she wanted to run away at the same time. She had never been so tormented over one male in her life as she had over this one.
Always this one.
He looked up then and caught her watching him. She didn’t jerk her gaze away, didn’t try to hide that she’d been looking. What was the point? He closed the laptop and put it away.
“I know this isn’t the way you expected this to happen,” he said. “But it’s for the best.”
“The best for whom?” she asked automatically.
His silver gaze didn’t waver. “For us. For the baby.”
“I don’t think waiting a month would have hurt.”
He shrugged. “When I decide to do a thing, I do it. I see no point in waiting.”
When he decided.
“What about your mother? Don’t you think she might like to see her son get married?”
His laugh was unexpected. It also sent a shiver over her. “The only thing she cares about right now is the fact I’m forcing her to live on her allowance. I doubt she’d trouble herself to bring me water if I were dying of thirst on her doorstep.”
Sadness jolted her at that statement. She knew he was an only child, and of course she knew that his father had recently died, but she’d had no idea his relationship with his mother was that bad. “Perhaps she’s still upset over your father’s death. Grief does unexpected things to people.”
She felt a little foolish for saying such a thing considering how his father had died, but stranger things had happened than a wife still being in love with her philandering husband.
He stared at her disbelievingly. “She is not sad, tesoro. Or, if she is sad, it’s not because he died, but because I’m now in charge of the money.”
“I’m sorry,” she said because she didn’t know what else to say.
“Not all families enjoy each other’s company the way yours does.”
Tina dropped her gaze from his. Yes, her family loved one another, there was no doubt about it. But she also thought perhaps they failed to understand one another, as well. They would absolutely not understand, for instance, why she’d agreed to marry Nico.
No, they would be furious. Renzo would pop a gasket when she told him.
Nico’s phone rang and he took the call, ending their conversation. A short while later, the plane landed at Gibraltar airport. It was dark when they stepped off the plane. She couldn’t see the ocean, but she could smell the tang of the salt air.
They climbed into a waiting car and were whisked to an exclusive hotel high above the city. They checked into the penthouse suite, which the staff assured them came with breathtaking views of the Bay of Gibraltar and the Spanish mainland—as well as the Rif Mountains of Morocco—though it would be morning before they would see the view.
But once they entered the suite, Tina was more concerned about the room. Room, as in singular.
“We need another room,” she said to Nico when she realized there was only the one.
She wasn’t ready to spend the night with him, not like this. Not when everything was spiraling out of control and she felt as if her life was no longer her own. If he’d kissed her earlier beneath the pergola, she might have yielded to him like a flower bending in a storm.
But he had not, and she’d had several hours now to fret about what was happening. From the moment she’d agreed to marry him, he’d shifted into high gear. She should have realized that he would. He was a businessman, and he had every intention of closing the deal before anything could happen to derail his plans.
To him, she was another acquisition. A bit of land, a factory, an exclusive source of some necessary component for his motorcycles.
What did you expect?
Nico crossed the main living area and opened the balcony doors. The bay spread like spilled ink below, and the lights of ships lit up the harbor. Across the bay, the Spanish town of Algeciras glowed in the night.
“There is only this room, cara,” he said when she came to stand in the open doorway.
Tina crossed her arms over her chest, her heart thrumming along like she’d just had a caffeine injection.
“It’s happening too fast for me, Nico. I only said yes this afternoon, and now we’re here, and we’re in the same room together, and my head is spinning.”
He turned his head to look at her. She couldn’t read him, couldn’t tell what was in that enigmatic gaze of his, and her pulse skipped. He was probably annoyed she was giving him trouble.
“There is only one room because it’s all they have available, Tina. We’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”
He sounded cool and guarded, and so very reasonable. Her cheeks felt hot. Sex seemed to be the last thing on his mind, though she couldn’t seem to move it from the front of hers. Because she couldn’t help but remember the last time they’d been alone in a hotel room overnight.
This one might be sleek and modern, furnished with chrome-and-glass tables, flokati rugs and leather couches, nothing at all like the elegant Hotel Daniele, but her mind didn’t know the difference. It kept replaying images of their last night together—cotton sheets so fine they felt like silk, twining bodies, sleek skin and that one perfect moment when she’d discovered how very addictive good sex could be.
“There is a couch,” she said, resisting the urge to fan herself.
His expression did not change. “I am aware of it.”
She hoped her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “I’ll sleep on it. I’m smaller than you.”
He left the railing and stalked toward her. She dropped her arms to her sides, took a step backward. He was so very big, so near, as he stopped only inches away from her. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him, and she wished that she’d put the stilettos back on. At least she wouldn’t feel as if he loomed over her if she had.
He reached out and caught a lock of her hair in his hand, twined it gently around his fist. “Is this really what you want?”
She nodded once, quickly.
He lifted her hair to his fine, aristocratic nose. “Do you not think, cara, that perhaps the modesty is a bit misplaced?”
The heat threatened to incinerate her from the inside out. “I—I agreed to marry you. So you would not harm my family,” she said, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper.
He laughed softly, wrapped her hair once more around his fist until she had to move closer. “Ah, I see. You have given yourself to me as a sacrificial lamb, is that it?”
“No—”
“You think that because you’ve agreed to the marriage, sex is off the table?” His voice was slightly harder this time.
She
