Protecting His Defiant Innocent

by Michelle Smart

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m too busy.’

  ‘Too busy to see your own mother?’

  ‘I visit her whenever I can. The rest I was never close to so it’s no loss.’

  ‘No siblings?’

  ‘I’m an only child.’

  ‘Spoilt?’

  He laughed harshly. Chance would have been a fine thing. ‘No.’

  ‘A father?’

  ‘He died five years ago.’

  The inquisitiveness on her features softened. ‘I’m sorry. I lost my father last year. It’s hard, I know.’

  ‘It wasn’t much of a loss. I hardly knew him.’

  Seeing her open her mouth to ask another question, he leaned forward. ‘My mother raised me as a single parent. They were married but my father was rarely there and rarely gave her money. She worked so many different jobs to put a roof over my head and food on the table that she was hardly there either, but she wasn’t absent by choice as my father was. She didn’t have the time or money to take me to Madrid to visit her family. We lived in Alicante, hundreds of miles from them. If my father hadn’t been such a selfish chancer our lives would have been very different so, no, I didn’t find his death hard. I went to his funeral out of respect but I am not going to pretend I grieved for him. I barely knew the man.’

  His father had been unsuited to family life, a man always on the road searching for the next big thing, which had never turned into anything, but that next big thing had always been more important to him than his wife and child.

  So unimportant was his father to his life that he rarely thought about him, never mind talked about him, but with Francesca seemingly keen to interrogate him about his life, it was simpler to give her the full impartial facts and be done with it.

  ‘That must have been hard for you. And your mamma,’ she said, her eyes full of sympathy.

  Thankfully their food was brought over to them by the cheerful waitress, T-bone steak for him and seared tuna pasta salad for Francesca.

  She dived into hers and for a while he thought he’d escaped further interrogation.

  Wrong.

  ‘How often do you see your mother?’

  ‘I try and visit over Christmas and for her birthday.’

  ‘Is that it? Two visits a year?’

  He took a large bite of his steak and ignored the implied rebuke. He didn’t need to justify himself to her.

  ‘If I only saw my mother twice a year she’d kill me,’ Francesca mused. ‘She thinks I live too far from her as it is and I’m only a twenty-minute walk away.’

  ‘You’re her daughter. It’s a different relationship.’

  ‘Tell that to my brothers,’ she said with a roll of her eyes that immediately dimmed, the vibrancy in them muting.

  With a pang, he knew she was thinking of Pieta.

  ‘Pieta was a good son to her,’ she said quietly. ‘He travelled all around the world but always remembered to call her every night. Daniele’s the opposite—I’m always annoying him by sending reminders for him to call. She worries about us. Pieta’s death has devastated her.’

  ‘You’re a close family,’ he observed.

  She nodded. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’

  Lucky until the brother she’d adored had been so tragically killed.

  ‘Your life and background are very different from mine.’

  ‘My life and background are different from most peoples. But, then, everyone’s is. None of us are the same. We all have our worries.’

  ‘You grew up rich and with a loving family. What worries did you have?’

  ‘Me, personally? None that were serious. I was lucky and privileged but I know I’m one of the fortunate ones and it’s why I want to go into human rights law.’

  ‘You want to spread some of your good luck?’

  ‘You may mock me but I’m serious. I could have settled down with a husband and babies by now but I want my life to mean something.’

  He could only guess how hard she’d had to work to prove herself. He knew how old money worked—he’d protected enough of the people who lived in that world to know it was still male dominated. It couldn’t have been easy for her to go against her family’s expectations and wishes.

  ‘You could run Pieta’s foundation.’

  Her pretty brow rose. ‘Are you mocking me again?’

  ‘Not at all. You were the consummate professional today. Pieta would have been proud of you.’

  Her face flushed with pleasure. ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m sure of it, and I’m sure Alberto will be back at work soon. He could help and guide you. And keep you out of trouble,’ he couldn’t resist adding.

  She half grinned and half scowled then shrugged ruefully. ‘It isn’t for me. I want to get the hospital on Caballeros built for Pieta’s memory but his philanthropy isn’t the route I want to go. That was his and once things have settled we’ll work as a family to make sure the foundation continues, but it won’t be me running it. Maybe Natasha will.’

  She fell silent after that, eating her food quietly, her thoughts obviously thousands of miles away with her family.

  He watched her carefully. Underneath the front she put on she was grieving. He’d caught snatches of it during their time together, moments when she’d be talking to someone and, just like that, her eyes would lose their focus and her brow crease as if in confusion. And then, just as quickly, she would pull herself together and snap her focus back to the person before her.

  She did it now. ‘When was the last time you spoke to your mother?’

  He could laugh at her single-mindedness. ‘A couple of months ago.’ At her exaggerated incredulity, he felt compelled to add, ‘We’ve never been close in the way you are with your mother. Her whole life revolved around me and making sure all my needs were met but to get that she had to work fifteen hour days. I hardly knew her.’ He hardly knew her now.

  He took a long breath.

  He really needed a beer.

  Felipe raised his palm before she could ask anything else and said, ‘It was a long time ago. I haven’t lived with her for almost twenty years. We respect each other but she’s not like your mother. She’s not the clinging sort.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t cling,’ she said defensively, then covered her mouth to hide a snort of laughter. ‘Yes, she does cling. But I don’t mind. I like it.’

  ‘And I like the relationship my mother and I have. It suits us both.’

  She cast him with a look of pure disbelief then shrugged as if to say it was a point she couldn’t bother arguing. ‘Is her life easier now?’

  ‘Much easier. I’ve bought her a house and a car, I send her regular money. She doesn’t need to work. She has friends and goes on dates. She has a life now, which she never had before.’

  That perked her up. ‘You bought her a house?’

  He groaned, sensing a new thread of his life for her to delve into. ‘Can we not talk of something else?’

  ‘Okay, tell me why you joined the army.’

  ‘Because I was turning into a juvenile delinquent with no parental authority and no hope of getting a decent job because there was no one there to make sure I attended school.’

  ‘How long were you in the army for?’

  ‘Eight years in all.’ And they had been the best years of his life. The camaraderie, the companionship...after a childhood spent alone the army had given him the family he’d always craved. In Sergio he’d found the brother he’d always longed for.

  How could the woman sitting opposite him understand any of this? Her family was as close as a family could be. She’d never eaten her childhood meals alone with only the television for company. She’d never been alone. She’d never wanted for anything, not mate
rially or emotionally. It had all been handed to her on a plate.

  So why was he fighting his own tongue from spilling the rest of it out to her?

  It was those eyes, the way they smouldered and hung on to his every answer.

  Every time he stared into those honest eyes a pulse would flow through him. He’d scrubbed his hands over and over but could still feel the softness of her skin and the silkiness of her hair on his fingers as if they’d marked him. When she’d been standing with Eva, the charity worker, he’d distinguished Francesca’s scent without even thinking about it.

  He knew her scent.

  During their conversation, without him realising how, they’d both cleared their plates.

  It was time to bring to a close this ordeal he’d enjoyed far too much.

  He got to his feet. ‘We can go back to the suite now.’

  She stared up at him with such hurt at his brusqueness that he felt much as he would have if he’d kicked a puppy. Like a heel.

  Instead of obeying, she folded her arms, the obstinate look he was becoming accustomed to setting on her jaw. But her eyes were knowing as she said, ‘I think I’ll stay for dessert.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘YOU’RE WELCOME TO share my bed,’ Francesca said brightly as Felipe made a bed on the floor for himself close to the door, using the duvet, spare sheets and pillows from his suite.

  He didn’t look at her. He’d returned to ignoring her and speaking in monosyllabic grunts ever since she’d insisted on staying for dessert.

  Her insistence on staying had been a deliberate kick-back. Felipe had relaxed over their meal and opened up to her, not by much but enough for her chest to lighten and hope to spring free. A proper conversation between two adults enjoying each other’s company. There were times he’d looked at her as if he wanted to eat her, the desire in his eyes vivid... But then he’d withdrawn as quickly as if he’d pulled the trigger on a gun.

  Now he was back to looking at her as if he’d like to chuck her in the sea.

  ‘Why don’t you stop talking and get ready for bed?’ he growled. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’

  ‘I’m not tired.’

  ‘Read a book.’

  She wished she knew what it would take to pull his barriers down long enough for him to forget his reasons for resisting and simply treat her as a woman. That’s all she wanted.

  ‘I’ll put my nightclothes on in the bathroom, shall I?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Okay. I won’t be long. Try not to miss me.’

  It didn’t take long for her to change into the over-sized T-shirt she slept in, wash her face and brush her teeth, all the while wondering if she had the courage to go for full-scale seduction.

  She could hardly believe she was having these thoughts.

  Pieta’s death had brought home how short and fickle life could be. The dangers of Caballeros had reinforced that notion. All those years she’d spent studying, any thought of a romantic life pushed aside so as not to distract her from her dreams... It had stopped her feeling life rather than just going through the motions of living it.

  Felipe was nothing like the rich, boring, single men her parents had brought in a steady trickle to the family home before she’d escaped to university, hoping their darling daughter would snare one of them and marry into luxury and be doted on. The only similarity he had with them was that he was fabulously rich.

  Francesca hadn’t wanted to be doted on. Her mother had married young and was content to live the life of a social butterfly where the biggest daily problem would be matching her nail varnish with her outfit. Francesca had wanted so much more. She had wanted to be like her brothers and cousin Matteo. They were also expected to settle down and breed but at a much older age. They were expected to have fantastic careers first, whereas she’d been expected to adorn her husband’s fantastic career. She hadn’t wanted to adorn or be beholden to a man. She’d wanted a fantastic career of her own and had known from a very young age that the only way to get it was by studying as hard as she could to get the highest possible grades so her parents had no choice but to take her and her aspirations seriously.

  She had succeeded. There had been many fights and many tears but eventually they had accepted her wishes. That hadn’t stopped them parading eligible rich men in front of her but the tone had changed; become hope rather than expectation.

  If she continued working hard, in two years she would sit her bar exams and qualify as a lawyer, then spend a few more years establishing herself in the career she’d devoted her life to achieving. Only then would she think of making a marriage, safe in the knowledge that, whoever she chose, her hard-won independence would not be compromised and the marriage would be conducted as equals.

  That had been the plan.

  What she hadn’t expected was this awakening, this heady desire for a man that no amount of logic could explain.

  She didn’t want to explain it. She wanted to explore it, to reach out and touch it and experience these wonderful feelings that had soaked into her being, all of which were for Felipe.

  He was not a man to dote on a woman. He was strong and protective but would never treat a woman as a pet.

  And he didn’t want a relationship either.

  If anything were to happen between them it would be nothing but a short, sweet affair that wouldn’t compromise either of their chosen paths.

  The problem, Francesca acknowledged ruefully, came with the if.

  It would help if she knew how to seduce a man, let alone one so determined to keep her at arm’s length. And wasn’t seduction supposed to be conducted wearing sexy lingerie? She wore pretty underwear but nothing that could be considered sexy or lingerie.

  All she had was herself.

  When she walked back into the suite she found Felipe kneeling by his huge khaki kitbag.

  He looked at her briefly then closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath before pulling out his washbag. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

  A moment later came the telling click of the bathroom lock.

  Taking a deep breath, Francesca turned all the lights off apart from her bedside one, giving the room a soft seductive quality. Then she got onto the huge bed and arranged herself into what she hoped was a seductive pose. Instead of making her feel wanton it made her feel like a fool so she tried a different pose. That made her feel a bigger fool. After trying a variety of others she settled for sitting with her legs stretched out and hooked at the ankles, her head resting on the headboard.

  Felipe spent so long in the bathroom that doubts began to crowd her. Did she have his feelings for her all wrong?

  Were those times when she looked in his eyes and saw pained desire burning back at her nothing but creations of her own tortured mind, like a child desperate to see Father Christmas swearing blind they saw him flying his reindeer past their bedroom window? Nothing but a hopeful, overactive imagination?

  She sensed when he was ready to leave his sanctuary and swallowed, placing a hand to her rapidly beating heart.

  The bathroom door opened. Their eyes met.

  He held her gaze a beat too long then broke it, striding past her to the nest he’d made by her door.

  She watched his every step with her heart in her mouth.

  Francesca had seen Felipe with nothing but tight swim shorts on at the swimming pool but she had been some distance away. Up close his magnificence was stark enough to steal her breath and set her already ragged pulses soaring. Up close there was no escaping the bulge in the snug black boxers he wore.

  Even a straight man would do a double take at him.

  A silvery mark on his right calf caught her eye, pulling her out of the trance she’d slipped into. ‘What happened to your leg?’

  ‘Gunshot,’ he answ
ered gruffly.

  His answer had her pressing the switch behind her to turn the corner light on.

  Her hand flew to her mouth.

  It wasn’t just a silvery mark; there was a hollowed out section of flesh around his shin bone that covered half his calf.

  Thick icy sludge crawled up her spine and through her veins, freezing her from the inside out.

  She could hardly get her vocal cords working to whisper, ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘The perils of army life.’

  ‘You were shot in battle?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Feeling faint, she took a long breath, unable to look away from the ugly wound that made her heart hurt.

  Felipe was a military man. She’d known that before she’d met him. It was his career in the army, including his time in the Special Forces, that made him so effective at what he did, that had given him the solid foundations to build the hugely successful enterprise he had now.

  Yet whenever she thought about the armed forces—admittedly, before she’d met Felipe that had been rarely—she’d imagined it to be like those computer games she’d been banned from watching Daniele play when he’d been younger and she much younger still but, of course, had sneakily peeked in on. She hadn’t seriously thought about what it must be like to be in a real war, to have people firing at you not for fun but because they wanted to kill you.

  Someone had shot Felipe with the intention of killing him.

  He must have noticed her horror for his expression hardened. ‘I apologise if my wound disgusts you.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to refocus her eyes. ‘Don’t think that. I don’t think that. Felipe...’ She shook her head some more.

  Now the limp she’d often noticed made sense.

  As if to distract her attention from his wound, Felipe slid into the makeshift bed he’d made for himself on the floor, thumped the top pillow and lay on his back, gazing at the ceiling with his arm crooked above his head.

  Francesca turned the corner light off so the only illumination in the suite came from her bedside light.