The Bedroom Barter (6 page)

Someone who'd just walked in off the street and appar-ently felt sufficient compassion to take up her cause, she thought uneasily. And, on the face of it, how likely was that?

Sure, he'd offered her a way out, and she'd taken it. Yet she was risking a hell of a lot to accept his help, and she knew it. Which made her undeniable physical reaction to him all the more inexplicable. But if she was honest she'd been conscious of it—of him—since that first moment in the club when their eyes had met. And she'd found herself unable to look away.

When she was a small child, someone had warned her about wishing for things, in case her wish was granted in a way she did not expect. And Nanny had been quite right, she thought ruefully.

Because only a couple of hours ago Chellie had sung about wanting 'someone to watch over her', and that was precisely what she'd got. And every instinct was warning her that, among so many others, this could be her worst mistake so far.

The sooner I get away from him, the better, she thought, her throat muscles tightening. But that's not going to be so easy. Because I seem to have passed seamlessly from Mama Rita's clutches into his.

Oh, God, how could I have been such a fool? And is it too late to redress the situation somehow?

She drew a breath. 'What did you do with Manuel's keys?'

'Threw them into an open drain.'

'Oh.' She moistened dry lips with the tip of her tongue. 'That's—good.'

'I thought so,' he returned with a touch of dryness.

She looked down at the cobbles. 'This boat we're leaving on—where is it exactly?'

'It's moored at the marina,' he said.

'Isn't that the first place they'll look?'

'I doubt it.'

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'Because they have no reason to connect me with boats.'

'You don't seem very concerned.'

'And you're tying yourself into knots over possibilities,' he retorted.

Chellie subsided into silence again, biting her lip. Then she said, 'My passport—you did find it?'

He sighed. 'I told you so.'

"Then—could I have it, please?'

He gave her a swift sideways glance. 'Thinking of making an independent bid for freedom, songbird?' He shook his head. 'You wouldn't get half a mile.'

Knowing he was right did nothing to improve her temper. Or alleviate the feeling that she was cornered.

'Besides,' he went on, 'like Mama Rita, I feel I need something to guarantee your good behaviour.'

She gasped. 'Are you saying you don't trust me?' she demanded huskily.

'Not as far as I could throw you with one hand, sweetheart.' He paused. 'Any more than you trust me.' He slanted a grin at her. 'Grind your teeth if you like, but I'm still your best bet for getting out of here unscathed, and you know it. And what's a little mutual suspicion between friends?'

'I,' Chellie stated with cool clarity, 'am not your friend.'

He shrugged again. 'Well, my Christmas card list is full anyway.'

'However,' she went on, as if he hadn't spoken, 'I'd still like my passport back.' She paused. 'Please.'

'My God,' he said softly. 'The authentic note of the autocrat. That didn't take long to emerge. From downtrodden victim to "she who must be obeyed" in one easy step.' His voice hardened. 'And what am I supposed to do now, darling? Turn pale and grovel? You should have tried it with Manuel. He'd have been most impressed.'

'How dare you.' Her voice shook.

They had stopped walking. Suddenly Chellie found herself being propelled across the quayside and into the shadows between two wooden buildings, where he faced her, his eyes glittering, his hands gripping her shoulders, immobilising her completely. Making her look back at him.

'Oh, I dare quite easily,' he said. 'Because someone should have stopped you in your tracks a long time ago. And then perhaps you wouldn't need me to get you out of this mess now.'

'I don't need you,' Chellie flung back at him recklessly. 'There'll be other boats. I can find a passage out of here without your questionable assistance.'

'Yes,' he said, grimly. 'But probably not tonight. And that's only one of your problems. Because how long can you afford to wait? How long before word gets round that a girl with eyes like a cat and a bad haircut is trying to leave port and Mama Rita tracks you down?'

He paused. 'And there's the small question of cost,' he went on remorselessly. 'You've no real cash, so are you really prepared to pay the alternative price you might be charged? If so, you could find it a very long voyage.'

'You're vile.' She choked out the words.

'I'm a realist,' he returned implacably. 'Whereas you…' He gave a derisive laugh. 'In spite of everything that's happened, you still haven't learned a bloody thing, have you, sweetheart?'

She said in a stifled voice, 'Please—please let go of me.'

'Afraid I might want to teach you a valuable lesson?' He shook his head derisively. 'Not a chance, sweetheart. You're not my type.'

But he made no attempt to release her, and Chellie, trapped between the hard male warmth of his body and the wall of rough planking behind her, felt herself begin to tremble inside.

Suddenly the world had shrunk to this dark corner, and the paler oval of his face looking down at her. The sheer physical nearness of him.

She was dimly aware of other things too. Men's voices shouting angrily and the loud blare of a vehicle horn. But all that seemed to be happening in another world—another universe that had no relevance to her or the quiver of need that was growing and intensifying within her.

She saw his head turn sharply, heard him swear quietly and succinctly under his breath, then, before she could even contemplate resistance, he swooped down on her, and for one startled, breathless moment her mouth was crushed under his.

But not in anything that could be recognised as a kiss. That was the real shock of it all. Because the tight-lipped pressure of his mouth on hers was simply that—physical contact without an atom of desire or sensuality.

A harsh, untender parody of a caress.

And one that was over almost as soon as it had begun.

Chellie leaned back against the wall, her legs barely able to support her, looking up at him, trying and failing to read his face.

She said in a voice she barely recognised, 'What was—
that
about?'

He said, '
That
was Manuel in a Jeep, with another guy driving him.' He paused. 'Bald, built like a bull. Do you know him?'

'Rico. He's a bouncer at the club.' Chellie spoke numbly, trying to drag together the remnants of her composure without success. 'Did they see us?'

'I think they might have stopped if so,' he said drily. 'Besides, I made sure you were well hidden.'

'Yes,' she said. And, again, 'Yes.'
So that was why
… She shivered.

He took her hand again. 'Come on.'

She hung back, staring up at him, her eyes blank with fright. 'What are we going to do now?' Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

He shrugged. 'We go down to the marina and get aboard the boat, as planned. What else?'

'But—everything's changed.' Her voice was a little wail of protest. 'They'll be there first—waiting for us.'

'Then we'll make damned sure they don't see us.' He sounded appallingly calm. 'But I'd bet any money that they're not going anywhere near the marina. Trust me on that, if nothing else.'

He put his arm round her and set off down the quay again at a brisker pace. 'On the other hand, I'd prefer us not to be loitering around on their return journey. Going on a wild goose chase often brings out the worst in people,' he added wryly.

Chellie went with him mechanically, her thoughts in turmoil. But it wasn't simply the threat of discovery that plagued her. Because, to her own amazement, that no longer seemed to be her first priority.

Instead, she found she was reliving the moment when she'd stood with him in the darkness with his mouth on hers. Examining—analysing every trembling second of it.

And realising, to her horror, that she'd wanted more. That she'd needed him to recognise that she was female to his male. That she—wanted him.

The breath caught in her throat.

My God, she thought, with a touch of hysteria. It's completely crazy. How can I be feeling like this? I—I don't even know his name.

Nevertheless, that was the shaming truth she had to face—to endure. That there'd been more than a moment when she'd actually wanted her lips to part under his, inviting—imploring his deeper and more intimate invasion. When she'd longed to feel his hands on her body—the sting of his thighs against hers.

A soft, aching instant when she'd been ready to go wherever he might lead.

A small sound escaped her, halfway between a laugh and a sob.

He noticed instantly. 'What is it?'

'Nothing,' Chellie disclaimed instantly. 'At least—I— don't think I'm handling this situation very well.'

He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was abrupt. 'You're doing all right.'

It wasn't what she'd wanted to hear. She'd hardly expected praise of the highest order, but she'd hoped, at least, for a little warmth and reassurance.

She thought, I wanted him to smile at me as if he meant it…

But I mustn't think like that, she told herself in sudden anguish. It isn't right. And it certainly isn't safe.

Although his arm round her felt safe. Safe—but oddly impersonal. Just as his kiss had been.

Well, now she knew the reason for that totally sexless performance.
I made sure you were well hidden
.

Someone to watch over me, she thought wearily. That's what I wanted, so I can hardly complain about the way he does it. And it was only a minute ago, anyway, that he told me I wasn't his type.

She felt her face warm at the memory. She could only be thankful that she hadn't yielded to that swift, burning temptation and responded to the taste of his mouth. Oh, it would have been so frighteningly easy—and such a disaster.

Because he wasn't her type either, she reminded herself forcefully. He was more than merely attractive, and he might have an educated voice, but that was only a veneer. Underneath there was a darkness—a danger.

And certainly no Galahad either, she thought. He was just a buccaneer, like all the others who'd once pursued their predatory trade up and down the Caribbean sea.

If she'd met him in London, or down at Aynsbridge, she wouldn't have given him a second glance.

Unless he'd looked at you first, said a sly voice in her brain. And you'd suddenly found you couldn't tear yourself away…

Her problem was that she wasn't accustomed to instant sexual attraction. Had always written off that kind of emotion as cheap. Told herself that passing attractions could have no place in her life.

Liking should come first, she'd always believed. A mental attunement that could blossom into real love—Shakespeare's 'marriage of true minds' that 'looks on tempests and is never shaken'.

So how, then, did she explain Ramon? A chapter of accidents, she supposed wearily. She'd been searching desperately for a way to break her father's yoke and release herself from the stultifying boredom of her life. Something that would take her further than non-stop partying.

She had also been rebelling over his persistence in pushing Jeffrey Chilham at her as a future husband. It was to have been a purely dynastic marriage—Jeffrey, a widower at least twenty years her senior, was poised to take over the running of the corporation when Sir Clive retired—and there was nothing the matter with him that a complete personality transplant could not have cured.

He was correct, worthy, and so ponderously indulgent in his attitude to her that she'd often longed to fling herself at him, screaming, and sink her teeth into his jugular vein.

As a result, she'd been driven to parading a succession of totally unsuitable young men in front of her father. She'd had no intention of marrying any of them. She had just wanted to convince Sir Clive that she was a person in her own right, and not for sale. That she was capable of finding her own husband.

Nevertheless, it had been painful to see them fade away, one after the other, after being exposed by him to the social equivalent of an Arctic winter.

The gossip columns had enjoyed a field-day with her, their comments becoming increasingly snide as one relationship after another had withered and died. Chellie had loathed finding herself portrayed as some heartless rich bitch who chewed men up and spat them out, treating love and marriage as a game for her ego.

Ramon had been so different—or was that just what she'd persuaded herself to believe? He was certainly unlike the suits who hung round her, trying to curry favour with her father and failing.

And he'd braved the full force of Sir Clive's icy disapproval to be with her, which had earned him mega-points in her regard at an early stage in their acquaintance.

She'd never dreamed, of course, that she was simply being carefully and ruthlessly targeted.

He'd talked to her, too, in that deep, softly accented voice that seemed to caress her like dark velvet. Shown her for the first time the possibility of another kind of life outside her father's aegis.

He'd spoken to her of rainforests, and rivers as wide as oceans. Of remote
estancias
where herds of cattle grazed on thousands of acres. Of the house that he'd inherited as his father's only son and the fruit and coffee plantations that surrounded it.

And, of course, of the wife he needed to live beside him there. The girl who, miraculously, seemed to be her.

He'd wooed her so delicately, offering her what she'd believed was adoring respect, keeping her newly awakened senses in ferment. She was his angel on a pedestal, to be worshipped always.

He'd sold her a dream, Chellie thought with self-derision, and she'd bought into it completely. She hadn't even thought to ask who was running those vast plantations while he was away. All she could see was herself, riding beside Ramon through an endless sun-drenched landscape. She'd been lost in the glamour of it all.

The question of money had never really been addressed, of course. Ramon was well dressed, had a flat in the right part of town, was seen in the best places and drove a fast car. Naively she'd supposed that that, and all his talk of family estates, added up to solvency. And that her own financial standing was immaterial to him.