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Except right now he only wanted her sexually active with him.
He acknowledged he’d been unusually disappointed by the discovery she wasn’t quite what she seemed. For a few hours there he’d been enjoying the fantasy: man and woman out on a date, the simplicity and honesty of their interaction. Yet when it came down to it he would have left it there last night. Nice girls didn’t feature in his personal life.
He wasn’t in the market for a wife, or even a significant other, if that was the phrase, and the girl Clementine had seemed to be for a while there would have expected the whole romantic package.
He didn’t do romance. He did sex.
And what a girl like Clementine was offering in all her luscious glory was clearly uncomplicated, sizzling sex. Oblivion between her lush thighs. The promise in those sparkling eyes at the beginning of the night. The complete lack of emotional ties a girl like that came with. The sort of girl who could be bought.
A former lover had once accused him of being cold-blooded, but he doubted that. It was why he picked his partners very carefully. Women to whom under no circumstances he would become attached. Women who liked what he could give them more than anything he might promise for the future.
He had seen what emotional attachments could do—the mess they created, the havoc they played with innocent lives. He had seen it played out in his parents’ lives.
His father had loved his mother completely—taking over her life, turning all of their lives into a twopenny opera. When he’d died Serge had been ten years old and his mother had been devastated. Barely able to cope. He had seen both the intensity of love and the chaos it wrought when it went awry, or was simply taken away. His mother had remarried for financial reasons. Her second husband had beaten her for seven long years before she’d taken a familiar way out with an overdose of pills.
He had been away at boarding school, and later in the military. He had known nothing of her life until he’d stood by her grave with distant relatives who had spent no little time filling him in on the details of her disastrous second marriage—details no one had seen fit to give him during her sad life.
Emotional detachment came easily to him.
So last night, when Clementine had seen the direction of his gaze and blood-red colour had risen up to the roots of her hair, he had been curious to see how she would play it. She had kept her cool and stared him down. Before babbling. He had to go now. She had his number. He had hers. Maybe he could call next time he was in London.
At first he’d thought she was giving him the brush-off. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened to him. This gorgeous, sexy, clever girl who wanted him to believe she had the morals of a nun, or next to it, was handing him his walking papers.
Then it had all made sense. She had put the ball in his court—was waiting to be asked to see him again. His body was saying yes but his mind had gone stone-cold. Something about the entire scenario: foreign girl in a cheap hotel, holding back on any sexual contact, waiting for him to make this about more than a one-night encounter.
He hadn’t been born yesterday. It wasn’t going to happen.
He’d had no choice but to leave without making any definite plans with her, but as he had walked away down the dank, dimly lit corridor he’d glanced back and found she was peeking out into the hallway, drawing back as he caught her and closing the door.
And that was that.
Except he was still thinking about her after a conference call, an hour looking at complicated design plans and a lot of coffee. He hadn’t slept well. Sexual frustration could do that. He’d had two cold showers—one on arriving home and another first thing this morning. There were other women he could call, but it was Clementine he was interested in.
He swigged another mouthful of coffee.
Where was she now? Working her little job? PR for Verado. He knew Giovanni Verado. High-end masculine luxury goods. She’d meet a lot of men in that job. Men with money—which was probably the point.
The nice girl had evaporated around about the time he’d spotted those prophylactics. If she wasn’t sleeping with him on a first date, she was sleeping with someone—or planning to.
His mouth twisted cynically. She liked the money. She probably had several guys with the right cars, the right lifestyle on a string and she was working it. Girls who looked like Clementine, with that level of independence and confidence, were never single. There was always something going on.
Yet there was something else about her.
He could still hear her husky laughter, see her clapping her hands, singing along with the music last night although she didn’t know the words and it was a foreign language to her. He remembered how she had been dismayed by his attempt to kiss her and then covered it up.
