The Argentinian's Demand

by Cathy Williams

  Her mouth went dry as he continued to stare at her with those dark, dark eyes which had never before seemed to impact on her senses the way they were doing now.

  ‘Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been working on some of those...um...deals for weeks...months...’

  Leandro broke the connection and began walking again towards Immigration, where they were waved through, and directly to the first-class lounge, where once again they were treated to the very highest levels of respect and fawning.

  She would have said that money talked, but she knew that he would have commanded the same attention if he had been broke. There was just something about the man that seemed to make people automatically obey.

  ‘And yet you won’t be seeing the conclusion of most of them. So why bother to feign interest?’

  ‘Just because I’ll be...leaving...it doesn’t mean that I’m not one hundred per cent committed to doing my utmost to...to...make sure the work gets done on them.’ She found herself sitting on a plush sofa and a waiter appeared from thin air to take orders for drinks or food—presumably whatever they wanted.

  Leandro shrugged. ‘In that case why don’t you call up the Edinburgh file on your computer and we can go through it.’

  He gave her the most polite of looks and Emily struggled to manufacture a smile in return.

  He was bored. He obviously thought that mentally she had already defected, and he could barely summon up an interest in discussing work with her. It made sense. The only reason she was tagging along on this jaunt was because he wanted to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t get up to Heaven knew what. Treason? The illegal sale of company secrets to ‘the other side’? Didn’t he know her at all after nearly two years of working with her?

  No. He didn’t. He didn’t know a thing about her. And, if she could spring an engagement on him, a fiancé lurking in the wings, then he must wonder what other surprises she might have in store?

  With less than her usual aplomb she dutifully brought up the file and was keenly aware of him shifting his big body towards her so that they could browse through the information together.

  She went through all the motions. After a lifetime of holding her emotions in check there was no tremor to her voice, nothing at all to betray her crazy jumpiness. She could feel his eyes moving from the screen to her profile and wanted to scream at him at least to do her the favour of fully concentrating—because if he didn’t then her nerves would fray just a little more at the edges.

  ‘Have you any idea how hot it will be when we land at the airport?’ he asked, when she had finished a long-winded spiel on the various obstacles that had been put in the way of the deal completion, and Emily grimaced.

  ‘I didn’t think we were discussing the weather,’ she said, which teetered precariously on the edge of being lippy—not that it mattered, considering she was practically no longer his employee and in no need of a reference.

  ‘Is the rest of your wardrobe along the lines of what you’re wearing now?’

  Emily edged away from him and snapped shut her computer, turning to return it neatly to the smart case she had brought with her.

  Why did she feel like a fool?

  For no reason she was suddenly overwhelmed by an image of herself as a woman in her twenties, buttoned up and careful, always on her guard. She could barely remember a time when she hadn’t been that way. The last boyfriend she had had—a brief six-month fling four years previously—had been an unmitigated disaster. Her inexperience had been agonising and her inherently suspicious nature had gradually seeped into the relationship, suffocating it, until they’d parted company amidst a welter of embarrassing platitudes about keeping in touch and remaining friends. They never had.

  Then she thought of the women Leandro dated: sexy, full-on women, who weren’t cocooned in a veritable fortress of self-protective defence mechanisms that would have rivalled any Victorian maiden’s chastity belt.

  What must he think of her?

  She told herself that it hardly mattered, and yet her tight mouth, silenced on everything that was in the slightest bit personal, now seemed ludicrous and childish.

  Emily drove aside that disturbing vision of herself and cleared her throat.

  ‘I...I naturally want to dress in a suitably...er...’

  ‘Restrained manner for an eight-hour flight to the Caribbean?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have felt comfortable in jeans and a tee shirt,’ she said flatly.

  A tide of colour washed up her face and she had to bite back the nervous temptation to jump into a qualifying speech when he remained looking at her in silence.

  ‘And you feel comfortable in a starchy linen suit?’

  ‘It’s practical.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  He pulled out his top-of-the-range sleek tablet and flicked it on.

  Emily interpreted that as a signal that their conversation was over. She had brought her book with her, a lightweight crime thriller, but would he launch into a sarcastic aside about her choice of reading matter if she fished it out of her handbag? So instead she extracted some material she had printed off the last day she had been at work—background reading on the holiday compound to which they were headed—and buried herself in it.

  Leandro, working his way through a series of emails from his family to which he owed replies, glanced across to where her lowered head and stiff body language were visible signs of her armour.

  What was it about this woman? And why was he suddenly so obsessed with finding out what made her tick? He wasn’t taking her to the Caribbean to remove her from possible secret-sharing with competitors. She would never do any such thing and he knew that. No. He was taking her with him because...he wanted time with her. Time in which he could indulge his sudden curiosity. Or maybe it irked him that she could just walk out on him when he needed her? Since when did women walk out on him? Even though it might be on a professional basis...

  One thing was for sure: it was going to be a hellishly long flight if they both maintained the tight-lipped silence she seemed to want.

  Attuned to her on a level that was frankly irritating, he boarded the plane, settled into his seat—a comfortable recliner that could convert into a full bed at the press of a button—and he noted with some amusement that even when all the lights had been switched off and they could do as they pleased she remained upright, reading a book which she had ferreted out of her bag.

  He reclined his seat, switched off the little reading light, debated whether to rescue her from her obvious discomfort by introducing a little light work-related banter and then decided against it.

  How, Emily thought crossly, could the man just fall asleep? On a plane?

  He was way too long for his seat, even when it was fully down, converted into a bed. She stole a sidelong glance at his averted profile. There was something vulnerable about a person when he was asleep. The lines that gave his face definition were smoothed out into peaceful tranquillity and she found herself mesmerised by the way he looked.

  He was no longer the hard-edged boss who’d so recently been threatening her with the force of his personality and the animal magnetism of his physical presence. There was a boyish handsomeness to his face that made something inside her squirm.

  She returned to her book, but found herself glancing across again and again to him, her eyes lingering on his face, then drifting down the length of his body to the broadness of his chest, the strength in his hands which were lightly clasped on his stomach, the muscular length of his legs...

  She gulped and looked away quickly, her heart thumping inside her, as she took in the obvious bulge of his crotch.

  What on earth was happening to her?

  If she had been really and truly engaged, anticipating marriage to the man of her dreams, then she knew that her thoughts would no
t be striking off at a tangent now—that she would be able to look at Leandro and not feel this unaccustomed rush of forbidden attraction. But she wasn’t really and truly engaged, was she?

  Abruptly she turned away and thought about Oliver—the guy her boss thought she was crazy about...the guy who should have been jealous and possessive of her. What a joke. Yes, she would be marrying him, but her reasons were all cynically practical.

  She needed the money and he would be her passport to that.

  * * *

  She must have drifted into a sleep of sorts, and to feel herself being shaken awake was so disorientating that she gave a little yelp of alarm and jerked forward. It took her a few seconds to register where she was. Not in her bed but on the plane, her seat still fully upright. Her heart was going like a jackhammer inside her and she could taste the remnants of her dream as it was chased away by Leandro’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her.

  Her immediate instinct to pull away fought against the lethargy of being abruptly awakened and she stared at him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She had left her linen jacket on and it had rucked up. Through the stiff fabric his hand was warm and heavy, burning a direct path to her shoulder. It acted like an anchor, weighing her down so that she felt she couldn’t move.

  ‘What the hell were you dreaming about?’

  ‘What?’

  His face was so close to hers that she could feel his warm breath fanning her cheek. His hair was tousled and he looked achingly, sinfully sexy, all rumpled and bedroom-eyed.

  ‘Dreaming,’ Leandro repeated, his hand moving from her shoulder to absently caress her neck and jawline. ‘You were dreaming, Emily.’

  ‘I woke you up. I’m sorry.’

  She could scarcely breathe. She was hyper-conscious of his hand on her face. She was certain that he barely realised what he was doing, but she was all too aware of it, and yet she found that she couldn’t budge an inch, couldn’t retreat to the safety of her own side of the seat.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he cut in impatiently.

  His eyes roved over her flushed face and lighted on her parted mouth. Immediately and without warning he felt the pain of sudden arousal. Her cheeks were pink, her hair was struggling free of its constraints and appeared to be longer than he had imagined, and her wide blue eyes were hazy with the remnants of confusion. She looked every bit the young girl she was—the girl she tried so hard to conceal beneath an icy, untouchable veneer.

  A wayward thought insinuated itself into his head. She looked sexy. Sexy and, with those parted lips, eminently kissable.

  ‘What were you dreaming about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Emily drew back and he removed his hand from her shoulder. She felt its absence in a way that disturbed her, but she kept her gaze as steady as she could on his face.

  Yes, she had been dreaming, and the dream came back to her now in jagged bits and pieces. Oliver. Actually marrying him. What that would entail. A nasty dream of dark shadows and fear. And wrapped up inside the dream had been Leandro—although now, awake, she couldn’t remember what exactly he had been doing there.

  ‘Quite an extreme reaction for a dream about nothing.’

  ‘Did I...mention anyone...?’

  Leandro stared down into her blue eyes and wondered what accounted for that wary look.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But you yelped as though you were scared.’

  ‘I’ve never been a quiet sleeper,’ Emily said truthfully, if only to explain herself.

  ‘No?’

  She hesitated and threw him a reluctant smile which he found unreasonably captivating—perhaps because it was such a rare occurrence.

  ‘I went through a period of sleepwalking when I was...younger...when I was in my early teens. Ever since then I’ve been a jumpy sleeper.’

  Leandro imagined her as a young teenager and immediately wanted to know more about her, wanted her to open up to him before she released the shutters and returned to hide behind them.

  ‘That must have driven your siblings mad,’ he murmured encouragingly.

  ‘I don’t have any siblings. I’m an only child.’ No big secret there, and yet it felt like a confidence of huge proportions.

  ‘So this marriage must be a big deal for your parents...?’

  ‘I...’

  Leandro continued to lock her with his dark eyes, making retreat from the conversation difficult.

  ‘It’s just me and my mum.’ Emily’s mouth tightened. As soul-baring went, this was as far as it was going to go—she was amazed that she had actually got to this point in the first place.

  Leandro waited and then into the deepening silence said lightly, ‘Peace and quiet...’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, as an only boy with four sisters, peace and quiet was never something I could bank on from one day to the next.’

  ‘Four sisters...?’ Emily grinned and stole a glance at him. When he raised his eyebrows and smiled at her she felt her pulse quicken and her skin prickle. Aeroplane chatter, she thought a little nervously. No harm done.

  ‘Four sisters—and they all liked experimenting with their make-up on me...’

  Emily burst out laughing and Leandro thought that she didn’t do nearly enough of that. He wondered whether her fiancé brought out that side of her—the side that would spontaneously laugh, would make her shed the look of someone carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders... And he felt a spurt of irritation towards the man...

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘Believe it.’ He grinned with wry amusement. ‘Clearly I was only four or five at the time, but I still bear the scars.’

  ‘And you didn’t develop a taste for wearing make-up in later life?’

  Leandro burst out laughing. ‘So far I can happily avoid cosmetic counters...’

  ‘Then the scars can’t have been so ingrained.’

  Their eyes tangled as they both shared the same moment of relaxed banter and for a few seconds Emily’s heart seemed to skip a beat—several beats. Her mouth went dry and there was a strange roaring in her ears.

  ‘Have you...? Have you...?’

  ‘Have I what?’

  ‘Have you...got any idea as to whether there are any last-minute things that might need doing at the hotel when we arrive...?’

  She barely recognised the breathlessness in her voice, but at least she had managed to drag the conversation back down to Planet Earth—although when he lowered his eyes and moved fractionally further back she felt herself missing that moment of warmth that had suddenly and unexpectedly ignited between them.

  Leandro wondered if she might just scrabble in her multi-purpose handbag and extract her laptop computer so that she could hide behind it.

  ‘I’ve appointed some good people to oversee all the building work. Everything should be in pristine condition when we arrive. Bar cutting a ribbon, the place should be up and running and ready for its first happy holidaymakers to arrive.’

  ‘Its first extremely wealthy holidaymakers...’

  ‘Are you telling me that you disapprove of people who have sufficient money enjoying expensive holidays abroad?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  But bitterness had found its way into her voice. There had been a time, when she was growing up, when she had been on those sorts of holidays. She could barely remember them—she had made great strides in blanking those memories out of her head—but right now they crept back in. Those holidays as a child, when she and her parents had gone to expensive hotels in expensive destinations.

  ‘No, of course I don’t,’ she said in a more normal voice. ‘After all, if your hotel is fully booked then it provides countless jobs for the locals, and I know from reading the literature that it’s all going to be eco-friendly. Th
e food will be locally sourced...everything’s been cleverly done to cause as little disturbance as possible to the natural environment...’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like a tour guide,’ Leandro said drily.

  He realised that he would miss this about her—her ability to absorb the bigger picture of any deal he undertook, to transform it into much more than a money-making exercise.

  What was she thinking...handing in that letter of resignation?

  He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration and shifted in his seat. However much he paid, there was a limit to how much space was available on an aircraft, and right now he wanted to walk about, flex his muscles—do something highly physical to counterbalance the restlessness inside him at the thought of her dumping him.

  No, he amended mentally, she wasn’t dumping him. She was moving on to greener pastures.

  It was a notion that didn’t make him feel any better. Greener pastures with some guy she could barely bring herself to mention! Was there something wrong with the man? He felt there probably was or she would have pulled out a wallet full of photos by now, however tight-lipped she was by nature.

  ‘Perhaps that might be my next job,’ Emily quipped without thinking.

  ‘So you will be getting another job after you’re hitched to this man of yours...?’

  He wondered where the time had gone. They would be landing in under an hour and he felt as though he could have carried on talking to her for another eight.

  ‘Possibly,’ Emily murmured vaguely. ‘Gosh. Is that the time? I must go to the ladies’...freshen up... I can’t believe the time’s gone so quickly! Literally flown past...!’

  Leandro scowled and watched as she slipped out of the seat. Keen eyes followed her hands as she smoothed the prissy shirt and readjusted the equally prissy jacket. She was as slender as a reed and he wondered if she worked out.