‘No,’ he agreed, coming towards her, causing her to move back and then stop when she realised that she couldn’t back up any further because the backs of her legs were already pressed against the bed.
When Raphael stood in front of her and leaned towards her Charley sank down onto the bed, her heart thudding with a mixture of expectation and apprehension, her gaze fixed on the second button of his shirt, not daring to move either up to the tanned bare flesh above it or down to the waistband of his jeans below it. He was reaching towards her—no, not towards her but past her, Charley recognised, dragging her gaze from his chest to his ar
m just in time to see him retrieving the package he had dropped on the bed earlier.
Mortified by her own misinterpretation of the situation, Charley scrambled to her feet.
‘I took the precaution of ordering these for you,’ Raphael was telling her impersonally, handing her the box. ‘Hopefully they will fit.’
He was obviously waiting for her to open the parcel—so, turning her back to him as she placed the box back down on the bed, Charley proceeded to do so.
The first thing she noticed once she had removed the carrier’s cardboard wrapping was that the elegant black box inside it was stamped in gold with the name of a world-renowned fashion designer. Her heart sank. How on earth was she going to pay for designer jeans?
Uncertainly she opened the box, her anxiety deepening when she realised that the tissue layers inside it didn’t just contain a pair of jeans. There was also a tee shirt and what looked like a butter-soft, fashionably shaped tan leather jacket.
Dropping the lid back on the box, Charley turned to confront Raphael.
‘I can’t possibly wear these clothes,’ she told him flatly. ‘It’s…it’s kind of you to have thought of replacing my jeans, but these things…’ She gestured helplessly towards the box, embarrassment burning her face. ‘They’re way outside my price range,’ she was forced to tell him. ‘I couldn’t afford—’
‘There is no question of you having to pay for them,’ Raphael interrupted.
‘What?’ Charley was too overwrought to conceal her feelings. ‘I can’t let you buy clothes for me. It wouldn’t be right.’
Raphael crossed his arms and gave her a haughty look of arrogant disdain.
‘Where my affairs are concerned, I am the one who says what is and what is not right. I do not intend to waste time in resolving the issue of your tender pride whilst you wait for a member of my staff to source a pair of jeans for you. You will wear the clothes which I have provided. If wearing them is so offensive to you that you do not wish to keep them, when you return to England you may send them back to me—or give them to a charity.’
Charley tried to withstand the look he was giving her, but it was her gaze that fell away first, even though she managed to muster the determination to tell him, ‘The jeans look smaller than my normal size. I don’t think they will fit me.’
‘On the contrary—they will be a perfect fit,’ Raphael told her.
He was so arrogant, so sure of himself, so sure that he was right that Charley had what she knew was a childish urge to puncture that self-confidence.
‘You can’t possibly know that—even if you checked the size of my own jeans.’ Designers were, after all, notorious for making their clothes smaller than those of less expensive manufacturers.
To her shock, instead of backing down Raphael gave her an even more haughty look and told her, ‘I didn’t need to check your jeans to assess what size you would need. I am a man, and despite the fact that you choose to inflict on your body clothes that smother it instead of enhancing it I am perfectly able to assess the shape and proportions of what lies beneath them.’
What was he saying? That he could see through her clothes to the body she had always been so anxious to protect from male appraisal and criticism? Flustered and defensive, Charley argued fiercely, ‘That’s not possible.’
Before she could stop him Raphael had taken hold of her—one hand holding her arm and preventing her escape, the other resting on her waist. Charley sucked in her breath. Why hadn’t she thought to wear the towelling robe hanging up in her bathroom? Why hadn’t she checked who was knocking on the door of her bedroom? Why had fate allowed her to be trapped in this untenable situation? Her heart was hammering into her ribs, tingles of awareness shooting to every part of her body from the pressure of Raphael’s hand on her waist.
‘From the span of my hand against the curve of your waist I can tell that your waist can’t be much more than twenty-two inches,’ he announced matter-of-factly.
A swift spasm of shocked recognition at his accuracy shook Charley’s body—or was it the fact that Raphael’s fingertip was moving in a straight line down over her still tensed stomach, causing rivulets of unwanted sensation to run from his touch with faster gathering force the lower his fingertip moved. Like lava from a long-suppressed volcano, they gathered speed and spread out, overwhelming the opposition of her tightened muscles and sending their message of aching arousal deep into her body. Surely it was only her own wanton imagination that was telling her that he had momentarily flattened the whole of his hand against her body, so that the heel of his palm momentarily pressed hard against the vulnerable flesh surmounting her sex? Shame, guilt and fear surged through her. How pitiful she was for actually thinking what she was thinking. She could understand why her body would be aroused by Raphael’s touch, but how on earth could she imagine that he might want her?
Raphael was now drawing a line out to her hip bone and telling her coolly, ‘Your hip measurement is approximately thirty-four inches.’
‘Thirty-four and a half, actually.’ Charley managed to find the courage to correct him.
‘Which is still too narrow for your height.’
‘Which you can also assess, no doubt?’ Charley couldn’t stop herself from snapping.
‘Certainly,’ Raphael agreed, releasing her arm to step close to her and turn her round, holding her against his own body and directing her attention to the full-length mirror in front of her.
‘I am six foot three, which means that you are around five foot nine—and you have long legs, in proportion to your height.’ His hand brushed the top of her bare thigh, causing her to grit her teeth to control the shudder that gripped her.
Charley was beyond telling him that in fact she was five nine and a quarter. She was beyond doing anything other than staring with growing horror at the sharp peaking of her nipples beneath her thin top, the erotic contrast between their erect, eager stiffness and the swell and softness of her breasts filling her with humiliation.