. ‘Maybe you might be better with your right hand.’

She turned, colour seeping into her cheeks as a slow pulse of anger beat in her veins. ‘Thanks for the tip, but can we assume that if I want your help I’ll ask for it?’

‘I thought I’d already made it clear that, even if you did, you wouldn’t get it,’ he said smoothly, moving around the table and potting balls with a swift, lethal efficiency that made Tamsin’s heart plummet. ‘Although maybe I could make it a little fairer.’ He smiled lazily across the table, moving his cue to the other hand. ‘Since you’re playing left-handed, I will too. Number ten. To you.’

Tamsin opened her mouth to make some stinging retort, but found her throat was dry and no words came. Helplessly her gaze fixed itself on the strong, tanned hand Alejandro placed on the table, splaying his lean, long fingers.

The room was very quiet and very still. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, below which the fire had sunk to an amber glow. His narrow, focused stare was exactly level with her knicker line, and it was intense enough to feel like he could see right through the flimsy grey chiffon.

The thought sent a gush of arousal crashing through her.

The sudden sharp crack of the balls colliding made her jump, and she watched, mesmerized, as the yellow ball rolled gently across the green baize towards the pocket beside her thigh. A shiver rippled through her as she suddenly, unaccountably, found herself thinking not of the movement of the ball across the table, but of Alejandro’s fingers over her skin …

Guiltily she wrenched her head up as the ball came to a halt. Alejandro was watching her, the expression on his dark, bruised face unreadable.

‘There,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Your turn.’

Tamsin blinked. He’d missed the shot. That was good news, but somehow the knowledge that he’d only missed because he’d taken it with his left hand took any sense of triumph she might have felt and turned it right on its head.

‘I don’t need favours, Alejandro, and I don’t need special treatment,’ she snapped, walking briskly towards him to take the shot. ‘In fact, let’s be honest, I don’t need any of this. Wouldn’t it be better for both of us if you just did the decent thing for once in your life and gave the shirt back to me now? Or are you on some kind of personal mission to make my life as unpleasant and difficult as possible?’

‘You want to concede defeat?’

There was a sinister, watchful stillness about him, and his tone was carefully neutral, but she heard the challenge in his words.

She smiled slowly, sweetly. Adrenalin was pulsing through her like pure alcohol, dilating her blood vessels, making her heart beat faster. She felt high, but at the same time perfectly lucid and oddly calm as she turned her body towards his, mirroring his position, leaning with one hip propped against the edge of the table. ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ she said softly. ‘Which is exactly why it’s the last thing I’d ever do.’

He didn’t smile back. His swollen upper lip accentuated the beauty of his face while making him look twice as dangerous. Standing there, with the lamplight making the hair that fell over his face blue-black, he was every inch the Spanish conquistador.

‘You’re sure about that?’ he said quietly, almost apologetically. ‘You have to know that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this?’

He held her in his gaze. It was like drowning slowly in warm syrup … delicious … but no less terrifying for it. She blinked. Drowning was drowning, after all.

‘Let’s see, shall we?’ she said in a low voice, and moved round so that she was facing the table again. She was acutely, painfully aware of him beside her, towering over her as she bent to take her shot, looking down on her bare back with that hard, golden gaze that seemed to warm her skin like evening sun.

She had to get a grip. Concentrate.

There was no hurry. She flexed her shoulders slightly, steadying herself. Above her she heard a low rasping sound as Alejandro dragged a hand across his stubble-roughened jaw. She clamped her own mouth shut against the whimper of excitement that rose up in her at the sound, and took the shot.

With a series of satisfying staccato clicks, the balls ricocheted around the table, the orange she’d lined up cannoning neatly into the top pocket. She threw him a quick glance from under her lashes as she moved around to the other side of the table.

‘I hope you’re keeping score.’

Alejandro gave a low, ironic laugh. ‘Don’t worry about that. And you still have a long way to go before the shirt is yours. Don’t get complacent.’

The look she gave him was full of fire and loathing. Alejandro watched with interest as she bent forward over the table to take the next shot, his eyes automatically travelling to the shadowed hollow between her breasts. Being so relentlessly spoiled for a lifetime had obviously given her a completely unrealistic grasp of her own limitations, he mused, forcing himself to shift his gaze upwards to her face. In the glow of the lamp above, the green baize of the table intensified the colour of her eyes to a vivid emerald. He watched them flicker, dart, measuring the distance as a tiny frown of concentration appeared between them.

She hesitated, completely focused, the tip of her pink tongue appearing between her plump lips. She moved, and with one swift flick of her wrist the ball dropped into the pocket. As it fell, Alejandro realised he’d been holding his breath. His whole body felt tense.

Well, that was one word for it. And some parts felt more ‘tense’ than others.

Damn her. As she straightened up he saw the same look of self-satisfied triumph on her face as he’d seen earlier in the hallway with her father when she’d got her own way. She was playing him, he thought acidly. She was perfectly aware of how sexy she looked, leaning over that table with her dress falling forward, and her green eyes right on a level with his crotch. She was manipulating him as ruthlessly as she had that night at Harcourt Manor all those years ago, but with twice as much finesse.

‘This isn’t complacency, Mr D’Arienzo,’ she said huskily. ‘This is confidence.’

Lust gripped him, making him feel dizzy. Leaning against the wall, tipping his head back, he watched through narrowed eyes as she undulated around the table, taking shot after shot. In the quiet room, everything seemed distorted, exaggerated, so that he was almost painfully aware of the soft sigh of her breathing, the whisper of chiffon against her velvet skin.

She straightened up. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want special treatment?’ she said coldly. ‘I missed. It’s your turn.’

Scowling, he levered himself upright and walked stiffly around the table. His mind had been so occupied with other things he’d almost forgotten about the game, and he was surprised to see how few balls remained now. She was more skilled than he’d thought. As he leaned over the table he was aware of her picking up the small cube of chalk and rubbing it across the tip of her cue. He looked up. She was holding the cue in both hands in front of her, like a pornographic prop, and as he watched she put it by her mouth and blew softly, getting rid of the excess chalk.

It was deliberate torment.

‘I have to congratulate you. You’re quite a player.’

He spoke with lethal calm, but the careless savagery of his shot gave some hint of the choking rage inside him. The few remaining balls ricocheted violently from cushion to cushion and then stilled.

‘Thank you.’

Alejandro took a step backwards, out of the pool of light, and leaned against the wood-panelled wall. Tensing his jaw, he looked away as she stood with her back to him to take her turn. ‘It wasn’t a comment on your sporting ability.’

Inexorably he found his head moving round to look at her again. In the lamplight from above her bare skin gleamed, as smooth and flawless as thick cream. The bones of her spine showed through, making him want to run his fingers down them to where they disappeared beneath the grey satin band of her dress. She shifted her position slightly, pressing her hips against the table and adjusting her weight in the high heels.

‘No?’ Her voice was cool and detached as she parted her legs to gain better balance and stretched forward over the table. He’d thought her legs were bare, but now he could see that he’d been wrong. She was wearing stockings of the sheerest silk. Stockings with wide, lace tops which were visible as she bent forward.

Alejandro felt his breath stop and his muscles tighten, as if he’d just been tackled and brought down. Hard.

She turned back to him and her eyes were very dark. ‘What was it, then, Alejandro?’

‘I was referring more to your match technique,’ he said with quiet brutality. ‘Though the theory behind it is fatally flawed. If you think that after last time there’s even the smallest chance that I’d be interested—’

‘You bastard!’

He caught her by the wrist as she raised her hand to hit him and wrenched her arm back to her side. Her breathing was very rapid, and he could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his own. ‘Oh no,’ she breathed, her voice trembling slightly. ‘I wouldn’t think that after last time there’s any chance of that, Alejandro. Your lack of interest then was sufficiently spectacular to leave me in no doubt about that. But don’t worry,’ she went on, her emerald eyes glittering with feverish defiance, ‘I’m sure that to most people all that hugging and kissing on the pitch when you score a try just looks like the camaraderie of the game.’

His grip tightened on her wrist, and he saw her wince. ‘Be careful, Tamsin.’

She laughed, a low, breathy, mocking laugh. ‘Why? Because you don’t want—’

She didn’t get any further. In one decisive movement Alejandro had closed the small gap that separated them and brought his mouth down on hers, so that the rest of her stupid, childish taunting was lost in the wildfire of his brutal kiss.

It was like falling off a cliff and finding she could fly. The ground beneath her feet melted away. Gravity ceased to exist. There was nothing but darkness and fire, and the roar of blood in her head. His fingers dug into her shoulders, pulling her against the hardness of his body. Of his arousal.

His rigid, obvious arousal.

Oh, God …

She wasn’t aware of dropping the billiard cue, but she must have done, because suddenly her hands were sliding across the rock-hard contours of his shoulders, moving up the column of his neck to tangle into his hair. The taste of him, the scent of him, filled her—dry and masculine, earthy and clean. His mouth ground down on hers, violent, desperate, brilliant, searing his brand on her forever.

The billiard table pressed hard into her bottom and instinctively, with a hitch of her hips, she raised herself up so that she was sitting up on it, parting her thighs and pulling him into her. The bittersweet taste of blood was on her lips, metallic and warm, and his fingers bruised her skin. She didn’t care.

If he stopped now she knew she would scream.

She wriggled back on the table, grabbing the open collar of his evening shirt, pulling him with her. Suddenly she was aware of the sound of their breathing, harsh and laboured. Her whole body vibrated with want, arching towards him, opening like some exotic, fleshy flower, oozing nectar. Reality was irrelevant. The past was meaningless and the future incomprehensible. All that mattered was now, and this—the glorious incarnation of every one of her guilty, luscious teenage fantasies.

She was in the arms of Alejandro D’Arienzo, and his mouth was crushing hers, his hands holding her, sliding downwards, his thumbs caressing the underside of her breasts.

Alejandro lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were as dark as vintage cognac, glinting dully in the low light, and his mouth was full and crimson where the ferocity of their kiss had opened up the cut in his lip.

He moved his thumbs upwards, brushing them over the hardened tips of her swollen, tingling breasts. She stiffened, her head falling backwards. Instinctively, helplessly, she felt her legs wrap around his body, tightening and drawing him into her, wriggling against him as the straining peak of his arousal pushed against the damp silk of her pants.

Her mouth opened in silent bliss, her eyes were wide, dazed, and her breathing shallow as, frozen on the brink of some terrifying, tempting abyss, she stared up into his bruised face.

His bruised, cold, totally emotionless face.

Before she could move or speak he had let her go, stepping sharply away from the table where she was sprawled backwards, turning so she could no longer see his face.

‘I think we’ve proved that your cheap shots were wide of the mark, sweetheart,’ he said mockingly. ‘It’s not that I’m not interested in women, per se. It’s just that spoiled little girls who use sex as a bargaining tool don’t really do it for me. Sorry.’

Points of light danced in front of Tamsin’s eyes and for a desperate, horror-struck moment she thought she might faint. Or be sick.

She closed her eyes, fighting the feeling, focusing all of her fading energy on holding onto that small scrap of tattered dignity which would enable her to hold up her head and look him in the eye as she told him exactly what she thought about men who treated women like laboratory rats to be experimented on.

But when she opened her eyes again he was gone.




CHAPTER FIVE


TAMSIN gave a low moan of despair as she looked at her reflection in the big, cruelly lit mirror.

The lighting in the ladies’ loo at Twickenham might be designed for functionality rather than flattery, but there was no doubt that the face that looked back at her was a mess. Mortuary-pale, with matching white lips, the only hint of colour came from the bluish shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes. It wasn’t a good look.

Right at that moment she would rather face a firing squad—than photographers and journalists from the sports desk of every major national and special-interest publication in the country, but she didn’t have much choice. Her father, along with members of the England management, was waiting for her, and he would expect her presentation to be seamless.

With a shaking hand she dabbed some lipstick onto her pale, numb lips and pressed them together, remembering with a slice of sudden breathtaking pain how they’d swelled and burned beneath Alejandro’s kiss last night as the blood from his torn mouth had crimsoned them.

No.

She couldn’t go there now, not when she had to get out there and look like a poised professional instead of the creature from the crypt. It was absolutely not the time to revisit the ground she had worn bare throughout the long hours of the night as she had asked herself the same question over and over again.

Why had she been so stupid?

Letting him humiliate and reject her once was bad enough. Giving him the opportunity to do it a second time … Well, that was nothing short of insanity. And yet, at the time she had been powerless to stop it. It was as if, the moment he’d left her shivering in the freezing darkness of the orangery at Harcourt, she had shut down and had gone into a state of mental suspended-animation. She remembered reading somewhere that extreme shock could do that to people. For six years she had gone about her life, looking for all the world like a normal person, a perfectly healthy, successful young woman, so that even those closest to her—even Serena—had no idea that beneath the surface she was frozen. A stopped clock.

Until last night.

Putting the lid back on the lipstick, she threw it into her bag and pressed her palms to her cheeks as tears smarted in her eyes again. Big girls don’t cry: that was what her father always said. By the time Tamsin had been born Serena, two years older, had already cornered the market on ‘pretty and feminine’. Tamsin did ‘tough’ instead, and Henry had accepted her as the son he’d never had. Tears were for babies, he’d told her, and Tamsin had learned very early to hold them in.

Last night had been a minor blip—well, quite a major blip, actually—but she was back on track today. She stepped back, taking a deep breath and giving herself one last look in the mirror before heading back out there. As a designer, her clothes were about so much more than fashion, both mirroring her mood and influencing it. The way she dressed always made a statement, and today’s severe black trouser-suit said very loudly ‘don’t mess with me’. The four-inch heels she wore with it added, ‘or I’ll smash your face in’.

The noise from the press room spilled out along the corridor as she left the sanctuary of the ladies’, a loud babble of conversation, as rowdy and excited as the bar on match day. Tamsin shuddered. Right now it sounded good-natured enough, but she had a horrible feeling that in a few minutes it could turn into the sound of a pack of journalists baying for her blood.

‘Ah, there you are, Tamsin. We were waiting.’ Henry Calthorpe looked at his watch as he came towards her. ‘Is everything all right?’

Tamsin summoned a smile. It felt like strapping on armour plating. ‘Everything’s fine, Daddy,’ she said ruefully. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘No reason.’ Henry was already moving away. ‘You look pale, that’s all. But if you’re ready let’s get started.’

The noise level in the press room rocketed as they filed in. The cameras started whirring and journalists got to their feet, keen to get their questions answered.

Boards showing life-size images of the players lined up at the start of yesterday’s game had been placed behind the long table at the front of the room. Taking a seat right in front of Matt Fitzpatrick’s hulking figure in the picture, Tamsin found herself sitting between her father and Alan Moss, the team physio. He was there to comment on the effect the techno-fabric of the new strip was expected to have on the players’ physical performance, but he’d also come in very handy if she passed out, Tamsin thought shakily, picking up the pen that had been left on the table in front of her and starting to sketch.

Henry introduced them all, saying a few brief words about each person’s role in the new team. When he reached Tamsin, the reporters seemed to strain forwards, like greyhounds in the stalls the moment before the start of the race.

‘As you may be aware, Tamsin Calthorpe won the commission to design the new strip, as well as the off-field formal attire of the team.’

‘Surprise, surprise!’ shouted someone from the back. ‘I wonder how that happened?’

Outrage fizzed through Tamsin’s bloodstream. Instantly her spine was ramrod straight, her fingers tightening convulsively around the pen in her hand as her body’s primitive ‘fight or flight’ instinct homed in on the former option. Forcing a grim smile, she looked into the glittering dazzle of flashbulbs in front of her.

‘It happened thanks to my degree in textiles and my experience designing for my own label, Coronet.’ She didn’t quite manage to keep the edge of steel from her voice. ‘I believe there were three other designers competing for the commission, and the selection process was entirely based on ideas submitted for the brief.’

‘But why did you put yourself forward?’ someone at the front persisted. ‘You’re best known for designing evening dresses worn by celebrities on the red carpet. It’s quite a leap from that to top-level sports kit, wouldn’t you say?’

She’d been expecting this question, and yet the hostility of the tone in which it was asked seriously got to her. She wondered if the microphone just in front of her was picking up the ominous thud of her heart.

‘Absolutely,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘And that was exactly why I wanted the commission. I’d built up my own label from nothing, and I was ready for the next challenge.’

‘Was it the challenge you wanted, or the money? Rumour has it that the recent spate of high-street copies has hit Coronet hard.’

Tamsin felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. The bright lights of the cameras made it hard to see anything beyond the front row, but that was probably just as well. Lying was easier if you didn’t have to make eye contact.

‘Coronet’s designs are as in demand as ever,’ she said coldly. ‘My business partner, Sally Fielding, is already handling requests for next year’s Oscars and BAFTAs.’

All that was true. Sally had been approached by several stylists in Hollywood and London, but, since all of them expected dresses to be donated for nothing more than the kudos of seeing them on the red carpet, it didn’t help Coronet’s cash flow. But there was no time to dwell on that now. If she let her focus lapse for a second this lot would tear her limb from limb.

‘Would you agree that your background as a womenswear designer had an obvious influence on this commission?’ another voice asked.

Thank goodness; a straightforward question.

Tamsin was just about to answer when the speaker continued, assuming an outrageously camp tone. ‘The oversized rose-motif and the dewdrops on the rugby shirts are simply to die for, aren’t they?’

A ripple of laughter went around the room. Tamsin’s patience was stretched almost to its limit.

‘Maybe it might be an issue for any guys who aren’t quite confident about their masculinity,’ she said sweetly. ‘Fortunately, that doesn’t include any of the team. The dewdrops, as you call them, are small rubberised dots that maximize grip for line-outs and scrums. But you’re right—my background in couture has been influential. The starting point for any design is the fabric, and this was no different. Working in association with Alan here, and experts in the States, we sourced some of the most technologically advanced fabrics in the world.’

The room was quieter now. People were listening, scribbling things down as she spoke. A bolt of elation shot through her. ‘We started with tightly fitting base-layer garments beneath the outer kit,’ she continued, her voice gaining strength. This was safe ground. Whatever poisonous comments people could make about who she was or where she came from, no one could say she didn’t know her subject. ‘These are made from a fabric which actually improves the oxygenation of the blood by absorbing negative ions from the player’s skin. It also prevents lactic acid build up, improving performance and stamina.’

‘So why did England lose yesterday?’ someone sneered from the back.

Because Alejandro D’Arienzo was playing for the opposition.

Tamsin’s mouth was open, and for a terrible moment she thought she’d actually said that out loud. Casting a surreptitious, panicky glance around, she realised that the cameras were now pointing at the coach, who was talking about form, injury and training. Thank goodness. She picked up the mini bottle of water from the table in front of her and took a long mouthful, grateful for a moment of reprieve. On the pad in front of her she’d unconsciously been sketching the outline of an elongated female figure, and looking at it now she felt a wave of anguish. All the critics were right, she thought miserably, adding a drapey flourish of fabric falling from one shoulder of the figure. She didn’t belong here. She should be back in the studio with all the team, working on next autumn’s collection.

The pen faltered in her hand as dread prickled the back of her neck. If the business was still going then. The RFU commission had helped appease the bank a bit, but …

She gave a small start, dimly aware of Alan’s gentle nudge. ‘Tamsin? This one’s for you.’

She blinked and looked ahead into the gloom beyond the dazzle of the camera lights. ‘Sorry? Could you repeat the question, please?’

‘Of course. I wondered—’ the voice was leisurely, unhurried. ‘—did you encounter any particular problems in the production of the strip?’

A hand seemed to close around her throat so that for a moment she could hardly breathe, much less answer. There was no mistaking that deep, mocking, husky voice with its hint of Spanish sensuality. ‘No,’ she said sharply, her eyes raking the darkness, trying to locate him.

‘None at all?’

He stepped forward, people standing around the edges of the room beyond the rows of chairs moving aside to let him through. His eyes, bruised and shadowed, burned into hers with laser-like intensity that belied the lazy challenge in his voice, and Tamsin noticed with a thud of sheer horror that in his hand he held the shirt.

The missing number-ten shirt.

The treacherous, sadistic, ruthless, vindictive bastard. For a moment she was speechless with loathing. He was trying to force her to admit, in front of people who were already cynical enough about her ability, that she had messed up.

As if he hadn’t humiliated her enough.

‘No,’ she repeated coolly, lifting her chin and meeting his gaze head-on. ‘I was lucky that the manufacturing team was excellent, and the whole production process was very straightforward. When working with very specialised fabrics like these, technical problems with dye or finishes are almost to be expected, but in this instance I managed to anticipate all potential issues and as a result there were no problems at all.’

There. She stared defiantly at him, daring him to say anything to the contrary. After all, if he did, that would betray the fact that he had inside information, which would be an extremely unwise move to make in front of a room full of journalists.

Tamsin’s heart was pounding. She watched him glance down at the shirt in his hand, and back up again. Back at her. His face was like stone.

‘I see. You had an excellent team. Does that mean that your involvement in this commission was merely nominal?’

‘No, it does not,’ she said in a low, fierce voice. Beside her, Tamsin heard her father make a sharp sound of impatience and disgust, and was aware of him leaning over to whisper something to the RFU official on his other side. She knew that at the smallest signal from her he would summon security to remove Alejandro D’Arienzo from the room, but the knowledge gave her no satisfaction. She didn’t want him to go anywhere before she’d made him see that she was more than just a dizzy, vacant heiress playing at having a grown-up job.

‘In that case,’ said Alejandro smoothly, ‘may I assume that you’re available for other commissions of a similar kind?’

‘What do you mean?’

The rest of the room was watching—waiting with the same morbid fascination that make people slow down when they passed a road accident, Tamsin thought bitterly. She felt like a cat who had been lured into the lion’s cage at the zoo and was about to be devoured in front of a crowd of avid onlookers.

‘Miss Calthorpe—sorry, Lady Calthorpe.’ Alejandro’s voice was husky, seductive, eminently reasonable. Only she could sense the barbs beneath the silk. ‘You’ve convinced us all that you won this contract fairly and have been single-handedly responsible for seeing it through every stage from design to completion. I’m sure I’m not alone in admiring the results of your work.’ There was a murmur of grudging assent from the rows of reporters. Tamsin felt irritation prickle up her spine as she noticed the rapt expressions on their faces as they looked up at Alejandro. ‘I’m one of the sponsors of Los Pumas—the Argentine rugby team,’ he was saying, ‘And I’d like to invite you to redesign their strip for their relaunch next season.’

A moment ago they’d been preparing to lynch her, but one word from their hero and they were rolling over like puppies. It was sickening.

‘I—sorry?’

Tamsin’s head snapped round to look in bewilderment at her father as her mouth opened in astonishment. She should have been paying closer attention. For a moment there she thought he’d just asked her to design the Pumas strip, but surely she’d misheard?

Henry Calthorpe cleared his throat importantly. His voice was utterly dismissive. ‘I’m afraid that would be impossible. Tamsin’s schedule is booked up for months in advance, although I’m sure if you put your request in writing …’

A low, derisive murmur went around the room as the reporters shifted in their seats and looked meaningfully at each other, sensing carnage. But Tamsin was oblivious to everything but Alejandro. His dark, handsome face wore the look of a pirate king who had just forced the damsel in distress to walk right to the end of the plank.

There was nowhere for her to go, and he knew it. It was a case of give in, or give up. If she refused him now, it would make everything she’d just said sound like a lie.

Tamsin didn’t give in easily, but she knew when she was outmanoeuvred. She forced herself to look straight at him, but it was more than she was capable of to manage a smile as well.

‘I’d be absolutely delighted, Mr D’Arienzo.’

So, Tamsin Calthorpe had talent, of that there was no doubt. Whether it extended into the field of design, or was simply confined to deception and dishonesty remained to be seen.

Alejandro pushed through the crowd of journalists, many of whom had now turned in his direction to pick up on the unexpectedly juicy twist the story had just taken. Ignoring them, he made straight for the door through which the RFU officials, with Tamsin amongst them, had just disappeared.

He saw her straight away, deep in conversation with her father at the far end of the room where croissants and coffee were set out on a table. If that severe black trouser-suit was supposed to make her look grown up and professional, she’d got it completely wrong, he thought sourly. She just seemed absurdly young; far too thin and somehow …

Ah. Of course.

Vulnerable.

Silly of him to be so slow on the uptake. That was exactly the effect she must have been going for.

As he crossed the room towards them, he watched her put a hand on her father’s arm, as if restraining him. Deliberately he avoided looking at Henry Calthorpe, instead focusing on his daughter. She was very pale—he’d thought before that was just the harsh TV lighting—but he could see now that she looked as if she were about to pass out. Could it be that he’d finally managed to shake the oh-so-secure world of Lady Tamsin?

Leaving Henry’s side, she came over to him. She was trembling, he noticed with a twisting sensation deep in his gut.

‘I hope you’re satisfied.’

‘Extremely,’ he said in an offhand tone. ‘I’ve just secured the services of an extremely talented designer who’s apparently booked up for the foreseeable future. Now all I need is a cup of coffee and my day would be made.’

Her fine eyebrows rose. He could almost see the sparks of hostility that seemed to electrify the air around her. ‘Secured? I’m sorry—shouldn’t that be blackmailed?’

Alejandro laughed. ‘You’ve been watching too many films. Or did I miss the part when someone held a knife to your throat?’

‘You know what I mean,’ she hissed, looking swiftly around her, as if checking to see if anyone was listening, and taking a step towards him. ‘You know that there’s no way I could refuse out there, with the world’s press just waiting for a chance to tear me to ribbons.’

With some effort Alejandro kept his face and his voice completely blank. Her clean, floral scent as she moved closer gave him a sudden flashback to last night, and how it had felt to kiss her. His lip, swollen and bruised this morning, throbbed at the memory.

‘Refuse? Now why would you want to do that?’

‘Because I cannot and will not work for someone I don’t respect.’

He moved past her, and with complete insouciance began pouring coffee from the cafetière on the table into a china cup. ‘Oh dear,’ he drawled. ‘Well, you’d better get over the artistic-diva tantrums, because by tomorrow morning every paper is going to be carrying the story of how England’s up and coming celebrity designer is off to Argentina to work her creative magic on the Pumas.’ He turned back to her, leaning against the table as he took a thoughtful sip of coffee. ‘Unless of course you’d like me to call some contacts and tell them you’ve reconsidered—’

‘Argentina?’ Her eyes widened in horror, ‘Who said anything about Argentina?’

For a split second she looked so scared that Alejandro almost felt sorry for her. Almost. But the memory of what she’d done to him six years ago burned like his split lip. It was her turn to be sorry now.

‘Did you really think I would bring the whole team over here? That may be how people in Tamsin’s world usually operate, but you’re going to have to get used to a whole new way of doing things, sweetheart.’

Watching her eyes darken from emerald to the dark, opaque green of yew trees in winter, he waited for the storm to break. He had seen from the little firework display last night when she’d tried to hit him that Lady Tamsin had a formidable temper, and wondered what she would do now. Scream? Throw something? Or turn to Daddy for help?

She tilted her chin, her blistering hostility cleverly cloaked in ice-cold nonchalance. Alejandro was grudgingly impressed at her restraint.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’

‘To you?’ he said very quietly. ‘Oh no, Tamsin, I’m doing it for you. I’m giving you a chance to prove yourself. I’m giving you a chance to showcase your talents and seal your reputation. You should be grateful. I thought you liked a challenge.’

She laughed softly then, almost as if she was relieved. It sounded breathy and musical. ‘I get it. You think that I’ve had my hand held and all the hard work done for me here, don’t you? You think that I’m going to be absolutely clueless out there on my own, and you just can’t wait to watch me fail.’ She looked up at him, her soft, pink mouth curved into a smile. ‘Well, Alejandro, I won’t fail. I did it all myself, and I can do it again—better, more easily this time—so, if you’re dragging me over to the other side of the world just so you can have the pleasure of watching me screw up, you’re wasting your time.’

‘Fighting talk. Very impressive,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘But I warn you, Tamsin, this isn’t a game. This isn’t like last night, where you can flirt and seduce your way through when the going gets tough. This is work.’

A rosy tide flooded her cheeks and the smile evaporated instantly. ‘And you’re the boss, right?’ she said with quiet venom. ‘Good. I’m so glad we got that straight, because if you so much as lay a finger on me I’ll have you for sexual harassment faster than you can say “hotshot lawyer”.’

Before Alejandro could respond, a member of the grounds team in an England tracksuit and baseball cap had appeared beside them, looking anxious. ‘Miss Calthorpe?’ he said nervously. ‘The photographer’s ready to start the photo-shoot down on the pitch. But, er, unfortunately we seem to be missing one shirt …’

For a moment she didn’t move. And then, still keeping her gaze fixed to his, she said, ‘Thank you. I’m bringing it right now.’

Alejandro smiled as much as his swollen lip would allow. ‘A car will come for you tomorrow morning,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Please be ready by eleven o’clock.’

‘Tomorrow? But—’ She stopped abruptly, visibly struggling to rein in the furious protest that had sprung to her lips. Finally, pressing her lips together, she gave a curt nod and turned on her heel to follow the grounds official.

Alejandro watched her go, her narrow back ramrod-straight, her blonde head held very high. She was hanging onto that fiery temper by a thread, he thought wryly. She seemed very confident that she could handle the professional aspect of the next couple of weeks—but how would she do on the personal? Would the spoiled little diva be able to cope?

He waited until she was almost at the door before calling, ‘Oh—and Tamsin?’

She turned, her face set into a mask of politeness. ‘Yes, Mr D’Arienzo? Or, now I’m working for you, should I call you “sir”?’

‘Alejandro is fine. We’ll be flying on my private jet tomorrow. It’s only a small plane, so bring one bag only, please. I know what women are like for packing ridiculous amounts of unnecessary clothes.’

The look she shot him was ice-cool. ‘You’re saying clothes will be unnecessary? Careful, Mr D’Arienzo—this is business, remember?’

And then she was gone. Alejandro was left staring after her, his coffee cooling in his hand, his mind swirling with disturbing thoughts of Tamsin Calthorpe sprawled naked on the leather seats of his jet, and the unwelcome suspicion that she’d just scored some victory over him.

He’d take her advice. He would be careful.

He had an uneasy feeling that this was going to be a whole lot more trouble than he’d bargained for.




CHAPTER SIX


‘ONE bag! How the hell am I supposed to get everything I need into one stupid bag?’ Wedging the phone against her shoulder, Tamsin picked up a soft jacket, the colour of dark chocolate, and looked at it longingly. ‘Should I take my army coat or the brown cashmere jacket?’

‘Cashmere,’ said Serena firmly. ‘The other one makes you look like you’re in the Hitler Youth. So, tell me, how’s Daddy about all this?’

‘Well, that’s another annoying thing, actually. He’s furious. Which is particularly unfair, considering he knows I had absolutely no choice.’

She squashed the jacket onto the top of her already bulging leather holdall. It was half-past ten, and the bedroom looked like the scene of a police raid, with drawers pulled open and spilling out silken wisps of underwear, cardigans and dresses in every colour.

‘Darling, since when has Pa been rational where his best beloved daughter is concerned? He thought he’d dealt with this problem once and for all, so you can’t blame him for being a bit fed up.’

‘What?’ said Tamsin vaguely, looking around the room. ‘Do you think three sweaters will be enough?’

‘Sweaters?’ There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. Eventually Serena said in a strangled voice, ‘Tamsin, just run by me what else you’ve packed.’

Tamsin picked up a thick leather belt with a heavy jewelled buckle and threw it back into a drawer. ‘Look, I know you’re going to say that I should take lots of dressy stuff, and that Alejandro Playboy D’Arienzo probably holds A-list parties every night or whatever, but I don’t care, because I’m not getting involved in any of that. I’m not interested in him. I’m there to work.’

‘It’s not that. Just tell me you haven’t packed for winter? Darling, it’s the height of summer over there just now. The temperature is in the thirties!’

In the middle of the chaos Tamsin stopped and went very still, her mouth suddenly dry. Her eyes darted to the big, old-fashioned schoolroom clock on the wall by the window, and then to the miserable London greyness outside. She gave a small whimper.

‘Oh, God. Oh, no! I didn’t think …”

‘OK. Don’t panic. Let’s be rational about this. First you have to take everything out of the bag.’

‘Everything out,’ repeated Tamsin desperately, pulling out armfuls of cashmere and wool and trying not to cry. ‘OK. Now wh—?’

She stopped suddenly as she heard the sound of a car engine in the mews below.

He wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes yet, and surely he wouldn’t be so inconsiderate as to—?

A door slammed. Footsteps echoed on the frosty pavement.

‘Oh, Serena. He’s here,’ she whimpered into the phone as the doorbell rang. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘OK,’ said Serena urgently. ‘You’re going to be cool and professional. You’re going to bear in mind at all times that he is absolutely not to be trusted, and most importantly of all—’ the doorbell rang again ‘—you are not going to sleep with him.’ She sighed. ‘But first, you’re going to let him in.’

‘Finally.’ Alejandro walked past her into the narrow hallway and looked around with barely concealed impatience. ‘I was just about to leave. I assumed you’d had second thoughts.’

‘About such a—what was it?—generous opportunity to prove myself?’ Tamsin said sweetly. ‘Now why would I do that?’

‘You tell me,’ he replied with heavy irony. ‘Are you ready?’

She was halfway up the narrow stairs. ‘Nope. Come up.’

Gritting his teeth in irritation, Alejandro followed her, trying not to look at her rear in the skinny black jeans she wore.

‘This better not take long. My driver’s waiting.’

‘Really?’ she said lightly. ‘Can you drive to Argentina? I thought we’d be going by plane.’

He found himself in a large living space with windows all along one wall and warm old pine floorboards. There was a kitchen area at one end with peacock-blue cupboards and an enormous French baker’s rack groaning under the weight of china and pans. The other end was taken up with a huge sofa upholstered in shocking pink brocade and a white furry rug. The whole space was painted in a creamy off-white, and even on the greyest winter morning it was airy and bright.

It was also incredibly messy.

‘Have you been burgled, or is it always like this?’ he asked, looking around. On the table beside the telephone was a pile of unopened brown envelopes, many of them printed in red and marked ‘urgent’.

Stepping over piles of clothes, magazines, discarded shoes and scraps of fabric, he made his way to the door through which Tamsin had just disappeared and felt a dart of heat as he realised it was her bedroom.

‘No, and no,’ she said haughtily, picking up an armful of bulky winter clothes and shoving them into the bottom drawer of an enormous old armoire. ‘It’s like this because some annoying person forced me to travel halfway across the world at a moment’s notice, and then arrived early to pick me up.’

Alejandro glanced at his watch. ‘Ten minutes. That’s hardly early. I assumed you would have packed last night.’

‘Oh, did you?’ she snapped. ‘Well, I think that’s one of the many things I find annoying about you, Alejandro. You have no right to assume anything. How do you know that I didn’t have other plans last night? Why should I turn my life upside down and cancel everything when you snap your fingers?’

Without letting a flicker of the emotion that suddenly licked up through him at the thought of what her ‘other plans’ for last night had been, Alejandro bent down and picked up a scrap of fuchsia-pink silk from the floor beside the bed and held it up. It was a suspender belt.

‘It doesn’t look as if you cancelled anything last night,’ he said sardonically, feeling a twist of grim satisfaction as he watched her eyes widen in outrage. For a moment she stared mutely at him as he turned the delicate band of silk and lace around in his hands before tossing it casually onto the bed.

‘If you must know I spent last night in my design studio, alone, getting together all the stuff I need to bring with me for work. That’s why I haven’t had time to tidy up, or pack, because that’s why I thought you’d hired me—to design your rugby strip for you. If you’d wanted someone with the domestic skills of Snow White, you should have gone to Disneyland.’

She had a point. Maybe he should have, because from what he’d found out last night it seemed likely that Snow White would be about as capable of designing sportswear as Lady Tamsin Calthorpe, and would probably be a lot less scared of hard work.

Leaning against the doorframe, Alejandro shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her thoughtfully. He knew from the press conference yesterday when she had so convincingly denied that there had been any problems with the production of the shirts that she was a virtuoso liar. In fact, identifying when she was telling the truth and when she was making it up was going to be very entertaining. The flight to Buenos Aires was fifteen hours. A challenge like that would pass the time nicely.

He sighed impatiently, letting his gaze wander around the room. The bed was an old Edwardian brass one, piled high with lace pillows and silk cushions, both its head- and-foot-boards draped with sequined scarves, bead necklaces and bras. The intimate femininity of the place made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of things that he’d resolved to forget. A bottle of perfume on the antique dressing-table instantly brought back the warm, fresh scent of her body; a lidless lipstick beside it conjured an image in his mind of her lips, plump and pink in the moments before he’d kissed her, engorged with desire and scarlet with his own blood as he’d pulled away.

Levering himself away from the doorway in one sharp, aggressive movement, he crossed impatiently to the window. ‘I suppose it’s pointless telling you to hurry up.’

Tamsin gritted her teeth and very deliberately carried on folding the long linen shirt on the bed. ‘If you helped it would be quicker,’ she said with exaggerated patience. ‘Or is helping anyone an entirely alien concept?’

Alejandro turned round. ‘It depends,’ he said slowly in a voice that dripped acid, ‘whether the person you help is then going to claim they did it all themselves.’

The barb found its mark with cruel accuracy. Tamsin bit back a small gasp of pain and grabbed another plain-white linen shirt from the wardrobe, followed by a faded pair of cutoff jeans and an Indian-print tunic top. ‘Forget it,’ she muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Just don’t bother.’

‘Don’t forget this.’ Alejandro picked up the suspender belt from where he’d thrown it on the bed and held it out to her. His eyes glittered with malicious amusement. Tamsin snatched it and shoved it viciously back in the drawer.

‘I don’t think I’ll be needing that,’ she said icily, gathering up a pale-blue satin bra and another one in pink candy-striped silk and throwing them in on top of the suspender belt. ‘Or these. It’s work, remember, Alejandro. I thought we made that perfectly clear.’

Ostentatiously she pulled out three pairs of plain-white cotton knickers, and a white cotton bra and, casting a defiant glance at Alejandro, threw them into the bag. Then she zipped it up.

‘There. I’m done.’

‘That’s all you’re taking?’

She saw him glance incredulously down at the bag, and shrugged nonchalantly to cover up her own sense of unease. Half an hour earlier it had been bursting at the seams, now it was half empty. But having Mr Disapproving there had really cramped her style. There was no way she was going to let him watch her pack anything that could remotely be considered frivolous or alluring.

‘I think it’s enough, since I don’t intend to stay long, and I certainly don’t intend to—’

He laughed. ‘Enjoy yourself?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t want to change your mind—add anything?’

‘No. Let’s just go.’




CHAPTER SEVEN


‘SOME wine, Lady Calthorpe?’

Tamsin gave a stiff nod of assent. Squashing down a leap of annoyance at the use of her title, she watched Alberto, the uniformed steward, pour pale-gold wine into two long-stemmed glasses.

They’d been airborne for just over an hour, but in spite of the exceptional luxury of Alejandro’s private jet she felt nervous and jittery. She’d spent all of the time so far gazing vacantly at a magazine, but couldn’t remember a single detail of anything in it. She did, however, seem to have become oddly familiar with the cover of the share report which Alejandro was reading opposite her.

Alberto gave a courteous murmur and melted away, and Tamsin picked up her glass.

‘Could you please inform your staff that there’s absolutely no need to bother with the whole “Lady Calthorpe” thing?’ she said brusquely. ‘I never use the title myself, and I prefer it if other people just address me by my name.’

Alejandro looked up from the share report. ‘Of course. If that’s what you prefer, I’ll pass it on.’

His face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion, so why did Tamsin get the distinct impression that he was laughing at her? The irritation that had been simmering inside her for the last hour now came bubbling up, like milk coming to the boil.

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

He leaned back in his seat, apparently totally relaxed, but his hooded gaze stayed fixed to her face with a sharpness that belied his laid-back body language. ‘Not at all,’ he said smoothly, throwing the report onto the seat beside him and unfolding a snowy-white linen napkin. ‘I just find it slightly … ironic that you’re suddenly so keen to play down your aristocratic connections.’

‘Ironic?’ she snapped. ‘In what way ironic?’

Alejandro took an unhurried mouthful of wine. ‘Well, you clearly have no problem with using them when it suits you, to get what you want.’

Alberto appeared again, carrying two white plates as big as satellite dishes, each bearing a delicate arrangement of pale-pink lobster and emerald-green salad leaves in its centre. He set these down on the table with elaborate care, giving Tamsin the chance to beat back the fury that instantly flamed inside her. She waited until Alberto had retreated again before answering.

‘Let’s get this straight from the outset, shall we? I love my family. I’m proud of who I am and where I come from, but I have never used it in any way to open doors for me in my professional life.’

Toying lazily with a rocket leaf, Alejandro reflected that that wasn’t what the guy he’d had dinner with last night had said. A board member of the RFU, he had confided over an extremely good port that there had been no other contenders for the England-strip commission, that the design brief from the chairman’s daughter had been the only one under consideration.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

He smiled. ‘Not really. I’m prepared to believe that you might think that because you have a flat and a job that your life is just like everyone else’s. But your family background—’

She cut him off with an incredulous gasp. ‘You hypocrite! We’re having this conversation on board your private jet, for God’s sake! What do you know about living like everyone else?’

He felt himself tense, giving a small indrawn hiss of warning. ‘The difference is,’ he said with quiet venom, ‘I’ve worked for this. For everything I have. I came from nothing, remember.’

He expected her to back down then, to understand that she—the pampered heiress who had never known what it was like to be without anything, particularly not an identity—was on very, very dangerous ground here. But she didn’t. Instead she laid down her fork and looked at him through narrowed eyes.

‘OK,’ she said softly, pausing to suck mayonnaise off her thumb. ‘You had it tough. So that made you need to prove yourself, didn’t it?’

Her words were like a punch in the solar plexus. A very hard, accurate and unexpected punch.

‘Which I’d say,’ she went on in the same quiet, even tone, ‘means that you’re just as much shaped by your family background as I am.’

‘Wrong. I have no “family background”.’

His voice was like gravel, and the warning in it was blatant. She ignored it. A small frown creased her forehead beneath her sleek platinum hair, but other than that her expression was completely calm as she said, ‘Of course you do. Everyone does.’

He gave an icy smile. ‘Maybe in your world, but my family background was wiped out when I was five years old, when I came to England.’

Her frown deepened. ‘Why did you come?’

The pressurised, climate-controlled air seemed suddenly to be charged with tension. Tapping one finger against the polished table top, Alejandro looked out at the blue infinity beyond the window of the plane. He wanted to tell her to back off, that she had strayed into territory that he kept locked, barred and guarded with razor wire, but somehow to do so felt like a denial of who he was and where he’d come from; a betrayal of his father.

And hadn’t his mother betrayed Ignacio D’Arienzo enough for both of them?

He kept his tone neutral and his explanation brief. ‘Argentina was a troubled country at the time that I was born. There was a military dictatorship. My father and uncles were taken for their involvement with a trade union, and my mother was afraid that we might be next. She was half English, on her father’s side, and she booked us on a flight to London the next day. We took nothing with us.’

‘What happened to your father?’

The pure, clear sunlight filtering in through the moisture-beaded window of the plane lit up Tamsin’s face, turning her skin to translucent gold. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and propping her chin upon them. Her eyes were the cool, shady green of an English woodland in summertime, and they seemed to draw him into their quiet depths.

‘Who knows? He’s one of thousands of los desaparecidos: the disappeared. Neither living nor dead.’

‘That’s an awful thing to have had to live with,’ Tamsin said softly. ‘Not knowing …’

He shrugged. ‘It allowed me to believe that he was alive.’ His smile was brutal. ‘Unfortunately my mother didn’t share that view. She remarried quite quickly—the man she worked for as a housekeeper in Oxfordshire.’

‘Oh,’ Tamsin said, and it was more of a whispered sigh than a word. She hesitated, biting her lip. ‘But it can’t have been easy for her.’

Alejandro rubbed a hand across his forehead. Of course, he should have realised that Tamsin Calthorpe would see it from his mother’s side. They were two of a kind. Loyalty and faithfulness weren’t on the program. It was all about expedience.

‘Oh, I think it was,’ he said with brittle, flinty nonchalance. ‘I think it was very easy, in the end, to completely reinvent herself and behave as though the past had never happened. The only thing that was difficult was living with the reminder of where she’d come from. Which was where my long incarceration in the British public-school system began.’

While he was speaking she’d been playing absently with the stem of her wine glass, but suddenly she wasn’t doing that any more, and her hand was covering his. Her touch seemed to burn him, to sear flesh that already felt exposed and flayed raw.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a quiet voice.

He’d waited six years for that, and the irony of the circumstances in which he was finally hearing it took his breath away. What was she sorry about—his mother’s betrayal, or her own?

He moved his hand from beneath hers.

‘I doubt it,’ he said getting up and giving her a twisted smile. ‘Yet.’

Well, actually, he was wrong. She was sorry. Very sorry.

Sorry she’d agreed to come with him, sorry she’d ever set eyes on him, sorry she’d made the mistake of responding to him like he was a decent, well-adjusted human being. It wouldn’t happen again any time soon.

She was only trying to break down the awkwardness that seemed to exist perpetually between them. She was trying to be nice. She couldn’t help it if he was bitter, emotionally arrested and had major trust issues.

Tamsin sighed and looked out of the window into nothingness. Major and perfectly understandable trust issues, she thought miserably. His revelations had touched her deeply, and she’d seen his pain behind the hard, cynical façade. She understood why he had so fiercely maintained his Argentine identity during his time in England, even though it had infuriated the management of the England team and had ultimately cost him his place on it. But it was all he had left of his father, and of his old life. He had been trying to stop himself disappearing too.

Beyond the window the light was fading, and the sky was the same leaden grey as the Atlantic Ocean far beneath them. With infinite weariness, Tamsin looked down at the magazine on her knee and read the same paragraph for the hundredth time. ‘Next season’s key trend will be camouflage’, it said.

How appropriate, she thought, stifling a yawn with her hand.

‘You’re tired.’

She jumped as Alejandro’s voice broke the thick silence that had lain between them for ages now. ‘Get some sleep,’ he said coolly. ‘You know where the bedroom is.’

He had shown her when they had first boarded the jet, and she’d been utterly taken aback by such insane luxury. She’d like nothing more than to curl up now on the large bed—which was ridiculously out of proportion with the scaled-down proportions of the plane—and go to sleep, but Alejandro’s faintly scornful tone made it impossible to admit that.

Straightening her spine, she blinked rapidly. ‘I’m fine. It’s your bed, you have it.’

‘I have reading to catch up on. Business.’

His cold superiority made invisible hackles rise on the back of her neck. ‘Yep. Me too,’ she said briskly, picking up her laptop and flipping it open. ‘Lots to be getting on with.’ The sideways glance she shot him was filled with loathing, but her voice was deliberately sweet. ‘After all, the sooner I make a start on this, the sooner I can go home again, and I think we’d agree that would be best all round.’

At least there was one thing they could agree on, Alejandro thought sourly, leaning forward to lower the blind on the window and block out the reflection of her face in the glass. As the darkness had deepened outside her reflection had gradually come to life, like a Polaroid photograph developing, and he had found his eyes were constantly drawn to it, noticing the way she chewed her bottom lip when she was reading, and how her fingers stroked the hair behind her ears.

All of which was completely irrelevant to the company he was currently thinking of buying, he thought scathingly, returning his attention to the share report.

Business was a game like any other, Alejandro had discovered. You had to observe the tactics of your opponents, recognise their strengths and exploit their weaknesses. You had to know when to hold back, and when to surge forward and press your advantage home. And you had to be able to do it without emotion.

He was good at all that.

Unconsciously now he found himself turning towards Tamsin, and felt an instant dropping sensation in his chest. She was sitting perfectly straight, her legs tucked up to one side of her on the wide leather seat, the laptop balanced on her thigh. The screen was blank, and her head was bent forward slightly so her long fringe fell down over her face.

She was asleep.

In one fluid movement Alejandro got out of his seat and crossed the narrow space between them, removing the computer from her knee and putting it on the table in front of her. Then, slipping one arm behind her neck, he slid the other beneath her knees and scooped her up, holding her against his chest.

Her head fell back, rolling against his arm and giving him a perfect view of her small face with its wide cheekbones and full, generous mouth. His heart gave a painful kick as he looked down at her. For six years he had painted her in his mind as a sort of cross between Lolita and Lady Macbeth, but it was impossible to reconcile that image with the soft, fragile girl in his arms. As he watched, her lips parted slightly and she gave a small, breathy sigh of contentment, and then tucked her head into his body.

With a low curse he turned abruptly and carried her to the back of the plane, kicking the door to the bedroom open and depositing her quickly on the bed. A cashmere blanket lay folded neatly at its foot, and he shook it out and laid it over her, briskly, his hands not making any contact with her body at all.

And then he left, as swiftly and as brutally as he had come, slamming the door shut behind him.

Tamsin’s eyes snapped open the moment he was out of the small room.

A few seconds ago she’d been so tired she’d felt as if her eyelids had lead weights attached to them, but now she was wide, wide awake. Her heart was thumping against her ribs like a caged animal, and every cell of her body seemed to vibrate and thrum with painfully heightened awareness. It was as if someone had just injected her with concentrated caffeine.

Being in his arms for those few moments had done that to her.

She pushed back the blanket he had laid over her so perfunctorily and sat up, running her tongue over her dry lips and looking around her in something like desperation. When she’d felt his arms around her, felt the hardness of his broad chest against her, she’d thought for a dizzy, disorientated moment that she was dreaming and had given herself up to the bliss of being close to him …

Oh, no. She’d sighed, hadn’t she? She’d actually sort of moaned with pleasure.

Springing up from the bed, she paced restlessly around it. She’d known it was going to be difficult, being thrown into such close contact with him, but she hadn’t even come close to realising how hard. They were only halfway there, for crying out loud, and already she’d managed to make an almighty fool of herself—not once but twice.

Panic rose within her as she thought of the hours that stretched ahead, but there was no escape, and nothing to be done except try to keep her mind off Alejandro D’Arienzo altogether. Work was the answer, but her laptop was in the cabin, and there was no way she was going back out there to get it—although if she could just find some paper and a pen she could make a start on some sketches now. Her gaze fell on a little drawer set into the sleek cabinetry beside the bed, and she ran her fingers along it, trying to locate the concealed catch.

It sprang open, immediately revealing a blank notepad. Tamsin gave a little hiss of triumph as she took it out, looking underneath to see if she could see a pen.

There was one. Right there in the bottom of the drawer, half-buried beneath a lot of small, silver packets.

With a trembling hand she reached out and scooped them up, staring at them as a sick feeling spread through the pit of her stomach and an assortment of unwelcome images filled her head: Alejandro, his skin dark against the white sheets, his hair falling over his face as he lifted his mouth from the pouting, scarlet lips of a sultry beauty and reached over to the drawer for condoms.

The door handle turned with a muffled click. Tamsin gave a gasp of horror and slammed the drawer shut, stuffing the condoms into the back pocket of her jeans and spinning around as the door opened and Alejandro appeared.

‘I thought I heard something. So, you’re awake.’

‘Of course,’ she said as casually as possible, holding up the pad. ‘As I said before, I’ve got work to do. I haven’t got time to sleep.’ She ran her shaking hands through her hair in the manner of someone who was perfectly relaxed and didn’t have her pockets stuffed with condoms.

Alejandro advanced into the room. Apart from the fractional lift of his eyebrows his face was as expressionless as ever, but his eyes glittered with sardonic amusement. ‘I see,’ he said quietly. ‘You were doing a pretty good impression of it before.’

‘That wasn’t sleep. That was a power nap.’ Even to Tamsin’s own ears her voice sounded ridiculously shaky, but she couldn’t help it. It was the effect of being in this small space with him. This small, intimate space, with the huge bed stretching between them like a taunt, and the images conjured up by her own pitifully overactive brain refusing to go quietly. She turned away, hoping that it would help her keep her composure. ‘I won’t need proper sleep for ages now,’ she said airily.

‘Oh, you won’t? That’s good news.’

His voice was soft, hypnotising. Unwillingly, she felt herself turning back to face him. Unsmiling, he was looking at her steadily as he took hold of the bottom of his dark cashmere jumper and pulled it over his head. Tamsin’s heart-rate doubled instantly and her mouth went dry.

‘Why?’ It came out as a hoarse croak. The pressurised air seemed to be filled with the sound of her throbbing heart.

His mocking smile was like icy water in her face.

‘Because I assume that means you won’t mind me having the bed.’ He held open the door for her. ‘Don’t work too hard.’

The sky was pale pink by the time Tamsin set aside her laptop and rubbed her hands wearily across her face. Her eyes felt gritty and her head and neck ached with exhaustion, but she had a good basis for four different designs to show Alejandro and the board of Los Pumas. Letting her head fall back against the seat, she closed her stinging eyes and allowed herself a moment of triumph as she took a couple of deep breaths in, savouring the smell of fresh coffee that was coming from Alberto’s galley kitchen, and the faint, skin-tingling scent of lime that was coming from …

Her eyes flew open. Alejandro was standing over her, smiling wryly. His hair was slicked back and damp from the shower, and in the golden morning sunlight he looked like something from an advert for men’s expensive grooming products—relaxed, tanned, fresh, and gut-wrenchingly gorgeous.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I take it you slept well?’

Tamsin sat bolt upright and pushed her hair back from her face. ‘No, I didn’t, I—’ she spluttered in protest. ‘I wasn’t asleep. I’ve been working! That was just—’

‘Another power nap?’ he said, with mocking gravity. ‘Of course. Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ll be landing in a few minutes.’

She would have liked nothing more than a shower and a change of clothes, but there was no time, so had to content herself with brushing her teeth and splashing her face with water in the tiny but opulent shower room, emerging just in time to fasten her seatbelt as the plane came in to land.

It touched down with a bump and came to a standstill on the tarmac. Tamsin felt desperately impatient to be out of the confined space, and she watched as the ground crew placed the steps alongside. Alejandro didn’t seem to be in any hurry, hardly glancing up from his coffee as the door was thrown open.

Tamsin gave a small gasp.

Two uniformed men appeared at the top of the steps and came into the body of the plane. In the sunlight from the open door, she caught the dull gleam of guns at their belts as they spoke in low, rapid Spanish to Alberto.

‘Alejandro!’ she croaked, instinctively moving towards him and reaching out to touch his arm. Her heart was hammering and her skin felt suddenly clammy. There seemed to be an iron band around her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Beside her Alejandro felt very strong and very safe. ‘Alejandro—look.’

‘Hmm? Is something wrong?’

‘They have guns.’

Slowly Alejandro raised his head. His expression of total impassivity didn’t flicker as he looked across at the men, but surreptitiously he reached to unfasten his seatbelt.

‘Don’t make any sudden moves, and do exactly as I say,’ he said very quietly.

Swallowing hard, Tamsin nodded, desperately trying to resist the urge to throw herself into the safety of his arms. He leaned closer to her to whisper into her ear, and she closed her eyes, focusing on his voice, knowing absolutely that if anyone could protect her, it would be him.

‘You can start by getting out your passport,’ he breathed.

Her eyes flew open, and her gasp of fury and outrage was lost as the two uniformed men spotted Alejandro and came forward with jovial cries of welcome, uttered in exuberant Spanish. While they greeted each other in a flurry of handshaking and back-slapping, Tamsin gritted her teeth and waited for the burning in her cheeks to subside as it dawned on her that these were customs officials.

This was no ordinary plane, and Alejandro D’Arienzo was clearly no ordinary passenger here. There was no queuing to get through customs for him. Here the mountain came to Mohammed.

As Alejandro spoke to the men in rapid Spanish, Tamsin listened in fascination to the rise and fall of his low, musical voice. This was the language he had been born to speak, she thought distractedly. It was like suddenly seeing a beautiful piece of art in its proper setting. He had always spoken perfect English, so that anyone hearing him would never guess that he had neither heard nor uttered a word of the language for the first five years of his life, but there was a slight stiffness in his speech. A formality that contributed to his aura of distance.

Not so now when he spoke Spanish. He came alive. His voice flowed across her like a caress. A promise. An invitation. She felt her stomach tighten and heat spread downwards through her as her imagination supplied fanciful meaning to the delicious-sounding words she couldn’t understand.

And then suddenly she realised that they were all looking at her, and that one of the men, the swarthy, bearded one, was coming towards her. She stiffened, throwing back her head and looking questioningly at Alejandro as the man gave her a courteous nod of his head and made a gesture she didn’t understand.

‘What do they want?’ she said warily.

‘Relax. It’s just a formality. They’re from customs. They just want to give you a quick search.’

Tamsin felt her eyes widen in shock and fear as the bearded man advanced on her, and she found herself automatically moving towards Alejandro. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she hissed. ‘What do I have to do?’

‘This.’

He stood in front of her and lifted her arms. Then, keeping his face perfectly still, his hands came to rest lightly on her waist and he murmured, ‘Good. Now, stand with your legs apart.’

A wave of liquid heat crashed through her. She looked up to find his eyes on hers, filled with smouldering amusement. The bearded customs official moved round so that he was standing behind her, and began skimming his hands over her.

His touch was completely professional, totally impersonal, but pinned beneath Alejandro’s shimmering, golden gaze Tamsin felt like she was naked. She kept her chin held high, biting her lip to stop her breath from escaping her in ragged gasps of fury and humiliation as Alejandro looked at her, and kept on looking.

‘Is this really necessary?’ she said through clenched teeth, aware that nerves had made her voice take on a cut-glass haughtiness that was wholly unnatural. ‘I’m hardly a drug-smuggling criminal.’

Alejandro’s eyes darkened to the colour of rich honey, and she watched as his mouth curved into a smile of pure, mocking pleasure at her discomfiture as the customs officer’s hands moved down her body, lightly touching her ribs beneath her breasts, grazing her waist, her hips. ‘Unfortunately, they don’t know that. Your title means nothing here, Lady Calthorpe. Nothing good, anyway,’ he drawled, the husky gentleness of his tone belying the cruelty of his words. Tamsin’s insides melted as her eyes blazed with defiance.

The customs man’s hands were moving upwards again, lightly patting the outsides of her legs, her hips, her bottom …

He stopped, and said something in Spanish. Alejandro gave a curt nod.

‘He’d like you to empty your back pockets, please.’

Oh, God. No.

Tamsin felt the blood rush to her face in a shaming tide of crimson as panic gripped her by the throat and squeezed. ‘What? I’ve got nothing—why should I?’

Alejandro’s voice was like velvet now. ‘Your pockets.’

Setting her chin and lifting her head, Tamsin moved her hand to the back pocket of her jeans. Alejandro watched her with the intensity of a lion watching a deer, his eyes glittering with an emotion Tamsin couldn’t and didn’t want to interpret.

At that moment she didn’t want to do anything except vanish in a puff of smoke. Or be kidnapped by aliens.




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