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A movement at the door caught the corner of Nic’s eye, and he looked back to see Madalena Vasquez entering. The instantaneous effect was almost laughable. His whole body tautened, and an urgent need to see her up close again rushed through him, shocking him with its force. He’d never felt that for another woman. Not even a lover.
From here she looked even more stunning than she had two weeks ago. Her hair was up and she was wearing a long midnight-blue sheath. Strapless, it showed off the delicate lines of her collarbone and shoulders. The gently muscled strength of her arms. There was something slightly odd about the dress, though, that he couldn’t put his finger on. Much like the dress she’d worn the other night in Mendoza, it was as if it didn’t fit perfectly. As if it wasn’t hers.
He was so used to seeing women immaculately turned out that he could spot the slight anomaly a mile away, and it didn’t fit with what he would have expected of Madalena Vasquez.
‘Who is that? She looks familiar.’
‘That,’ Nic said tightly, irrationally not liking the fact that his solicitor was looking at her too, ‘is Madalena Vasquez. She’s home and taking over the family estate.’
The solicitor laughed cruelly. ‘That place is a mess. She’ll be begging you to buy her out.’
Nic moved away from his solicitor and towards Madalena. He couldn’t fathom the urge he felt to turn around and punch the older man. It was visceral and disturbing, and the remnants of it lingered as he drew closer and saw that wide green gaze settle on him. Pink flooded her cheeks and he could see the faintest bruised colour under her eyes—signs of fatigue. His chest constricted. Once he’d believed in that artifice, but it was a trick to incur sympathy learnt from her mother. To make a man believe that she was as innocent as she looked. When she was rotten to the core.
Nevertheless his rogue body could not be dictated to by his mind. Desire was hot and instantaneous.
He put a smooth smile on his face and tried to ignore the increasing heat in his body. ‘Welcome to my home.’
Maddie tried not to let Nicolás de Rojas see how affected she was just by watching him walk towards her. She felt like snorting incredulously. Home was a woeful understatement for this seriously palatial house. Once, a long time ago, her home had been as grand, but now it was a crumbling shell.
She didn’t trust his urbane charm for a second. His eyes were like shards of ice and she shivered imperceptibly. Forgetting her resolve to appear nothing but aloof, she blurted out, ‘Why did you invite me here?’
Quick as a shot he answered, ‘Why did you come?’
Maddie flushed, all of her reasons for coming feeling very flimsy and transparent now. She should have just sent the invitation back in tiny pieces as she’d intended. But she hadn’t.
She squared her shoulders. ‘I came because it’s been two weeks and I want to let you know that I’ve still no intention of going anywhere.’
Nicolás tipped his head slightly. She barely saw him make the gesture, and then a man appeared at his side.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Madalena Vasquez, I’d like to introduce you to my house manager, Geraldo. He will show you around and see that you have everything you need. If you wouldn’t mind excusing me? I have some new guests to attend to.’
And just like that he had turned and was walking away. Maddie felt inexplicably bereft, dropped …
The intensity of emotion he aroused so effortlessly was still high. Maddie cursed herself for allowing any hint of vulnerability through. She had to be strong enough to withstand Nicolás de Rojas and his brand of arrogance or she’d never survive.
She turned to the man waiting by her side with a big forced smile. ‘Thank you.’
Maddie’s head was spinning by the time Geraldo, who had proved to be a charming host, showed her back into the main courtyard, which was now thronged with people. Men were in tuxedos and women glittered in long dresses and jewels.
The reality of the sheer opulence she’d just seen was a little hard to take in. The home itself—the few main rooms she’d been shown—was exquisitely furnished but also comfortable. Accessible. It was a home. And that had affected her deeply. Her own home had always been more like a cold and austere show house, full of dusty antiques. Unfortunately all of them had long since been sold to fund her father’s downward spiral.
‘I’ll leave you here now … if that’s okay?’
Maddie swung her gaze back to the pleasant house manager and realised he was waiting for her answer. ‘Of course. You must be busy. I’m sorry to have taken you away from your duties.’
He said urbanely, ‘It was a pleasure, Señorita Vasquez. Eduardo, who is our head winemaker, will see to it that you taste from the best of our selection of wines tonight.’
Another equally pleasant man was waiting to escort Maddie over to where the wine-tasting tables had been set up. It was only when she looked up and caught the coolly sardonic expression on Nicolás’s face, where he stood head and shoulders above the crowd across the room, that she understood she was being effectively herded in exactly the direction he wanted her to go. And being shown exactly what he wanted her to see.
The transparency of his actions and the way she’d almost forgotten what was happening here galled her. So she merely skated her own gaze past his and made Eduardo the focus of her attention as he explained the various wines to her.
After a few minutes Maddie managed to take advantage of someone coming up to ask Eduardo a question and escape, turning instinctively away from the direction where Nicolás de Rojas was holding court with a rapt crowd. She hated being so aware of where he was at any moment, as if some kind of invisible cord linked her to him. And yet, a small snide voice reminded her, as soon as puberty had hit she’d had that awareness of him as a man.
She walked through a silent, dimly lit room full of luxuriously stuffed couches and rosewood furniture and out onto a blissfully quiet decked area which hugged the outside of the house. Little pools of golden light spilled out onto the ground, and Maddie went and curled her hands over the wooden fence which acted as a perimeter.
The strains of a jazz band playing for the very select crowd wafted through on the breeze. She smiled cynically. Nicolás de Rojas could have stopped her at the front door and she would have already been in awe of his screaming success and wealth.
The wide gravelled drive, the rows upon rows of well-tended fertile vines and gleaming outbuildings had been enough of a display. That was what she wanted for her own estate—to see it flourishing as it had when she was a young girl, with rows of vines full of plump sun-ripened grapes …
She heard a noise and whirled around. Her heart thumped hard in her chest at the sight of Nicolás de Rojas in the doorway of the room behind her, shoulders blocking out the light, hands in pockets. He was so rakishly handsome that for a moment she forgot about everything and could only see him.
Maddie called up every shred of self-control and smiled. But it was brittle. Seeing Nicolás’s house up close like this had affected her far more deeply than she liked to admit.
‘Did you really think that showing off your success would make me scurry to the nearest airport with my tail between my legs?’
His jaw was gritted but he stepped out of the doorway, making Maddie’s breath hitch in her throat when his scent reached out and wound around her. She couldn’t back away. The wooden posts were already digging into her soft flesh.
‘It must feel very dull here after the bright lights of London … not to mention the ski slopes of Gstaad. Aren’t you missing the season?’
Maddie flushed deep red. She smiled even harder, hiding the hurt at that particular memory. ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a Celebrity Now! reader, Mr de Rojas.’
Maddie had long since berated herself that she should have been suspicious when her flighty mother had expressed a desire to see her—even offering to fly her out to meet her in the wealthy ski resort for a holiday. This was the same mother who had refused to help Maddie out because she believed that she’d already sacrificed enough for her daughter.
As soon as she’d arrived at the ski resort it had become apparent that her mother needed her daughter to help foster an image of dutiful motherhood. She’d been intent on seducing her current husband, who was divorced, but a committed and devoted father. Maddie had been too disappointed and heartsore to fight with her mother, and had given in to a cloying magazine shoot in which for all the world they’d appeared the best of friends.
Nicolás answered easily, ‘I happened to be on a plane on my way home from Europe. The air hostess handed me the wrong magazine, but when I saw who was gracing the cover I couldn’t resist reading all about your wonderful relationship with your mother and how you’ve both moved on so well from the painful split with your father.’
Maddie felt sick. She’d read the article too, and couldn’t believe she’d been so hungry for affection that she’d let her mother manipulate her so crassly. She pushed the painful reality of her mother’s selfishness aside.
‘This evening was a wasted exercise on your part, de Rojas. You’ve merely made me even more determined to succeed.’
The fact that he thought he had her so neatly boxed up and judged made fresh anger surge up inside Maddie.
‘I’ve just spent two weeks in a house with no electricity, and as you can see I’m not running screaming for the nearest luxury health spa. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s late and I’ve got to be up early in the morning.’
Maddie gathered up her dress to stalk off, but at that moment one of her oversized shoes came off and she stumbled. A strong hand closed around one bare arm to steady her and the sensation was electric.
Nicolás didn’t let her go, though. She was whirled around to face him again, one shoe on, one shoe off.
He was frowning down at her. ‘What do you mean no electricity?’
Maddie was used to being considered tall, but right now she felt positively petite. Bitterness laced her voice at being made to feel so vulnerable, when she had no doubt that was exactly what this man had intended all along. ‘We’ve been using an ancient generator to get electricity in our house since they cut my father off months ago—when he stopped paying the bills.’
Nicolás shook his head. He looked shocked. ‘I didn’t know it was that bad.’
Maddie tried to pull her arm back but his grip was firm. Panic at her helpless physical reaction galvanised her to say, ‘As if you care. You were too busy signing off on your solicitor’s letters, doing your utmost to get a dying man to sell up. Do you know that he received the last letter the day he died?’
Now Nicolás looked confused. His hand tightened. ‘What are you talking about? I never signed any letters. Any correspondence between my family and yours stopped when my father died. I was too busy rebuilding our own brand and renovating the estate and house.’
‘You can spout all the lies you like, de Rojas. This evening was a mistake. I’ve let down every generation of my family and my father by coming here. It won’t happen again.’
Nicolás’s hand softened its grip on her arm and Maddie felt ridiculously disorientated, her anger dissipating like mist over a hill. His eyes were intense blue flames that communicated something base and carnal directly to her insides.
His voice was deep. ‘But you did come here tonight, and there’s something in the air … it brought us together before, and it’s still there.’
Maddie felt the sense of disorientation increase. She finally yanked her arm free from his grip, but his words were hurtling her back in time to when he had stood in front of her and said, ‘You’re nothing but a tempting tease. I was curious to know what the Vasquez princess tasted like and now I know—poisonous.’
The bitterness and anger of that exchange eight years ago was far too acute, eclipsing everything else. Maddie had not trusted herself with another man since then because of it. She’d held a part of herself private and aloof for fear of getting hurt again, or facing painful revelations. She had to push him back before he guessed how vulnerable she was.
She squared her shoulders and forced herself to look Nicolás dead in the eye. ‘I seduced you once, de Rojas. Did you really think this evening would induce me to try and seduce you again? Eight years isn’t enough time for you to get over your wounded ego?’
Nicolás stood tall, and she saw him pale beneath his tan. ‘You little bitch.’
CHAPTER THREE
MADDIE didn’t know where on earth she’d got the nerve to say those words when, if anything, they could be more legitimately levelled at her. She hadn’t got over what had happened eight years ago—not by a long shot.
She heard a rushing in her ears, but she ignored it and tossed her head. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t see me again. I think we can safely say this farce is over. I came tonight because I was curious to see what you were up to. You’ve seriously underestimated me.’
She was turning away again when she forgot that she still had one shoe off. She stumbled into thin air, and would have fallen if Nicolás hadn’t caught her and hauled her back against him. One strong arm was wrapped around her ribcage, just under her breasts, and the other was across her shoulders. Adrenalin pumped through Maddie’s veins. She immediately tried to remove his arms but they were like steel bands. And they were completely alone.
She had an urge to shout out, but a hand came over her mouth as if he’d read her mind. Panic gripped her—not at the threat of violence but at the threat of something much more potent. The evidence of Nicolás de Rojas’s hardening body at her back was liquefying her insides. A silent scream sounded in Maddie’s head: No! Not this, please. He would expose her vulnerability in seconds if he touched her.
She bit down on the fleshy part of his hand and heard him curse—but not before she’d tasted the salty tang of his skin. Her belly swooped and fire danced along her veins. He moved her effortlessly in his arms and now she was facing him, his arms manacling her to his body, her hands behind her back. She was completely powerless. And, to her absolute disgust, the predominant thing she was feeling was excitement.
‘Let me go.’
He shook his head, eyes glittering down into hers. Maddie felt as if she’d completely lost her footing. Past and present, everything was mixing, and she felt seriously overwhelmed.
‘I’m not finished with you, Maddie.’
Maddie’s heart lurched painfully at hearing him use the diminutive of her name. She could remember with painful clarity telling him that she preferred Maddie to the more stuffy-sounding Madalena. He had touched her cheek and said, ‘Maddie it is, then …’
He smiled, and it was the smile of a predator, forcing Maddie back to the present moment. ‘One thing you should know is that if I’ve underestimated you, then you’ve seriously underestimated me. We have unfinished business—and ironically enough it’s got nothing to do with business.’
Before Maddie had even properly taken in his words or read his intent he’d hauled her even closer. His head descended and his hard mouth pressed against hers. For a second Maddie had no reaction except numb shock. And then sensation exploded behind her eyes—hot and urgent.
Desperately she tried to cling onto reality and not let that hot urgency take over her need to stay immobile and unresponsive. But she might as well have been hoping that the sun wouldn’t rise in the morning.
Being in this man’s arms again was like seeing a beacon of light strobing across a choppy ocean and reacting to it with an unthinking instinct to seek harbour. Maddie felt the inexorable and overpowering urge to follow it, even as everything rational was screaming at her to stop, pull herself free, not to react. But a much bigger part of her was aching all over with the effort it took not to react.
As if sensing her turmoil, Nic freed her hands and lifted his own to her head, fingers caressing her skull, angling her head so that he could better plunder her mouth. His tongue flicked against the closed seam of her lips and at that touch Maddie felt her resistance falling away. Her free hands hovered for a long moment. She knew in some dim place that she should use them to push him away, but when she put them between their bodies and felt the taut musculature of his torso underneath his thin shirt they clung … didn’t push.
He growled low in his throat at her capitulation and became bolder, his tongue prising open her soft lips to seek the hot interior of her mouth. The devastation of that simple intimacy made Maddie sway against him. She could feel her breasts crushed against the solid wall of his chest.
One of his hands was on her waist, digging into her flesh, anchoring her solidly against him. She could feel the bold thrust of his arousal against her belly, and between her legs she felt hot and moist.
The world was turning into a hot furnace of sensation and desperate wanting—and then suddenly a cool breeze was waking Maddie as if from a drugged trance and she was blinking up into Nic’s impassive face. It looked as if it was carved from stone. Maddie felt like jelly. Her mouth was swollen, her heart beating like a piston. Her hair was tumbling down over sensitised skin.
‘You …’ She couldn’t even formulate a word beyond that.
In a voice so cold it woke her up more effectively than anything else, Nic said, ‘What do you want to say, Maddie? You want me to believe this act? That I’ve effectively rendered you speechless with passion?’
A look crossed his face that was so bitter it took Maddie aback. For a moment she was distracted from her growing humiliation.
‘You forget that you already tried that once with me. I’m not stupid enough to fall for it again. You can’t, however, deny that you want me. As much if not more than when you were hot and trembling in my arms eight years ago. I could have taken you that day and you would have been with me every step of the way. You might have seduced me out of boredom, but there was nothing bored about your response then—or just now. And you’ve never been able to handle that reality.’
The sheer arrogance of his tone and expression revived Maddie from the fugue she’d been in. She moved out of his embrace with a jerky movement and saw dark colour flash along his cheekbones.
‘I am not interested in your hypotheses, or your take on the past. The past is in the past and that’s where it’ll stay. This …’ she waved a hand to encompass what had just happened ‘.is nothing but evidence that physical chemistry can be dismayingly arbitrary. That’s all.’
Nic smiled. ‘If I hadn’t stopped when I had I could be taking you right here, just feet away from one hundred guests, and I’d have had to put a hand over your mouth to stifle your screams of pleasure.’
The sheer carnality of his words made Maddie raise her hand—he’d pushed her too far.
Before it could connect to his smug face he’d caught it in a steel-fingered grip. Shock washed through Maddie in a wave. She’d never raised a hand to anyone in her life. The line of Nic’s mouth was impossibly grim.
‘I was merely proving that you’re no more in control of your desire for me now than you were eight years ago, no matter how much you tried to convince me that you’d found what we had done so abhorrent it made you physically ill. You came here tonight to test me as much as I tested you. My bed is free at the moment … you’re more than welcome to join me there and we can indulge this arbitrary chemistry until you’ve come to your senses and decided to sell the Vasquez estate to me.’
Maddie ripped her hand free of his grip and had to curb the urge to try and strike him again. His version of what had happened that cataclysmic afternoon was very different from hers. She knew she’d given him the impression that what they’d shared had disgusted her … and for a while she had found what they’d done abhorrent. But not for the reasons he obviously believed.
And she couldn’t tell him. As much as she hated him right now, telling him the truth would only expose her even more. He would know that that week had meant everything to her, that she hadn’t set out coldly to seduce him just for her amusement. There was no way she could disabuse him of that belief now. It was her only defence against him.
She stood very tall and said frostily, ‘You seem to have forgotten that your bed was busy enough only two weeks ago. I think I’ll pass, thanks.’
And then she turned and walked out.
To her intense relief he didn’t stop her. It was only when she got outside to the main door that Maddie realised that she was barefoot. She certainly wasn’t going to go back now for her shoes and risk seeing Nic again. She scrambled into the Jeep as soon as the valet brought it round, and as she saw the lights of the hacienda grow smaller in her rearview mirror she finally let out her breath.
She’d been a prize fool to think that Nic de Rojas wouldn’t bring up what had happened in the past. He was a very virile and proud man. She knew she’d damaged his ego then … and she shuddered now when she recalled the bitter look she’d seen cross his face just a short while ago. She’d had no idea it would all feel so fresh and unresolved between them.
Even though the events of eight years before had sent out violent ripples, she would have imagined that the actual week which had led to those events had faded in his memory. That the intervening years and the countless affairs he seemed to have had with beautiful women would have made Maddie’s innocent and gauche charms fade into insignificance …
The way he’d just kissed her, together with the memory of that week—those heady days when desire had tightened like a steel coil in her belly until she’d begged him to make love to her—made Maddie shake so much that she had to pull over on the hard shoulder or risk a crash. She put her head down on the steering wheel between her hands and tried to empty her mind, but it was impossible … the memories were too potent—especially after what had just happened.
She’d managed to evade her mother and father that day, and take a horse out riding on her own. She’d always instinctively hoped for a glimpse of Nic de Rojas on his own estate, and her heart had almost stopped when she’d seen him just metres away. The intensity on his face had scared her and she’d turned her horse to run, not even sure what she was running from. Perhaps it had been the delicious and illicit excitement thrumming through her blood.
She could remember looking back and seeing that he was following with that same intense expression—and her excitement had spiked to almost unbearable levels. Her whole body had gone on fire. The friction of the horse as it had surged powerfully between her legs had nearly made her cry out she was so oversensitised. By the time she’d reached the remote orchard which straddled both their estates her body had been as taut as a bowstring, humming for him.
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