Why the hell did he still want Portia Lanchester? He’d had her—Dios, but he had had her!—so why the hell did he still want her?
Why was it only her body that he wanted beneath him, above him—any damn way so long as it was her?
Why was it only her face he kept seeing, by day and by night, intruding into business meetings, festering in his dreams?
How could he still want her?
A woman he despised. A woman who thought herself too good for his touch.
Except when his touch could save her family wealth…
Anger seethed in him.
How could he still want a woman like that?
The car pulled up in front of the Park Lane hotel. He would spend one night here, and then fly on to New York tomorrow. The Tencorp proposal he’d flown in to hear had b
een a waste of his time. They were not a company he wanted to do business with. Their environmental record was abysmal. He’d known it, but had stopped off in London all the same. It had been weakness to do so. He did not ask himself why it was a weakness he’d succumbed to.
It certainly didn’t have anything to do with Loring Lanchester. The bank was being run now by someone who knew one end of a balance sheet from the other, and it might, given some proper management, be showing a decent profit by the time he sold it off to one of the multinational banking houses for a worthwhile price. He would not be out of pocket on Loring Lanchester.
Liar! The word mocked in his brain as he headed up to his suite.
Money was not the only currency in the world…
He walked into his suite and tossed his briefcase down on the coffee table. He needed a workout. Perhaps some heavy expenditure of muscle power in the hotel’s health club would drain out some of the anger eating away at him.
More than just anger.
Frustration.
He was not used to going without sex for this long.
Three weeks since he’d got rid of Portia.
Three weeks of celibacy forced on him by his own crushing inability to summon the slightest interest in another woman.
How the hell long is this going to last?
How long before he was free of wanting Portia Lanchester?
With an impatient gesture he loosened his tie and headed into his bedroom.
The phone rang on the sideboard.
He picked it up as he went by.
‘Yes?’ he said curtly.
‘I have Ms Lanchester in Reception, Mr Saez,’ said the deferential voice of a hotel clerk.
He stopped dead. Had he heard right?
There was a long, long pause. The clerk at the other end waited politely.
Then, in a slow voice, Diego heard himself say, ‘Tell her to come up.’
Déjà-vu, thought Portia, as she pressed the button for the penthouse floor. Or should that be déjà-fait? She wondered absently what the correct French would be for doing the same thing second time around.