Chapter Five #2
‘When you have a figure like mine, twirling in front of mirrors in changing rooms is a bit of an ordeal,’ she said lightly, scuttling in small steps towards the bedroom door. ‘You probably wouldn’t understand,’ she embellished, more embarrassed by the second.
‘And that would be because...?’
‘You must know that you’re a good-looking guy!
’ She wondered how the conversation had strayed so quickly from her simple enquiry as to what the plans were for the following day.
‘I don’t suppose mirrors pose a problem for you.
Anyway—’ she brushed aside the conversation, uncomfortable under his perceptive gaze ‘—you were talking about shopping. Why are we going shopping? There are loads of other things I’d rather be doing. ’
‘I’m in complete agreement with you there. However, you’re going out with me now, we’re engaged and it would seem odd for you to be seen wearing cheap off-the-peg clothes.’
Sammy’s mouth dropped open. ‘You said you weren’t interested in telling me what I could or couldn’t wear.’
‘And I’m not, although I confess that I’m relieved you took the decision yourself to put the jeans and baggy tops on the back burner while we’re out here.’
‘So if you don’t care what I wear, then what’s the shopping expedition all about?
’ she bristled, fired up at an implied insult behind the suggestion.
‘I’ll bet you’ve never hinted to any of those women you’ve been out with in the past that you wanted to take them shopping because you didn’t like their choice of clothing! ’
‘That’s a thought,’ Leo murmured, remembering what she had said about not liking shopping experiences. He didn’t get why she would feel self-conscious of her body because there was an earthy voluptuousness about her that was powerfully attractive.
His eyes wandered.
She had slender legs, and a waist that was a handspan slim, but her breasts were generous and her hips were downright sinful in their curves, fashioned to be contoured by a man’s hands.
He looked away, frowning at his brief loss of self-control.
‘Maybe—’ he thought of his exes and their minimalist approach to clothing ‘—I should have steered some of my past girlfriends to items of dress that weren’t the size of paper tissues. A diet of relentlessly non-existent clothing can get very boring for a guy after a while.’
‘You don’t mean that.’ But she was foolishly touched that he had made an effort to counteract any offence she might have taken by indulging in a little white lie.
‘It’s not about what you choose to wear. It’s about the quality of what you choose to wear.’
‘I can’t afford to blow my savings on clothes,’ Sammy told him abruptly.
‘You probably could,’ Leo countered with cool, restrained honesty, ‘when this little charade is over. But that’s by the by. What I’m saying is that any woman of mine would be expected to be wearing the very best. The very best in twinsets and pearls, if that happened to be her choice.’
Sammy stared at him and then she burst out laughing. ‘You have got to be kidding!’
Leo frowned. ‘Why would I be kidding?’
‘Leo, I’m not the kind of girl who expects any man to buy her clothes for her! That’s incredibly old-fashioned.’
‘And what sort of girl would you be describing?’ he enquired with the sort of shuttered expression that would have signalled a warning to her across the bows had she not still been smirking at the concept of a man paying for what she wore.
‘Oh, just an airhead who traipses along from shop to shop, happy for you to dip into your wallet to fund her wardrobe.’
‘Have you ever,’ he asked, ‘been treated to a shopping spree by one of these chauvinistic dinosaur guys you don’t approve of?’
‘Well...’
‘So that’s a no. Maybe you should give it a try before you start passing judgement.
The fact of the matter is this, as my fiancée, you would be treated like a queen.
There’s no way I would countenance you going out in cheap supermarket bulk-buy clothes.
You would wear the very best, in whatever you chose to wear. ’
‘I didn’t get my outfits in a supermarket.’
‘You know where I’m going with this, Sammy. Were this real, I would want you to be wearing the very best. It would give me pleasure to indulge you.’
Sammy went bright red. The deep, sexy timbre of his voice conjured up an image of this big, powerful man entranced enough with a woman to be possessive, generous and proud.
‘But it isn’t real.’ She headed straight back down to earth before wayward images in her head could start giving her a thrill that would have been utterly inappropriate.
‘No,’ Leo agreed smoothly, ‘it isn’t. But, since that’s not the image we’re aiming to project, you’re just going to have to subject yourself to the torture of the shopping trip.
’ He raised his eyebrows and looked at her speculatively.
‘Who knows...maybe you’ll enjoy it more than you expect.
And if at the end of this you’re too proud to keep the clothes you’ve bought you can always hand them back to me.
A charity shop would be more than happy to take the discards. ’
Sammy couldn’t dwell on any of that for long because she was wandering back off to the appalling prospect of sharing a bed with him.
Somehow she had convinced herself to forget about that while they had been sparring but her apprehension swamped her all over again as she locked herself in the bathroom and took her time having the longest bath in living memory, while listening out to hear whether he had entered the bedroom.
Her very-respectable pyjamas were neatly folded on the little circular table in the enormous bathroom.
She only wished she weren’t so nervous because her nerves prevented her from enjoying what had to be the most luxurious bathing experience of her life.
The bathroom was a vision of pale marble, oversized fluffy towels, a walk-in wet room and a bath big enough to stage a concert.
Just like that, she thought back to him asking her whether she had ever been treated to a shopping spree by a guy.
She was very quick to condemn the thought of it, and she knew that she wasn’t going to have fun choosing clothes which someone she barely knew was going to feel obliged to pay for, but, that said, here she was, enjoying the splendour of a hotel he was paying for.
What did that say? She had always prided herself on her ability to stand on her own two feet.
From an early age, she and her mother had presented a united front, soldiering on after her father’s premature death.
She had learned how to carry the weight of responsibility on her shoulders and that had been truly put to the test when her mother had fallen ill.
She had also learned not to depend on something as frivolous as her looks to get her through and, yes, she had privately nurtured some scorn for those women who relied on their appearance to provide the rungs on the ladder they could use to clamber upwards.
She wasn’t going to turn to crafty feminine traits to see her through!
But something about Leo made her feel feminine.
She found herself responding to his blatant masculinity in ways that were girlish and light-headed.
She had wanted him to compliment her on her choice of dress and she could only blame the bizarre nature of the situation for fostering unwanted responses.
She listened carefully at the bathroom door before pushing it open into the adjoining bedroom.
She was fully dressed, bathrobe on for good measure, but in fact she need not have worked herself up into a lather because he wasn’t in the bedroom.
The vast four-poster bed, bigger than a normal king-sized bed, was untouched.
She wasn’t about to hazard a peek outside to see what he was doing or even whether he was still in the suite. She might be covered from head to toe but there was something about being dressed in pyjamas...
She dived into the bed, burrowed down so far to one side that she was inches away from tumbling off, hunkered down for the long haul and eventually fell asleep.
When she woke, daylight was doing its best to wriggle past the floor-to-ceiling curtains, which were still tightly drawn.
And Leo was nowhere to be seen, although his side of the bed had definitely been slept in.
She had no idea when he had got into bed and no idea when he had got out of it.
It was after nine and she freshened up in a rush, changing into a summery dress, a cheap and cheerful addition to her wardrobe, and a pair of canvas espadrilles.
She combed her hair loosely over one shoulder so it fell in soft waves and tentatively left the sanctuary of the empty bedroom.
* * *
Leo had been on the verge of waking her because time was moving on but, whilst he rarely suffered from jet lag, he accepted that she might need to sleep off the disruption to her body clock.
He was also strangely reluctant to venture into the bedroom.
By the time he had finally made it to bed, she had been fast asleep, her breathing soft and even.
As his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see that she had kicked off the duvet, just as he could see that her prim and proper top had ridden up and, from the angle in which she was lying, he could just about make out the soft swell of the underside of her breast.
He had felt like a voyeur.
Riveted to the spot, he had felt himself harden and, for the first time in his life, he had been unable to control his wayward libido as he had remained glued to the spot, staring at that sliver of pale skin, barely visible at all.
He had seen more of the naked female form than most men but he couldn’t recall the last time he had been held captive by a glimpse of a breast.
Thinking about those few seconds, when he had barely been able to breathe, was enough to ensure he remain just where he was, at the desk by the window, waiting for her to emerge.