His Suitable Bride(154)

‘Now, wait a minute …’

Her head came up again sharply, the words snapping from her as he kicked open a door.

‘Just what do you think you’re doing …?’

‘I’m trying to do something about your feet.’ Alexa could hear the faint touch of mocking laughter in Santos’s voice, setting her teeth even more on edge. ‘You need to have those cuts cleaned, and—’

‘In a bedroom?’

She tried to struggle free but had her attempts thwarted when Santos simply dumped her down onto the soft, yielding surface of a wide double bed.

‘I’ll need water and cloths—both in the bathroom,’ he explained in a tone of such exaggerated patience that made his words anything but tolerant, ‘and you might need esparadrapos—sticking plasters. Besides which …’

His arm swept in a wide circle to indicate the huge room and its décor.

‘I can assure you that is not my room!’

Not unless he had suddenly developed a predilection for pink and frills, Alexa admitted, forcing herself to subside back onto the bed.

He was right in one thing, she acknowledged privately. Her poor feet did need attention. She’d been a fool to keep on wearing the shoes when they had started to rub so badly, but then she had had no real choice. Her only other shoes were miles away in the hotel where she had prepared to be bridesmaid at the wedding—such a long, long time ago, it now seemed. And unless she was to go back there barefooted then she needed something to help make her more comfortable.

So she bit her lip and kept quiet, submitting to Santos’s ministrations, determined not to let him or anything he said or did get to her in any way.

And that was a resolution that she found impossible to stick to. If she thought that Santos’s touch had been gentle before, then now it was soft as a caress. The warmth of the water and antiseptic ointment soothed and numbed the raw patches on her skin, and the sticking plasters he applied seemed to have magical healing properties in them.

But she would have been a liar if she hadn’t admitted that she was far more affected by the sight of this dark, stunning man kneeling at her feet once again, and tending to her injuries with the gentleness of a lover. The urge to reach out and touch him, to stroke her hands across the black silk of his hair, or along the line of his jaw, was almost more than she could bear. She had to actually slide her hands underneath her thighs to keep them safe from straying into that dangerous temptation. And then when he finished, sat back on his heels, looked up into her face and directed that devastating smile straight at her, she felt her heart seem to stop for a moment, making her catch her breath in shock.

‘I think that will help.’

‘It will do more than help,’ she managed in a voice that sounded as if it was about to break in the middle. ‘They feel wonderful.’

‘I’m glad.’ Santos pushed himself to his feet, took the bowl from the small table on which it stood and headed for the bathroom to empty out the cooling water. ‘So now we can talk.’

How had he done that? Alexa wondered. How had he managed to inject a note into the otherwise innocuous words that made her whole body tense, every nerve stretching tight and tingling in wary apprehension, even the fine hairs on her skin lifting uneasily?

‘Talk about what?’

‘About where we go from here.’

Santos came to lean in the doorway, hooded silver eyes fixed on her face as she swivelled round on the bed to face him.

‘The only place we go from here is downstairs …’ And preferably right out of the house. ‘I have no wish to be alone with you!’

‘But I thought that was the plan all along, querida.’

The words were hissed at her with an icy control that transformed him totally. Suddenly the concerned man whose gentle touch had brought tears to her eyes had vanished and in his place was the cold-eyed, hard-faced fiend who had sent shivers down her spine in the first moment she had been introduced to him.

The man she had wondered how her sister could possibly love.

How anyone could possibly love.

And yet somehow throughout the day her opinion had changed. She had even found herself attracted to this man. Had wanted him to kiss her, to hold her.

So which one was the real Santos?

There was a nasty, slimy sensation crawling over her skin as she faced the fact that the man she had felt herself so drawn to was in fact the performance planned to deceive. And that she, like a stupid, gullible fool, had fallen straight into the trap he had set for her.

‘Plan? What plan? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know of any plan.’

‘No? Forgive me if I don’t believe you, querida, but I refuse to believe that your parents didn’t have a back-up plan.’