a realisation about.
‘Well you are about to find out what it’s like. I’m not staying here whilst you dither about just who you want to help with finding your brother. It seems to me you would rather marry than find him. What are you afraid of, Raul? Sharing your inheritance?’
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her close against him, looking directly into her eyes. For a brief moment she thought she saw desire combined with the anger her words had induced. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest, his closeness invading every sense in her body as drops of rain began to unceremoniously fall.
He didn’t care about the rain, or that they were quickly getting wet, instead he looked into her eyes, his breath as hard and fast as hers. Did he feel that powerful attraction too? The same attraction she was fighting? She couldn’t allow him to know what he did to her.
‘Let me go,’ she demanded fiercely, wanting only to hide the spark of something very close to desire that had leapt to life inside her, despite the dousing by the rain.
She couldn’t break eye contact as the rain began to fall harder; locals and tourists alike sought refuge inside the buildings of the plaza, but she couldn’t move. It was as if he’d cast a spell, fixed her to the spot. She couldn’t walk away, didn’t want to move.
He let her hand go, but remained so very close, looming over her like a matador, and to her horror she still couldn’t move, couldn’t back away from him. Around them the plaza had emptied, the noise of the pre-Christmas parties replaced by the constant thud of rain onto the now soaked bricks and cobbles of the plaza. She could feel him so very close, feel the heat of his body, smell his masculine scent. For goodness’ sake, she could even taste his kiss, taste what it would be like to have his lips pressed against hers.
Her hair was beginning to stick to her head, her jacket to her skin. She began to shiver, but she wasn’t cold. Far more powerful sensations were racing round her body. Raul pulled off his jacket, his eyes locked on hers all the time as he placed it round her shoulders. It made it worse. She could smell him around her, feel his heat caressing her, and as the rain quickly soaked him his shirt became tantalisingly transparent, serving only to heighten his strength and masculinity—not to mention her barely veiled desire to be kissed by him.
Before she knew what she was doing or had time to think of the implications of such actions, she’d moved closer still. It was all the invitation he’d needed and within seconds she was in his arms, her own wrapped around his neck as his lips, hard and demanding, claimed hers. Her wet body clung to his, the sensation of being against him so wildly sensual as the rain continued to fall on them that she couldn’t help the sigh of pleasure escaping.
His husky whisper in Spanish only added to the electrifying moment and she couldn’t stop herself pressing closer still, feeling every hard contour of his body against hers.
Then sense prevailed. What was she doing? Kissing the one man she shouldn’t kiss. Her enemy. What was the matter with her?
‘That,’ she breathed heavily as she pulled back from him and out of his arms, the rain still pounding down around them. ‘That was not part of our deal.’
‘Yet you can’t maintain you didn’t want me to kiss you, can you, querida?’
She shook her head as he continued. ‘In fact, it was you who started it, you who moved towards me. What is a man meant to do when a woman like you kisses him? Stand there and not move?’
‘I am not your querida.’ She hurled the words at him, glaring accusingly as her heart thumped and her body pulsed with need.
‘So you have said.’
‘I don’t want anything from you, Raul, and especially not a kiss. All you need to do is find out if your mother has any idea who it was your father had an affair with.’ Desperate to rid her body of the heat that surged powerfully through it after that explosive kiss, she pulled off his jacket, allowing the rain to cool her, to dampen the desire she hadn’t been able to fight.
‘That may not be easy.’ He glared at her, obviously fighting the same desire as she was. A man like Raul Valdez, who had a reputation for being as ruthless a lover as a businessman, surely wouldn’t have to fight the attraction.
‘Marrying you won’t be easy either.’ She spoke the truth, but now those words came from a different place than they had done when she’d first met him. She hadn’t known then just how lethal a kiss from him could be.
‘Very well,’ he said as he looked down at her, raindrops falling from his hair, making her want to reach up and push it back from his forehead. ‘I will arrange for you to meet my mother. And now I suggest we go and get dry—separately.’
‘Absolutely separately. There won’t be a repeat of this. Of that much I can assure you.’
THE LAST THING Lydia had expected was Raul to announce they were going away for the weekend and to be driven out of Madrid, into the countryside. Even more of a shock was the fact that he had relented and agreed to take her to see his mother. In the short time she’d spent with Raul, Lydia knew he didn’t do anything on a whim. Everything had a purpose. So what was this visit all about?
The question lingered in her mind until finally, after what had felt like hours of driving, due to the tension filling the car, he turned off the road. The car tyres scrunched over the gravel drive of a country villa, typically Spanish in every way. Not at all like the grandeur of his Madrid penthouse apartment.
‘This is nice,’ she said lightly as he turned off the engine, silence filling the car, blending with that ever-present tension as he looked at her. She’d been acutely aware of his presence next to her, of every move he’d made as he’d driven first on the busy roads away from the city and then to the quieter and smaller roads through farmland, interspersed with villages.
‘My weekend retreat,’ he offered as he got out of the car. She watched him walk around the front of it and towards her door, rebelliously enjoying the view of his long legs and lean body encased, as always, in a suit, which did little to hide his strength. Memories of how it had felt to be pressed against his body as rain had soaked them rushed back at her, adding to the air of expectancy zinging between them.
Aware he would think she was waiting for him to open her door, she quickly did so herself and slipped out of the low sports car. Standing outside in the fresh air of winter, she expected to feel less intimidated by him, but after the previous night and the kiss that had set fire to her whole body she was anything but. There wasn’t any escape from the attraction, no relief from the sizzle of tension now.
She couldn’t allow herself to be drawn in by it—by him. She had to keep in mind his motives for bringing her to Spain, to this romantic villa. It was purely money and wealth that drove him; not the need to find a brother he’d never known of, purely money. He might have all the trappings of wealth, but other than that he was no different from Daniel, wanting her for what she had, not who she really was.
‘And your mother lives here?’ She hoped the question was light and casual, belying the turmoil in her mind, but the look he fired her way was far from that. It was cold and calculating. Distanced yet intense.
‘No, she lives about half an hour’s drive into the hills.’
So she was alone with
