The Argentinian's Demand

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I’ve always been a very careful person. I’m not sure I’ll be able to go on a sightseeing tour with you tomorrow, Leandro. Not with my...damaged foot... Walking will probably be difficult...’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Emily was temporarily confused.

  ‘You said that you’ve always been a careful person...’

  He sat back and inspected his handiwork with a critically appreciative eye. Neatly bandaged, neatly cleaned.

  He levered himself up and before she could protest he was sitting on the sofa next to her, depressing it with his weight, far too close to her for his liking.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit too young to be careful all the time?’

  ‘I’m just not inclined to take risks,’ Emily returned defensively.

  And was her engagement part of that pattern of not taking risks? Leandro wondered. Had she decided on a safe bet? Someone who didn’t set her world alight because having her world set alight would be taking a risk, and she didn’t do risk-taking? Was that why she was so tight-lipped when it came to discussing the one thing in her life that she should have been shouting from the rooftops?

  He remembered that feeling he had had—that feeling that she was aware of him, aware of him as a man...

  In his head, strands of information were rearranging themselves, reconfiguring into bite-sized pieces he could deal with—bite-sized pieces that made perfect sense as soon as he began thinking laterally, as he was now doing.

  She didn’t love the guy she was engaged to. When she spoke about him it was with reticence and a certain amount of caution. Maybe she liked the man, but more likely she simply saw him as a rescue package because she feared entering her thirties without a partner and he was a safe bet—someone from her childhood who had resurfaced. He didn’t challenge her, but neither did he repel her. The poor guy was probably besotted with her. She had cool, eye-catching killer looks. Doubtless he fancied himself in love and she was going along for the ride because something was better than nothing.

  The thought that she might be attracted to him appealed to a part of Leandro that was instinctive and primal and intensely satisfying.

  ‘I don’t think your foot should come between you and a relaxing day exploring the island,’ he murmured, with a slow, lazy smile that she found vaguely disconcerting. ‘I’ve cleaned all the blood, and I’m pleased to tell you that it’s a surface cut only. In fact barely in need of a bandage. But, as a careful person, you’ll appreciate that it’s better to be safe than sorry...’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being careful.’ Emily felt drawn to justify herself. ‘You apply that to all your work dealings...’

  ‘Ah, but that’s where it ends.’

  ‘Is it? I thought you were very careful not to get too involved in your personal relationships,’ she answered with asperity, and then flushed—because what was the point in trying to resurrect barriers only to trample them underfoot the second she was drawn into a non-work-related conversation with him?

  ‘Touché—although I’m not sure your comparison is valid.’

  ‘What time do you anticipate we will be leaving in the morning for this sightseeing tour?’ Emily couldn’t meet his eyes. She could still feel the sensation of his hands on her foot and her body was still tingling from thoughts that had no place in her head. ‘If I’m up to it.’

  ‘You’ll be up to it.’ Leandro stood up, returned the basin to the small kitchen and then strolled to the window to gaze briefly out into the darkness before turning to face her. ‘I’ll get Antoine to prepare a picnic for us...’

  ‘Is that really necessary? We could always return here to the hotel...’

  ‘We’ll be out for the day, Emily,’ Leandro said gently. ‘Back late afternoon. It may be a small island, but there’s no rush, is there? And...’ He paused and allowed his eyes a leisurely roam. ‘Avoid the starchy clothing. Swimsuit, towel, sunblock...you won’t need any more than that...’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EMILY COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time she had been on holiday. Any holiday of any kind, barring the good old and bitterly remembered days when she had still been caught up in the illusion of happy family life. When her parents had taken her abroad on expensive holidays to expensive destinations. Those didn’t count. And for the better part of her adult life...well, there had been no opportunity, no money, no time...and hardly any inclination when she thought about it.

  Now, as she stood in front of the mirror and contemplated the girl staring back at her, she was disturbed to find that she felt in a holiday mood. The warmth, the salty smell of the sea, the uninterrupted sound of waves lapping against a shoreline, the lack of crowds which imposed an atmosphere of serenity and intimacy...

  Sometimes it was hard to drag herself back to the reality of the situation. That she was here because of work—because she had handed in her notice—because he didn’t trust her not to fly to his competitors and divulge state secrets. Or maybe simply because it was within his power to make her stay and complete her full notice, so he would.

  And as soon as she began thinking that she likewise remembered why she had handed in her notice. Because her life was about to change. Because she was going to get married. To Oliver. For reasons which were complex and cynical and somehow made her feel immeasurably sad. But when she felt herself spiralling down that road she always managed to yank herself away from the brink.

  Except now—right now, right here—with the windows to the cabana flung open on a view of lush, breathtaking, Technicolor beauty, she could feel dissatisfaction creep up on her. Dissatisfaction and melancholy at where her life was going. She would never experience this again—this feeling of simmering excitement because she was looking forward to a day out. With a guy who...

  She turned away abruptly from the full-length mirror and flung her towel, her sunblock, a tee shirt and a pair of shorts, her book and her hat into the colourful canvas beach bag she had been tempted into buying from the hotel shop.

  Her foot was completely fine and she had removed the bandage and replaced it with a strip of plaster. It felt odd to leave her laptop behind, charging on the desk in the little sitting room. She had so far managed to tote it along everywhere with her, like a solid, tangible shield against personal contact with Leandro. Fat lot of good it had done her.

  Here she was with her hair swinging down her back in a plait, dressed in shorts and a tee shirt like a teenager, with her sensible swimsuit underneath and a simmering sense of excitement when she should have been feeling apprehensive and resentful at spending the day in his company.

  She had eaten breakfast in her bedroom and spotted Leandro as soon as she entered the reception area of the hotel. Everyone was gearing up for the big photo shoot. There was a general air of excitement. The casual clothing of the staff which had been in evidence previously had been jettisoned in favour of uniforms: crisp white and mint-green. Amidst all this Leandro cut a commanding figure, surrounded by some of his employees who were hanging onto his every word.

  Her heart skipped a beat as she stood at the side and looked at him. After all this time working for him, spending hours upon hours in his company, she marvelled that she could have kidded herself into believing that he had absolutely no effect on her—that she was immune to his looks. It would seem not. Images of him had obviously been stored in her memory bank, and now there was no need to be near him to know the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the curve of his sexy mouth, the imperious set of his features.

  She took a deep breath and walked confidently towards him as the little cluster of dark-skinned, smiling people greeted her and broke away, scurrying off in different directions.

  ‘They’re thrilled with all of this, aren’t they?’ Emily asked politely.

  She had to stop herself from staring at him. He was wearing a pale blue polo shirt and
khaki shorts that showed off the length and strength of his muscular legs, liberally sprinkled with dark hair.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’ Leandro looked down at her—at the impossibly fair hair, the long, slender legs, the sexy, boyish physique. She looked incredibly young without the suit, without make-up, without the severe hairstyle.

  ‘I guess so.’ Emily laughed, eyes carefully averted, shielded with one hand against the blinding glare of the camera flashes. ‘How long will they be here?’

  ‘Wrapped up in a day. We should miss the thick of it. Unless, of course, you’d like to be photographed for the spread?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’

  ‘Why not?’ Leandro drawled. ‘Are you camera-shy? No need, you know. I imagine you’re incredibly photogenic...’

  Emily reddened and wondered whether this was a flirtatious remark—then immediately chided herself for being over-imaginative. This was just how he was. Innately charming. It was why women found him so irresistible. It was why...

  The natural conclusion of this train of thinking should have been her being led down a well-trodden and familiar path. Innately charming, irresistible—hence womaniser and general player whose modus operandi involved breaking hearts.

  However, she lost the thought before she could follow it through. She was too busy playing with the idea that he found her photogenic.

  She tripped along behind him towards a buggy which was only slightly bigger than a motorised golf cart and handed him her bag, which he tossed into the back seat, where it joined a massive picnic basket and a cooler containing, she assumed, an assortment of cold drinks.

  ‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’ She hesitated as he held the door open for her.

  ‘If I can fly a plane then I can certainly drive this little motorised tin can. Besides, there’s no traffic to speak of around here, and you have my word that I will protect you as though my life depended on it.’

  Emily felt another quiver of something—something that made her feel hot and flustered and a little bit scared.

  ‘I hope you’ve brought your sunblock?’ He glanced across at her as he swung himself into the driver’s seat and reversed the buggy at alarming speed, sending up a little flurry of gravel. ‘You look like you burn easily.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’

  ‘You’re already a little sunburned on the bridge of your nose.’

  Emily automatically rubbed her finger along her nose and kept her eyes firmly fixed ahead of her.

  ‘So, tell me what you think of the hotel—how you’re enjoying your stay here...’

  Having tuned in to those barely visible reactions she had whenever she was in his presence—reactions which he now concluded had always been there, cleverly hidden underneath a polished professional exterior, Leandro now found that they were all he could notice. The way she blushed whenever he surprised her with a remark that was non-work-related, even the most innocuous. The way she looked away, nostrils slightly flared, at the faintest whiff of a double entendre.

  She fancied him—and where did that leave her so-called fiancé? His curiosity had been aroused and, like an itch, he was determined to scratch it, determined to get to the bottom of the enigma. And playing at the back of his mind was the tantalising notion that if she fancied him—and he was certainly having trouble stamping down his suddenly hectic libido—then where might that lead?

  If she figured she was in love with this guy she had jacked her job in for, then wouldn’t he be doing her a favour in showing her that that was certainly not the case? Wouldn’t he be sparing her a lifetime of unhappiness and regret by demonstrating the unavoidable truth that if she was attracted to other men, specifically him, then hitching her wagon to some guy out of desperation was not a solution?

  ‘It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to in my entire life,’ Emily answered truthfully. ‘The scenery is amazing. So unspoiled. I wonder if the island will remain that way once it’s discovered.’

  ‘The minister for tourism here—or for such tourism as exists at the moment—seems to be a very discerning guy.’

  Leandro was still caught up in his thoughts, still acutely aware of her sitting so close to him that the smallest shift in his body weight would bring their thighs together.

  ‘He appreciates how important it is to keep the flavour of this island. It’s a fine line. Over-development would kill the tourist industry faster than civil war, and he gets that.’

  ‘You’re very lucky that you were the first to stamp your mark here...’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as being astute rather than lucky.’

  He slid his eyes along to her and inhaled sharply. She was trying and failing in an attempt to keep her hair from flying all over the place as they sped along the small empty road parallel to the sandy strip of coastline. On one side acres of coconut trees meandered towards the town and the outlying suburban areas. On the other more coconut trees separated the road from the beach, and the striking blue of the water could be glimpsed through their slender spiralling trunks. The sky was a perfectly cloudless milky blue. Sea breezes kept the temperature just right, preventing the tropical heat from becoming unbearable. He had chosen the spot for this hotel very carefully.

  ‘Were you always like this?’

  ‘Like what?’ Leandro asked, raising his eyebrows in a question.

  ‘Astute when it comes to business?’

  ‘You mean was I doing deals at the age of ten? No. But I inherited the hard-working gene from my father and grew up with the belief that an expensive education was not a right but a privilege—one to be appreciated and used well. And what about you, Emily? Was it always your ambition to be a personal assistant?’

  ‘You say that as though it’s something to be...ashamed of.’ She turned to him and glared.

  ‘Far from it. Behind every successful businessman there’s always a personal assistant, making sure that all the nuts and bolts are taken care of.’

  ‘I wanted to be a vet,’ Emily admitted, because somehow, despite his qualification, he had still managed to make her job sound pedestrian. And there was a part of her that wanted him to know that she had once fancied herself as destined for all sorts of things—grand things.

  ‘A vet...’ Leandro murmured, and saw her give a curt nod from the corner of his eye. ‘That’s a far cry from being someone’s personal assistant...’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Demands high grades...’

  ‘Do you think I wasn’t clever enough to get them?’

  ‘Far be it from me to think any such thing. You forget—I’ve worked with you for nearly two years. I know how clever you are.’

  ‘Now, why does that sound so patronising?’ But she laughed and gave up the unequal fight between the wind and her hair. ‘I can smell the sea. It’s amazing.’

  ‘Look through there—through that clump of trees. Do you see a path? Well, that’s where we’re going.’

  ‘How on earth do you know about this place?’

  ‘The hotel manager is a fount of information and was only too happy to steer us in the direction of the best beaches.’

  He swerved off the road and brought the buggy to a bumpy stop just where the Tarmac gave way to rich soil and the dense, lush foliage that was so much a feature of the tiny island. With the engine killed, the sound of the sea reached her, and she held her face upturned to the sun, enjoying the bliss of the warmth on her skin.

  Okay, so it might not be a holiday, but for the first time in as long as she could remember she felt removed from the low-level stress that accompanied her everywhere.

  They walked through the roughly hewn path, down a gentle incline and through a bank of coconut trees, emerging onto a strip of sand that was fine, white and powdery. The beach stretched in a half-moon crescent and the sea was as calm a
s a lake and a piercing turquoise.

  Emily stared out, squinting against the sun. She felt free—free from all concerns and worries. She felt like a young woman without a care in the world, and she marvelled that she could have forgotten what that felt like. This was a taste of normality and she savoured it, knowing that its visit would be fleeting.

  When she turned around it was to find that Leandro had flung a massive beach rug on the sand and had stripped off to his swimming trunks. The sight of him, bare-chested, was even more breathtaking than the scenery she had been gaping at moments before.

  Goodness, had she been fantasising about this all the time she had been working for him? Underneath the blistering scorn and her composed demeanour, had she fooled herself into imagining a detachment that had never been there?

  He certainly lived up to any fantasy a girl could have. His shoulders were broad and muscled, his stomach washboard-flat, and the sprinkling of dark hair on his chest was aggressively, challengingly masculine.

  She found that she was having trouble breathing, and in a desperate attempt to conceal her shameful reaction reached into the bag over her shoulder and whipped out her sunglasses, which she stuck firmly on the bridge of her nose.

  ‘I take it you’re not going to spend the day in shorts and a tee shirt?’

  His own clothes had been dumped on the rug, along with the shoes which he had kicked off. Even his feet, she noted distractedly, were unfairly sexy. How was that even possible?

  ‘I’m not a strong swimmer.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m here. I won’t let you be swept away by any treacherous undertows...’

  ‘You’re certainly a man of many talents,’ Emily bantered uneasily. ‘You can fly planes, drive off-road cars and now cross-channel swimming...’