got impatiently out of the bed, the after-sun she had managed to put on her shoulders earlier, and partway up her back, doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the heat or the stinging sensation that continued to keep her from sleeping.
She opened the French doors to stroll out onto the balcony, hearing the distant clanging of a bell around the neck of a goat or sheep, and the clicking sound of the cicadas.
The island really was beautiful, with the brightly coloured bougainvillea that grew in such abundance, the orange and lemon trees that grew on the terraced hillsides and the tiny villages with their wondrous smells of cooking, old-fashioned shops and cafés. Plus it was all surrounded by the most magnificently coloured sea Brynne had ever seen.
But it was all ruined for Brynne by the presence of Alejandro.
What had happened between the two of them earlier today?
She wasn’t quite sure …
The conversation had started out so innocently. And ended in that fiercely heated kiss, a kiss that had left such tension and disharmony between them that Brynne had felt restless and disturbed ever since.
Because she was still angry with him, she had told herself after he had left her. It was only when she had come up to bed, and sleep had continued to elude her, that she had allowed her thoughts to become less angry, to try to understand why their conversation had deteriorated in the way that it had, with the result that Alejandro had actually kissed her.
Her conclusion, at least as far as she was concerned, was not a pleasant one!
There had been such intensity between them during that heated exchange, so that when he had kissed her so suddenly her body had given her no choice but to respond. At which point she had been totally aware of the heat of him, of the broadness of his shoulders, of the hard power—and pleasure—that hardness promised—
No!
Brynne closed her eyes to shut out the memory. It would be extremely stupid on her part to allow her sexual awareness of Alejandro to get any deeper than it already was.
But what if it was something she had no control over?
She could hear the sound of a car coming down the narrow, winding road to the villa, and knew it had to be Alejandro returning from his evening out.
There was something slightly undignified about the possibility that Alejandro might see her standing out on the balcony and think she had been waiting here for him to come home.
She hadn’t, had she …?
It didn’t matter whether she had or not, she decided as she moved quickly back into her bedroom and shut the door behind her; Alejandro wasn’t going to see her and jump to any conclusion, erroneous or otherwise.
Sounds carried in the silence of the night, and she heard Alejandro park the car in the garage, then the scrape of his shoes on the terrace as he walked to the villa and let himself in.
Her nerves tensed as she waited for him to ascend the stairs and walk down the hallway as he went to bed.
The light knock on her bedroom door startled her so much she almost knocked over the vase of lilies that stood on her dressing table.
Alejandro had come to her bedroom, not his own!
Because of that kiss they had shared this afternoon? Had Alejandro realized that part of her anger towards him had been because she had been inexplicably roused by the exchange?
You’re being stupid now, Brynne, she instantly rebuked her panicked thoughts. As far as Alejandro was concerned she had told him how much she didn’t like him this afternoon.
‘Yes?’ she called out, lacing her fingers together to stop them from trembling.
The door opened slowly, and Alejandro came quietly into the room. ‘I saw the light was still on in your bedroom and wondered if there was a problem …?’ He arched his dark brows.
Yes, there was a problem, Brynne realized achingly as she felt her nipples harden beneath her silky pyjamas from just looking at him in his evening suit, the warmth of her body centred between her thighs now.
The darkness of his hair was slightly ruffled by the evening breeze, and the top button of his shirt was undone to reveal the beginning of the dark hair that no doubt covered his chest and went down to his—
She lifted her startled gaze back up to his face and instantly wished that she hadn’t as she found her eyes were now held and captured by the intensity of his.
‘Brynne …?’ he prompted.
She swallowed hard, inwardly chastising herself for her stupidity. ‘Er—no, there’s no problem,’ she answered him determinedly. ‘I—just couldn’t sleep, that’s all. It’s—very hot this evening, isn’t it?’
Hotter still since Alejandro had entered her bedroom!
What was wrong with her? She wasn’t an impressionable teenager but a mature woman of twenty-five, and had been out with a number of men over the last few years—
But none of them had been in the least like Alejandro!
No, they had been nice men, ordinary men, men who had shared her interests, men she had been able to talk to, not a man who filled a room just by walking into it, a man who could command with just a look, a man who had upset and disturbed her life since the moment he had entered it six weeks ago, a man who—
A man who created a moist heat between her thighs just by being in the same room as her!
This was awful.
Terrible.
‘Brynne, what—’
‘No!’ she exclaimed when she saw he was about to walk farther into her bedroom. ‘It’s late, Alejandro,’ she told him abruptly. ‘I would like to go back to bed now.’
Alejandro searched her face. Was he being ridiculous? Brynne had looked at him just now as if—well, as if she returned some of the desire he had felt when he had kissed her this afternoon.
It was a feeling he had tried to dismiss as fanciful after he’d left her, and then again this evening as he had sat at the crowded dinner table of the Roigs, Antonia’s attempts to tease him out of his reverie completely unsuccessful. In fact, he had felt himself becoming more and more impatient this evening with Antonia’s attempts to beguile him with her sultry beauty!
He had seen the light still on in Brynne’s bedroom as he had driven down the hill to the villa and had told himself not to knock on her door. It would not be a sensible move on his part after their last encounter, when the emotion had been so heightened between them he had had to walk away from it.
He had told himself to go to his own bedroom, and forget all about Brynne Sullivan. But his feet had seemed to have a different idea of his intentions as he had found himself knocking on her door!
It was there still, a tension, a frisson, that he could feel stretching across the room between them.
Even in pyjamas Brynne looked beautiful,
