his wider intentions. As far as Ramon Perez was concerned there was no urgency. Even the sequence of events was irrelevant to him. But he would own finca Fuego Montoya…and take her to bed.
‘What are you doing?’
Annalisa jumped guiltily and grabbed the sheet to cover herself as Ramon strolled back into the stateroom. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut until they burned as hot as her face, she sent desperate mind messages for him to leave. He was a married man—out of bounds, out of the question! Where was her common sense? Her sanity? As remorse bludgeoned her emotions she stretched out her long legs, searching for some cool spot to soothe her overheated senses. But she only succeeded in setting up some delicious after-shocks in a region of her body that insisted on responding to Ramon however hard she fought to remain detached.
‘Get up.’ His voice was sharp.
And was that contempt too?
‘Look at me, Annalisa,’ he warned when she only buried herself deeper under the sheets. ‘This won’t work.’ And, crossing to the bed, he deftly flipped back the covers.
With an exclamation of alarm Annalisa snatched out a hand to grab them back, then realised that instead of being naked, as she had expected, she was in fact wearing the top half of a pair of rather elegant pyjamas. Clearly made for a man, in burgundy-coloured silk piped with black, they did an excellent job of preserving her modesty. With her vision partly obscured by tousled hair, she slowly raised her head.
Fresh from the shower, Ramon was wearing a dark grey impeccably tailored suit, which he had teamed with a crisp white shirt and a sober silk tie in shades of blue. Business uniform, she realised, vaguely recalling a phone call to Don Alfonso some time the previous evening to arrange a meeting in his office.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, trying desperately to instil some normality into the situation.
‘That’s better,’ he said approvingly, seeing that she was at last making some effort to wake up.
There was amusement in his expression and, watching his lips, Annalisa found her mind wandering back—or rather stumbling back through a half-remembered tangle of impressions… Shock rippled through her when she thought what must have happened between them.
‘You might want to drag your focus away from me and go and freshen up,’ he suggested coolly.
It wasn’t that easy, not when you had just spent the night together…and his arrogance pointed to there being another notch on his bedpost. But if that were the case would he not show some reaction? Even scorn would be better than nothing.
‘The meeting with our legal teams is at eleven,’ he said pointedly, ‘and it is now—’ he shot a glance at his wristwatch ‘—a little past ten o’ clock.’
His commanding voice managed to convey any manner of things, but nothing of a personal nature. Mortified, Annalisa drew her knees up to her chin as he went on.
‘As there is no time for you to return to the finca, I have taken the liberty of having a suitable outfit delivered to the yacht. I hope you will find it to your liking.’ With a look he drew her attention to an Armani suit hanging inside an otherwise empty wardrobe.
Under anything approaching normal circumstances she would have been ecstatic. But right now it was the final humiliation! No doubt this was his way of paying her off. Or maybe he was just cruelly underlining the fact that unwittingly she had been more suitably dressed for seduction than business the previous evening. The black slip-dress had seemed a good idea at the time, simple yet sophisticated. Her only nod towards frivolity had been a pair of high-heeled mules. And she had taken care to see that her unusually full breasts were safely concealed beneath a dove-grey cashmere shawl…
But in a sudden flashback she remembered the shoes going even before she embarked! She had taken them off to preserve the teak decks as they’d approached the gangplank, steadying herself with her hands planted tentatively on Ramon’s arm… And as the white cruiser had slipped its moorings the sea breeze had plucked at the shawl until Ramon took it and handed it to a member of his uniformed crew.
Dinner had been set out on deck under a protective glass canopy. Just the two of them, waited on by men like shadows who had known just when to attend and when to disappear. As the sleek hull had sliced through a mirror-flat sea she had begun to sip the first glass of champagne…
‘I think you’d better take a cold shower,’ Ramon observed briskly.
Her dazed eyes transferred slowly to his face. ‘What?’
‘A cold shower,’ he repeated patiently, as if trying to coax a child into action.
And, if she had wanted some reassurance of his intentions, there was not a hint of seduction on his face. Last night it had been the easiest thing in the world to adapt to Ramon’s sybaritic lifestyle, but mornings were something else! Perhaps he would mellow over breakfast. The tone of his voice when he crossed the stateroom to fling open the curtains extinguished that hope.
‘I’ll have a tray of fruit juice and croissants brought to you.’
Hard to believe that dinner had placed her in such a hypnotic trance… How else could she explain how she had come to be leaning her head on his shoulder? Annalisa frowned as she tried to remember just when Ramon had removed his dinner jacket, opened the buttons on his shirt, turned back the cuffs, revealing strong, tanned arms shaded with dark hair? It was all so hazy…
‘I’ll run the shower for you,’ he barked, interrupting her reverie with an impatient gesture. ‘And then I’ll wait for you on deck. If you care about the finca at all, you have exactly half an hour to get ready.’
She shook her head as she struggled to recall a single clear detail from the night before. She vaguely remembered leaning forward to reach for the champagne flute…somehow their fingers had touched. Then, removing the glass from her hand, Ramon had settled her back against the sofa—
‘Annalisa! How can you expect to do business with me when you won’t even get out of bed? I thought I told you to get up.’
‘I’m sorry… I…I was thinking about last night—’
His expression was like a slap in the face. ‘There’s no time for that now.’
Stiffening her resolve, she sat up and confronted him. ‘Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’
‘The meal was good,’ he admitted impatiently.
‘And the rest?’ She watched as he mashed the door handle impatiently.
‘The champagne was a good year—other than that I have no idea what you are talking about.’
Angrily she turned her back on him.
For a brief moment he remained silent and then he gave a short, virile laugh. ‘Allow me to reassure you, Annalisa. If there had been anything else between us apart from a meal last night you would remember.’
‘So, we didn’t…?’ Her glance flickered up to his face and away again.
‘You are not accustomed to champagne,’ he observed coolly. ‘Do you think I would take advantage of you?’
She studied the stitching on the amethyst silk counterpane
