‘Believe it or not, neither do I.’
‘You’re right. I don’t believe it.’
Cesar laughed softly and stroked her hair back. ‘Okay, I admit I haven’t led a celibate life since Marisol died, but this level of spontaneity…’
‘You mean you court your women before you hop in the sack with them.’ It was so silent in the cottage that she could almost hear the beating of their hearts. ‘Don’t you ever get lonely?’ she asked, and Cesar stiffened as he felt the push against his self-imposed barriers. This was one of the most intimate questions he had ever been asked.
‘You don’t have to answer that one,’ Jude said quickly. ‘Not if you’re scared to.’
‘Scared?’
‘Maybe not scared, as such.’
‘Of course I don’t get lonely! I have a very active life, as it happens.’
‘Right.’
‘Your tone smacks of disbelief.’ But he laughed. He felt too damn relaxed to let her get under his skin. Must be something in the good old-fashioned clean country air that had gone to his head. He stroked her thigh and then pushed her legs apart so that he could cup her between them, just gently resting his hand there. He could already feel himself ready to make love to her all over again, like a sex-starved teenager bedding a woman for the first time.
‘Course I believe you. I bet you play lots of sport, go out a lot and have women flocking around at your beck and call.’
‘Yes to all three.’
Of course he was just being honest. For a man like Cesar, women were just a pleasant distraction in his life. This sort of situation would be unusual for him and not just because it would have veered wildly away from his normal routine of pursuit and capture, not just because they had fallen together against all odds—it would have been unusual because she wasn’t his type.
‘Where do you go?’ she asked, stifling the discomfort she felt at knowing that she had slept with a man who would walk out of her life the minute the snow stopped falling and he could climb back into that expensive car of his and drive away. ‘You said that you go out a lot. Where to? Theatres? The cinema?’
‘Theatres, yes. Cinema—can’t tell you the last time I went to see a movie. There’s not enough time in the day for such mindless luxury.’
In her head she was getting a picture of a man who seldom relaxed and the more glimpses she got of the man, the more she wanted to know more.
‘Theatre is a luxury,’ she pointed out.
‘Theatre is either entertaining clients,’ Cesar told her drily, ‘or else being entertained by them. Life in the concrete jungle is one great big exercise in back-scratching.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘I can think of better things to do.’ He grinned and let her know just what he had in mind by reaching out to touch her breast. ‘Are you ready for me again?’
‘We could talk…a bit…’
‘Why?’
In that split second, Jude knew that her curiosity had been a mistake. They had made love, done the most intimate things imaginable with one another, but in all other respects they were still worlds apart. Discovering one another was not on Cesar’s agenda, at least not beyond the extent of getting to know her in relation to his brother.
‘You’re right. Why talk when there are so many better things to do? I mean, I’ve been on my own for a while…’
She stroked his back and felt him stiffen.
‘What are you trying to say? Are you telling me that you’re using me as a refresher course?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Cesar shifted so that he could pull back from her, look her squarely in the eyes. ‘You know what I’m saying, Jude. You haven’t been with a man for a while and here I am.’
‘Ah.’ Dawning comprehension. Cesar might find talking a bore, he might use women for recreational purposes only, but he didn’t like the idea that for once the shoe might be on the other foot. She knew that it was wrong to encourage him to misinterpret her behaviour but weren’t some lessons in life salutary?
‘You are quite a hunky specimen…’
‘Hunky? Specimen?…Specimen?’
‘Don’t tell me that I’m the first woman to tell you that…’ Jude found that she was enjoying the wicked one-off opportunity to have Cesar on the back foot. ‘I mean, what girl in her right mind wouldn’t enjoy a string-free romp in the hay with you? Especially if she happens to find herself marooned with you, so to speak?’ To prove her point, she leaned forward and kissed him slowly, lingeringly and provocatively on his mouth.
This was a Jude she didn’t recognise. She had taken her relationship with James seriously and one step at a time. She had made sure that she got to know him over a period of time before they progressed onto a physical level. She certainly would never have encouraged him to think that she was using him for sex! Nor would she have hopped into bed with him after a few hours because they happened to be in the same place, at the same time and with the same thing on their minds.
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Cesar said repressively but she could feel him responding to that kiss and it gave her a heady feeling of power.
‘Why not? You enjoy sex with women without any desire or intention of having a relationship with them…’
‘You’re playing with vocabulary.’
‘Am I?’ Jude gave a perplexed frown. ‘Sorry, I thought I was just being honest and straightforward. I always speak my mind. You know that. You said that yourself.’
‘I have relationships with women.’ Cesar wasn’t sure why he was launching into a debate on a non-subject, but he felt self-righteously aggrieved at her spurious accusations. ‘Just not relationships that will end up leading down the aisle. You ask any of the women I’ve dated in the past. They’ll all tell you that they had a damn good time with me.’ He shot her a wolfish grin that made her blood run hot with desire, but she kept her expression serious. This was talking and she knew it was dangerous but she felt driven to get beneath that iron exterior to the real man, even though her head was telling her that it was a pointless exercise.
‘If you say so.’ She shrugged. ‘Talking’s overrated anyway,’ she told him truthfully. ‘You can talk until the cows come home and think that you really understand someone, only to discover that you didn’t know them at all.’
‘And, on the flip side of the coin, you can spend two minutes in someone’s company and realise that you know them completely.’ He cupped one of her breasts and teased her pouting nipple with his thumb. The rough abrasiveness of his finger sent feathery sensations all through her body until she could almost feel herself melting.
‘Hmm,’ she sighed, curling her body against him and moving sinuously against his erection. ‘My parents did, you know. One look across that crowded village hall and their future was sealed.’
‘Which, theoretically, makes me as good a candidate for everlasting love as your ex. You’d better make sure you don’t fall for me.’ Cesar realised that he was guilty of making the most provocative statement he could think of but he was still a little irritated when she laughed as if he had cracked the joke of the century.
‘Oh, please,’ Jude said, sobering up but still smiling. ‘I would need sectioning under the Mental Health Act if I was ever fool enough to do that.’ Fall for him? It was a crazy, disturbing thought that made her denial all the more vigorous. ‘You’re probably the last man on the face of the earth I could ever fall in love with.’ Just to silence that little voice in her head that was reminding her that she had managed to climb into bed with him, which would have been unthinkable two days ago.
‘I’m crushed,’ Cesar murmured, his hand moving down to idly play between her legs. ‘You’re very bad for the ego. Most men would be insulted to think that they were being used as a stud.’
‘But you’re not…’ And she almost wished he was, but sex for the sake of sex, unsullied by any annoying emotional complications, was the kind of language he understood.
This time round their love-making was fierce and urgent. When he had touched and caressed every inch of her body, he rolled her so that she was on top of him, driving down on him while she continued to kiss his face, his neck, the broad span of his shoulders.
He didn’t know what time it was when he eventually surfaced. His legs felt stiff and he had to angle himself off the sofa because she had fallen asleep on his shoulder. As he moved, she stretched and made a soft sound, then squirmed back into sleep mode.
For a few seconds Cesar stood, naked, looking down at her, trying to get her measure.
She bristled and hissed like a wildcat, but then there had been moments when she had been shy and cautious and tentative. One minute she acted the stammering girl, the next she was telling him that he was nothing more than a pick-me-up for someone who needed a little sex. Who the hell was she?
One thing for sure—if she had decided to seduce Fernando, for whatever reasons, the poor boy wouldn’t have stood a chance. As he watched her, she stirred and opened her eyes. There was no post-coital smile on her face, nor was she making the slightest effort to entice him back between the sheets.
This in itself was a little annoying. Cesar was accustomed to women using all manner of guile to keep him in bed once they had managed to get him there in the first place.
‘Have you checked the weather?’ They had been lying on the throw which she used as an attractive cover for the squashy sofa and she half wrapped it round herself now and wriggled into a sitting position.
She could, shamefully, have stayed lying there on the sofa with him for the rest of the day but she had felt when he had eased himself off and had kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep.
She wasn’t sure how she had managed so spectacularly to jump into a pot of boiling water, but jump she had. They had made love and as they had dozed, entwined like the perfect happy couple, she had had time to think and they weren’t the perfect happy couple. In fact, they were neither perfect nor were they a couple in any way imaginable. Even the happiness part was debatable because, while she had been on cloud nine when they had been making love, reality had had time to do its job and yank her very firmly back down to earth.
Cesar was a highly sexed man and, caught up in an unusual situation, he had taken what he had sensed had been on offer. Somehow he had managed to twig that she was attracted to him and he had acted on that nebulous feeling with the unerring instinct of a man accustomed to women falling over themselves to get near him. No phone, no computer—what better way to pass the time than making love? He was a man who would be able to distance the act from emotion, but what about her?
She had wanted him and had made love to him because he fascinated her. There were feelings wrapped up in the melting pot and she knew that she had to stand back and take stock before those inconvenient feelings dragged her down deeper.
‘About to.’ He walked across to the window and squinted at a black and white landscape. ‘Snow’s stopped.’ He dropped the curtain and turned to look at her, pink and rumpled and cool as a cucumber.
‘That’s good. Look…’ Jude licked her lips nervously ‘…about what happened…’
‘You mean the business of your using me to satisfy your sexual needs…?’
‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ Jude admitted grudgingly.
Cesar strolled to where their heap of frantically discarded clothes were piled together on the floor and extracted his boxers, which he slipped on. ‘Well, that’s some much needed balm for my battered ego,’ he said, fishing through the bundle and separating them.
‘We both got carried away. Cooped up here, with the snow outside…a bit like people who do crazy things when they’re on holiday. It was just something that we’ll have to pretend never happened.’ She took a deep breath.
‘And what if I don’t feel like going along with the pretence?’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’ She had fed her curiosity and was beginning to see how women could be brainwashed by men who just weren’t good for them. She intended to get her speech in before he could deliver his.
‘What if I think that what happened between us was pretty good? What if I think that there’s no conceivable reason why we have to pretend it away?’ He shrugged. ‘So the snow stops and life gets back into gear…’ He strolled towards her. ‘Are you telling me that that would make a scrap of difference to the chemistry between us? In fact,’ he continued smoothly, ‘are you telling me that if I decide to kiss you right now, you’re going to turn away because you’ve been able to tell yourself that you are no longer attracted to me?’
Jude hadn’t bargained for anything but ready agreement from him and she looked at him in some confusion.
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Then what is…?’
‘The point is…’ Now he was perched on the sofa next to her, his weight depressing it so that her body inevitably slid against his. ‘The point is,’ she repeated patiently, ‘we both acted out of character. I don’t… I’m not the kind of girl who just hops into bed with someone on the spur of the moment and yes, I know I might have given you the impression that I was just using you, but I don’t do stuff like that. The fact is that if I choose to get involved with a man, then I want more out of it than just a romp in the hay.’
‘Clarify.’
‘We’re different people, Cesar. We don’t think along the same lines and what you look for in women is not what I look for in men.’
‘Oh, well, everything’s as clear as mud now.’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying. You distract yourself with women…’
‘Because I’m really deeply unhappy and lonely…haven’t we been here before?’
Jude could feel all her well-thought-out arguments begin to unravel at his mildly amused, mildly indulgent tone of voice. This was not the aggressive reaction she had expected and now she felt as if she were on thin ice. Wasn’t that huge ego of his supposed to respond with predictable fury?
‘You’re right on one count,’ Cesar said thoughtfully. ‘Leaving aside the loneliness, deep unhappiness issue, I don’t get involved with women because I don’t want anything long-term out of the relationship, but do you…?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Want something long-term out of this?’
‘I’m not going to waste my time with someone who’s a commitment-phobe and, like I said, you’re not the sort of man I’d envisage being a life partner,’ Jude told him bluntly. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’ve made a mistake and move on from there.’
‘Move on to…what?’
‘To someone I think I can build a relationship with, and if it doesn’t come to anything, then that’s fair enough, just so long as we both start with the same intentions. No one knows what the future holds but we can all start out with high hopes that it’s going to be leading somewhere. You don’t, Cesar. You start out with the assumption that all your relationships are destined for the bin and they are. You’ve been married and it was wonderful and since nothing will ever compare to that, then as far as you’re concerned, there’s no point in trying. You take what you want and then you walk away, and please don’t tell me about all the lucky women who have thoroughly enjoyed being with you and would never have dreamt of asking for more.’
A dull flush had spread across Cesar’s high cheekbones. ‘Finished?’ he asked coldly.
‘You probably think I’m being stupid…’
‘Your choice what decisions you make with your life but while you’re in the mood for sermon preaching you might want to think that, while you’re waiting for your dream to come true, life’s passing you by.’
‘You’re right. My decision.’
‘I was about to go and have a shower. After that, I’m going to go and see how deep my car’s buried under the snow.’ He had never begged for any woman in his life before and Cesar wasn’t about to start now. She had made her point perfectl
y clear. ‘Just out of interest, what is your ideal guy?’
‘Someone kind and thoughtful,’ Jude said defensively. She wasn’t sure how he had managed it, but it no longer felt noble to be holding out for the perfect man. Was she wasting her life waiting for a dream? And if Cesar was that far off the scale in terms of suitability, then how was it that he had the ability to make her heart beat faster and her pulse quicken? How could he make her feel so alive when all her common sense pointed to the fact that he was all wrong?
She was beginning to feel faint as she took stock. She might say one thing and tell herself that she believed it, but somehow the man had crawled under her skin. What had started out as dislike had turned into something else and now she was very much afraid that she had committed the fatal sin of beginning to fall for him.
‘Someone who doesn’t think that he’s God’s gift to womankind,’ she carried on fiercely. ‘A gentle kind of guy…’ Except James was like that and where had that ended? Cesar was nothing like that and yet…
‘Why did you sleep with me?’
‘You should go have your shower.’
‘I will just as soon as you say it.’
‘Okay! I slept with you because you’re…you happen to turn me on! Satisfied?’
‘Perfectly. You forget, I only know how to use women. I just wanted you to say it aloud, though, so you can remind yourself that sometimes having fun is its own reward. An empty bed is never grateful for the moral high ground.’
He headed for his shower. He damn well needed something to cool him down! He had managed to get the last word, but it had been an empty victory.
Of course, he told himself, rubbing himself dry with the towel and then glaring at his reflection in the mirror, women like that were bad news for a man like him and he should have been thanking her for being honest and upfront. And, hell, who was he to complain about jettisoning someone because they didn’t fit the bill? He had jettisoned countless numbers of women in the past, maybe not with quite such unadorned frankness, but it all counted for the same thing.
The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress Page 23