The Spaniard’s Summer Seduction
Under the Spaniard’s Lock and Key
Kim Lawrence
The Secret Spanish Love-Child
Cathy Williams
Surrender to Her Spanish Husband
Maggie Cox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Under the Spaniard’s Lock and Key

About the Author

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons, and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

CHAPTER ONE

SUSAN Ward manoeuvred herself down the ramp into the kitchen, her daughter and husband protectively shadowing her progress.

Propping her crutches against the chair her husband pulled out, Susan lowered herself into her seat, ignoring her nearest and dearest as they hovered anxiously.

Maggie, watching the procedure apprehensively, released a relieved sigh when her mum was safely seated. ‘You’re getting pretty good on those things, Mum,’ she observed, privately concerned that she was also far too ambitious. It was lucky her dad was now retired from his job on the oil rigs so was around to keep an eye on things when she wasn’t.

It had been three months since the experimental surgery, but to see her mum, who had been confined to a wheelchair for the last eighteen years, on her feet even for short periods still gave Maggie a thrill.

And now, if things went according to plan, in a couple of months she would no longer need the chair or even the crutches.

Susan dismissed the comment and turned her frowning regard on her daughter, who took a seat opposite. ‘Never mind that, how are you feeling? Really feeling,’ she added, holding up her hand in anticipation of her daughter’s reply.

‘She looks exhausted, doesn’t she, John?’ She appealed to her husband for support.

John Ward’s warm glance swept his daughter’s pale face, touching the warm dark ebony curls that clustered around her heart-shaped face. ‘She looks beautiful.’

Oh, well, Maggie reflected, at least I have got one fan even if he is my dad. ‘Thank you, though according to you I was beautiful when I was twenty pounds too heavy, had teenage acne and braces,’ she reminded him.

‘Don’t change the subject, Maggie,’ her mother said sternly.

‘I told you, I’m fine, Mum,’ she replied, pasting a determinedly cheerful smile on her face to illustrate the level of her fineness.

She had perfected the ‘I’m fine’ smile a long time ago, because no matter how bad her day had been Maggie had always been pretty sure growing up that her mum’s had been worse.

This conviction dated from the day when her dad had returned home from the hospital with her baby brother and no Mum—she had been four at the time.

Her other brother Ben, at the noisy toddler stage, had run around the room while John Ward sat with baby Sam in his arms and explained to Maggie that Mum would not be coming home yet and when she did Maggie would have to be a big girl and help her because Mum was not well.

Maggie had only vaguely understood the explanation of what was wrong with her mother, but she had known it was bad because her big strong dad didn’t cry.

The tears had scared her and made her feel sick inside. She had begged him to stop crying, and promised that if he did she would never ever be a bad girl.

Of course she had not been able to keep that promise, but the determination that had been born that day to protect her mum and stop her dad crying had never left her.

Compared with what her mum had coped with, a broken engagement and a cancelled wedding faded into insignificance.

‘Seriously, I am fine,’ Maggie promised in response to the sceptical looks directed her way as she anchored her heavy dark hair at the nape of her neck with one hand and accepted the mug of coffee her father passed her. ‘I’m just sorry about messing everyone about this way,’ she added, her brow furrowing as she tried to calculate how much her parents had already laid out on the wedding.

It was easier to address the practicalities of the situation than think about what an idiot she had been. ‘All that money,’ she fretted.

‘Forget the money,’ her father said firmly. ‘That’s not important—’ He broke off mid sentence as the door opened to let in a cold gust of air and two young men in muddy rugby kit.

They ignored their sister, grunted in the direction of their father and mother before heading for the fridge.

‘Glass, Sam,’ Susan said out of habit as her younger son raised a carton of milk to his lips.

He lowered the carton and said, ‘We lost, if anyone’s interested.’

His older and slightly more intuitive brother nudged him with his elbow and removed the pad he was holding to his own cut lip. ‘They’re not interested, Sam. So what’s up, guys?’

Maggie got to her feet. Telling her parents had been bad enough—they at least, bless them, had not asked any awkward questions even though she knew they were dying to. She could not, however, rely on her brothers to be similarly restrained. ‘Nothing. That lip could do with a stitch,’ she added, casting an expert eye over her brother’s mouth.

Ben rolled his eyes and, taking the carton from his brother, took a swig of milk before subjecting his sister to an equally critical narrow eyed stare. ‘Sure. You always look like death warmed up.’

‘I’ve just worked a ten-night stretch in a busy casualty department,’ Maggie reminded him.

‘So?’ Ben retorted, looking unimpressed. ‘Nothing new there—you always work crazy hours. You have to be certifiably insane to be a nurse.’

‘Thanks.’ Maggie’s mouth twisted into a grim little smile.

Simon had called her the perfect nurse. The recollection sent her stomach muscles into tight unpleasant spasm, though, to be totally accurate, apparently Simon had been quoting his mother, the possessive Mrs Greer, whom Maggie had found to be manipulative and very overprotective of her only child, when he said this.

She resisted the temptation to cover her ears as snippets of that conversation drifted through her mind.

‘Obviously you won’t work when we are married. You can help out with my constituency work, and the social engagements.’

‘I like my work,’ she had replied, wondering how Simon would take the news she had no intention of giving up work.

‘Of course you do, darling. Mother has always said you are the perfect nurse and when she moves in—’

Maggie had been unable to hide her horror. ‘Your mother is going to live with us?’

Simon had looked annoyed by the interruption, giving a thin lipped smile. ‘Of course.’

He had made it sound as if it were a done deal, and why not? she thought with a grimace of self-disgust. She had always gone along meekly with what he said.

‘Did you get any injuries from the train derailment I saw on the telly, Mags?’

Maggie dragged her wandering thoughts back to the present and responded to the ghoulish enquiry from Sam with an absent nod of her head.

‘That explains why she looks so wrecked,’ Sam observed.

Ben shook his head. ‘No, it’s not work…’ His eyes widened. ‘Are you pregnant?’

The colour flew to Maggie’s cheeks, and Susan Ward looked uncomfortable, making it obvious that this had been her first thought too.

‘Ben!’ his father warned.

‘No, it’s OK, Dad,’ Maggie said, placing her hand on her dad’s shoulder. ‘It’s not a secret.’ She took a deep breath. ‘If you must know the wedding is off.’

Sam closed the fridge with his elbow and let out a silent whistle. ‘So no more slimy Simon!’

‘Simon is not…’ Maggie stopped. Actually he was. She suddenly felt pretty stupid that her little brother had recognised the characteristic and she hadn’t.

She had wasted four years of her life on Simon, which might have been acceptable if she had been desperately in love with him, but Maggie now knew she hadn’t been.

Maybe she was one of those people that couldn’t fall in love? A depressing thought but a definite possibility; she had certainly never experienced the sort of blind, intense passion her friends spoke of.

‘Do you have to send back the presents? There’s a coffee maker that’s much better than the one we have—’

Sam’s brother cut across him. ‘Did he dump you? Or… God, had he been cheating on you?’ The idea drew a chortle of laughter from his brother. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

‘Simon did not sleep with anyone.’ Not even with me, Maggie thought, swallowing the bubble of hysteria in her throat.

‘Well, what did he do, then?’

Maggie’s eyes fell as she hesitated. For the first time in her life she felt awkward bringing up the topic of her adoption.

She had never had any hang-ups at all about being adopted, no yearning secret or otherwise to find her natural mother—it had never even occurred to her that Simon had any concerns.

Though concern was clearly an understatement considering the lengths he had gone to to trace her birth mother. Thinking ahead, he had called it; anticipating future problems, he had explained with a self-congratulatory smile.

Maggie closed her eyes and could hear him calling her birth mother’s identity ‘a potential skeleton-jumping-out-of-the-cupboard situation’ before going on to explain in the same pompous manner that a politician in his position—one with a future—could not be too careful.

‘He had a problem with…’ She looked at the expectant faces and hesitated again.

Mum and Dad had told her years ago that they would understand if she wanted to contact her birth mother, but Maggie had never believed they could be as all right with the idea as they appeared.

Maggie, who had always been keenly conscious of the crazy guilt thing Mum had about not being able to do the things with her children that able-bodied mums took for granted, had no intention of searching out a mother who was able to enter the mums’ race on sports day.

To her mind even thinking about her birth mother felt like a betrayal of the parents who had loved and cared for her, and why contact a stranger who had given her away and risk rejection for a second time?

Would they believe that Simon had made the unilateral decision to search for her birth mother? Or would they think that she had decided they were not enough family for her? Maggie decided there was no point taking a risk.

‘It was a lot of little things. We simply decided that we didn’t suit. It was all very amicable,’ she lied, absently touching the bruised area on her wrist.

‘Maggie will talk about it when she’s good and ready and you two,’ John Ward said sternly, ‘have all the sensitivity of a pair of bricks. Your poor sister—’

‘Had a lucky escape,’ Ben interrupted. ‘And don’t look at me like that—I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking. Sorry, Maggie, but it’s true.’

Susan broke the awkward silence that followed this pronouncement.

‘What you need is a holiday.’

Maggie laughed. ‘You think I should go on the honeymoon cruise?’

Maggie had no desire to go on the cruise that had been a cause of friction. Though Simon had reluctantly agreed that it might not be proper to take his mother on their Mediterranean honeymoon, he had assured her that next time of course she would go with them; Mother apparently loved cruises.

He hadn’t asked Maggie if she enjoyed them.

‘Oh, goodness, no, there’d be too many middle-aged people on a cruise,’ Susan exclaimed, adding, ‘Where did I put those brochures you brought home the other day, John? I think they’re on the piano stool. Go get them, Ben.’

‘Mum, I can’t go on holiday. There’s so much to do. I need to cancel the—’

‘Your father and I will do that.’

John nodded. ‘Of course, and you might as well say yes, Maggie, because your mum will wear you down eventually. She always does,’ he added, dropping a kiss on the top of his wife’s fair head.

He wasn’t wrong. By the time the weekend was over Maggie found she had booked herself on a European coach tour.

Her mum had mixed feelings about her choice.

‘But, Maggie, there will be nobody under forty on a coach tour.’

‘Mum, I’m not looking for romance.’

‘What about fun?’

It was a question that Maggie considered on more than one occasion over the next few weeks.

Maybe, she mused, she ought to put sensible on hold and try spontaneous, though not as spontaneous as her friend Millie had suggested when she heard the news of the broken engagement. Fun was one thing but, as she told Millie, the idea of a casual fling with a stranger did not appeal to her.

She had responded with a mystified shake of her head to Millie’s suggestion that she might not have met the right stranger yet.

What Millie didn’t get was that she simply wasn’t a very sexual person.

CHAPTER TWO

RAFAEL worked his way across the room crowded with members of two of the most ancient and powerful families in Spain, brought together to celebrate the baptism of the twin boys who were the result of the marriage that had joined the two dynasties.

His cousin Alfonso, a frown on his face, approached.

Rafael arched a dark brow. ‘A problem?’

‘I’ve just been speaking with the manager, Rafe.’

Rafael nodded encouragingly.

His cousin shook his head and said quietly. ‘I can’t let you pay for this, Rafael.’

‘You don’t think I’m good for it?’

His cousin laughed. The extent of Rafael’s fortune was something that was debated in financial pages and gossip columns alike, but even the most conservative estimates involved a number of noughts that Alfonso, who was not a poor man himself, struggled to get his head around.

Like all the Castenadas family members present, Alfonso was old money, though like many of the old families, including his wife’s, the Castenadas family were not the power they once had been.

Except Rafael, the family maverick whose massive fortune was not down to inherited wealth.

When Rafael’s father died in a sailing accident he did leave his son an ancestral pile and several thousands of acres, but the land that hadn’t been sold off had been mortgaged to the hilt and the ancestral pile had been sadly neglected.

The estancia had needed a massive investment of, not just cash, but enthusiasm and expertise to bring it into the twenty-first century.

Rafael had both.

In the last year Rafael-Luis Castenadas had added a newspaper and a hotel chain to his already wide-ranging holdings. It was a long way from the disgrace Alfonso’s uncle had always predicted his son would bring to the family name.

‘If he was still with us Uncle Felipe would have been proud of all you’ve achieved.’

Rafael raised a dark slanted brow to a satirical angle. ‘You think so?’

Alfonso looked surprised by the question. ‘Of course!’

Rafael shrugged, recalling his father describing his career choice as a ‘passing phase.’

‘All things are, I suppose possible.’ All things except his ability to please his father, Rafael mused, unable to recall the exact moment he had realised this, but able to recall the sense of release he had got when he’d finally stopped trying.

Following this revelation there had been a short interval when out of sheer perversity he had adopted a lifestyle guaranteed to embarrass his father.

He had rapidly outgrown the rebellion, but he was still paying the price for this youthful self-indulgence, those early colourful bad-boy antics had attracted the attention of the press at the time, and Rafael had never totally shaken that youthful reputation or the interest of the media.

‘But surely…’ Alfonso protested.

Rafael’s lips curved into a sardonic smile.

‘My father was an elitist snob—being a Castenadas was his religion.’ How anyone could think an accident of birth made him somehow better than his fellow man had always seemed bizarre to Rafael.

The lack of emotion in the dry delivery, as much as the sentiment, made his cousin stare.

Reading the shock and disapproval Alfonso struggled to hide reminded Rafael that, though he had always got on well with his cousin, who was the epitome of a decent guy, when it came to family pride they were not reading from the same page.

‘You will allow me to give my godsons this gift.’

Responding to the charm in Rafael’s smile—very few did not—Alfonso grinned back. ‘Gift? What were the cases of vintage wine?’

Rafael’s arm moved in a dismissive gesture. ‘Wine is a good investment and I managed to locate some rare vintages.’

‘I’ll say, and I’m grateful on the boys’ behalf but that’s not the point, Rafael.’

‘The point is I wish to do this for my godsons. They are, after all, my heirs.’

Alfonso laughed. ‘I won’t raise their hopes. You’re thirty-two, Rafael—I think you might manage an heir or two of your own,’ he observed drily.

‘I have no interest in marriage.’ Why perpetuate a flawed formula?

He was surrounded by failed marriages, unhappy marriages and expensive divorces. If marriage were a horse it would have been put down years ago on compassionate grounds, but it was a product of wishful thinking and people, it seemed, needed dreams.

Rafael was content with reality.

He rarely had a relationship that lasted more than a couple of months, which was as a rule about the time when he started hearing ‘we’ a lot. It was also generally around this time he began to find the qualities that had first attracted him to a woman irritating.

He was not waiting to find his soulmate.

‘I will leave the domestic bliss to you and Angelina. I do not buy a restaurant if I want a meal and I do not intend to take a wife in order to have sex.’

Alfonso winced and said, ‘Nice analogy.’

‘I do not have a reputation for niceness,’ Rafael reminded him. He did, however, have a reputation for being utterly ruthless and single-minded when he pursued a goal. It was debated whether it was this ruthlessness, his sharp analytical mind or a combination of the two that accounted for his success.

Rafael, not given to introspection, had never attempted to analyse the formula; he did what he did because he liked the challenge—when he stopped enjoying it he would walk away.

An hour later all was still going smoothly—so far, at least. In the days when he’d had to attend every last family event, Rafael had seen far too many that had gone sour to rule out the possibility totally.

It might at least liven the proceedings, he mused, and almost immediately felt ashamed of the selfish sentiment. This day meant a great deal to the proud parents so for their sake he hoped the day stayed boring.

With luck he would not be obliged to see his family until next Christmas.

He put down the drink he had been nursing since he arrived, glanced at his watch and wondered when he could leave without causing offence.

‘Have I thanked you for all this?’

He turned at the sound of the voice behind him, the hard light of cynicism that made several of his relatives uncomfortable absent from his eyes as he smiled at Angelina.

It was hard not to smile, not just because his cousin’s wife was a beautiful woman—it was more than that. Angelina was the most genuine person he had ever met, she had a warmth that made people around her feel good.

A tall woman, and one blessed with symmetrical features set in a perfectly oval face, a slim, elegant figure and an aura of serenity, his cousin’s wife was probably many men’s idea of a perfect woman.

Rafael had wondered more than once why he wasn’t attracted to her in a sexual way, but he never had been.

‘Alfonso has already thanked me.’

She watched the uncomfortable look cross his face and gave him a hug. ‘Why do you hate people to know you can be nice?’ she wondered.

‘I am not nice. I always have an ulterior motive—ask anyone.’

‘Yes, you’re totally selfish. I can see how much you’re enjoying yourself.’ She angled a quizzical look at his dark face. ‘Wondering when to make your escape?’

There was an answering smile in Rafael’s eyes as he asked, ‘Should I mention you have baby vomit on your shoulder?’

Angelina carried on smiling, displaying a perfect set of white teeth as the dimple in her chin deepened. ‘No, Rafael, you should not.’

The first time he had seen Angelina and Alfonso together it had been obvious even to a cynic like him that they were crazy about each other, and as far as he could see the honeymoon was still on.

Ten years down the line, who knew?

‘Motherhood suits you.’ He saw the flicker cross her face and knew he had inadvertently dredged up a memory.

‘Thank you, Rafael. The twins, it’s hard not to think about. It was all so different this time.’

Rafael had no trouble interpreting the disjointed sentence. He watched her swallow and wished he had kept his mouth shut.

He saw her lips quiver and hoped she was not going to start crying. He put a lid on his empathy, a sympathetic word or gesture now would no doubt open the floodgates and he had a major dislike of female tears. ‘Why think about it?’ he said brusquely.

Rafael’s philosophy was if you made a mistake you lived with it. Beating yourself up over it was to his way of thinking a pointless exercise, and an indulgence.

‘You’re right.’

‘If only more people realised that.’

Generally appreciative of his ironic sense of humour, Angelina did not smile.

Her shadowed eyes were trained on the far end of the vaulted hall where her husband, a son balanced expertly on each arm, paused to allow admiring relations to kiss the cherubic cheeks.

‘He is such a good father.’

‘And you are a good mother, Angelina.’

She shook her head. ‘It makes me think…did I do…?’ She lifted her troubled brown eyes to Rafael. ‘Was it the right thing?’

Rafael had no doubt. ‘You did the right thing.’

Rafael had strong feelings about advice: he never requested it and he never gave it.

It was a sound position, it was just a pity that he had forgotten and made an exception for Angelina.

‘But I hate lying.’

‘Confessing might have made you feel better, but what would it have achieved other than—?’

‘Make Alfonso call off the wedding. He would never risk a scandal.’

‘Maybe,’ Rafael lied. In his mind there was no maybe.

He actually had no doubt at all what the outcome would have been had Angelina found Alfonso and not himself at home the day she had arrived at his cousin’s city apartment to confess all.

Would Alfonso have felt sympathy for Angelina, forced to give birth at sixteen to her married lover’s child? Yes.

Would he have married her after she had confessed? No.

‘You did the right thing, Angelina. Why should you suffer now for a mistake you made when you were little more than a child? You were the victim then—is it fair you be the victim now? Everyone makes mistakes.’

‘Alfonso doesn’t,’ she said wistfully.

Rafael might have said that Alfonso wasn’t perfect, but he knew it would be a waste of breath. To his wife he was.

‘It doesn’t seem right I’m this happy. I wonder if she’s happy, my little girl. I wonder sometimes.’

‘Better not to,’ Rafael advised tersely. ‘Why think about what you can’t have?’ He had wasted many nights wanting his mother back, but he was no longer ten and he knew better.

CHAPTER THREE

MAGGIE WANDERED THROUGH the winding streets just soaking up the atmosphere. She had a whole afternoon to do her own thing before she needed to be back at the hotel for what the tour guide had enthusiastically described as an ‘authentic paella experience.’

Attendance was optional but he’d told her it was highly recommended.

Having paused for a glass of wine at a pavement café, she pulled the map from her shoulder bag. The tour guide had declared the street market a must for any visitor to the city in search of authentic Spain and, according to her map, it was really close.

Half an hour later and totally lost in a maze of alleys Maggie decided to admit defeat. With the clock ticking and the tour guide’s instruction to be back at the hotel by seven if she planned to join the group for dinner, she finally decided to head straight for the cathedral.

Maggie was just beginning to think that she would miss out on seeing that too when she spotted the distinctive spire of the cathedral directly ahead.

Standing on the pavement, sweat trickling down her back—the day had been hot; the evening was sultry without a breath of breeze to offer relief—she waited for a lull in the steady stream of traffic. It quickly became clear there was none. Not that this seemed to bother other people, who just stepped confidently into the road weaving their way through the traffic to an accompaniment of horns, yells from drivers and rude gestures to the opposite side of the congested road.

Before she could think better of the idea she stepped out.

The security outside the hotel was tight; the media had been kept away, only a couple of approved photographers had been permitted access, though unfortunately Rafael’s departure coincided with their arrival.

‘Since when were you camera shy, Rafael? I’d heard you are very photogenic. I think your face and reputation keep half the scandal rags in business.’

Rafael reacted to his elderly uncle’s cackle of laughter with a sardonic smile.

‘I suppose I was slightly naive to think that my family at least would give me the benefit of the doubt.’ Rafael liked women, he liked sex, but if he had bedded as many beautiful women as the press liked to suggest he doubted he would have the strength to get out of bed.

‘You were never naive, Rafael—not even when you were a baby like those two. I remember your baptism like it was yesterday,’ his uncle reminisced. ‘You bawled your head off all through and your father kept saying, “Elena, do something,” and she did, though I doubt if Felipe had an affair in mind.’ He angled a look that held more curiosity than apology at his tall great-nephew’s face as he added, ‘No offence intended.’

The muscles along Rafael’s strong jaw tightened, but his expression did not change as he promised, ‘None taken.’

‘Her mistake was confessing. Honesty is not the best policy, especially when dealing with people like your father. How old were you when he.?’

‘Threw her out? Ten.’

Old enough to feel angry and betrayed. An image flashed into his head and he felt nothing as he watched his ten-year-old self begging his mother to take him with her and shouting when she tearfully sobbed she couldn’t.

‘It was a tragedy she died so young.’

Before he ever had a chance to retract the things he had yelled at her as she left.

Not insensible to the sensitivity of the subject, Fernando slid a glance at Rafael’s stony profile before observing, ‘There are worse things in life than being considered a sex god.’

‘A hard reputation to live up to.’

The comment drew a laugh from the older man. ‘Modesty,’ he mocked. ‘That’s not like you, Rafael.’

‘You think I need a lesson in humility?’ Meekness was to his mind an overrated virtue, he had never turned the other cheek in his life and he wasn’t about to start any time soon. In his world displaying any weakness was fatal.

‘You care what I think?’ Fernando stopped dead, his attention straying across the road. ‘Now that is what I call a remarkably good-looking woman…she reminds me of someone… Rafael…?’

It was not hard to identify the object of his relative’s admiration. She stood poised uncertainly on the edge of the pavement watching for a gap in the heavy traffic that moved through the congested street.

A little above medium height, she had a natural poise and elegance that made her stand out from the crowd even wearing standard-issue faded denims and a loose cotton tee shirt that hinted at the lush curves of her breasts, the natural attribute he suspected had first drawn his reprobate great uncle’s attention.

As his glance moved upwards to her face she stepped backwards as a scooter mounted the pavement. As she lifted a hand to throw the ponytail that had flopped forward over her shoulder her head turned and he saw her face for the first time.

The breath left his body as Rafael froze, feeling as if someone had just landed a punch in his solar plexus.

‘Over there… I think she’s trying to cross the road. You see her?’

‘I see her.’

‘Now that is what this party lacked—a few pretty faces to look at.’

‘Not pretty,’ Rafael contradicted.

His elderly relative looked outraged. ‘Not pretty? What is wrong with you? Don’t tell me you like your women like sticks. A woman should be soft and—’

‘Beautiful,’ Rafael corrected, cutting across his great-uncle’s list of womanly attributes.

As his brain emerged from its temporary paralysis his eyes remained trained on the slim figure, but it was not the brunette’s face or her indisputably womanly figure that held his stunned gaze.

He glanced briefly at his great-uncle, who played the forgetful old man card when it suited him but was anything but; the last thing Rafael needed at this moment was Fernando to realise why the girl looked familiar to him.

He was surprised he hadn’t already.

The sooner he got him safely away from this potentially explosive scene, the better.

Rafael dragged his eyes off the brunette. Still aware of her in the periphery of his vision, and aware he was not the only one aware of her—this was a woman accustomed to male attention—he offered his great-uncle a supportive arm, nodding to the driver who held the door open as Fernando took his place in the car.

The car moved off and Rafael was able to focus all his attention on the brunette.

She was obviously heading for the hotel. If she walked in now he could imagine the reaction and there were photographers to record the moment for posterity and every tabloid on the planet!

An illegitimate love child reunited with her mother while the unsuspecting husband and social elite looked on. My God, the girl had to have engineered the moment for maximum embarrassment—not that her motivation or her feelings were what he needed to concentrate on now, he told himself, blocking out this line of speculation.

This was about damage limitation. Let Angelina have this day at least before disaster in the shape of this girl arrived.

He couldn’t let her go into the hotel.

So how did he stop her?

He found himself wistfully contemplating a less civilised and much simpler age when he could have simply slung her over his shoulder.

This not being an option, he had to repress his natural instincts and opt for more subtle methods. As he sifted through the possibilities he was very aware that no matter what action he chose, he could not give this situation a happy outcome.

The story had everything: sex, money and a beautiful woman—or in this case two!

If she walked through those doors now he could imagine the reaction to that face and tomorrow’s headlines. He couldn’t allow it to happen.

Rafael tried to narrow his focus to the here and now. It was a struggle: he had a mind wired to asking why…where; a question mark was a challenge to him.

As he walked towards the road his mind was working fast as he sifted through the possibilities. What was she doing here?

Coincidence did not even make it to the list.

Rafael did not believe in coincidence any more than he believed in the Easter bunny or the general decency of his fellow man…or in this case woman. He did believe in protecting the people he cared about.

His silver grey eyes narrowed. The brunette, her hair and other things bouncing gently, had begun crossing the road towards the hotel entrance, confirming all his worst suspicions.

He felt something kick low in his stomach—anger, he told himself—as he watched the gentle sway of her hips in the tight jeans she wore.

Of course there were decent and genuinely good people—people like Angelina. He liked to think he was not without the odd scruple, but this woman was not one of life’s innocents.

It always amazed Rafael how that vulnerable minority managed to get through life with their ideals and their lives intact while most people were out for what they could get regardless of the people they trampled over in their pursuit of whatever ambition drove them.

What was driving Angelina’s daughter?

Greed, revenge…possibly a combination?

A child genuinely wishing to discover a parent would hardly choose a public occasion to do so.

Then as he watched she stepped off the pavement. Dios, he might not have to worry about scandal—the girl was a traffic statistic waiting to happen!

It was pure luck that she reached his side of the road before disaster struck—or almost. He watched as she jumped in response to the blast of a scooter horn as it whizzed past her, lost her footing and began to fall back into the moving traffic.

CHAPTER FOUR

MAGGIE lifted her head, a smile of gratitude ready to thank the person who had leant a steadying hand and pulled her onto the safety of the pavement.

‘Thank you…’ The words and the smile died a death as she found herself looking into the lean face of her saviour.

The sound of the traffic retreated somewhere into the recesses of her shell-shocked brain. She was looking into the dark face of the most beautiful man she had ever seen or even imagined.

She was too startled to disguise her reaction. Maggie’s gaze travelled in wide-eyed appreciation over his strongly sculpted features.

This was not a face anyone would forget in a hurry.

As a child Maggie remembered wondering what her mum had meant when she spoke of someone’s ‘beautiful bones.’

He was what she meant.

The genetic gene pool had been very generous to this tall Spaniard, who had been gifted cheekbones sharp enough to cut yourself on, a strong aquiline nose and a firm, angular jaw.

His unlined brow was broad and intelligent and he possessed the most striking eyes she had ever seen—pale icy grey, almost silver, the striking colour intensified by the dark ring around the iris, they were fringed by incredibly long spiky lashes that were as dark as his strongly delineated ebony brows.

But it was his mouth that Maggie couldn’t take her eyes off. Was it the hint of cruelty she saw in the sensual curve of his sculpted lips that tugged so strongly at her senses and made the aura he projected so overtly sensual and masculine?

Close your mouth, Maggie, you’re drooling.

In an effort to respond to the ironic voice in her head, she gave herself a mental shake.

It didn’t help. Her head remained a swirl of impressions and her nerve endings continued to thrum, sending shivers across the surface of her overheated skin.

She’d had too much sun, Maggie decided, shading her eyes as she struggled to find an explanation for being struck dumb and foolish at the same moment—an explanation that did not involve being in the presence of a six-feet-four black-haired Mediterranean male who looked like a fallen angel who worked out!

The fine lines around his marvellous eyes deepened as he looked down with concern into her face.

‘Are you all right? There is someone you’d like me to call, perhaps?’

Oh, my God, even his voice was sexy! Deep and slightly gravelly, his cultured voice contained a faint and attractive foreign inflection.

‘I… I…’ She gulped, then he smiled and she thought, Wow!

Get a grip, girl. So you were smiled at by a good-looking man—there is no need to act as though you’ve just been released from a convent.

‘You’ve had a shock. You’re shaking…’ Rafael pushed aside an intrusive flicker of genuine concern. Save it, he told himself, for Angelina and her marriage.

Besides, in his expert opinion this was about sex, not the sun or a blow to the head. He was not the only one to feel the sexual charge in the air. This was not a thing he could have anticipated, but Rafael knew that such things were easier to work with than fight against—not, obviously, to the extent that he followed the advice of the loud voice telling him that what he really wanted was to know what she would taste like when he kissed her!

Though had the circumstances been different, who knew…?

The comment drew Maggie’s gaze to the fingers still curved around her upper arm. She made no attempt to break the contact; in fact she was conscious of a strange reluctance to do so.

She could feel the warmth in his long brown fingers through the thin fabric of her cotton top and sense the strength in them…in the man himself.

Her eyes lifted and the impression of strength she picked up from the light contact intensified. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and athletically built—he was both lean and hard.

He projected an undiluted force-field of raw masculinity. It was utterly overwhelming and…seductive?

The latter question made Maggie’s eyes widen with shock. Curbing the imaginative dialogue in her head, she began to pull her arm away, then stopped as she encountered the flash of concern in his silver grey eyes.

She swallowed past the sudden emotional thickness in her throat and blinked as her eyelids prickled. She looked away, embarrassed by her emotional response to this cursory show of concern.

‘I’m fine…oh!’ Maggie grunted as a passerby bumped into her. ‘Sorry…’

‘You are sorry?’ Her rescuer mumbled something under his breath and directed a glare of such autocratic outrage at the retreating back of the clumsy culprit that Maggie would not have been surprised to see the burly figure disintegrate into a pile of dust.

‘You’re very kind.’

Her low-pitched voice with the husky timbre came as a surprise—not an unpleasant one. ‘You’re English?’

Had he needed confirmation, this would have been it. He knew that Angelina had been shipped to England to have her baby.

She had not gone into details, but he could only imagine that the experience of being sent away from family and friends at such a time must have been a terrifying ordeal for a sixteen-year-old.

Maggie saw the flicker of expression move at the back of his incredible eyes and interpreted it as surprise. She had seen a lot of that when people realised she was not Spanish. There had been several occasions on this trip when unable to respond when, someone spoke to her in Spanish, she had had to explain that she was English.

It was difficult not to think about her genetic heritage when for the first time in her life her colouring made her blend in, not stand out.

She lifted a hand to smooth her tousled hair, a frown settling on her brow as she blinked to clear the unbidden image of Simon’s excited expression when he had revealed that the firm he had employed to investigate her background without telling her had discovered her real mother did not have, as his own mother had suspected, Romany blood, but was in fact a member of one of Spain’s oldest families.

‘Like Mother said, it explains your temperament and your colouring, doesn’t it, sweetheart? The way I see it,’ he had mused, ‘if this family are willing to acknowledge you it would do us no harm at all. Obviously we have to approach them sensitively…’

Sensitive—he actually said sensitive and with no trace of irony. ‘You told your mother about this?’

Simon had remained oblivious to the danger in her voice and stilted manner. ‘It was her idea.’

He had not appeared to notice her flinch as he’d smiled indulgently before announcing confidently, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

Maggie had been pretty sure Simon hadn’t or he wouldn’t have been standing that close to her clenched fists.

She could remember clearly staring up at his handsome face, and thinking, I’ve never actually seen you before.

She was engaged to a man who didn’t know her at all, a man who under the caring exterior he liked to cultivate, was utterly and totally self-centred.

‘You’re thinking how did the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat come to be adopted by an ordinary English couple.’

Maggie had recovered her voice in time to silence any further revelations and assure Simon that she had no interest in her birth mother or a family who were strangers to her, and neither did she have an interest in marrying him.

It had taken some time to convince Simon that she wasn’t joking, but when he had realised he had been furious, revealing a side to his nature that she had never glimpsed previously.

Maggie flicked her ponytail firmly over her shoulder and equally firmly pushed away the memories.

She had moved on and in a rather unpredictable way, she thought, directing a bold direct stare at the face of the dark, devastatingly handsome Spaniard. Communication was not a problem; he spoke perfect English.

The problem was her inability to stop staring at him or speculate on how good his non-verbal communication skills were.

‘You are here with your family?’ He arched an ebony brow, his eyes travelling up from her toes to her glossy head.

She shook her head, feeling ridiculously tongue-tied and unable to shake the crazy conviction he could read her thoughts.

Rafael arched a dark slanted brow. ‘Boyfriend…?’

Maggie rubbed the finger that had recently sported her engagement ring. ‘No…’

Rafael’s sharp gaze noted the action and he filed it away for future reference. She was young to be divorced, but he did not discount the possibility.

‘I’m here alone. On holiday.’ Nice move, Maggie—you’ve just told a total stranger that you’re a vulnerable target. ‘With friends,’ she added quickly as her natural caution kicked in.

‘You are alone with friends?’

She flushed and gave a self-conscious laugh and struggled not to look guilty. Her inability to lie without blushing remained a constant source of irritation. ‘I’m with a group of friends,’ she lied.

The corners of his sensual mouth lifted as he arched an ebony brow. ‘Public place and I’m totally harmless,’ he drawled, displaying an uncomfortable ability to read her mind as he stood there looking about as far removed from harmless as a wolf. She tilted her head back to look into his face and qualified further—of the big and bad variety.

‘I’m sure you are,’ she lied politely, adding, ‘Excuse me,’ as she fished her phone from her pocket and scanned last night’s text from her mum with an expression of interest.

For some women, of course, the bad part would have been a plus, but she had never been drawn to danger. Danger was for women who could live in the moment, and men like him were for women who did not worry about how it would feel the next day.

Maggie had never been swept away by the moment, she had never said to hell with tomorrow and she didn’t see the attraction of dangerous men any more than she felt the urge to walk along a crumbling cliff edge because the view was nice.

She studied her companion’s dark lean face and couldn’t deny that the view was very nice. The skin on her scalp tingled as her glance drifted to his mouth and she corrected her assessment. This man was many things but nice wasn’t one of them!

Uncomfortably conscious of the flash of heat that washed over her skin, she pressed her hands to her stomach where a flock of butterflies were rioting and lowered her eyes back to her phone.

‘Bad news?’ he asked, not fooled by the little pantomime but playing dumb and for time.

His thoughts raced.

He needed to warn Angelina and give her the opportunity to tell Alfonso. He owed her that much, as he was the one who had encouraged her in her lie of omission to her husband in the first place.

That one had really come back to bite him, he reflected grimly. The next time he got asked for advice he would politely refuse.

This girl might, for all he knew, be an expert liar, but there were some things that you couldn’t control and she was genuinely shaken. Whatever the cause it seemed logical to take advantage of it before she fully recovered her wits.

All he had to do was figure out in the next thirty seconds how to get her some place that wasn’t here without breaking any laws. If it involved kissing that would be a plus, he reflected as his heated glance shifted to the full sexy curve.

‘Not really… I just missed them.’

‘Your many friends.’

Fascinated, he watched the colour rush over her cheeks.

She nodded, not meeting his eyes, but lifted her chin defiantly. ‘We’re meeting up back at the hotel,’ she told him creatively before glancing at her watch and exclaiming, ‘It’s that time already!’

To her dismay the tall Spaniard did not take the hint; he just carried on looking at her. Looking hard. She lowered her own gaze. The unblinking regard was unsettling on more levels than she wanted to admit, let alone examine.

Maybe the novelty of a man noticing she existed had spooked her. Wincing at the self-pitying direction of her thoughts, she shook her head and laughed.

Rafael raised an enquiring brow. ‘Something is funny?’

‘Not funny—sad,’ she admitted, hoping the enigmatic response would shut him up.

As he watched her soft lips curve into a determinedly cheerful smile that did nothing to banish the despondent shadow from her luminous eyes he felt feelings stir. Refusing to recognise them as concern—definitely not empathy—he reminded himself that his concern belonged with the mother and her threatened marriage, not the daughter.

He was attracted to the daughter—inconvenient, but not a problem. He had never had a problem keeping his libido on a leash. He couldn’t allow himself to look at her and think of her as a beautiful woman because she was business and sex and business did not mix.

He had to look at her and think, Disaster waiting to happen.

While he could not stop the disaster unfolding, he could control the timing to minimise the impact and give Angelina time to tell her husband that she had a past and that that past had come calling.

There was a problem. Just one? mocked the voice in his skull. Every time he tried to focus on his strategy his train of thought got hijacked and he found himself thinking about her mouth.

He puzzled over this growing obsession.

It wasn’t even as if she were as beautiful as Angelina. The resemblance was startling, but she was not, as he had first thought, a duplicate copy. Her face was heart-shaped and her nose, though delicate, was tip-tilted, her mouth was…

His thoughts slowed as his eyes drifted to that full, generous curve.

Her mouth, he admitted, was a problem.

He wanted to kiss her. The weakness angered him.

‘Sad?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘Just a private joke.’ It was joke when she realised that she had allowed Simon to systematically undermine her confidence and make her feel that her wants and needs were always secondary to his.

It took a total stranger noticing her and being kind to bring home the extent to which she was hungry for attention and how invisible she had felt.

For Simon she had come just above…maybe above…his appointment with his hair stylist, because whether he liked it or not, as he was fond of telling her, the sad fact was that appearances counted in politics… The first time he had said this he had felt compelled to advise her that the amount of cleavage she was showing in her favourite red dress might give the wrong idea.

Her blue dress, he had added, made her look wholesome.

And she had been so eager to be the woman he wanted her to be that she had gone and changed, the same way she had stopped wearing her hair loose and had abandoned her killer heels.

Part of the problem was that she had been so young and impressionable when she met Simon, a first-year student on her first ward allocation, and the handsome son of a rather demanding patient had seemed very sophisticated.

And, yes, she had been flattered that he noticed her. For years boys had not noticed her, not really until the last year at school when she had finally said goodbye to the ubiquitous braces. The event had coincided with her skin clearing up, and, once revealed as smooth and flawless, her golden-toned complexion made her stand out among her fair-skinned classmates.

Her excess inches had also melted away almost overnight. She had needed a belt to keep her school skirt from falling down—she had a waist.

The boys at school had noticed her then, but their admiration had taken the form of crude comments and clumsy passes and Maggie, to hide her shyness, had responded to them with an icy disdain that had earned the not very inventive nickname of Ice Queen.

To Maggie at eighteen—and in her head still the dumpy teenager—Simon, a nearly-thirty-year-old lawyer with political ambitions, had seemed very sophisticated, and he had been interested in her!

He hadn’t been clumsy, he’d been charming, and he had never made her feel awkward or uncomfortable. He had even been sympathetic when she confided how self-conscious her overgenerous breasts and curvy hips made her feel, patting her hand and assuring her comfortingly that nobody was perfect. With very limited experience of men and dating, Maggie had been relieved when he had put no pressure on her to go farther than kissing. Though the circumstances of her childhood had made her mature in many ways in other ways, she had led quite a sheltered life.

When he had asked her to marry him a dazzled Maggie had really believed herself in love and fully expected the relationship to move on to another level; her feelings about this had been mixed.

When Simon had said he respected her and he wanted to wait until they were married she was pretty sure that relief should not have figured even fleetingly in her reaction, but it had.

Her fists curled as she reflected angrily on how submissive she had been, how she had let Simon mould her into the person he wanted her to be.

‘You wish to share this joke?’

Maggie shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to tell this man above all others that she was not used to male attention. She tried to frame a suitable excuse to make good her escape.

She could always just open her mouth and say, ‘Go away,’ but, having had good manners instilled in her from the cradle, it was hard for Maggie to tell anyone to get lost, especially when that someone had just sort of saved her life.

‘Allow me to walk you back.’

Maggie shook her head and smiled to rob her refusal of offence. ‘I couldn’t possibly put you to the trouble.’

She thought of cliff edges and pretty views and sighed. No, she would definitely opt for the safe route even if the view was not so thrilling, although for a split second she had been tempted.

The same way you opted for the, oh, so safe Simon and that worked out so well.

Ignoring the contribution of the critic in her head, she folded her phone and held out her hand.

‘Thank you very much for saving me, but I won’t impose on you any longer.’

The stilted dismissal made Rafael veer between amusement and astonishment, then as his attention was captured by the rapid rise and fall of her rather magnificent breasts both were swallowed up by a blast of raw lust so strong he actually took a stiff half step backwards as his body hardened.

It took him unawares. It was a long time since he had wanted a woman this much, let alone a woman that was out of bounds. Maybe, he mused, that was the attraction…the forbidden fruit?

The fingers that tightened on her arm made her wince. He murmured an apology.

She couldn’t see his expression; his heavy eyelids were lowered, leaving only a glittering slit of silver.

For a second she thought he wasn’t going to take her hand, then he did, holding it a moment too long, giving time for the electrical tingle under her skin to morph into a shameful throb of awareness that clutched low like a fist in her belly.

Then his brown fingers tightened slightly before falling away.

She stayed motionless her eyes meshed with his compelling silver eyes. His gaze was strangely emotionless considering the electrical charge that shimmered in the air between them—or did it?

She brought her lashes down in an ebony protective screen and sucked in a shaky breath. She clearly needed to get her overactive imagination in line. It made no sense that the brush of a stranger’s fingers could… She rubbed her hand against her thigh and dismissed the moment from her mind.

The sexual charge in the air did not diminish even though they were no longer touching.

‘You are not well enough to walk.’ It was not a lie; she looked pale and shaken.

‘I’m fine. I just missed lunch and if I don’t hurry I shall miss the paella evening.’ Authentic, she reminded herself as she tried to work up enthusiasm for the prospect—the authentic flamenco evening had involved dancers who hailed from Manchester, though in their defence they had been very good.

‘I know where they do the best paella.’

‘How nice.’

He watched the appearance of the polite smile that was starting to aggravate him and thought about doing something that would wipe it off her face.

‘It would be nicer if I had company…would you come share some paella with me?’

CHAPTER FIVE

MAGGIE stared at Rafael, startled by the invitation.

‘With you?’ she asked, trying to judge if he was serious; not that it mattered—she was not going to say yes, was she?

His shoulders lifted in a magnificent shrug as he inclined his dark head.

Maggie gave a strained laugh and lifted her flushed face to his… So, all right, it was gratifying that a gorgeous man like this wanted her company, but not reality. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t know you…and I’m not… ‘she stumbled.

‘Not?’

She gave him a direct look.

‘You have very beautiful eyes.’

The eyes in question fell from his. ‘You don’t have to compliment me, and actually I don’t like it.’ Her heart was thudding so hard against her ribs that he had to hear it above the hum of the traffic.

‘If that were true it would make you a very unusual woman, but as a matter of fact it was not a compliment.’

A laugh left Maggie’s lips as her eyes swept upwards. ‘No?’ She arched a feathery brow. ‘It definitely wasn’t an insult.’

‘You have a lot of experience of insults?’

Maggie smiled. ‘I have brothers.’

He began to smile back, then as his eyes drifted to her mouth he stopped abruptly. The buzz of sexual awareness that had been pumping through his veins became a loud thrum.

‘It was actually a statement of fact—you have very beautiful eyes.’

His eyes were resting on her mouth when he said it and something in the smoky scrutiny made Maggie’s heart rate quicken.

And why not? She was allowed to be attracted to a man; it was plain silly to deny it. She was not expert at reading the signs, but it seemed possible he might be attracted to her, although he might be one of those men who were able to make every woman think she was special.

Attraction or not, it wasn’t going anywhere. If she had been the sort of girl who could separate sex from emotion he would have been exactly the sort of man she would have chosen—she wondered uncomfortably if she had been sending out the wrong signals.

She gave an apologetic shrug and explained. ‘I’m not looking for a holiday romance.’

Though some people had suggested—even her own mother had dropped hints—that this was exactly what she ought to be looking for.

Her friend Millie’s typically outspoken parting shot came back to her.

‘What you need to recover from Simon is some fun for once in your life—head-banging sex with no strings with, of course, the right stranger.’

Was there such a thing as the right stranger…and was he it? Maggie brought the train of thought, shocked, to an abrupt halt.

Her eyes widened. I am tempted. I’m really tempted!

He gave a sardonic smile. ‘I was offering dinner.’

The mortified colour flew to her cheeks. ‘Of course you were…sorry…that is, I was…’ Wondering if no strings sex was such a terrible thing. And why shouldn’t she? It wouldn’t hurt anyone; it might even be liberating…it might even be fun.

She doubted this was the sort of fun her mum had had in mind.

He grinned, immediately achieving the impossible and looking even more rampantly gorgeous—he really was the most incredibly male man she had ever met—and looked amused.

‘That is a yes.’

Flustered, Maggie swept the hair from her eyes. ‘Yes, that is, no, I…’

‘You wish for references perhaps?’

She flushed and shook her head feeling gauche, foolish and excited; her eyes widened in recognition of this last emotion. ‘Of course not.’

‘I am Rafael. Rafael-Luis Castenadas.’ Holding her eyes, he bowed formally from the waist. He straightened, pushing a dark hank of hair back from his wide brow as he did so, then angled an enquiring brow and waited.

Not recognising the cue to give her own name, Maggie heard herself say, ‘That’s a lovely name.’

She squeezed her eyes closed and thought, Please, please, let the ground open up and swallow me.

He watched as she bit her lip hard enough to bruise the soft pink flesh and break the skin. He saw a bead of bright blood form and thought about blotting it with his tongue before. He stopped the thought but was unable to stop his body reacting lustfully to the image.

He had never met anyone with a more expressive face. Did she allow every emotion she felt to register on those lovely features?

It made his task easier that she was so easy to read though he wondered how many men had taken advantage of her transparency—as he was.

He pushed aside the sliver of guilt. He had an excuse and he wasn’t trying to get her into bed…though in other circumstances that might, he conceded, have been a tempting idea.

Maggie opened her eyes and found he was watching her; the unblinking intensity of his regard was unsettling.

‘And you?’ he prompted.

‘Me?’ she echoed, wondering about the expression she had glimpsed on his face.

‘You have a name?’

She flushed and struggled to get her brain into gear. She could not believe the effect this total stranger was having on her. ‘I’m Maggie. Maggie Ward, well, Magdalena really, but nobody calls me that.’

‘Everyone starts out as strangers, Magdalena.’

His deep voice had a intimate quality. Maggie, uncomfortably conscious of the forbidden shiver trickling down her spine, told herself it was his accent. Just because he made her name sound exotic didn’t mean she was—she was still the same Maggie who was far too sensible to get silly because a man with a pretty face and a more than all right body noticed she existed.

Her glance skimmed the long, lean, male length of him and the breath left her parted lips in a tiny sigh of appreciation that she hurriedly covered in a cough. Ruefully she admitted to herself he was better than all right—actually he was better than stupendous though a person would have to see him without the clothes to be sure.

Maggie stopped dead mid-speculation, her eyes widening to saucers. I’m mentally undressing a man!

‘Even lovers…’

Her wide eyes leapt to his face. ‘Lovers?’ she echoed, thinking if ever there was a cue to walk this was it. This was not a subject that total strangers discussed. His next comment made it clear he did not share her inhibitions. She was starting to think he might not have any.

‘Lovers start out as strangers.’

He smiled at her with his eyes and her stomach flipped and quivered.

She recalled Millie’s friendly advice on how to add some spice to her holiday.

‘Act available, Maggie,’ she had counselled. ‘When your eyes meet his and your heart starts to thud and you get that delicious fluttery kick in your belly, don’t look away. A guy needs some encouragement.’

Maggie took a deep breath and didn’t look away.

It was just dinner, there would be other people, and she’d be experiencing some of the local culture, which was what she liked about foreign travel.

‘Will they have room at this paella place?’

Just for once it would be good to break away from her sensible image—not too far, obviously. And they were not talking the head banging, no-strings sex thing—this was dinner.

Where would be the harm?

As his strangely hypnotic eyes swept slowly across her upturned features. It probably made her pathetic, but she really wished she’d put on more make-up than a swipe of lip gloss and a smudge of eyeshadow.

As he examined the fine-boned features Rafael was struck once more by the startling resemblance between mother and daughter, but now he was equally conscious of the dissimilarities. The younger woman would be considered by most to have less claim to classical beauty, but when it came to sex appeal she was streets ahead.

‘They will always make room for me. Come…’

No shocker that he should issue commands—he had that written all over him. The shock was that she allowed him to steer her through the throng.

Looking back on the moment and the ones that followed later, Maggie was left to wonder if her body had not been taken over by an alien.

Maggie paused, ducking her head to look through the door he held open for her. The sumptuous interior looked just as impressive as the exterior of the long, low, powerful-looking car.

‘This is yours?’

‘You are going to lecture me on my carbon footprint or car theft?’

She slung him a cross glance and slid inside, lifting the newspaper that lay on the passenger seat. The headline was in Spanish but the image was one that had graced several front pages across the world that week—a well-known Hollywood star with his long-term partner making their relationship official at a civil ceremony.

The image of the two hand-in-hand, smiling men shifted her thoughts back to her dad’s parting words when Maggie had been startled to realise that her dad, at least, had his own ideas about what had caused her to break off the engagement.

‘I respect the fact you don’t want to talk about it, love, but the fact is, Maggie, some men…just because Simon has issues with his…leanings…’

Maggie had stared, astonished, as her father, red-faced, had cleared his throat before finishing huskily. ‘Never think you were the problem or it was your fault.’

‘No,’ she had responded faintly, thinking, Was I the only one who didn’t have a clue?

And she hadn’t—not until that final argument when things had got pretty ugly.

Maggie had never seen the normally restrained Simon so angry before, and the trigger to him losing it totally had of all things been a throwaway comment in the heat of the moment, because he didn’t have the faintest idea why she was angry. ‘I don’t think you even like women!’

‘Who have you been listening to? I am not gay!’

Before Maggie had been able to assure him she hadn’t meant that at all he had grabbed her arm and wrenched her towards him, lowered his face to her and snarled, ‘If you spread lies like that I’ll…’

Startled by his aggressive reaction, Maggie had frozen with shock, but had not lowered her gaze from his menacing glare. She knew from past experience it was a mistake to show fear to bullies. And Simon was a bully.

Why had she not known that before?

Anger had come to her rescue; her chin had come up and she had asked with cold disdain, ‘You’ll what, Simon?’

The ruddy colour rising up his neck had reached his cheeks, darkening the skin to magenta as he’d glared at her in furious frustration. ‘I… I’ll…’

Pretending not to notice the fingers tightening painfully around her wrist, she had cut across him. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I touched a raw nerve, but your sexuality is not a subject that interests me.’

Simon had looked at the ring she held out to him and released her arm.

She had dropped it into his palm, walked away and not looked back.

Maggie threw the newspaper into the back seat and fastened her belt with a click. Her chin lifted. Being sensible had got her nothing but humiliation; it was time for a bit of recklessness.

But maybe not this much, she thought half an hour later as they seemed to finally arrive at their destination. The village cut into the hillside was small, in a matter of moments they had driven through.

Keeping her voice carefully casual, Maggie turned her head in time to see the village lights disappear as the road began to climb steeply and asked, ‘Aren’t we stopping?’

Maggie recognised the extreme vulnerability of her position; she was in a car miles from anywhere with a man who could, for all she knew, be a homicidal maniac and nobody knew where she was.

She should be seriously scared, so why wasn’t she?

‘Relax, Maggie, I’m quite harmless.’

She looked at his profile and thought, If you were I wouldn’t be here. It was a bit late to recognise that it was the danger he represented that had drawn her here.

He was her rebellion against the self-imposed rules she had lived her life by.

‘Relax—you will enjoy yourself, you know.’ She looked at him with big wary eyes and he expelled a sigh. ‘That was not a threat, you know, and you can take your hand off the door—it’s locked.’

‘Why didn’t we stop in the village?’

‘Because,’ he said, pulling the car onto a patch of rocky ground beside a number of other vehicles, ‘the villagers are all here.’ He released the central lock. ‘You are sorry now that you came?’

Maggie, her lips curved in a happy smile, shook her head. ‘No.’ When he’d said the village was here he had not been exaggerating; the area of flat ground fringed by trees was full of people.

She felt his eyes on her and turned her head.

Her own smile faded as their glances connected and locked. The raw hunger in his deep-set eyes made her breath quicken and her stomach muscles quiver receptively.

For a moment their glances clung until Maggie, her heart beating hard, allowed her lashes to fall in a concealing veil.

The heavy thrum of her pounding blood in her ears was deafening. Confused, excited and scared by the strength of her reaction she ran ahead, anxious to distance herself from him and her feelings.

She used the moment to gather her calm around her like a comfort blanket—she wasn’t comforted but after a little deep breathing she was able to speak without babbling anything stupid like, ‘You’re beautiful,’ when he reached her side.

The tremors that hit her body intermittently she could do little about, so she jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans, blissfully unaware that while the first-aid measure hid her shaking hands it also pulled the denim tight across her bottom, riveting Rafael’s eyes on the feminine flare of her hips.

‘This is incredible,’ she said, not feigning her enthusiasm as she looked around the mountainside clearing. ‘However did you find this place?’

Eyes shining, Maggie stared at the scene, drinking it in: the flickering flames of the open fires, smoke in the night, the strings of fairy lights in the tall pines twinkling above the heads of the people of all ages sitting at the rustic tables, eating, drinking, laughing and some dancing to the music supplied by an accordion player.

The smell of the food cooking in the giant pots filled the air and mingled with the wood smoke, the scent of damp grass, and the wild thyme crushed underfoot.

‘Rafael.’ The man who greeted her companion stared at Maggie with open curiosity before smiling and making a comment in his native tongue.

The men spoke for a moment before Rafael turned back to Maggie. ‘I did not find it,’ he said, responding to her previous question. ‘I was brought up not far from here.’

‘A country boy!’

He arched a dark brow as he placed his fingers under her elbow to guide her to a seat at one of the long trestle tables. ‘That surprises you?’

Considering his aura of sophistication it did, but she had to admit he did seem very relaxed and at home in the surroundings and, judging by the number of people who greeted him with warmth and familiarity, he had not forgotten his roots.

She smiled as people moved to make way for them; Rafael told her to save him a seat while he left to bring her back food.

Maggie sat quietly drinking in the sights and smells, trying to commit this very special moment to memory, she was pretty sure that by the morning it would all seem like a dream.

Rafael returned carrying two plates of steaming paella and, setting one before her, pulled a stray chair to the table and straddled it.

Maggie speared a prawn with her fork and put it in her mouth. She gasped. ‘That is incredible!’ and refilled her fork.

Her plate was half empty when she realised that Rafael was spending more time watching her than eating himself.

She lifted her eyes to his face and once again he responded to a question before she had framed it. ‘I like watching you eat. It is rare to see a woman who enjoys her food.’

‘Well, I’d enjoy it more if you weren’t watching every mouthful,’ she admitted frankly.

Maggie tapped her foot as the fiddler struck up a fresh tune. The man on the accordion finished off his glass of wine before he joined in too. There was a ripple of clapping as people flocked onto the makeshift dance floor. This was clearly a popular choice.

‘They all look as if they’re having a good time.’

The wistful note in her voice was not lost on Rafael, who was starting to find her undisguised enthusiasm for everything wearing. Every time she looked at him with wide trusting eyes he experienced a need to justify his actions to himself that he did not enjoy.

He knew he was doing the right thing.

So why, asked the voice in his head, do you feel like such a lowlife?

‘The paella is very lovely.’

Of course it was.

She was the easiest woman to please he had ever met and by far the most beautiful.

Would she be equally appreciative in bed?

The sybaritic image of her naked body beneath him, her dark hair spread out on a pillow, flashed into his head. Struggling to banish the erotic sequence of images that followed it, he shut his eyes, disconcerted by the strength of the desire that gripped him.

It seemed the moment to remind himself that she was not his type at all.

Luscious, obviously, but there was an aura of wide-eyed innocence about her that under normal circumstances he would have steered well clear of.

He had a low boredom threshold and virtue was, in his experience, boring. It was admittedly not boredom that had him in a constant state of painful arousal, but sexual hunger once quenched did not have a long shelf life. He gave a jaundiced smile; if anyone knew that it was him.

Maybe, he mused, it was genetic. His father’s numerous mistresses had never lasted long—pride in his family name had not extended to Felipe Castenadas depriving himself of female companionship after Rafael’s mother’s departure.

There had been many women and his father had spoken about them with a lack of respect behind their backs and sometimes to their faces that had never sat easily with Rafael as a boy.

Rafael had been in his early teens when he had gone to leave the room in disgust during the middle of one of his father’s coarse diatribes about his mistress of the moment.

His father had stood up and blocked the door. Rafael could still recall the smell of alcohol on his breath. ‘You know what your problem is, boy, you romanticise women,’ he had sneered. ‘Don’t shake your head, boy, I’m doing you a favour. Do you want a woman to make a fool of you? At heart they are all like your mother, basically whor—’

The crude sentence had never been completed. Felipe had met his son’s eyes—realising for the first time perhaps that he had to tilt his head to do so—and what he had seen there had made him pale.

He had moved away from the door maintaining an illusion of macho bluster, but clearly shaken. It had been a turning point. He had never pushed Rafael in the same way, or mentioned his mother again.

In other respects nothing had changed. It wasn’t just female companionship his father had not deprived himself of—Felipe Castenadas had lived a lavish lifestyle even when he couldn’t afford it. Rafael had been forced to watch silently as his father sold off the estate he’d claimed to love piece by piece to pay for his indulgences, all the time silently vowing to one day restore it.

He had done so now and gained in the process the respect and gratitude of the people on the estate. Though his father would never have accepted an invite to a party like this, Rafael did so regularly, and he frequently enjoyed these simple occasions more than the lavish social events he was expected to attend.

He had never brought anyone along before so he could almost see the speculation in his tenants’ faces as they looked at his companion. It was annoying but the speculation would die away.

He studied her through his lashes as she smiled. The man who did end up with her would have to share her—the woman loved the whole world, and paella.

He watched as her smile had a predictable effect on a group of young men who stood a few feet away, staring. He could almost smell the testosterone from here; she remained cheerfully oblivious to the effect it had on them.

Rafael’s clenched teeth were starting to ache.

If that smile had turned out to conceal a mean and spiteful agenda he might not be feeling this uncharacteristic guilt.

He had nothing to feel guilty about.

So why do you feel the need to remind yourself of that so frequently?

‘You are not counting carbs, then?’

The sardonic observation made Maggie lift her chin. ‘Sorry if that offends you,’ she said, sounding anything but.

‘It was not a criticism.’

Almost certain that, despite this reassurance, it was exactly that, Maggie paused, her fork in the air. The furrow between her brows deepened as she studied his dark face. His entire attitude since they had arrived had been offhand and she was getting the impression he had regretted bringing her.

She ought to be regretting it too, but the hormonal rush she got every time she looked at him had an addictive quality. Then there was the smell of his skin and the way he. She inhaled deep, closing down this chain of thought, which could, if left unchecked, go on for a long time—there was a lot about him she found fascinating!

He might be her hormonal Achilles’ heel, but she was not about to apologise for liking food. She had been there, done that before.

‘I tried dieting.’ Simon had bought her a number of very useful books on the subject of healthy eating. ‘It made me cranky and I almost fainted running for the bus.’

A look of astonishment crossed his face. ‘Why would you diet?’ His eyes dropped, sliding appreciatively over her lush curves; by the time he made the return journey to her face Maggie’s cheeks were burning and her heart was slamming hard against her ribs like a trapped bird.

She was trapped, trapped by the sheer strength of the sexual awareness that had invaded every cell of her body.

‘I know I could do with losing my hips and my bottom is a bit…’

A hoarse rattling sound emerged from Rafael’s throat. ‘You have a magnificent body.’

Heat flashed through her body as their eyes meshed, the sweet sharp ache between her legs made Maggie shift uncomfortably and feel acutely embarrassed—but mingled with the embarrassment was a strong element of dizzy excitement.

‘Clothes hide a multitude of sins,’ she joked, trying to lower the sexual temperature, she was mortified by the thought of anyone listening in to this conversation.

‘It depends on your definition of sin.’ His slurred drawl made her shiver. ‘Would you like to compare notes?’

Maggie swallowed, the fork slipping from her nerveless fingers. His smoky eyes were eating her up.

‘I would really like to know what sinful thoughts are going through that beautiful head right now.’ His finger trailed down her cheek.

Maggie gasped and pulled back breaking the spell that held her in sexual thrall. ‘I’d really like to dance.’

Rafael laughed at the change of subject and thought I would like to see what those clothes are hiding. ‘This is not my sort of music.’

‘Your foot was tapping.’ Perhaps it was just her he didn’t want to dance with?

He heaved a sigh, there was time to ring Angelina and warn her later.

And why should he pass up the opportunity to legitimately hold that soft warm body next to his own?

It looked as if he was not the only person to have this idea.

Recognising the young man who, egged on by shouts from his friends lining the makeshift bar, was approaching, Rafael acknowledged him. ‘Enrique.’

The friends, who clearly had not really thought their friend this bold, fell silent.

Maggie watched as the two men spoke; the young man with the bold eyes and macho swagger kept flashing her smouldering looks that made her want to laugh. Despite the physical dissimilarities—he was dark and not very tall; Sam and Ben were tall and fair—he reminded her of her brothers.

When Rafael showed any inclination to smoulder in her direction she felt no desire to smile—in fact her reaction was worryingly close to throwing herself on the floor and screaming, Take me!

There had to be a logical reason for her bizarre behaviour. That fish last night had tasted funny…?

‘Enrique wants to know if you’d like to dance.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

His brows lifted at the question. ‘Why should I mind?’ Rafael shrugged, displaying zero reluctance to relinquish her to the care of the flashing-eyed young man, and said, ‘Have fun.’

Maggie looked at him with narrowed eyes. Weren’t Spanish men meant to be possessive? Clearly if they were Rafael was the exception to the rule because, far from objecting to the handsome boy—actually he was more than a boy; now she looked more closely she could see he was probably nearer her own age than her brothers’, but next to Rafael there was something immature about him—

‘Don’t worry, I will,’ she promised, taking the young man’s hand and allowing him to lead her out onto the dance floor.

CHAPTER SIX

RAFAEL drummed HIS fingers impatiently on the table-top as he waited for Angelina to pick up. He felt a jolt as Maggie, who appeared to be rapidly losing her inhibitions, turned her head and smiled at him.

He smiled back, then scowled as she was whirled away by her laughing partner, her dark hair streaming behind her like a silken cloud, her laughter floating on the air as Enrique, his shirt unfastened to reveal a bronzed chest, pulled her closer to demonstrate a complicated step that she copied with ease.

She was very graceful and her laughter and her lack of inhibition made him feel unaccountably annoyed.

Above the sound of her warm laughter he heard Angelina’s voice.

‘Rafael, are you at a party? Is that why you deserted us so early? Alfonso said you were avoiding the photos.’

Rafael forced his gaze from the dancing couples.

‘I’m planning on staying at the castillo tonight. Is Alfonso there?’

‘Yes, do you want to speak to him?’

‘No. Don’t talk, just listen.’ I’m about to turn your perfect day into a nightmare. He expelled a deep breath and said, ‘Your daughter is here.’

The silence lasted a full thirty seconds before she breathed hoarsely, ‘That isn’t possible! What is she like, Rafael?’

‘Like you,’ he said, wishing he could not hear the raw longing in her voice. Conscious of a male voice in the background, sharp with concern he added quickly, ‘She was going to crash the party.’ The ease with which he had diverted her had made Rafael think that the timing of her arrival might after all have been fortuitous—from her point of view—rather than malicious.

Malicious or not, the effect would have been equally destructive. He did not regret his actions and the necessary subterfuge. This was definitely a moment when the ends justified the means.

‘I’m playing it by ear,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t think she knows who I am.’

A man who believed in meticulous research, Rafael did not enjoy the novel sensation of working in the dark.

If he’d had a detailed report on his laptop telling him everything that was relevant about Miss Maggie Ward, he would have been much happier. At the moment all he knew about her was that she had a lopsided smile, a husky voice, a mouth that invited sinful speculation and a lush distracting body—and she liked paella.

‘If the opportunity arises and she feels able to confide in me I will do my best to convince her this is a bad move, but that’s a long shot,’ he admitted, thinking of the stubborn firmness of her rounded chin. ‘You should tell Alfonso sooner rather than later. I’m sorry, Angelica, it was bad advice.’

He slid the phone into his pocket as a breathless and happy Maggie was delivered by a smug-looking Enrique back to the table.

Maggie, her face flushed from the exertion and her eyes sparkling, smiled as the young man spoke, then looked to Rafael.

‘What did he say?’ Without waiting for the translation she caught Enrique’s hand and flashed a smile of radiant warmth, then, appearing oblivious to the effect it had on the susceptible boy, said, ‘That was fantastic. You’re a great dancer, but I’m worn out,’ she added, fanning herself with her hand and miming a faint.

The young man raised her hand to his lips and spoke again.

‘He said that you not only look beautiful but you dance beautifully too.’

‘Oh, how sweet!’ Maggie said raising herself on her tiptoes to reach up to plant a kiss on the young man’s smooth cheek. She turned her head to Rafael, her smile fading as she encountered his stony expression. ‘Tell him thank you.’

‘He already got that part.’ A nerve clenched in his lean cheek as Rafael sought to contain the irrational surge of anger that he had experienced when he had watched her kiss the boy.

‘I think he’s smitten.’

Maggie’s eyes narrowed and her chin lifted at the cold criticism in his manner. She refused point-blank to allow him to make her feel guilty for a spontaneous peck on the cheek, it had just been innocent fun and even if it hadn’t been it was none of his business!

It wasn’t as if he had wanted to dance with her. Now that, she admitted, would have been a very different experience and not nearly so innocent.

‘That’s because I’m utterly irresistible, a real man-eater.’

Rafael said something that drew a laugh from the young man who caught Maggie’s hand, bowed low over it and brushed it with his lips. Then with a grin and a display of youthful exuberance he ran off to be clapped on the shoulder by his friends before claiming his next partner.

Antipathy shone in Maggie’s eyes as she took her seat next to Rafael. Choosing water rather than wine, she filled her glass from one of the jugs on the table.

He raised a brow at her choice and taunted lightly, ‘The vintage not to your palate?’ The locally made wine, thanks to some clever marketing, had actually started to appear on a number of high-end restaurant wine lists, and his investment in the new winery that many had considered wasteful had not only already paid for itself but brought jobs to an area where young people were often forced to leave in order to find work.

‘You’re not drinking,’ Maggie observed, unwilling to admit she had no head for alcohol—a sniff of a wine gum made her tipsy.

‘I’m driving.’

The reminder made her frown. ‘What time is it?’

He extended his arm towards her; his sleeve was rolled up to the elbow. Maggie stared for a moment, her throat dry and her heart pounding as she struggled to resist the impulse to run her fingers over the hair that lightly dusted his sinewed golden forearm.

Her voice was husky as she read the time on the metal-banded watch that circled his wrist out loud.

‘It’s a long way back,’ she fretted.

Rafael watched as she nibbled gently at the pouting curve of her full lower lip. This had never been about seduction…but he found himself wanting her more than he had wanted a woman in a very long time.

‘Don’t look so worried—I am a man who believes that a woman is allowed to change her mind.’ This was an attitude that had rarely been tested.

The colour flew to Maggie’s cheeks. ‘About what?’

He just laughed. ‘It’s fine if you have second thoughts,’ he observed not in reality feeling at all fine as he looked at her lovely mouth. His glance slid lower to the outline of her lush breasts beneath the fine fabric of her top, and he felt even less fine.

He felt hungry.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved by his take-it-or-leave-it attitude or insulted.

Had she changed her mind?

Did she have a mind? Now the initial defiant mood had ebbed, allowing herself to be picked up by a total stranger had started to seem less spontaneous and more criminally reckless.

And if she felt this way when the music was playing and the moon was shining how was she going to feel in the morning? she asked herself.

There had to be a less dramatic way to shake her sensible girl image. Next time she would settle for something tamer, like a motorbike or tattoos.

‘I will make sure you get safely back.’ Maggie’s eyes connected with his and her stomach went into a lurching dive. There was nothing safe about the glow in his smoky eyes. ‘But what,’ he asked, tilting his chair back to avoid a collision with some passing dancers, ‘is the hurry?’

Enrique called out and winked at her as he whirled his new partner past.

‘What did you say to him before?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Were you talking about me?’

‘I simply translated.’

Maggie replayed the conversation and her eyes widened in dismay. ‘You didn’t!’

One corner of his mouth lifted in a mocking smile. ‘Actually I gave him a modified version—I told him that you eat little boys like him for breakfast.’

‘What if he thought you were serious?’ she charged.

His eyes dropped and Maggie was shocked and embarrassed to feel her body respond to the slow, insolent sweep of his densely lashed eyes.

‘What makes you think I was not serious?’ he countered. His voice lowered a husky octave as he leaned into her and observed softly, ‘You are a very desirable woman.’

Tongue-tied and blushing, she looked away, unable to come up with a smart remark to diffuse the fizz of sexual tension.

Did she want to diffuse it?

A thoughtful expression drifted across his lean predatory features as Rafael watched her plunge into a state of delicious blushing confusion. Rather than exploiting her sexuality, she seemed shocked by any reference to it.

‘I think maybe I will have some more to eat.’ Not looking at him, Maggie picked up her plate.

As she hurried across the grass towards the long trestle table loaded with food she bit her lip to repress a groan. So much for the new improved sexy me—I must have looked like a scared rabbit! What must he think of me?

Unable to stop herself, she glanced back over her shoulder and it became clear he wasn’t thinking of her at all. Her place had been taken by a pretty woman in a low-cut blouse who as Maggie watched threw back her head and laughed, her uninhibited spontaneity a striking contrast to Maggie’s own stilted self-consciousness.

She felt a stab of something that was obviously not jealousy but was nonetheless unpleasant. It was strange. She was not normally so self-conscious; it was just something about Rafael… Something? Who was she kidding? It was everything about Rafael!

The fact was she had never been attracted to a man this way in her life before. It wasn’t just the fact he was incredibly handsome, which he was, it was more…his earthy sensuality… She shook her head, frustrated by her inability to analyse what it was about him.

Maybe it was not possible to analyse; maybe she just had to accept that looking at his mouth made her ache.

One minute she was thinking about his carnal perfect mouth and the things she was shocked to realise she would have liked him to do to her with it and the next she was running.

Later, when she tried to work out the exact sequence of events they remained a confused jumble. In each reconstruction her shocking, shameful thoughts somehow mixed up with the sense of panic and urgency that she reacted to instinctively.

She was never even sure why she had glanced towards a pile of recently sawn timber—perhaps movement caught her eye? She actually looked away, barely registering it as her attention drifted to the children playing a hundred yards or so away.

Then a low rumble just audible above the sounds of merriment made her turn her head again. She froze, paralysed with horror as she saw the stack of felled trees begin to move… Like a house of cards they slipped, fell and began to roll down the steep incline.

Straight towards the group of playing children.

The plate slipped from her fingers. She was told later she yelled—that was what caught the attention of the others who set off in her wake—but she had no memory of that. She just remembered running, praying and the sound of her laboured breathing loud in her ears as she raced towards the children.

By the time she reached them the older ones, alerted by cries, had already started moving, running out of the path of the approaching danger. Some were crying, but the sound was lost in the general pandemonium.

Maggie bent and scooped up two of the smaller children sprinting to the safety of higher ground before depositing them in the arms of women standing, shocked, watching, and she went back, passing men running in the opposite direction with children in their arms.

One child remained, a solemn-eyed little boy who raised his arms to Maggie when she reached him, hefting him into her arms. She turned, pressed his face into her shoulder and tried to run; her legs felt leaden. They worked painfully slowly as she fought against the inertia, struggling to suck air into her oxygen-starved lungs.

She could hear the danger approaching but didn’t dare look… Convinced she wasn’t going to make it with her last ounce of strength she flung the little boy at a young man who was running out to meet them.

She saw him safe and closed her eyes as the adrenaline rush in her bloodstream dipped dramatically. She tried to run felt her legs give and cried out. Safety was tantalisingly near but she couldn’t… Her face scrunched into a teeth-clenched mask of determination as she tried to push herself forward.

Then something hit her. For a brief moment she thought it was the loose timber, then she realised the solidity was warm and male—it was Rafael. She stopped fighting as he carried her from danger.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE impetus of Rafael’s sprint carried them both past the crowd of cheering villagers and to the brink of the grassy slope beyond. He dug his heels in but the momentum he had built up was too great to resist and they went over the top, Maggie still in his arms.

As they landed at the bottom the breath left her body in a painful whoosh as she sank into the mercifully soft ground. For a moment she couldn’t breathe or speak…but euphoria made her want to explode. She was alive—that was a big, a massive, plus considering the way things had been looking seconds earlier. A little detail like speech loss was fine, bruises were fine, Rafael on top of her was…

Her chaotic thoughts slowed from a breathless gallop to a slow canter. Rafael was on top of her!

He was breathing like a marathon runner. She was underneath him, a position that if she was honest she had been imagining pretty much from the second she saw him.

She felt fingers frame her chin and heard a deep voice harsh with concern ask, ‘Are you all right, Maggie? Can you hear me?’

‘Of course I can hear you. I’m not deaf.’ She opened her eyes, his face suspended above her was very close.

His heavy-lidded eyes blazed, the heat in them pinning her as surely as his body; the bones of his face stood out in stark prominence beneath his gleaming golden skin.

She got breathless and it had nothing to do with his weight pinning her down—well, only partly. The veneer of cultured civilisation and urbane charm was totally stripped away, revealing the essence of the raw masculinity beneath.

Without a word or taking his eyes from her, he bent his head and fitted his mouth to hers, kissing her hard, then without a word he rolled off her.

‘You went back?’

She turned her head in response to the stark incredulity in his voice. Rafael lay on his back, one arm curved above his head, staring at the sky. She could see his chest rising and falling in sync with his laboured inhalations.

She decided that if he could pretend the kiss hadn’t happened, so could she. She could definitely ignore the fact her lips tingled and his taste was in her mouth, a piece of cake!

‘I think you saved my life, thank you.’ Twice, if anyone was counting.

She expected him to mention the fact. He didn’t.

‘I don’t want your thanks.’

She lay there on the floor as he got to his feet in one lithe athletic bound. He dragged the hair back from his brow before extending a hand.

After a pause Maggie took it and found herself hauled to her feet.

‘You insane idiot, do you have a death wish?’

Maggie was spared from responding to this savage question because at that moment the village en masse swept over them like a blanket of goodwill and concern.

Maggie was carried away on a wave of hugs, kisses and tears, taken quite literally to the heart of the village.

She was declared a heroine bilingually. It was all very emotional and Maggie, both embarrassed and overwhelmed by the attention, went very quiet.

She lost count of the number of times she said she was fine. It was Rafael who finally rescued her from the love and adulation, saying firmly that she needed rest, could they not all see that she was about to collapse?

She repressed her natural inclination to deny she was that pathetic and allowed herself to be escorted back to his car. It seemed to Maggie from his manner that Rafael’s intervention was motivated more by irritation than concern for her well-being.

He had received his share of gratitude too and with every thank-you his mood seemed to have got darker.

Was she paranoid or was she the focus of his annoyance?

Maybe he was actually hurt but was too macho to admit it. She had got the definite impression when they were falling that he was trying to shield her using his body and his arms, which had circled her like a steel barrier to cushion the impact.

And despite his assurances to the contrary the cuts on his dark face did suggest he hadn’t escaped as lightly as she had. His dark hair was tousled and his shirt was ripped almost off his back, revealing a very distracting expanse of brown chest, well-developed shoulders and flat, muscle-ridged belly, not to mention a hand-sewn label that explained in part his irritation: his shirt was no more off the peg than his body was.

Maybe he blamed her for everything, including the ripped shirt. She thought about the angry kiss—hard not to—her eyes half closing as she remembered the texture of his firm lips, the warmth of his breath…the brief explosion of mind-numbing passion.

It was lucky, really, that everyone had assumed her numbed state was caused by the trauma of the accident. She wanted them to carry on believing this version. For Rafael to even suspect that a kiss that had barely registered on his radar had turned her the next best thing to catatonic would have been too mortifying.

She lifted a hand to her mouth and tilted her head back to catch a glimpse of his beautiful sculpted mouth, and immediately stumbled on the rocky ground where the cars, including Rafael’s, had been parked.

Several pairs of arms reached to catch her but Rafael’s were there first. Ignoring her weak protest, he swung her up into his arms, barely breaking stride.

Reaching his car, he deposited her in the front seat.

‘That was quite unnecessary,’ she said frostily.

‘You are welcome.’ He inclined his dark head, his grey eyes mocking her.

Maggie managed a stiff smile as one of the women placed a blanket over her knees. The man standing beside the woman waited until she had tugged it snugly around Maggie before he leaned into the car and clasped one of Maggie’s hands between both of his and said something in Spanish.

Maggie gave a helpless smile and the old man looked to Rafael.

‘The little boy you went back for was Alfredo’s grandson. He says to tell you that you are an angel sent from God.’

Maggie gave an embarrassed little shrug, then turning her hand to grasp the teak-coloured gnarled fingers that lay on top of hers, she squeezed and smiled saying huskily, ‘I’m glad nobody was hurt.’ She glanced at Rafael, bit her lip and, struggling to control the husky throb of emotion in her voice, said, ‘Tell him what I said, please.’

Rafael’s eyes lingered on her face, moving up in a sweep from the graceful line of her slender neck, the curve of her cheek, the fullness of her lips and her wide-spaced liquid dark eyes. Alfredo’s description seemed apt—she did look like an angel, a sad, sexy angel.

This was a situation where seeing both sides of the argument was not useful. Maggie Ward might have many excellent qualities beyond a kissable mouth and a sinfully sexy body, but he didn’t want to know about them. It confused the issue.

She was a danger to the happiness of two people he cared about. Focus on that, he told himself, and forget about her mouth and her courage. Think of her as a problem to be solved and maybe a pleasurable interlude.

And why not? Why was he beating himself up because he found her attractive? He knew the attraction was reciprocated. He was in danger of letting her innocent aura make him lose sight of the facts. He had not kidnapped her, drugged her or sworn eternal love; she had come of her own free will.

Maggie Ward knew that his intentions were strictly dishonourable and she had come along anyway. She was a young woman who wanted to add the spice of a one-night stand to her trip, so why should he feel as though he was taking advantage?

He had been staring at her so long that it crossed Maggie’s mind that for some inexplicable reason he might be about to refuse her request.

‘Please?’

Responding to the prompt and ignoring the questioning look in her eyes, Rafael translated.

Maggie watched the elderly man’s lined face crease into a wide smile as he listened to Rafael. He turned his attention back to Maggie, said fervently, ‘Angel.’ And pressed something into her hand before bowing out of the car to join the other villagers who had gathered to say goodbye.

‘Watch the door.’

Maggie responded to the abrupt instruction and pulled the blanket closer as Rafael slammed the passenger door with what seemed to her like unnecessary force. There was nothing in his manner to suggest he agreed with the other man’s version of her actions. Now she was sure it wasn’t her imagination—his attitude towards her since the accident had been terse and unfriendly to a degree that could not be due to a spoiled designer shirt.

Any inclination to flirt with her had presumably vanished along with her make-up and hairgrips. He was obviously a man who could not see past dirty faces.

Or maybe his taste didn’t run to angels?

She had no idea why she felt so let down. It wasn’t as if she had been thinking of him as deep and meaningful when she looked at him, though a bit of dust on his face had not lessened his magnetism, she admitted, sliding a covert peek at his dark face.

But then it was hard to think of anything that would.

Slightly embarrassed, she waved back to the crowd that had gathered as the car drew away. As they vanished from view she opened her hand.

‘Oh,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t take this.’ The gold medallion resting in her palm was obviously old; the carving was delicate. ‘It must be valuable.’ She held it out towards Rafael.

‘It’s a Saint Christopher.’

‘I know. Take me back. I must return it.’

Rafael did not respond to her urgent request. ‘You can’t do that—it would offend him.’

‘But.’

‘He wanted you to have it.’

‘I’m a stranger,’ she protested.

‘A stranger who saved his grandson’s life, his angel.’ And was she anybody else’s angel? he wondered. Was there a man back home who would not be pleased that she had driven off into the mountains with a stranger?

She wore no ring, but that didn’t mean she was unattached. For some women a man back home did not prevent them indulging in a holiday romance, though for some reason he was struggling to put her in that bracket.

The mockery in his voice brought Maggie’s chin up. Her fingers tightened around the medallion. His cynical sarcasm made her see red. ‘You shouldn’t make fun of him,’ she said fiercely.

‘I wasn’t making fun of him. I couldn’t help but notice you were enjoying the attention.’

This totally unfair scathing evaluation took Maggie’s breath away. ‘And their heirlooms, don’t forget that. I managed to fleece them too.’ She allowed her dark eyes to move contemptuously over his patrician profile before putting the medallion over her head. She freed her tangled hair from the chain. ‘You do know that you are a very unpleasant man, don’t you?’

‘Is that why you let me pick you up?’

Colour scored her pale cheeks. ‘I made a mistake and assumed you couldn’t be as shallow and superficial as you appeared—I was wrong. And you sulk.’

The bitter afterthought drew a startled look from Rafael.

‘I’d be happier having cheated death once today if you kept your eyes on the road.’

‘Sulk?’ Accustomed to hearing the women in his life express rapturous praise, Rafael struggled to swallow this more critical analysis of his character.

On any other occasion his utter astonishment at the accusation might have drawn a smile from Maggie.

‘Well, you’re obviously in a strop over something, but I’d be grateful if you didn’t take it out on me.’

They had passed through the village before reaction hit her. She started to shake. She tugged the blanket closer and made a clinical diagnosis of delayed shock.

‘Are you cold?’ Rafael asked, adjusting the heating.

Biting back a childish, ‘Like you’d care’ she compressed her lips and said coldly, ‘I’m fine.’

‘Then why are you shaking?’

She was bewildered by his continued hostility and accusing manner. Did he think she was acting?

Determined to give him no opportunity to accuse her of being an attention seeker or canvassing the sympathy vote she plastered on a cheery smile.

‘I’m not,’ she denied. ‘I feel fine.’ It was only a very small lie, actually. Other than her shaking hands and the scratches on her arm that were stinging she really didn’t feel too bad, and she would feel a lot better once this man was a distant memory.

She was a very bad liar, though even a good liar, Rafael thought, his eyes flickering briefly in her direction, would have struggled to deny the chattering teeth and milky pallor.

Accustomed to the company of women who did not know the meaning of ‘putting on a brave face,’ he realised that stoicism was an overrated quality. And, far from making a woman low maintenance, all it meant in reality was a man could never relax. He would always be wondering if the bright smile actually hid an inner anguish.

Not that her anguish, inner or otherwise, was anything to do with him.

Sweat broke out like a rash over his upper lip as he relived those moments when he’d thought he wasn’t going to outrun the avalanche of destruction, that he was going to see her lost under half a runaway forest.

‘I suppose you think it was a brave thing to do?’

‘I didn’t think at all,’ she admitted, punching in the hotel number and missing the anger that pulled the skin taut across the sculpted bones of his face.

Rafael could not believe this woman. She was acting as if nothing had happened—surely she realised what danger she had been in.

He realised it.

His entire body went cold every time he realised it. Even now he could feel the fear that had clawed across his skin as he had been forced to stand by, helpless, and watch, unable to stop her until it had almost been too late.

A fine sheen of sweat broke out across the golden skin of his brow when he recalled the moment that he had thought he would not reach her in time.

He was a man who did not indulge in pointless what-if scenarios, and Rafael’s knuckles stood out white on the steering wheel as he found himself unable to stop projecting images, each one more horrific than the last. They all ended the same, with her broken, crushed body, and he would have been at least indirectly responsible.

She wouldn’t have been in a position to be harmed if he had not lured her away from the city. He might not have intended her actual harm, but he definitely hadn’t had her best interests at heart.

If anything had happened to her…? The unaccustomed guilt lay heavy on Rafael’s shoulders.

‘They will probably inscribe that on your headstone.’

The bitterness in his voice drew Maggie’s indignant gaze to his face. ‘There’s no need to take it out on me and I’m not planning on needing one just yet!’

Rafael, his eyes trained on the road ahead as he swerved to avoid a pothole, asked, ‘Don’t take what out on you?’

Maggie compressed her lips, aware that if she said she thought he had switched off the charm offensive and started to be so nasty because his expected one-night stand had turned into something more tedious it would be tantamount to an admission she had been expecting the same outcome this evening.

And you weren’t?

Frowning at the ironic voice in her head, she punched in the hotel number again.

‘You might as well put that phone down.’

Maggie ignored him. ‘I need to leave a message.’ The tour guide would not worry if she missed the optional evening entertainment, but if she didn’t arrive back until the early hours it was possible that they might start to worry. ‘I had plans for this evening.’

‘So did I.’

She flashed him a look and he added, without looking at her, ‘We have no signal here.’

‘I saw you using your phone.’

An expression she struggled to interpret broke the impassive stoniness of his expression. ‘There is no signal this side of the mountain.’

Despite the information, she tried once more before admitting defeat. ‘What time will we reach the city?’ she asked, dropping the phone back in her bag.

In the mirror he caught sight of her pressing her nose to the window like a child. Nothing else about her was childish. Recalling the softness of the warm body he had carried sent an indiscriminate pulse of lust through his body.

‘You will have to delay your plans,’ he informed her shortly. ‘We are not going to the city.’

The abrupt afterthought sank in and Maggie swivelled in her seat. ‘Is that a threat?’

He looked bored and said, ‘A fact.’

‘But I want—’

‘What you want is not factored into my plans. You know the time—it is not practicable to drive into the city. I have a house nearby.’ Beautiful women always thought the world revolved around them and just because she had a reckless streak that made her perform stupidly brave acts did not exclude Maggie Ward from this rule.

‘You said you would see me safely back.’

‘I did not say when.’

‘So when? Next week, next month?’ she enquired with silky sarcasm.

The silence stretched.

‘Are you trying to scare me?’

A raw laugh left Rafael’s throat. ‘Scare?’ How, he wondered, did you scare a woman who had so little regard for her own safety? Under that soft exterior Maggie Ward had a core of steel. ‘Is it working?’

‘In your dreams,’ she snorted. ‘Are you always this rude?’

He turned his head briefly and flashed her a grin that did not reach his steely eyes. ‘Yes.’

Her jaw tightened as she angled a narrow-eyed glare of seething dislike at his profile. ‘You really must be Mr Popularity.’

‘People generally overlook my manners.’

‘You’re not that good-looking,’ she lied, then flushed at the implied compliment.

‘I’m crushed,’ he said, sounding anything but.

‘It shows,’ she retorted, wondering how she could ever have thought this man sensitive and charming—he was a shallow, arrogant chauvinist.

‘But I am that rich.’

This boast drew a scornful snort. ‘I suppose you own this half of the mountain,’ she said, nodding to the towering bleak presence to their left.

‘And the other half and the village and two others actually.’

‘And I’m a duchess. I’m not that gullible, and you’re not that good a liar and as for your…wow!’ Maggie let out a silent whistle, her gaze riveted on the illuminated façade of a stone castle complete with turrets that loomed before them. ‘That is the most incredible hotel I have ever seen!’ she admitted, envying the glamorous people who must stay at a place like that.

Was he planning on staying there?

If so, it was distinctly possible he hadn’t been exaggerating the rich part. Well, that was one problem solved—they would have to part company. A place like that would not let her through the door looking like this.

‘It is not a hotel.’

‘You mean a family still lives there?’ What an anachronism, she thought, in this day and age for one family to occupy so much space, but maybe seeing it sold off to a developer might be a worse crime.

Directing his car through large ornate wrought-iron gates that swished open silently at their approach, Rafael shook his head as he drove down the avenue lined with lime trees.

‘No, just one person.’

‘All that for one person…’ She stopped, the colour receding from her already pale face as the penny finally dropped. ‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

HE confirmed her suspicion with a tiny nod of his head. ‘You can use the landline to leave that message about your change of plans.’

‘My plans haven’t changed.’ Maggie found herself protesting to his back.

She was presuming they were expected because as his feet hit the gravel people started to appear. Presumably, she thought sourly, to respond to the commands he was issuing—at command issuing he was definitely not an amateur.

Maggie began to struggle with the car door, her spirits slightly buoyed because she realised that all she had to do was ask the hotel to send a taxi out to pick her up.

She wasn’t stranded or reliant on Rafael.

‘Allow me.’

Of course the door opened smoothly for him. Maggie nodded her head in an attitude of cold courtesy. ‘Thank you.’ It was good to feel in control again—you wish.

‘Can you manage or shall I carry you again?’

Was that a joke? Maggie decided she didn’t want to know. She pushed away the memory of being held in his arms and waving a hand in a shooing gesture, snapped crankily, ‘I’ve told you I’m fine.’

Catching sight of her reflection in the wing mirror, she realised that she did not look fine.

The inner masochist in her made Maggie take a second look, she barely repressed a groan.

It wasn’t hard to see why the smouldering Spaniard had stopped smouldering, and who could blame him for going off her big time?

Her hair had returned to its natural curly state; surrounding her face in a dark tangled froth and hanging loose down her back, it made her look scary. As for her face minus all make-up and plus a lot of dirt… She closed her eyes and thought it was just as well the seduction idea was off the menu.

‘We have mirrors inside.’

His tall figure, backlit by the light streaming through the open door, stood there, his arms folded across his exposed chest radiating impatience.

Maggie gave a grimace, embarrassed at being caught out staring at her reflection. ‘I’m coming,’ she huffed, jogging to catch him up.

Rafael watched her approach with a frown. ‘Slow down. There’s no fire.’

Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘Make up your mind!’ It seemed to her that it didn’t really matter what she did—as far as this man was concerned it would be the wrong thing.

The massive metal-banded oak door she followed him through opened directly into what appeared to be an old banqueting hall complete with roaring fire, suits of armour and tapestries on the stone walls.

How many centuries had his family lived here? she thought, wondering what it must be like to trace your roots this far back. Her eyes widened…my God!

She spun around. ‘I’ve forgotten your full name.’

He blinked at the confession. ‘Rafael-Luis Castenadas,’ he revealed, watching her face carefully for a reaction.

There was none. If she had come to search for her mother, he would have thought she would be more than familiar with the name.

‘Ramon will show you where you can use the phone.’

‘You…?’ She was talking to his back. She wrapped her arms around her body, fighting the vulnerable sensation—vulnerable because Rafael Castenadas’s presence did not offer her security.

Quite the contrary was true.

A tall thin man wearing a dark suit and a sombre expression, presumably the Ramon in question, escorted Maggie to a room off an inner hallway. Despite the massive dimensions it was actually quite cosy-looking, with book-lined walls, vibrant-coloured rugs on the polished wood floor and a fire burning in the open fireplace.

To complete the domestic picture a dog of indeterminate parentage lay asleep on one of the large sofas. It opened one eye when Maggie walked in, wagged its tail and went back to sleep.

The thin man nodded towards the phone, and went to leave.

‘No…don’t…’ She dropped her outstretched hand when he turned.

‘Can I help you?’

She gave a sigh of relief. ‘Great, you speak English. I was wondering, where am I exactly…the address, I mean, of here? Does here have a name?’

If he found the request odd he did not show it, and when Maggie struggled to follow his pronunciation of the castillo he produced a notepad and pen from his breast pocket and wrote it down for her.

After her concern that someone might be worried, it appeared no one had noticed her absence! Maggie explained to the person at the other end that she would need a taxi to pick her up. When she gave the address, spelling it out to avoid any mistakes, there was a loud intake of breath the other end, but the hotel agreed it would be no problem.

‘Oh, and how much would it be likely to cost?’

The reply to her afterthought took her breath away. ‘You’re joking.’

The voice the other end assured her that he was not.

Knowing that there was no way her tight holiday budget would run to that sort of money, Maggie thanked him for his trouble but explained that she’d changed her mind.

With a sigh she hung up and sat down beside the dog.

‘So what,’ she asked, burying her face in his fur, ‘do we do now?’

She was still no nearer an answer when fifteen minutes later Rafael walked in.

He made no sound. It was the prickle on the back of her neck that made Maggie turn her head.

She stopped stroking the dog’s ears.

‘How long have you been standing there?’ Nervous tension made her voice sharp.

He had changed and presumably showered, his wet hair was slicked back and he was wearing dark jeans and a white open-necked shirt with no tears. He could have stepped right out of a glossy page advertising…well, actually, advertising anything, because when they said that sex sold they were not wrong.

And every inch of his tall, lean, muscle-packed frame oozed sex, every hollow and plane of his dark face. Maggie’s eyes drifted from the full curve of his sensual upper lip to his hooded glittering gaze and her anxiety levels went off the scale.

She licked her lips nervously and drew her knees up to her chin.

‘Not long.’ He clicked his fingers and the dog lifted his head, his tail thumping loudly against Maggie’s legs.

Rafael said something in Spanish and the dog immediately jumped off the sofa and, tail still wagging, went and sat by his side.

‘He knows he is not allowed on there, but he likes to push the boundaries…and see how far he can go.’

‘Then you click your fingers and bring him to heel.’ He probably used the same method with his women, she thought sourly.

And I bet it works. Imagining the sort of women a man who looked like him and lived in a place like this normally shared his bed with did not improve her mood.

Not that she had any intention of sharing his bed, even if she was invited, which now seemed doubtful. No, her loss of sanity had only been temporary she was now fully in control.

You keep telling yourself that, Maggie.

She was no longer amazed that his initial interest had waned, but she was amazed that he had ever been interested in her in the first place. She had seen the sort of woman she was willing to bet he dated, polished and elegant, not a hair out of place, not a nail chipped and not an extra inch anywhere on her svelte silhouette to ruin the line of her designer clothes.

‘A reward helps,’ he said as the dog took a treat from his fingers before trotting over to the fire and flopping down. ‘It is sometimes hard to work out who has trained who,’ he remarked ruefully.

Maggie, who couldn’t imagine anyone calling him domesticated, shrugged and swept her hair across one shoulder, thinking if he resembled any animal it was a wolf.

‘Sorry about your plans.’ He walked across to a cabinet, pulling out a bottle and two glasses. ‘Tonight did not go as either of us anticipated.’

She laughed. ‘I think you could call that the understatement of the century.’ And she was betting things not going to plan was not something that happened to him often.

He didn’t just have the looks and the animal magnetism, Rafael was also clearly a rich, powerful man, used to getting what he wanted.

Had he really wanted her…?

She breathed through the illicit thrill that raced along her nerve endings at the startling thought. The point was he was used to seeing something and getting it, and equally quickly losing interest. A car, a painting or a woman, and things went smoothly for him because people were there to make sure they went smoothly.

She was sure he had people whose sole purpose in life was to shield him from the unsightly.

Under normal circumstances their paths would never have crossed, but they had and he had thought, Why not.? Had he calculated she was worth the effort of a drive into the country, but when the effort had involved dust, tears and messy hair he had begun to regret his eccentric choice?

She tugged at the medallion that hung between her breasts and watched as he poured some amber liquid into the bottom of both glasses. ‘I don’t want a drink.’

He shrugged and lifted a glass to his lips. ‘Well, I do.’ He took the place she had vacated and looked at her over the rim of his glass; his ludicrously long, dark, spiky lashes cast a shadow along his razor-sharp cheekbones.

‘Well we’ve both gone off the idea of a one-night stand.’ She laughed and tried to act as though this were something that happened to her every day of the week. ‘So where do I sleep? I’m assuming I can cadge a lift back tomorrow morning?’

She was about as convincing as silicone implants. ‘You’ve never had a one-night stand, have you?’

Maggie considered lying, but decided it was doubtful she could pull it off. ‘Not as such.’ she conceded reluctantly.

A muscle beside his mouth clenched. ‘But you came with me. What were you thinking of?’

Outrage with no trace of irony…talk about double standards! ‘You invited me, but let me guess—it’s not the same thing. God, I haven’t actually been missing anything, have I? Simon probably did me a favour.’ Now there was a novel thought. ‘Men are a total disappointment!’ she concluded heavily.

Rafael, struggling to follow the angry diatribe, picked up on one word. ‘Who is Simon?’

He took a swallow of the brandy that appeared to have no effect on him, but Maggie, conscious that she was being uncharacteristically indiscreet, wondered if the effect could be passed on to her like a sympathetic pregnancy.

She was a sympathetic drunk; the frivolous imagery made her smile.

‘Simon is my…was my fiancé.’

A look of utter astonishment crossed his face. ‘You were engaged?’

Maggie lifted her chin. ‘Why shouldn’t I be engaged?’ she demanded in a dangerous voice. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked, banging her chest. ‘Just what’s wrong with me?’ Her voice stalled on a quivering note of self pity.

‘Nothing is wrong with you.’

Maggie glared at his rigid blank face and snarled, ‘Once more with feeling! I actually prefer you when you’re incredibly rude. Mouthing polite platitudes you clearly don’t believe. It’s just so not you!’

‘I am not rude.’

The denial made Maggie roll her eyes. ‘No, you probably call it not caring what people think. Well, newsflash, buster, it’s the same thing!’ she informed him, tacking on seamlessly, ‘I think I will have that drink.’ Buster…? She really had to cut down on her intake of gangster movies.

‘Is that such a good idea?’ he asked, wondering about the man who had let her go. Clearly not very bright, that went without saying, but what had attracted Maggie to this loser and did he still have all his limbs intact?

She might look like Angelina, but Angelina’s daughter had definitely missed out on the statuesque calm gene; she was a real firebrand and bolshy with it, he thought, unable to repress the flicker of admiration.

Ignoring him, Maggie walked across to the bureau and picked up the glass. Surprised by the weight of the antique lead crystal, she weighed it in her hand before she lifted it in a silent toast. Rafael watched one brow raised, as fifty-year-old vintage brandy vanished down her throat on one gulp.

‘That must have hurt.’

Maggie lifted a hand to her throat, feeling the burn all the way down to her stomach. ‘It still is,’ she admitted, covering her mouth politely as she coughed.

Rafael found himself laughing. He went from being furious with her to enchanted. She really was delicious and not like any woman he had ever encountered. It was as if the less she tried to please him, the more he was fascinated.

‘Do they actually let you out without a keeper?’

‘Time off for good, possibly angelic behaviour. You know what my mistake was?’ The burn, she realised, had become a glow settling warmly in the pit of her stomach.

‘I know I will probably regret asking this, but what was your mistake, Maggie Ward?’

‘I thought I could become another person just like that.’ She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point. ‘But you can’t… I should have started with a motorbike or a tattoo…with you I was…’ She watched him shake his head in utter confusion but didn’t try to explain—he’d never understand. ‘You’ve got to keep it real and know your limits.’

Rafael, to whom real was fast becoming a dim and distant memory, took the half-full glass from her hand. The scary part was she was still well under the legal limit. ‘And I am not real?’

‘You’re a mistake,’ she admitted. ‘Jumping in the deep end. I wanted to prove to Simon… Millie, my mum…no, myself…’ She looked shocked by the admission and sat down abruptly. ‘I really don’t know what I was or am doing…a lot of things have been going on in my life just lately.’ And he really wants to know this, Maggie, she admonished herself.

‘Sometimes the past is better left undisturbed.’ He could see how delving into a background, searching for roots, might make a person question their life.

Maggie lifted her eyes, a little bemused by the intensity of his fixed regard.

Did he think she had a past? She almost wished she did have. Either way, she wasn’t about to admit she was actually a blank boring page, especially when it came to men and sex.

God, I don’t want to die a virgin.

She tried to think of a suitably enigmatic response and blurted, ‘But doesn’t the past make us what we are?’ His past had to be littered with glamorous, beautiful women.

‘I like to look forward, not back.’ And when he looked back on tonight, would it be with regret?

Regret that he had resisted the temptation that was driving him slowly out of his mind? Or regret because he had ignored the nagging voice of his conscience?

Did he want her so much because she was out of bounds? he speculated. And why was she out of bounds? What had changed between first seeing her and now? They were two consenting adults—why should they not enjoy each other?

‘What were you thinking when I came in? You looked very deep in thought.’

‘Isn’t that looking backwards?’

‘Touché!’

Her eyes slid of their own volition to the sensual curve of his sculpted lips.

Simon had never made her feel attractive.

The way Rafael had looked at her when they’d met, she had felt more aware of her femininity than Simon had made her feel in four years.

‘You have a very impressive home.’ He was a very impressive man.

‘Are you changing the subject?’

‘Yes.’

He released a laugh. Maggie tilted her head back as he got to his feet, and shuffled to the far end of the sofa as he sat down beside her.

‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Better, but a bit…’ Her voice died to a whisper when he reached across and trailed a finger down her cheek. ‘Near-death experiences will do that.’

She felt intense relief mingled with troubling regret when his hand fell away. ‘I just keep thinking what if I hadn’t met you tonight?’

Was she wondering about the confrontation with her birth mother? For the first time he considered today from Maggie’s point of view.

She might have dreaded the meeting. It might have taken her weeks to work herself up to the moment and, perhaps not fully committed, still wondering if she was doing the right thing, she had stepped back.

Was she regretting it now? Was she wishing she had not allowed herself to be diverted?

‘If you hadn’t brought me there, would those children have.?’ She shook her head.

He watched a visible shudder pass through her body and realised it was another ‘what if’ that was plaguing her.

‘They are fine, you are fine.’ A nerve in his lean jaw jerked as the slow-motion replay of the event in his head reached the moment when he had thought she would not be fine. ‘You can’t live your life thinking what if.’ he continued hoarsely.

Maggie turned her head, their eyes meshed and Maggie felt some of the tension leave her body. She sighed slowly and nodded and said, ‘But what if…?’

He loosed a husky laugh and lifted a finger to her lips. ‘Enough.’

It wasn’t the firm admonition that silenced Maggie, but the confusing combination of sensations that was coursing through her body.

His thumb stayed at the corner of her mouth, his eyes sealed to hers; the air was thick with an almost electrical charge that made it hard for her to breathe.

He leaned into her close, very close, but not touching. Her heavy lids half closed as she swayed closer as though drawn by some invisible thread that connected her to him. ‘Your skin smells.’ He exhaled and she felt his brandy-scented breath on her cheek.

He stopped and she thought, Bad…good? Say something…do something…touch me.

‘It’s late. We should go to bed.’ He had never in his life felt a need so raw, so primal to possess a woman.

She gave a fractured sigh. Her heart rate quickened but her body relaxed. It seemed right. ‘Yes.’

He met her eyes shining with promise and trust and he heard himself say, ‘Perhaps this is not a good idea.’

She felt her smile slide off her face, and flinched as if he’d just thrown cold water in her face. Not water, Maggie, just a reality check. This is what happens when you start thinking you’re irresistible.

She lifted her chin. ‘I am a bit tired.’ She gave an artistic yawn to demonstrate the point, then spoilt the pretence by adding, ‘I’m not drunk, you know.’

‘I know you’re not.’ Scruples, he decided, were very overrated and painful, and what would be achieved by depriving them both of an experience that would, he knew, be pleasurable?

She felt the mortified heat reach her cheeks. To have one man politely excuse himself from her bed was one thing; two. There had to be something seriously wrong with her.

‘This day started quite well, and this may sound dramatic but it really is turning into the worst day of my life. You’ll laugh, but actually I thought…’ She stopped, shook her head. He wasn’t laughing; he was staring at her with a fixed intensity that she was not going to mistake for blind lust. ‘I really do feel like an idiot.’

‘You’re not an idiot.’ He took hold of her elbows and looked down into her heart-shaped face, gazing deep into her liquid dark eyes. ‘But you do have a smudge on your nose…right there,’ he said, kissing the spot.

Do not read anything into it, Maggie… ‘It’s fine—you don’t fancy me…perfectly understandable…look, you’re not the first man to be able to resist me. I’m not going to take it personally. I’m not really—’

‘Shut up!’ He hooked a finger under her chin and he captured her eyes and like a primal blast the blaze of hunger in his drove the air from Maggie’s lungs in one shocked gasp.

She melted, paralysed by a combination of raw lust and desperate longing, unable to catch her breath; her fingers closed around the hard muscles of his upper arms.

‘Do you want to spend the night alone, Maggie?’

Maggie’s eyes closed as he kissed the corner of her mouth, her body twisting and arching as she tried to insinuate herself closer. ‘No,’ she whispered against his mouth. Then she opened her eyes, looked at his lean dark face so close to her own, and said, ‘No!’

He smiled at the defiant declaration, a slow, predatory smile that sent her stomach into a spasm of raw excitement. The tension in the air between them thickened; it shimmered.

‘Neither do I.’

CHAPTER NINE

THE raw hunger in his kiss blazed along Maggie’s nerve endings, vaporising any lingering doubts or fears. This was what she wanted, Rafael was what she needed.

She held his face between her hands as his lips moved expertly over her own, the slow, languid exploration a torment and a revelation. At the first erotic incursion of his tongue into her moist mouth she moaned deep in her throat and opened her mouth to invite him deeper, meeting his tongue with her own.

They kissed with a frantic hunger and all the time he touched her, his hands sliding over her soft womanly curves, dragging moans from her lips.

When he did lift his mouth fractionally from hers it was to rasp, ‘I love your mouth. It is a miracle. You are a miracle…so soft.’ He ran a finger down her throat, his eyes darkening as he felt the deep shiver that rippled through her body. ‘So sensitive to my touch.’

‘You won’t stop, will you?’

She felt the rumble of laughter vibrate in his chest as he pulled her under him and laid her full length on the sofa. There was no laughter in his face as he stared down at her, just a fierce, relentless hunger that tightened the knot of excitement low in her belly.

‘Not any time soon,’ he promised huskily as he lowered his body onto hers. ‘I don’t believe any man could resist you. It is not possible… Madre mia, I have wanted you from the moment I saw you.’

Maggie gasped, her eyes flying wide as she felt the pressure of his arousal against her belly. Her arms slid around his middle, pulling him closer. She was revelling in the amazing feel of his lean hard body against her and pleasurably conscious of the fresh rush of liquid heat between her thighs.

The heat burned between them as they kissed, he touched her everywhere. Maggie slid her hands under the hem of his shirt. She heard him gasp at the touch of her fingers on his bare flesh and would have pulled her hand away but he caught her wrist and, holding her eyes, placed it back on his body, spreading her fingers and saying huskily, ‘I want to feel your hands on me, querida.’

Maggie’s throat was too congested with emotion to speak. She nodded mutely and trailed her fingers slowly across the ridges of muscle on his flat belly.

Rafael closed his eyes, sucked in a breath, then lowered his head and kissed her with a driving ferocity that made her head swim. His mouth still connected to hers, he raised himself off her, unfastened his shirt with one hand and stroked her face with the other, his fingers tangled in her hair.

Maggie opened her eyes just as the fabric parted. Weak with lust and longing she stared, her passion-glazed stare moving hungrily over the gleaming hard lines of his greyhound-lean, muscle-ridged bronze torso.

A deep, sobbing moan was wrenched from her throat. The sound made the hairs on the nape of Rafael’s neck stand on end and propelled him into frenzied action.

Slowed only by the tremor in his fingers, he unbuckled his belt and slid his jeans over his hips before kicking them away.

Kneeling astride her, clad only in boxers—the erotic image, she knew, would be permanently etched in her brain—he began to undress her.

Every brush of his fingers on her hot skin sent shimmies of tingling sensation along her sensitised nerve endings.

As he peeled her bra from her shoulders a deep gasp was wrenched from deep in the vault of Rafael’s chest. His golden skin glistened with the need that drove him as he stripped off her pants, sliding them with tantalising slowness over her smooth thighs.

Suddenly overwhelmed by self-consciousness she gasped, ‘This isn’t me!’ And tried to cover herself.

Rafael caught her hands and pinned them above her head, holding them lightly there with his hand.

‘Look at me.’

Maggie reluctantly turned her head. Without a shred of self-consciousness he divested himself of the boxers she had imagined concealed nothing; it turned out they did. She swallowed and felt her cheeks burn as guiltily she wrenched her eyes higher.

‘This is me, and you are allowed to look, and want and touch. There is no shame, just sex. This is natural and good.’ He had a very poor opinion of the person who had made her feel differently. ‘This is you…and I will look. I will look because you are—’ he swallowed as his glance dropped ‘—Dios mio, your are perfect…so unbelievably perfect.’

He cupped one pink-tipped breast in his hand, drawing the straining point between his fingers, rubbing the sensitised flesh before he lowered his head and applied his tongue to the engorged nub.

Maggie writhed under his touch, her fingers sinking deep into his hair. Her hips lifted as he ran his tongue down the soft curve of her belly, then lower.

As he parted the delicate folds, stroking her, Maggie squeezed her eyes tight closed and cried his name over and over until she could bear no more.

‘This is…please…’

Satisfied that he had brought her to the brink and barely able to control his own driving hunger, Rafael settled between her parted thighs.

His hot, hungry eyes broke through the last shreds of Maggie’s shredded control. Face flushed, dark velvet eyes glazed with passion, she spread her thighs wider and, reaching for him, whispered, ‘Please, I need you inside…’

And then amazingly he was and she had not come close to imagining how impossibly marvellous, how incredible it could feel to have him throbbing hard and hot, filling her.

He registered her incredible tightness and her cry as he entered her and it took a few seconds for his brain to link the two and produce the explanation.

Her body tightened around him and Rafael could no longer resist the temptation to sink deeper into her silky smoothness.

Maggie’s legs wrapped around his hips. It was incredible. She kissed his chest and hung on as each thrust of his body sent her deeper into a blissful delirium.

Above her his face was a rigid mask as he struggled to control himself to give her a taste of the pleasure she had never experienced.

When it hit her, the first wave of orgasm shocked a fractured cry from Maggie. Her head went back and she clung to him as another and another hit her, then exploded into a deep pulse of pleasure that went all the way to her toes. As the wave receded she felt Rafael stiffen above her and shiver as the heat of his release filled her.

Holding her head against his chest, Rafael stroked her dark hair. Their bodies slowly cooled. Maggie lay listening to the beat of his heart slow before she lifted her head and smiled at him.

Rafael did not smile back. He didn’t say a word. He just lifted her up and, draping a throw around them both, carried her from the room and through the silent maze of hallways into a room that was dominated by a large four-poster bed.

He didn’t take her to the bed. Instead he walked into the adjoining bathroom, a massive room of startling decadence with a vast sunken marble bath, armchairs and a carved fireplace with candles set in the grate and along the mantle.

With her in his arms he walked straight into the walk-in shower and switched on the water. As she watched the spray run over his dark face, making his skin glisten, he set Maggie on her feet.

Then still without a word he took the citrus-scented gel from an applicator and began to lather her skin. Gently but thoroughly he washed her, moving his hand in firm circular motions until she tingled everywhere.

Maggie didn’t break the silence she just stood passively, her throat constricted by a myriad conflicting emotions she didn’t want to analyse. The warm water was soothing, easing the aches and bruises on her body.

There was nothing remotely sexual about his ministrations, even though she could hardly not notice the fact that he was aroused.

It was all a little surreal. She felt as though she were watching the scene from outside her body, and strangely the experience was on one level even more intimate than what had preceded it.

Finally he switched off the water. He carefully wrung the excess moisture from her hair and swathed her in a towel, using another to dry her from head to toe before picking her up once more and striding back into the bedroom. The fire in this room was lit. Flames crackled as he pulled back the covers on the bed and laid her naked body on the crisp sheets.

She watched as Rafael used the damp towel to cursorily blot the moisture on his own body before climbing in beside her.

He pulled her to him, fitting her curves into his angles before tilting her face up to his.

Finally he broke his silence.

‘Now, querida, we will do this thing the way it should be done.’

‘I thought it was fine the first time,’ she admitted, feeling so relaxed that she was boneless, though sexual awareness remained like a prickle under her skin.

He kissed the pulse spot at the base of her slender neck and the prickle became an itch.

‘You are not a woman who should settle for “fine” and I am not a man who delivers it.’

He delivered this not as an arrogant boast but more in the form of a simple statement of fact, and Maggie accepted it as such. When it came to matters carnal she was quite prepared to accept that Rafael was the expert.

‘But?’

He touched a finger to her lips. ‘And afterwards we will discuss how it is that you were a virgin.’ His eyes darkened; the discovery was one that would stay with him for ever. ‘I could have hurt you and that would have…’

The expression of self-loathing on his face as he broke off and swallowed hard drew a cry of protest from Maggie. ‘You didn’t—you were perfect.’

His mouth curved into a complacent smile. ‘Yes, you mentioned that. Don’t blush—a man likes to be appreciated.’ The smile faded from his face. ‘Now let me show you how much I appreciate you.’

Maggie’s eyes darkened. ‘Please,’ she whispered.

Much later as he lay still sheathed in the heat between her thighs Rafael struggled to make sense of his reluctance to break the physical connection even though his sexual hunger and hers were satisfied—finally.

He looked at her face pressed against the curve of his shoulder her lashes dark on her cheek as she surrendered to sleep and he realised it was foolish to analyse such things. It was not as if it were a meeting of souls; they were sexually compatible. Maggie was an amazingly passionate woman and an incredibly intuitive lover.

Rafael suspected there was still more passion there just waiting to be awakened. It was a pity that she would not be here long enough for him to unlock that promise.

CHAPTER TEN

MAGGIE put down her coffee cup and stared at Rafael. She waited for the maid who had fetched fresh coffee to leave before she replied to his invitation.

‘You’re suggesting I spend the rest of my holiday here, with you.’

Rafael refilled his own cup. ‘It seems logical.’

His idea of logic and hers were very different. ‘Not logical—mad.’

‘How so?’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘It’s totally crazy.’

‘That is not an argument and, anyway,’ he said, considering her freshly scrubbed image with a smile, ‘I think you need some crazy in your life.’

She shook her head. ‘Last night was enough crazy to last me a lifetime.’

‘I seriously doubt that.’ He planted his elbows on the table and leaned towards her, a knowing look on his face. ‘You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?’

She responded to the goad with a frown and firm denial that she almost immediately cancelled by saying, ‘I couldn’t?’

‘But you want to.’

‘I have plans.’

Rafael, who knew about her plans, said, ‘Dump your plans.’

She tried to look amused when she asked, ‘Do women always dump their plans for you?’ Because of course she knew they did and she knew why.

Last night had been the most mind-blowing experience of Maggie’s life, and she would cherish it forever. Walking away this morning was hard—in a week’s time just how much harder would it be?

The thought frightened her and made her hesitate.

‘You will not regret it, I promise.’ While she was here with him Angelina was safe.

You’re such a saint.

Rafael ignored the sardonic voice in his head and added, ‘Did I not fulfil my promises last night?’

Maggie closed her eyes, hearing his smoky voice in her head promising her a glimpse of paradise and more. And he had made good on the promises more than once.

‘I’ve got nothing here, no clothes…no.’

He glanced at the watch on his wrist. ‘I am having your luggage brought from the hotel. It should be here shortly.’

Maggie laughed. ‘You were that sure I’d stay?’

‘I was that sure that I want you to stay. I will make this a holiday to remember.’

‘It’s already that.’ It would be strange going back to her normal life after this.

‘So why do you look sad?’ He had never experienced a desire to make a woman smile before, but he did now.

She shook her head. ‘I’m not sad…mad possibly,’ she conceded, ‘but not sad, just…’ She screwed up her nose and gazed around the room. ‘This is not my life.’

‘What is your life?’ Rafael heard himself ask and frowned. This situation had been a lot simpler when he had thought of her as a problem to be solved. When, he wondered, had she become a person?

A beautiful and desirable person, and her smile made him happy.

The question seemed serious. She stared at him and then to lessen the intensity of the moment she summoned a smile. ‘If you have a spare five minutes I might actually take you up on that invitation. But seriously…’

He cut across her. ‘I was being serious.’

Her eyes fell from his. His intensity was unsettling; actually, he was unsettling.

She gave a strained little laugh. ‘I’m sure you’re not really interested…’

‘I asked, didn’t I?’

‘I work in a city casualty unit. I’m a nurse.’

‘A nurse?’

She tilted her head to one side and studied his face. ‘You sound surprised.’

‘I am,’ he admitted, though now he thought about it he could see her in the role. ‘The last time I was in a casualty department in England my nurse was a rugby player called Tomas. I’m feeling cheated.’

The glow in his eyes made her dizzy and excited.

‘So its not just last night—you spend your time saving lives.’

Maggie gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘It’s not normally so dramatic and there is no danger involved, except of course when a drunk decides to take a swing.’

Rafael tensed. ‘At you?’

Maggie who couldn’t stop staring at the muscles clenching and unclenching beside his mouth, nodded. ‘It has been known,’ she admitted, blinking as he loosed a stream of fluid, angry-sounding Spanish. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, patting the clenched hand that lay nearest her and saying cheerily, ‘I can take care of myself and I have very quick reflexes.’

‘What sort of world are we living in when a nurse takes being assaulted for granted? Madre di Dio, your family allow this?’ he grated incredulously.

‘It’s not really a question of allowing, is it? I’m over eighteen… I’m over twenty-one, and I’ve never been assaulted. It happens, but not to me.’

‘But it could. Well, I,’ he announced autocratically, ‘would not permit it.’

‘Well, I’m glad I’m not your sister.’

‘So am I, but I have no sister.’

‘Your father and mother?’ she asked, wondering about this man whom she was alone with and realising he had told her nothing about himself. She had slept with a stranger and she had agreed to stay with him.

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘Both dead.’

The pragmatic statement did not invite sympathy but Maggie’s tender heart ached. ‘I can’t imagine what that would be like.’ A shadow crossed her face as she imagined a life that did not contain her family.

‘So you have a family…?’ Having pushed the Angelina question to the back of his mind, he did not enjoy the topic being front and centre where he could not ignore it.

She reached into her bag and pulled a family snapshot she always carried from her wallet. She held out her hand and offered it to him.

Maggie frowned as she watched an expression of astonishment wash over his dark face. He was looking at the snapshot as if it were an alien.

‘Is something wrong? You don’t have to—’ She began to withdraw her hand but he caught her wrist.

‘No, nothing’s wrong,’ he promised, taking the photo, not because he actually felt any interest but because he knew it would have injured her feelings if he had refused.

Feelings were entirely new territory for him and he saw no urgent need to explore this development.

‘I’m more used to being offered bills for designer shoes.’

Her brow furrowed in confusion at the comment. ‘Why? Do you have a business interest?’

He regarded her in much the same way she imagined he might had she just announced that she believed in Santa Claus.

‘No, I have girlfriends with expensive tastes who like me to pick up the tab.’ He did not begrudge the expense, he considered himself a generous lover.

The plural was not wasted on Maggie.

Good God, where is your pride, Maggie?

I’m sleeping with a man who, not only does not promise something as basic as exclusivity, he probably doesn’t understand the meaning of the word.

‘If you ever pay for my shoes I will feed them to you.’

He stared. ‘You don’t like shoes?’

‘You may not mind women who sleep with you for your money, but I mind being mistaken for one.’ She pinned him with a wrathful glare and yelled, ‘I’m sleeping with you for the sex! On a temporary basis, obviously.’

‘Obviously, and I promise not to offend you with shoes, though I would like to point out that I like to think it is not just my money they sleep with me for.’

Maggie’s eyes narrowed. She knew they didn’t and she hated them all with a vengeance. ‘You really do love yourself!’

His lashes lifted from his cheek and he levelled a direct look into her eyes. ‘Love is not something I encourage.’

Maggie blinked. The warning was unmistakeable. Then before she could respond to it he began to study the snapshot, saying, ‘Those are your brothers?’ The young men in the slightly out of focus snapshot were both blond and broad-shouldered and duplicates of their father. All three men towered over their sister, and the woman in the wheelchair.

She nodded, wishing she had remembered sooner that this was not the most flattering photo she had ever appeared in. ‘I still had my braces then.’

‘Which accounts for the lack of a smile? The woman in the wheelchair…your mother?’

‘Yes.’ Maggie did not want to go into details, but added, ‘But she’s not in the wheelchair any more—at least, not all the time.’

‘Your brothers are not much like you.’

Maggie grinned. Talking about her family made this abnormal situation seem less surreal. ‘You mean because they’re six feet four or because they’re blond?’ she suggested, raising a hand to her dark hair and grimacing as she realised it had come free of the ponytail and now hung loose in a tangled skein down her back.

‘Your colouring is very… Mediterranean?’ His glance moved across the glowing contours of her face. Her skin was flawless and had a peachy sheen that was almost opalescent. The idea of carrying her back to bed became more urgent than eating breakfast.

Maggie’s eyes fell evasively, her long lashes brushing the soft curve of her smooth high cheekbones, but not before Rafael had seen the emotion flicker across her face.

‘Actually, I wouldn’t look like Ben and Sam. I’m adopted.’

‘That must have been a shock…discovering you’re adopted.’ Rafael suggested, watching her push the gleaming strands of hair back from her heart-shaped face with both hands, looping it into a heavy bunch before letting it fall down her back.

She shook her head. ‘Not really. I didn’t discover—I always knew I was adopted. Mum and Dad always made me feel special because they picked me.’

‘But your brothers, they are…?’

‘Big surprises, with an emphasis on the big,’ she added with an affectionate grin. She felt some of the tension slip from her shoulders as a mental picture of her younger siblings formed in her head. ‘Mum and Dad thought they couldn’t have children so they were pretty shocked when Ben came along and then, a year later, Sam.’

‘So your real mother?’ he probed, wary of pushing too hard.

Her smile vanished. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ she suggested.

Rafael gave a casual shrug and didn’t push.

‘I really envy you being bilingual… Spanish is such a marvellous language and you have an incredible home. I have never met anyone who lived in a castle before.’ She stopped, drew breath, and prayed for the floor to open and swallow her.

She had just taken inane babble to an entirely new level. On the plus side, at least she had run out of breath before she asked him about his heating bills!

No, actually there was no plus side.

‘We don’t have to talk at all.’

The invitation in his smoky, sinfully sexy voice would have been obvious no matter what language he chose to use. Maggie’s breath snagged in her throat. Her eyes fused with his and Maggie’s insides melted.

She reached for the coffee pot and refilled her cup. ‘This is great coffee,’ she enthused.

‘Or we could.?’ Rafael conceded drily.

Maggie, who couldn’t stop staring at his long tapering fingers—she had never looked at a man’s hands and thought about them on her skin, but now she had she couldn’t stop—blurted with incurable honesty, ‘I feel very out of my depth.’ She levelled her candid gaze at his face and wondered how she had ever been mad enough to think a one-night stand with him was a good idea.

‘Once you learn to tread water, depth is not a problem.’

‘I can’t swim.’

‘But you are a very fast learner.’

She blushed and looked at him through her lashes. ‘You’re a passable teacher, but you’re also the sort of man I’d normally cross the road to avoid. You’re not my type at all. It’s crazy, but from the moment I saw you I.’

‘You what?’

Maggie shivered. He had a voice that was the auditory equivalent of having your skin stroked against the deep pile of rich velvet.

‘The moment I saw you I wondered… I wondered what sort of kisser you were.’ And you had to tell him that why, exactly?

Rafael didn’t move, didn’t blink, but she heard the breath leave his lungs in one audible hiss.

She carried on looking at him.

It was said and there was no way she could unsay it. Near-death experiences did not make you braver, they clearly made you more stupid!

‘God, pretend I didn’t say that. I’m embarrassing myself.’ she admitted, not looking at him. ‘I’m embarrassing you.’

‘I am not easy to embarrass.’

Her eyes lifted. ‘I know,’ she conceded unable to take her eyes off his dark face. ‘Not that I’m suggesting that’s a bad thing. It wasn’t a criticism,’ she added hastily, thinking not many people looking at his face would find much to criticise.

Her embarrassed little laugh transmuted into a sharp intake of breath as he left the table and came round to join her.

Holding her eyes, he took her hand and drew her up to him. Placing a hand behind her head, he tilted her face up to him.

‘I too wondered when I saw you how you would taste. I wanted to find out right there in the street.’ And what man would not? How could any man with red blood in his veins resist the combination of warm sexuality, wide-eyed innocence and a body made for pleasure? ‘What would you have done if I had?’

‘Screamed, called for help…?’ she suggested, struggling to inject amusement into her voice and failing totally—her breath was coming in short choppy spurts that made it difficult to breath and impossible to raise her voice above a whisper.

‘And now?’ he asked, running his thumb across the cushiony pink surface of her lips.

She closed her eyes because looking at the flame burning deep in his—a trick of the light, probably—made her dizzy, and said, ‘Are you going to kiss me or torture me?’ She held her arms wide in a come and get me gesture and, eyes still tight shut, tilted her head back in invitation.

‘When you put it like that I see it would be an act of charity to put you out of your misery.’ The fever in his blood as he looked down at her made him shake—literally shake with need.

She tensed in anticipation of the plundering pressure of his lips; the light touch on the corner of her mouth took her by surprise.

Maggie’s eyes flickered open. They were still open, welded to the silver gleam in his, as he increased the pressure slightly as his tongue followed the curve of her mouth, leaving a damp trail.

The heat and frustration inside Maggie mounted as she noticed just how ragged her breathing was.

‘How was that for you?’

‘You know your way around a mouth. Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet,’ he breathed against her mouth.

So I would get a good score, hmm?

His wicked grin flashed as he took her face between his big hands.

‘That was not a kiss, that was merely the beginning…foreplay. I love the way you blush… I love your skin.’

‘There is only so much foreplay, Rafael, a girl can take.’

The touch of his warm lips as they claimed her sent a tide of heat through her body. Rafael’s arms slid around her body, pulling her close into him. Maggie’s arms curled around his neck as she raised herself up on tiptoe and leaned into the male hardness of his lean body, excited by the leashed hunger that made him shake.

The excitement spiralled at the first sensual stab of his tongue into the warm, moist recesses of her mouth. She moaned with need and kissed him back, her hands bunching into fists as she grabbed the fabric of his shirt.

‘I’m so sorry, darling, I had no idea.’

Maggie jumped away from him as if shot. Blinking as she struggled to clear the sexual fog in her brain, she stared. For some reason the star of a top American detective series was standing in the doorway.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IN the flesh and without the benefit of lighting and make-up and minus the skin-hugging trademark leather trousers Camilla Davenport was even more beautiful than the wisecracking detective she played on the small screen.

Five ten in her bare feet, which she wasn’t—her heels had to be at least four inches—she was dressed in what was probably the latest fashion. It was hard to find fault.

And Maggie tried!

In real life the actress’s eyes were actually bluer, her lips even more incredibly pouty, and her breasts—was it even possible—more perky. And the people who said the camera put on ten pounds were obviously lying.

Was he sleeping with her?

Of course he was sleeping with her.

Maggie felt sick and stupid and plain. A plain, stupid woman throwing up—that would leave a great lasting impression, because obviously she was leaving. It would save him the bother of asking her to go.

‘Camilla, what are you doing here?’

Rafael dragged a not quite steady hand through his dark hair and turned a less than welcoming glare on his ex-lover.

‘And how did you get past Security?’

‘Oh, don’t blame them—nobody told the darlings I am yesterday’s news. Rafe, darling, you look absolutely scrummy…’ She advanced with a purposeful sexy sway and kissed him on the cheek, not from intention, but because he turned his head before she landed the kiss.

She gave a sigh and stroked a red-painted nail down his cheek. ‘As always,’ she said, adding with a pout, ‘you are a spoilsport.’

Rafael issued her a glare of seething impatience and her hand fell away.

‘Oh, all right, look, I can see my timing is absolutely lousy as usual—’ she flashed Maggie a friendly look apparently totally all right to find her lover with another woman ‘—but I was up here to check on the house. I’m thinking of putting in a new pool. I have a little villa just across the valley,’ she explained to Maggie. ‘Rafael makes a very friendly neighbour.’

‘I can imagine,’ Maggie said, trying hard not to, but Camilla’s attention and her fluttering eyelashes had already returned to Rafael.

‘So I thought I’d come and say sorry in person and I am truly…’

Rafael struggled to contain his impatience. ‘For what?’

She widened her eyes in amazement. ‘God, you don’t know! Wow, that’s…awkward.’ She lifted her brows and grimaced in Maggie’s direction. ‘He always reads the papers from cover to cover, doesn’t he? But not today. I guess he was busy.’

Maggie blushed and Camilla gave a husky laugh and said, ‘You’re different.’ Her attention swung back to Rafael. ‘All right, I’ll come clean. You remember that gorgeous weekend we spent on your yacht?’

‘I remember.’

Would anyone notice if she slipped out? Maggie wondered bitterly. Or on second thought she might make a scene, a big, noisy scene, and smash a few things because dignity was not, in her opinion, any substitute for broken crockery.

Different—presumably that translated as not glamorous.

Camilla took a folded newspaper from her bag and spread it on the table. Rafael, oblivious to Maggie’s violent plans, did not even glance at it.

He can’t even take his eyes off the woman, Maggie thought miserably…and who can blame him?

‘That afternoon on the deck when we got… It turns out we weren’t alone. Tragic, I know, and so shocking—there’s absolutely no privacy these days. I think it must have been that speedboat that passed.’

‘Just as you took off your top.’

Maggie closed her eyes and thought, Just kill me now, let me die or, failing that, let me come up with a really good exit line!

‘Timing is everything.’

Rafael walked over to Maggie’s side. She tensed as she felt his fingers massage the tense muscles of her neck. ‘You all right?’

Maggie moved away and, unable to come up with an exit line of any variety, mumbled, ‘No, if you’ll excuse me…’

He moved to block her exit and declared autocratically, ‘No, I won’t. I want you to hear this.’

Tears of anger and humiliation formed in her eyes. Did he want to rub her nose in it for some reason, or was he genuinely unaware of how humiliating this was for her?

Maggie wasn’t sure which explanation was the worst.

‘So why are these photos appearing now, Cami, three months after the event?’

Cami and Rafe? She really wanted to throw up now. A choked sound escaped Maggie’s throat.

‘What’s wrong?’

That he could ask the question spoke volumes about his sheer titanic insensitivity.

‘I always knew there was something missing, now I know what it is…a pet name for you, darling.’

The corners of Rafael’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something, honeybunch.’ He turned back to the other woman and folded his arms across his chest. The levity left his eyes as he snapped coldly, ‘Come clean, Cami.’

‘All right, I can see you’ve guessed—you always do. The studio are meeting this weekend and there have been rumours flying around that they are going to cancel the show. The viewing figures were low, but that was because they killed off my love interest… I always said—’

‘Cami!’

‘All right, all right. I arranged for the photo to be taken as an insurance policy, and it turned out I needed it, and,’ she added, clapping her hands and releasing a squeal of delight, ‘it has worked. The photos are all over the Internet, your name guarantees that, and the studio have been on the phone all morning. They are definitely going to commission a third series and give me a pay hike. Aren’t I brilliant?’

Rafael was at his most dry as he responded, ‘Not the word I would have used.’

Cami gave a wide complacent smile. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be mad if I explained things.’

‘You are a very devious woman, Cami.’

Maggie had struggled to follow the explanation—the American spoke very quickly and her brain was on a go-slow—but if she had got the facts even half right Rafael’s attitude made no sense. The woman had used him and the apparent public appetite for stories about him, and he didn’t even seem mad.

That made no sense at all unless…unless he was in love with the beautiful actress.

‘Darling, a girl has to watch her back in this business if she doesn’t have a man to do it for her.’

‘Your agent would sell his soul for you, always supposing he ever had one.’

‘Gus is a treasure but he doesn’t do it for free.’ She picked up a croissant from the table. ‘You know, I’m totally starving.’

Rafael put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. ‘Say goodbye, Cami.’

She gave a philosophical smile. ‘Goodbye…’ She waved over her shoulder to Maggie, who stood like a small statue and watched Rafael steer her through the door.

When he returned a few moments later she was still standing in exactly the same place.

‘Your luggage has arrived,’ he said, setting her cases on the floor.

Maggie expelled a deep shuddering sigh and felt the life return to her body, and the anger and the burning humiliation.

She marched over to him and picked them up. ‘I won’t be unpacking.’

‘Fine. I will buy you new clothes.’

She scrunched up her face in a grimace of loathing. ‘I would prefer to walk around naked!’ she yelled.

‘I can work with that.’

She compressed her full lips into a thin line. ‘I have no interest in being part of your harem!’

He studied her angry face for a moment in silence. ‘Do you not think that perhaps you are overreacting?’ he suggested calmly.

‘Mildly!’

She stood her ground as he walked across to her, though by the time he reached her side her knees were shaking.

‘You’re crying.’

‘Not because I give a damn about your sleazy sex life, I’m mad, that’s all.’

‘You’re jealous.’ The first display of jealousy was his signal to walk, but Rafael could see that this situation was different.

In what way exactly? asked the pedantic voice in his head.

Different required a different approach—not compromise, because he did not do compromise, but an explanation perhaps?

‘You have no cause. Cami and I were lovers…’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Shock, horror, call the press—oh, I forgot,’ she trilled. ‘They already know.’ The world knows and he appears to care less. ‘And save your explanations. I’m just someone you picked up—you don’t owe me any.’

‘Do not speak of yourself in that manner!’ There was a reason he had spent his life facing problems head-on and not manipulating and nice talking his way around them—nice talk didn’t work!

She blinked at the lash of anger in his voice.

‘It’s the truth.’

‘It is a crude version of the truth and you are deliberately trying to provoke me.’ A spasm of impatience tightened his lean face as he snapped, ‘Shut up and listen. Past tense—we were lovers. I do not have a harem, I have one lover in my bed at a time and at the moment it is you.’ And for some reason even though she drove him insane he wanted it to stay that way.

‘You’re not sleeping with anyone else.’

‘I do not make a habit of explaining myself to people.’ So what was he doing now?

‘All right, you may not be sleeping with her, but you wish you were. It’s obvious. You weren’t even angry with her and she used you.’

‘That was always a possibility.’

The calm admission made her stare.

‘Cami is without scruples—charming,’ he conceded, ‘but utterly self-centred.’

‘And good in bed,’ Maggie, slightly mollified by his scathing assessment, inserted with a sniff.

He did not deny it, but no matter how expert a lover he had taken he had always been conscious of an empty, knowing sense of dissatisfaction even after the most satisfactory sex.

The feeling had been absent last night and this morning. Possibly her inexperience added a challenge that he needed?

‘There are a hundred Camis—a thousand. I meet them wherever I go.’ He studied the tear-stained face turned up to his and wondered if he would ever meet a Maggie again.

As she watched him dismiss the actress with a click of his long fingers she wondered if he would dismiss her in the near future in a similar fashion. He almost certainly would and the knowledge gave her a horrid sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘Look, I could lock myself away behind high walls and massive security and never have an unflattering photo of me snapped. But I consider the price too high.’

‘But you have a lot of money.’

The observation drew a grim smile from Rafael. ‘It is not a question of cost.’

‘Something only a very rich person would say.’

Rafael ignored her wry interjection and said quietly, ‘I would become a virtual prisoner. Instead I walk the middle ground. I do not actively seek publicity and on occasions I go out of my way to avoid it, but I do not lose sleep over every insane story that appears about me.’

Maggie frowned, considering his words. ‘All right.’

He regarded her warily. ‘I believe you and I might have overreacted slightly.’ Slightly! She had broken out with a bad case of the green monster; the amazing thing was he hadn’t run for the hills.

‘So we can go back to where we were before the interruption?’

The sultry look she flashed him through her lashes sent a pulse of lust through his already aroused body. ‘I think we’d got past the foreplay.’

‘Do not be so impatient,’ he charged, slipping his hands around her waist. It was so tiny that he could almost span it. ‘I am still waiting for you to score me on my kisses.’ He pressed an open-mouth kiss to her neck and her head fell bonelessly back. ‘Be generous,’ he pleaded huskily.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MAGGIE forced her heavy eyelids open. Rafael’s face was so close she could see the gold tips on his lashes and feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. ‘I’m thinking possibly above average.’

He inclined his dark head fractionally without taking his eyes from hers. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, breathing in his warm male musky scent and feeling dizzy—in a good way.

‘You’re a very beautiful woman.’ He slid a hand into her hair and let the silky strands run through his fingers. ‘A sensual woman.’

‘You really think so?’

The indentation between his brows deepened. ‘If you have any doubts, then I’ve been doing something wrong.’

‘No, Rafael, you do everything right…so right it hurts.’ She pressed a hand low on her stomach to show him where her agony was centred.

His smouldering eyes slipped to her mouth. Very slowly he lowered his head and kissed her; he kissed as if he would drain her, then he lifted her up into his arms and strode from the room.

‘You do know all this macho stuff does nothing for me,’ she said, teasing the sensitive skin behind his ear with her flickering tongue.

‘You are very bad for my ego.’

‘Well, you’re incredibly good for mine,’ she confessed struggling even now to get her head around the fact the marvellous man fancied the socks off her.

Rafael removed more than her socks and she enjoyed every single second of it. She was determined to savour every moment of their short time together.

Over the next few days Maggie did not lose sight of her vow.

She did indeed extract the last ounce of pleasure from everything, from the sound of his laughter, to waking and feeling the warm weight of his arm across her waist, and the intimacy of a candlelit meal and a shared bottle of wine.

She savoured everything and firmly pushed away the lurking knowledge that it would all shortly end. It was getting harder to ignore the ticking clock.

She woke on the Wednesday and thought, Two days left.

She opened her eyes and the cheerless thought slipped away. Rafael’s head was on the pillow beside her, his long lashes lying in dark fans across the chiselled contours of his cheekbones, his jaw darkened with a layer of piratical dark stubble.

Sleep had ironed some of the severity from his patrician features and the hank of dark hair flopping across his high forehead made him look younger.

She could have carried on looking at his face for ever.

Over the days some of his defences had come down and he had opened up and spoken to her about his family and the uncomfortable relationship he had had with his father, who sounded to Maggie like a sadistic monster.

When Maggie had voiced her opinion he had laughed, and told her that his father had never been that interesting.

She had learnt about his mother more slowly. Sometimes she had caught a look of surprise on his face when he’d spoken of her. She got the impression that it was not something he did often.

Then the previous night as they had lain, their bodies still cooling in the aftermath of lovemaking so intense that it had made her weep, he had explained abruptly why he had reacted so strongly to her tears.

‘I was ten when my mother left. I never saw her again. She was crying.’

The association, it seemed, had stayed with him always.

He had not revealed the story in one go, it had slipped out in fragments that Maggie had joined like a puzzle to see the big picture, and it was a very sad picture that had made her tender heart ache for him. Though, knowing how allergic he was to any form of sympathy, she had made her response practical, contenting herself with hugging him hard until he’d laughingly asked if she was trying to break his ribs.

Amazingly he was not bitter that when faced with the stark choice his mother had chosen her lover over her son. He was not even sorry she had left, because, he’d explained, her marriage was killing her.

Maggie had realised that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.

She had fought back tears as he’d described watching her being reduced to a shadow of herself by her destructive marriage.

Aching with empathy, Maggie had felt his frustration—a child who had had to stand by and watch helplessly the systematic destruction of someone he loved.

No, it seemed that the thing that haunted Rafael was the angry words he had yelled at her while she left. Things he had never been able to retract because she and her lover had died not long afterwards in a train smash.

Maggie, her tender heart bleeding for the vulnerable child he had been, had wrapped her arms tight around him, laying her head on his warm chest.

‘She would have known you didn’t mean it. She must have known you loved her. And the last thing she’d want is for you to carry on beating yourself up over it. I mean, she must have been eaten up with guilt.’

She wasn’t sure if her comments had helped but she hoped so. It had been late before they had slept and, not wanting to wake him now, she slipped from their bed careful not to disturb him. Shrugging on a towelling gown, she went downstairs to the big kitchen where she helped herself to coffee from the fresh pot on the stove before pulling a warm roll from the basket. Tossing it from one hand to the other as it burnt her fingers, she reached for a plate and the butter.

She was topping the butter with jam when Ramon entered the kitchen looking uncharacteristically flustered.

‘If you’re looking for him, the boss is still asleep.’

She hesitated to add, ‘Can I help?’ because, although the staff rather surprisingly acted as though her position in the household were permanent and had developed a habit of consulting her on domestic issues, Maggie was very conscious of her temporary status and always referred them to Rafael, who was not always appreciative of her tact. Only the previous day he had become extremely exasperated and referred the problem back to her after she had refused to mediate a minor domestic dispute.

‘That is the problem. Sabina took it on herself to wake him when the guests—’

‘He has guests?’ Maggie tightened her robe.

This was the first time the outside world had intruded on her little idyll and it was an unwelcome reminder of how flimsy the foundations her happiness was based on actually were.

The world was out there and, like it or not, she had to go back into it. She had wondered what she would say if Rafael suggested continuing their relationship after her holiday ended.

She had agonised over her response, finding the thought of never seeing him again hard to contemplate without horror. But would drifting slowly apart, as they inevitably would, be less painful? A cancelled visit, a missed call, watching the gradual disintegration of their relationship? Wouldn’t a clean break be easier in the long run to bear?

In the end the question might be academic; he might not suggest it. While he never mentioned it ending, he never mentioned it carrying on either. And Rafael had never given any indication that he considered their time together anything other than a pleasant interlude.

For her part Maggie had resisted it, but she had finally been forced to ask herself why when she was around him her heart reacted independently of her brain.

He was the love of her life, and though she had always scoffed at the better-to-have-loved-and-lost theory she would not have had it any other way.

Him not returning her love was a tragedy, but not ever meeting him would in her mind have been an even greater one. She had embarked on the affair thinking that sex might liberate; in reality love had.

‘I think I’ll take my coffee upstairs.’

‘Well, if you think that.’ Ramon stopped. ‘Perhaps that might be best, but I thought.’ He shook his head and vanished, leaving Maggie to stare after him in perplexed bemusement.

The reason for his stress became more obvious when she entered the grand hall, her intention to take the short cut up the main staircase to their room.

She came to a halt and tried to blend into the background. Rafael was standing at the far end in the company of a man and woman, who was pushing a pram up and down with her foot.

The raised angry voices of the two men made it clear she had wandered into the middle of a private argument. Unsure whether to retrace her steps and use one of the rear staircases or try and slip unnoticed up this one, she hesitated uncertainly.

While she stood there the seated woman turned her head and the blood left Maggie’s face. The plate and mug slipped from her nerveless fingers and she shook her head slowly from side to side.

This could not be happening.

The face she was looking at demonstrated how slim the line between beauty and average was; it was her face if her features had been perfectly symmetrical, if her lips had been less generous and her nose had been straight.

The woman stood and Maggie thought she could be looking in the mirror if she were four inches taller and half a stone lighter.

Nobody was shouting any more; they were all staring at her. She never had liked being the centre of attention, she thought, struggling to control the bubble of hysteria lodged in her throat.

The silence that had followed the shouting was unbearably loud.

‘I dropped the plate.’

Her voice was the catalyst for a fresh bout of yelling. This time the woman joined in and the baby—no, babies—in the pram started to cry.

Feeling strangely disconnected from the drama unfolding and, for that matter, her own body, Maggie listened to the exchange of insults and accusation—a lot of accusation, and most of it aimed at Rafael, who made, it seemed to Maggie, only a token effort to defend himself.

His attention was constantly straying from those who were energetically jabbing the finger of blame at him to Maggie.

‘How could you, Rafael! My daughter…you have betrayed every trust I ever had in you!’

‘What gave you the right to assume.? I am not like your father… I thought we were friends…’

Maggie sucked in a breath, caught up in this strange nightmare moment but distant from it—distant from these people who were not her people.

The need for the comfort, the familiarity, of those she knew were there for her no matter what rose up inside her until she had to act on it.

‘Nice to meet you, but I have to go now.’

Even though her voice had been barely more than a whisper the acoustics in the room were such that every word echoed around the room.

Silence broke out all over again.

Maggie dropped to her knees. ‘I’ll just…’

Rafael was at her side, taking her hand and cursing as he saw blood oozing steadily from the superficial cut.

‘I could do with a dustpan, really.’

‘Madre di Dios!’ he breathed, lifting her into his arms.

He turned his head, murder in his eyes in response to an angry comment from the male half of the couple, before he strode up the stairs with Maggie in his arms. She didn’t resist, she did not do anything—the blank look in her eyes scared him more than anything in his life!

He sat her on the bed and cleaned and dressed the wound. He pushed a glass of brandy into her hand. For a moment she looked at it blankly, then he saw something move at the back of her eyes a moment before, with calm deliberation, she tipped the contents on the floor.

‘Was that who I think it is?’

‘Yes, it was. Your mother is married to my cousin.’

The muscles along her jaw quivered as she looked at him with dark unfriendly eyes.

‘No, she isn’t, because my mother,’ she said in a voice that quivered and shook with emotion, ‘my mother looked after me when I had chicken pox and wanted to scratch the spots—she stopped me. She read my teacher the Riot Act when I was being bullied at school. She listened to my spellings when I had a test. I only need one mother and that woman is nothing to me…a stranger.’

‘I know it must be hard for you to understand now, but Angelina was very young and her family—’

Maggie shook her head and covered her ears. ‘I don’t want to know her name. I don’t want to know how sad and sorry she is. I want nothing from her. Do you understand? Nothing!’

‘You’re pretty judgemental. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?’

The question drew a bitter smile from Maggie. ‘Several, but the one I’m looking at right now makes the others fade into insignificance.’

She saw him flinch as her words hit home and she didn’t care. She was glad. She wanted him to hurt as much as she was, even though that was impossible.

The burst of anger had actually cleared the fog of confusion in Maggie’s brain, leaving cool, clear clarity in its place. As the argument’s main points sifted through her mind she looked at her bandaged hand and noticed it had stopped shaking.

‘Let me get this straight—is it true what that man said?’

‘Alfonso my cousin.’ Who now, it seemed, hated and despised him—there was a lot of it around! The next time anyone asked his advice he was going to develop selective deafness—not that this was likely to happen any time soon; most, if not all, of the people he cared about were not talking to him.

‘Was he right? You slept with me to stop me confronting her and spoiling a family party. You could,’ she suggested bitterly, ‘have just explained it wasn’t a good moment. And I wasn’t…’

‘You weren’t?’

‘I have never wanted to trace my birth mother. I even split up with Simon because he did just that and now you…’ She dropped her head into her hands. Rafael had seemed so different, but actually he wasn’t.

He was worse!

She pressed her fingers to her pounding temples. Rafael covered them with his own and tilted her face to his. ‘I admit it started out that way.’

‘And then you fell desperately in love me…yes… Save your breath, Rafael, for the next starry-eyed fool who thinks every word you utter is gospel.’

‘I have never lied to you, Maggie.’

‘No, but you were pretty economic with the truth and anyway you didn’t need to lie, did you? Because, let’s face facts, I was easy!’

Rafael swore.

Maggie flinched away from his outstretched hand. ‘It was all an act, wasn’t it? And in the end such a waste of your valuable time, because I never presented any danger. I was not a scandal waiting to happen. I was just a silly girl who believed you were as special as you seemed. And you’re not, you’re not special, you’re…’ Her voice quivered as the tears began to seep unchecked from her eyes. ‘I hate you and I wish we’d never met!’ She raced to the wardrobe and began to pull her possessions off the rail. ‘I’m going home.’

The dark lines of colour scoring Rafael’s razor-edged cheekbones deepened as he watched her. ‘I did not ask you to stay with me only because of Angelina and you did not stay because you hate me.’

Maggie spun back, her dark eyes glowing with scorn. ‘Like you said yourself, I’m a fast learner, and actually hating is not so hard!’ Maggie drew a hand across the nape of her neck to free the hair trapped under her shirt before sweeping it back from her face and securing it behind her ears.

‘Do not be dramatic.’

The terse recommendation drew a low growl of incredulity from Maggie’s throat.

‘You could not regret the sex any more than I do…’

Maggie’s head went back as though he had struck her. She bit her trembling lip.

‘You were not so open,’ he charged angrily. ‘You did not tell me you were a virgin.’

Maggie’s jaw dropped as she shook her head in disbelief—as if what he had done could compare. ‘What was I meant to do—carry a sign around my neck? Call me an idiot, but I had this crazy idea I was missing out on something marvelous, that the experience would be liberating! How was I to know that it was all hype and no substance?’

He received the information with an aggravating air of disbelief. She wondered what it would take to dent this man’s ego. More than a bad review from her, clearly—though it had been noted on more than one occasion that she was a bad liar.

‘That is not what you said last night.’ The memory sent a surge of lust through his body that Rafael was powerless to control.

Maggie gave a sniff and fixed him with a glittering glare, channelling cynical woman of the world as she admitted, ‘I’m a great actress…sigh…gasp.’ She let her head fall back and moaned, ‘Please…please…you’re so good at this,’ before straightening up and smoothing back her hair.

‘You’re so marvellous blah…blah…blah… Women have been saying what men want to hear for ever. It was a good holiday, end of story, and now I’m going home.’

He took one last look at her angry, accusing face and shrugged expressively before turning and stalking stiff-backed towards the door. He paused in the opening and turned back.

‘It may suit you to play the unwilling victim now, Maggie, but we both know that you were not!’

He had vanished before she thought of a suitable response. Tears streaming down her face, she ran to the door. He was nowhere in sight but she shouted down the corridor anyway.

‘My fiancé turned out to be a complete and total loser and I decided that anything had to be an improvement. I was wrong!’ she threw after him, before sliding to the floor and crying her heart out.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT was a month later when Rafael made a discovery: it was actually quite easy to enjoy anonymity—all a person had to do was stand in a busy casualty department on a Saturday night.

He been standing in a corner of this noisy, crowded Casualty waiting room for an hour and nobody had approached him. He got the impression that if he stayed quiet he could stand there all night and nobody would; this, however, was not his intention.

He had a plan, well, not a plan exactly—for the first time in his life Rafael was winging it.

Another thirty minutes passed and the novelty value of being invisible began to lose its charm for Rafael. It occurred to him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot that he might have taken the under-the-radar approach a little too far.

His jaw clenched as he continued to scan the room. He had still not caught even a glimpse of her dark head and he was losing the struggle to control his frustration.

Inaction was not his thing for a reason—it was a very unproductive method of achieving a desired end.

And his desired end remained elusive. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and wondered how she worked in this place surrounded constantly by all this ugliness and suffering.

Rafael watched a man dressed in a security uniform approach, stop a few feet away and wait expectantly.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

Rafael flashed him a look. ‘I should not think so.’

The security guard, who had all the responses to belligerent or threatening behaviour—not that he wasn’t extremely relieved that this tough-looking customer was displaying neither—struggled for a response to this polite but unhelpful reply.

‘Have you given your details at the desk?’

‘I am waiting for someone.’

‘I’m afraid… Mr.?’

‘Castenadas,’ Rafael supplied.

He watched the inevitable flicker of recognition in the other man’s eyes, and gave a philosophical shrug. Security guards tended to have a lot of time to flick through tabloids.

‘Do I know you? Your face…’

Rafael was saved the necessity of responding because a smashing sound, loud enough to be heard over the general babble in the waiting area, followed by raised voices caused the man to break off.

Like everyone else Rafael turned in the direction of the sound, then he heard the cry—a cry of pain followed by the distinct sound of breaking glass.

Rafael, responding to the rush of adrenaline that flooded through his body, hit the ground running. He was through the swing doors and parting the curtain before the security guard had finished summoning help.

The scene was chaos: an overturned trolley, broken glass, instruments all over the floor and a large thug slurring a string of loud abuse at the figure crouched on the floor.

Some gut instinct had told him the cry had come from Maggie’s lips. Even so, seeing her there made him reel as though a blow had landed through his defences.

She lifted her head, saw him, gave a sob of relief and said, ‘I’m fine!’ despite the evidence to the contrary.

He advanced and felt his foot slip; he glanced down, saw the blood on the floor and the colour seeped out of his face. It only took him a second, a second that was long enough to realise that the gore came, not from Maggie, but from her attacker, who was standing barefoot in the broken glass, oblivious to the pain.

The realisation that the thug was going to feel it once his anaesthetic of choice wore off afforded Rafael a brief moment of savage satisfaction before he placed his hand on the man’s collar and hauled him across the room.

Rafael, grimacing in distaste, moved his head back as he was hit by alcohol fumes.

He glanced over his shoulder and was relieved to see that Maggie was getting to her feet, helped by another nurse.

The drunk did not understand a word of the staccato Spanish directed at him but he did recognise the cold light in those eyes.

Rafael’s lip curled in distaste as he watched the rapid transformation from aggressive to pathetic when the drunk recognised he had lost the upper hand.

The two security men relieved him of his burden and Rafael swung back to Maggie.

‘What are you doing here, Rafael?’ Something twisted hard in his chest when he saw her face.

He struggled to control the rage lodged in his throat. ‘I am not a medic, but if you want my unqualified opinion I’d say ice might be a good idea.’

‘What are you doing here, Rafael?’

Of course she knew, she had known the moment she saw him standing in the waiting area and pointed him out to Security as a dangerous-looking character.

He was here to speak on behalf of her birth mother, Angelina Castenadas.

She could think the name now, even say it out loud, and she’d had a series of long discussions with her mum. The discussions had involved a lot of tears but she felt less threatened by the situation. It definitely helped that she now believed Mum and Dad would not feel she was being disloyal if she did have contact with her birth mother.

‘Other than saving you?’

She studied his dark face hungrily, loving every strong plane and hollow. Seeing him again had made her realise that she would never be over him, she would smile, she would laugh, she would seem normal, but there would always be an empty space inside her that she knew he was meant to fill.

‘Thank you, Rafael.’

Her brow furrowed with concern she struggled to conceal. There were lines around his mouth she had not seen before, and shadows under his eyes that made them appear haunted.

Had he lost weight?

Had he been ill?

‘Who saves you when I am not around?’

‘These things only happen to me when you are.’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘Look, I can save you time and energy.’ She lowered her eyes as her composure slipped and added huskily, ‘I know why you’re here.’

He stiffened, wariness sliding into his grey eyes as he met her candid gaze.

‘You’re here to plead my birth mother… Angelina’s case.’ Maggie bit her lip. ‘I know I sent her letter back unopened, but since then… I’ve thought about it a lot and spoke with Mum and I can see that I have been unfair. I know she had reasons for giving me up and things couldn’t have turned out better for me. I have a marvellous family. I would like to meet her…later…’ She still struggled with the idea that it could be the positive experience her mum suggested, but she was willing to try.

The silence stretched.

‘I’m sure that Angelina will be pleased that you feel this way, but that is between you and her.’

‘But I thought.?’

‘I came because we had something that…it was not over.’ And until it was he would remain unable to function. ‘I want you back.’

The breath left her body in one startled gasp. ‘You want me back.’

His lifted a shoulder in an irritated shrug. ‘No, I was just passing.’ His eyes narrowed as he hissed, ‘Why else would I be here?’

‘And what I want? I suppose that is irrelevant.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.