she wanted to?’
There was a pause. ‘Of course she did,’ he agreed softly. ‘All women want me to make love to them. Didn’t you demonstrate that yourself only moments ago?’
Kat flinched at the accusation, but she couldn’t deny it, could she? ‘So who was she?’ she questioned.
‘A journalist.’ Carlos allowed himself a brief, hard smile. ‘Who I heard was doing a feature on me—and so I invited her here to find out what angle she was taking, and whether or not I needed to persuade her to adopt a different one.’
‘Why would anyone want to do a feature on you?’
Black eyes challenged her. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Because you’re rich? Or because you’re unbearable?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Wealth is hardly an achievement in its own right. You of all people should know that, Princes a.’
And then she remembered the photo. That startling photo. The young Carlos wearing the richly ornate jacket of the bullfighter—his face just as proud and as beautiful as it was now, but without the cynicism which time had etched onto the features of his older self.
‘Bullfighting,’ she said slowly. ‘She wanted to talk to you about bullfighting.’
There was the beat of a pause. ‘Of course she did,’ he said slowly. ‘They always want to talk about bullfighting.’
‘But why?’ Kat stared at him. ‘Because it’s exciting—or because hardly anyone does it as a career choice?’
‘Both those things, but it is a little more complex than that.’ He met the question in her eyes. ‘It’s fifteen years since I left the ring, and she’s just digging around because she wants to know why.’
‘And why did you leave?’
‘You think I want to talk about it with someone like you?’ he queried softly. ‘A woman whose definition of a hard day’s work is painting her own nails because the manicurist happens to be off sick?’
He saw her flinch but Carlos didn’t care. Couldn’t she take the truth about the kind of woman she was? He had vowed never to talk of those days, to relive the pain and the torture which had raged inside him during his tumultuous years in the ring. A pain which had little to do with the noble bullfight itself, and more to do with the cruel father who had made his life such a torment.
The journalist had tried every trick in the book to get him to talk, and a couple more besides. She had certainly been enterprising, he would say that for her. The editor had probably selected her for her beauty and her sheer ruthlessness. So that when the lunchtime interview had not been progressing as she’d wished, she had suggested sunbathing. And then laughingly stripped off her bikini top as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.
He had been aroused, yes—of course he had. The woman’s breasts had been full and pale and her glossy lips had parted as if to demonstrate that she was very accomplished with her mouth. But sex offered to him on a plate had never been his thing.
He looked down into the blue eyes of the Balfour girl. Maybe he should tell her that and have done with it—because, in effect, wasn’t she doing exactly the same? Trying to twist him round her little finger with her come-to-bed eyes and pouting lips. Perhaps he should tell her that no matter how much she tried to tempt him, she was here to do a job and nothing more. He had given his word to her father that he would teach her something in the way of commitment, and Carlos always kept his word.
So why had he kissed her? And why was the memory of that kiss making him grow hard even now? So hard that he would have liked to have taken hold of her aristocratic hips and thrust right into her.
‘You’d better have some breakfast,’ he said harshly. ‘And then start by clearing away the mess in the dining room.’
Kat met the stony black gaze. ‘And if I don’t?’
He thought how beautiful she looked when she defied him. ‘If you don’t? Then, Princesa, I will quickly lose patience with you, and I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ he answered. ‘You might do well to remember that the sooner you start fulfilling your obligations, the sooner you can leave—and free us both from this infernal incarceration.’
Shaken, Kat stood watching as he walked away from her, her eyes drawn to the graceful movement of his white-jeaned physique and the way the silk shirt billowed slightly in the breeze. Unthinkingly, she touched her fingertips to her lips—to where the tender flesh still tingled with the heat of his passionate kiss—and she felt the corresponding thunder of her heart as she remembered it. But the kiss meant nothing, she reminded herself—and Carlos couldn’t have made that clearer.
She wondered if he’d gone off to work in one of the warren of luxurious rooms which lay below the deck, but it wasn’t until a few minutes later when she heard the throaty roar of a powerful engine that she realised that he’d gone. Properly gone.
Racing over to the side of the yacht, she saw a flash of silver as a powerful little motorboat cut through the sapphire waters. The wind streamed through the wild black curls of the man who stood at the helm and the sun had illuminated his olive skin into dark gold. He looked, she thought, like some powerful and formidable god of a man.
For one split second, their eyes met—and Kat registered the implacable coldness in his gaze, with barely a flicker of recognition or acknowledgement on his stony features. Was he demonstrating the fact that he was free to come and go as she was not? Or was he silently laughing at her and her lowly predicament?
She turned away and looked around the deck. Either way, she was trapped here—with a list of menial chores to do for a sexy tyrant of a man, and no means by which she could escape.
Chapter Five
AFTER Carlos had gone, Kat was left with the stinging realisation that she’d never had to clean up after anyone.
At all the different schools she’d attended—before being kicked out of most of them—there had always been someone else to make the beds and do the laundry for the privileged schoolgirls. Even at home, she’d managed to wriggle out of helping with domestic chores—maybe because her kindly and efficient mother had been a bit of a pushover.
When her mother had divorced Oscar and married Victor, it had been a fairly amicable arrangement for all concerned. But even so, Tilly Balfour had been so racked with guilt over the inevitable disruption it had caused that she’d tried to cushion her three daughters against any emotional fallout by spoiling them just a little. And Kat, being the youngest, had been very easy to spoil.
And then when Tilly’s new husband had been posted to Sri Lanka, there had been servants galore to run around after the whole family. Until…
Kat blinked back the tears which could still catch her by surprise, even all these years later. But for once the thought was stubbornly refusing to be blocked.
When Victor had been killed—murdered—nobody in their right mind was going to ask Kat to do anything she didn’t want to do. And if they did, then she usually turned her back on it and ran away.
But now suddenly that had all changed. Because for the first
