by Kim Lawrence
‘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 t
o 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 class-mates.
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?