The Ultimate Persuasion: A Tempestuous Temptation / The Notorious Gabriel Diaz / The Truth Behind his Touch
- -
- 100%
- +
‘What, then?’
‘Luiz, it’s getting colder out here and I’d really like to get back to the bed and breakfast so…’ She took a few more steps back, although her eyes remained locked with his, like stupid, helpless prey mesmerised by an approaching predator.
Luiz nodded, breaking the spell. ‘I’ll see you back there in…’ he glanced at his watch. ‘…a couple of hours. I have some work to do. Let’s make it six-thirty in the dining room. If we’re to have any kind of detour, then we’re going to have to leave very early in the morning, barring any overnight fall of snow that makes it impossible. So we’ll get an early night.’
‘Of course,’ Aggie returned politely. She was gauging from the tone of his voice that, whatever temporary truces came into effect, nothing would deflect him from his mission. It suddenly seemed wildly inappropriate that she had thrilled to his eyes on her only moments before as she had provided him with his very own fashion show, purchased at great expense. She might have made a great song and dance about her scorn for money, her lack of materialism but, thinking about how she had strutted her stuff to those lazy, watchful eyes, she suddenly felt as though without even realising it she had been bought somehow. And not only that, she had enjoyed the experience.
‘And I just want you to know…’ Her voice was cooler by several degrees. ‘That once we’re back in London, I shall make sure that all the stuff you bought for me is returned to you.’
‘Not this rubbish again!’ Luiz dismissed impatiently. ‘I thought we’d gone over all that old ground and you’d finally accepted that it wasn’t a mortal insult to allow me to buy you a few essential items of clothing, considering we’ve been delayed on this trip?’
‘Since when is a summer dress an essential item of clothing?’
‘Climb out of the box, Aggie. So the dress isn’t essential. Big deal. Try a little frivolity now and again.’ He couldn’t help himself. His gaze drifted down to her full lips. It seemed that even when she was getting on his nerves she still contrived to turn him on.
‘You think I’m dull!’
‘I think this is a ridiculous place to have an ongoing conversation about matters that have already been sorted. Standing in the snow. The last thing either of us need is to succumb to an attack of winter flu.’
With her concerns casually swatted away, and her pride not too gently and very firmly put in its place, Aggie spun round on her heels without a backward glance.
She could imagine his amusement at her contradictory behaviour. One minute she was gracefully accepting his largesse, the next minute she was ranting and railing against it. It made no sense. It was the very opposite of the determined, cool, always sensible person she considered herself to be.
But then, she was realising that in his presence that determined, cool and always sensible person went into hiding.
Annoyed with herself, she did what she had to do in town, including purchasing some very functional underwear, and once back at the bed and breakfast she retreated up to her bedroom with a pot of tea. The landline at the hotel to which they were heading was still down and neither could she make contact with her brother on his mobile.
At this juncture, she should have been wringing her hands in worry at the prospect of the scene that would imminently unfold. She should have been depressed at the thought of Luiz doing his worst and bracing herself for a showdown that might result in her having to pick up the pieces. Her fierce protectiveness of her brother should have kicked in.
Instead, as she settled in the chair by the window with her cup of tea, she found herself thinking of Luiz and remembering the brush of his lips on hers. One fleeting kiss that had galvanised all the nerve-endings in her body.
She found herself looking forward to seeing him downstairs, even though she knew that it was entirely wrong to do so. Fighting the urge to bathe and change as quickly as possible, she took her time instead and arrived in the dining room half an hour after their agreed time.
She paused by the door and gathered herself. Luiz was in the clothes he had presumably bought after they had parted company, a pair of black jeans and a black, round-necked jumper. He had pushed his chair back and in front of him was his laptop, at which he was staring with a slight frown.
He looked every inch the tycoon, controlling his empire from a distance. He was a man who could have any woman he wanted. To look at him was to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. So why was she getting into such a tizzy at the sight of him? He had kissed her to shut her up, and here she was, reacting as though he had swept her off her feet and transported her to his bed.
Luiz looked up and caught her in the act of staring. He shut his computer and in the space of a few seconds had clocked the new jeans, tighter than her previous ones, and one of the new, more brightly coloured long-sleeved T-shirts that clung in a way she probably hadn’t noticed. It was warm in the dining room. No need for a thick jumper.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting your work,’ Aggie said, settling in the chair opposite him. There was a bottle of wine chilling in a bucket next to the table and she eyed it suspiciously. Now was definitely not the time to over-indulge.
‘All finished, and you’ll be pleased to know that the deal is more or less done and dusted. Jobs saved. Happy employees. A few lucky ones might even get pay rises. What did you buy in town after you left me?’
He poured her some wine and she fiddled with the stem of the glass.
‘A few toys,’ Aggie confessed. ‘Things to take to the home. The children don’t get a lot of treats. I thought it would be nice if I brought some with me. I shall wrap them; it’ll be hugely exciting for them. ‘Course, I couldn’t really splash out, but I managed to find a shop with nothing in it over a fiver.’
Luiz watched the animation on her face. This was what the women he dated lacked. They had all been beautiful. In some cases, they had graced the covers of magazines. But, compared to Aggie’s mobile, expressive face, theirs seemed in recollection lifeless and empty. Like mannequins. Was it any wonder that he had tired of them so quickly?
‘Nothing over a fiver,’ he murmured, transfixed by her absorption in what she was saying.
Having pondered the mystery of why he found her so compellingly attractive, Luiz now concluded that it was because she offered more than a pretty face and a sexy body. He had always tired easily of the women he had gone out with. No problem there; he didn’t want any of them hanging around for ever. But the fact that Chloe, who had hardly been long-term, could be classified as one of his more enduring relationships was saying to him that his jaded palate needed a change of scene.
Aggie might not conform to what he usually looked for but she certainly represented a change of scene. In every possible way.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Aggie asked suspiciously.
‘I was just thinking about my own excessive Christmases.’ He spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘I am beginning to see why you think I might live in an ivory tower.’
Aggie smiled. ‘Coming from you, that’s a big admission.’
‘Perhaps it’s one of the down sides of being born into money.’ As admissions went, this was one of his biggest, and he meant it.
‘Well, if I’m being perfectly honest…’ Aggie leaned towards him, her face warm and appreciative, her defence system instantly defused by a glimpse of the man who could admit to shortcomings. ‘I’ve always thought that pursuing money was a waste of time. ‘Course, it’s not the be-all and end-all, but I really enjoyed myself in that boutique today.’
‘Which bit of it did you enjoy the most?’
‘I’ve never actually sat on a chair and had anyone bring clothes to me for my inspection. Is that how it works with you?’
‘I don’t have time to sit on chairs while people bring me clothes to inspect,’ Luiz said wryly. ‘I have a tailor. He has my measurements and will make suits whenever I want them. I also have accounts at the major high-end shops. If I need anything, I just have to ask. There are people there who know the kind of things I want. Did you enjoy modelling the clothes for me?’
‘Well…um…’ Aggie went bright red. ‘That was a first for me as well. I mean, I guess you wanted to see what you were paying for. That sounds awful. It’s not what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant.’ He sipped some of his wine and regarded her thoughtfully over the rim of his glass. ‘I would gladly have paid for the privilege of seeing you model those clothes for me,’ he murmured. ‘Although my guess is that you would have been outraged at any such suggestion. Frankly, it was a bit of a shame that there was any audience at all. Aside from myself, naturally. If it had been just the two of us, I would have insisted you remove your bra when you tried that dress on, for starters.’
Aggie’s mouth fell open and she stared at him in disbelieving shock.
‘You don’t mean that,’ she said faintly.
‘Of course I do.’ He looked surprised that she should disbelieve him.
‘Why are you saying these things?’
‘I’m saying what I mean. I don’t know how it’s happened, but I find myself violently attracted to you, and the reason I feel I can tell you this is because I know you feel the same towards me.’
‘I do not!’
‘Allow me to put that to the test, Aggie.’
This time there was nothing fleeting or gentle about his kiss. It wasn’t designed to distract her. It was designed to prove a point, and she was as defenceless against its urgent power as she would have been against a meteor hurtling towards her at full tilt.
There was no rhyme or reason behind her reaction, which was driven purely on blind craving.
With a soft moan of surrender, she reached further towards him and allowed herself to drown in sensations she had never felt before.
‘Point proved.’ Luiz finally drew back but his hand remained on the side of her face, caressing her hot cheek. ‘So the only remaining question is what we intend to do about this…’
CHAPTER SIX
AGGIE couldn’t get to sleep. Luiz’s softly spoken words kept rolling around in her mind. He had completely dropped the subject over dinner but the electricity had crackled between them and the atmosphere had been thick with unspoken thoughts of them in bed together.
Had she been that transparent all along? When had he realised that she was attracted to him? She had been at pains to keep that shameful truth to herself and she cringed to think how casually he had dropped it into the conversation as a given.
He was a highly sexual man and he would have no trouble in seeing sex between them as just the natural outcome of mutual attraction. He wouldn’t be riddled with anxiety and he wouldn’t feel as though he was abandoning his self-respect. For him, whatever the reasons for their trip, a sexual relationship between them would always be a separate issue which he would be able to compartmentalise. He was accustomed to relationships that didn’t overlap into other areas of his life.
At a little after one, she realised that it was pointless trying to force herself to go to sleep.
She pulled on the dressing gown that had been supplied and was hanging on a hook on the bathroom door, shoved her feet in her bedroom slippers and headed for the door. One big disadvantage of somewhere as small as this was that there was no room-service for those times when sleep was elusive and a glass of milk was urgently needed. Mrs Bixby had kindly pointed out where drinks could be made after hours and had told them both that they were free to use the kitchen as their own.
Aggie took her time pottering in the kitchen. A cup of hot chocolate seemed a better idea than a glass of milk and it was a diversion to turn her mind to something other than turbulent thoughts of Luiz.
She tried without success to stifle her flush of pleasure at his admission that he had been looking at her.
Caught up between the stern lectures she was giving herself about the craziness of his proposal, like uninvited guests at a birthday party were all sorts of troublesome questions, such as when exactly had he been looking at her and how often…?
None of that mattered, she told herself as she headed back up the stairs with the cup of hot chocolate. What mattered, what was really important, was that they get this trip over with as soon as possible and, whatever the outcome, she would then be able to get back to her normal life with its safe, normal routine. One thing that had been gained in the process was that he no longer suspected her of profiteering and she thought that he had probably dropped his suspicions of her brother as well. He still saw it as his duty to intervene in a relationship he thought was unacceptable, but at least there would be no accusations of opportunism.
However, when Aggie tried to remember her safe, normal routine before all these complications had arisen, she found herself thinking about Luiz. His dark, sexy face superimposed itself and squashed her attempts to find comfort in thinking about the kids at the school and what they would be getting up to in the run up to Christmas.
She didn’t expect to see the object of her fevered thoughts at the top of the stairs. She was staring down into the mug of hot chocolate, willing it not to spill, when she looked up and there he was. Not exactly at the top of the stairs, but in the shadowy half-light on the landing, just outside one of the bedrooms, with just a towel round his waist and another hand towel slung over his neck.
Aggie blinked furiously to clear her vision and when the vision remained intact she made a strangled, inarticulate noise and froze as he strolled towards her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked in an accusing gasp as he reached to relieve her of the mug, which threatened to fall because her hands were trembling so much.
‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘I…I was thirsty.’
Luiz didn’t answer. There were only five rooms on the floor and, if he hadn’t known already, it wouldn’t have been hard to guess which was hers because it was the only one with a light on. It shone through the gap under the door like a beacon and he beelined towards it so that she found herself with no choice but to follow him on unsteady legs.
The sight of his broad, bronzed back, those wide, powerful shoulders, made her feel faint. Her breasts ached. Her whole body was in the process of reminding her of the futility of denying the sexual attraction he had coolly pointed out hours earlier, the one she had spent the last few restless hours shooting down in flames.
He was in no rush. While her nerves continued to shred and unravel, he seemed as cool as a cucumber, standing back with a little bow to allow her to brush past him into the bedroom, where she abruptly came to a halt and stopped before he could infiltrate himself any further.
‘Good night.’
Her cheeks were burning and she couldn’t look him in the eye but she could imagine the little mocking smile on his mouth at her hoarse dismissal.
‘So you couldn’t sleep. I’m not sure if a hot drink helps with that. I have a feeling that’s an old wives’ tale…’ Luiz ignored her good-night, although he didn’t proceed into the bedroom. It was sheer coincidence that he had bumped into her on the landing, pure bloody coincidence, but didn’t fate work in mysterious ways? The laws of attraction…wasn’t that what they called it? He remembered some girlfriend waffling on about that years ago while he had listened politely and wondered whether she had taken leave of her senses. Yet here it was at work, because he had been thinking about the woman standing wide-eyed in front of him and had decided to cool his thoughts down with a shower, only to find her practically outside his bedroom door. Never did he imagine that he would thank providence for the basic provisions of a bed and breakfast with only two en suites.
‘I was thirsty, I told you.’
‘I was having trouble sleeping too,’ Luiz said frankly, his dark eyes roving over her slight frame. Even at this ungodly hour, she still managed to look good. No make-up, hair all over the place but still bloody good. Good enough to ravish. Good enough to lift and carry straight off to that king-sized bed behind her.
He felt his erection push up, hard as steel, and his breath quickened.
Aggie cleared her throat and said something polite along the lines of, ‘oh dear, that’s a shame,’ at which Luiz grinned and held out the mug so that she could take it.
‘Would you like to know why?’
‘I’m not really interested.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Whatever she might say, Luiz had his answer in that fractional pause before she predictably shook her head.
He hadn’t been off the mark with her. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He could always tell these things. His mouth curved in lazy satisfaction as he played with the idea of eliminating the talking and just…kissing her. Just plunging his hands into that tangled blonde hair, pulling her towards him so that she could have proof of just how much he was turned on, kissing her until she begged him not to stop. He could feel her alertness and it hit him that he hadn’t been turned on by any woman to this extent before in his life.
He had spent the past couple of hours with his computer discarded next to him on the bed while he had stared up at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head, thinking of her. He had made his intentions clear and then dropped the matter in the expectation that, once the seed was planted, it would take root and grow.
‘I want you,’ he murmured huskily. ‘I can’t make myself any clearer, and if you want to touch you can feel the proof for yourself.’
Aggie’s heart was thudding so hard that she could barely think straight.
‘And I suppose you always get what you want?’ She stuck her disobedient hands behind her back.
‘You tell me. Will I?’
Aggie took a deep breath and risked looking at him even though those dark, fabulous eyes brought on a drowning sensation.
‘No.’
For a few seconds, Luiz thought that he had heard incorrectly. Had she just turned him down? Women never said no to him. Why would they? Without a trace of vanity, he knew exactly what he brought to the table when it came to the opposite sex.
‘No,’ he tried out that monosyllable and watched as she glanced down with a little nod.
‘What do you mean, no?’ he asked in genuine bafflement.
Aggie’s whole body strained to be touched by him and the power of that yearning shocked and frightened her.
‘I mean you’ve got it wrong,’ she mumbled.
‘I can feel what you’re feeling,’ he said roughly. ‘There’s something between us. A chemistry. Neither of us was asking for this but it’s there.’
‘Yes, well, that doesn’t matter.’ Aggie looked at him with clear-eyed resolve.
‘What do you mean, that doesn’t matter?’
‘We’re on opposite sides of the fence, Luiz.’
‘How many times do I have to reassure you that I have conceded that you were innocent of the accusations I originally made?’
‘That’s an important fence but there are others. You belong to a dynasty. You might think it’s fun to step outside the line for a while, but I’m not a toy that you can pick up and then discard when you’re through with it.’
‘I never implied that you were.’ Luiz thought that, as toys went, she was one he would dearly love to play with.
‘I may not be rich and I may have come from a foster home, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have principles.’
‘And if I implied that you didn’t, then I apologise.’
‘And it doesn’t mean that I’m weak either!’ Aggie barrelled through his apology because, now that she had gathered momentum, she knew that it was in her interests to capitalise on it.
‘Where are you going with that?’ Luiz had the strangest feeling of having lost control.
‘I’m not going to just give in to the fact that, yes, you’re an attractive enough man and we happen to be sharing the same space…’
‘I honestly can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘Yes, well, it’s not my fault that you’ve lived such a charmed life that you’ve always got everything you wanted at the snap of a finger.’
Luiz looked down into those aquamarine eyes that could make a grown man go weak at the knees and shook his head in genuine incomprehension. Yes, okay, so maybe he had had a charmed life and maybe he had always got what he wanted, but this was crazy! The atmosphere between them was tangible and electric…What was wrong with two consenting adults giving in to what they both clearly wanted, whether she was brave enough to admit that or not?
‘So…’ Aggie took a couple of steps towards the door and placed her hand firmly on the door knob. As a support, it was wonderful because her legs felt like jelly. ‘If you don’t mind, I’m very tired and I really would like to get to bed now.’
She didn’t dare meet his eyes, not quite, but lowering them was equally hazardous because she was then forced to stare at his chest with its dark hair that looked so aggressively, dangerously un-English; at his flat, brown nipples and at the clearly defined ripple of muscle and sinew.
Luiz realised that he was being dismissed and he straightened, all the time telling himself that the woman, as far as he was concerned, was now history. He had never been rejected before, at least not that he could remember, and he would naturally accept the reality that he was being rejected now, very politely but very firmly rejected. He had never chased any woman and he should have stuck with that format.
‘Of course,’ he said coldly, reaching to hold both ends of the towel over his shoulders with either hand.
Immediately, Aggie felt his cool withdrawal and hated it.
‘I’ll…er…see you tomorrow morning. What time do you want to leave?’ This time she did look him squarely in the face. ‘And will you still be taking that detour to…you know? I’d understand if you just want to get to our destination as quickly as possible…’ But she would miss seeing Gordon and Betsy and all the kids; would miss seeing how everything was. Opportunities to visit like this were so rare. Frankly non-existent.
‘And you question my motives?’
‘What are you talking about?’ It was Aggie’s turn to be puzzled and taken aback at the harsh, scathing contempt in his voice.
‘You have just made me out to be a guy who can’t control his baser instincts—yet I have to question your choice of men because you seem to lump me into the category as the sort of man who gives his word on something only to retract it if it’s no longer convenient!’
Hot colour flared in her cheeks and her mouth fell open.
‘I never said…’
‘Of course you did! Well, I told you that I would make that detour so that you could visit your friends at your foster home and I intend to keep my promise. I may be many things, but I am honourable.’
With that he left, and Aggie fell against the closed door, like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly severed. Every bone in her body was limp and she remained there for a few minutes, breathing heavily and trying not to think about what had just taken place. Which, of course, was impossible. She could still breathe in his scent and feel his disturbing presence around her.
So he had made a pass at her, she thought, trying desperately to reduce it to terms she could grasp. Men had made passes at her before. She was choosy, accustomed to brushing them aside without a second thought.
But this man…
He got to her. He roused her. He made her aware of her sexuality and made her curious to have it explored. Even with all those drawbacks, all those huge, gaping differences between them…
But it was good that she had turned him down, she told herself. He had been open and upfront with her, which naturally she appreciated. Fall into bed because they were attracted to one another? Lots of other women would have grabbed the opportunity; Aggie knew that. Not only was he drop-dead gorgeous, but there was something innately persuasive and unbearably sexy about him. His arrogance, on the one hand, left her cold but on the other it was mesmeric.