Playboy's Lesson (13 page)

Lucca swung her so quickly towards the exit she tottered on her skyscraper heels. ‘Not right now,’ he muttered.

‘I know why you don’t want to sleep with me. You’re worried you might want to sleep with me more than once, aren’t you?’ Lottie was enjoying this newfound freedom of speech. She could say whatever thought popped into her mind and she didn’t blush or cringe in embarrassment. ‘You might want to have a proper fling with me, like for weeks and weeks, maybe even months and months.’ She grinned at both of him. ‘You might even fall in love with me like it says in the paper. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?’

He let out a very rude word and tugged her towards the car.

* * *

Lucca carried the now-sleeping Lottie into the hotel. It was a relief to have her finally shut up. He couldn’t imagine what the paparazzi would make of her tipsy ramblings about him falling in love with her.
Sheesh!
Luckily there was no one about. In fact, the place looked a little deserted. There weren’t the usual crowds of guests checking in or checking out or people having drinks in the bar. It looked like a ghost-town hotel instead of the usual hub of activity even though it was only just past midnight.

A staff member came over hurriedly. ‘Oh, dear, Mr Chatsfield, is Her Royal Highness unwell too?’

‘No, just a little, er...tired. I’m taking her up to—to the suite.’

‘We left several messages on your phone,’ the man said. ‘We’ve had to quarantine the hotel.’

‘What?’

‘There’s been an outbreak of a virus.’ The staff member gave a very good impression of hand wringing. ‘The medical authorities want to keep things contained until they identify the cause. We’re not sure if it’s food poisoning or a highly contagious rotor virus. We’re not taking any more bookings until we know for sure and we’ve been advised to keep all the guests on-site for forty-eight hours to stop the spread of infection.’

Lucca mentally rolled his eyes. He’d planned to fly back to Preitalle as early as possible the next morning. He didn’t want Lottie under the same roof as him in case he was tempted beyond his endurance. ‘Do my father and his CEO know about this?’

‘Yes, we’ve informed them both. They’ve probably been trying to contact you. Have you had your phone off?’

‘On silent.’ Lucca hadn’t wanted to face the fallout from his father or Christos when the news broke of his ‘affair’ with Lottie. He could just imagine the spraying he would get. Not that he wanted their approval. Far from it. He enjoyed creating drama. It served them right for trying to control him.

Lottie opened her eyes and blinked at him owlishly. ‘Have I been sleeping?’

‘Yes
, cara mia
,’ Lucca said, conscious of the staff member watching intently.

‘I had the bestest time, Jean Rene,’ Lottie said to the staff member who had remained nameless to Lucca up until that point. ‘Lucca took me dancing. I had champagne cocktails that tasted yummy scrummy. And I had my first ever vodka chaser.’

Jean Rene to his credit didn’t blink an eye. ‘That is wonderful, Your Royal Highness. I’m so glad you had a good time.’

‘I had a
marvellous
time!’ Lottie crowed as she seesawed her lower legs up and down like an excited child while Lucca tried to hold her steady in case he popped a disc. ‘Lucca’s in love with me, aren’t you, Lucca?’

‘But of course,
ma petite
,’ he said, mentally grinding his teeth.

She touched his bottom lip with her salty fingertip. ‘You can’t resist me, can you? I’m not like your usual floozies. I’ve got class.’

‘You sure do, baby girl.’ He edged towards the lifts. ‘Keep me posted on the situation, er, Jean Rene, okay?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Jean Rene smiled a man-to-man smile. ‘Have a wonderful night.’

* * *

Lottie woke up with a blinding headache and a mouth that felt like she’d been sucking on a gym sock. She gingerly sat upright, wincing as the morning light threatened to laser her eyeballs. She reached for her glasses and blinked a couple of times to clear her vision.

Lucca was sitting in a wing chair in her suite...slumped would be more accurate. He was soundly asleep, his head lolled to one side, his feet crossed over at the ankles. He was still in the clothes he had been wearing last night; the top three buttons of his shirt were undone showing a rather delicious display of hard male muscle and wiry chest hair.

Why had he spent the night watching her sleep? Had he put her to bed? She looked down at her bra and knickers.
Had he undressed her?
She frowned as she tried to recall last night.... It was all a bit of a blur. A nice blur, however. She knew she’d had a good time. Lucca had been wonderful company. He’d made her laugh and he’d taken her dancing.

She carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed and tested her balance. Her head swam a little but she didn’t feel too bad, all things considered. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t fix.

She came out of the bathroom a few minutes later to find Lucca going through his messages on his phone. He looked up as she came in, his gaze running over her dressed in the hotel bathrobe and her hair in a towel turban on her head. ‘How’s your head?’

‘Did you undress me last night?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t lay a finger—’

‘Why not?’

He frowned at her. ‘What do you mean “why not?” You were off your face, that’s why not.’

Lottie tilted her head at him. ‘I never took you for the chivalrous type. I thought you’d make the most of an easy lay.’

He stood and shoved his phone in his trouser pocket, his expression tight with reproach. ‘There’s something you need to learn, young lady. You don’t need to be drunk to have a good time. You don’t know what sort of creeps are out there waiting to take advantage of you.’

‘Don’t you find me attractive?’ Lottie knew she was revealing her insecurities by asking but she couldn’t seem to help it. He’d had the perfect opportunity to seduce her and he hadn’t done so. Surely he’d had a little grope? Stolen a kiss?

He raked a hand through his hair and turned swiftly to leave. ‘I’m not having this conversation.’

‘Why did you spend the night in my room?’

He drew in an audible breath and swung back to look at her. ‘I was worried about you. You were acting a little out of character, to put it mildly.’

‘I wasn’t
that
tipsy...was I?’

He gave her a hardened look. ‘You were pretty smashed.’

Lottie screwed up her face for a moment. ‘I don’t remember much after that vodka chaser.’ She relaxed her features into a bright smile. ‘The nice man behind the bar—your friend—gave it to me on the house. Wasn’t that sweet of him?’

His expression still had that pained tinge to it. ‘I’d stay away from champagne cocktails and men you don’t know in future.’

‘How I am going to meet anyone new if I only associate with people I know?’

‘Not my problem.’ He strode to the connecting door. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’

‘So, what time do we leave?’

He turned back to look at her, his mouth pressed into a thin flat line. ‘We don’t.’

CHAPTER NINE

‘QUARANTINED?’ LOTTIE GASPED once Lucca had filled her in. ‘Does that mean we can’t leave our rooms?’

‘Apparently so.’ He scraped a hand through his hair, a habit he’d developed recently, she’d noticed. That and frowning so deeply his brows met in the middle. ‘They want to keep the virus—if that’s what it is—contained.’

‘Gosh, no wonder you looked so ghastly the other night,’ she said. ‘And here I was thinking it was self-inflicted.’

He gave her a levelling look. ‘I know I’ve got a reputation for hard partying but I never let myself get out of control. I know my limits and I stay within them, unlike someone I know who shall remain nameless.’

‘There’s no point going on and on about it,’ Lottie said with a cross look. ‘I didn’t know that third drink would go to my head like that. At least nothing bad happened. It could’ve been much worse. You could’ve taken photos of me while I was in my underwear....’ She narrowed her gaze at him. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

His eyebrows slammed together in affront. ‘What sort of cad do you think I am?’

She gave a huffy little shrug of her left shoulder. ‘Who knows what you might’ve got up to while I was out of it.’ She gave him a beady look and added, ‘You took my dress off.’

He did the hair-scrape thing again, and then added to it by dragging the same hand down his face, distorting his handsome features as he let out an exasperated-sounding breath. ‘You got the zip jammed. You came out of the bathroom with your dress stuck around your hips. I undid it for you and then you got into bed and went out like a light.’

Lottie tugged at her lip with her teeth. ‘I didn’t do or say anything embarrassing, did I?’

He cocked one eyebrow in a sardonic arc. ‘You mean the bit about wanting to show me how convincing you are at faking an orgasm?’

‘I did
not
say that!’

‘Sure you did.’

Lottie felt her blush go from her face to her scalp in a hot spreading prickle. ‘You’re making that up. You’re teasing me.’
You’d better be teasing me. The alternative is way too mortifying.

His dark eyes glinted with malicious enjoyment. ‘You also gave a very good impression of being madly in love with me.’

She let out a laugh but it didn’t quite make the grade. ‘Ha, ha. Very funny. As if I would ever fall in love with someone like you. No one would believe it for a second.’

‘Yeah? Well, guess what? The whole world thinks you’re in love with me.’

Lottie had forgotten about the rest of the world. Her world had shrunk to the four walls of the Chatsfield Monte Carlo that currently contained her and Lucca. A secret world where she saw facets to his personality no one else saw: his vulnerability when he was sick, his artistic talent, his kindness and concern, his protectiveness, his gallantry. ‘Maybe, but they think you’re in love with me right on back,’ she pointed out. ‘I’m the first woman you’ve spent more than one night with. So far we’ve spent three nights together. For a playboy that’s kind of like being married, isn’t it?’

He winced as she said the word. ‘Kindly refrain from using that word when in my presence. It makes me want to puke.’

Lottie furrowed her brow. ‘What have you got against marriage? I know your parents didn’t do such a good job of it, but lots of people manage to live happy and fulfilling lives together. Why not you?’

‘Not going to happen.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d be bored out of my brain within a week of the ceremony,’ he said.

‘Not if you married the sort of woman you felt an intellectual equal with,’ she said. ‘It’s no wonder you’re bored with the ones you hang around now. They don’t know you. They just want to sleep with you for the bragging rights. It’s not about who you are as a person. For them it’s just sex with a filthy-rich guy who looks hot.’

‘Thanks for summing up my sex life so profoundly.’

‘You’re welcome.’

* * *

Lottie didn’t see Lucca for most of the day. He’d gone to his suite and presumably showered and shaved and did what men needed to do after spending a night in a chair watching a tipsy girl sleep it off.

But once it got after eight in the evening she began to feel increasingly restless. It didn’t seem fair that the world was reading about her smoking-hot fling with the world’s most notorious playboy when said playboy was deliberately avoiding her. She decided if they had to be holed up in the Chatsfield Monte Carlo together, then they ought to be...well,
together
,
for some of the time at least.

She gave his door a sharp rap. ‘Lucca?’

‘Go away.’

She frowned at the wood panelling on the door. ‘Are you sick again?’

‘No.’ There was a brief pause where she thought she heard him mutter a curse. ‘I’m working.’

‘Drawing, you mean? Can I see? Please?’ She rattled the doorknob impatiently. ‘Let me see. Are you doing the one of me?’

The door opened so quickly Lottie almost fell through the doorway. Lucca towered over her with a brooding scowl on his face. ‘Can’t you take a hint?’

‘Well, pardon me for disturbing the muse or whatever you call it but I’m bored witless in here and I think you should do the honourable thing and entertain me for a bit since it’s your stupid hotel that’s locked down because of some ghastly little virus.’ Lottie knew she sounded a little petulant, even a little vacuous. Knew she was probably giving a very good impersonation of one of his bimbo bedmates, but the truth was she missed him.

She enjoyed his company. She found it stimulating, exciting. He didn’t bow and scrape to her because she was a princess like most men did. He teased her and made her laugh.

And he was so talented and so secretive about it. That intrigued her.

‘Can’t you watch a movie or something?’ he said. ‘Read a book? Listen to music? Phone a friend?’

She gave him an arch look. ‘I just did, but apparently he’s got more important things to do than spend time with me.’

His frown cut deeper into his forehead. ‘I’m no friend of yours.’

Lottie brushed past him before he could close the door again, her gaze going to the desk near the window where she could see his art materials set up. ‘Oh, you
are
doing the one of me.’ She went over and looked at the drawing that he had now started painting. There was a magnifying glass set up and a series of tiny brushes and tubes of paint and a palate where he had mixed some colours. ‘It’s beautiful. When will it be finished?’