Fortune in the Stars (3 page)

'Erica's parents?' he probed.

'They had been divorced so often, Erica claimed to have
lost count of how many step-parents she had had.'

She gave a start of surprise as he reached over and patted
her lightly on the hand.

'Sorry,' he muttered. 'Erica was the one who died a few
years ago, wasn't she?'

Penny nodded, unable to speak for the pain she knew would
always haunt the remaining three of that childhood quartet.

'And you, Penny, what's your background?' he asked, his
deliberate alteration of the course of their conversation leaving her
none the wiser as to how much he really knew of the details of Erica's
tragic death.

'It's pretty straightforward. The only reason I was sent
to that particular school was because my father's a diplomat and he was
posted to the back of beyond just before I was twelve.'

'And where are your parents now?'

'Brazil—so naturally I don't see much of them.'

'You should try the mayonnaise with those prawns,' he
suggested, with a smile so utterly charming that she had difficulty
believing she had earlier judged him to be completely without charm.
'It's very good… If you like garlic, that is.'

She tried the mayonnaise and pronounced it delicious.

'And the wine—you haven't tasted that either.'

She took a dutiful sip from her glass and found even her
untutored palate suspecting that this must be an exceptionally high
quality wine.

'It's fantastic,' she enthused. 'Is it local?'

He gave a small laugh as he shook his head. 'A remark
guaranteed to have my grandfather turning in his grave,' he murmured.
'I feel obliged to qualify my remark about his taste—he had
an exceptional nose for wine. What you are now sampling is part of a
truly magnificent cellar.'

'Did your maternal grandparents bring you both up?' she
asked.

'Just the grandfather—he was a widower,' he
replied, the grimly closed look returning to his face.

Penny watched in awkward silence as he studiously returned
his attention to shelling prawns, an action telling her more plainly
than any words that the subject, which he himself had re-opened, was
once more closed.

'What do you do for a living?' she eventually asked,
responding more to a need to fill the uncomfortably lengthening silence
between them than to any particular interest, yet realising the instant
the words were out that it was hardly the most apt of questions to be
putting to a man probably worth millions.

His eyes flickered towards hers, a hint of something like
amusement in them.

'Nothing—I'm a playboy. Didn't you know?' he
drawled. 'And since my grandfather died six months ago and his entire
business empire passed to me, I have an ever bigger and better toy to
play with.' He leaned over and refilled both their glasses, a cold
smile on his lips. 'I seem to have shocked you, Penny—though
I can't for the life of me think why.'

Penny picked up her glass and almost drained it in an
attempt to recover her wits.

'Why on earth should I be shocked?' she asked, shocked to
the core not only by the casual malevolence with which he could dismiss
a grandfather so recently dead, but also by the realisation that six
months ago she had been seeing Lexy more frequently than usual and
could, in retrospect, remember no hint of anything resembling grief in
her friend at that time.

'Why indeed—yet you obviously are. Haven't you
come across a self-confessed playboy before?'

Penny looked at him, plainly having difficulty in
believing her ears. 'You know perfectly well it's nothing to do with
that! It's your attitude towards your grandfather!' she exclaimed,
belying completely her claimed lack of shock.

'What about my attitude towards my grandfather?' he
enquired, managing to sound genuinely intrigued.

'Well, he… I mean, most people would at least
be upset at losing a grandfather—especially one who had also
been surrogate mother and father to them.'

'Surrogate mother and father,' he repeated, chuckling
reflectively. 'Yes, I dare say you're right—most people
would. More wine?'

Penny's nod was absent-minded. Though she still felt
residual shock at his callous attitude, she was at the same time
realising how completely and irrationally subjective her own reaction
was. She took several more gulps of the wine—it really was
very good—while trying to sort out her thoughts.

'I admit I was a little shocked… And I had
absolutely no right to be,' she apologised a little disjointedly.
'After all, I know nothing whatever about your relationship with your
grandfather… He could have been a complete ogre, for all I
know.'

'You're beginning to sound as though you knew him
intimately,' he murmured wryly. 'But your spontaneous reaction
intrigues me; do you hold that blood ties automatically engender
respect—love, even?'

'No, I…' Penny found herself once again
resorting to draining her wine glass in order to give herself time to
think. 'To be honest,' she eventually stated, 'I've had rather a long
day.' A perfectly honest statement, she told herself. 'And I'm so tired
I can hardly think straight.' She detected no honesty at all in that
last statement because tiredness had little or nothing to do with her
inability to think coherently.

'How inconsiderate of me,' Dominic replied, rising
instantly. 'I'll show you the way back to your room— unless
you'd prefer a little more to eat first.'

Penny shook her head, rising also. 'No, that was
delicious, thanks.'

She found herself wishing she hadn't shaken her head, then
realising exactly how little she had had to eat all day as three,
possibly even four glasses of wine started wreaking their merry havoc
throughout her senses.

'Perhaps we could finish this interesting conversation
tomorrow,' he startled her by saying as he led her back through the
dining-room and into that confusing maze of halls.

She glanced up at him, wondering if he was being
sarcastic, and found his expression as urbane as his words had sounded.
Well, one thing was for sure, she decided dazedly, her unexpected
companion wasn't exactly what could be described as an open
book— most of the time she hadn't the remotest idea what was
going on in his head.

'Are you quite sure you've had enough to eat?' he asked
suddenly, catching her by the elbow as her steps faltered slightly.

'Perfectly, thank you,' replied Penny, her words lilting
with the delightful wooziness she was feeling. 'Oh, heavens!' she
exclaimed, suddenly stopping short. 'We didn't clear away the
things… There's all that food left out—'

'Don't worry about it, I'll see to it,' he cut in, his
grasp firm on her elbow. 'You need your sleep—you're almost
reeling with tiredness,' he added with a soft chuckle.

'You mean from all that wine!' retorted Penny with total
candour—she actually
was
reeling! 'You
know, apart from those delicious prawns, the only other thing I've had
to eat today was a slice of toast early this morning.'

'Well, at least you'll have no problems sleeping in a
strange bed,' he chuckled, releasing her arm and opening the door to
her room. 'And it's probably way past your bedtime anyway.'

'What time is it?' she asked, glancing down at her wrist.
'I didn't change my watch.'

'Seven minutes to one, I'm afraid,' he replied, then gave
another of those soft chuckles she was beginning to find rather
attractive—though this one, she noticed, contained a hint of
disbelief in it. 'In fact, fifty-three minutes into my thirty-first
birthday… It is the tenth today, isn't it?'

'It is!' exclaimed Penny delightedly. She loved birthdays,
and the very idea of someone actually forgetting his own
birthday—even if for only fifty-three minutes—
amazed her. 'Happy birthday! If you like, I'll bake you a birthday cake
tomorrow… Well, today, actually.'

'I think we'd better wait and see how you feel in the
morning,' he advised, his eyes twinkling down into hers with open
amusement. 'But you might as well give the birthday boy his customary
kiss now—in case you're feeling too rough to oblige in the
morning.'

'What custom is this?' she asked, laughter bubbling in her
voice as he lowered his head to accommodate her, closing his eyes and
offering her his lips.

'A local one—I think,' he muttered, through
still-posed lips.

'Oh, well, when in Rome…' giggled Penny,
placing her hands on his shoulders. 'Are you ready?'

'Of course I'm damned well ready—I'm beginning
to get a crick in my neck!'

'OK. Happy birthday.'

Having decided that a peck on the cheek was all that could
be reasonably required of her—after all, birthday or not, the
man was a virtual stranger—Penny was thrown to find her lips
against a mouth, instead of the cheek at which she had aimed. And it
was a mouth that no longer held any trace of its former puckered
innocence; it was one taking its welcome unquestioningly for granted,
parting her lips with practised command while his arms wound
confidently around her body. And Penny's own arms moved, as though of
their own volition, to twine and cling around his neck, her lips
spontaneously giving the welcome demanded of them as her body became
invaded by a multitude of wild sensations hitherto unknown to it.

'Not merely a happy birthday,' he murmured huskily, when
at last obliged to come up for air. 'But a most unexpectedly happy one
indeed.'

Drugged by the delightful sensations coursing through her,
Penny dispensed with words altogether, impatiently drawing his mouth
back to hers… She had never experienced anything remotely
like this before and was only too eager to prolong the experience.

It was only when his tightening arms lifted her almost off
her feet that Penny became aware he had manoeuvred them both through
the door and into her room. And it was then, too, that a vague
awareness of the total lack of any inhibition she was displaying began
dawning on her.

'What a delightful unexpected birthday present you've
turned out to be,' he whispered, his hands sliding purposefully over
her body.

'Dominic!' she shrieked, full awareness engulfing her like
an avalanche even as her body leapt in frantic excitement to his touch.
'Look, I'm sorry… I really am!' Terrifying images of what
could happen to women who had behaved with the mindless stupidity she
had just displayed were flashing through her mind. 'I've obviously had
far much more to drink than I'd realised… I honestly don't
usually behave in the least like this!' she babbled frantically.

'How disappointing!' he grinned, a trifle breathless as he
released her. 'I was really rather enjoying it all.'

'I don't know what happened,' she gulped, disconcerted to
find the delightful sensations still rioting on unabated within her. 'I
mean… I was going to kiss your cheek.'

'I much preferred it the way it turned out,' he murmured,
the sultry, dangerously suggestive darkness in his eyes worryingly
increasing rather than dampening the tumultuous excitement within her.
'As I'm sure you did.'

'No! I… Please!' she croaked incoherently, then
watched dazedly as he strolled to the door and blew her a mocking kiss
before stepping out and closing it behind him.

Penny stood as though rooted where he had left her. She
was probably having a mental breakdown, she decided—a
decision she welcomed with a ludicrous sense of relief. The traumas of
the past week were finally taking their toll… There could be
no other explanation for the fact that, when Dominic Raphael had closed
the door behind him, there had been part of her silently shrieking out
to him to come back.

'Good
morning,
se
n
orita
.'

Penny began struggling from the depths of sleep as those
words reached her, wincing as the swish of the curtains brought light
flooding into the room.

'Se
n
or Raphael says to tell you he will join you for
breakfast on the pool terrace whenever you are ready.'

The door had already closed behind the maid uttering those
words by the time Penny had struggled upright.

She had a bit of a headache, she thought groggily, as the
aroma of coffee drew her attention to the tray the maid had placed
unnoticed on the bedside-table. She poured herself a cup, idly
wondering if her headache warranted taking an aspirin. Then full
wakefulness hit her with a devastating thud.

Headache? She should be in the throes of an almighty
hangover, she berated herself as horror and humiliation swept over her.
Harshly dismissing her conclusion of the night before—that
she was in the throes of a mental breakdown—as the product of
drunken reasoning, she masochistically began poring over every
conceivable detail of her behaviour up to the moment Dominic Raphael
had finally left her room.

'It wasn't me!' she groaned aloud, slumping back against
the pillows in weak disbelief and almost spilling her coffee.
Admittedly she rarely drank more than a couple of glasses of wine with
a meal; and all right, so she had had more than her usual
quota—and on an empty stomach—but it should never
have had that appallingly libidinous effect on her!

Frowning, and with her mind racing, Penny slowly drank her
coffee, and gradually her frown eased and she began laughing weakly.

If only Rupert had been a fly on the wall last night! She
pulled a face. The truth was that Rupert would never have believed what
he was seeing, she admitted glumly. In fact, he would have had no
difficulty whatsoever in concluding that the woman responding to
Dominic Raphael's kisses with such unbridled enthusiasm could only have
been her double.

She finished her coffee, still lost in thought as she
poured herself another.

Though Rupert had never actually come right out with it
and accused her of being frigid, it was a matter that had always loomed
silent and unresolved between them.