seemed to him that anyone could want to choose the simple practical need for a drink over the sensual banquet he had obviously intended enjoying.
‘Yes.’
It was all she could manage. That and the brief, uncomfortable ducking of her head, carefully avoiding his burning gaze. If she looked into his eyes she would see the anger there that wasn’t in his voice and she knew it would destroy her nerve to go on.
‘I said I was thirsty when I came down. I’m still thirsty now. I was on my way to make a coffee…’
‘You’re joking, sὶ?’
He couldn’t believe it, she realised uncomfortably. He really couldn’t believe that she would reject his seductive advances. That she would turn them down—turn him down.
And even worse, he hadn’t ever thought that she could resist him. He had assumed that she would be putty in his hands, easily distracted from her purpose by what he wanted. That she would do as he wished, without any questions. That she would respond to his whim as swiftly and obediently as a trained dog. And that if he told her to jump then she would simply ask how high.
‘Why should I be joking?’
She tried to assume an airy carelessness that she was very far from feeling. The look in those deep-set eyes was dangerous, and the strong body was still too taut, too unmoving for comfort.
‘Cassie…’
Whatever he had been about to say, he didn’t finish. Even as he spoke her name in that harsh way of his, the edge on the word so rough that it scraped its way over her exposed skin, there was the sound of another key being inserted into the lock behind them.
A moment later the door was pushed open, swinging back on its hinges until it slammed against the wall with an ominous-sounding thud. A man, tall, dark, strong like Joaquin, stood in the doorway framed against the still-burning sunlight outside.
‘Cassie?’
Her name was spoken in a voice so very similar to Joaquin’s, the intonation, the accent an almost exact match for his. But where Joaquin’s tone had been so cold and distant, the warmth and welcome in this one were so evident that she turned to him in instinctive relief, her eyes lighting up, her mouth curving into a ready smile.
‘Ramón! Come in!’
‘Ramón.’
Joaquin’s echoing of his half-brother’s name held none of the warmth and welcome that Cassie had shown.
‘What are you doing here? And where the hell did you get the keys to the house?’
‘I was invited,’ Ramón returned casually. ‘And keys—well, Cassie lent hers to me so that I didn’t have to hang about outside. Here, querida…’
He tossed the keys and a smile in Cassie’s direction and as she caught the clinking bundle she saw the brooding look in Joaquin’s dark eyes and was unable to suppress a faint smile herself.
So Joaquin was none too pleased with his brother’s sudden appearance. Perhaps even a little jealous?
Surely that was a hopeful sign? Perhaps even something she could play on to find out the real state of her lover’s feelings?
Taking a couple of quick steps forward, she enfolded Ramón in a warm hug, pressing her cheek to the lean, hard planes of his.
‘Come in, Ramón. Would you like a drink? We were just about to have coffee.’
And the look on Joaquin’s face as she led the way down the hall towards the kitchen gave her a sudden lift to her spirits that made it almost worth the risks she had taken by provoking him in this way.
CHAPTER TWO
DAMN Ramón!
‘Damn, damn, damn him!’
Joaquin slammed his fist hard against the side of the window frame as he stared across at the terraced expanse of his garden, to where the clear water of the curved swimming pool glinted in the last of the afternoon sun.
Damn him for appearing at just the wrong moment! For walking into the house as if he owned it, flashing that smile at Cassandra and interrupting…
Interrupting what?
The question froze him suddenly, hand still clenched tight into a brutal fist, the knuckles of his fingers showing through white under his tanned skin.
This time, the muttered curses in his native Spanish were harsher, more savage—and aimed at himself instead of his brother and his ill-timed visit.
Interrupting what? That was the real problem. The uncomfortable, nagging worry at the bottom of his mind, that corrupted and distorted everything until he wasn’t sure what to think.
He had thought that he’d succeeded in what he’d planned for his early arrival at the finca. That he’d enticed Cassandra out of her difficult mood, charmed away the uncharacteristic coolness and distance in her attitude—seduced it out of her. And he had believed that she was ready, as she had always been in the past, to put their differences behind them, and do their making up where they always did it so well—in bed.
But Ramón’s arrival had interrupted all that. Broken the mood totally and left him fuming with frustration while his woman and his half-brother made coffee and chatted affably.
It seemed that Ramón had a habit of turning up unexpectedly, just when he was least wanted. After all, hadn’t he arrived on their father’s doorstep, unannounced, nothing known of him until then, just at the moment when Juan Alcolar and his son by marriage had been at the lowest point of their relationship together? And now here was Ramón, the illegitimate son—one of the illegitimate sons, Joaquin corrected, because there was Alex too. But Ramón was the son who was everything that his father would have wanted—who had everything going for him—except that he was not Juan’s legitimate heir.
‘No!’
He muttered it aloud to emphasise the word, driving it home to himself.
It wasn’t Ramón’s fault that he was who he was. Not Ramón’s fault that their father was a philandering womaniser who couldn’t keep his trousers on when he was with another female. He was their father’s son after all; no one could have any doubt about that. You only had to look at the three of them together and it was as plain as could be.
And it wasn’t Ramón’s fault that he had wandered in on the awkward, uncomfortable confrontation between his brother and Cassandra.
The sort of awkward, uncomfortable, uneasy confrontation that was becoming more and more common between them. So much so that the nagging unease was the norm rather than the rare occurrence it had been at the beginning of their relationship.
At the beginning…
Joaquin’s hard features softened from the taut, harsh lines into which they had been drawn, and a smile of memory played over his sensual mouth.
At the beginning— Oh, their relationship had been amazing then. Amazing, fantastic—mind-blowingly sensual. They had been
