Exotic Affairs(88)

‘You now have ten minutes to make yourself feel better about meeting our guests,’ he said, with a subtle alteration in the possessive that didn’t pass Caroline by. ‘Bathroom through that door.’ He indicated. ‘Clothes in the cupboards. I have a few phone calls to make.’

With that he began walking towards her, looking the cool, calm, inscrutable Luiz Vazquez who utterly scorned the idea that anything so weak as a tremor could dare to touch him.

She was blocking the door he obviously wished to go through to make his precious calls, but for the life of her Caroline couldn’t give another single inch to him by stepping meekly to one side.

He reached her, stopped. Her heart began to thump. Taller than her, wider than her, darker than her in every way there was, he intimidated her on levels she had not known existed before she knew him.

His eyebrows arched. ‘Is there something we missed?’ he prompted, softly mocking her stubborn refusal to budge.

She had to swallow through a terrible tension before saying what was on her mind, but she was determined to say it anyway. ‘Didn’t you hurt me enough seven years ago without continuing this vendetta you seem to have going for my family?’

His hand came up, touched her pale cheek, and the skin beneath began to burn as if branded. ‘Seven years ago you would not have needed to ask that question,’ he murmured.

‘Seven years ago I thought you loved me,’ she replied huskily. ‘But it wasn’t love, was it, Luiz? I was merely there, and easy, which provided you with a bit of light amusement in between all the really serious stuff.’

He smiled an odd smile. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘It’s what I know,’ she insisted—even now, seven years on, still able to feel the bitterness of learning that eating away at her.

His dark head came down, making her stiffen and tingle when he brought his lips into contact with her ear. ‘Then how can you bear to have me touch you?’ he whispered in soft, moist, sensual derision—and dropped his fingers from her cheek to place them over her breast where the thin fabric of her dress did nothing to disguise her instant response to him.

With a jerk she stepped sideways and right out of his reach, hating herself and despising him so much that she could barely cope with what was now tumbling about inside her.

Luiz said nothing, but then he really didn’t need to—which was the real humiliation as he simply opened the door she was no longer guarding and stepped through it.

Left alone, it was all she could do just to sink weakly into the nearest chair. Instantly she felt something beneath her, and reached down and plucked out both her bag and her bra. The flimsy piece of black silk dangled like a taunt from her trembling fingers, reminding her why it wasn’t on her body.

It was still slightly damp. On another thought she got up and walked over to the bed, where Luiz had dropped his discarded jacket. The moment she picked it up the clean scent of him began to completely surround her. Her eyes were still glazed but her other senses were working just fine, she noted grimly. For touching this jacket was like touching Luiz. Smelling him, feeling him, wanting him—wanting him…

The jacket, like her bra, was damp, which was obviously why Luiz had changed it for another one. Damp around the pocket, where he’d stuffed her bra, damp around the shoulders from when he’d placed it around hers.

A sigh whispered from her that was so bleak and hopeless she was glad there was no one around to hear it. Seven weeks loving him, she thought sadly. Seven years hating him. And probably only seven seconds back in his presence and she had been fighting a losing battle against the way he could make her feel.

It was awful, like coming face to face with her own darkest secret. For hate was merely the other side of love. Weren’t the romantics always saying that?

Which left her with what to comfort herself? she wondered as she dropped all three items on the bed and turned her back on them. She didn’t know—didn’t think she wanted to know.

The clothes he had told her she would find in the cupboards happened to be her own clothes, which brought home even harder the amount of calculation he had put into all of this. He had been very sure of himself, very positive that she would end up here with him, one way or another.

In fact everything she had brought to Marbella with her was now residing in this room. Except for her father, she added—then instantly began to worry about him, maybe wandering about this villa like a loose cannon searching for some explosive excitement.

The prospect had her hurrying to change. She spent less than five minutes in the well-equipped bathroom, showering away the effects of her swim and then hurriedly blowdrying her hair before she applied a quick, light covering of make-up and went to decide what she was going to wear.