Visconti's Forgotten Heir(25)
Colour touched her cheeks at the significance of what he meant.
‘Could I have a shower?’
Thick black brows drew together. ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’
She wasn’t sure she was, but she needed to get away from him—and fast! ‘I think so.’
‘Go on, then,’ he conceded, getting to his feet so that she could get up off the bed. But as she started towards the door he put a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ll go in there.’ He gestured towards the en suite bathroom on the other side of his room. ‘That way I can keep an eye on you, just in case you feel inclined to faint on me again.’
* * *
Sitting on the bed while she showered and listening to the water cascading down over her lovely body was torture to Andreas, but he was too concerned about her to take himself off to shower in one of the guest bathrooms after what had happened.
But why had it happened? The question started up a train of thought that ran away with him as he considered her situation. His colleague had said she’d sounded quite desperate when she’d mistakenly thought she’d been given the job and had asked for that letter for her landlord. Why had things become so difficult for her?
If she’d been modelling since she’d had her son—as she’d implied when she’d accidentally let slip about the child being brought up by her mother’s aunt—she would have been earning good money, so where had it all gone? Why was she in such dire straits now?
Her mother had been—and for all he knew still was—totally alcohol-dependent. Could Magenta have gone down the same road? Been swept up in a spiral of parties and social drinking as it was easy to do in the so-called glamorous circles she moved in? Was that why she had claimed not to drink when he had taken her up to his office? Not because of what she’d seen it do to her mother, but because she was in danger of getting hooked on the stuff herself?
Not liking the turn his thoughts were taking, Andreas got up and started pacing the room.
She had driven him nearly insane with her tender femininity in the past. But she had thrown his crazy feelings for her right back in his face. And since then—who knew? What sort of company or practices had she got herself involved with since? She was a woman men couldn’t resist. Men and even women—the much older, motherly type—had sometimes stopped him in the street when he had been with her just to congratulate him or comment upon how lovely she was. He’d never experienced anything like it before or since. It had made him feel like a million dollars, knowing how much other men envied him, knowing how much they wanted her when she was his—all his. Except she hadn’t been, he reflected, his jaw clenching almost painfully. She wasn’t and never had been his.
With a sick possessiveness ripping through him he wondered how many men had held her—caressed her—lost themselves in that glorious femininity just as he had—since she had walked out of his life. How many had been made to feel like the only man left in the universe as she’d wrapped those long silky legs around him and fed his ego with her soft impassioned cries? He wondered if he wasn’t inviting a whole heap of trouble down on himself by giving her this job, just because he hadn’t been able to resist having her under his roof, when he was in danger of being drawn in by her dangerous femininity as hopelessly as he had been six years ago.
He had worked himself into a foul mood and, picking up the phone by the bed, he started dialling a number to try and immerse himself in his work, try and calm himself down.
She was a vamp, a witch, he thought, feeling his body hardening instantly. The sound of water running in the shower had ceased and he glanced towards the bathroom door, aware that she’d be stepping out now, that she’d be towelling herself dry. So what was stopping him from going in there? Dragging the admission from her—even without touching her—that she wanted him as much as he wanted her? He had always been able to arouse her with words in the past so why didn’t he just do it? Give in to the promise of sublime ecstasy and instigate what they both wanted? To wind up in that bed together. The duvet was still damply creased with the imprint of her body, and Andreas had to take several deep breaths to engage all his powers of control.
He wouldn’t do it because he was much too honourable to behave like that with a woman. Even a tease who lured men into her web of unbelievable ecstasy and then dumped them when it was time to move on to something more profitable.
He was deep in conversation with the manager of one of his American hotels when Magenta emerged from the bathroom. She’d slipped her arms inside the robe, belted it around her tiny waist, and with the collar pulled up to meet the damp loosened tendrils around her face she looked enveloped by it, so small and waif-like, and yet lovely and desirable.