The Argentinian's Virgin Conquest
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She stared at him, ran glinting green eyes all over him, and he felt his jaw tense, his hands flex. He found himself standing taller, puffing out his chest, staring down at her.
‘No need for all what?’
He could not get this framed right in his head. She’d been struggling in the water—he was sure she had! If he hadn’t seen her God knew what would have happened to her. What sort of person was ungrateful for that?
‘So you didn’t need any help? Well, my mistake, but you certainly didn’t look like you were in control out there.’
Her head came up and she gave him that haughty look he’d clocked just before she’d vanished into the sea.
‘You didn’t rescue me! I didn’t need rescuing! I was fine—it was only a jellyfish! And if I hadn’t had to swim away from you and your stupid speedboat I would have seen it!’
Dante opened his mouth and then bit down. What a foul-tempered witch! He should have left her there. She was screaming at him when all he’d tried to do was help her.
‘You might want to learn some manners, Princess. Before I toss you back overboard.’
That was exactly what he wanted to do. He could feel his shoulders tensing further and his fists bunch—he had to get himself in check. What was going on? He was easy, slow—even lazy when it came to women. He never, ever got fired up. Never acted without brain and body being in total harmony. Hadn’t he learned anything all those years ago?
So what the hell nerve was she touching that had him flexing and puffing and grinding his jaw when he looked at her?
He looked at her now as her green eyes widened. Her rosy mouth fell open slightly, and maybe that was a moment of vulnerability stealing across her face like a cloud across the sun. Likely she was just another one of Lord Louis’s cast-offs, dramatically throwing herself overboard because she’d just realised her shelf life had expired.
Who knew? Women were all games and drama. He had the T-shirt to prove it. And the only sure thing was that he was never going to be taken in by a woman again.
‘Do not call me Princess. I do not hold that title. And you might want to ask people if they want to be manhandled before you chuck them onto your boat.’
‘Plenty do.’ Dante smiled then, and watched her eyes widen all over again. He nodded his head back to the Sea Devil, where the gang would be getting well back on track now. ‘There’s a party over there, waiting for its host to return. So if you’ll excuse me...?’
He gestured to the water—jerked his thumb. She could get on with her own rescue.
‘Off.’
‘What?’ She frowned as if he was speaking a different language—and not very clearly at that. ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’
He looked round at the Sea Devil. Another boat was making its way towards it and now berthed alongside. He put the binoculars back up to his eyes. Looked like the Cotier sisters climbing out. He’d know those legs anywhere...
He turned back to her.
‘Sorry—what?’
‘You know, people like you—you disgust me! You’re just tourists, intent on destroying this place—it’s all parties and speedboats and you don’t give a damn about the island, or the people, or the animals, or—’
‘Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, off.’
Her eyes widened in shock and up went her chin even further.
‘Honestly! You think you can order me around now? Really? Do you know who I am?’
‘Know who you are? Apart from being the biggest pain in my ass, I couldn’t care less if you were the Queen of England. Which you’re not. So now I think—’
He cocked his head, relishing the pink tinge to her neck, which seemed to be spreading to her chest. Her chest. She certainly had one—and it was well worth a lingering stare. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction—even though the swell of her left breast, set almost completely free by her bikini, was quite a test.
‘I think you and I have nothing left to say to one another. So I’m ordering you now to get off my boat.’
She stared right at him, and he knew that a lesser man would flinch. But not he. Not Dante Hermida. He might not have a doctorate from Harvard Law School, or a Fortune 500 business like his brother—yet. But he could fight and he could ride and he could charm every woman within a hundred-mile radius.
So why was this one being so difficult?
‘You’ve got twenty seconds. Damn!’ he said, suddenly catching sight of the misted face of his grandfather’s treasured watch.
He shook his head, held his annoyance in check. He’d nearly lost it once before over a stupid woman, but he’d managed to keep it intact for all these years—a gift from the one person on this earth who’d had time for him. Damn this woman. Standing on his boat, spraying her poison and leaving him soaked to the skin. She might look like a goddess—like some kind of deity in female form—but life was far too short to waste another second with a woman who made his hackles rise this high.
‘Ten,’ he said.
Biting down on the urge to throw her off himself, he ripped his T-shirt over his head and grabbed up a towel. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her watching him through narrowed eyes, seething and ungrateful. Yeah, but there was no mistaking her hunger. He could feel it—emanating out of every selfish pore. She might sound as if she wanted to fight, but she was eying him like a late lunch.
He patted the towel down each arm and over his pecs. ‘Five.’
She was still gawping, still showing no signs of going anywhere. Slowly he grabbed each end of the towel and rubbed it across his back, then down over his abs. Finally he smoothed it over his face and dragged it roughly through his hair. Then he stood right in front of her. His shorts were soaked too. Her eyes landed there and her mouth opened on a coy, ‘Oh...’
Her skin glistened in the bright late-morning light as stray droplets of water continued to course their way down all those curves. Idly he wondered if her waist-to-hip ratio was the best he’d ever seen, because it had started a reaction in his body that seemed to pay no heed at all to the fact that he really didn’t like her.
It looked as if she was planning to play hardball. Okay. He was open to the idea.
Feeling more than a little turned on himself, he lifted the towel again and swiped down each leg. He had great legs—or so he was told, he thought laughingly. ‘Great legs’ were legs that could grip a horse, make it twist or stop with a squeeze of the thighs. But she didn’t look as if riding a polo pony was what she had in mind for him.
‘You don’t seem to be moving, Princess. Were you hoping for some more body contact before you go?’
He was. He let his gaze travel all over her now. The twisted bikini provided such a generous view of her left breast. The hard bud of her nipple peeped out invitingly and he felt another hard kick of lust. For all she was annoying, she was also an incredibly attractive woman—and he could think of many ways she could redeem herself.
He cupped himself and dropped his hands to his waistband, tugged at the string and raised his eyebrows in invitation. Just how far would she let him go?
‘Zero,’ he said.
In one move he loosened the shorts, slid them down over his jutting erection to the wet floor of the boat and stepped out. She stood for a split second, a look of utter shock on her face, and then she spun, bolted to the side and dived off into the sea.
‘Man overboard!’ he called after her. ‘Again.’
He felt the splash of water on his sun-warmed skin and walked to the side to see limbs and white foam as she thrashed her way back to the Marengo.
‘Pleasure, Princess,’ he said, sending her on her way with a mock salute.
Then he pulled his shorts back on and with his hand on the wheel and his foot on the floor, he powered back through the waves. If he never saw her again it would be far too soon.
CHAPTER TWO
LUCIE HEAVED HERSELF back onto the Marengo, wheezing and gasping and incandescent with rage. Staff appeared from every possible corner, staring at her bedraggled form, complete with purple rash. She stomped through them, flapping her arms to get them out of her way. After what she’d just been through the last thing she needed was a crowd of strangers babbling on about jellyfish stings!
Back in her quarters, she went straight into the bathroom—and it was only then that she noticed that what had started out as a hastily thrown on bikini that she’d grabbed to do a quick circuit of the yacht had now turned itself into three postage stamps of ill-positioned fabric.
She turned herself this way and that in the mirror, looking to see what he had seen. And it wasn’t good—the ten pounds she had lost certainly hadn’t gone from her boobs or her bottom.
She pulled the skimpy thing off and tossed it in the laundry basket, wondering if she would ever have the nerve to wear it again. Then she stepped into the shower and let the hot water course down over her. What on earth would happen next on this disastrous day?
All she’d wanted when she’d jumped in was a relaxing, calming swim to clear her head, and then she’d planned a bath and an hour or so with the hairstylist and the beauty therapist to help her prepare for tonight. But instead of an aromatherapy massage and pampering to within an inch of her life she’d been nearly ploughed to death by a speedboat and stung by a jellyfish—not to mention that whole encounter on the boat.
She shuddered and reached for the shampoo. So much for being relaxed. She’d have to deal with her social anxiety on top of all the other anxieties she’d developed so far today. One thing was sure—she was in for hours of deep breathing until she finally put her head on her pillow tonight.
Damn that stupid man and his stupid boat!
And his outrageous behaviour.
She let the soap run free and stared down at her body, cringing because he had seen so much of it. But, even though she might not have been exactly dressed for an audience with Her Majesty, that didn’t excuse his unashamedly egotistical actions! Standing there in those red swim-shorts, with his manhood outlined so clearly...
She shook her head and scrubbed at the jellyfish sting like Lady Macbeth, as if by trying to get rid of the mark she would get rid of the image of him. The look that he’d speared her with—that supercilious grin and those twin dimples, those bright blue eyes that had mocked her. Those shoulders and those impossibly firm, smooth pectorals. An actual six-pack that one could imagine—touching...
What an arrogant, egotistical, boneheaded...
Urgh!
At least this was one thing that she and her mother agreed on. Men who were so obvious about sex were normally more to be pitied than despised. And he was definitely obvious! And she totally despised him.
Who was she kidding? She knew absolutely zero about men and even less about sex. One didn’t really fall over them at home with the governess or at an all-girls boarding school. Thankfully.
The last thing she wanted was a life like her mother’s—diets and dresses, reporters and snappers. With every last move scrutinised and analysed and published for the world to see. And having to wear that everything’s fabulous, darling face everywhere she went—even if she’d just caught her husband cheating or her weight had ricocheted to above eight stone.
It wasn’t that she was vehemently opposed to men—but they had very little to recommend them.
Take this yacht, for example. It was such a drain on the family finances when they could be funding more eco projects, out here or at home. But her father simply had to have it so that he could ‘entertain’.
She flipped the taps off and stepped out of the shower, twisting her hair up into a turban and grabbing a towel as she went.
Her father’s answer to everything was to throw money at it. He’d paid for the food, the drink, the staff, her dress, the harbour fees and the biggest auction item—the use of his yacht for a month.
But his most generous gift, as far as she was concerned, was that he had stayed away—as instructed. It would be a disaster to end all if he suddenly turned up. She’d seen first-hand what happened to women under the age of ninety whenever he was near—and it wasn’t a pretty sight. No wonder she’d found that man today so irritating. He was just a young, blond version of her father. All ego, all sex appeal—and disaster written all over him.
She began searching for something to cool her skin, but really there wasn’t enough coconut oil in the whole of the Caribbean to smooth away the vicious red marks from the jellyfish sting—or the mental scarring from her encounter with that—that lunatic on a speedboat!
She checked her phone, registering that the blank screen meant her mother was now even less likely to put in an appearance.
She put it down with a sigh and lifted a pot of her most expensive unguent. She dropped a thick, gloopy dollop onto her palm, spreading it across her arm and chest where the jellyfish sting now bloomed like a cheap tattoo. But it still didn’t look any better. And she had less than an hour now until she had to squeeze herself into that hideously revealing frock and face those hideously overbearing crowds—completely alone.
Another wave of nausea announced itself and she swallowed quickly, lest any more acid land in her mouth.
Its lid screwed back on, she replaced the little pot on the dressing table and stared at herself in the mirror, suddenly noticing that lights were starting to appear in the harbour, announcing the evening ahead. And here was she—stressed, not dressed, and with no mother in sight to take over the horrific task of hostessing.
Maybe she could ‘have a migraine’. She’d always thought it such a convenient ailment. How could anyone prove it one way or another? She could feign some sort of illness and let the whole thing look after itself. The conservation centre staff would be there. Somebody was bound to be willing to host...
She wanted to scream into a pillow, but this was her mess and there was nothing else to do but to get on with it. It was bad enough that the guests thought they were going to be schmoozing with Lady Viv—who now only just might be persuaded to put in an appearance on camera—so Lucie certainly couldn’t leave the whole thing to anyone else.
She ran to the bathroom. This nausea was overwhelming. She had to get it under control—one way or another.
CHAPTER THREE
LUCIE CLUTCHED A glass of fortifying champagne between white-knuckled fingers and stood like one of the pillars on the mid-deck. Any minute now someone might drape a piece of muslin over her and tie a balloon round her neck.
Her first glass had been half emptied in a single gulp in her room, which had led to a choking fit and a grave look from the hairstylist, who had been packing up her stuff. She’d better not start throwing alcohol down her neck—even though she’d run out of ideas for a quick and painless death. A little deadly nightshade—how did that work?—or something one could simply inhale or swallow. And then she’d fold like a chimney struck by a wrecking ball, while all these strangers continued to sip obliviously on their champagne.
They were arriving all the time. She could hear them, smell them, see them—one big, sensory blur. Her face felt tight—was she even smiling? She had no idea—couldn’t feel anything other than the hammer of her heart and the flush of burning red that still bloomed across her chest and neck. She tried to open her mouth to say hello, but the word stuck in her throat, died there.
All she could do was stand there—shoulders back, stomach in, chest out—with her glass clutched in her hand and her face stretched into what she hoped was a smile. All she could do was breathe deeply and wait for it to be over.
‘I haven’t seen Lady Vivienne yet—is she here?’
The Mexican Wave of those words washed over her every few minutes. If she heard it one more time she might actually throw herself overboard. That would be quite dramatic. Lucie ran a mental image as another crowd of people who, like her mother, probably couldn’t tell the difference between a turtle and a tortoise, came trundling onto the yacht, making too much noise.
Suddenly the Mexican Wave turned back on itself. Bodies seemed to wheel around and preen and pose and Lucie’s heart began to pound even more loudly.
Someone interesting was arriving. Someone very interesting.
Could it be...? Could it possibly be...? Had her mother actually dropped everything back home and got on a jet to get here? Maybe she had heard the hurt and felt some kind of empathy or love or even just motherly duty towards her. Was that possible?
She turned with the crowd and strained her head to see. Everybody was thronging towards the steps. It had to be her. Who else would get this level of interest in a crowd that was already chock-full of the so-called ‘it-list’?
Maybe she had been too harsh? Too quick to judge? She hadn’t really given her a proper chance to explain. She had said she would come for part of it—hadn’t she? And she had been the one to plan most of the party—who’d laid down all those rules. And they’d really, really made Lucie focus. She did like the fact that she could see past her stomach to her feet now. And it felt good—it really did—that she could tolerate the heat so much more easily and not worry about her thighs rubbing together when she walked.
Yes, she had her mother to thank for all that—and she would. That was her, wasn’t it? Coming aboard? Strange that she hadn’t come in on the helipad, but maybe she’d found a different way to get here. Maybe that was what she’d been about to say on the phone before she’d cut her off so abruptly.
Lucie finally found a space in the crowd and got ready to greet her. But...where was she? There was no sign of Lady Vivienne. No gleaming perfect smile or couture-perfect outfit. No. There, strolling towards her, was another version of perfection. The male version. Dark blond hair flopped over an eye, golden skin, bluest, truest gaze and the laziest, most indolent grin.
The idiot from the boat.
What on earth was everyone doing, staring at him? Lucie looked to her left and right. And what on earth was he doing here?
Suddenly her dry voice formed words and actually delivered them.
‘Who invited you?’
He was strolling towards her as if he could barely find the energy, but her words had an effect. Oh, yes.
He straightened and his shoulders went back—rigid just for a moment, but no mistaking it. Exactly the same way he’d looked on his boat earlier, when she’d had the temerity to question his intelligence. When he’d seemed made of steel and stone.
And then he slipped back into that easy, breezy, nothing-is-a-problem attitude.
‘Invited? You mean begged, don’t you?’
Lucie fumed. The big idiot was standing right in front of her now. On either side of him stood two pull-up banners—sea turtles swimming, with white lettering clearly displaying the name of her foundation: Caribbean Conservation Centre.
‘Not if you were the last man alive! This is for people who’re trying to do something to save endangered animals. You probably can’t even spell endangered!’
He looked at her, tucked one hand on his hip—and her eye slid there again! Despite herself. His perfect wide shoulders, broad, strong chest and narrow waist were all tucked up inside a soft blue shirt the colour of his eyes. Not that she particularly cared about his eyes. Or how arresting they were. Or how hard it was to look away.
‘Maybe you can find someone to play schools with later, Princess.’ He was looking down at her as if he had some other kind of game in mind. ‘But you don’t have a monopoly on helping save the planet. I’m sure my friends’ money is quite as good as everybody else’s.’
Lucie slid her eyes around to see the party he’d come with all disappearing into the crowd. She knew she should get over her disappointment towards her mother and her anger towards him and find someone out there who could run the auction. But his very presence riled her.
‘You have friends? How did you get them—kidnapping them? Throwing them onto your boat?’
‘Trust me, kidnapping you couldn’t be further from my mind.’
He slipped her a self-important smile, bared a flash of teeth between two proud dimples.
She could sense the crowd getting fuller, the time coming closer. Suddenly the realisation of where she was and who she was and what she was supposed to be doing overwhelmed her.
An anxious voice to her right told her there were only twenty minutes until the auction. Followed by yet another question about her mother. Followed by a third question about who exactly was going to announce the items if not Lady Vivienne... Were they to assume that Lady Lucinda would be doing it in her stead?
She hadn’t sorted anything out. She had buried her head, hoping the problem would just solve itself. That a miracle would happen. But it hadn’t.
The faces around her were all staring. People began to crush in. Her personal space was disappearing, and with it the air to breathe. And still he stood, right in front of her, with that dimpled smile plastered all over his face, that supercilious look dripping contempt.
‘Lady Lucinda...? We need to get started now. Will you...?’
She turned, and a sickening grey mist swept down over her vision. A hand moved, sweeping out to show her where she should proceed. Blindly she moved ahead, her eyes focused on the little podium that had been built up at the head of the ballroom.
To its left and right were the various objects and artefacts that had been gifted by her mother and her coterie of high society friends who had been persuaded to be part of this. A couture gown here...a handbag there... Jewellery, silk scarves, cosmetics and more. A week on someone’s island in the Indian Ocean...a fortnight at an English country house in the shooting season. A signed polo shirt and tickets to a match in Dubai...
Dazedly she realised that that was who he was—the polo player. The one her mother had practically passed out over when she’d heard he’d be coming. The one who was an ‘utter Lothario’.
But what did any of that matter now? Her mother wasn’t here and she was—and she had to step up, get on with this auction. She had to.
She stared again at the tables set up with all the goodies. She could list each and every one. She had typed them into the programme that she’d sent out, into the advertising copy she’d placed in various local and international publications—she knew every single thing and who had donated it.
But there was no way she would be able to say that. Say anything at all. Her voice was buried under a rock of anxiety.
There was nothing she could do—nothing she could do. The suffocating fear built, the tightness returned, and the terror of being right here, right now, became excruciating. She looked for one of the staff from the conservation centre. She scanned the room, but all she could see was the crushing crowd of people, hovering and staring. They were all around her, gawping as if she were some kind of crazy. Which she was.
She had to get out—had to get out or she’d pass out.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’
She could see jewel-bright colours, dresses,, jewellery, glasses... She could hear voices, feel the daggers of their derision.
‘Hey.’
A warm, strong hand wrapped around her arm. She jumped at the sudden contact and tried to jerk away, but the sickness was overwhelming.
‘Get your hands off me,’ she whispered.
‘Slow down, Princess. You trying to take someone’s eye out?’
Lucie slowed...stopped. He was right behind her, his hand still on her arm. Her skin, clammy now, felt the chill of the night breeze and the warmth of his touch. She reached out, tried to lay her hand on the railing—missed. She stepped forward, unseeing, stumbled...
‘Steady on. Stand still.’
She grasped the rail and stood staring down at the black sea. Her stomach still heaved, but the spinning had stopped and the whirling grey settled as the world became centred around a solid warm wall behind her, stabilising her. A large male body. He laid one hand beside hers on the rail and placed the other at her neck, weighted and heavy, and for once she didn’t flinch.