LITMIR.BIZ

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the lack of interest with which he’d greeted the wine. Yet tonight he could have willingly sunk a bucketful of liquor. ‘A drink,’ he said abruptly.

      Me, too, she thought as she led the way across a cobbled courtyard to one of the city’s oldest pubs.

      Inside, a log fire blazed at each end of the bar and the warmth hit her like a blanket.

      ‘Go and find a seat,’ he instructed tersely. ‘What do you want to drink?’

      ‘B-brandy.’ She shivered violently, despite the heat of the room.

      She found a table far away from the others. She suspected that their conversation wouldn’t be for general consumption. Then she slipped her coat off and sat there waiting for him, her knees glued primly together—like a girl who had just been to deportment lessons.

      He brought two large brandies over to the table and sat down opposite her, aware of the way that she shrank back when their knees brushed.

      ‘Oh? So shy, Sabrina? Don’t like me touching you?’ He held his glass up in a mocking toast. ‘Isn’t that a little like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? You weren’t so shy in my bed, were you, my beauty?’

      She gulped down some brandy, the liquid burning welcome fire down her throat, and her cheeks flushed with indignant heat. ‘Did you bring me here just so you could insult me?’ she demanded. ‘Is that what you’d like, Guy?’

      He shook his dark head and sipped his own drink more sparingly, surveying her over the rim of his glass with eyes which gave nothing away. ‘Not at all.’ But he bit back the unexpectedly explicit comment about what he would like.

      She put the glass down, feeling slightly dizzy with the impact of the burning liquor on an empty stomach. ‘What, then?’

      He dipped his hand deep into his trouser pocket, aware that her eyes instinctively followed the movement. Aware, too, that she certainly wasn’t immune to him either. He watched with fascination as her eyes darkened and he could sense that she was resisting the desire to run her tongue over her lips.

      ‘Recognise this?’ he asked casually, as he withdrew the thin gold chain with the pretty little ring and dropped it on the polished surface of the table in front of her.

      Sabrina’s heart pounded with guilt and shame. ‘Don’t insult me even more by asking me questions like that!’ she said bitterly. ‘Of course I recognise it! It’s mine—you know it’s mine! I left it in your bedroom!’

      It lay like an omen before them.

      ‘Then why hide it from me?’

      She opened her mouth to deny it, but could not. He knew. He was an intelligent man. She was cornered, and she reacted in the same way that all trapped creatures reacted. She attacked. ‘You lied to me, too!’ she accused.

      His eyes narrowed. ‘When?’

      ‘You implied that you were employed by the company—you didn’t tell me you owned it!’

      He nodded and his eyes took on a hard, bright glitter. ‘Yes, I heard about your discussion with Prince Raschid’s emissary.’

      ‘She insulted me!’

      ‘So I believe.’ His lips flattened into a forbidding line.

      ‘She was jealous,’ said Sabrina slowly, as she recognised now the emotion which had made the woman’s voice so brittle. ‘Jealous that I was in your bedroom.’

      ‘Yes.’ His gaze didn’t waver.

      ‘Have you slept with her, too?’

      ‘That’s none of your business!’ he snapped, but something about the dark horror written in her eyes made him relent. ‘Of course I haven’t slept with her! She’s a business acquaintance I’ve met on barely half a dozen occasions!’

      ‘And you met me once,’ said Sabrina hollowly.

      ‘That’s different!’ But he didn’t pause to ask himself why.

      ‘So why did you lie to me about owning the company?’

      He paused deliberately and met her eyes with a bitter challenge. ‘I wanted to be sure that it was me you were turned on by, and not all the trappings.’

      ‘As though I’m some kind of cheap little gold-digger, you mean?’ Sabrina glared at him. ‘And you lied to me about when you were leaving Venice, too!’ she accused.

      He raised a dark, arrogant eyebrow. ‘Did I?’

      ‘You know you did! You told me you were staying for a few days, yet the airport said you had a flight booked out that afternoon!’

      He gave her a look of barely concealed impatience. ‘Oh, that!’ he said dismissively. ‘So what? Flights can usually be changed.’

      ‘And if they can’t?’ she challenged.

      ‘Then you buy another ticket.’ His eyes glittered. ‘A small price to pay under the circumstances.’

      The cool, arrogant statement told her in no uncertain terms his true opinion of her, and Sabrina stared at him with hurt and anger in her eyes. ‘These particular circumstances being sex with a stranger, you mean?’

      He smiled. He certainly preferred her fighting and spitting to that lost look of despair she’d worn when they’d first walked in here. ‘You were there, too, Sabrina. That’s what we did—had sex.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said bitterly, thinking that he didn’t even respect her enough to dress up what had happened by calling it lovemaking.

      ‘And you still haven’t answered my question,’ he observed coolly. ‘About the ring.’

      Shakily, she grabbed her glass from the table and drank from it.

      He wondered whether she was aware that her tiny breasts moved with such sweetness beneath the fine sweater she wore. A pulse began to beat insistently at his temple and he jabbed an angry finger at the chain. ‘So why hide it from me, Sabrina?’

      She stared down into the trickle of brandy left in her glass and started to feel nervous. ‘Can I have another drink, please?’

      ‘No, you bloody well can’t!’ He didn’t take his gaze from her downcast head. ‘Sabrina? I’ll ask you again. Why hide it from me?’

      ‘I d-don’t know.’

      ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ He sucked in a deep, painful breath. ‘Is it an engagement ring?’

      Well, now he would know what type of woman she really was. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. You know it is!’

      He nodded, unprepared for the jerking pain of jealousy. And a bright, burning anger—as fierce as anything he had ever experienced. It pierced like an arrow through his heart. He tried to stay calm, but it took every shred of self-restraint he possessed. ‘I see.’

      There was something so wounding about the way he said those two empty words that Sabrina looked at him with a question in her eyes.

      ‘Now I understand,’ Guy said heavily. He pushed the chain across the table towards her and gave a hollow, humourless laugh. ‘You must have had a lot of explaining to do.’

      She stared back at him in genuine confusion. ‘Explaining?’

      He leaned back in his chair a little, as if close proximity to her might taint him. Or tempt him. ‘Well, yes. Hell, I know you’re a liberal woman, Sabrina—you certainly proved that—but surely your fiancé would be a little jealous if he found out about your little lapse?’ His mouth curved. ‘Though maybe not. Maybe you’re the kind of couple who play away.’ He lowered his voice into a sexy, insulting whisper. ‘Then get turned on by telling each other all about it. There are couples like that, or so I believe.’

      The blood left Sabrina’s face and she stared at him in horror,

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