The Venetian One-Night Baby

SABRINA WAS A little late getting to the cocktail party, which was being held in a private room at the hotel. Only the designers and models and their agents and select members of the press were invited. She entered the party room with her stomach in a squirming nest of nibbling and nipping nerves. Everyone looked glamorous and sophisticated. She was wearing a velvet dress she’d made herself the same shade of blue as her eyes and had scooped her hair up into a bun and paid extra attention to her makeup—hence why she was late to the party.

A waiter came past with a tray of drinks and Sabrina took a glass of champagne and took a generous sip to settle her nerves. She wasn’t good at networking...well, not unless she was showing off in front of Max. She always worried she might say the wrong thing or make a social faux pas that would make everyone snigger at her.

Large gatherings reminded her of the school formal the day after she’d slept with her boyfriend for the first time. The rumourmongers had been at work, fuelled by the soul-destroying text messages her boyfriend had sent to all his mates. Sabrina had heard each cruelly taunting comment, seen every mocking look cast in her direction from people she had thought were her friends.

She had stood behind a column in the venue to try and escape the shameful whispers and had heard her boyfriend tell a couple of his mates what a frigid lay she had been. The overwhelming sense of shame had been crippling. Crucifying.

Sabrina sipped some more champagne and fixed a smile on her face. She had to keep her head and not time-travel. She wasn’t eighteen any more. She was twenty-eight and ran her own business, for pity’s sake. She. Could. Do. This.

‘You’re Sabrina Midhurst, aren’t you?’ a female member of the press said, smiling. ‘I recognised you from the expo programme photo. You did a friend’s wedding dress. It was stunning.’

‘Yes, that’s me,’ Sabrina said, smiling back. ‘And I’m glad you liked your friend’s dress.’

‘I’d like to do a feature article on you.’ The woman handed Sabrina a card with her name and contact details on it. ‘I’m Naomi Nettleton, I’m a freelancer but I’ve done articles forsome big-name fashion magazines. There’s a lot of interest in your work. Would you be interested in giving me an interview? Maybe we could grab a few minutes after this?’

Sabrina could barely believe her ears. An interview in a glossy magazine? That sort of exposure was gold dust. Her Love Is in the Care boutique in London was small and she’d always dreamed of expanding. She and her best friend Holly Frost, who was a wedding florist, hoped to set up their shops side by side in Bloomsbury in order to boost each other’s trade. At the moment, they were blocks away from each other but Sabrina knew it would be a brilliant business move if they could pull it off.

She wanted to prove to her doctor parents the creative path she’d chosen to follow wasn’t just a whim but a viable business venture. She came from a long line of medicos. Her parents, her grandparents and both her brothers were all in the medical profession. But she had never wanted that for herself. She would much rather have a tape measure around her neck than a stethoscope.

She had been drawing wedding gowns since she was five years old. All through her childhood she had made dresses out of scraps of fabric. She had dressed every doll and teddy bear or soft toy she’d possessed in wedding finery. All through her teens she had collected scrapbooks with hundreds of sketches and cuttings from magazines. She’d had to withstand considerable family pressure in order to pursue her dream and success was her way of proving she had made the right choice.

Sabrina arranged to meet the journalist in the bar downstairs after the party. She continued to circulate, speaking with the models who had been chosen to wear her designs and also with the fashion parade manager who had personally invited her to the event after her daughter had bought one of Sabrina’s designs.

She took another glass of champagne off a passing waiter.

Who said word of mouth didn’t still work?

* * *

Max came back to the hotel after the dinner with his client had gone on much later than he’d originally planned. He hadn’t intended having more than a drink with Loretta Barossi but had ended up lingering over a meal with her because he hadn’t wanted to come back to his room before Sabrina was safely tucked up and, hopefully, asleep in bed. Unfortunately, he’d somehow given the thirty-six-year-old recently divorced woman the impression he’d been enjoying her company far more than he had, and then had to find a way to politely reject her broadly hinted invitation to spend the night with her. But that was another line he never crossed—mixing business with pleasure.

He was walking past the bar situated off the lobby when he saw Sabrina sitting on one of the plush sofas talking to a woman and a man who was holding a camera in his lap. As if she sensed his presence, Sabrina turned her glossy honey-brown head and saw him looking at her. She raised her hand and gave him a surreptitious fingertip wave and the woman with her glanced to see to whom she was waving. The woman leaned forward to say something to Sabrina, and even from this distance Max could see the rush of a blush flooding Sabrina’s creamy cheeks.

He figured the less people who saw him with Sabrina the better, but somehow he found himself walking towards her before he could stop himself. What had the other woman said to make Sabrina colour up like that?

Sabrina’s eyes widened when he approached their little party and she reached for her glass of champagne and promptly knocked it over. ‘Oops. Sorry. I—’

‘You’re Max Firbank, the award-winning architect,’ the young woman said, rising to offer her hand. ‘I’ve seen an article about your work in one of the magazines I worked for a couple of years ago. When Sabrina said she was sharing a room with a friend, I didn’t realise she was referring to you.’ Her eyebrows suggestively rose over the word friend.

Sabrina had stopped trying to mop up her drink with a paper napkin and stood, clutching the wet and screwed-up napkin in her hand. ‘Oh, he’s not that sort of friend,’ she said with a choked little laugh. ‘I had a problem with my booking and Max offered me his bed, I mean a bed. He has two. Two big ones—they look bigger than king-sized, you could fit a dozen people in each. It’s a huge room, so much space we hardly know the other is there, isn’t that right, Max?’ She turned her head to look at him and he almost had to call for a fire extinguisher because her cheeks were so fiery red.

Max wasn’t sure why he slipped his arm around her slim waist and drew her to his body. Maybe it was because she was kind of cute when she got flustered and he liked being able to get under her skin for a change, the way she got under his. Besides, he didn’t know any other woman he could make blush more than her. And, yes, he got a kick out of touching her, especially after That Kiss, which she enjoyed as much as he had, even though she was intent on denying it. ‘You don’t have to be shy about our relationship, baby.’ He flashed one of his rare smiles. ‘We’re both consenting adults.’

‘Aw, don’t you make a gorgeous couple?’ the woman said. ‘Tim, get a photo of them,’ she said to the man holding the camera. ‘I’ll include it in the article about Sabrina’s designs. That is, if you don’t have any objection?’

Hell, yeah. He had one big objection. He didn’t mind teasing a blush or two out of Sabrina but if his family got a whiff of him sharing a room with her in Venice they would be measuring him for a morning suit and booking the church. Max held up his hand like a stop sign. ‘Sorry. I don’t make a habit of broadcasting my private life in the press.’

The woman sighed and handed him a business card. ‘Here are my details if you change your mind.’

‘I won’t.’ He gave both the journalist and the photographer a polite nod and added, ‘It was nice meeting you. If you’ll excuse us? It’s been a big day for Sabrina. She needs her beauty sleep.’

* * *

Sabrina followed Max to the lift but there were other people waiting to use it as well so she wasn’t able to vent her spleen. What was he thinking? She’d been trying to play down her relationship with Max to the journalist, but he’d given Naomi Nettleton the impression they were an item. She stood beside him in the lift as it stopped and started as it delivered guests to their floors.

Max stood calmly beside her with his expression in its customary inscrutable lines, although she sensed there was a mocking smile lurking behind the screen of his gaze. She moved closer to him to allow another guest into the lift on level ten and placed her high heel on Max’s foot and pressed down with all her weight. He made a grunting sound that sounded far sexier than she’d expected and he placed the iron band of his arm around her middle and drew her back against him so her back was flush against his pelvis.

Her mind swam with images of them locked together in a tangle of sweaty limbs, his body driving into hers. Even now she could feel the swell of his body, the rush of blood that told her he was as aroused as she was. Her breathing quickened, her legs weakened, her heart rate rocketed. The steely strength of his arm lying across her stomach was burning a brand into her flesh. Her inner core tensed, the electric heat of awakened desire coursing through her in pulses and flickers.

The mirrors surrounding them reflected their intimate clinch from a thousand angles but Sabrina wasn’t prepared to make a scene in front of the other guests, one of whom she had seen at the cocktail party. After all, she had a professional image to uphold and slapping Max’s face—if indeed she was the sort of person to inflict violence on another person—was not the best way to maintain it.

But, oh, how she longed to slap both his cheeks until they were as red as hers. Then she would elbow him in the ribs and stomp on his toes. Then she would rip the clothes from his body, score her fingernails down his chest and down his back until he begged for mercy. But wait...why was she thinking of ripping his clothes off his body? No. No. No. She must not think about Max without clothes. She must not think about him naked.

She. Must. Not.

Max unlocked the door and she brushed past him and almost before he had time to close it she let fly. ‘What the hell were you playing at down there? You gave the impression we were sleeping together. What’s wrong with you? You know how much I hate you. Why did you—?’

‘You don’t hate me.’ His voice was so calm it made hers sound all the more irrational and childish.

‘If I didn’t before, I do now.’ Sabrina poked him in the chest. ‘What was all that about in the lift?’

He captured her by the waist and brought her closer, hip to hip, his eyes more blue than grey and glinting with something that made her belly turn over. ‘You know exactly what it was about. And just like that kiss, you enjoyed every second of it. Deny it if you dare.’

Sabrina intended to push away from him but somehow her hands grabbed the front of his jacket instead. He smelt like sun-warmed lemons and her senses were as intoxicated as if she had breathed in a potent aroma. An aroma that made her forget how much she hated him and instead made her want him with every throbbing traitorous cell of her body. Or maybe she was tipsy from all the champagne she’d had downstairs at the party and in the bar. It was making her drop her inhibitions. Sabotaging her already flagging self-control. Her head was spinning a little but didn’t it always when he looked at her like that?

His mouth was tilted in a cynical slant, the dark stubble around his nose and mouth more obvious now than earlier that evening. It gave him a rakish air that was strangely attractive. Dangerously, deliciously attractive. She was acutely aware of every point of contact with his body: her hips, her breasts and her belly where his belt buckle was pressing.

And not just his belt buckle, but the proud surge of his male flesh—a heady reminder of the lust that simmered and boiled and blistered between them.

The floor began to shift beneath her feet and Sabrina’s hands tightened on his jacket. The room was moving, pitching like a boat tossed about on a turbulent ocean. Her head felt woolly, her thoughts trying to push through the fog like a hand fumbling for a light switch in the dark. But then a sudden wave of nausea assailed her and she swayed and would have toppled backwards if Max hadn’t countered it with a firm hand at her back.

‘Are you okay?’ His voice had a note of concern but it came from a long way off as if he was speaking to her through a long vacuum.

She was vaguely aware of his other hand coming to grasp her by the shoulder to stabilise her, but then her vision blurred and her stomach contents threatened mutiny. She made a choking sound and pushed Max back and stumbled towards the bathroom.

To her mortifying shame, Max witnessed the whole of the undignified episode. But she was beyond caring. And besides, it had been quite comforting to have her hair held back from her face and to have the soft press of a cool facecloth on the back of her neck.

Sabrina sat back on her heels when the worst of it was over. Her head was pounding and her stomach felt as it if had been scraped with a sharp-edged spoon and then rinsed out with hydrochloric acid.

He handed her a fresh facecloth, his expression wry. ‘Clearly I need some work on my seduction routine.’

Sabrina managed a fleeting smile. ‘Funny ha-ha.’ She dragged herself up from the floor with considerable help from him, his hands warm and steady and impossibly strong. ‘Argh. I should never drink on an empty stomach.’

‘Wasn’t there any food at the cocktail party?’

‘I got there late.’ She turned to inspect her reflection in the bathroom mirror and then wished she hadn’t. Could she look any worse? She could almost guarantee none of the super-sophisticated women he dated ever disgraced themselves by heaving over the toilet bowl. She turned back around. ‘Sorry you had to witness that.’

‘You need to drink some water. Lots of it, otherwise you’re going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning.’ His frown and stern tone reminded her of a parent lecturing a binge-drinking teenager.