The Ultimate Playboy Page 16

  He rubbed his hands together with a childlike glee that made her laugh. After two minutes he grabbed a clean spoon and scooped a drop of the sauce. ‘As the last ingredient was your idea, you sample it first.’ He blew on it and held it to her lips.

  She tasted it, shut her eyes to better feel the flavours exploding on her tongue. The decadent taste made her groan long and deeply.

  ‘Ruby.’

  Her name was a crack of thunder that had her spinning round.

  Narciso stood in the doorway, the look on his face as dark and stormy as the tension thickening the air. For several seconds, everyone remained frozen.

  Then silver eyes flicked to the Frenchman. ‘Leave.’

  Michel’s eyes widened at the stark dismissal. Narciso took a single step forward to allow the chef to sidle past before he slammed the door shut behind him.

  The sound of the lock turning made her nerves scream.

  Slowly, Narciso walked towards her. With his every step she willed her feet to move in the other direction, away from the imposing body and icy fury bearing down on her. But she remained frozen.

  She held her breath as he stopped a whisper from her.

  ‘My intention was to find you and explain things better, perhaps even apologise for what I said in my study.’

  Her heart lifted, then plummeted again when she deciphered his meaning. ‘Well, I’m waiting.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t be getting an apology from me now, amante.’

  He leaned over and looked into the copper pan bubbling on the stove. Picking up a spoon, he scooped up some sauce and sampled it.

  ‘Not half bad. What is it?’

  ‘Oh, I thought you’d recognise it, Narciso. This sauce I’ve named The Valentino Slimeball Special. It’ll taste divine with the freshly made Playboy’s Puffballs I’m planning on serving them with. You’ll love it, trust me.’

  Slowly, he lowered the spoon and speared her with those icy silver eyes. ‘Say that again.’

  ‘I’m pretty certain there’s nothing wrong with your hearing.’

  He tossed the spoon into the sink and leaned closer, bracing his hands on either side of her so she was locked in. ‘Say it again anyway. I like the way that pretty mouth of yours pouts when you say puffballs.’

  Despite his indolent words, his eyes glinted with fury. Her instinct warned her to retreat, but caged in like this, watching the erratic pulse beating at his throat, she knew any attempt at escape would be futile.

  He was hanging on to his control by a thread. The sudden urge to shatter it the way he seemed to shatter hers so very easily made her stand her ground.

  ‘You’ll have to beg me if you want that.’

  ‘Ah, Ruby, shall I let you in on personal insight?’

  ‘Can I stop you?’

  ‘I think you delight in pushing my buttons because you know it’ll get you kissed. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Then why are you licking your lips like that? Anticipation has you almost insane with desperation right now.’

  ‘You have a ridiculously high opinion of yourself.’

  ‘Prove me wrong, then.’

  ‘I won’t play your stupid games.’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘No. Uninterested.’

  ‘Believe me, Ruby, this isn’t a game.’ When his hands went to undo the tie holding her dress together, she batted them away.

  ‘Stop. What’s wrong with you?’

  His laugh was filled with bitter incredulity. ‘I walk in here to find you moaning for another man and you ask me what’s wrong with me?’

  ‘You’re jealous?’

  Right before her eyes he seemed to deflate. His hold on her dress ties loosened. And the eyes that speared hers held hellish agitation.

  ‘Yes! I’m jealous. Does that make you happy?’

  Her senses screamed yes. Jealousy meant that she mattered in some way to him. The way he’d come to matter to her. ‘Why did you come in here, Narciso?’

  He sucked in a breath. ‘I told you, to apologise.’

  ‘Because my feelings are hurt or because you hurt me?’

  He lifted a hand and trailed his fingers down her cheek. ‘Because I hurt you,’ he rasped deeply.

  The breath shuddered out of her. ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, Ruby. What I’m feeling...what you make me feel, I don’t know what to do with it. It may well come back and bite us both.’

  ‘But at least you’re acknowledging it. So what happened in your study?’ she asked before she lost her nerve.

  His lips firmed. ‘That woman in the picture you saw. Her name is Maria.’

  She bit her lip to stem the questions flooding her.

  ‘She’s Paolina’s—my housekeeper’s—granddaughter. I met her that summer ten years ago. She came to visit from Palermo. Paolina brought her to the house and we hung out. By the second week I’d convinced her to stay for the whole summer. I believed myself...infatuated with her.’ His lips pinched until the skin showed white. ‘I was young and naïve and respected her see-but-don’t-touch edict. Until I found out she was giving it up to Giacomo.’

  Shock rocked through her. ‘She was sleeping with your father?’

  ‘Not only sleeping with him. He’d convinced her to make a sex tape, which he forced me to watch on the last day of my stay in Sicily.’ Something in the way he said it made her tense.

  ‘What do you mean forced?’

  His teeth bared in a parody of a smile. ‘He had two of his bodyguards hold me down in a chair while the video played on a super-wide screen, complete with surround sound. It was quite the cinematic experience.’

  Her mouth gaped. ‘Oh, my God. That’s vile!’

  ‘That’s Giacomo,’ he said simply.

  ‘So, what is he doing with her in New York now?’

  His jaw clenched. ‘I don’t know. The reason I opened the file in the first place was to tell my investigator to toss the case.’

  ‘But now you think he’s plotting something?’

  ‘She’s broke. Which means she’s the perfect pawn for Giacomo.’

  Ruby wanted to ask him how he knew that, but the forbidding look in his face, coupled with the anguish lurking in his eyes, changed her mind.

  With the evidence of the two people who’d betrayed him before him, he’d have to have been a saint to remain unaffected. Hell, the thought of the double blow of betrayal made her heart twist in pain for him.

  ‘I’m sorry I condemned you. I didn’t know.’

  Mingled fury and anguish battled in his eyes. ‘What about this, Ruby mio? Do you know this?’ he muttered roughly.

  He parted her dress and his fingers were drifting down the bare skin of her belly, headed straight for her panty line, before she could exhale. Warm, sure fingers slid between her thighs before Ruby knew what had hit her.

  Her cry of astonishment quickly morphed into a moan of need as his thumb flicked against her clitoris.

  ‘Narciso!’

  ‘Dio, how can I crave you this badly when I didn’t know you a week ago?’

  Need rammed through her and she clung to him. ‘I don’t know. You forget that I should hate this, too. I should hate you.’

  He leaned in close, until his hot mouth teased her ear lobe. ‘But then that would mean you were conforming to some lofty image you have in your head of your ideal man. You’d be denying that our little tiffs make you so wet you can barely stand it. I turn you on. I heat up your blood and make you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt. I make you crave all the things you’ve denied yourself. I know this because it’s what you make me feel too. Close your eyes, Ruby.’

  ‘No.’ But already her eyelashes were fluttering down, heavy with the
drugging desire stealing over her.

  The next moment, his breath whispered along her jaw. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

  She groaned. ‘Narciso...’

  ‘Say no and I’ll end this.’

  She whimpered. ‘You’re not being fair.’

  He laughed again. ‘No, I’m not, but I never claimed I was a fair man. And when I feel as if my world is unravelling, halos don’t sit well on my head.’

  His fingers worked faster, firing up sparks of delight in her that quickly flared into flames.

  ‘Oh! Oh, God.’

  He kissed her hard and deep, then nibbled the corner of her mouth as she shattered completely. He ran his free hand down her back in a roughly soothing gesture as she floated back down. The mouth at her ear lobe feathered kisses down her jaw to her throat, then back up again.

  ‘I’m sorry that I hurt you, Ruby. But I’m not sorry that I make you feel like this.’

  * * *

  The New York she’d left just days ago to travel to Macau was the same. Ruby knew that, and yet it was as though she were seeing it for the first time.

  As they travelled through midtown towards Narciso’s penthouse on the Upper East Side, the sights and sounds appeared more vibrant, soulful.

  Part of her knew it was because she was seeing it through different eyes. The eyes of a woman who’d been introduced to passion and intense emotion.

  She wanted to push that woman far away, deny all knowledge that she existed. But self-delusion had never been her flaw.

  She’d slept for most of the four-hour flight from Belize City, a fact for which she was thankful. Awake and in close proximity to Narciso, she didn’t think she could’ve avoided letting him see her confusion.

  Their intense encounter in the kitchen on his yacht had been highly illuminating. Very quickly after granting her most delicious release, he’d walked away, leaving her replete and alarmingly teary.

  She’d stood in the kitchen long after he’d left, clutching the sink and fighting a need to run after him and offer him comfort.

  But how could she have when his words echoed in her ears.

  I hurt you...I’m sorry...I crave you...

  With each word, her heart had cracked open wider, until she’d been as raw as his voice had been.

  As raw as she was now...

  The need to run from her thoughts was very tempting. Giving in, she activated her returned phone. Several voice and text messages flooded into her inbox.

  Three were from the same number. One she didn’t recognise but suspected its origin.

  She answered Annie’s query as to when she would be returning and declined her invitation to a girls’ night out when she was back from the West Coast. She wasn’t ready to face anyone yet, least of all her perceptive roommate, when her emotions felt as if they’d been through a shredder.

  The second message was from her mother, asking her to get in touch. She tensed as she listened to the message again. On the surface, it sounded innocuous, a mother asking after her child. But she heard the undercurrents in her mother’s voice and the hairs on her neck stood up. The other messages forgotten, she played the message a third time.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Narciso’s deep voice cut across her flailing emotions.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Ruby.’

  She glanced at him, and her heart lurched. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you care.’

  ‘I care,’ he stated simply.

  She sucked in a breath. ‘How can you? You told me there was nothing beneath the surface, remember?’

  She knew she was probably overreacting but the thought that her mother was reaching out to her because her father had in all likelihood had another affair made her stomach clench in anger and despair.

  But unlike the numerous times before when she’d been angry with her parent, Ruby was realising just how harshly she’d misjudged her mother.

  From the cocoon of self-righteousness, it’d been easy to judge, to see things in black and white. But having experienced how easy it was to lose control beneath the charisma and magnetism of a powerful man, how could she judge her mother?

  Sure, she was aware that part of the reason her mother had stuck around was because she craved the fame that came with being part of a power couple. But Ruby also knew, deep down, her mother could be a success on her own.

  A strong, warm hand curled over hers. Her gaze flew up to collide with silver eyes. ‘I know what I said but I want to know what’s going on anyway.’

  His concern burrowed deep and found root in her heart. ‘My mother left me a message to call her.’

  He nodded. ‘And this is troubling?’

  ‘Yes. Normally she emails. She only calls me when something...bad happens.’

  ‘Define bad.’

  ‘My father...sleeping with a sous chef, or a waitress, or a member of their filming crew. That kind of bad.’

  He swore. ‘And she calls you to unburden?’

  ‘And to put pressure on me to join their show. She seems to think my presence will curb my father’s wandering eyes.’

  His gaze remained steady on hers. ‘You don’t seem angry about it any more.’

  Because he’d made her see herself in a different light: one that didn’t fill her with bitterness.

  Warmth from his hand seeped through, offering comfort she knew was only temporary.

  ‘I’ve come to accept that sometimes we make choices in the hope that things will turn out okay. We take a leap of faith and stand by our choices. My mother’s living in hope. I can’t hate her for that.’

  A flash of discomfort altered his expression. ‘How very accommodating of you.’

  ‘Accommodating? Hardly. Maybe I’m just worn out. Or maybe I’m finally putting myself into someone else’s shoes and seeing things from their point of view.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘I can’t forgive any man who toys with my...a woman’s feelings. Who exploits her vulnerabilities and uses them against her.’

  His sharp glance told her the barb had hit home. ‘If you’re referring to what happened in the kitchen—’

  ‘I’m not.’ A lance speared her heart. ‘I think it’s best we forget about that, don’t you?’

  * * *

  I think it’s best we forget...

  He had no idea why that statement twisted in his gut but it did long after they’d reached his underground car park and entered the lift to his penthouse. Beside him Ruby stood stiffly, her face turned away from him.

  He’d expected her to protest when he’d demanded she stay with him until after his VIP dinner party.

  Instead, she’d agreed immediately.

  The idea that she couldn’t be bothered to argue with him made another layer of irrational anxiety spike through him.

  Roughly he pushed the feeling away, meshed his fingers with Ruby’s and tugged her after him when the lift doors opened.

  Paolina exited one of the many hallways of his duplex penthouse to greet him.

  Despite being in her late sixties, his housekeeper was as sprightly as she’d been when he was a boy.

  ‘Ciao, bambino. Come stai?’

  He responded to the affectionate greeting, let himself be kissed on both cheeks; allowed himself to bask in the warmth of her affection. But only for a second.

  Catching Ruby to his side, he introduced her, noting her surprise as he mentioned Paolina’s name.

  She turned to him as Paolina took control of their luggage and headed to the bedrooms. ‘Would this be the same Paolina who’s related to Maria?’

  His smile felt tight. ‘Sì.’

  ‘I...I thought...’

  ‘That I
was a complete monster who cut everyone out of my life because of one incident? I’m not a complete bastard, Ruby.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she murmured.

  Her smile held none of the vivacity he’d come to expect. To crave. He wanted to win that smile back. Wanted to share what plans he’d put in place before they left Belize. But unfamiliar fear held him back.

  Would she judge him for doing too little too late?

  He watched her turn a full circle in the large living room, her gaze taking in and dismissing the highly sought-after pieces of art and exclusive decorative accessories most guests tended to gush over. The location of his apartment alone—on a thirtieth floor overlooking Central Park—was enough to pull a strong reaction from even the most jaded guest.

  Ruby seemed more interested in the doors leading out of the room. ‘Do you mind showing me to the kitchen? I’d like to see where I’ll be working and if there’s any equipment I need to hire. I should also have the final menu for you shortly. If there’s anything you need to change I’d appreciate it if you let me know asap.’

  Again he felt that unsettled notion of unravelling control. But then...when it came to Ruby, had he held control in the first place?

  It certainly hadn’t felt like it when he’d walked in on Ruby and Michel. Hearing her moan like that had been a stiletto wound to his heart.

  In his jealousy and blind fury had he taken things too far? He tried to catch her eye as he walked beside her towards the kitchen but she refused to look at him.

  He’d never had a problem with being given the silent treatment. But right now he wanted Ruby to speak, to tell him what was on her mind.

  ‘What I’ve seen so far of the menu’s fine. It’s the perfect blend of continental Europe and good old-fashioned Italian. The guests will appreciate it.’

  Her only reaction was to nod. They reached the kitchen and she moved away from him.

  She inspected the room with a thoroughness that spoke of a love for her profession. Her long, elegant fingers ran over appliances and worktops and he found his disgruntlement escalating.