boutique is in Salvador. A stylist I employ checks the stock after each visit and removes the clothes that have been worn, which are then given to a local charity.’
Lia felt ashamed of her quick judgement. This wasn’t like her... But he pushed her buttons like no one else. And had he really never brought a woman here? She tried to read his now expressionless face and had to admit that a man like him wouldn’t lie about that. Why would he need to?
The realisation that it must be some sort of sanctuary for him made her feel even more vulnerable. She weakly chose deflection to avoid acknowledging the revelation that she was the first woman he’d brought here.
‘Well,’ she said stiffly, ‘that’s very generous of you, but I’ve brought my own clothes.’ She belatedly realised that her autumn/winter clothes would obviously be totally unsuitable in this climate.
Ben straightened from the door now, and for the first time since she’d met him Lia sensed a slight chill in the air. Contrary to the way she would have expected to feel, she didn’t like it.
He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s my first time here this year, so I have a few maintenance things to catch up on. Make yourself at home. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen if you’d like a snack. And you’ve seen where the beach is—it’s entirely private, so you won’t be disturbed.’
And then he turned to walk out. A veritable cauldron of emotions rendered Lia immobile and speechless for a moment as she watched him leave. There was anger that he’d all but kidnapped her, but that was fading in light of these all too seductive surroundings and the fact that he was giving her space.
And then she castigated herself for being so easily duped—because he had to have an agenda. And she needed to remember that. Because something was shifting, and if she wasn’t careful she’d be falling under a spell she might not be able to resist.
She hurried to the door of the bedroom in her bare feet and saw his broad back descending the stairs. ‘If this is all just to get to my father then you might as well send me back to New York right now,’ she blurted out. ‘Because I would never let someone seduce me to get to him.’
* * *
Ben stopped in his tracks. Frustration still coursed through his blood. Never had a woman so comprehensively stonewalled him. And certainly not one who wanted him. And never had a woman had such an obviously low opinion of him. To his utter chagrin, when usually he couldn’t care less what people thought of him, he found himself caring about her opinion.
She looked at him as if he was something stuck on the bottom of her shoe, even as that pulse beat hectically under her skin at her neck, every time he came close.
Slowly he turned around, jaw tight, teetering on the edge of telling her that he’d arrange for her to be taken back to Salvador, but then he saw her hovering by the doorway, and that compulsion died a death when he saw the expression on her face. There was still defiance, but there was also something he hadn’t seen before—a kind of wary uncertainty. A hint of vulnerability. It made him think of the fleeting look of hurt he thought he’d seen when he’d called her a princess. And the moment of sheer terror on her face when her friend had asked her to step in for the model at the charity auction.
In bare feet, and still wearing that decadent dress which was badly creased by now, with her hair loose and mussed around her shoulders after the long journey, she looked more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen in his life.
And he wanted her.
Ben slowly came back up the stairs, seeing how her eyes widened. She was tense, too, and it wasn’t just from anger at his commandeering of this situation. She was tense because of him, because she wanted him, and suddenly Ben knew that there was no way he was letting her go.
He stopped a few feet away from her. ‘I won’t stand here and insult your intelligence by denying that I have an interest in your father’s business...but right now I’m not concerned with that.’
Ben was surprised to find that he really wasn’t. Right now all his interest was focused on one thing. Lia. And making her acquiesce to him.
She swallowed and his eyes tracked the movement down the slim column of her throat.
Finally she said, in those cut-glass tones, ‘You won’t get anywhere with me, Mr Carter, so I think it would be best if we just kept ourselves to ourselves until it’s time to go home.’
Ben almost felt sorry for her as he answered, ‘You really shouldn’t issue a challenge like that, Lia...’
‘YOU REALLY SHOULDN’T issue a challenge like that...’
That evening, Benjamin Carter’s words still resounded in Lia’s head. Damn the man.
After pacing her sumptuous room for a couple of hours that morning, she’d finally explored the dressing room. Determined to make the most of this situation, she’d kitted herself out in a modest bathing suit and some beach attire. After helping herself to a light lunch in the kitchen she’d headed to the beach.
There had been no sign of Benjamin Carter, much to her relief, but she had heard some noises that sounded as if they were coming from the front of the house. Not wanting to face him in a diaphanous beach cover-up, she’d found an idyllic spot on the beach under the shade of a palm tree, out of immediate sight of the villa.
For a few hours she had almost fooled herself that she was on a vacation she’d chosen willingly. She’d dozed, swum, and read a book that she’d pulled off the shelf in the comfortable den.
She’d returned to the villa as dusk was falling and had nearly tripped over her own feet when she’d seen a half-naked Ben Carter perched precariously on the terracotta rooftop of the villa. Her eyes had been immediately drawn to the sleek muscles of his broad back, moving sinuously under his skin as he’d hammered something into a slate.
The fact that he had been laughing and joking with another man, whose ebony skin had also been gleaming with exertion, had gone largely unnoticed. Carter had been wearing nothing but a faded pair of board shorts and battered-looking sneakers.
Lia had almost jumped out of her skin when a melodious and mischievous-sounding voice had said near her ear, ‘Not a bad sight at the end of a hot day, hmm?’
She’d looked to her left to see a startlingly pretty young woman, with skin the colour of warm chocolate, eyes to match and a huge smile. With a colourful scarf on her head, she had blended into the exotic background perfectly.
The woman had introduced herself as Esmé, and after explaining that the other man was her husband had said, ‘I was just coming to find you. Ben sends his apologies for being busy all afternoon but says he’ll look forward to you joining him for dinner at eight.’
Lia had been about to demur when she’d realised she was being ridiculous, and that this nice woman didn’t deserve to be put out just because the last person she wanted to have dinner with was her host.
Are you so sure about that? a little voice had crowed.
In any event, Lia had made her escape from the provocative view of a far less civilised Benjamin Carter before he’d been able to turn around and see her reaction, which was confusing to her on so many levels. Since when
