‘I know, and then to introduce you as my companion ...I’m not surprised you were angry. I should have said partner.’ And, tilting her head back, he brushed her lips with a gentle kiss.
‘Partner. Yes, I like that,’ she murmured, stroking her hand over his hairy chest. ‘If it is true.’ She glanced up through her thick lashes at his beloved face, needing all the reassurance she could get.
‘Of course it is true. Now and for ever,’ Raul declared throatily, his hand capturing hers on his broad chest.
Penny sighed her contentment. Raul was hers. All of him. And, glancing down at the muscular length of his magnificent body, she began to giggle.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Oh, Raul, the business tycoon, still wearing his jacket and shirt, admittedly tom open, then naked from the waist down except for his socks.’
Raul pulled himself up the bed and looked down. His lips twitched; he glanced at Penny and lifted a socked foot, and they both burst out laughing, the happy sound echoing in the still night air.
CHAPTER TWO
‘COME on, sleepyhead; you have ten minutes to get ready.’
Penny opened her eyes and looked up at Raul standing by the side of the bed. She stretched and smiled—a slow, sensuous curve of her full lips. She lifted out a hand towards him. Then, frowning, she let it drop to the coverlet. He was already dressed in a navy silk suit...
‘Not this morning, honey,’ he drawled with a mocking grin, accurately reading her mind. Usually they started the day in a much more enjoyable fashion.
Penny murmured, ‘Spoilsport!’ and snuggled back under the cover. ‘You work if you must, but I feel like another hour in bed.’
‘Sorry, but there has been a change of plan.’
‘What?’ she asked fuzzily, reluctant to leave the warmth of the wide bed.
‘Come on, Penny; move it. The honeymoon can’t last for ever. You’re booked on a flight back to Spain leaving in seventy minutes.’
‘We’re leaving?’ She hauled herself up into a sitting position, her eyes flicking enquiringly to his hard face.
‘Not exactly. I have to stay a few days to sort out a couple of problems with the design of the desalination plant. But you are going back to the hacienda; you will be safer there. I should never have brought you with me in the first place. Too many men around here would pay a fortune for a girl like you, and I cannot be around to protect you all day.’
He crossed the room and pulled back the curtains, allowing the blistering brilliance of the morning sun to illuminate the room. Penny blinked at the harsh light, and the even harsher expression on Raul’s dark face.
‘Really, Raul, aren’t you overreacting a bit?’ she responded drily. ‘I can’t see myself being kidnapped out of the Hyatt Regency, somehow.’ And, sliding out of bed, dragging the sheet around her naked body, she crossed to where he stood lounging against the window-frame. ‘And you did promise to take me to England,’ she reminded him peevishly. ‘I’ve arranged—’
‘Not now, Penny; I haven’t the time to argue.’ He cut her off in mid-sentence. ‘I don’t want you here. I want you back in Spain, where Ava and Carlos can look after you.’ Pushing away from the window, he swatted her bottom as he brushed past her. ‘Do as you’re told and hurry. You now have only eight minutes.’
The master has spoken, Penny thought angrily, but still she did as she was told. Packing took a matter of minutes, and after a lightning-fast shower she pulled on her briefs, a pair of white cotton trousers and a blue halter-top, slipped white espadrilles on her feet and she was ready. But silently simmering with resentment.
She marched into the sitting room, ready to demand an explanation. Raul knew perfectly well that she had arranged to meet her friend Amy in London at the weekend. Now he was suggesting that she stay in Spain and wait for him like a dutiful little wife. Except she wasn’t his wife! And what had he said earlier? ‘The honeymoon can’t last for ever.’
She paused. Was that how Raul viewed the past few idyllic months that they had been together—a honeymoon for him, without the complication of having to marry the girl in the first place?
‘Dios, Penny, are you determined to make a spectacle of yourself?’ Raul’s angry voice sliced the air.
‘Spectacle?’ She glanced up at his frowning face. What had she done wrong now?
‘No bra, bare arms, bare back—is there no end to your stupidity?’
Penny looked down at her neat blue halter-top and back up at her lover’s grim face. ‘Apparently not,’ she muttered, and she wasn’t just referring to her clothes.
‘No matter; you haven’t time to change.’ And, grabbing her arm, he bustled her out of the suite and into the waiting elevator.
‘Even if I had, I wouldn’t,’ she snapped defiantly. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, it is the middle of June, the temperature is over a hundred degrees, and it will not be much different in Andalusia. I couldn’t give a fig if the women here go around covered from head to foot. I am Christian and British and will wear what I please.’
She almost added, So there. Much as she loved Raul, he could be the most arrogant, chauvinistic man in the world sometimes.
‘Happy you got that off your chest?’ Raul drawled mockingly, with a cynical, sensual glance at that particular part of her anatomy.
Penny felt the colour surge in her face but wasn’t sure whether it was anger or arousal that was making her blush. ‘Yes,’ she snapped back, and turned her head away as he slipped one arm around her waist, his head lowering towards hers. She wasn’t in the mood to kiss and make up. She was angry, confused and bitterly disappointed.
Perhaps it was just as well that they were parting for a while. The events of the last twelve hours had left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. She had glimpsed herself through a stranger’s eyes—those of an Arab prince—and she did not like what she saw. Plus, Raul’s attitude did not help one bit.
It was as if coming to an Arab country had heightened in him the characteristics of his Moorish forefathers. The Moors had once dominated southern Spain for nearly eight hundred years, and, watching Raul now, she could quite imagine him locking her away in purdah, given half a chance.
His home, situated west of Granada, was built in the Moorish style—all graceful arches and elegant balconies but with iron grilles at the windows. A central courtyard, sheltered from the burning heat of the summer by ancient olive and lemon trees, also effectively blocked off the outside world.
The land had been in Raul’s family for generations—a huge estate with vast expanses of olive groves stretching across the gently waving plains and higher up into the hills where roamed cattle and the horses which Raul kept as a hobby. She loved the place, but it was isolated...
She glanced up at him, her disturbing thoughts clearly reflected in her blue eyes. But at that moment the elevator doors swished open and Raul straightened to his full height, his dark face impassive as he ushered her across
