His Suitable Bride(164)

Why was he here? Santos had asked himself that question a hundred times on the journey from Spain. He knew what had sparked the decision to make the journey. It had been made in the black fury that had descended on his brain when he had got back to the bedroom after taking the phone call. A too long, impatient phone call in which he had cut off one of his managers with harsh ruthlessness in order to hurry back to where Alexa was.

Or, rather, where he had thought Alexa was.

Instead the room had been empty, the door wide open, and no sign of the woman who had been in his arms, responding so passionately to his kisses, his caresses, such a short time before. The only evidence that she had ever been there was the dishevelled quilt, the dent in the pillow where her head had lain.

He’d known then what had happened, though he hadn’t quite been able to believe it. And the red mist that came up before his eyes threatened his ability to think straight enough to believe, or to doubt. A hurried search, an even more hurried questioning of some members of staff had only confirmed his furious suspicions and that was when all rational thought had fled his brain, driven out by the roar of pure fury that totally consumed him.

She had run out on him.

A second Montague daughter had turned tail and run just like her sister. The whole family had slashed at his pride and his reputation—and taken the money he had been foolish enough to let them have at the start. Someone would have to pay.

And that someone was going to be Alexa Montague.

He could of course have simply called in her father’s debts, and sent the lying fool to prison for embezzlement, as he had originally planned, but that thought no longer satisfied him. The one thing that had been clear in his mind was that he was going to find Alexa Montague.

It had been a simple matter to track down her address. Her witch of a stepmother had been only too keen to supply it, and her weak, greedy father had gone along with it, seeing his own hope of escape by doing so. Her family had handed her to him on a plate.

And as soon as she had opened the door to him this evening he had known exactly why. He had never been able to get Alexa out of his mind. Ever since she had disappeared, her image had been in his thoughts, stopping him from thinking clearly, preventing him from sleeping.

In fact, if he was being honest, she’d been in his head from the first moment they had met. Petra might have described her as dull and dowdy, but there had been something about her that had caught on his senses and wouldn’t let go. Even when he’d thought her cold and stiffly distant, he had been intrigued by her. The woman who had come to tell him about her sister’s disappearance had been someone else again, the one he held in his arms as they had danced another person entirely. Then there was the woman whose hair he had released until it fell in a cloud of soft silk about her face, whose eyes had glistened in the moonlight as her body strained towards him, whose mouth had practically begged for his kisses until he had thought that he would groan aloud with the strain of withholding them. But it was the woman he had taken to bed who had eclipsed them all.

That woman had haunted his nights, keeping him from sleep, or, if he did slide into a doze, had made his slumber restless and uneasy as heated erotic images walked through his dreams, murmuring his name, offering her mouth to his, her body opening to his caress.

And when he had woken, sweating and shaken, with his heart racing at twice its normal speed, he had found himself hard and aching, his body aroused by the night’s imaginings and clamouring for the release it needed. A release that Alexa’s flight had forced him to deny it.

But not any more. In the moment that she had opened the door, he had known exactly why he was here. The shoes were no real excuse; revenge might be part of it but sheer physical craving was more, so much more. Seeing her as he had never seen her before, with the soft cherry-red jumper and the tightly clinging jeans emphasising gentle curves, her hair tumbling in loose waves, her beautiful skin touched with just the smallest trace of make-up, he had felt his heart kick hard in his chest. The fierce sting of hunger had started up lower down in his body, so strongly that it had been an effort to speak and not just to reach out and drag her into his arms, kissing her until they were both senseless with need and passion.

‘I’m here to finish what we started,’ he declared, the twist of sexual hunger making his voice raw and rough. ‘I’ve come for you.’





CHAPTER NINE


‘COME FOR …’

Alexa couldn’t believe what she had heard. Panic was buzzing inside her head, making her thoughts reel, so she was sure that she hadn’t actually caught what he had said. That he couldn’t have said …