Mary Lyons - The Playboy's Baby

‘What? I don’t believe it! Are you seriously trying to tell me that you had the nerve to ring my hotel, and...?’ She paused, the full enormity of what he’d done suddenly striking home. ‘Oh, Lord—you must have got them to pack my suitcases, as well!’

‘Certainly I did,’ he agreed, with another maddening, cool smile. ‘Why would you want to waste a precious hour or two of our valuable time together in such a mundane task?’

‘But...but you just can’t do that sort of thing!’ she retorted crossly, appalled to think that some chambermaid had been forced to collect up all her things, empty her drawers and pack her suitcase. Thank goodness she had at least left her bedroom looking reasonably tidy.

But the whole affair was still highly embarrassing. Goodness knows what the hotel must have thought! And what gave Matt the right to act in such a dictatorial, domineering and high-handed manner?

‘It’s no good telling me I can’t do something—especially when it’s clearly obvious that I’ve already done so,’ he drawled. The maddening truth of what he was saying only increased her annoyance.

‘But I haven’t settled the bill, or...’

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘That’s all been taken care of.’

‘Well, thanks a bunch, Matt!’ she snapped. ‘With my reputation now clearly in shreds, I don’t see myself being able to stay at the Mark again. Right?’

‘Absolutely right,’ he agreed smoothly, placing his arms firmly about her rigid, angry figure. ‘Why on earth would you want to stay in a hotel—however comfortable—when you could be curled up in bed with me, here in this apartment?’ he added softly, his arms tightening about her as he lowered his dark head.

The sweet seduction of his lips and tongue, together with the close intimate contact with the hard, male contours of his body, was, as usual, proving totally irresistible.

And, after all, Samantha told herself weakly, what was the point of quarrelling over something so unimportant as a suitcase? All that mattered was the fact that his deepening kiss was, as always, causing the blood to race in her veins, her body shivering with delight at the sensual, erotic touch of his fingers as he loosened her robe, slipping his hands inside to caress her warm, naked body.

Trapped in a dense mist of desire and pleasure, she could only give a slight moan as he slowly moved his lips from hers.

‘There’s no need to be cross with me, sweetheart,’ he murmured softly. ‘I’ve merely been putting into practice the agreement we came to, earlier in the kitchen. Which means when you’re in New York you stay here with me. Got it?’

She nodded. ‘I guess I’m just not used to someone telling me what I can and cannot do. But I’ll try to work on it.’

‘OK.’ Matt grinned. ‘Now, I’d like to point out that we have—thanks to my foresight in arranging for your suitcases to be delivered here—managed to save an hour or two of valuable time. Which means,’ he added with a low, sensual laugh, ‘we can now relax, and go back to bed.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Absolutely not,’ he drawled blandly, his lips twitching with laughter as he led her firmly back over the thick cream carpet towards the bedroom. ‘Surely you must have realised that New York can be a very exhausting city?’

‘And so we need a rest, right now, to conserve our energies for the day ahead?’ she queried ironically, struggling to keep her face straight.

‘Precisely!’ He paused, turning her around to face him. ‘You do, I hope, approve of my new schedule?’

Samantha gazed up at the man who’d so unexpectedly reappeared in her life.

‘Well, taking the rough with the smooth...’ she began, before giving a muffled laugh as she buried her face in his warm shoulder. ‘Yes, my darling Matt, I think I can just about handle it!’

CHAPTER THREE

SAMANTHA paused in the doorway, turning to give a fleeting glance around the huge main living area of her penthouse loft apartment in London.

Her two sisters thought that she was quite mad—particularly the eldest, Edwina, living in cheerful disorder in Gloucestershire with her doctor husband and two noisy, rumbustious young daughters.

However, Samantha had always had an absolute fetish about making sure that her apartment was in pristine, apple-pie order when she left for work in the mornings. Mainly because, when she returned home after a long and exhausting day at the office, she’d found that she needed to relax in a calm, tranquil space which was completely uncluttered.

Now, as always, she got a good deal of satisfaction and enormous pleasure from the sight of the pale oak floorboards and the simply draped, white muslin curtains over the large floor-to-ceiling windows. The current vogue for ‘minimalism’—which seemed to involve having as little furniture as possible, with everything tidied away in vast storage cupboards hidden from view—was her idea of absolute heaven.

‘But it’s so terribly bare!’ her older sister had shrieked in dismay on her first visit to Samantha’s new apartment two years ago.

Shuddering as she’d viewed what seemed blank, empty acres of floor space—broken only by two, huge modern sofas and a deep leather chair, surrounding a long glass and stainless-steel coffee table—Edwina had turned to gaze at her with a worried frown.

‘I simply can’t believe that you really want to live in this great barn of a place? Quite honestly, Sam, it would drive me absolutely up the wall!’

But when Samantha had pointed out to her older sister that this was really what she wanted, Edwina had merely responded with a bewildered shrug of her shoulders. In fact, she had firmly placed the blame for her younger sister’s strange taste in interior decoration on a legacy from their Swedish grandmother.

‘Well, it has to be the answer, Sam. After all, you’re the only one of us who inherited Granny’s dead straight, pale flaxen hair.

‘Yes, I know...’ she’d added impatiently as Samantha had rolled her eyes up at the ceiling. ‘I know you probably only remember Granny as a white-haired old lady. But I’ve seen a photograph of her as a young girl—and it could easily have been a picture of you!

‘And besides,’ Edwina had continued with a laugh, ‘I reckon this place would definitely go down a storm in Gothenburg! However, if it’s what you really want—then I hope you’ll be very happy living here.’

And, indeed, she had been extremely happy, Samantha thought, closing her front door and taking the lift down to the ground floor, where her early morning taxi was waiting to take her to the office.

Traffic congestion in the city of London was now so bad that, as Samantha frequently told her friends, anyone who tried to drive to work clearly needed their head examined. Her apartment was situated in the up-and-coming district of Clerkenwell—only a short distance away from her office near St Paul’s Cathedral. So, it obviously made sense to leave her car safely parked in the underground car park, beneath her apartment, and take taxis to and from the office.

‘G’morning, Miss Thomas,’ her regular taxi driver called out as she climbed into the back of the black cab. ‘I reckon it’s going to be a lovely hot day. In fact, my wife thinks that it’s going to be a real case of flaming June!’

‘You may be right, Joe,’ Samantha murmured, extracting a file from her briefcase.

She generally found that this journey to work was a perfect time to make notes, or jot down any memos concerning the day’s work which lay ahead. But this morning, for some unaccountable reason, she didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on business.

Leaning back on the leather seat, she closed her eyes, trying to ignore the strange nauseous feeling in her stomach.