Just as you are riding on mine, Marnie thought as she watched him go. Then took back that thought with a bitter twist to her tensely held mouth. It was unworthy. She loved her brother, and for once the mess he was in was not of his own making but poor Clare’s.
Clare…her eyes clouded over as she thought of her pretty little sister-in-law and the minefield of anxieties she must be negotiating right now. And Jamie was right; Clare was not in any fit condition to take any more stress.
Even if it meant Marnie placing herself in the hands of the enemy!
A shiver rippled through her, leaving her cold even though the sun was warm in the room, the unwanted memories managing to crawl through the thick protective casing she wore around herself, sending her blue eyes bleak as the artist in her began to construct his image in front of her.
Guy, she thought achingly, unable to stop the picture from building. A big man, but lean and muscular, with the kind of naturally tanned skin that enhanced his dark good looks. His chocolate-brown eyes always made exciting promises, and that lazy, sexy smile he used to save for her alone could… She gave an inner sigh that stayed just this side of pain. Her dark Italian love, she remembered wistfully. The only man who had ever managed to get her soul to leave her body and soar on an eddying wave of pure exquisite feeling.
Guy was a man of the earth and air, with banked-down fires inside him that would flare and turn the blood to sizzling, spitting flames.
He was the kind of man whose charismatic power over the opposite sex had given him an arrogance few would deny him. His huge ego was well deserved—along with his colourful reputation. Guy was a man’s idea of a man—the kind of man who walked right out of a woman’s foolish dreams. And a selfish, cruel and faithless swine! she reminded herself bitterly. He saw what he wanted, and took it with all the fire and passion in his hot Latin nature—just as he had seen and taken her! In his arrogance, he’d made her fall in love with him, then ruthlessly and callously thrown that love right back in her face! She would never forgive him for that. Never.
Four years ago, Guy had hurt her so deeply that she had prayed never to set eyes on him again. But with his usual arrogance he had refused to allow her that one small relief. And, four years on, they now shared a different kind of relationship, one which had them tiptoeing around each other like wary adversaries, using their tongues instead of their bodies to strike sparks off each other. Hostile yet close—oddly close. In the four long years since she and Guy had split up in a blaze of pain and anger, he had not allowed her to cut him out of her life. Guy possessed a tenacity which surprised her somewhat. For a man who was able to get whatever he wished at the simple click of his fingers, it seemed odd to her that he should still want her. She was, after all, one of his few failures in life, and his ego did not usually like being reminded of those.
Now, and for the first time in a long time, she sensed her own vulnerability, and another smile touched her mouth—one full of rueful whimsy this time. Guy had always predicted that Jamie would be the source of her inevitable downfall.
It seemed that his years of patience were about to bear fruit.
She glanced across the mad clutter of her busy studio room to where the telephone sat innocent and inert on the small table by the door, and slowly, carefully she steadied her emotions, settled her features into their normal cool, calm mask, and readied herself for what was to come. For Jamie might be placing her on a plate for Guy, but it did not mean she was going to sit still on it!
With these defiant thoughts to accompany her across the room, Marnie lifted the receiver off its rest and began to dial the never-to-be-forgotten number of il signor Guy Frabosa’s London home.
CHAPTER TWO
HE WASN’T there.
‘Typical,’ Marnie muttered as she replaced the receiver, ‘just damned typical!’ feeling all that careful mental preparation going frustratingly to waste.
Guy might live in London, have his business base there, but the very nature of that business kept him constantly on the move, personally overseeing every aspect of the conglomerate of companies he had inherited from his abdicating father on Guy’s own retirement from motor racing. And it took several calls to different numbers suggested to her before she eventually tracked him down, in Edinburgh of all places.
She was put through to a plastic-sounding female voice who seemed about as approachable as a polar bear. ‘Mr Frabosa is in conference,’ came the uncompromising block to Marie’s request to speak to him. ‘He does not wish to be disturbed.’
Is that so? mused Marnie, the woman’s frigid tone putting a mulish glint into her blue eyes. For the last hour she had been passed from pillar to post in her attempt to contact Guy, and in the end she had only got the Edinburgh information by pulling rank on the frosty-voiced female blocking her request. It wasn’t often that Marnie laid claim to her married title, but she felt no qualms about doing so when she thought the moment warranted it. She had more than earned the right, after all.
And it seemed the same tactic was required again! ‘Just inform him that Mrs Frabosa wishes to speak to him, will you?’ she said coldly, and gained the expected result as the woman stammered through a nervous apology and went off to inform Guy of his caller.
For the next five minutes, she hung on the line with only the intermittent crackle of static to tell her she was still connected while she waited for Guy to come dutifully to the phone.
He didn’t.
Instead she got the plastic voice again, sounding flustered. ‘Mr Frabosa sends his apologies, Mrs Frabosa, but asks if he could call you back as soon as he returns to London?’
Marnie’s lips tightened. ‘When will that be exactly?’ she asked.
‘The day after tomorrow, Mrs Frabosa.’
The day after tomorrow. Marnie paused for a moment to consider her next move. The very fact that she was calling him must in itself tell Guy that she needed to speak to him urgently, since it was such a rare occurrence. It was typical, she irritably supposed, for him to make her wait. He always had liked to annoy her by stretching her patience to its limits.
Well, two could play at this game, she decided, as sly calculation joined the sense of mutiny. ‘Then tell him thank you, but it doesn’t matter,’ she announced, and calmly replaced the receiver.
She knew Guy, she knew him well.
It took just three minutes for him to get back to her. And, just to annoy him, she waited until she had counted six hollow rings before she lifted the receiver and casually chanted her name.
‘Sometimes, cara, you try my patience just a little too far.’
The deep velvet tones of his voice swimming so smoothly down the line had her closing her eyes and clenching her teeth in an effort to stop herself responding to the sheer beauty of it. Loving or hating this man, he still had the power to move her sexually.