The raw hunger in his deep-set eyes made her breath quicken and her stomach muscles quiver receptively.
For a moment their glances clung until Maggie, her heart beating hard, allowed her lashes to fall in a concealing veil.
The heavy thrum of her pounding blood in her ears was deafening. Confused, excited and scared by the strength of her reaction she ran ahead, anxious to distance herself from him and her feelings.
She used the moment to gather her calm around her like a comfort blanket—she wasn’t comforted but after a little deep breathing she was able to speak without babbling anything stupid like, ‘You’re beautiful,’ when he reached her side.
The tremors that hit her body intermittently she could do little about, so she jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans, blissfully unaware that while the first-aid measure hid her shaking hands it also pulled the denim tight across her bottom, riveting Rafael’s eyes on the feminine flare of her hips.
‘This is incredible,’ she said, not feigning her enthusiasm as she looked around the mountainside clearing. ‘However did you find this place?’
Eyes shining, Maggie stared at the scene, drinking it in: the flickering flames of the open fires, smoke in the night, the strings of fairy lights in the tall pines twinkling above the heads of the people of all ages sitting at the rustic tables, eating, drinking, laughing and some dancing to the music supplied by an accordion player.
The smell of the food cooking in the giant pots filled the air and mingled with the wood smoke, the scent of damp grass, and the wild thyme crushed underfoot.
‘Rafael.’ The man who greeted her companion stared at Maggie with open curiosity before smiling and making a comment in his native tongue.
The men spoke for a moment before Rafael turned back to Maggie. ‘I did not find it,’ he said, responding to her previous question. ‘I was brought up not far from here.’
‘A country boy!’
He arched a dark brow as he placed his fingers under her elbow to guide her to a seat at one of the long trestle tables. ‘That surprises you?’
Considering his aura of sophistication it did, but she had to admit he did seem very relaxed and at home in the surroundings and, judging by the number of people who greeted him with warmth and familiarity, he had not forgotten his roots.
She smiled as people moved to make way for them; Rafael told her to save him a seat while he left to bring her back food.
Maggie sat quietly drinking in the sights and smells, trying to commit this very special moment to memory, she was pretty sure that by the morning it would all seem like a dream.
Rafael returned carrying two plates of steaming paella and, setting one before her, pulled a stray chair to the table and straddled it.
Maggie speared a prawn with her fork and put it in her mouth. She gasped. ‘That is incredible!’ and refilled her fork.
Her plate was half empty when she realised that Rafael was spending more time watching her than eating himself.
She lifted her eyes to his face and once again he responded to a question before she had framed it. ‘I like watching you eat. It is rare to see a woman who enjoys her food.’
‘Well, I’d enjoy it more if you weren’t watching every mouthful,’ she admitted frankly.
Maggie tapped her foot as the fiddler struck up a fresh tune. The man on the accordion finished off his glass of wine before he joined in too. There was a ripple of clapping as people flocked onto the makeshift dance floor. This was clearly a popular choice.
‘They all look as if they’re having a good time.’
The wistful note in her voice was not lost on Rafael, who was starting to find her undisguised enthusiasm for everything wearing. Every time she looked at him with wide trusting eyes he experienced a need to justify his actions to himself that he did not enjoy.
He knew he was doing the right thing.
So why, asked the voice in his head, do you feel like such a lowlife?
‘The paella is very lovely.’
Of course it was.
She was the easiest woman to please he had ever met and by far the most beautiful.
Would she be equally appreciative in bed?
The sybaritic image of her naked body beneath him, her dark hair spread out on a pillow, flashed into his head. Struggling to banish the erotic sequence of images that followed it, he shut his eyes, disconcerted by the strength of the desire that gripped him.
It seemed the moment to remind himself that she was not his type at all.
Luscious, obviously, but there was an aura of wide-eyed innocence about her that under normal circumstances he would have steered well clear of.
He had a low boredom threshold and virtue was, in his experience, boring. It was admittedly not boredom that had him in a constant state of painful arousal, but sexual hunger once quenched did not have a long shelf life. He gave a jaundiced smile; if anyone knew that it was him.
Maybe, he mused, it was genetic. His father’s numerous mistresses had never lasted long—pride in his family name had not extended to Felipe Castenadas depriving himself of female companionship after Rafael’s mother’s departure.
There had been many women and his father had spoken about them with a lack of respect behind their backs and sometimes to their faces that had never sat easily with Rafael as a boy.
Rafael had been in his early teens when he had gone to leave the room in disgust during the middle of one of his father’s coarse diatribes about his mistress of the moment.
His father had stood up and blocked the door. Rafael could still recall the smell of alcohol on his breath. ‘You know what your problem is, boy, you romanticise women,’ he had sneered. ‘Don’t shake your head, boy, I’m doing you a favour. Do you want a woman to make a fool of you? At heart they are all like your mother, basically whor—’
The crude sentence had never been completed. Felipe had met his son’s eyes—realising for the first time perhaps that he had to tilt his head to do so—and what he had seen there had made him pale.
He had moved away from the door maintaining an illusion of macho bluster, but clearly shaken. It had been a turning point. He had never pushed Rafael in the same way, or mentioned his mother again.
In other respects nothing had changed. It wasn’t just female companionship his father had not deprived himself of—Felipe Castenadas had lived a lavish lifestyle even when he couldn’t afford it. Rafael had been forced to watch silently as his father sold off the estate he’d claimed to love piece by piece to pay for his indulgences, all the time silently vowing to one day restore it.
He had done so now and gained in the process the respect and gratitude of the people on the estate. Though his father would never have accepted an invite to a party like this, Rafael did so regularly, and he frequently enjoyed these simple occasions more than the lavish social events he was expected to attend.
He had never
