The Forbidden Cabrera Brother (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Cathy Williams

  She felt very bad about his parents, but what choice did she have?

  On the spur of the moment, she wrote a note, which she left in her bedroom, to be given to his mother, apologising for her abrupt departure and blaming work demands.

  She would have some appreciation of what that meant considering at least one of her sons had sold his soul to the workplace.

  The minute she thought of Dante, her mind began shutting down and her heart picked up pace and she had to close her eyes and breathe deeply so as not to feel faint.

  That kiss.

  There had never been anything like it in her life before. Jimmy...solid, reliable, steady Jimmy had never made her heart beat fast. She had liked him and they had fumbled around a bit but neither had had the slightest urge to take things to the ultimate conclusion.

  He’d lived with his dad and she’d been living with her parents and it was a small village where everyone knew everyone else. Renting a room in their one and only hotel would have been ridiculous.

  They would look forward to really enjoying making love when they were married, they had vaguely told one another. Actually, she wasn’t even sure they had discussed it at all, simply assumed that that would be how things worked out between them.

  Afterwards, when he had dumped her for the improbable model, she had been realistic enough to conclude that he hadn’t pushed for sex because, as much as he’d liked her, he hadn’t been attracted to her. Not really.

  She hadn’t stopped to ask herself whether she’d been attracted to him.

  She’d nursed her wounded feelings and escaped.

  Now, Dante had kissed her and it had been a thunderbolt. That was what passion felt like. That was the sort of aching and yearning that would have been impossible to ignore. She felt as though she had been sleepwalking and now she was fully awake, for better or for worse.

  The taxi driver took his time getting to the hospital. On the way, he insisted on having a long conversation with her in Spanish, even though her responses were limited to an array of vaguely interested expressions and non-committal murmuring.

  In her head, she was working out how she might get a flight back to London. Bye-bye to yet more money she didn’t have. She would just have to go to the airport with her bag in hand, get to a ticket desk and pay whatever it cost for the first flight out.

  Funny thing, she mused, hurrying into the hospital and pausing for a few seconds to get her bearings because the place was just so huge and she couldn’t seem to keep a mental tab on which lift she needed to take to get to his ward, Alejandro would have understood her dilemma.

  They would have spent hours laughing and talking about the mess she’d got herself into.

  She hit the ward and was heading towards the reception desk when she saw Dante.

  His face was grim, drawn. Given half a chance, Caitlin would have fled in the opposite direction, but two things stopped her. The first was the sight of Dante striding towards her, a man on a mission, eyes firmly pinned on her hovering figure even though he was on his phone, talking urgently to someone at the other end.

  The other was the fact that there was a commotion happening outside what seemed to be Alejandro’s room, even though it was hard to be completely sure.

  It was the latter that fired her forward and she reached Dante just as he shoved his phone back in his pocket.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Caitlin breathed, trying to peer around his body but not getting very far. ‘Is Alejandro okay? All those people... Is that his room or someone else’s?’ Her eyes were already filling up at the thought of her friend having some kind of unforeseen setback.

  ‘My brother is awake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is as if he’s been having a nap and now he’s up and ready to start the day.’

  ‘That’s...that’s amazing. I have to go and see him, talk to him...’ She took a step to the left and Dante reached out and blocked her from stepping forward with a hand on her arm.

  Caitlin froze. Her mind emptied of everything. All she could feel was the burning touch of his fingers on bare skin.

  ‘He’s going to be wheeled off for a battery of tests,’ Dante was saying, while she desperately tried to focus on something, anything, other than his hand on her arm. ‘There’s no point in you trying to get to him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ve just been on the phone to my mother and said exactly the same thing to her. As you can imagine, she is as keen to see Alejandro as you are.’

  Caitlin finally looked directly at Dante and inwardly quailed because all too clearly she could remember the inappropriate kiss that had galvanised his appalled withdrawal and damning judgement.

  Should she bury the memory and pretend that nothing had happened between them? Or bring it out into the open, get rid of the elephant in the room before it started wreaking havoc? Or did it matter anyway, considering she was planning on clearing off as soon as she got back to Dante’s house?

  The decision was taken out of her hands when Dante said, coolly and firmly, leading her away from Alejandro’s room towards the double doors back out into the main body of the hospital, ‘You and I need to have a little chat.’

  ‘About what?’ At that very moment, Caitlin decided that pretending nothing had happened was definitely going to be the best option. ‘I really think I should stick around here for a bit...see what’s happening with Alejandro before I go—’

  ‘Before you go?’ Dante pulled to an abrupt halt and stared down at her with a veiled expression.

  ‘Work is beginning to get a little impatient, Dante. I honestly can’t stay over here indefinitely. My parents are also... They’re anxious about me...’

  ‘You’re a big girl,’ Dante gritted. ‘I’m sure your parents will understand why you’ve stayed on.’

  Caitlin didn’t say anything. She had spoken to her mother the evening before and had detected the stress in her voice with a sinking heart. Her parents were clinging to their composure by the skin of their teeth and, more than ever in their lives, relying on her to steady them in stormy times.

  Soothing, long-distance conversations were just not the same as seeing them face to face, being able to have a cup of tea, to hold her mother’s hand and assure her that everything was going to be just fine.

  Her father was doing his best, but he had always been the easy-going one between the two of them and now that her mother was on the verge of cracking up, her father was fighting his own battle with low-level panic, paralysed by the fear that everything he had worked for, what little remained, would somehow be wiped out from under his feet, and plagued with guilt at the thought that he had been the one responsible for all their problems.

  How much longer could she just hang around?

  ‘Don’t tell me what my parents can or cannot understand,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m overjoyed that Alejandro has regained consciousness. I had planned on leaving later today but now I’ll see him when he’s up to visitors and I will leave for London as soon as I do afterwards.’

  Dante didn’t say anything. He had no intention of having any kind of showdown inside a hospital, so he spun round on his heels, making sure to keep his fingers firmly locked round her arm, and began leading her quickly towards the exit, ignoring the bank of lifts in favour of the stairs.

  His car, in the underground car park, was waiting for them and they made their way there in complete silence.

  There would be enough to talk about in due course, he thought.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To a café I know in the Plaza Mayor.’

  ‘But can’t you just tell me what you need to tell me right here?’ She knew what he was going to say. He was going to mention that wretched kiss. He was going to voice all the suspicions that had been playing around in his head ever since he had set eyes on her. As far as he was concerned, she
had offered up conclusive proof that he had been right to have been suspicious. He was going to call her to account and she couldn’t blame him.

  But it surely wasn’t going to be a long conversation!

  Was it even going to be a conversation at all? Or a full-frontal attack, which she would deal with by being as unresponsive as possible?

  Judging from the way she had been frogmarched to his car, she was going for the full-frontal attack.

  But at least they would not be having it at his house. At least, in the public arena, she wouldn’t feel quite so overwhelmed.

  And the Plaza was just a wonderful place, a beautiful rolling arcade ringed with stunning sepia-and pastel-coloured buildings, a tribute to history and the stunning architecture of the period.

  She might just be able to sideline his attack by absorbing her surroundings, a sort of displacement therapy.

  The café was nestled in one of the sepia-coloured shops. From the outside, it looked as though it might be on the verge of collapse. Inside, it was a marvel of modernity, with a long steel counter behind which five chic young girls catered for the needs of the most discerning of coffee drinkers and pastry consumers.

  ‘I had no idea my brother would come to when I went to see him,’ Dante opened. ‘I had to go because of what happened between us at the pool.’

  Caitlin cringed. ‘About that...’ she said faintly. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t meet those arresting dark eyes that were pinned to her face. For the first time, she wondered whether he had kissed her because he had been caught up in the moment, just as she had been, or whether he had kissed her as some kind of test to find out whether she really was the adoring fiancée she claimed to be.

  She felt sick. Her stomach churned. All her insecurities pointed her in the direction of that kiss being nothing more to him than a means to an end. Why else would a guy like Dante, a guy who could turn his back on a woman who looked like Luisa, look at her? Yes, he had said something about her being sexy, but of course he would say that to butter her up and lower her defences for the moment when he leaned into her for that kiss, testing the ground, feeling his way to the answers he had been seeking.

  ‘Yes?’ Dante enquired coolly. He sat back as his double espresso was put in front of him, the attractive waitress taking her time as she positioned the cup just so. His eyes remained fixed on Caitlin’s face, keenly noting the delicate bloom of colour in her cheeks. A guilty conscience would do that to a woman, he thought tightly.

  ‘I never meant for that to happen.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ he responded smoothly. ‘Engaged to one brother but happy to get into an intimate clinch with the other? Not exactly an example of a woman with sterling moral principles, is it?’

  Trapped by a secret that wasn’t hers to share, Caitlin could only bow her head in silence.

  She would accept the full force of his condemnation. She would be gone in a heartbeat and she would be able to put it all behind her, except she knew that that would be easier said than done. Idiot that she was, she actually cared about what he thought of her.

  Somehow, she had been incapable of locking the man away in a convenient one-dimensional box. She’d tried, but he’d broken out of it and come right at her with all those complexities that had turned him into a living, breathing, fascinating guy who had fired her up in ways she would never have dreamt possible.

  That was why she had kissed him. He stirred a crazy attraction inside her and she just hadn’t been able to resist, but she knew how it looked on the outside. Kissing him had boxed her in as a two-timing woman who was happy to fool around behind her fiancé’s back.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, without much hope of him paying a blind bit of notice to what she had to say. ‘I know what it looks like, but I’m not that kind of person.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me that. That answers all my questions.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

  ‘Then try coming at me with something a little better.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘What about the truth?’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth. I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t...’ She looked away and fell silent because there was nowhere to go with an explanation.

  ‘I told my brother about that kiss and you’ll never guess his response.’

  Caitlin was pretty sure she could.

  ‘Actually, I had no idea my conversation would prove to be the thing that would rouse my brother from his deep and peaceful sleep, but it was. I started to talk to him...’

  Dante paused and recalled the way he had felt, opening up to a sleeping Alejandro. For the first time he had felt something strong and bonding. It had been the one and only meaningful conversation he had ever had with Alejandro. The fact that Alejandro had been unconscious at the time had made it easy, had removed the inhibitions born over time.

  Dante met her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. So green, so crystal clear...so full of a disingenuous innocence that was way off mark. ‘I started to talk to him and bang. He opened his eyes and was as with it as though he’d never been dead to the world at all. Funny thing, he didn’t seem all that perturbed by what we did. I had expected some kind of forceful reaction, had braced myself for his disgust and loathing for my weakness. I didn’t get any of that. Does that surprise you?’

  Faced with that direct question, Caitlin frantically tried to compose an answer that would make sense. The truth was off the table. She stared down at her empty coffee cup and licked her lips nervously.

  ‘He’s...er...a very understanding kind of guy, as I’m sure you’d know if you’d ever taken the time to find out about him.’

  Dante could only admire her attempt to divert him from her non-answer by launching a missile at him.

  ‘Nice try but it won’t work.’

  ‘Maybe we don’t have a conventional relationship.’ Caitlin didn’t bother to ask him what he’d just meant by that because she knew.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Like a shark sensing blood, Dante felt on the verge of a revelation. If his head had temporarily been elsewhere, he was now once again committed to the task at hand. He pushed his cup to one side and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.

  ‘I know what you were trying to do when you kissed me,’ she said, swerving round his question.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘You wanted to see if I would respond. You pretended to be attracted to me, you said lots of stuff you didn’t mean, because you knew that if I responded then you would have all your suspicions confirmed. You want to push me into a corner and paint me black, but leading me on? That’s sly.’

  ‘You think I’m sly?’

  Caitlin looked at him in stony silence.

  ‘You couldn’t be further from the truth,’ he gritted brusquely. ‘I’m not a man who plays that kind of game.’ This was getting off point and he dragged his runaway thoughts back to the matter at hand.

  ‘You and Alejandro. You were telling me that what you had wasn’t a conventional relationship. Explain.’ He shifted in the seat and tried to focus. He wasn’t going to let her derail the conversation by veering off at random tangents, but he couldn’t help but admire the antics. She was a match for him and he liked that.

  ‘We were both great friends.’ She was going to have to tiptoe round all manner of minefields, but Dante wasn’t going to let up. ‘Things went from there.’

  Dante waited. Nothing further seemed forthcoming. He was very happy to play the long game, but eventually, he said, ‘You drifted into a relationship because you happened to be good friends?’ He looked at her with rampant incredulity.

  ‘Friendship is a very good basis for a relationship,’ Caitlin said defensively.

  ‘And you would have married him? He would have married you? I find that hard to belie
ve. For starters, you’re young. Why would you abandon the one thing most women seem to want? Love, passion and a belief in fairy stories about happy-ever-afters? Nor do I understand why my brother would do the same.’ But Dante knew that he had no faith in the institution of marriage. Love and fairy stories? No way. His own experience had taught him that any permanent relationship should always have a solid basis in reality. He’d fallen for the wrong woman once upon a time and his guard was permanently up. Maybe Alejandro was fashioned from the same cloth. Maybe he, too, had had an unfortunate experience that had taught him that a marriage of convenience was the way forward. Who knew?

  And his parents had been getting quite vocal on the subject of their eldest son settling down.

  Maybe he’d decided to opt for the friend knowing that he wouldn’t be troubled by a demanding or jealous woman who might end up wanting more than he was prepared to give.

  That was certainly the lens through which he, Dante, viewed relationships...

  He felt as though he was clutching at straws, but what else could explain his brother’s nonchalant reaction to what had happened at the pool between himself and Caitlin?

  But why would Caitlin have gone along?

  ‘I had a terrible experience once upon a time,’ Caitlin said softly, severing any further conclusions he might have been formulating on the subject of her and his brother. ‘I was engaged to a guy. We’d known each other for ever, and in a small village like the one I grew up in that counts for something. Getting married was expected. Except no one—not me, not Jimmy, none of our family or friends—could foresee a five-foot-ten model swanning into his life and sweeping him off his feet.’

  Reliving the moment, Caitlin realised that she felt next to nothing thinking about it now.

  ‘He felt sorry for me. That was the toughest part. I suppose everyone did. I left for London and I put men behind me. I wasn’t going to get involved with anyone ever again. Alejandro,’ she tacked on truthfully, ‘made sense.’

  ‘Well, I hate to burst the bubble, but you might have to start rethinking that scenario,’ Dante gritted. ‘Alejandro’s feathers weren’t ruffled at the thought of me kissing you. Are you happy to settle for someone who doesn’t really give a damn what you do and with whom?’