Exotic Affairs(87)

Then she gave a shaky laugh. ‘You’re joking,’ she decided.

But his deadly smooth, deadly calm, deadly serious expression told her that this was no joke. He meant it. Marriage. Luiz wanted marriage. To her.

Without a single word, she turned and walked back to the bedroom door. This had gone far enough, she was telling herself grimly. And it had gone on long enough. Now she was—

‘We have been here before, Caroline, but I am quite happy to act out the scene again if you need me to do it…’ Luiz’s voice slid snake-like after her. ‘So, walk out of that door and I will play your father tonight at poker…’

Her fingers curled around the brass doorhandle, actually gripped and began to turn it before she lost the will. Slowly she turned, weakly she leaned against the door now behind her, defeatedly she stared across the room to where Luiz was now propped up against the rosewood tallboy, with his ankles crossed casually and his hands resting comfortably in his trouser pockets.

Tall, dark, undoubtedly the most attractive man she had ever met in her entire life, he exuded self-assurance from every supremely relaxed pore.

The self-assured kind of man who wanted his pound of flesh, for some utterly obscure reason. ‘I suppose you have a good reason for making this proposition?’ she prompted shakily.

His lashes flickered, hiding dark brown eyes as they slid over her. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

Caroline’s mouth tightened. ‘Am I to know what that reason is?’ she asked.

‘Not until you agree to do it,’ he replied. ‘And maybe not even then, depending on how you agree to it.’

‘Then how would you like me to agree to it?’ she enquired ever so, ever so sweetly, beginning to pulse with anger at the way he was making her pull answers out of him.

A smile touched his mouth, a very wry smile that acknowledged her sarcasm. ‘Well, a simple yes would do for starters,’ he drawled. ‘But to hear you say yes because you simply can’t imagine the rest of your life without me in it would be absolutely perfect.’

Since the chances of that happening were less than nil, she didn’t even bother to remark on the suggestion. ‘And what are the chances of the ante going up again before you’re finished with me?’ she asked instead.

‘Finished with you?’ Curiously he picked up on the word, then gave a shake of his head. ‘In this case, my ever being finished with you doesn’t apply,’ he told her. ‘I may sound like a fully emancipated all-American guy,’ he said, thickening his accent to suit the remark, ‘but remember that I am Spanish. And, being Spanish, I marry once and for life. So take that on board while you make your decision,’ he advised her. ‘I want your life Caroline,’ he spelled out. ‘And, because I have raised the stakes,’ he added, ‘I will not only not play your father tonight, but I will also agree to pay off all his outstanding debts, get your home out of hock and ensure that it remains that way for the rest of your life. At the same time I will take over your watchdog role with your father.’ He seemed to decide that covered it nicely. ‘Does that sweeten the deal a little for you?’

Sweeten it? It made it positively compelling, she thought with heaviness that took her that little bit closer to defeat—though if she had any choices at all she wished someone would point them out to her. ‘If this is for life, then why me?’ She frowned, wishing she understood what was really going on. And she knew there just had to be something going on that Luiz wasn’t talking about.

‘Why not you?’ Luiz countered with a shrug. ‘You are beautiful, you are well bred, and you would enhance the arm of any man,’

‘A trophy, in other words,’ she likened bitterly.

‘If you like.’ He wasn’t going to argue with that belittling description. ‘But honesty forces me to add that I still fancy the hell out of you or you wouldn’t be standing here at all, believe me.’

His dry smile made her flinch. But she received the message well enough. Be glad I do still fancy you, Caroline, or you would now be standing in deep trouble somewhere else entirely.

‘Yes. I will marry you,’ she said, that briefly and that simply.

To give him credit, Luiz didn’t try to draw out his victory. ‘Good,’ was all he said, then, straightening his lean frame away from the tallboy, turned to slide open the top drawer.

Standing there, watching him, Caroline thought she saw the merest glimpse of a tremor in his hand as he took it out of his pocket to open the drawer. But by the time he turned, with a clean handkerchief in a hand that revealed only super-sure steadiness, she decided that she must have been mistaken.