Her One and Only (9 page)

That alone was out of character for him. He was normally extremely solicitous about consulting her and almost too fussy about making sure he had chosen a good wine.

The first course came and with it the wine waiter, who filled both their glasses.

Samantha had a healthy appetite and enjoyed her food, but watching James pick at his, quite obviously too preoccupied to eat it, destroyed her own desire to eat.

Samantha took a deep breath. Enough was enough. Putting down her cutlery she leaned across the table and began quietly, ‘James, something is obviously wrong and...’ She stopped, her eye caught by the woman standing in the entrance to the restaurant, a small frown puckering her forehead.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ James asked her.

He had his back to the restaurant door but as he saw where Samantha was looking he swivelled round.

Samantha heard the sharp exclamation he made under his breath as he saw Rosemary standing in the doorway.

‘James, what...?’ Samantha began.

But he was already on his feet, telling her curtly, ‘Please wait here, Samantha. I’d better go and see what she wants.’

As he reached the redhead, Samantha saw him take hold of her by her arm and almost march her out into the foyer and beyond her own sight.

The waiter came to ask if they were ready for their main course and Samantha shook her head, instead she allowed the wine waiter to refill her glass.

Sipping on her wine she watched the entrance to the restaurant. Five minutes went by and then ten and then another five. Suddenly Samantha had had enough. Finishing her wine she stood up and, ignoring the enquiring looks of the waiters, she marched purposely towards the foyer.

Initially she was unable to see either James or Rosemary. The foyer was now relatively empty though, certainly empty enough for her to be able to hear their voices coming from the room to one side of the foyer.

Frowning she approached it. By the sound of Rosemary’s raised voice, although she couldn’t make out
exactly
what she was saying, they were having an argument.

The door to the room was half open. Determinedly, Samantha gave it a push and then gave a small shocked gasp.

Rosemary and James were standing just inside the small room. Rosemary had her back to her whilst James was facing her but he couldn’t see her and the reason he couldn’t see her was because he was engaged in exchanging an extremely passionate kiss with Rosemary and his eyes were closed. Even so, something must have alerted him to the fact that they weren’t alone because, suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked straight at Samantha.

She didn’t wait to hear whatever it was he might have to say by way of explanation. What explanation was there, after all, that could serve any useful purpose? She had seen what she had seen and she had certainly seen that James was kissing Rosemary, who he purported to dislike intensely, with far more fire and passion than he had ever shown towards her. All right, so they might not be an item; a
couple,
but
that
didn’t alter the fact that he had quite deliberately misled her about the true nature of his relationship with the other girl.

Feeling both angry and humiliated Samantha turned on her heel and left, too preoccupied by her own feelings to be aware of the presence of anyone else in the foyer, much less the fact that she was about to cannon into him, until the breath was expelled from her lungs with dizzying force and a firm pair of male hands gripped hold of her.

‘Liam!’ she exclaimed in shock.

‘Where’s the fire?’ Liam joked, and then frowned as he saw her face.

‘Sam, what is it? What’s wrong...?’

Normally Samantha knew that her pride would never have allowed her to admit to any kind of failure but she was still in shock from what she had just seen.

‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong,’ she told him furiously. ‘
My
date...the man
I
thought would be the perfect father for my children, is back there smooching with a girl he told me he didn’t even like.’

‘James is here with someone else.’

Liam looked bemused.

‘But I thought
you
were going to be having dinner with him.’

‘So did I, but he didn’t have much of an appetite for food, nor, it seems, for
me
and now I can understand why,’ she told Liam bitterly, her eyes filling with dismayed tears which she hurriedly tried to blink away. To have caught James, of all men, in a clinch with another woman when he had... When he had what? When he had
not
wanted her!

A sharp shudder speared through Samantha’s body. Perhaps Cliff had been right, after all. Perhaps she
wasn’t
the kind of woman...perhaps she wasn’t
any
kind of woman enough for a man. Fresh tears smarted her throat.

How
could
James do this to her?

‘Liam, what are you doing?’ she demanded sharply as she suddenly realised that Liam had guided her towards the lift and had pressed the bell.

‘I’m taking you up to my suite so that you can calm down and tell me exactly what’s going on.’

‘What’s going on is that James is a lying perfidious beast who... Oh...’ Samantha gave a small soft gasp as the lift arrived and the doors opened, allowing Liam to gently push her into it.

Since several other guests joined them on its upward journey Samantha was unable to protest to Liam that all she really wanted was to be left completely and totally on her own until they were out of the lift and he was guiding her down the carpeted corridor to his hotel room door.

‘This isn’t any business of yours, Liam,’ she told him shortly, ‘so please stop trying to interfere... All I want to do is to call a taxi to take me back to Bobbie’s.’

‘You want to go back to Bobbie, looking like this,’ he demanded exasperatedly as he opened the suite door and pushed her in front of the mirror hanging in the tiny entrance lobby.

Whilst Samantha stared in revulsion at her flushed tear-stained face, Liam closed and locked the door behind her.

‘Now, come and take a seat, try to calm down and tell me what’s happened.’

‘What’s happened is that James is a lying, cheating rat,’ Samantha told him indignantly, refusing to do as he suggested and instead pacing the carpeted floor in front of the suite’s sitting room fireplace. The suite, she observed absently, was quite obviously one of the hotel’s best ones, lovingly furnished with either genuine antiques or excellent reproductions; the bowl of flowers on one of the console tables was giving off a softly sweet smell but Samantha was in no mood to appreciate the scent of flowers.

‘Rosemary is supposed to be engaged to someone else, she’s even wearing a ring, and yet just now, downstairs, well, let’s just say it was no brotherly kiss he was giving her,’ she told him darkly.

Liam’s eyebrows rose but initially he made no comment, waiting a few seconds before suggesting calmly, ‘Perhaps she’s received some kind of bad news and James was comforting her.’

Samantha gave him a scornful look.

‘Comforting her? He looked more like he wanted to...’ She stopped, her face flushing as she recognised just
what
it was James had looked as though he wanted to do with the woman in his arms.

Samantha closed her eyes, willing the tears she could feel filling her eyes not to fall.

Suddenly she remembered the lipstick that had stained James’s mouth when he had returned from parking his car and his earlier preoccupation. Had he and Rosemary...?

‘How
could
he do this to me?’ she cried, furiously bunching her hands into protesting little fists. ‘How
could
he when...’

‘Perhaps he didn’t realise just what you had in mind for him,’ Liam suggested dryly.

Samantha shot him a bitter look.

‘He
lied
to me,’ she told him fiercely. ‘If I had thought for one moment that he was...that there was...

‘What’s that?’ she demanded suddenly, staring at the ice bucket with its complimentary bottle of champagne which was standing on the coffee table.

‘Champagne,’ Liam told her unnecessarily. ‘Look, about James...’

‘You haven’t opened it yet,’ she pointed out.

Liam frowned as he looked at her. Although not a total non-drinker, Samantha had a notoriously low tolerance of alcohol and for that reason tended to avoid anything more than an aperitif followed by a single glass of dinner wine.

‘No, I haven’t,’ he agreed urbanely. ‘And if you’re suggesting that you’d like a glass... I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘Why not?’ Samantha demanded truculently. ‘I’m an adult now, Liam, remember, and if I want to get drunk...’ Before Liam could stop her she reached out and removed the bottle from the ice bucket, inexpertly managing to prise the cork free.

The bubbling liquid spilled down over her hands and when Liam took the bottle from her it ran down his own, as well. Eyeing him challengingly Samantha raised her fingers to her mouth and slowly started to lick the spilt champagne off them.

Liam felt as though someone had hit him good and hard in the solar plexus.

‘Cut it out,’ he told her sharply.

‘Cut what out?’ Samantha demanded.

Liam shook his head. Did she
really
not know what she was doing to him, what images she was conjuring up inside his head with her actions? Just watching the way her tongue curled delicately over her fingers made him want to...

‘Well, if
you
won’t give me a drink then I guess I’m going to have to go down to the bar and buy my own,’ Samantha was telling him aggressively.

Liam thought fast.

‘Okay...okay,’ he told her appeasingly, ‘hang on a second whilst I pour it for you.’

With any luck she wouldn’t even notice that he hadn’t done more than half fill the glass, only it seemed she had and what was more she was letting him know in no uncertain terms that she had.

‘Sam, I just don’t think this is a good idea on an empty stomach,’ he warned as she tilted the glass and drank quickly from it.

‘No? Isn’t it supposed to be the classic reaction to finding out that you’ve been betrayed by...’ She stopped. She couldn’t say by her lover because James wasn’t that. ‘Not, I suppose, that
you’ve
ever had to drown the pain that loving someone who doesn’t love you back has caused you,’ Samantha challenged Liam recklessly.

She was beginning to feel oddly light-headed and reckless, as though someone had taken the brakes off her reactions and emotions. It was a heady, powerful feeling and one she decided she could quite get to enjoy. With James the last few days she had found that she was constantly having to watch her words, to be careful and tactful so that she created the right kind of impression on him, but with Liam, none of that mattered. Liam knew already just what she was like. With Liam she could be as outspoken as she wished, there was no need, no point, in trying to convince
Liam
that she would make good wife material.

‘Not in alcohol I haven’t,’ Liam told her sternly.

‘You mean,
you
have loved someone who didn’t want you?’ Samantha asked him curiously. ‘Who?’

‘You’re going to regret this in the morning,’ Liam told her wryly as he recognised the effect the champagne was beginning to have on her.

‘Champagne doesn’t cause a hangover,’ Samantha told him loftily.

Liam looked unimpressed.

‘Why was he kissing her when he should have been kissing me?’ she demanded mournfully as she eyed the champagne bottle.

‘I want another drink, Liam,’ she told him plaintively. ‘No, don’t stop me,’ she demanded as he started to shake his head.

‘I
need
to get drunk. After all, I’m suffering from a broken heart.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sam,
you
don’t love James,’ Liam told her acerbically.

Angrily Samantha tried to focus on him, to tell him just how wrong he was but discovered, to her bemusement, that he was simply refusing to stand still and was, for some reason, swaying from side to side in front of her.

No, of course she didn’t love James, but she wasn’t going to have
Liam
tell her so.

‘Don’t I?’ she demanded, frowning fiercely at him. ‘And just how would
you
know that.’

‘For several reasons,’ Liam informed her softly, ‘all of which I’d be more than happy to discuss with you—when you’re sober.’

‘I’m sober now.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ he corrected her.

‘What reasons? Tell me. I want to know. Tell me, Liam,’ Samantha insisted, crossing the floor between them, taking hold of his shirt-clad arm and giving it an angry little shake.

Liam closed his eyes.

This close he could smell the heart-wrenchingly familiar scent of her skin and what was worse, he could feel the way his body was reacting to it and to her. It was just as well, perhaps, that Samantha
was
so tipsy, otherwise she would be able to see just what her presence, her proximity, was doing to him.

‘Tell me, Liam,’ she was still demanding, her eyes a dark, deep, drownable, fatally alluring heavenly blue. ‘
What
reasons?’

She was standing so close to him now that— Liam took a deep breath and then another but it was no good, there was no way he could stop what he was feeling.

Almost angrily he took hold of her, pinioning her arms at her side.

‘This reason, for one,’ he told her grimly as he bent his head and expertly silenced the shocked protest she had been about to make with the firm pressure of his mouth.

Samantha’s head was spinning, her thoughts, her reactions, her whole self going crazily out of control. This was Liam who was holding her,
kissing
her, she reminded herself.
Liam
who was just about the nearest thing she had to an elder brother, but her
body
didn’t seem to be aware of any barriers her mind was trying to throw up between them. Her
body...
Samantha gave a delicate little shudder as she felt pure female sensual longing pour through her body.