Sharon Kendrick - London's Eligible Bachelors - The Unlikely Mistress

It was an exquisite jewel of a Georgian building, set in the shadow of the mighty church. Sabrina had been there twice while negotiating her transfer and had met the man she would be working for.

Tim Reardon was the archetypal bookshop owner—tall, lean and lanky, with a fall of shiny straight hair which flopped into his eyes most of the time. He was vague, affable, quietly spoken and charmingly polite. He was single, attractive—and the very antithesis of Guy Masters.

And Sabrina could not have gone out with him if he had been the very last man on the planet.

‘Come on in, Sabrina.’ Tim held his hand out and gave her a friendly smile. ‘I’ll make us both coffee and then I’ll show you the set-up.’

‘Thanks.’ She smiled and began to unbutton her coat.

‘Where are you staying?’ he asked, as he hung her coat up for her.

It still made her feel slightly awkward to acknowledge it. ‘In Knightsbridge, actually.’

‘Knightsbridge?’ Tom gave her a curious look which clearly wondered how she could afford to live in such an expensive neighbourhood on her modest earnings.

‘I’m staying with a…friend,’ she elaborated awkwardly.

‘Lucky you,’ he said lightly, but to her relief, he didn’t pursue it.

It was easy to slot in. The shop virtually mirrored its Salisbury counterpart, and after she and Tim had drunk their coffee they set to work, opening the post and filing away all the ordered books which had just come in.

The shop was quiet first thing in the morning, and it wasn’t until just after eleven that the first Cathedral tourists began to drift in, looking for their copies of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

During her lunch-hour Sabrina managed to locate a supermarket and rushed round buying ingredients. Never had choosing the right thing proved as taxing. She wanted, she realised, to impress Guy.

When he arrived back home that evening, he walked in on an unfamiliar domestic scene, with smells of cooking wafting towards him and loud music blaring from the kitchen.

He moved through the flat in the direction of the noise, pausing first at the dining-room door, where the table had been very carefully laid for dinner for two.

And when he walked into the kitchen, Sabrina didn’t notice that he was there, not at first. She was picking up something from the floor, her black trousers stretched tightly over the high curve of her bottom, and Guy felt his throat thicken.

‘Hello, Sabrina.’

Half a lemon slid uselessly from her fingers back to the floor as she heard the soft, rich timbre of his voice. She turned round slowly, trying to compose herself, to see him still wearing the beautiful dark suit, the slight shadowing around his chin the only outward sign that twelve hours had elapsed since she had last seen him. Oh, sweet Lord, she thought despairingly. He is gorgeous.

‘Hi!’ she said brightly. ‘Good day at—’

‘The office?’ he put in curtly. ‘Yes, fine, thanks.’

‘Shall I fix you a drink? Or would you prefer to get changed first?’

His mouth tightened. ‘Any minute now and you’re going to offer to bring me my pipe and slippers.’

Sabrina stiffened as she heard his sarcastic tone. ‘I was only trying to be friendly—’

‘As opposed to coming over as a parody of a wife, you mean?’

‘That was certainly not my intention,’ she told him primly.

The glittering grey gaze moved around the room to see that his rather cold and clinical kitchen had suddenly come to life. ‘This looks quite some feast,’ he observed softly.

‘Not really.’ But she blushed with pleasure. ‘And if you’re planning to get out of your best suit, could you, please, do it now, Guy? Because dinner will be ready in precisely five minutes.’

Neglected work. Late. And now she was telling him to get changed!

Guy opened his mouth to object and then shut it again. What was the point? And she was right—he didn’t want to eat in his ‘best’ suit, which was actually one of twenty-eight he had hanging neatly in his wardrobe. He sighed. ‘Five minutes,’ he echoed.

He took slightly longer than five minutes, simply because, to his intense exasperation, he realised that she had managed to turn him on. Had that been her bossiness or her presumption? he wondered achingly as he threw cold water onto his face like a man who had been burning up in the sun all day. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman since that amazing night with Sabrina in Venice. Hadn’t wanted to. Still didn’t want anyone. Except her.

Now, that, he thought, was worrying.

The meal began badly, with Guy frowning at the heap of prawns with mayonnaise which Sabrina had heaped on a plate.

‘You don’t like prawns?’ she asked him nervously.

‘Yeah, I love them, but you really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.’

‘Oh, it was no trouble,’ she lied, thinking about the beef Wellington which was currently puffing up nicely in the oven. ‘Do you want to open the wine? I bought a bottle.’

He shook his head, remembering last night, the way it had loosened him up so that he had spent a heated night tossing and turning and wondering what she would do if he walked just along the corridor and silently slipped into bed beside her. ‘Not for me thanks,’ he answered repressively. ‘You can have some, of course.’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’ As if she would sit there drinking her way through a bottle of wine while he looked down that haughty and patrician nose of his.

Guy saw the beef Wellington being carried in on an ornate silver platter he’d forgotten he had and which she must have fished out from somewhere.

‘Sabrina,’ he groaned.

Her fingers tightened on the knife. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like beef Wellington,’ she said, the slight note of desperation making her voice sound edgy.

‘Who in their right mind wouldn’t?’ He sighed. ‘It’s just that you must have spent a fortune on this meal—’

‘It was supposed to be a way of saying thank you—’

‘And I’ve told you before not to thank me!’ he said savagely, feeling the sweet, inconvenient rush of desire as her lips trembled in rebuke at him. ‘Look, Sabrina, I don’t expect you earn very much, working in a bookshop—’

‘Certainly nowhere in your league, Guy,’ she retorted.

‘And I don’t want you spending it all on fancy food!’

‘I’m not here to accept charity—especially not yours!’

‘Sabrina—’

‘No, Guy,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I want to pay my way as much as possible.’

He took the slice she offered him and he stared down at it with grudging reluctance. Pink and perfect. So she could cook, too. He scowled. ‘Do that,’ he clipped out. ‘But this is the last time you buy me steak! Understood?’

That was enough to guarantee the complete loss of her appetite, and it was only pride which made Sabrina eat every single thing on her plate. But by the time they were drinking their coffee his forbidding expression seemed to have thawed a little.

‘That was delicious,’ he said.

‘The pleasure was all mine.’

He heard the sarcasm in her voice, saw the little pout of accusation which hovered on her lips. Maybe he had been a little hard on her. ‘I’m not used to sharing,’ he shrugged.

‘It shows.’ She risked a question, even if the dark face didn’t look particularly forthcoming. ‘Have you got any brothers and sisters?’

‘One brother; he’s younger.’

‘And where is he now?’

He sighed as he saw her patient look of interest. These heart-to-heart chats had never really been part of his scene. ‘He lives in Paris—he works for a newspaper.’

‘That sounds interesting.’