it normal for a woman to feel like this when she had just made love for the first time? she wondered. To experience strong feelings of emotional attachment towards the man who had shown you what real pleasure was? To feel all fluttery in his presence—and for your breath to catch in your throat, making breathing quite a feat?
‘Buenos días,’ he said, putting the papers and laptop down on the table. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘I…well, yes,’ she answered awkwardly, wondering what the protocol was—whether he would come over and take her in his arms and start to kiss her.
He didn’t. He simply sat down at the table and began to pour a cup of the coffee she’d just made. ‘Like some?’ he questioned.
Kat swallowed down her disappointment, pride making her nod her head and force a smile as if the thought of a cup of coffee pleased her more than anything else. But inside she was hurting as the absence of a kiss or a hug told her as clearly as words that he regretted what had happened last night.
She took the cup he slid towards her. In a way, she might have preferred it if he was being angry—at least anger might have indicated that he felt something towards her. But this…this cool air of near impartiality was making her feel as if she had no substance at all. As if she hadn’t gasped out her pleasure while his powerful body had filled her. And surely such cool indifference meant that he couldn’t wait to be rid of her? So tell him you want to leave before you have the indignity of him asking you to go.
‘So,’ she said, careful to keep her voice steady. ‘What time do you estimate we’ll reach shore?’
Carlos’s eyes narrowed—because this was not the reaction he had been anticipating. Women always clung to him like vines the day after he’d made love to them, pressing their bodies against him and urging him back between their soft thighs. Sometimes he succumbed and sometimes he didn’t. But he always expected a come-on.
So why were Kat Balfour’s bright blue eyes shuttered by the long sweep of her ebony lashes, and the lady herself doing a very good impersonation of an ice queen? And why was she talking to him in that cool and careful way, as if she was a completely different person from the one who had cried out her pleasure in his arms last night? Unexpectedly, he felt irritated.
‘What are you talking about?’ he questioned.
‘You said that we would be sailing for shore today. You offered to fly me back to England—even America. Remember?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ he said slowly. ‘But that was then. Things have changed now, Kat—you must realise that.’
Trying to keep the hope from her voice, Kat quickly put her cup down before she slopped hot coffee all over her lap. ‘They have?’
‘Of course.’ For the first time, he recognised that the reality which had deprived him of sleep for much of the night had not even occurred to her. But then, why would it? This was a whole new territory for her. She was probably still getting used to the way her body felt and had given no thought to the potential bombshell it might now be concealing. He now had to think about the best way to put this. Only there was no best way, he realised. Just the bald, blunt truth. He stared at her. ‘You do realise you could be pregnant?’
Kat’s world stopped as the word spun. Round and round in her head it went. ‘Pregnant?’ she repeated blankly, as if it was something he had plucked at random from the dictionary.
Carlos’s voice roughened. ‘That is one of the consequences of having unprotected sex,’ he said, and saw her mouth open in distress. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa!’ he exclaimed bitterly, and slammed his fist on the table so that his cup half jumped out of its saucer. ‘I blame myself! I was the experienced one. I was the one who should have used something. Who should not have been so overcome by lust that I failed to protect myself. Better still, I should have walked away.’
He was still trying to come to terms with what he had done. That of all the people in the world, it should have been this blue-eyed heiress who had succeeded in making his legendary control dissolve. The kind of woman who epitomised everything he despised. And he had taken her virginity. Her purity lost on the bonfire of his lust. Contrition didn’t come easily to a man who rarely considered himself to be in the wrong, but for once in his life Carlos recognised that contrition was due. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’
‘If it makes you feel any better, I feel exactly the same,’ said Kat quickly, but inside her heart lurched with pain. Because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She’d waited years and years to have sex—and every fairy-tale hope she’d attached to it was being systematically smashed by the Spaniard.
Oh, the physical expectations had easily been met—in fact, they’d surpassed her wildest dreams. It was this grim aftermath which was threatening to erode that ecstatic recall. She didn’t want apologies and regrets that it had ever happened—she longed for him to take her into his arms and comfort her. And maybe kiss her too. Tell her that he adored her, leaving her free to admit that he was already occupying a sizeable place in her heart, despite all her determination not to let him.
Well, it’s your own stupid fault, tormented the voice of her conscience which she had been failing to quieten all morning. It was you who was hell-bent on having this man to be your lover. And he made it clear that you were the kind of woman he despised, so you have only yourself to blame for the consequences.
Carlos looked at her, thinking how pale and pinched her face looked this morning. And suddenly, his imagination conjured up an image of his seed—one of the many seeds he had planted in her last night—growing into a baby. A baby. Beside his coffee cup, one hand balled into a tight fist as a strange, nameless emotion caught in his throat. ‘Our feelings on the subject are irrelevant,’ he said unevenly. ‘What we have to decide is what to do next.’
‘Well, I want to get off this boat as soon as possible,’ she put in, determined to beat her own retreat before she was evicted. ‘Just the way we’d planned.’
Carlos narrowed his eyes. You and me both, Princesa, he thought. And not just because the idea of her working on his yacht now seemed intolerable after everything that had happened. Last night had been a spur of the moment thing—a gesture of comfort which had escalated into something else. Being cooped up on board with her—having once tasted the pleasure of her delicious body—would stretch his resolve to breaking point. But it wasn’t going to happen. Not again. It wouldn’t be fair. Certainly not to her. And in the meantime…
‘When will you know?’ he demanded.
She stared at him blankly. ‘Know?’
His black eyes were fixed on her face. Didn’t her rich-girl’s education provide basic classes in biology? he wondered bitterly. ‘Whether or not you’re carrying my child.’
Colour flooded into Kat’s cheeks, because this question seemed almost as intimate as what they had done together last night. And bizarrely, the thought of a tiny, black-haired baby with golden-olive skin—a miniature Carlos—did not fill her with the dread and fear she would have expected. Instead, she felt an unbearable sense of longing wash over her and she shook her head in slight disbelief. How crazy was that? Letting her mind do a few swift calculations, she stared at him. ‘In about two weeks.’
Carlos didn’t react, and neither did he point out the obvious. That they had chosen her most fertile time to make love. ‘In that case, I think you should stay here, with me,’ he stated flatly.
