CHAPTER FOUR
OH, THANK GODfor that, thought Orla, the tension gripping her body giving way to relief so intense it was almost palpable.
Things had taken an unexpected turn for the worse for a moment back there and the sudden potential reversal of fortune had sent her into an almighty spin, but she’d stayed cool and calm, and disaster had been averted. The mistake she’d made had been fixed. Her job was secure, her reputation was intact and her demons remained buried. Her work here was done. And now, with the adrenalin and stress fast draining away and the monumental effort of controlling her body’s wayward response to his taking its toll, all she wanted to do was sleep because she was shattered.
Stifling a yawn, she pushed up on the chair arms and got to her feet, every muscle she possessed aching and sore, and she didn’t even pause when he said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Bed,’ she muttered, envisaging her gorgeously comfortable room at the hotel and almost weeping with need. ‘It’s been a very long, very eventful twenty-four hours.’
‘Don’t leave just yet. Stay and have a drink with me.’
Now, that did make her pause mid-turn. Because, despite her desperation to flee consuming every one of her brain cells, something about his voice seemed different. The chill had gone. His tone was smoother, lighter, less antagonistic and more like that of the man in her dreams.
Curious, her pulse skipping, she turned back and glanced down to find that he was looking at her with focus, with intent, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck shot up. At the sight of the decidedly wicked glint in his eye, and the faint yet devastating smile curving his mouth, she shivered, and heat pooled low in her belly.
What was he up to? Why the glint? Why the smile? Why the abrupt one-eighty personality change?
She didn’t want to know, she told herself firmly. She was tired and confused and her defences were weak. She should have ignored him and carried on with her exit. She shouldn’t have allowed her curiosity to get the better of her. She didn’t need glints and shivers. She needed respite from his effect on her and to recharge her batteries.
‘Thank you, but no,’ she said, crushing the tiny yet powerful urge to say yes and indulge her curiosity a little while longer because she had a plan to which she intended to stick.
‘It doesn’t seem right to drink this alone.’
He waved a hand in the direction of the bottle she’d acquired and her eyebrows shot up, shock momentarily wiping out the fatigue and the wariness along with the plan. ‘This?’
He gave a nod. ‘Yes.’
‘You’re planning on drinking it?’
‘I am.’
For a moment she just stared at him, scarcely able to believe it. Had he lost his mind? Perhaps yesterday’s bump to the head had done more damage than had first appeared, because this wasn’t just any old bottle of wine. This was special beyond words. Surely it wasn’t for drinking.
‘But it’s over a hundred and fifty years old,’ she said, aghast. ‘It’s worth a quarter of a million dollars. If you drank it, that would be it. History and a fortune blown in a matter of minutes. Shouldn’t it be in a museum?’
‘It is mine, isn’t it?’ he said reasonably, although she noticed that both the glint and the smile had faded slightly.
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘I never wanted it simply for the sake of owning it, only to admire it from a distance while it gathered even more dust. I’ve wanted it for its story, to savour and appreciate it and learn from it. So let Zurich and New York put theirs in a museum. I’ll do what I damn well please with mine.’
‘Of course,’ she said, hastily back-pedalling, since, despite the easy way he’d delivered the explanation, he didn’t look at all pleased at having his decision questioned and really she ought not to be antagonising him when she’d only just got her job back. ‘It’s none of my business what you do with it. But seriously, please save it for your guests at the conference. It would be completely wasted on me. I know nothing about wine. I’m more of a cocktails-with-an-umbrella kind of a girl.’
‘Then I’ll teach you.’
To her alarm, he surged to his feet in one fluid movement and made for the sideboard on the other side of the room, but she didn’t want him to teach her, she thought a bit desperately. She wanted a break from the dizzying breathlessness that she couldn’t seem to shake no matter how hard she tried. She wanted space. Sleep. And at some point she really ought to try and figure out why she’d messed up his instructions in the first place. ‘What if I don’t want to learn?’
‘Isn’t it your job to see to my every request?’
While the question that wasn’t a question hung in the air, Orla narrowed her eyes and shot daggers at his back. Bar the immoral, the illegal or the unethical, it was, damn him, and it occurred to her suddenly that not only was he drop-dead gorgeous, but he was also determined and ruthless and clearly unused to hearing the word ‘no’.
Not that that was remotely relevant at the moment. Why he would want her to share the wine was anyone’s guess, but she had the feeling that she was still on somewhat shaky ground and he was the client, which meant that he was right. Within reason, what he wanted, he got. So she’d let him do his spiel, have one quick sip of wine and then she’d be off. ‘Fine.’
‘Excellent. Come and join me.’
Armed now with a decanter and a corkscrew, Duarte picked up the quarter of a million dollars that he was about to throw down his very tanned, very attractive throat and strode to a seating area where half a dozen glasses stood upside down on a tray in the centre of a coffee table.
Orla eyed the only seating option warily. The sofa wasn’t a big one and he’d take up most of it. Perhaps she could drag the chair she’d been sitting on over. But no. It was solidly wooden and impossibly heavy. It wasn’t budging, no matter how hard she pulled.
Taking a deep, steadying breath and assuring herself that it would be fine, that all they were doing was tasting wine, she moved to the sofa and sat down, wedging herself as tightly into the corner as she could. But, as she’d suspected, it wasn’t enough. There was just too much of him. He was stealing her air, dizzying her with his proximity and robbing her of her composure, and she had the feeling that alcohol was only going to make things worse.
Yet she couldn’t move. In fact, as she watched him brushing the dust off the neck of the bottle and carefully removing the cap, she wanted to scoot over and lean into him. She wanted to find out exactly how hard and muscled his chest might be. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top to reveal a tantalising wedge of tanned skin and gave her a glimpse of fine dark hair, and her fingers itched to investigate further.
‘The grapes that made this wine grew when Queen Victoria was on the British throne,’ he said, tilting the decanter and slowly pouring the contents of the bottle into it while she set her jaw and sat on her hands. ‘Ulysses S Grant was the US president. Echoes of revolution and Bonaparte still sounded through France. It was a hot, dry summer in Bordeaux that year, a perfect climate for growth and harvest. The vineyard had just been bought by Rothschild. This was the first vintage to be bottled under their ownership. Nothing was mechanised. These grapes were picked by hand and transported by horse and cart. They were trodden by the feet of a hundred locals instead of going into a press as they do nowadays.’
His deep voice was mesmerising. The web he was spinning was lulling her into a sensual trance from which she didn’t want to emerge. She was there, in France. She could feel the heat of the sun, smell the dusty earth that mingled with the scent of ripened grapes and snippets of French. She wanted him to tell her more. She wanted him to tell her everything. She could listen to him for hours.
‘You paint a vivid picture,’ she said, her voice so unusually low and husky that she had to clear her throat to disguise it. ‘You have a good imagination.’
He set the bottle down and glanced at her, his eyes dark and glinting with something that made her stomach slowly flip. ‘So I’ve discovered.’
What did that mean?
‘What if it’s turned to vinegar?’ she said, forcing herself to focus on the beautiful cut-glass decanter that was now worth a fortune, and not on the hypnotic effect he was having on her.
‘It hasn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Smell the cork.’