ridden in his private lift down to the parking basement in total silence. With no choice but to go along with him, she was too angry to trust herself to attempt small talk.
Her sympathy was history. Sylvie no longer cared what he was feeling.
Smug self-satisfaction, no doubt, at putting her to the maximum possible inconvenience just because he could.
He led the way past an equally black and gleaming Aston Martin that was, no doubt, his personal transport. Fast and classy with voluptuous cream leather upholstery, it fitted his specification perfectly.
For a car or a wife.
Shame on Candy for dumping him; he deserved her!
They reached the van. He unlocked it, slid open the driver’s door and held out the keys.
She stared at them.
She’d been tempted to insist on driving the van herself, if only to reclaim a little of the control which he’d wrested from her the moment she’d arrived at his office. If he was really serious about charging her for using it—and nothing about him so far suggested he had a sense of humour; his smile, when he’d finally let it go, had been pure wolf—it seemed eminently reasonable.
She’d had Tom McFarlane up to the eyebrows; he’d used up every particle of goodwill and she didn’t want to spend one more minute with him than was absolutely necessary.
But she also wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible and had been counting on the fact that macho man wouldn’t be able to stand by and watch her load and unload the thing by herself.
She might, of course, be fooling herself about that. It was quite possible he’d enjoy watching her work up a sweat as she earned every penny of her—reduced—fee. She was already regretting that twenty per cent. She’d earned every penny of it this afternoon.
Too late now. She’d just have to think of the eighty per cent she would be paid. The money for all those suppliers who’d put their heart and soul into making Candy’s dream come true. And her reputation for being the kind of solid, dependable businesswoman whose word, in a business that was not short on flakes, meant something. Trust that had taken time to garner when her centuries-old name had, overnight, become a liability …
‘I’d come and give you a hand but I have to take delivery of a cake.’ Then, ‘Do you need a hand up?’
‘No, thanks,’ she snapped back, snatching the keys from him and tossing her bag on to the passenger seat. ‘I’ve got one of these and I frequently drive it myself.’
‘Not in that skirt or those heels, I’ll bet.’
Oh, terrific!
That was where anger and speaking before your brain was engaged got you. But it was too late to change her mind because he didn’t give her the chance to do so and back down gracefully. Instead he gave one of those I’m-sure-you-know-best shrugs—the ones that implied it was the last thing he thought—and stood back, leaving her to get on with it.
Unfortunately, getting on with it involved hoisting her narrow skirt up far enough to enable her to step up into the cab. Which was far enough for Tom McFarlane to get the full stocking tops and lace underwear experience.
The up side—there had to be an up side—was that it would be his breathing under attack for a change.
‘Not that I’m complaining,’ he assured her, apparently perfectly in control of his breathing.
And a good thing too, she decided. One of them ought to be in control of their bodily functions. Not that she bothered to dignify his remark with an answer, but let her skirt drop, smoothing it primly beneath her as she sat down, before placing the key in the ignition.
‘What kept you?’
She’d had to buzz him so that he could let her through into the basement parking garage and by the time she’d pulled into the bay by the private lift that would take her directly to the penthouse loft apartment he was there, waiting for her.
His impatience touched a chord deep within her. Despite her very real, her justifiable anger with Tom McFarlane, her own impatience with every interruption, every traffic delay had been driven not by her need to be with an important client in Chelsea but by some blind, completely insane desire to get back to him. To renew the edgy, heat-filled connection.
He might make her angry but for the first time in years she felt like a woman and it was addictive …
‘I can manage,’ she assured him as he opened the door, offered her a helping hand. The default reaction of the modern woman. When did that happen?
It didn’t matter; he took no notice. ‘I’ve seen you manage once today. Since I’ve already seen your underwear, this time we’ll do it my way.’
‘A gentleman wouldn’t have looked,’ she gasped, outraged. Outraged by the fact that he obviously thought her legs not worth a second look.
‘Is that a fact? I guess that just proves that I’m not a gentleman.’ His eyes gleamed in the dim light of the underground garage. ‘Didn’t your old school chum tell you that it was one of the things she liked most about me? After my money. The risk. The realisation that for once in her life she wasn’t in control.’ He leaned close enough for her to feel his breath upon her cheek. For every cell to quiver with heightened awareness. Her skin to get goose-bumps. ‘That she was playing with fire.’
Sylvie’s mouth dried.
It worked for her.
‘But then again,’ he said, straightening, ‘you’re no lady, Miss Smith, or you’d have accepted my offer of assistance. So shall we try it again? Need a hand?’
‘The only help I need is with the boxes,’ she declared angrily. She certainly didn’t need to hitch up her skirt to get down. All she had to do was swing her legs over the side and drop to the floor but, then again, Tom McFarlane was going out of his way to rile her, so why make it easy for him?
It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to organise this wedding in the first place—especially not once she’d met the groom—but Candy had begged and when she wanted something, no one could deny her anything.
Except, it seemed, Tom McFarlane.
And maybe the house in Belgravia and the country estate were, after all, non-negotiable if you weren’t marrying for love …
In retrospect, Sylvie thought, it was easy to see why she’d left so much of the detail to Quentin, but it really was too bad that, when all her instincts had been proved right, she was being punished by this man, not just for her bad judgement but for his too.
And her body seemed intent on joining in.
Maybe that was why, instead of jumping down, she put her hands flat against the seams of her skirt in a deliberately provocative manner, as a prelude to sliding it back up her legs.
To punish him—punish them both—right back.
Tom McFarlane couldn’t believe the way he was behaving. He was already calling
