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

She thought of him as polished and sophisticated, a man who had everything, with his dark good looks and his enormous flat and wealthy lifestyle—and that wasn’t even taking into account his consummate skill as a lover. Yet something just now had frozen his face into granite. Had made him look almost savage. Was Guy Masters a man of never-ending ambition—and, if so, then why, when he seemed to have more than most men could only dream of?

‘What’s so good about being invincible?’ she queried softly.

Guy’s face tightened. Because it was the opposite of how his father had operated, with his easy come, easy go attitude to life and all the devastation that attitude had brought in its wake. But he had never shared that devastation with any woman and he wasn’t about to start now. Even with Sabrina Cooper and her warm, trusting smile and tantalising blue eyes which the devil himself must have given her.

‘It all comes down to personal choice,’ he said coldly. ‘And that’s mine.’

Sabrina could recognise a brush-off when she heard one—and more than a reluctance to open up. From the daunting expression in those dark, stormy eyes, it was more like a refusal to talk.

Tactically, she retreated.

‘Have a nice time,’ she said placidly. ‘I think I’ll have a bath and that early night.’

Guy had to stifle a groan as some of the tension he’d been feeling was replaced by a new and different kind of tension. Images of her long, pale limbs submerged beneath the foaming bubbles of his bathtub crept tantalisingly into his mind as his photographic memory recalled them with breathtaking accuracy. Did she really need to share something like that with him?

‘Yeah,’ he clipped out. ‘Do that.’

‘Shall I leave you some supper?’ she asked. ‘I thought I’d make some risotto—I got some amazing oyster mushrooms cheap at the market.’

Guy scowled. Just five days and she seemed to have taken over most of the cooking and most of the shopping—and she insisted on shopping around to save him money—even when he’d told her that she didn’t need to. With her, it seemed pride as much as parsimony—and she could be so damned stubborn.

‘You don’t have to cook for me every night,’ he said shortly. ‘I told you that.’

‘But it’s no trouble if I’m cooking for myself—’

‘I’m perfectly capable of fixing myself some eggs when I get home!’ Guy snapped, and turned and walked out of the room, because that hurt little tremble of her mouth was enough to crumble a heart of stone.

Sabrina could hear him slamming around in his room; then the telephone began to ring. She waited to see whether Guy would answer it, but it carried on ringing and so she picked it up.

‘Hello?’

There was a pause, and then a rather flustered-sounding woman’s voice said, ‘I’m sorry—I think I must have got the wrong number.’

‘Who did you want to speak to?’ enquired Sabrina patiently.

‘Guy Masters. My son.’

‘Your son? Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Masters, I didn’t realise—I’ll just get him for you.’

‘No, no, wait a minute—just who might you be?’

Sabrina cleared her throat. ‘I’m Sabrina,’ she said. ‘Sabrina Cooper.’ And then, because the voice seemed to be waiting for some kind of clarification, she added, ‘I’m staying here. With Guy.’

‘Are you now?’ enquired the voice interestedly.

‘Er, just a minute, I’ll get him for you,’ said Sabrina hastily, but when she looked up it was to find Guy standing in the doorway, his face a dark and daunting study.

Wordlessly, he came and took the phone from her, and Sabrina quickly left the room, but not before she heard his first responses.

‘Hi, Ma. Mmm. Mmm. No, no. No—nothing like that.’

A few minutes later, he came and found her in the kitchen, chopping up her mushrooms.

‘Don’t do that again!’ he warned.

She put the knife down. ‘Do what?’

‘Answer my phone—especially when I’m around.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly. ‘I didn’t realise I was breaking some unwritten rule, but of course it is your flat.’ His flat, his territory, his control.

But he didn’t appear to be listening. ‘And now my mother’s asking me eight hundred questions about you. Move a woman in and suddenly everyone’s thinking rice and confetti!’

‘Well, I can assure you that I’m not,’ she told him acidly.

‘Me, neither!’ he snapped.

She turned her back on him and heard him go out, slamming the door behind him, and she viciously decapitated a mushroom. He was bad-tempered and unreasonable, she told herself. And she must have been crazy to agree to come here.

Guy walked into the Kensington wine-bar where his friends had been congregating on Friday evenings for as long as he could remember, surveying the dimly lit and crowded room with an unenthusiastic eye. He asked himself why he had bothered to come out to fight his way to the bar for a glass of champagne when he could have drunk something colder and vastly superior at home. And maybe given Sabrina a glass, too.

He shook his head. What the hell was he thinking of? He always went out on a Friday night!

‘Guy!’ called Tom Roberts, from the other side of the room, and Guy forced himself to smile in response as he wove his way through the crowded room.

‘It’s obviously been a bad day!’ joked his cousin, as Guy joined him.

‘On the contrary.’ Guy took the proffered glass of champagne and gave it a thoughtful sip. ‘I think I may have negotiated a deal on that old schoolhouse over by the river. It’s going to make someone a wonderful home.’

‘So why the long face?’ teased Tom.

‘I guess I’m just tired,’ said Guy, and that much was true. Sleep didn’t come easily when all you could think about was moon-pale flesh and banner-bright hair and a naked body in the room just along the corridor.

Tom topped up his glass. ‘So how’s the new flatmate working out?’ he asked casually.

Guy could recognise a leading question when he heard one. ‘Sabrina?’ he stalled, equally casually.

Tom smiled. ‘Unless you’ve moved another one in.’

‘I must have needed my head examined!’ groaned Guy.

‘That bad, is it?’ Tom threw him a sympathetic glance. ‘She seemed sweet.’

‘Yeah, she is.’ Too damned sweet. Sweet as honey. That night in his bed—all clinging and sticky like honey. A honey trap, he thought with a sudden heat, and drained his glass in one. ‘Where’s Trudi tonight?’ he asked.

‘She’s on a sales conference in Brussels,’ explained Tom. ‘She’s not coming back until tomorrow.’

Guy nodded. Good. Good. ‘Fancy going out for a meal in a while?’ he asked.

‘Oh!’ Tom started grinning. ‘Diversionary tactics to keep you out of the flat, you mean?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Guy shrugged.

‘Oh, we’ve all been there, mate,’ said Tom obscurely. ‘There’s bound to be a woman sooner or later who gets underneath your skin. It’s about time it happened to you!’

‘Sorry.’ Guy’s voice was cool but firm. ‘You’ve lost me.’

Tom put his glass down and narrowed his eyes. ‘And you still haven’t told me anything about Sabrina Cooper…’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘The obvious. Like, is she a friend, or is she a lover?’

Guy opened his mouth and then shut it again. What was the point in trying to explain the whole bizarre situation, even to a man who had known him nearly all his life? Sabrina’s reputation wouldn’t emerge from it unscathed. And neither, he realised grimly, would his own.

‘We’re men, Tom,’ he said flippantly, ‘so we never talk about things like that, right?’