Billionaire's Mediterranean Proposal

Relief drenched through Tara. If that was him simply acting the role of attentive lover…

She dragged her mind away, steadied her breathing. Oh, sweet Lord, whatever he had, he definitely had what it took to get past her defences.

Her expression changed. It was just as well that his personality didn’t match his looks—he had all the winning charm of a ten-ton boulder, crushing everyone around him! And it was even more just as well, she was honest enough to admit, that her acquaintance with this man was going to be extremely short-lived.

She’d see this exercise through, get back to work, and be a useful five hundred pounds the richer for it. All feeding into the Escape to My Cottage in the Country fund. She made herself focus on that subject for the remainder of the thankfully short journey, doing her best to ignore the very difficult to ignore presence of the man sitting next to her, and grateful that he was being monopolised by Blondie, who was clearly making the most of him.

As the car pulled up under the portico of the woman’s hotel Tara sat meekly while the other two got out. Marc Derenz escorted Blondie indoors, to emerge some minutes later and throw himself back into the car, this time on the far side vacated by Blondie.

‘Thank God!’ Tara heard him say—and he sounded as if he meant it.

Tara couldn’t resist. He was such a charmless specimen, however ludicrously good-looking. ‘Such a bore, aren’t they?’ she said sweetly. ‘Women who don’t get the message.’

Dark eyes immediately swivelled to her, and Tara reeled inwardly with the impact. It was like being seared by a laser set to stun. Despite the effort it cost her, she gritted her teeth, refusing to blink or back down.

He didn’t deign to answer, merely flicked out his phone and jabbed at it. A moment later he was in full flood to someone he clearly wanted to talk to—unlike herself—and Tara assumed from his businesslike tone, that business was what it was.

She leant back, not sure if she was feeling irritated by his manner or just glad the whole escapade was almost over. Even so, she unconsciously felt her head twist slightly as the car moved back out into the traffic, so she could behold his profile. Again, she felt that annoyingly vulnerable reaction to him, that skip in her pulse. She jerked her head away.

Oh, damn the man! He might radiate raw sexuality on every wavelength, but his granite personality was a total turn-off. The minute she was out of here and had the money he’d promised her she would never think about him again.

Five minutes later they were back at the hotel where the fashion show was being held and she was climbing out of the limo. Pointedly, she held her door open—no way was he driving off without paying her.

‘You said five hundred,’ she said, holding out her hand expectantly. The only reason, she reminded herself grimly, that she had anything to do with this man was for money! No other reason.

For a moment he just looked at her, his face closed. Then he got out of the car, standing in front of her. He was taller than her, even with her high heels, and it wasn’t something she was accustomed to in men.

She felt her jaw set. There was something about the way he was looking at her. As if he were considering something. She lifted her chin that much higher, eyeballing him, hand still outstretched for her pay-off.

His dark eyes were veiled, unreadable.

‘My money, please,’ she said crisply. What was going on? Was he going to try and welch on the deal? For a sum that would be utterly trivial to a man like him?

Then, abruptly, she realised why he was not reaching for his wallet. Because he was reaching for her hand.

Before she could stop him, or step away, he’d taken hold of it and was raising it to his mouth. His expression as he did so had changed. Changed devastatingly.

Tara felt her lungs seize—felt everything seize.

Oh, God, she heard her inner voice say, silently and faintly and with absolute dismay, don’t do this to me…

But it was too late. With a glint in his obsidian eyes, as if he knew perfectly well that what he was doing would sideswipe her totally, he turned her hand over in his, exposing the tender skin of her wrist.

Eyelashes far too long for a man with a face that tough swept down, veiling those dark, mordant eyes of his. And then his mouth, like silken velvet, was brushing that oh-so-delicate skin, gliding across it with deliberate slowness. Soft, sensuous, devastating.

She felt her eyelids flutter shut, felt a ludicrous weakness flood her body. Desperately she tried to negate it. It was just skin touching skin! But her attempt to reduce it to such banality was futile. Totally futile. The warm, grazing caress of his mouth on the sensitive surface of her skin focussed every nerve-ending in her entire body just on her wrist. She was melting, dissolving…

He dropped her hand, straightened. ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, his voice low, his eyes holding hers. The darkling glint in them was still there, but there was something more to it—something that kept her lungs immobile. ‘Thank you for your co-operation this evening.’

There was the merest hint of amusement in his voice. She snatched her hand away, as if it had been touched by a red-hot bar of iron, not by the sensuous, seductive glide of his mouth.

She had to recover—any way she could. ‘I only did it for the money!’ she gritted, going back to eyeballing him, defying him to think otherwise.

She saw his expression harden. Close. Whatever had been there, even if only to taunt her, had vanished. Now there was only the personality of that crushing boulder back in evidence.

With a clearly deliberate gesture he reached for his wallet in the inner pocket of his tailored dinner jacket, and an equally deliberately flicked it open. Stone-faced—determinedly so—Tara watched him peel off the requisite number of fifty-pound notes and hold them out to her.

She took them from him, her colour heightened. There was something about standing here and having a man handing her money—any man, let alone this damn one!

He was looking at her with that deliberately impassive expression on his face, but there was something in the depths of those dark veiled eyes of his that made her react on total impulse. The man was so totally charmless, so totally forbidding, and yet he had so totally shot to pieces her usual cool-as-ice reaction to any kind of physical contact with a man. She’d let him do all that wrist-kissing, let him taunt her as he had and hadn’t even tried to pull away from him.

Now, in an overpowering impulse to get some kind of retaliation, she lifted the topmost fifty-pound note from the wad in her hand. Stepping forward, she gave her saccharine smile again and with deliberate insolence tucked the fifty-pound note into his front jacket pocket and patted it.

‘Buy yourself a drink, Mr Derenz,’ she told him sweetly. ‘You look like you could use one!’

She turned on her high heel, stalking away back into the hotel, not caring about his reaction. If she never saw Marc Derenz again it would be too soon! A man like him could only be bad, bad news.

A man who, like no other man she’d ever met, could turn her into melting ice-cream with a taunting wrist-kiss and a veiled glance from those dark eyes—and who could equally swiftly make her mad as fire with his imperious manner and rock-like personality.

Yes, she thought darkly, definitely bad news.

On so many counts.

* * *

Behind her, stock-still on the pavement, knowing the doorman had been covertly observing the exchange and not giving a damn, Marc watched her disappear from sight, the skirts of her gown billowing around her long, long legs, that glorious chestnut hair catching the light. In his memory he could still taste the silken scent of the pale skin at her wrist, the warmth of the pulse beneath the surface.

Then, his expression still mask-like, he turned away to climb back into his car, and be driven to his own hotel.

As if mentally rousing himself, he reached for the crumpled note in his breast pocket. He slipped it back into his wallet, depleted now of the four hundred and fifty pounds that were in her possession. As his wallet held his gaze, he felt as if the contents were reminding him of something important to him. That he would be wise not to forget.

How much he had wanted to silence that acidly saccharine mouth of hers, taunting him in a way that right now, in the mood he’d been in all evening, had not been wise at all… Silence it in the only way he wanted…

No. Tara Mackenzie was not for him—not on any terms. All his life he’d played the game of romance by the rules he’d set out for himself, to keep himself safe, and it was out of the question to consider breaking them. Not even for a woman like that.

After all, he mused, had it not been for the wretched Celine he would never even have encountered her. Now all he wanted was to put both of them behind him. For good.

It would be less than a fortnight later, however, that he would be forced to do neither. And it would blacken his mood to new depths of exasperatedly irate displeasure…

* * *

Tara was looking at kitchens and bathrooms online, trying to budget for the best bargains. However she calculated it, she still definitely needed at least another ten thousand pounds to get it all done. And even living in London as cheaply as she could—including staying in this run-down flat-share—it would take, she reckoned, a good six months to save that much.

What I need is some nice source of quick, easy dosh!

She gave a wry twist of a smile tinged with acerbity. Well, she’d made that five hundred pounds quickly enough—just for keeping the oh-so-charmless Marc Derenz safe from Blondie.

Memory swooped on her—that velvet touch of his mouth on the tender inside of her wrist…