The Playboy in Pursuit Page 4

  ‘Are you going to put me out of my misery by coming to dinner with me tonight, Lucille?’ he demanded to know. ‘Or are you going to condemn me to eternal depression?’

  ‘How will a date with me put you out of your misery?’ she challenged, as if she didn’t know. A conquest a day keeps depression at bay!

  ‘It just will,’ he said firmly. ‘I promise to be a gentleman, if that’s what’s worrying you. Just dinner and conversation. Nothing else.’

  Lucille frowned. He actually sounded sincere. Who knew? Maybe he meant the ‘just dinner’ part. Maybe he simply wanted the distraction of company. Maybe he had been in love with that Flame female and was genuinely upset.

  Lucille was startled to find she didn’t like that last thought. Perhaps because underneath she wanted him to want her as she wanted him. Oh, yes, there was no point in denying it, not to herself. She wanted him. Wanted him naked, wanted him in bed, wanted him right now, or at the very latest…tonight.

  Any shock—or self-disgust—at this starkly explicit realisation was eventually overlaid by an angrily defensive train of thought. Why shouldn’t she want him? And why shouldn’t she have him, at least once? Now that her female hormones were up and running again, she’d be stupid not to take advantage of this situation. Erica was right. Who better to have sex with than a man who specialised in the practice?

  It wasn’t as though Val would be hurt by her going to bed with him. Hell, he’d probably be grateful.

  A decidedly erotic quiver ran down her spine at the thought. Despite his promise of gentlemanly behaviour, Lucille knew that a virile man like Val didn’t stand a chance of staying virtuous if she pulled out all the stops, then didn’t say no when he took the bait.

  ‘All right,’ she said, amazed that she could sound so calm in the face of such wicked plottings. ‘I wouldn’t want to be responsible for plunging you into eternal depression.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ he said, finding an instant smile.

  Lucille smiled back. I’ve gone mad, she decided. Stark raving mad.

  Whatever was Michele going to say?

  Nothing, the devil’s voice whispered in Lucille’s head. Because you’re not going to tell her. Tonight is going to be your dark little secret. Your deep, dark little secret.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HER phone rang at ten to eight, just as she was doing some last-minute frantic primping.

  ‘What a time for someone to ring,’ Lucille muttered as she hurried from her bedroom to the living-room.

  Not that she hadn’t already had three hours to get ready since arriving home at five. But three hours simply weren’t enough for this kind of date. There was so much to be done. So much to be worried over, and to change her mind over. Not the least of which was what one should wear to seduce a man who’d been seduced by the best of them.

  In the end she’d gone for broke, in a dress which would have revived an octogenarian on life support. It was part of the wardrobe she’d splurged on after her divorce had come through but never worn. Emerald chiffon with a low-cut V neckline, sheer tight sleeves and a softly layered skirt which fell to mid-calf, leaving her slender ankles and sexily shod feet in full view. Her cleavage was deep and her hair up in a fashionably dishevelled style, with tendrils falling all round her neck.

  Lucille swept the receiver up to her ear, clinking with one of the crystal drop earrings she’d just hooked into her lobes.

  ‘Yes?’ she said sharply down the line.

  ‘It’s Val. I’m stuck in a traffic snarl on the bridge. I’m going to be late getting to your place.’

  Hearing his voice brought home exactly what she was doing. This wasn’t some wild sexual fantasy she was about to embark on. This was a real man she was planning to seduce. And she was a real woman. A woman who hadn’t made love in so long she’d probably forgotten how!

  Lucille’s stomach crunched down hard, then churned. She couldn’t go through with this. She simply couldn’t. What had she been thinking of? Aside from any other consideration, the man was a playboy, for pity’s sake. Maybe he would know all the right moves in bed, as Erica had pointed out. But her pride simply wouldn’t allow herself to let such a man think she was nothing but an easy lay.

  Which he would.

  ‘Lucille?’ he prompted.

  ‘Yes, I’m here,’ she said stiffly. At least she would have time to change again, into something less provocative.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said.

  ‘It can’t be helped. You needn’t have worried. Or called.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to think I was deliberately keeping you waiting, or that I was an arrogant creep with no respect for time or women.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that,’ she bit out, though she probably would have.

  ‘You sound a little upset.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m just not ready yet.’

  His laugh was low and incredibly sexy, reminding Lucille of why she’d been brought to this.

  ‘Now I understand,’ he said. ‘I sometimes forget it takes women for ever to get dressed. Off you go, then, because I want you ready and waiting when I arrive. I’m literally starving.’

  She bristled. ‘I thought you said you always ate late.’

  ‘I seem to have forgotten to eat today, and the cupboards in my new apartment were bare, except for coffee and tea.’

  ‘Oh, dear. I should have seen to that.’

  ‘That’s what Erica said when I called to thank her for everything. But don’t fret. I soothed her concerns by saying I was going out for dinner tonight and you’d promised to attend to the matter first thing in the morning.’

  Lucille’s heart missed a beat. ‘You didn’t tell her you were taking me out to dinner, did you?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why didn’t you want me to tell her?’

  Lucille didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I have an awful feeling,’ Val went on drily, after an embarrassing stretch of silence, ‘that your reluctance to answer has something to do with your poor opinion of my character.’

  Lucille didn’t deny it.

  ‘Mmm. We will explore this subject more in depth over dinner, when you can’t get away with going silent on me. Ah, the traffic’s moving. I might not be too long after all. Better shake a leg, Lucille, or you’ll be going to dinner in whatever you have on at the moment. Dare I hope it’s your birthday suit?’

  She did end up going to dinner in what she had on at that moment, because Erica rang as soon as she hung up, chastising her for not catering to Val’s basic culinary needs on the spot, after which she tried to pump Lucille for her personal opinion of the man. By the time Lucille had neatly side-stepped her boss’s questions and got off the darned phone, it was too late to change. Her intercom buzzer began ringing before she could take more than two steps back towards her bedroom.

  Lucille groaned, accepting ruefully that she would have to go to dinner as she was. Hopefully Val wouldn’t get the wrong idea about the way she looked. Not that she was all that provocatively dressed by modern standards. Val was probably used to his dates wearing a whole lot less. As long as she didn’t act provocatively, or flirtatiously, he would have no reason to get out of line.

  The dangly earrings could go, however, she decided sensibly, unhooking and tossing them on the hall table as she hurried past on her way to the intercom beside the front door. Now that she’d come to her senses she could hardly believe that her self-esteem had let her sink so low as to actually consider throwing herself at such a man.

  If she’d been able to politely get out of dinner, she would have. A bit hard, however, when he was right downstairs and she’d only spoken to him minutes before. All she could do was keep her defences in place and not let him get to her sexually a second time.

  ‘That you, Val?’ she said coolly, on flipping the switch.

  ‘The one and only. All dressed and raring
to go?’

  ‘Just about.’ All she had to do was get her purse. ‘I won’t be more than a minute. You might as well wait down there.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Lucille contemplated changing her shoes, but that old rebellious streak won out and she didn’t. A mistake, possibly, she worried as she rode the lift down to the lobby. The black patent high heels gracing her feet tonight made today’s cream stilletos look sedate. Not because they were higher. That would have been impossible. But because of the amount of exposed foot. There was only one pencil-thin strap anchoring her foot to the sole and another wickedly sinful one snaking around her ankle. They were painful shoes to wear, but made her feet look gorgeous and her sleekly stockinged legs even better.

  Val certainly seemed to think so when he caught sight of her stepping out of the lift. He was standing outside, under the covered porch, but had a perfect view through the glass security doors of the building’s lobby area. His eyes followed her every step as she walked towards him, his gaze riveted to her lower legs.

  Lucille was staring at him too, but he was too intent on her ankles and shoes to notice.

  He’d changed clothes since she’d left him, though he was still wearing black. Black tailored trousers. Black silk shirt which buttoned right up to his neck. Black belt and shoes.

  Clearly his father’s housekeeper had hopped to it and done Val’s bidding. Just before Lucille had left him this afternoon Val had rung the woman and asked her to send all his things over in a taxi.

  Lucille suspected that most women did Val’s bidding. Pronto.

  He’d also showered and shaved since she’d last seen him. Brushed his hair too. Where before he’d been roughly handsome, now he was smoothly handsome. Dazzlingly so.

  Lucille might have been dazzled if she hadn’t been ready for her sexual reaction this time. Her heartbeat still quickened but her defences remained in place, swiftly dispensing with the sudden silly idea that Val’s interest in her might not be transitory or superficial.

  Playboys don’t date little nobodies like you, she reminded herself. Their girlfriends are supermodels. Heiresses. Pop stars. Actresses. This was obviously a spur-of-the-moment invitation. Val needed the distraction of company tonight and you just happened to be there.

  A cynical conclusion, but then Lucille was cynical about men. She had every reason to be.

  Still, he seemed to genuinely like what he was seeing tonight. More than like. His eyes were gleaming with male admiration as she swung open one of the glass doors. Lucille’s female self couldn’t help feeling flattered by his fancying her physically, but she wasn’t about to get carried away. She’d dressed to attract him, after all.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, finally glancing back up into her face. ‘Now the rest of you matches the shoes.’

  Lucille smiled a sardonic smile. He had no idea how much she’d matched those shoes a few short minutes before. If she’d remained in her earlier erotically inflamed mood, seeing him looking this gorgeous himself would probably have heated her up so far she would have been in danger of spontaneous combustion.

  As it was, she could still detect some body changes she seemed to have no control over. A tingling all over the surface of her skin. A tightness in places which hadn’t been tight a few seconds before. That insidious quickening of her heartbeat.

  Just as well nothing was visible to the naked eye.

  ‘What happened to the ice princess?’ he asked, smiling.

  ‘I always put the ice princess to bed after the sun goes down,’ she tossed back blithely.

  ‘And the stern headmistress?’ he enquired.

  She met his dancing black eyes with cool green ones. ‘She’s there, ready and waiting, if my date gets out of line.’

  He grinned, then gave her considerable cleavage an appreciative once-over. ‘If you wear dresses like that on your dates, I’ll bet a good few get out of line.’

  She ignored that one. ‘Actually, I haven’t dated for a while.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Erica said as much earlier this afternoon. Why not?’

  Her shrug was splendidly nonchalant. ‘No spark.’

  He frowned. ‘No spark?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  His eyebrows arched. ‘Does that mean there’s a spark with me?’

  Her smile was dry. ‘Come now, Val, a girl would have to be myopic or a moron not to feel at least a tiny spark with a man of your many God-given talents.’

  His brows dropped, then beetled together. ‘Why do I get the feeling that’s a criticism again, and not a compliment?’

  ‘I have no idea. Maybe you’re paranoid.’

  He shook his head, clearly frustrated by her cryptic repartee. ‘Not usually, but I suspect I could get that way around you.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she murmured as he steered her over to the waiting taxi. ‘We can’t have that.’

  She felt his puzzled frown on her as she climbed in, and she did feel a bit guilty. Open sarcasm wasn’t usually her way.

  But underneath she did so resent his effortless charm, and the way he made her feel. Damn it all, why couldn’t her libido have been unfrozen by an ordinary guy? Why did it have to be a womanising playboy? She wouldn’t have had to resist a regular guy. She could have surrendered to what she wanted without having to feel disgustingly weak, or appallingly cheap, or just plain foolish.

  She could only hope that when this night was over she wouldn’t revert to the woman she’d been before meeting Val Seymour. Because Michele was so right. She didn’t really want to be alone and celibate for the rest of her life. It was too lonely. Too…unnatural.

  Or so it seemed at the moment, with Val pressed so close to her in the back of the taxi. His maleness seemed to be calling out to her, making her brutally aware of her woman’s body, especially those parts she’d fantasised about him touching, and kissing, and caressing. Her breasts. Her belly. Her bottom.

  Her eyes slid sidewards to lock with his, his smouldering gaze sending every hormonally activated nerve-ending in her body off the Richter scale of arousal. When he began to lean her way she was sure he was going to kiss her, and, whilst the prospect produced an instant panic, she knew she wouldn’t stop him.

  He must have picked up on her alarmed body language, however, because he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he smiled a wry smile and shifted away a little.

  ‘Sorry,’ he drawled. ‘Didn’t mean to invade your personal space. I’ll keep a more gentlemanly distance in future.’

  Lucille didn’t know if she felt relief or dismay.

  In the end, self-irritation overrode everything else. To think she would have let him kiss her! Just like that! Lord, she’d have to be careful in the taxi after dinner. And when he walked her to the door. There’d be no coming up for coffee. Or anything like that.

  Being alone with this sexy devil could spell disaster, especially with some wine in both their systems. As much as she might have fantasised about it, no way was Lucille going to wake up the next morning with Val Seymour’s head on the pillow beside her. No way!

  Grimly determined to keep her own head from now on, she ordered her treacherous body to behave itself for the rest of the evening, then settled back to stare blankly through the passenger window at the city lights. Anything was better than looking at the man seated next to her. If she didn’t want to make a complete fool of herself before this evening was out, then looking at him was best kept to a minimum!

  But how on earth was she expected not to look at him in the restaurant, when he’d be sitting right opposite her? There was only so much staring at menus that she could indulge in.

  Lucille sighed. Saying yes to this dinner date had been a big, big mistake!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE restaurant was only five minutes away, an intimate little harbourside place with a view.

  Lucille had asked Val to choose somewhere dimly lit and discreet, not one of those overpriced showy places where the famous and infamous went to see and be seen. Lucille cringed at the though
t of appearing in any of the gossip columns as Val Seymour’s latest ladylove.

  She could see it now. Dashing entrepreneur seen dining alone with mystery blonde.

  Despite all Val’s precautions—he swore he’d never been here before—it was obvious the maître d’ recognised him. They were unctuously shown to the best table in the house, over in a private and rather precious corner, with a screen protecting them from the other patrons but nothing between them and the truly spectacular night view of the harbour bridge and the city lights beyond.

  On the plus side, no one gawked or whispered as they were shown to their privileged spot. In truth, the diners probably couldn’t see all that well beyond the immediate circle of their own tables, the room was so subtly lit—the result of tiny recessed ceiling lights and only a single candle sitting on each dark-clothed table.

  Lucille smiled ruefully to herself as she sat down, remembering what Michele had said about candlelit dinners putting a girl in the mood. Little did Michele know, but a man like Val didn’t need romantic accompaniments to put a girl in the mood. All he had to do was turn up!

  ‘What’s tickling your fancy?’ Val asked, looking up from the wine list he’d been handed.

  ‘Just something a girlfriend said to me at lunch today,’ she replied, thinking how devilishly attractive he looked by candlelight. If Satan himself had chosen to take flesh, then this was how he would look. Black hair. Black eyes. And a sinfully sexy mouth.

  That sinfully sexy mouth smiled a sinfully sexy smile. ‘Am I allowed to ask what?’

  ‘Secret women’s business is never shared with men-folk,’ she replied haughtily.

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He nodded sagely. ‘You were talking about sex.’

  ‘Would an ice princess do that?’ she mocked.

  ‘I would think ice princesses talk about little else,’ he countered. ‘Because that’s all they ever do on the subject. Talk.’

  ‘You could be right there,’ she confessed on a dry note.

  He laughed. ‘Somehow I don’t think I’m even close. So what have we here?’ he mused, running his eyes over the list of wines. ‘Red or white?’