The Latin Lover

by Lucy Monroe

  She was ready for him, slick and hungry, and he fed her, inch by agonising inch, until he was buried to the hilt and could go no further. He held her there, locked in his embrace, locked as one, his feet planted wide as the waves tried to claim them. A moment to be savoured, a moment like no other. Then, with a rush like the outgoing sea, he pulled out of her. Her gasp of loss turned to one of delight as he lunged into her again.

  She was liquid in his arms, salt and surf and part of the sea, but part of him now too. And the waves crashed around them as he crashed into her, deeper and harder, searching for a sweetness that defied the salt.

  And the waves built inside him, and all around, and where she held him, in her tight embrace. And he knew the exact moment she left him, knew the instant she’d come apart, knew it and couldn’t help but follow her into the crashing foam.

  They tumbled and rolled, spluttering and laughing and still locked together, finally coming to rest breathless on the sand, the receding waves leaving them in the shallows.

  The salt was sticky on his skin, the sand felt gritty in his hair, and his skin stung where they’d grazed the sandy bottom. And yet he’d never felt better in his life.

  He wiped a tendril of hair from her face, stroking her forehead with his thumb. Her blue eyes looked up at him, her plump lips parted as her breathing calmed.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her. ‘Crazy and beautiful.’

  She looked up at him and made to say something, but then her lips stalled and turned into a smile. He wondered what it was she’d been going to say. Wondered what she’d thought better of.

  And he wondered how long he had before he had to tell her he was leaving without her.

  A few hours at most.

  And suddenly he didn’t feel good any more. The sand and grit and salt and the knowledge he’d risked everything by not using protection all combining into one irritating package. If she were pregnant with his child…

  ‘Do you still have your IUD?’

  She blinked and frowned.

  ‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘It seems you caught me, as you like to say here, with my pants down.’

  Her eyes widened as the truth dawned. ‘Oh, of course.’ She shook her head, and for just a moment he thought she was going to say she was unprotected. ‘No. It’s okay. There’s no chance.’

  And yet instead of the relief he was expecting his mood got inexplicably darker. He swiped at his sand-coated skin. ‘I have sand everywhere.’

  But she just laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck, dragging him down for a kiss. After a moment he let her. If they only had a few hours, he wasn’t going to waste them feeling bad.

  They washed in the ocean, letting the wave action work its magic in tearing the sand away, then dried off under the shade of their tree, picnicking on cold chicken and fresh tropical fruit and chilled white wine. And afterwards they lay down on the rug and watched a lone falcon perform lazy loops over the water’s edge, ever watchful for its next meal.

  The sun tracked lower, their shade moved, and she took the tube of sunscreen and squirted some into her hands, getting Alejandro to roll over. She rubbed it into his shoulders and back, her fingers trailing down his arms.

  He turned suddenly and captured both hands in his own. ‘Do you remember how we met?’ he asked.

  She looked at her hands in his and remembered the chance meeting in a café on the Costa del Sol that had exploded into an affair that very night.

  ‘It was your hands,’ he said. ‘You were beautiful enough, but you were sewing something and it was your hands that drew me to you—the way they worked, the way they moved. I knew I had to have you from that very moment.’

  He was so intense, so sincere, that it was impossible not to feel the impact of his words in the answering beat of her heart. He held out her hands, holding them palm up in his own, examining them as if searching for their secret.

  ‘They are just hands, and yet your fingers bewitched me in that very first moment. How is that possible?’

  His accent was stronger, as if he was struggling with what he had to say, struggling to express himself. His words washed over her, drenching her in a new hope. Was he bewitched? Was that the reason he’d come back for her? Was this faint hope unfurling in her heart founded in something other than just wishful thinking?

  ‘Why did you leave me?’

  The question came so softly, so unexpectedly, that she didn’t think she’d heard it right. But then she lifted her eyes to his and read the question there too.

  ‘Leah?’ he prompted. ‘Why?’

  Her heart was thumping so loudly it drowned out the sound of the seabirds and the crashing surf. As it drowned out the tiny voice in her head that told her not to be foolish enough to admit the truth. Besides, she told herself, if she couldn’t tell him on this special day, after all they’d done and all they’d shared, she could never tell him.

  ‘Because I fell in love with you.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS clearly the wrong answer. He stared at her for a moment too long—the same moment in which she realised her mistake. Then he let her hands fall as he suddenly rose, looking skywards to the sun before searching about for his clothes. ‘It’s time we were leaving.’

  ‘Alejandro?’

  ‘Get dressed! It’s time to go.’

  She sat there, too stunned to react, unable to assimilate the sudden change from caring to cold. She’d thought that today she’d seen a glimmer of something in him, sensed the tiniest spark of something deeper than mere desire. She’d opened her mouth and told him the truth, and she’d ruined everything.

  What the hell had she done?

  In the time she took to don her bikini and shorts and locate her sandals Alejandro had stashed the remains of their picnic away and swept up and shaken the sand from the rug. He threw his towel over his shoulder. ‘Ready?’

  She grabbed her things and stumbled after him along the beach. ‘You did ask,’ she protested. ‘Why did you ask if you didn’t want to know?’

  He didn’t answer. Because he didn’t know why he’d asked or what had prompted him. The question had emerged from his mouth fully formed. He only knew that never in a million years had he been expecting her to say what she had. If she’d said she’d had enough of the sex, if she’d said she was sick of the hours he worked or was homesick for Sydney, those reasons he could have coped with. He might not have believed her, but those reasons he would have understood. Those reasons would justify what he had to do.

  But for her to say that she’d walked out on him because she’d fallen in love with him? It made no sense. No sense at all.

  ‘What does it matter why I left?’ he heard her cry out behind him. ‘Sooner or later you would have grown tired of me anyway and cast me off. You would have traded me in for another model as easily as you’d trade a car.’

  He spun around. ‘That was my decision to make!’

  She stopped following him, her eyes sheened with moisture. ‘Can’t you just forget I said anything?’

  How he wanted to. He turned and crashed his way along the path, scattering birds and butterflies, sending them for cover, and all the time wishing he could forget. But how could he forget those words and how they’d sounded? And how could he forget the look in her eyes when she’d told him?

  She’d fallen in love with him and then she’d walked out on him. And now he had forced his way back into her life so he could take his turn and leave her high and dry. If he dumped her now she’d think it was because she’d admitted falling in love with him.

  It shouldn’t matter!

  But for some reason it did.

  He’d wanted to get even with her. Had hungered for it. But he’d never expected that getting what he wanted might ultimately taste this bad.

  Mierda! What a mess.

  The tide was higher when they reached the dinghy, the tiny beach all but covered, and the wind was up, turning the waters of the passage bumpy. He stashed the basket a
nd towels away and untied the boat, telling Leah over his shoulder to jump in as he pushed it out. He wouldn’t look at her. He couldn’t. Not if it meant looking into those eyes again.

  But once inside the boat he had no choice.

  She sat there, her hands planted firmly on the bench either side of her, her jaw set, her hair twisted into some kind of quick-fix hairdo that looked as if it was about to come undone at any minute. He pulled hard on the oars, using the exercise for therapy, wishing the pain in his muscles would overshadow the pain in his twisted gut, wishing that the creak of the oars in the gates would blot out the sound of her words playing over and over in his head. “Because I fell in love with you.”

  She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him. That had never been part of their arrangement. She’d been just another in his long line of women companions, with a similar list of necessary attributes.

  She was beautiful.

  Convenient.

  And, best of all, temporary.

  The blades dug deep as the swell caught them, the boat lurched and tilted, but still she sat there, unflinching.

  She’d been too temporary. Why couldn’t she have waited until he was finished with her? It would have happened. It always had before.

  Until Leah.

  The injustice grated on his senses. He hadn’t had time to grow tired of her. She’d left him before he was ready to let her go. And now he had forced himself into that very same position of losing her once again before he was ready. But this time the circumstances were entirely of his own making.

  It was more than a mess. It was a nightmare.

  He glanced over his shoulder, checking his direction, noting that the launch was back and disgorging its passengers. Good. They would be long gone by the time he made it back. He didn’t want to talk to anyone now.

  He leaned forward, ready to dig in with another stroke, but this time it was the words of his old rowing coach he heard, and once again he was eighteen, his muscles screaming and cramping with pain, his gut lurching in rebellion as he sat in the stroke seat of the eight. The coach had followed them in his motorboat, issuing instructions to their coxswain and driving them on, further and further, as they raced towards some imaginary finish line he’d promised them. Ten more strokes. Then another twenty. Up the rating. Dig deeper. Harder. And with lungs bursting, muscles burning up, they’d kept up the pressure and pushed through the imaginary line.

  “Dig those blades in,’ he’d yelled through his loudspeaker. ‘Never stop rowing until you cross that finish line. Until then the race isn’t over.”

  In all his years at university it had been the best advice he’d received. In all the years since it had served him well. Because of that coach he’d set his targets way beyond everyone else’s and kept on rowing, kept on working towards winning the entire length. The lesson had paid dividends through all the years since he’d taken over the running of Casino de Diamante. He was always looking for the extra mileage that could take him further, seeing the competition falter far behind.

  He dug the blades into the choppy water and dug down into himself, looking for reserves, seeking new sources of strength. The finish line was out there somewhere. There had to be a way to get there if he only dug deeper.

  This race wasn’t over yet.

  Leah felt empty. Where earlier her heart had been so full, now there was nothing but a raw, gaping hole, left all the emptier for the joy that their blissful afternoon together had generated. Joy that in the blink of an eye had somehow turned to grief.

  And she’d done it. She had nobody else to blame. She’d opened up her heart and she’d let him rip it right out of her.

  But how could she ever have seriously imagined that Alejandro would react to her confession in any other way? He was the head of one of the most prestigious and well-respected casino businesses in Europe, a ruthless businessman used to mixing it with the best. Whereas she was just a lowly dressmaker, scraping out an existence in the suburbs of Sydney, trying and not succeeding very well to keep her wayward brother out of trouble.

  She’d known her love was wasted months ago, and she’d walked away rather than admit she’d lost her heart to him. Why had she been so foolish as to think anything had changed now? Because with a few smiles and some easy banter he’d seemed different from the man who had stormed his way into her shop and back into her life, demanding she return to his bed in exchange for rescuing her brother? The sun must have truly fried her brain today.

  For he was the same man.

  Right now he sat there like a man on a mission, powering the small dinghy through the choppy water, his expression brooding, his eyes impenetrable, closed off. Clearly he couldn’t wait to get to the other side, to get away from her as fast as he could.

  Who could blame him? Discovering that the woman you’d taken to be your temporary bed companion has been harbouring secret wishes and desires must be every man’s nightmare.

  There was no way he would want her to stay now, regardless of the deal he’d brokered to get her back. He’d heard enough; he’d want to be done with her as quickly as possible.

  Which suited her right down to the ground.

  He steered the boat towards the jetty, pulling in the nearside oar as the dinghy bumped alongside. Two of the crew from the launch met them, pulling the boat in and keeping it steady, offering his sullen passenger a hand out. She took it, stepping onto the jetty as if she couldn’t wait to be gone. Fine.

  But a second later, after he’d thrown a hasty instruction to the crew to take care of their things, he noticed her walking down the jetty, her back ramrod-straight. He stiffened, the blood thickening in his veins. He’d seen that walk once before.

  ‘Leah!’

  She hesitated the merest fraction of a second, but she didn’t turn around, she kept right on going.

  He caught up with her where the jetty met the beach. He took her arm and spun her around. ‘Where are you going?’

  Her eyes shone back at him, glacial blue, cold and unyielding. ‘Where do you think I’m going? I need a shower. And then…’ She jagged up her chin. ‘Then I need to pack.’

  Something wild and angry surged inside him. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  Her eyes turned momentarily colder before she sighed and they changed, softening, a sudden sadness filtering their blue. ‘Release me,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t belong here—in your world. Let me go home.’

  ‘No!’ he roared, the beast inside him clamouring for release.

  She put a hand over his where he clung to her arm, prising his fingers loose and letting his hand drop away. ‘You don’t want me. Not now. You haven’t ever really wanted me. Please let me go. I’ll find a way to repay you for Jordan’s debt. I’ll pay you back every last cent.’

  ‘I don’t care about the money!’

  She smiled. ‘No. But I do. You saved my brother from financial ruin. And, considering the sharks he was swimming with, you might well have saved his life. I have to find some way to repay you.’

  ‘That’s not what I want!’ On that one point he was clear. He didn’t care about the money, didn’t care about being repaid. But as to what he wanted…The blood was pumping through his body, thumping at his temples, the creature inside him struggling in turmoil. None of it made sense. Nothing was clear.

  She smiled then, a little sadly. ‘I guess we can’t always have what we want. If you give me half an hour I’ll clear my gear out of the apartment and be gone before you get back.’

  And out of the tumult, out of the confusion of his thoughts and the mayhem of his mind, one thing was crystal-clear. He could not let her go. He could not lose her again. ‘No. You can’t do that. You can’t move the finish line. It’s not over—’

  ‘Goodbye, Alejandro.’

  She turned and walked away. And something inside him snapped. At first it was the same thing that had happened the first time she’d left him—the same anger, the same fury. But then it was different. This was a pain that felt as if
his chest had been ripped open, the beast tearing its way out from the inside, arranging words and thoughts into new ways—ways that he could understand, words that told him more of the things he didn’t want and didn’t need, more of the things he did.

  And it was all so obvious. Why hadn’t he seen it before? He didn’t want to go back to Spain alone. He didn’t want to marry Francesca de la Renta or anyone like her. He didn’t care about her, and he didn’t care about spawning a dynasty.

  Because he cared about Leah.

  She was all that mattered.

  Because he loved her.

  Anguish followed the revelation. Anguish that he could have treated her so cruelly, that he had trampled on her honest declaration, that she might once again leave him.

  ‘You can’t go,’ he called as she walked away. ‘You can’t leave me—not like this.’

  His voice fractured on the last word and she stopped, taking her own sweet time before she turned around, a time that felt to him like an eternity.

  Even across the metres that separated them he saw the moisture sheening her eyes, the tears clumping her lashes, and his heart squeezed tight. He knew that he had done this to her, was determined that he would do all in his power to make things right. Starting now. He took a deep breath and, for the first time since arriving in Australia, knew he was telling the truth.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  She blinked, her blurry vision now seeming to affect her hearing too. ‘What did you say?’

  He walked up to her, the tails of his white shirt flapping in the breeze and his salt-stuck hair making him look more of a pirate than ever. ‘I said, I love you.’

  She shook her head, not believing, too afraid to encourage the answering call, the tiny quaking tremble inside that signalled the return of her heart.

  ‘You can’t love me. I’m just a nobody. You don’t want me to love you.’

  ‘I can’t lose you again,’ he said, taking her hands. ‘I don’t ever want you to leave me. Marry me. Come back to Spain as my fiancée.’