Forbidden or For Bedding? by Julia James Read Free Book Online Page B

about it.
    On their descent to the underground car park lot in his personal elevator, he chatted inconsequentially about the forthcoming event. She made the appropriate responses, civil and unexceptional, and in that manner they gained the waiting limo, its engine purring as they emerged. He guided her into its interior and followed likewise, giving the signal to his chauffeur to proceed.
    The journey was a bare fifteen minutes, if that, to the West End, and in the car he continued with his inconsequential chat. But it was sporadic only, and he was pleased. It was good to know that she was not one of those tiresome women who felt impelled to chatter the whole time. Alexa’s reserve won his approval, as did her obvious ability to travel without incessant talking. Instead, she seemed perfectly content merely to make whatever appropriate comment was required to answer his remarks, being neither taciturn nor garrulous.
    He liked that, he decided. And, moreover, he liked the opportunity it gave him, as she gazed composedly out of the tinted windows at the passing London scene, to let his regard appreciate her fully, her profile averted, and all her graceful figure displayed to him at his leisure.
    Yes, she was indeed well worth his time and attention. Pleased with his choice, he relaxed fully into the leather seats and continued his appreciative surveillance. The evening stretched pleasurably ahead of him.
    And the night—ah, the night would be exceptional…
    Â 
    Dim daylight was pressing at Alexa’s eyelids. Slowly, as if lifting a weight, she opened her eyes. Taking in her surroundings.
    It was a hotel bedroom. A hotel whose famous namealone was synonymous with style, exclusiveness and luxury. A hotel in which she had dined the previous evening, in a suite larger than her apartment, at a dining table resplendent with silver and napery around which had been seated half a dozen couples, all guests at the highly prestigious art gallery earlier in the evening, all of whom, so it appeared, had been invited to dine with Guy de Rochemont. Along with herself.
    Precisely how that had come about she had not quite understood—only that Guy de Rochemont had taken her elbow as the reception ended and guided her back into the chauffeured limo. They’d been disgorged a short while later into the lobby of the hotel, and then she’d been swept up with the other arriving dinner guests to the penthouse floor and into this suite.
    There had seemed to be no good opportunity to take her leave, and instead she had found herself being seated at the dinner table along with the others. At that point she had acquiesced as composedly as she could, and accepted that her presence at Guy de Rochemont’s side must be for the same reason he had taken her to the opening.
    And that could only be, Alexa had mused, trying to make sense of his extraordinary behaviour, because his preferred partner—surely the exotic Carla Crespi still?—had for whatever reason not been available, and he must have assumed that the exhibition would be of intrinsic artistic interest to her as a portraitist. Indeed it had been, despite her acute consciousness of the disturbing presence of Guy de Rochemont at her side.
    Because disturbing it most definitely was. She had done her best to ignore his presence, but Guy de Rochemont was difficult to ignore at all times, and the sleek dark sheath of a tuxedo made it completely impossible. But her mounting consciousness of him should— must ! she had thought—beutterly suppressed. Whatever the reason she could not complete his portrait, whatever the reason for her quite inappropriate consciousness of him all evening, the only reaction to him she must show was none at all. She must be cool, she must be composed, she must be an unobtrusive guest and nothing more.
    Her dogged composure had held through the meal, even through the ritual of serving coffee and liqueurs in the suite’s sitting room,