Эбби Грин – Summer Sins: Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain (страница 8)
Anticipation.
With a sudden lift of his hand, he raised the cognac glass to his lips and took a mouthful of the fine, fiery liquid. He might as well face it—he wanted to see the girl again. Wanted to spend more time with her.
And it was not just to check her out for his brother.
The kick of the cognac to his system seemed to release something in him. A hot pulse through his veins.
He wanted to see her again all right.
Danger prickled on his skin.
He shouldn’t do this.
The cool, analytical voice of reason spoke inside his head. It was the voice he always listened to. The voice he ran XeL with, ran his life with—the voice he listened to which had advised him to disentangle his brother from his previous
He shouldn’t have thought of Lissa Stephens. Shouldn’t have remembered that second image of hers, the one that had come like a blow out of nowhere in a rain-wet London street in the bleak fag end of the night.
But it was too late. It was in his head, etched like a diamond against murky smoke. The pure, bare, unadorned beauty of her profile turned away from him. The long fall of pale hair from its high plume. The upturned collar of her cheap jacket that nevertheless framed the crystal contours of her face.
Of its own volition his hand lifted the glass to his mouth again, and he took another mouthful. He wanted to see that image again. Wanted to look at it. At her.
He needed to know.
The words formed in his mind.
He needed to know. Was she, against all evidence, a fit woman to marry his brother? That was what he needed to find out.
Nothing else. That was, after all, the only question on the table. The only question that could be on the table.
Sharply, he turned away. There was nothing else he needed to know about Lissa Stephens.
As he deposited, with a jerkier movement than was necessary, the cognac glass on a table as he passed it, by heading to his bedroom, he screened out the word that had formed in his consciousness.
Liar.
Lissa lay, staring at the ceiling unseen above her. From time to time, through the muffling of the bedroom door, she could hear a train rattling along the tracks that ran past the rear of the poky flat. From beside her, on the next pillow in the double bed, came the rhythmic rise and fall of slightly stertorous, drug-induced breathing.
She gazed upward into the dark.
For all her extreme weariness she could not sleep. Even though she knew she had to be up again in a few hours, her mind was wide awake.
Thinking. Remembering.
And—worse still—imagining.
About one single face. One single man.
Angrily, she tried to force the image from her mind.
What was the point in thinking about him? None—none at all. So why was she doing it?
Because her mind would not go anywhere else.
Would not even think about the one thing that, above all else in her life, she always thought about. The one person she always had to think about.
Guilt drenched through her. Oh, God—how low could she stoop? Even thinking it with a note of resentment, however faint. Automatically, as if to assuage her own guilt, she reached out a hand to let it rest lightly on the sleeping form beside her. A wave of love and pity welled in her.
If only she could wave a magic wand. If only she could make it somehow instantly better. If only she could …
But she couldn’t. Bleakness chilled in her throat. There was no magic wand. Nothing like that. Only a tiny sliver of hope. And even to seize that meant that all her waking hours had to be dedicated to one thing and one thing only—earning money. Saving money. Little by little. Slowly, oh, so slowly.
Unless Armand …
The chill intensified.
He hadn’t phoned. She had hoped against hope that tonight he would, but there had been nothing. That made it three nights in a row, not hearing from him.
He’s gone.
The grim words tolled in her brain. She might try to dispel them, but they would not disappear.
Gone.
A single word, extinguishing hope—hope she should not have allowed herself.
Against her will the image formed in her mind of sable hair and dark eyes and a sculpted mouth.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘LISSA, the manager wants you. In his office. Sharpish!’
Lissa swivelled her head from her cramped place at the vanity unit in the crowded dressing room that she and the other hostesses changed in. She had only just arrived, and was about to start on her make-up.
She frowned at the command, issued by one of the staff from the door.
‘What for?’
A shrug was her only answer, and with a sigh Lissa got to her feet again and made her way out of the dressing room. A couple of the other girls looked at her curiously.
The manager’s office overlooked the casino floor, which was currently thinly populated.
‘You wanted to see me?’ said Lissa. She was wary and tense. It was seldom good news when the manager wanted to see a hostess. It was usually to reprimand her for not having brought enough custom to the bar. Maybe, thought Lissa tightly, the manager thought she hadn’t got the rich Frenchman to buy enough last night.
Damn, she didn’t want to be reminded of him. She’d done her best all day, all through the long slog into the City, and the long, tedious hours working in the office her temping agency had currently assigned her to. All through the crowded rush-hour journey home, sardined in the Tube train with all the other commuters until they’d been disgorged at the South London underground station closest to her flat. And certainly all through the brief time she’d had at home before setting out for her evening’s work here at the casino.
The manager, short and rotund and far from pleasant, eyed her up. Lissa stood impassively.
‘Private hire,’ he told her. ‘You’re to go straight there. There’s a car waiting outside.’
Lissa stood very still.
‘I’m afraid I don’t do private hires,’ she said quietly. ‘I did make that clear when I started.’
The manager narrowed his small eyes.
‘You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. And
Lissa swallowed. So Xavier Lauran had not been the type to stoop to coming on to her last night after offering her a lift home? No, he was just the type who liked the euphemism of a ‘private hire.’
‘Maybe Tanya would—’ she ventured.
‘He’s booked
Lissa understood. Schooling her face into immobility, she nodded and got out. She felt sickened, more than sickened. It just wasn’t something she’d thought of the man last night.
Somehow she got herself back downstairs again, picked up her things and left the casino.
Just as last night, the rain was coming down heavily. She shivered, but not because of the wet. She had just lost her job. She knew it. Knew the manager would sack her instantly as soon as he found out she had no intention whatsoever of accepting a ‘private hire.’ Worse, she wouldn’t even get the wages she was owed for this week’s work.
Anger and intense depression mingled venomously inside her. Avoiding the front of the casino, she made her way with rapid, urgent footsteps to the main road. At least there were plenty of buses at this time of night, and the Tube was still running. Another thought struck her. What reason could she give for getting home so early? She didn’t want to say she’d lost her job because she’d been offered one she wouldn’t take.
Well, she would think up something on the way home. She would have to. That was the least of her problems.
Acid still curdled in her stomach, and more than acid. Anger, gall and bitterness. More even than that. But she would not give it words. Instead she found other words.
Creep. Jerk. Slimeball.