The Billionaire Boss's Bride(43)

Once she was fully dressed, she informed him that he could take her down.

‘Would that be a command?’ he asked, amused at the change between the woman with clothes on and the woman with them off.

‘I could always try and go it on my own.’

‘I take that back. It wasn’t a command. It was a cunning piece of emotional blackmail.’

He lifted her up and carried her down the stairs while she protested futilely on what her sister would say.

Lucy, as it turned out, said nothing for a few seconds. She just looked as Curtis brought Tessa in and deposited her on the sofa.

‘I see you’ve been swept off your feet, sis!’ Lucy’s face broke into a smile of pure charm and she flashed Curtis an approving look.

It was the sort of look that inspired jealousy in other females. Tessa had never, ever, been jealous of her sister. She had been proud of the lovely child who had matured into a gorgeous adult. Lucy had all the hallmarks of the glamorous bimbo. Long, streaming blonde hair, perfectly chiselled features, wide blue eyes and a figure that screamed out for very tight clothing. However, she was saved from being the archetypal blonde by nature of her personality. Her eyes danced and her mouth looked as though it was permanently ready to laugh. There was something sweetly wicked about her and it had got men hooked time and time again.

No, Tessa had become used to sitting back and enjoying her sister’s impact.

Not quite so now. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Curtis just in case he, too, was falling under her sister’s spell.

She caught herself. This was the man who had just made love to her! Touched her in ways that had set her body alight!

But then…a little voice of malice said, he hadn’t exactly been shouting out his love, had he? Or even his attraction. And it hadn’t really been making love, had it? Not really. Not technically. He had pleasured her…

Lucy had flopped into one of the chairs, with one leg dangling over the arm and her head thrown back.

She was managing to turn brown into a colour everyone might conceivably want to wear, in the hope that they might pull it off too. Brown, flared jeans, brown tight cardigan cropped at the waist, exposing a terracotta-coloured silk vest. Nothing else. No jewellery, nothing brash, just utter simplicity.

Tessa roused herself sufficiently to answer Lucy’s questions about how she fell and where and how and why and wasn’t she so lucky to have had her boss there, on the spot, ready to charge into action and rescue her from being trampled to death by crowds of people intent on Christmas shopping.

Lucy made a feeble attempt at a joke about Christmas, turkeys and shoppers, forgetting the punchline three times, but still managed to evoke a hearty chuckle from Curtis when she did finally remember. Tessa’s laugh was a little more forced.

‘You seem pretty sober for a night on the tiles, Luce,’ she said, changing the subject from herself, and Lucy snorted, sitting up straighter and tucking her legs under her.

‘Started too early,’ she explained. ‘Lunch time, in fact. Just a quick one at the pub and you know how it goes. I barely drank a thing, actually. I’d planned on doing a bit of, yes, shopping, and I spent half my time checking my watch and wondering whether I could leave and catch them all up a bit later. Which is what I did, except by the time I caught them up I was as sober as a judge and they were rolling in the aisles.’

‘Not a good situation,’ Curtis said sympathetically. Tessa’s acidity levels rose accordingly. The warm glow she had felt in the immediate aftermath of their love-making was fading fast. Too many doubts had set in, and now, when she sneaked a look at Curtis, it was to find his attention focused on her sister.

‘Hence,’ Lucy was saying airily, ‘my early night. Well, early compared to what I had planned on. I would have come home a lot sooner if I had known about your leg, sis.’ Her voice became serious. ‘You should have called me.’

‘I didn’t think you’d hear your phone amid the noise,’ Tessa hedged. Actually, calling her sister hadn’t occurred to her at any point in time. Why would it? she thought sourly. How many damsels in distress would choose being rescued by a disgruntled sibling dragged away from a hell raising pre-Christmas pub-crawl over a knight in shining armour? Especially when said damsel in distress was in love with the knight in question?

‘True,’ Lucy admitted readily enough. ‘Although it does vibrate. I would have felt it in my bag. Maybe. Well, much more fun being rescued by a tall, gorgeous hunk, anyway.’ She giggled and Curtis shot Tessa a look that very much resembled a cat in possession of the proverbial cream.

‘Oh, good grief,’ Tessa said, ‘that sort of remark is just the thing to go to his head. Which,’ she added, ‘is already heavily inflated anyway.’