outside her marriage to sustain her through it, and yet again she questioned whether she had made the right decision.
It was later than she had planned when Natalia finally left the factory and as she glanced at her watch she recognised that she was only just going to make it back to the spa hotel in time to join Maya and Howard for the pre-dinner drink they had offered her.
However, the minute she stepped into their private suite she realised that they had more to worry about than her being late for drinks. Maya was seated on one of the large room’s three plain cream leather sofas, her right hand heavily bandaged and her arm in a sling.
‘She slipped and dropped a glass bowl and then cut her hand on it,’ Howard explained.
‘And now we are in the most dreadful fix.’ Maya sighed miserably. ‘We had a phone call earlier, before I fell, from an unexpected client who is in between flights and who wanted to book in for the night. He plays polo and has an old injury that occasionally flares up. He requested the massage you showed me, Natalia, you know the one? The deep muscle massage you devised for sports injuries?’
Natalia nodded her head. The massage in question was one of her spa’s specialities.
‘When he was here last month I recommended it to him,’ Maya continued, ‘and he said it was most beneficial. Apparently these days he spends more time behind a desk than he does on the polo field and so this old injury occasionally flares up. Naturally I took the booking, and now he is expecting his massage in half an hour’s time. He has taken our best suite, so he is not someone we would want to offend. Now I can’t do the massage, and Gina, the only other masseuse we have who could do it, is on holiday. I can’t tell you how cross with myself I am for doing something so stupid as dropping that wretched bowl.’
Natalia sympathised with her. She could tell that Maya was like her in that she set herself very exacting standards and she knew just how she would be feeling in her shoes. ‘Couldn’t I do the massage for you?’ she offered impulsively.
‘Would you?’ Immediately Maya was all relieved and grateful smiles. ‘We were hoping you might offer,’ she admitted honestly, adding, only half jokingly, ‘Natalia, are you sure you would not like a partnership with us? Only you would be the most wonderful asset to the business.’
Don’t tempt me, was Natalia’s immediate private reaction as she smiled and shook her head. The explanation she had given the other couple for her decision to sell the spa had been her wish to focus on developing her skills as a perfumier. Another lie, but a necessary one, according to King Giorgio.
‘What time is he booked in for?’ she asked Maya quietly, slipping into her professional persona.
‘Half past. You’ve got twenty minutes to get ready. I’ve already brought up a uniform for you. His name is Leon Perez. Since his injury is a polo injury I imagine he must be South American. He’s requested the massage in his suite, by the way, but there’s nothing untoward in that, as you will know. We do offer that facility. However, if for any reason his behaviour should become unacceptable, just press the buzzer at the side of the bed. We’ve had them installed in all of the rooms just in case. We intend to keep a list of those guests who mistake our services for those of a very different kind, so that we can make sure they don’t repeat their mistake.’
‘A wise precaution,’ Natalia agreed. ‘I did the same thing, although fortunately they haven’t been used as yet.’
‘When you’ve finished, we’ll have drinks and dinner and continue our business discussions then,’ Maya said as she handed Natalia a spa uniform.
The spa’s uniform was a simple cap-sleeved, high-necked, linen-mix, A-line shift dress in plain white. The fabric was thick and heavy enough not to reveal what its wearer might be wearing underneath, Natalia noted approvingly. She liked the fact that Maya respected her employees enough not to give them a uniform that was in any way provocative. There was just about enough time for her to go to her own suite to shower, plait her hair to keep it out of the way and change into the uniform. It was rather shorter perhaps than she would have liked, and a bit tighter, but that was a problem one became accustomed to when one was tall and had a voluptuously curved hourglass figure. She gathered together everything Maya had given her that she would need before making her way to the guest’s suite.
Natalia had given clients massages a hundred thousand times and more so there was no reason at all for that funny little sensation to curl its way through her stomach as she pressed the bell and then stood outside the suite waiting to be let in.
The suite door was being opened. A man was standing just inside it, wearing the ubiquitous white hotel bathrobe.
As she looked at him Natalia found that she was blinking dizzily in much the same way she had done when she’d first looked at the perfume bottle. It was him. Leon Perez was the man she had seen earlier, crossing the square. That it should be him was surely against all the laws of reason and logic, and yet there was no mistake. It was him. Her senses were telling her that very loudly and clearly. Her senses. What right had they to get themselves involved in what was after all a purely professional matter? This was dreadful. And what was worse, far worse, was that everything she had just told herself about there being no need for her to feel anxious had just been blown totally out of the water by the force of one single look from those impossibly long-lashed jade green eyes.
Her heart swung crazily through her chest as though suspended from a pendulum and then stopped dead. She felt as though she were drowning in the depths of his eyes; as though she were being sucked under by some powerful sensual undertow come out of nowhere to possess her. Through the clamouring tumult of her senses she could think only one clear thought. And that was how very, very badly she wanted him.
WHATwas this…this lightning dart of pure volcanic sexual desire shooting up inside Natalia to spill past the long-closed gates of her own restraint, melting them into nothing?
Leave! Leave now, an inner voice was urging her. You can’t afford this. Just turn around and go…because if you don’t…
‘You booked a massage?’
Too late…too late. Why hadn’t she done what that inner voice had urged her? she wondered shakily as she stepped into the warm womb of semi darkness that was the dimly lit foyer of the suite. Her ‘nose’, so sensitive always, too much sometimes, went into overdrive. She was being overwhelmed by the flood of scents washing over her, the new decorations smell of paint and carpet and fibres all mingled together. The scent of the lilies in the hallway, overlaying the special signature perfume she had created for herself and always wore, a special recipe based on roses, with a hint of musk sharpened with the unique oil she had produced by blending grapes as they ripened, and vines as they thrust out new growth, maturity blended with the raw, powerful surge of new life. Normally it pleased and soothed her, but now was distorted perhaps by the smell of her own fear and she discovered that she was fighting against its unfamiliar demanding sensuality.
But most powerful of all was the scent of him. Images flashed inside her head; heat; the scent of something alien and unknown to her carried on a hot wind, the scent of male power both physical and mental; a rawness and vitality merging into something so intimate that she felt almost as though he had physically imprisoned her. Something dangerous and very unwanted was happening to her, Natalia admitted, grand slamming her senses, rushing over her and through her, forcing her to surrender to it.
‘This way.’
With
