Wedding Night with a Stranger (7 page)

She swept up beside him in a flowery cloud of that perfume that would haunt him for the rest of his life, stalked to the table they’d shared, and snatched up her purse and wrap.

‘And please don’t insult me any further by attempting to pay for my dinner, Mr Nikosto.’ Her sweet, low voice throbbed with emotion. ‘I’ll pay for my own. And it’s not goodnight, it’s
goodbye.
’

Sebastian drove to the Celestrial office, took the lift up to his floor and strode to his desk. Without a second’s pause he typed the email he knew he should have sent a week since.

To: Pericles Giorgias

Dear Mr Giorgias,

At Celestrial we conduct our business contracts with honour and transparency. As CEO of this company, I reject utterly all hidden clauses, including ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ that cannot stand up legally or morally to the light of public scrutiny.

Celestrial withdraws from all negotiations with Giorgias Shipping.

Consider our association at an end.

Sebastian Nikosto.

His cursor hovered over the send button while frustration and desperation boiled in his soul. Hell, but of course he couldn’t send it. He slumped in his chair.

Now what? Work all night to eliminate the taste of her?

He got up and paced the office, striving to focus his mind on the challenges ahead of him the next day, anything to wipe out of his head the woman and her outrageous reaction to a simple kiss.

But it wasn’t just the kiss, was it? his uncomfortable conscience nagged. It was the situation. It was his idiocy in suggesting coffee. Why had he done it? He cringed to think of how inept he’d been.

God, had he been so long without a woman he could no longer recognise one who’d been brought up in the traditions?

He cursed himself for a fool, blundering into that kiss with such blind abandon. How could he not have read the signs? He couldn’t believe his error of judgement. She’d looked shocked, and revealed an utterly devastating lack of experience.

Where had she been for the last sixteen years? Had Peri Giorgias wrapped his niece in cotton wool and kept her in a tower?

He hadn’t asked for her, but, whether he liked it or not, however furious and enraged and maddened he felt by the situation, she was here now, dammit. Proud, touchy and—

Soft. Fragrant. Yielding to any enchanted fool who took her in his arms.

Vulnerable,
for God’s sake.

Against his will, he’d been moved by her. And however unpredictable and explosive a package she was, he felt responsible for her. Not that she’d ever allow him to set foot near her again.

He winced with the acknowledgement that some of the accusations she’d hurled at him could have had some basis of truth. Would he have succumbed to temptation so rapidly if he hadn’t at some stage thought of her as his for the taking?

He threw himself in his chair and flicked through his program files, stared for minutes unseeing at the screen, then gave up. A hundred laps of the pool were what he needed, followed by a long cold shower.

The situation looked irretrievable. Even if he wanted to risk taking the marriage option he’d wrecked his chances now. And admit it. He
wanted
to see her again. Wanted to talk to her, watch her eyes light up when she laughed, listen to her surprisingly husky voice.

Feel her softness. He closed his eyes while his senses swam in recollection.

If he could just think of some way to make things right with her.

I
T WAS
too hot in Sydney, even in an air-conditioned hotel suite of the finer quality. And there was no use blaming the champagne. A woman suffering sleep deprivation and jet lag should have expected to be able to sleep, not to toss and turn on her pillow or lapse into fitful dreams about Sebastian Nikosto. Disturbing dreams. Sensual and erotic dreams.

Although, if she was still wide awake could they honestly be called dreams? Fantasies, more like. Fantasies where he kissed her and touched her in the places she’d been so wildly conscious of during that kiss.

But as for that crack he’d made at the end about her feeling guilty…

Guilty? Her? Was
she
the one who’d instigated the kiss? Certainly she’d been polite, and co-operated in the spirit of the moment, but that was because she’d been well brought up, she had good manners and he’d taken her by surprise.

Every time she thought of the moment his lips had touched hers her insides swirled helplessly with a warm, languorous pleasure. The experience had felt nothing like kissing Demetri. She’d thought she’d been in heaven kissing Demetri, but now she realised she might as well have been pressing her mouth to the mirror.

She smoothed her fingers experimentally over her lips. She’d
read about that fiery sensation in romance novels, of course, but never imagined it actually existed. She’d known sexy kisses, sure, but she’d never experienced those little tongues of flame dancing along her lips. Privately, she couldn’t deny it had been pretty overwhelming.

She wondered if Sebastian had felt the same sensation. Perhaps he had, because what else had he meant about going somewhere for coffee if not to bed with her? He’d wanted to make love, just like that, and for a wild moment, for just a brief, fleeting, minuscule fraction of an instant, she was tempted.

But he didn’t know that, did he? Or did he? How could he have known? She realised then that she’d known pretty definitely that he’d wanted her, so he probably did know.

Oh, it was all so humiliating. How could she allow herself to feel the slightest bit of attraction to a man someone else had chosen for her? A man who stood to make a profit?

His stunned face when she was accusing him of taking advantage of her rose up in her mind and she grew hotly impatient with herself. For goodness’
sake,
if only she could stop dwelling on it. What did it matter? She’d never see him again, anyway, and that was how she wanted it.

She kicked off the covers and turned on her side, willing herself to fall asleep. She’d just closed her eyes when a weird vibrating buzz by the side of the bed alerted her to the fact that the hotel phone was ringing on its night setting.

Thea Leni? A reprieve?

She scrabbled for the phone, knocking nearly everything off the nightstand in the process. ‘Yes?’

There was a very small pause, then the deep masculine voice sank through her. ‘It’s Sebastian.
Don’t…
’

Her entire being sprang to vibrant, pulse-drumming attention.

‘…hang up, Ariadne,’ he was saying. ‘
Listen,
please. I just want to—say something.’

She shouldn’t listen. She should hang up and avoid talking
to him ever again. But she held her breath and the phone with a faintly moistening grip.

‘What—what is there to say?’

He sighed. ‘Oh, Ariadne.’ That sigh rustled through her and disarmed her utterly, so evocative it was of rueful, manly remorse and bewilderment. ‘What isn’t there to say? I haven’t woken you, have I?’

‘No, no, I—I’m in bed.’

There was a sudden dramatic silence, then another sigh. This one had a totally different quality.

‘Are you? In bed?’ Even without seeing him she could feel his slow sexy smile break out. ‘Me too. I haven’t been able to sleep for thinking of…tonight and…what happened.’ His voice had deepened, and become darker and more velvet if possible, as if by proxy stroking her all over in lieu of his lean, bronzed hands. ‘I just needed to tell you that—I’m sincerely sorry I upset you.
All
—all the times I’ve upset you.’

‘Oh.’ She struggled with whether or not she should forgive him. Would it be weak of her? Wasn’t he just trying to talk her round? But she wanted to. She brightened at the thought that without anyone else in Sydney, possibly the country, she didn’t have a choice.

Not to make it too easy for him though, she said sternly, ‘Well, you know, you can’t just go around kissing people.’

‘I know.’

He sounded so contrite, she felt soothed enough to go on. ‘Trapping people into having dinner with you, then talking them into walking in the dark with you, and…’

‘I know, I know. It probably looked like that. Can you just consider for a minute that I might—that I just—sincerely wanted to get to know you?’

She was silent. ‘Well, there’s no way you can get to
know
someone from one dinner. Not enough to—kiss them. We were
strangers.
We’re still strangers.’

‘Not altogether. Not now. Now that we’ve…’

‘Kissed?’ The word came out so huskily she had to clear her throat.

This time she could feel his smile radiating down the airwaves like a warm Saharan breeze. ‘Well, I
was
going to say broken bread together, but, now that you mention it, a kiss does rather focus your attention on a person, doesn’t it? I think it can tell you a lot.’

A hot flush washed through her, possibly making her glow in the dark. What could he tell about her? She hoped he didn’t guess she’d been lying here, unable to think of anything else except that kiss. Whether she’d performed her part well enough. How much better it might have been if she had more practice. How she might
achieve
such practice.

‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘All right, then.’

‘And—look, I have to say I don’t think of you as being a donkey, or a goat.’

Suspecting that he might secretly be laughing at the passionate things she’d said, she retorted quickly, ‘You knew what I meant!’

‘I did, yes. I think I can understand. I wanted to tell you that I feel the deepest respect for you.’ He exhaled a long breath. ‘Oh. This is a damnable way to meet someone, isn’t it?’

Her ears rang in disbelief. She was silent, straining to wrench the inferences from the words. Did he mean…
meet
someone? As in…?

After a while she ventured, ‘What—do you mean?’

Now
he
was hesitating. ‘I think you are aware that I find you very attractive.’

Her heart thundered into a drum roll. Now was the time to hang up on him. Stop him from saying another seductive, undermining word. But she held on, drinking in every gap, every pause and nuance of what came next like a swan under the spell of a sorcerer.

‘Desire is an amazing thing, isn’t it?’ he went on, his voice grave now. Warm and serious and sincere.

She lay in the darkness, her heart thundering, breathing so fast, with no defences against the beautiful deep masculine voice vibrating through her body, playing on her emotions, saying the things she’d always dreamed a gorgeous man would say to her.

‘…So stunning, and exciting, the way it hits you like a train. Even when you might expect to feel the very opposite, you see someone across a room and at once your body knows, even before your mind does. Do you know what I mean?’

She was knocked sideways, her heart a racing turmoil, her brain in shocked, incoherent confusion. ‘Oh, well, yes, I know I guess, Sebastian, but…but I mean…I can’t
say…
Anyway, look. I have to…I have to get up early in the morning. So…’

‘Oh. So you’d better get some sleep. Goodnight, then, Ariadne.’

‘Goodnight.’ She breathed the last word so softly it was hardly more than air, while her racing pulse roared in her ears.

Sebastian closed his phone and lay in the dark, wondering how far he’d retrieved the situation, smiling to himself about the shyness and shock in her husky voice, imagining her lying in bed in her pyjamas. No, not pyjamas.

A woman like Ariadne would wear pretty, virginal nightdresses. Fine cotton embroidered by little Swiss nuns with lace attached. What did they call that stuff? Broderie anglaise. He supposed it would be pretty enough, but say she belonged to him, he’d have wanted her to wear delicate silks and satins with thin little straps. Filmy things.

The vision that had nearly overwhelmed him when she’d told him she was in bed came flooding back to swamp him. Her hair spread around her on the pillow, her slim body covered in something diaphanous. Sweet, pointed nipples through the gauzy fabric.

He dragged a pillow against him and groaned.

God, it had been too long.

Ariadne was up soon after dawn. After that call it had taken ages to fall asleep, but at least the jagged emotions of the disagreement had been smoothed away. Admit it, she’d been excited, going over every little thing Sebastian had said. At the time some of the things had moved her with their conviction, but now in the cold light of day she needed to try to be honest with herself.

What had really changed? Tempting as it might be to allow herself to be carried away, she mustn’t forget that he had an incentive. Still, she wished she had at least said goodbye to him.

She was too worried about the bill to order breakfast, and besides, how could anyone eat with their life hanging in the balance?

When she was nearly ready to leave, she spread out the small collection of jewellery she’d thought appropriate to bring on a short holiday. Her earrings were all quite good, though she doubted she could get much for them, even if she found a jeweller who would accept them in exchange for cash.

She doubted her ruby pendant would buy her a bed for the night, let alone a plane ticket and a week or two’s accommodation in Queensland. Then there was her watch. She laid it on the console table and tried to reconcile the idea of selling it with sentiment and guilt. It had been her mother’s, one of the few reminders she had of that beloved face.

No, not that. Never. She couldn’t bear to part with it.

The most valuable item was the sapphire bracelet Thio and Thea had given her when she’d turned twenty-one. The sapphires were finely matched Ceylonese, lavender-tinged blue and wrought with white gold. She adored the exquisite thing. The thought of selling it, when they’d loved her so much in the giving of it…

Her eyes started pricking again and she fought off the emotion and thrust those thoughts away. If they’d loved her, why had they done this terrible thing?

She fastened on the watch, and rolled the other items carefully
back in their velvet pouches, slipping the earrings and the wrapped bracelet into her jacket pocket. She’d read of poor people selling their jewels to pawnbrokers, but Thea always dealt with Cartier. The bracelet had probably come from one of their boutiques, anyway. Surely they’d be happy to buy it back.

With her bags assembled ready for the porter, she located a phone directory, then reefed through it. There was a Cartier in Sydney, and hundreds of other jewellers, though she had no idea whether the addresses placed them near or far.

Perhaps the concierge could help.

Downstairs, she faced the reception clerk with a certain amount of trepidation. Her suite was opulent, even by the standards she’d been used to when she’d travelled with her aunt, so she could expect the cost to be high. Even so, when they handed her the account she was staggered.

She stared at it with disbelief, dismay clawing at her nape. Who’d have guessed champagne was so expensive? And why had she ordered so many courses without even checking to see what things cost? Guiltily, she realised she’d hardly even done justice to the meal, she’d been so churned up.

And why, for heaven’s sake, had she needed an entire suite? Had Thio ever in his life been content to book a single room?

She stared at the invoice for a few moments, then looked the clerk in the eye and signed the credit-card slip as coolly as if she were rich and had the full backing of Giorgias Shipping.

Another night like this, though, and she’d be cleaned out. She’d have to think of something fast.

The concierge agreed to keep her suitcase safe until she returned. He obligingly scanned his computer screen for her when she enquired about jewellers, then produced a map of the city and ringed an address for her. Within walking distance, he said.

Sebastian made a deliberate effort to relax on his drive to work. In spite of a strenuous and bracing early-morning surf, the song that had haunted him through the night continued to echo in his mind. Ariadne, Ariadne…

How successful had he been in recovering ground with her? Perhaps she’d agree to meet him later. Maybe he could even take this weekend off to show her some of the sights. How long since he’d taken a weekend?

With an effort, he focused on the day ahead. Gloom had settled over the company, and it was becoming a difficult place to be. He knew his employees were asking questions about the Giorgias Shipping bid. Where was it heading? If there wasn’t some sort of contract in the offing this week, any contract, he had some hard decisions ahead of him.

Trouble was, the place he really wanted to go right now was the Hyatt, to drown himself in blue eyes. This was hardly the way to deal with a crisis. The stress must have been getting to him.

Ariadne stalked numbly out of the pawnshop and into the street. She hadn’t expected much cash for her earrings, but the amount the broker had offered for the sapphire bracelet had been pitiful. Surely they must be worth thousands. Thea never bought poor jewellery, not for a gift, not for anything.

If the salespeople at Cartier’s hadn’t been so suspicious and mistrustful when she’d offered to sell it to them, she’d have thought to have it valued so she’d at least know what sort of price to bargain for. As it was, she’d been lucky to escape from the shop without the police being called.

She broke out in perspiration as for a wild second she teetered on the verge of real panic. Conscious of an unpleasant sensation of nausea, she had to fight to steady herself enough to hang onto her control.

She leaned back against a shop window while she cooled down enough to think. There was no use sinking down onto the
pavement. She could
earn
money, and when she had enough she’d buy her bracelet back from that sleazy pawnshop.