Exotic Affairs(118)

‘Escort Caroline to her room, Vito,’ he instructed, without removing his gaze from Felipe. ‘And remain there until I come…’

Caroline’s skin was prickling, and the shivery sense that he was issuing some kind of dire warning to Felipe with his security guard’s daunting presence was enough to keep her silent when Luiz let go of her hand and instructed quietly, ‘Go with Vito. Felipe and I have a few—things we need to discuss in private…’

She went, but she felt sick. She didn’t look back, but she could almost feel the two men sizing each other up as if for battle. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she whispered to Vito.

‘They will talk,’ he answered simply. ‘As Luiz said.’

‘I don’t like him,’ she confessed, finding herself moving that little bit closer to this big tower of a man Luiz had made her escort.

‘Few people do,’ Vito replied. That was all, but it seemed to say more than enough. Both Luiz and Vito had Felipe’s measure. And that meant that if Felipe had been checking up on them then Luiz had certainly been checking up on him—using this man she was walking beside to do the checking, she suspected.

Vito didn’t leave her even when she slipped away to use her bathroom; he was still standing by the door when she got back.

‘You’ve known Luiz a long time, haven’t you?’ she questioned curiously.

‘Since we were both nine years old,’ Vito replied.

Which placed them, by her reckoning, in an orphanage together. ‘So you are friends,’ she concluded, smiling wryly to herself because she was remembering her own thoughts from the other day, when she’d been sitting in the back of Luiz’s car while Vito drove her.

‘He saved my life once,’ Vito answered, but didn’t elaborate, even though Caroline stared at him in disbelief because she couldn’t imagine anyone having to save this man’s life for him. He was just too big, too everything surely, to be put into that kind of danger.

The purchases she’d made while they’d been away began to arrive then, diverting her attention. And a few more minutes after that Luiz arrived. With a quiet word in Vito’s ear he dismissed the other man, who left with a grim nod of his head that made Caroline shiver.

‘Why the need of a bodyguard?’ she demanded, the moment they were alone again. ‘Am I in some kind of danger I should know about?’

‘No,’ Luiz denied. ‘Not while I’m still breathing at any rate.’

‘So you’re the one who’s in danger,’ she therefore concluded.

‘Nobody is in danger!’ he denied.

‘Then why the bodyguard?’ she repeated stubbornly.

‘Escort,’ he corrected. ‘He was sent to escort you up here simply to make a point, okay? ‘

No, it wasn’t okay. And her face told Luiz that. ‘All right,’ he sighed out heavily. ‘Felipe would like to stop the wedding from taking place,’ he said. ‘That much is patently obvious. But how far he would go to stop it I am not entirely sure. So I am protecting my weak spots.’

‘And I am a weak spot.’

Suddenly his laziest grin appeared. ‘Oh, a very weak spot,’ he murmured seductively, and began to pace suggestively towards her.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she protested, putting out a hand to ward him off. ‘Not here in this house! Not until we are married!’ she added, chin up, amethyst eyes challenging. ‘I will have your respect el conde!’ she insisted when he took another step towards her.

He stopped. She had to fight to keep her disappointment from showing. Luiz grinned again, because he saw it anyway. ‘If I touched you now, you would go up in smoke,’ he challenged softly.

‘If you touched me now, I probably would,’ she ruefully agreed.

‘Then I won’t,’ he assured her.

‘Oh,’ she said, and didn’t even try to hide her disappointment this time.

‘Protocol,’ he explained. ‘Thanks for reminding me that in this house I must respect all bridal traditions.’

If Caroline was aware that she had changed a lot in the last twenty-four hours, then she was also aware that Luiz had changed too. Gone was a lot of the stiff tension he had brought with them into the valley, and what she saw now was a wonderfully charming, lazily relaxed and very sensually motivated man—in private anyway.

It was that recognition that sent her walking into his arms. ‘Just one chaste kiss, then,’ she offered invitingly, and snaked even closer to him when his arms slid caressingly about her.

‘Chaste?’ he mocked.

‘Mmm,’ she said. But there was nothing chaste in the way they stood there amongst a sea of unopened packages for long, very unsatisfying minutes.