high with lace pillows and silk cushions, both its head- and-foot-boards draped with sequined scarves, bead necklaces and bras. The intimate femininity of the place made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of things that he’d resolved to forget. A bottle of perfume on the antique dressing-table instantly brought back the warm, fresh scent of her body; a lidless lipstick beside it conjured an image in his mind of her lips, plump and pink in the moments before he’d kissed her, engorged with desire and scarlet with his own blood as he’d pulled away.
Levering himself away from the doorway in one sharp, aggressive movement, he crossed impatiently to the window. ‘I suppose it’s pointless telling you to hurry up.’
Tamsin gritted her teeth and very deliberately carried on folding the long linen shirt on the bed. ‘If you helped it would be quicker,’ she said with exaggerated patience. ‘Or is helping anyone an entirely alien concept?’
Alejandro turned round. ‘It depends,’ he said slowly in a voice that dripped acid, ‘whether the person you help is then going to claim they did it all themselves.’
The barb found its mark with cruel accuracy. Tamsin bit back a small gasp of pain and grabbed another plain-white linen shirt from the wardrobe, followed by a faded pair of cutoff jeans and an Indian-print tunic top. ‘Forget it,’ she muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Just don’t bother.’
‘Don’t forget this.’ Alejandro picked up the suspender belt from where he’d thrown it on the bed and held it out to her. His eyes glittered with malicious amusement. Tamsin snatched it and shoved it viciously back in the drawer.
‘I don’t think I’ll be needing that,’ she said icily, gathering up a pale-blue satin bra and another one in pink candy-striped silk and throwing them in on top of the suspender belt. ‘Or these. It’s work, remember, Alejandro. I thought we made that perfectly clear.’
Ostentatiously she pulled out three pairs of plain-white cotton knickers, and a white cotton bra and, casting a defiant glance at Alejandro, threw them into the bag. Then she zipped it up.
‘There. I’m done.’
‘That’s all you’re taking?’
She saw him glance incredulously down at the bag, and shrugged nonchalantly to cover up her own sense of unease. Half an hour earlier it had been bursting at the seams, now it was half empty. But having Mr Disapproving there had really cramped her style. There was no way she was going to let him watch her pack anything that could remotely be considered frivolous or alluring.
‘I think it’s enough, since I don’t intend to stay long, and I certainly don’t intend to—’
He laughed. ‘Enjoy yourself?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t want to change your mind—add anything?’
‘No. Let’s just go.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘SOME wine, Lady Calthorpe?’
Tamsin gave a stiff nod of assent. Squashing down a leap of annoyance at the use of her title, she watched Alberto, the uniformed steward, pour pale-gold wine into two long-stemmed glasses.
They’d been airborne for just over an hour, but in spite of the exceptional luxury of Alejandro’s private jet she felt nervous and jittery. She’d spent all of the time so far gazing vacantly at a magazine, but couldn’t remember a single detail of anything in it. She did, however, seem to have become oddly familiar with the cover of the share report which Alejandro was reading opposite her.
Alberto gave a courteous murmur and melted away, and Tamsin picked up her glass.
‘Could you please inform your staff that there’s absolutely no need to bother with the whole “Lady Calthorpe” thing?’ she said brusquely. ‘I never use the title myself, and I prefer it if other people just address me by my name.’
Alejandro looked up from the share report. ‘Of course. If that’s what you prefer, I’ll pass it on.’
His face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion, so why did Tamsin get the distinct impression that he was laughing at her? The irritation that had been simmering inside her for the last hour now came bubbling up, like milk coming to the boil.
‘Do you have a problem with that?’
He leaned back in his seat, apparently totally relaxed, but his hooded gaze stayed fixed to her face with a sharpness that belied his laid-back body language. ‘Not at all,’ he said smoothly, throwing the report onto the seat beside him and unfolding a snowy-white linen napkin. ‘I just find it slightly … ironic that you’re suddenly so keen to play down your aristocratic connections.’
‘Ironic?’ she snapped. ‘In what way ironic?’
Alejandro took an unhurried mouthful of wine. ‘Well, you clearly have no problem with using them when it suits you, to get what you want.’
Alberto appeared again, carrying two white plates as big as satellite dishes, each bearing a delicate arrangement of pale-pink lobster and emerald-green salad leaves in its centre. He set these down on the table with elaborate care, giving Tamsin the chance to beat back the fury that instantly flamed inside her. She waited until Alberto had retreated again before answering.
‘Let’s get this straight from the outset, shall we? I love my family. I’m proud of who I am and where I come from, but I have never used it in any way to open doors for me in my professional life.’
Toying lazily with a rocket leaf, Alejandro reflected that that wasn’t what the guy he’d had dinner with last night had said. A board member of the RFU, he had confided over an extremely good port that there had been no other contenders for the England-strip commission, that the design brief from the chairman’s daughter had been the only one under consideration.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
He smiled. ‘Not really. I’m prepared to believe that you might think that because you have a flat and a job that your life is just like everyone else’s. But your family background—’
She cut him off with an incredulous gasp. ‘You hypocrite! We’re having this conversation on board your private jet, for God’s sake! What do you know about living like everyone else?’
He felt himself tense, giving a small indrawn hiss of warning. ‘The difference is,’ he said with quiet venom, ‘I’ve worked for this. For everything I have. I came from nothing, remember.’
He expected her to back down then, to understand that she—the pampered heiress who had never known what it was like to be without anything, particularly not an identity—was on very, very dangerous ground here. But she didn’t. Instead she laid down her fork and looked at him through narrowed eyes.
‘OK,’ she said softly, pausing to suck mayonnaise off her thumb. ‘You had it tough. So that made you need to prove yourself, didn’t it?’
Her words were like a punch in the solar plexus. A very hard, accurate and unexpected punch.
‘Which I’d say,’ she went on in the same quiet, even tone, ‘means that you’re
