frowned as she watched an expression of astonishment wash over his dark face. He was looking at the snapshot as if it were an alien.
‘Is something wrong? You don’t have to—’ She began to withdraw her hand but he caught her wrist.
‘No, nothing’s wrong,’ he promised, taking the photo, not because he actually felt any interest but because he knew it would have injured her feelings if he had refused.
Feelings were entirely new territory for him and he saw no urgent need to explore this development.
‘I’m more used to being offered bills for designer shoes.’
Her brow furrowed in confusion at the comment. ‘Why? Do you have a business interest?’
He regarded her in much the same way she imagined he might had she just announced that she believed in Santa Claus.
‘No, I have girlfriends with expensive tastes who like me to pick up the tab.’ He did not begrudge the expense, he considered himself a generous lover.
The plural was not wasted on Maggie.
Good God, where is your pride, Maggie?
I’m sleeping with a man who, not only does not promise something as basic as exclusivity, he probably doesn’t understand the meaning of the word.
‘If you ever pay for my shoes I will feed them to you.’
He stared. ‘You don’t like shoes?’
‘You may not mind women who sleep with you for your money, but I mind being mistaken for one.’ She pinned him with a wrathful glare and yelled, ‘I’m sleeping with you for the sex! On a temporary basis, obviously.’
‘Obviously, and I promise not to offend you with shoes, though I would like to point out that I like to think it is not just my money they sleep with me for.’
Maggie’s eyes narrowed. She knew they didn’t and she hated them all with a vengeance. ‘You really do love yourself!’
His lashes lifted from his cheek and he levelled a direct look into her eyes. ‘Love is not something I encourage.’
Maggie blinked. The warning was unmistakeable. Then before she could respond to it he began to study the snapshot, saying, ‘Those are your brothers?’ The young men in the slightly out of focus snapshot were both blond and broad-shouldered and duplicates of their father. All three men towered over their sister, and the woman in the wheelchair.
She nodded, wishing she had remembered sooner that this was not the most flattering photo she had ever appeared in. ‘I still had my braces then.’
‘Which accounts for the lack of a smile? The woman in the wheelchair…your mother?’
‘Yes.’ Maggie did not want to go into details, but added, ‘But she’s not in the wheelchair any more—at least, not all the time.’
‘Your brothers are not much like you.’
Maggie grinned. Talking about her family made this abnormal situation seem less surreal. ‘You mean because they’re six feet four or because they’re blond?’ she suggested, raising a hand to her dark hair and grimacing as she realised it had come free of the ponytail and now hung loose in a tangled skein down her back.
‘Your colouring is very… Mediterranean?’ His glance moved across the glowing contours of her face. Her skin was flawless and had a peachy sheen that was almost opalescent. The idea of carrying her back to bed became more urgent than eating breakfast.
Maggie’s eyes fell evasively, her long lashes brushing the soft curve of her smooth high cheekbones, but not before Rafael had seen the emotion flicker across her face.
‘Actually, I wouldn’t look like Ben and Sam. I’m adopted.’
‘That must have been a shock…discovering you’re adopted.’ Rafael suggested, watching her push the gleaming strands of hair back from her heart-shaped face with both hands, looping it into a heavy bunch before letting it fall down her back.
She shook her head. ‘Not really. I didn’t discover—I always knew I was adopted. Mum and Dad always made me feel special because they picked me.’
‘But your brothers, they are…?’
‘Big surprises, with an emphasis on the big,’ she added with an affectionate grin. She felt some of the tension slip from her shoulders as a mental picture of her younger siblings formed in her head. ‘Mum and Dad thought they couldn’t have children so they were pretty shocked when Ben came along and then, a year later, Sam.’
‘So your real mother?’ he probed, wary of pushing too hard.
Her smile vanished. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ she suggested.
Rafael gave a casual shrug and didn’t push.
‘I really envy you being bilingual… Spanish is such a marvellous language and you have an incredible home. I have never met anyone who lived in a castle before.’ She stopped, drew breath, and prayed for the floor to open and swallow her.
She had just taken inane babble to an entirely new level. On the plus side, at least she had run out of breath before she asked him about his heating bills!
No, actually there was no plus side.
‘We don’t have to talk at all.’
The invitation in his smoky, sinfully sexy voice would have been obvious no matter what language he chose to use. Maggie’s breath snagged in her throat. Her eyes fused with his and Maggie’s insides melted.
She reached for the coffee pot and refilled her cup. ‘This is great coffee,’ she enthused.
‘Or we could.?’ Rafael conceded drily.
Maggie, who couldn’t stop staring at his long tapering fingers—she had never looked at a man’s hands and thought about them on her skin, but now she had she couldn’t stop—blurted with incurable honesty, ‘I feel very out of my depth.’ She levelled her candid gaze at his face and wondered how she had ever been mad enough to think a one-night stand with him was a good idea.
‘Once you learn to tread water, depth is not a problem.’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘But you are a very fast learner.’
She blushed and looked at him through her lashes. ‘You’re a passable teacher, but you’re also the sort of man I’d normally cross the road to avoid. You’re not my type at all. It’s crazy, but from the moment I saw you I.’
‘You what?’
Maggie shivered. He had a voice that was the auditory equivalent of having your skin stroked against the deep pile of rich velvet.
‘The moment I saw you I wondered… I wondered what sort of kisser you were.’ And you had to tell him that why, exactly?
Rafael
