Whirlwind Read Online Free PDF Page B

crumbs of egg. She forked a little of each into her mouth, savouring the mingled flavours slowly while Laird watched, amusement in his eyes.
    'Well?'
    She swallowed. 'Interesting, I don't know if I like it—but it's different.'
    'Different from what?' he asked, as if very curious about her reactions.
    'Baked beans!' Anna's green eyes glittered in the candlelight; mockery dancing in them. It was funny, wasn't it? she silently asked him to agree. His life-style was so many light miles from her own; they came from different planets, but as she went on eating the salty, crunchy caviare she decided to let her senses have full rein just for an hour more. She might never have such an experience again; why push it away untasted? Her eyes wandered around the elegantly furnished dining-room again and she sighed with enjoyment. It wasn't going to be easy to go back to her shabby room after this, but tonight she would sleep with a full stomach.
    Parsons appeared and whipped away their plates, substituting clean ones on which he laid wafer-thin veal in a delicate cream and mushroom sauce and some broccoli and pureed carrot.
    Laird had poured champagne into a fluted glass beside Anna's plate, and she sipped tentatively, avoiding Parsons' eyes. No doubt he thought she would be sleeping with Laird tonight; how many other girls had he seen at this table, having candlelight dinners for two?
    When he had gone she tasted the veal, expecting it to be. delicious and finding she was right.
    'Did you really find him in a gutter?' she asked, and Laird laughed.
    'Quite literally, yes. He was a chef at one of London's best hotels for years, I met him then, but when he started drinking heavily he lost his job and his wife left him for another man, taking their two children with her. Parsons went to pieces, I gather.
    He was blind drunk for about two years when I met him again—he fell under my car and lay in the gutter, so stoned he couldn't even speak.'
    He refilled her glass and Anna thirstily drank half of the sparkling wine. 'He's a terrific cook. How did you sober him up?'
    'Sent him to a place I'd heard of,' he said, finishing his veal and leaning back to watch her. 'Could you manage a dessert, or have you had enough?'
    Anna pushed her own plate away, giving him a little smile. 'I haven't eaten this much for years, but . . . what is the dessert?'
    'I'm not sure.' He leaned forward and filled her glass again and she shook her head cloudily.
    'Oh, no, I've drunk too much champagne already.'
    He made no comment, sipping his own with his black lashes down against his hard-boned cheek. She watched him in the candlelight, her senses singing. Why had she thought he wasn't good-looking? She couldn't have been seeing straight. He wasn't the cinema heart-throb type, admittedly, but his face was intensely sexy. It radiated a magnetism she had never noticed in a man before; the clear-cut lines of it kept her eyes busy and her pulses busier. She liked the way his thick hair grew from a distinct widow's peak; his heavy-lidded eyes were mysterious, but it was his mouth she kept looking at again and again, remembering the demanding pressure of it, the heat it had built up inside her as it moved along her neck.
    He looked up and she quivered, looking down, picking up her glass and drinking more champagne as if she had a mouth full of ashes.
    Parsons returned and Laird asked him, 'Any dessert?'
    'Crepes Suzette suit you?' growled the old man as if insulting him. 'Or isn't that good enough for yer 'ighness tonight?'
    Laird looked enquiringly at Anna. 'Would you like some crepes Suzette?'
    She couldn't resist them. 'Yes, please,' she said greedily.
    When Parsons had noisily exited, Laird asked her with a crooked smile, 'Another first for you?' and she nodded.
    Parsons cooked them at the table; Anna watched, fascinated, as if at a first night. The old man's gnarled hands were amazingly deft as he grated orange and lemon peel into the pan, stirred the sauce, slipped