The Forbidden Cabrera Brother (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Cathy Williams

  He hardened, felt that ache in his groin. He wondered whether coming down here had been the best of ideas. Maybe not.

  ‘It’s a hot day,’ he muttered roughly, turning away to strip off the tee shirt and then diving with fluid grace into the pool, only to surface and shake his head before raking his fingers through his wet hair.

  Caitlin edged back in the water. ‘I wouldn’t normally have come in...but...’

  ‘Don’t apologise, Caitlin. I’m glad it’s being used. It’s maintained twice weekly and yet so seldom used that I can’t imagine why I had it put in in the first place.’

  She could feel her cheeks burning. She was very much aware of him barely clothed, his body so close to hers that she could reach out and touch him with no effort at all.

  He was so beautiful.

  Seeing him here, bare-chested, she realised that, somewhere deep in her subconscious, she had wondered what he might look like underneath his expensive gear.

  He lived up to expectation. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, his torso the right side of muscular. There was a strength to his physique that made her think that he could pick her up one-handed and not feel the strain.

  Plus, he wasn’t asking those questions, those vaguely pointed questions that always made her so uncomfortable and guarded and on the defensive.

  He was being nice.

  ‘Why did you, in that case?’ she asked, looking at him briefly, eyes locking, before spinning away and swimming towards the shallow end of the pool because all of a sudden she had to escape the stranglehold of his presence.

  He followed her. He covered the length of the pool in slow, lazy strokes and somehow ended up by her side without looking as though he’d expended any energy at all.

  ‘I had the entire place renovated when I bought it years ago.’ He picked up the conversation where he had left off, as though there had been no interruption. ‘The architect and designer at the time both agreed that a swimming pool would be an asset.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s very ornamental.’

  ‘But as you say, if it’s not used...’

  ‘Maybe somewhere, at the back of my mind, I had high hopes of using it now and again.’ He smiled ruefully and a tingle of heated awareness shot through her body, making her fidgety and uncomfortable.

  ‘But then what happened?’

  ‘Really want to know?’

  Caitlin nodded. She was uncomfortable with the conversation because it felt strangely intimate, and yet she wasn’t sure why she should feel uncomfortable because they weren’t sharing secrets and he wasn’t telling her anything he probably hadn’t told lots of people who might have asked the same question she had. And yet...

  ‘I never seemed to find the time. Alejandro went to London but here, in Madrid—this is the heartbeat of the company, and not just the family business, but all the other networks I have subsequently developed on my own. The heart never stops beating and I am in the centre of it. Finding time to use this pool became an empty wish.’

  ‘You sound trapped,’ Caitlin mused, looking at him with empathy before turning away to sit on the step. ‘I always got the impression that there was nothing you enjoyed more than working.’

  Dante lowered his eyes, his lush, sooty lashes brushing his high cheekbones. He seldom, if ever, had conversations like this with any woman but he was enjoying talking to her, enjoying her calm intelligence, her refusal to kowtow to him and, most of all, the fact that she wasn’t flirting with him, doing her utmost to grab his attention by flaunting her assets.

  She wouldn’t be, though, would she? She was engaged to his brother. It was a reminder that was grudgingly acknowledged. She didn’t act like someone who was engaged, but why did he constantly catch himself overlooking it? Was it a Freudian slip? Since when was he the sort of man who suffered from such weaknesses? After that one and only youthful error of judgement, from which lessons had been learnt, he had led a gilded life, where success after success had made him untouchable and given him an unshakeable confidence in his ability to control his destiny, so he was ill at ease with the fact that there were gaps in his armour he had never suspected.

  ‘I’m far from trapped.’ Was he, though? For one piercing second he envied the freedoms his brother enjoyed. He had an easy show to run, working in an office that was so well oiled he was barely needed at all, free to pursue just the sort of interests that had brought him into contact with the woman sitting next to Dante. He wondered whether there was a low-level, unconscious resentment that had fuelled the distance between himself and Alejandro.

  Had he taken time to explore that possibility, was there a chance the chasm between them might have been bridged? And how was it that a stranger had been the one to propel him towards realisations he had barely acknowledged?

  Caitlin shrugged and looked away. She was so intensely aware of him and the potency of his masculine appeal that she could scarcely keep her thoughts straight. She didn’t trust herself to have the normal, inoffensive conversation the situation required.

  Dante was finding her lack of interest in pursuing that tiny morsel of information thrown to her oddly annoying.

  ‘And you?’ he asked gruffly, shifting uncomfortably because he couldn’t seem to look at the woman without his body misbehaving.

  ‘What about me?’ Caitlin raised her eyebrows with a slight frown.

  ‘Do you feel trapped in the road you’re going down? What’s life like for you and my brother? What do you do together?’

  Caitlin blushed. What do good pals do, she wanted to put to him, except hang out together, listen to each other’s woes, meet up as part of a group...?

  The charade stuck in her throat and for a few seconds she didn’t say anything, but he was watching her, waiting for a response, and so she said, eventually, ‘The usual.’

  ‘The usual? What’s that? Tell me?’

  ‘What do you usually do with someone you’re going out with?’ Caitlin threw the question back at him, flustered.

  ‘I wine them, I dine them, I shower them with whatever they want...’

  ‘And then you dump them?’ Caitlin was thinking of Luisa, the desperate yearning in her eyes when she had looked at him at the engagement party and the vicious jealousy when she had seen them together at the hospital, chatting. Was that how he handled all the women he dated?

  Caitlin took a deep breath. The hot sun made her feel reckless and daring. The intimacy that was sending shivers up and down her spine was unfurling something dangerous inside her and suddenly she was fed up of tiptoeing around the danger. If the shark was going to attack, then why not weather the attack now?

  ‘You’re suspicious of me, aren’t you? You think I’m after his money.’

  ‘And if I am?’

  ‘I don’t know why you would be. What have I done to deserve your mistrust?’

  If she cleared the air, then maybe he would back off. She didn’t have to lie. She just had to be tactful. He couldn’t very well call her a downright liar, could he? And if he was forced to tell her why he was suspicious, then she might be able to fudge her way through a few answers that might just satisfy him. She wouldn’t be here for ever. A few days of peace was all she was after.

  ‘I just can’t picture the two of you together, as an item,’ Dante murmured softly.

  Caitlin thought of the leggy Luisa and she stiffened at the implied insult.

  ‘I suppose you think I should be more like that ex-girlfriend of yours?’ she said coldly. ‘I suppose that, because that’s the sort of woman you like dating, it’s only to be expected that Alejandro should follow the same pattern? The last sort of woman he would ever go for would be someone like Luisa, even if, in your opinion, that would be the sort of woman you might be able to picture with him. As an item.’

  Dante raised both eyebrows and there was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Are you insecure about the
way you look?’ he asked lazily, and if Caitlin could have gone any redder, she would have.

  ‘Of course not!’ She whipped her head away and stared out at the marvellous vista, not really seeing any of it but instead conjuring up an unflattering picture of herself alongside Luisa. She thought of the woman her ex-boyfriend had fallen for and hated herself for returning to that unfortunate place, which she’d thought she had left behind. She thought of all those leggy beauties next to whom she knew she often came up short in the eyes of the opposite sex. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and she took a deep breath, refusing to give in to the weak temptation to feel sorry for herself.

  ‘Because you shouldn’t be.’ The words left Dante’s mouth, a silky murmur that was as dangerous as a dark incoming tide. ‘The likes of Luisa Sofia Moore can’t hold a candle to you.’

  He raked his fingers through his hair. He’d broken eye contact but he was still alive to her warmth, the feel of her next to him.

  ‘It’s not just about how you look,’ he breathed, reluctantly turning back to her, ensnared by the pure crystal green of her eyes. ‘So why is he with you? That’s what I find so puzzling. You’re not background, Caitlin. You might not stalk into a room like Luisa, but you still know how to make your voice heard. Nobody has ever talked to me the way you have. So, you and my brother, Alejandro, who has never been known to say boo to a goose? No. I’m just not getting it.’

  Caitlin didn’t say anything and, into the silence, Dante continued roughly.

  ‘Me,’ he breathed, ‘I’m the sort of man who could handle you. Not my brother.’

  Those words hung in the air between them and then he leaned forward and so did she, without even realising it.

  Her body moved of its own volition. A fractional movement. Her eyes closed drowsily and there was a buzzing in her ears as his mouth hit hers, hard and hungry and demanding. His fingers curled into her hair and she didn’t want to, knew she shouldn’t, but she returned that devouring kiss as though her life depended on it and then, just like that, he was pulling back.

  She looked at him, horrified.

  ‘If I had any questions,’ Dante said in a flat, hard voice, ‘trust me, they have now been answered.’

  With which he vaulted out of the water, his bronzed muscular body glimmering with droplets that glistened in the glare of the sun, while she remained frozen in place, like a block of ice.

  Watching and barely breathing as he walked away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DANTE DIDN’T KNOW who repelled him more. Himself, for his lack of control that had propelled him into crossing lines that should never have been crossed, or her, for crossing those lines with him when she was engaged to his brother.

  He didn’t glance back as he strode away from the pool back towards the house.

  All those questions that had been buzzing in his head ever since he had found out who she was now raged inside him, an angry swarm searching for answers.

  Work.

  He would bury himself in his work because that always did the trick. He hadn’t made it to the house before he realised that no amount of work was going to do the trick this time. He didn’t know what Caitlin was doing. He didn’t want to know. His mouth still burned from where her cool lips had opened beneath his and so, much to his rage, did his body.

  He’d never responded to any woman the way he’d responded to her.

  Was it because she was off limits? Maybe there was some deeply buried need to take what belonged to his brother. Was that it? Dante didn’t think so. He had never wanted anything Alejandro had possessed. In fact he had no idea what women his brother had dated in the past, but he was quite sure he would never have dreamt of lusting after any of them. It just wasn’t in his nature. He’d never lusted after any man’s woman in his life before. Hadn’t come close. He was a red-blooded male with a healthy libido and he enjoyed the pleasure of sex but, even in that faraway place where mistakes had been made, he couldn’t recall having experienced this fury of attraction that wiped out everything in its path.

  What the hell was going on here?

  He dressed fast, shrugging out of his swimming trunks, replacing them with jeans and the first tee shirt that came to hand, and then back out he went, to his car, which was parked at an angle in the courtyard.

  Where the hell was she? He hated himself for even wondering.

  He arrived at the hospital with no idea where he was going with this, but he had a driving need to confront his brother, which was ridiculous given the fact that Alejandro was dead to the world.

  Dante had kissed her. She’d kissed him right back. No coercion on his part! She’d melted in his arms and he had enjoyed every second of it. He just had to think about the piercing sweetness of her mouth, the way her soft, small, luscious body had curved towards him, and he could feel the stirring of an erection. Her clear green eyes, as they had fastened on him with smouldering hunger, had woken a sleeping monster in him he hadn’t known existed.

  Dante was rarely confounded by anything or anyone, but he was confounded now.

  The hospital was quiet as he made his way to his brother’s ward. They knew him at the desk so, when he nodded at the little cluster of nurses and medics chatting by the reception desk, they smiled and gave him the go-ahead to enter the room.

  He was going to have to tell Alejandro what had happened. He was going to have to find answers to the questions rolling around in his head. He was going to have to try to find out what, exactly, was going on.

  He had no idea how he was going to accomplish this because his brother wasn’t going to be answering anything any time soon, but he had to get things off his chest.

  Dante pushed open the door and let it swing on quiet hinges behind him, then he pulled one of the visitor chairs next to the bed and looked at his brother.

  Now that everything had been stabilised, Alejandro could have been peacefully sleeping. His breathing was gentle and even.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Dante began.

  He smiled at the incongruity of the statement, then the smile disappeared and he thought, out of the blue, when had he ever said that to his brother? When had he ever met up with him just so that they could talk? About everything and nothing? Without a sense of duty hanging over both their heads, aware only that, as brothers, meeting up now and again, however uncomfortable, was just something they should do?

  ‘Something has happened, Alejandro...’ He structured his thoughts. Caitlin’s image popped into his head, and he gritted his teeth together because never had his body been so relentlessly disobedient. How was he going to break this to his brother? Was it even right to try? He couldn’t be sure that Alejandro would hear a word he said and, even if he did, who knew whether he would remember any of the conversation?

  Many of Dante’s doubts stemmed from his interaction with Caitlin. He had listened and watched and everything inside him had questioned the relationship she was purporting to have with Alejandro. Her reaction to Dante earlier by the pool...that kiss...was just the icing on the cake.

  She wasn’t some besotted lover, starry-eyed over his brother, counting down until the wedding bells began ringing.

  Nor did his brother seem to be head over heels, like a swooning hero in a fairy tale.

  But what if he was wrong about Alejandro? It wasn’t as though he knew how his brother thought. It wasn’t as though they had the sort of bond that might allow him any insight into what went on in Alejandro’s head and in his heart.

  Was Dante willing to say what he had to say, to risk Alejandro taking everything in under that serene lack of consciousness and remember that the woman to whom he was engaged was not what she seemed?

  Was Dante willing to break his brother’s heart?

  His jaw clenched. This sort of truth, he thought, was worth imparting. He wished to God someone had saved him months of pointless infatuation with
a woman who had turned out to be as pure as mud, by setting him straight at the very outset.

  Haltingly, expecting nothing in response, he began to explain.

  Alejandro would sleep through it all. Dante was one hundred per cent certain on that point.

  He was, however, wrong.

  It took ages for Caitlin to get her act together because he had kissed her...no, they had shared that kiss...and everything inside her had gone into free fall.

  She had felt his mouth on hers long after he’d disappeared back into the house and it was only when he’d gone that her brain had begun functioning and she’d remembered, with sickening horror, what he had flung at her when he’d walked off.

  If he’d had any questions, then they’d been answered.

  You didn’t have to be a genius to get the drift. She’d kissed him and the sham of her relationship with Alejandro had been revealed. In a handful of seconds, she had done the one thing she’d been determined not to do. She’d given the game away. Nor could she now be honest. How could she? Alejandro’s secret was his to reveal, so she would have to accept that Dante would now see her as the worst possible candidate for the role of his brother’s fiancée.

  She hurried back to her bedroom, fearful that she might bump into Dante somewhere in the house, but she didn’t. Just in case, however, she dressed quickly, and called a taxi to take her to the hospital. While she waited for it to arrive, she remained locked in her bedroom.

  She had no idea what was going to happen next, but, playing it out roughly in her head, it involved her going to see Alejandro, where she would just have to explain what had happened and tell him, whether he could hear her or not, that she had no option but to return to London.

  She could always leave a text on his mobile phone and he would pick it up as soon as he came to, and, naturally, she would phone the hospital daily, but leaving was her only option when the alternative was to run slap bang into Dante at some unspecified time in the future.