Carole Mortimer - To Woo A Wife

Jarrett sat forward, his face on a level with Abbie’s. ‘He’s seated two tables away, to the left,’ he told her quietly. ‘And he doesn’t seem able to take his eyes off you. Not that I can altogether blame him,’ he added. ‘It can’t be every day that you see Cleopatra and Delilah all wrapped up in one deliciously feminine bundle!’

Abbie had located her admirer now, dismissing the young blond Adonis with one sweep of that violet-blue gaze.

God, she was a cool one, Jarrett acknowledged admiringly. The man who was watching her so intently had the sort of film-star good looks most women would drool over, and yet Abbie showed no feminine interest in him whatsoever, totally controlled again as her attention returned to their table, their main course now being served to them.

Stephen came into their conversation. ‘Cleopatra and Delilah were both scheming women...’

Jarrett grinned. ‘But beautiful, if history is to be believed—very beautiful.’

‘If you’ll all excuse me for a few minutes.’ Abbie spoke distractedly, seemingly unconcerned at the barb in Jarrett’s remark. ‘I have to go and make a telephone cali.’ She stood up as she excused herself, picking up her small clutch-bag, to walk across the restaurant and out into the lobby beyond, where public telephones were situated.

‘Was it something I said...?’ Jarrett asked his two remaining dinner companions.

‘I doubt it,’ Stephen replied. ‘Abbie probably does just have to make a telephone call.’

Maybe she did, Jarrett inwardly acknowledged, but the man who had been seated two tables away, the man who had been watching her so avidly through the meal, had obviously seen her departure as an opportunity to actually speak to her, getting up himself and following her from the room!

Jarrett’s eyes became golden slits as he watched the other man, whose hurried departure, so soon after Abbie’s, his meal half-eaten, couldn’t just be a coincidence. Despite Abbie’s air of cool assurance, there was also that vulnerability Jarrett had recognised in her earlier, and the delicacy of her tall, willowy body. The man who had followed her, so opportunely, was very tall and muscular, looked as if he worked out just for the hell of it!

He put his own snowy white linen napkin down on the table beside Abbie’s. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ he muttered, eyes narrowed purposefully as he strode out of the restaurant, uncaring of what Stephen and Alison thought of his departure.

It didn’t take him long to locate Abbie. Or the blond Adonis.

They were standing together across the lobby, nowhere near the public telephone booths, which were on the other side of the wide marbled hall. And even as Jarrett went to march across it and put a stop to the blond man’s intrusion Abbie reached up and put her hand on her companion’s arm in a gesture of familiarity, her smile warm and relaxed as she looked up into that handsome face.

Jarrett came to an abrupt halt, a knot tightening in his stomach while he watched the continuing conversation between the couple. Although she had given no indication of it earlier when he’d pointed the other man out to her, Abbie knew that blond giant! There was a familiarity between them that spoke of an intimacy of long standing; Abbie was looking quite animated now.

Jarrett felt a wave of temper sweep through him at the way Abbie was behaving with the other man. The two had behaved like strangers in the restaurant, no sign of familiarity between them, despite the fact that the man hadn’t seemed able to take his eyes off Abbie. What the hell was going on?

Whatever it was, Jarrett didn’t intend being caught standing here staring at the two of them like a gawking schoolboy!

Yet as their conversation continued he found he couldn’t move away. The two of them were very animated now, the man talking softly, but obviously slightly aggressively, while Abbie slowly shook her head in disagreement with what he was saying. The man broke off abruptly, and Abbie spoke to him now, that hand reassuringly on his arm once again. The man seemed to sigh his capitulation at what was being said, murmuring some sort of agreement, and Abbie nodded, a smile hovering about her sensuous lips.

The woman wasn’t just a mystery, she was an enigma, and Jarrett had too much else on his mind at the moment to try to get to the bottom of it. Maybe Abbie, for all she was such an old friend of Alison’s, was actually a high-class call-girl; it would certainly fit in with her reluctance to talk about herself, and the fact that she travelled so much without really enjoying it. It would also explain the single name of Abbie...

It did fit too, only too well, he slowly realised. A woman of Abbie’s undoubted beauty would be well sought after, could probably name her own price for the possession of that cool, elusive beauty, no matter how fleetingly.

Hell, he had probably spent the best part of the evening lusting after a woman who sold what he wanted from her! But he had never paid for a woman in his life—at least, not with cold, hard cash. Although expensive jewellery at the end of a brief relationship probably amounted to the same thing.

Oh, to hell with this, he inwardly cursed; if that was what she was he might as well have her himself for the night, and once he had he could get on with concentrating on the real reason he was here.

That decision made, he turned on his heel and walked back into the restaurant. Whatever arrangements Abbie was making to meet the blond Adonis later, she could damn well break. The only man she was going home with tonight was him. And it would be a night he intended them both to remember!

He watched her intently as she negotiated around the tables to where her party was seated, half expecting his desire for her to have lessened with the knowledge of what he now thought she was. But it hadn’t, the gently swaying hips, firm up-thrusting breasts, pert beneath the fitted sheath of her dress, only succeeded in evoking vivid images in his mind. Damn it, he had never wanted a woman as much as he now wanted Abbie—no matter what she was!

‘You shouldn’t have waited for me,’ she commented as she sat down, looking pointedly at Jarrett’s untouched steak.

His mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t. I’ve only just returned to the table myself,’ he added after a deliberate pause, observing her under hooded lids. And he wasn’t disappointed. She gave him a startled look, instantly wary, he realised with satisfaction.

‘Oh?’

She had to be wondering where he had been, to have just returned himself, must also be wondering if he had seen her talking to the blond Adonis. Well she could sit and wonder!

‘Successful telephone call?’ he said lightly before cutting into his perfectly cooked steak, seemingly uninterested in her answer. Because he knew she hadn’t made any telephone call!

‘Er—yes,’ she confirmed abruptly, still looking at him uncertainly.

‘Everything okay?’ Alison put in gently.

Abbie’s expression softened as she turned to her friend. ‘Everything is fine,’ she nodded warmly.

Were Alison and Stephen aware of what this woman did? Somehow he doubted it. Oh, Stephen was no angel, had been involved with lots of women before meeting Alison a few years ago, and Alison herself admitted to several relationships before Stephen. But what Abbie did was something else entirely, and certainly couldn’t be classed as relationships!

It was with a certain amount of satisfaction that Jarrett noticed the continued absence of the blond Adonis from his chair two tables away. The man, his business, he believed, successfully concluded, hadn’t even bothered to return and finish his meal. Well, he was going to regret later having missed out on his meal, and on Abbie—because Jarrett had plans of his own where she was concerned. And it was very rare for him not to get what he wanted!

The rest of the evening dragged as far as Jarrett was concerned, the exquisitely prepared food tasteless to him, his lack of contribution to the conversation drawing several veiled glances from those violet-blue eyes beneath long black lashes. Much to his satisfaction. He might as well be as much of a mystery to her as she was to him!

All the time his tension was rising, his anticipation of the night ahead making him completely introspective.

He had no idea how one went about paying a woman to go to bed with one.

But the blond Adonis had seemed to have no trouble arranging it, so neither would he!

CHAPTER THREE

ABBIE was all too aware of the brooding silence of the man sitting next to her, and of his steadily increasing tension.

But she had no logical explanation for his behaviour.

Oh, she had been a little concerned when he’d mentioned leaving the table at the same time she had, had wondered if he could have seen her out in the lobby talking to Tony. But, she had decided, even if he had witnessed that conversation, it would merely have looked as if the man who couldn’t ‘take his eyes off her’ had tried to strike up an acquaintance with her when he’d seen the opportunity of finding her on her own. And, as Tony hadn’t returned to his table, it would seem that he must have been rebuffed.

No, it couldn’t have been that which had changed Jarrett’s mood. Because it had changed. Unless his long silences were his way of sticking to his promise about keeping his cynicism to himself? She had wondered how he was going to manage that, when he obviously viewed life through such jaundiced eyes. Perhaps he had decided silence was the best course of action!

Not that she in the least minded his lack of participation in the conversation. She had been totally stunned earlier when he’d revealed that she—well, actually Sabina Sutherland—was the reason for his coming to Whistler. Although Alison had assured her, once they’d reached the powder-room, after Abbie’s choking fit, that neither she nor Stephen had been aware of Jarrett’s rea- son for being here, either. Nor did they know what business Jarrett had with Sabina Sutherland.

Jarrett was an entrepreneur—for that Abbie read opportunist! —with a finger in many pies. But as Sutherlands were also a multi-business company that told Abbie absolutely nothing. However, by the time Abbie returned to her private ski-lodge somewhere up the mountain, she should have all the information on Jarrett Hunter that she would need, in order to know whether or not she should see him as Sabina Sutherland...

She sincerely hoped the answer to that proved to be negative. Jarrett Hunter wasn’t a man she felt in the least comfortable with, and dealing with him on a business level would be like handling the unleashed tiger his eyes so reminded her of!

Eyes that watched her whenever he thought she was concentrating her interest elsewhere. And his interest was purely male, seeming to concentrate on each of her physical attributes in turn. She was sure she had been mentally stripped naked, and then reclothed, in the last hour!

‘Can I see you safely back to your suite?’ he offered smoothly later as they all left the restaurant together. ‘I’m sure Alison and Stephen are more than ready to disappear after this interruption to their honeymoon.’

Abbie delayed answering him as she smiled her thanks at the young man who had just returned her jacket and overcoat to her, the latter an expensive copy of a sable—she couldn’t stand the thought of wearing a real fur that had once covered some poor luckless animal’s body, but the icy Canadian winter called for warmth as well as comfort.

She wrapped the ankle-length coat about her before releasing her hair from the confines of its collar, turning to smile coolly at Jarrett. ‘As you can see by this coat,’ she commented, turning up the collar to keep her neck warm, ‘I’m not a guest at this hotel.’