The Argentinian's Demand

by Cathy Williams

Of course she had denied any such thing vigorously. She had schooled her features into a mask of disdain. She had reminded him that she had been his secretary for nearly two years, so how, she had asked pointedly, had he only now reached such a ridiculous conclusion? She had informed him coolly that the hot weather must have gone to his head.

  Then she had taken refuge in the sea, putting her limited swimming skills to the test and striking out until she’d realised that if she didn’t swim back to shore he would probably do something insane, like try and rescue her yet again.

  The thought of those strong arms around her had almost made her lose her stride.

  He had pulled back the curtain and revealed the monster. The sexual attraction she had been feeling—the one she had tried desperately to conceal—had been exposed and held up for inspection, and even though he had politely allowed the matter to drop she knew that his conclusions had not changed.

  They might just as well not have bothered with the trip round the island. She had barely been able to notice a thing. The delicious lunch, eaten in the charming miniature botanical gardens, surrounded by wildly colourful flowers and the sound of birds and insects, had been wasted on her. She had brought her phone with her, thinking that she would capture some of the sights, but in fact she hadn’t taken a single picture.

  She had been too busy thinking about what he had said and feverishly agonising about the myriad ways he could make the rest of her stay uncomfortable.

  She now longed for the safety of those London office walls. She wished that she had avoided this wretched overseas situation by fabricating some kind of clever excuse.

  Failing that...

  She looked at her reflection and saw, despite the tumultuous churning in her head, the image of a relaxed young woman nothing at all like the expressionless personal assistant who had made a virtue out of being impassive, remote and professional.

  She had caught the sun. Despite frequent applications of sunblock her skin was lightly tanned and satin-smooth. Her already fair hair was dazzlingly blonde, lightened by the sun. Forced into summer clothes, her body seemed more exposed than she could ever remember noticing.

  She should have been getting a tan for the guy waiting for her back home, but instead she was caught up fighting emotions that had no place in her life, and being apprehensive that somehow those emotions, which she could barely quantify, would take on a life of their own and start demanding attention she couldn’t afford to give them.

  She would have to return to the topic, like it or not, and dispatch it with a version of the truth—just enough to ensure that things returned to normal. Or as normal as was possible while they were trapped here on Paradise.

  * * *

  She left it as late as possible to join Leandro for dinner. The photo shoot had taken place and she knew that he had been booked for a personal interview and a series of pictures to accompany the article. The last thing she wanted was to be involved and have her picture taken. The entire crew would be staying the night on the hotel compound, sampling the rooms, but an offshore boat had been laid on for them so that they could enjoy dinner out at sea.

  Emily thought that they must have fought to get the dream job of a lifetime on this photography stint.

  Running nearly an hour late, she found him nursing a drink at the bar, and she faltered before taking a deep breath and walking confidently towards him.

  ‘Am I supposed to consider this fashionably late?’ Leandro enquired when she was standing next to him.

  She still couldn’t quite get used to not seeing him in a suit. Every time she laid eyes on his bare brown arms, his muscular legs, that glimpse of chest visible behind the casual shirt with the top buttons undone, she felt the force of impact anew.

  No different now. He was, thankfully, in a pair of long, cool khaki trousers and a dull blue polo shirt, loafers without socks.

  ‘I fell asleep and didn’t wake up in time,’ Emily lied.

  ‘You’ve caught the sun.’ He beckoned across a waiter and ordered a bottle of wine. ‘I thought we could try somewhere different tonight. One of the restaurants in the town.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here,’ Emily interjected quickly, because the thought of yet more unchaperoned time with him was the last thing she wanted. ‘I’m feeling a little too tired for going out again...’

  ‘Despite the long sleep?’

  He marvelled that away from the grey London skies and the impersonal office setting she could have undergone such a dramatic change. The severe hairstyles had all but been abandoned. Instead of her habitual bun she had braided her long vanilla-blonde hair into a loose plait which was draped over one shoulder and tied at the end with a scruffy red elastic band. Devoid of all but the most basic make-up, and wearing no jewellery whatsoever, she still managed to look classier and more tempting than any of the heavily adorned women he was accustomed to dating.

  Her dress was a silky flowered shift which exposed as little as possible and yet still managed to get his imagination going.

  And that was without thinking back to how she had looked in that unadventurous swimsuit! All long limbs and ballet dancer grace...

  He felt the push of an erection and forced it away with difficulty.

  ‘The sun tires me out,’ Emily told him vaguely. ‘I think I’d spend half my time in bed if I lived over here.’

  ‘Interesting thought.’

  Their eyes tangled briefly and she looked away, flushing. There she went again, she thought with annoyance, rising to a bait she wasn’t even sure he had consciously planted. Proving to him that what he had said about the whole attraction thing was true. An indifferent woman didn’t blush whenever there was the slightest bit of innuendo behind a remark!

  If she had been with her previous boss, a fatherly type in his sixties, she would not be trying to fight down the colour invading her cheeks and staring at the bartender with the desperation of a drowning swimmer searching for a life belt in open water.

  ‘How did the photo shoot go?’

  ‘You missed the post-shoot excitement,’ Leandro said drily. ‘Drinks on the house nearly put paid to their boat trip out to sea. I asked the skipper to make sure the crew kept an eagle eye on the lot of them. Man overboard! is not what I want to hear drifting across the water while we’re in the middle of our meal.’

  Emily smiled reluctantly and cradled the wine in her hand. She allowed herself to be amused by his rendition of the photographer who had tried to get him into various artificial poses, and the journalist covering the feature, who had stumbled over her words and asked him the same question several times.

  By the time their starters had been brought to them—casual hors d’oeuvres, because neither of them had the appetite for anything more substantial—they had moved on to a more serious conversation about the effect the article would have on business and then to the wider topic of the effects of tourism in small, undiscovered places.

  Even talking shop, she was aware of him in ways she had never been before—or had never thought she had been before.

  Almost without her being aware of it, her eyes took in the smallest changes in his expression, the movement of his hands as he lifted the wineglass to his mouth, the way he had of leaning back in the chair, half smiling, head tilted to one side, listening to her when she said something...

  Leandro was beginning to find the work chat tiresome. So many other areas of conversation were up for grabs.

  ‘There’s something I feel I ought to tell you,’ Emily began uncomfortably when the wooden board with their starters had been cleared away and there was a lull in the conversation.

  ‘I’m all ears.’ Leandro sat forward and looked at her with dark intent. ‘Of course if it involves an animated discussion of world events, then I might find my attention drifting...’

  ‘It’s always interesting to t
alk about what’s happening in the world,’ Emily said. She looked to find, with some surprise, that she had finished her glass of wine and, following the direction of her eyes, Leandro leaned across to pour her a refill.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ she murmured, acquiescing.

  ‘Because you might trip again? I might enjoy coming to the rescue... I did last time...’

  There was no mistaking the flirtatious innuendo even though his face was perfectly serious, as was his voice.

  ‘I’m not the sort of woman who has time for knights in shining armour,’ Emily told him crisply, but she couldn’t meet his eyes and instead chose to focus on the attractive displays of hibiscus flowers that dotted the bar counter. ‘And I happen to find world events fascinating. I guess, from what you’re saying, it’s not the sort of thing you like talking about with the opposite sex!’

  ‘I can’t say I have known many of them who would have had the remotest clue as to what was happening outside their immediate range of vision.’ Leandro raised his eyebrows with wry amusement. ‘So what you’re telling me is that the boyfriend isn’t your knight in shining armour?’

  ‘I understand why you’re curious about my...my situation...’ Emily mumbled. ‘I know you think that I should be more...excited...about the whole getting married thing...’

  ‘Ah...’ Leandro settled back and waited for her to continue. ‘It all seems a bit sudden,’ he prompted as the silence lengthened.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see their food being brought over to them with all the smiling enthusiasm he had taken note of over the past few days. It couldn’t be happening at a worse time. He didn’t want her to retreat behind any more banalities about the state of the world.

  Restlessly he waited as platters of food were placed in front of them. Fresh fish, plantain, plates of local sweet potatoes, yam and aubergine.

  ‘You were saying...?’ He resumed the conversation when the waiter had faded away. He was keenly aware of her deliberate attempt to avoid catching his eye. Curiosity ripped through him—not a mild stirring of interest, but a sharp, biting feeling that raced through his veins like a shot of pure adrenaline.

  ‘Oliver and I go back a long way...’ She cleared her throat, focusing on how she could placate his inquisitiveness with just enough of an explanation. ‘I mean, he’s been abroad working, but when he returned we picked things up...’

  ‘Picked what up? Hot sex?’

  ‘We don’t all see sex as an answer to everything.’

  ‘I’m curious as to why you’re with the man.’

  ‘It’s something of an arrangement,’ Emily told him, without inflection in her voice. ‘Something that suits us both. We get along fine with one another...’

  ‘You’re marrying for convenience because you “get along”? There must be more to it than that.’

  ‘I’m not into romance,’ she said with a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘I’m into...security...’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘There are no more explanations, Leandro,’ she told him pleadingly. ‘I’m your secretary. I don’t have to answer these questions, but I’m doing it because I know you’re curious and I know what you’re like. You won’t give up and we’re stuck here...’

  She concentrated on the food on her plate and felt his eyes on her, burning a hole straight to the deepest part of her where her thoughts were hidden.

  ‘So what do we do about this situation?’ Leandro drawled, closing his knife and fork on yet another fantastic meal.

  ‘Well, I will, of course, carry on working for you until my notice is up. I’ll try and source my replacement before I leave, obviously, but if I can’t find anyone you’re satisfied with, then I’m going to leave anyway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way!’ He spread wide his arms in a gesture of magnanimous generosity. ‘Let’s go for a walk on the beach.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s an exquisite night. Do you hear the insects just above the sound of the water lapping on the shore?’ He allowed her a few seconds to appreciate the imagery. He hadn’t been aware that he had such a poetic streak to his personality.

  ‘A—a walk?’ Emily stammered.

  ‘Or a dip in the sea. There’s something special about swimming at night.’

  ‘I definitely won’t be doing that!’ Emily said, horrified at the idea.

  ‘That’s fine. We’ll settle for just the walk, in that case...’

  She wondered how she had managed to be railroaded into this when, fifteen minutes later, she was standing on the beach with him. There was a slight breeze, but nothing to deflect the warmth of the night. The sky was clear, with the stars out, and the sea was just a silvery body of water.

  Leandro had rolled up his trouser legs and kicked off his shoes, which were lying somewhere by the little outcrop of rocks leading up to the hotel gardens.

  ‘You’ll need to take those sandals off,’ he suggested, turning around to look at her, a tall, dark, shadowy looming mass of pure muscle and undefined, exciting threat. ‘There’s nothing worse than sand in your shoes. Very uncomfortable.’

  Reluctantly Emily slipped off the sandals and dangled them in one hand. Leandro reached out, removed them from her loose grasp and tossed them in the general direction of where his own shoes were.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be fine. Enjoy the sensation of sand between your toes.’

  The hotel beach was long and unspoiled. As the hotel compound was left behind them the broad strip of sand, banked on one side by the dark water and on the other by an equally dark mass of tightly packed coconut trees, assumed a strangely intimate air.

  Jittery, Emily lurched into an awkward, stilted conversation about something trivial she had read about online that was happening back in England. A dreary story concerning two celebrities and an on-screen feud that had ended in fisticuffs. After Leandro’s amused remarks about his girlfriends taking no interest in world affairs she had felt suddenly dreary and dull and pedestrian in her interest in what was happening on the big stage, although trying to raise a laugh about a ridiculous piece of showbiz gossip hardly seemed an improvement now.

  She petered out into awkward silence and only realised that he had stopped walking when she glanced sideways to find no one next to her.

  Bemused, she turned around and looked at him. He was standing perfectly still, arms folded. In the darkness there was no way that she could decipher the expression on his face.

  ‘So...’ he drawled.

  ‘So?’ She felt a little shiver ripple through her body, and of their own accord her disobedient legs jerked into action and headed slowly in his direction, until she was standing right in front of him, staring up into his dangerously sexy face.

  ‘What are we going to do about our...little situation...?’

  ‘What situation are you talking about?’

  ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about, my dear secretary.’ A light gust blew some strands of hair across her face and he brushed them back and then kept his hand where it was, by her ear, which he proceeded to caress idly.

  Emily had never experienced anything quite so erotic in her life before.

  She had been in two relationships—if they could be called relationships—in all her twenty-seven years.

  The first when she was nineteen, with a boy she had convinced herself she fancied because he fancied her, and his enthusiastic pursuit had broken down her natural caution. But the spark had been missing and it had eventually fizzled out into a nondescript friendship which, in turn, had disappeared in the mists of time. She had no idea what had happened to him.

  The second, four years later, had been a similar disaster, she knew at least in part driven by her guilty knowledge that she was young and couldn’t live the rest of her life in nun-like celibacy. A littl
e tipsy, she had gone back to his place. Yet again there had been no spark, and they had returned to the point from which they had started. Just friends.

  And since then...nothing.

  Except, she considered with painful awareness, life had not been quite a desert of cobwebs gathering on her sexuality, had it? Because she had to admit grudgingly that beneath the contempt she had strenuously told herself she felt for her wretched boss there had been something else. Something that had put a spring in her step every morning when she had set off for work—something that had made her never resent it when she had been asked to work ridiculously long hours...when she had been cooped up with him as he nailed down one of his legendary deals...

  And now here she was. She could feel herself staring up at him for an inappropriately long time, barely breathing, drawn irresistibly like a moth to a flame.

  ‘Do I?’ she croaked, defending herself with what little was left in her armoury. She was so hotly aware of that absent-minded caress on her ear that she felt she might faint.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Leandro asserted, in the voice of someone stating the obvious.

  He dropped his hand and began walking, so that she fell in step with him. He could feel her presence beside him, nervous, quivering, and yet she was driven to remain even if a part of her might be telling her to flee back to the safety of the hotel.

  ‘You’re getting married for reasons that escape me,’ Leandro murmured. ‘You’re not attracted to the man and you don’t love him... Okay, security might be an appealing part of the deal, but I honestly can’t think that it would constitute reason enough...’

  ‘I never said that I didn’t love—’

  ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘Stop pretending that you know what’s going on in my head!’

  ‘An arrangement. Isn’t that what you called it?’

  Emily heard the hard edge in his voice and cringed. Put like that, it sounded...sordid. At best. And yet he didn’t know the half of it. But it wasn’t his business! None of it was!

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with an arranged marriage,’ she muttered impotently. ‘It happens. Some people might say that the most successful marriages are the ones that are made for sensible, practical reasons.’