The Unforgettable Spanish Tycoon

by Christy McKellen

  She glanced at him. ‘I do the same thing in London,’ she said, feeling a little rush of poignancy that their lives had followed such a parallel path, despite the distance between them. ‘It’s very easy to take beauty for granted,’ she added.

  ‘Yes.’ He paused then said, ‘It’s funny, but losing big chunks of my past seems to have brought the present into sharper focus.’

  When she looked round at him she experienced a little frisson at the intense way he was looking at her.

  ‘Are you happy with your life?’ she blurted, her nerves getting the better of her.

  His brow furrowed as he thought about this. ‘I’m satisfied with the way my business is growing and I enjoy living in Barcelona.’

  There was a heavy pause while she waited for him to continue. ‘And, for the purposes of our dinner this evening, I’m very happy with my love life.’ He flashed her a wolfish grin, making her tummy flip over.

  He gestured for them to start walking again and she fell into step with him as they made their way along the pavement, feeling even more jumpy now than when they’d first started out.

  ‘Speaking of which, I guess we ought to decide how long we’ve been an item, for the purpose of tonight’s charade,’ Caleb said, a wry grin turning up the corner of his mouth.

  Elena took a breath, feeling her pulse jitter. ‘Yes, I guess we should get our story straight. How about we tell them that we met at university but were just friends then, and bumped into each other again a year ago at a business conference and things progressed from there.’

  ‘Dull, but believable, I suppose,’ Caleb said with a thoughtful nod.

  A coach had parked a little way down the street and as they approached it the pavement suddenly became overrun by a large tour group that filed off to look at the famous building they’d just left.

  She felt Caleb slip his arm protectively around her as they began to be jostled by the crowd moving past them and she allowed herself to sink against his strong body for a moment, her heart beginning to race as she breathed in his zesty, familiar scent.

  Once they were clear of the crowd he let her go and she dazedly rubbed at her arm where his hand had gripped her, her skin feeling tingly and sensitive where their bodies had connected.

  ‘You’re going to have to get used to me touching you,’ Caleb said in a low voice, looking at her arm where she was rubbing it. ‘Or they’re not going to believe we’re a couple.’

  Elena swallowed hard, balling her fists. ‘Yes, of course. You just took me by surprise then, that’s all.’

  He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. ‘Were you always this jumpy around me?’

  ‘No, no! I’m just a little off balance today. This is all a bit strange, to be honest.’ She flashed him a strained smile. ‘You have to admit, we’ve got ourselves into a rather odd situation here.’

  She tried not to notice the puzzled look he gave her and strode on confidently, looking deliberately around her, at anything but him, to give her some time to pull herself together.

  Good grief, if she couldn’t even act normally around him when they were on their own how was she going to manage it when they had an audience tonight?

  She needed to get herself into a more relaxed and friendly mindset.

  A little further on they walked past Gaudi’s Sagrada Família, which rose majestically into the sky like a discarded giant elf king’s crown.

  ‘It makes me think of something from the Lord of the Rings,’ Elena said in wonder as she took in the arresting quirkiness of it. ‘We spent a whole weekend at university once, working our way through the trilogy of films. I could barely keep my eyes open at the end of it and I dreamt about it intensively for the next few nights.’ She glanced at him speculatively. ‘Do you remember?’

  He shook his head, agitation flashing in his eyes. ‘I have no recollection of ever seeing those films.’

  Her heart went out to him. It must be so distressing for him to lose so many of his memories—though, now she thought about it, the hard shell she’d witnessed at their initial meeting had definitely softened a little since they’d been gone. Perhaps the absence of deep-seated anger that had driven him for most of his life was finally allowing his true nature to emerge from the dark place where it had been hiding.

  ‘Well, perhaps you should think of it as a good thing,’ she said with forced jollity, in an attempt to lighten the sombre atmosphere that seemed to have fallen between them now. ‘You get to experience the excitement of watching them afresh. I wish I could do that.’

  His eyebrow shot up. ‘Losing the first twenty-five years of your life is a high price to pay though, don’t you think?’

  She shrugged. ‘I think it’s worth taking every positive you can out of an experience. Even if it is a testing one.’

  ‘You’re quite the optimist,’ Caleb drawled, raising a derisive eyebrow.

  Her skin prickled with annoyance. ‘And you’re a cynic! Life’s too short to dwell on the negative.’

  Although perhaps she should learn to take her own advice, she thought wryly, considering how much anxiety she seemed to be carrying around with her at the moment.

  Caleb looked taken aback at her outburst, but after a moment his features softened and he let out a low laugh. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘I have little enough “life” outside of the business as it is; I guess I should spend it enjoying what I work so hard to have.’

  They walked on again in silence for a minute, their arms swinging at their sides.

  ‘To be fair, I’m just as bad about spending too much time working and not enjoying all life has to offer,’ Elena said after a while. ‘I can regularly spend up to ten hours a day at work and sometimes carry on into the evenings if I need to. I’ve lost count of the number of parties and get-togethers I’ve cried off recently. My friends despair of me.’

  ‘You don’t go out much?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as much as I should. There’s no wonder I’m single; my personal life could definitely do with some TLC.’

  ‘Why have you really been on your own for so long?’ he asked in such a casual tone she felt sure he’d been waiting for the right opportunity to broach that question.

  So this was it then—time to be totally honest with him.

  ‘Well, the thing is, I nearly got married some years ago, to a guy called Jimmy,’ she said, bracing herself in case the mention of his name jogged Caleb’s memory, but he didn’t react, just looked at her with interest. ‘And I needed some time on my own after the relationship finished to get my head straight and then I got so busy at work I let things drift,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you split up with him?’ he asked brusquely.

  She sighed, feeling the old familiar tug of guilt in her chest. ‘I changed my mind about whether he was the right guy for me and called the wedding off at the last minute.’

  He blinked, but his expression remained impassive. ‘Do you regret it now?’

  ‘No. It was the right decision. It wouldn’t have worked out. He was a really nice guy, but being married to Jimmy would have stifled me in the end, killed my spirit.’

  Caleb nodded as if he understood exactly what she was talking about.

  ‘I think I felt the same about my ex-fiancée,’ he said, surprising her with his direct honesty.

  ‘She was a beautiful woman, incredibly smart and very driven, but there was something missing for me. I thought for a long while that it wouldn’t matter, but as soon as we started to talk seriously about arranging the wedding it became apparent it wasn’t going to work for me. There was something else wrong too, but I can’t remember what it was.’ He squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to bring the memory to the fore.

  Don’t let this be the moment when he remembers everything, she prayed silently—not when they were just starting to get on
so well.

  ‘I think my problem’s always been that I was brought up by two parents who argued all the time and I found my life growing up incredibly stressful,’ she jumped in, hoping to divert his attention back to her story in order to impart the whole sorry tale, just in case she found herself suddenly talking to the pre-accident Caleb—who she was sure wouldn’t be quite so interested in her reasons for letting him down so badly in the past.

  ‘They seemed to be on the verge of divorce all the time and I hated it. It made me so anxious I used to lock myself in my bedroom and turn my music up really loud so I didn’t have to hear the constant bickering. It made me crave stability, so when I met Jimmy a year before I left for university I thought he was the perfect person to give me what I needed.’

  Caleb just looked at her as if to tell her to carry on, so she continued.

  ‘He was such a calm and well-balanced person—the embodiment of a safe, solid future in my mind. Exactly the sort of man I wanted to settle down with. The complete opposite of my dad.’

  And you, Caleb.

  She cleared her throat nervously. ‘Somehow the relationship survived through our time at separate universities—with a small blip—’ She glanced at him then hurried on, ‘And he proposed to me a couple of years after we graduated.’

  It was nearing midday now and the sun was out in full force. Elena was beginning to feel increasingly stifled in her suit so she slipped her jacket off, looping it over her arm to carry it instead.

  ‘I thought I wanted a relationship like that at the time, but as it got closer to our wedding day this strange kind of panic engulfed me. I was terrified I was heading for a life of middling satisfaction and settling for someone I didn’t feel any true passion for. I loved him, but I realised it was only as a friend.’

  And she knew this because she knew what real passion felt like. After meeting Caleb at university her feelings for him had crept up on her, day by day, until she could barely see straight with confusion. She’d wanted him, so much, but the sensible side of her brain had told her that Jimmy was a much better bet for a future partner. Caleb was fierce and impulsive and somewhat wild: the kind of man who scared her with his dominating intensity and passion, not to mention his overwhelming sex appeal.

  Something that was still powerfully evident today.

  ‘I hurt Jimmy really badly and I still feel awful about it, but it was for the best. He’s fine now. He met someone else and they’ve just had a little girl. I hear they’re getting married next year.’

  When she finally turned to look at him again, Caleb was nodding thoughtfully as if he understood where she was coming from.

  They’d reached her hotel now, which had views from the city’s beach across the sparkling blue of the Balearic Sea.

  ‘It won’t take me long to grab my bag; I’m on the first floor.’

  To her surprise, he followed her to the lift.

  Shrugging off a twist of nerves, she pressed the button and waited for the lift to arrive.

  She guessed he was following her mandate to keep him in her sights at all times to the absolute letter.

  Typical Caleb.

  Once up on her corridor it took her three attempts to make her key card work in her door and she finally stumbled into the room, flushed in the face and her skin prickling with awareness as Caleb followed her inside.

  ‘Okay, I’ll just be a minute. I need to grab my things from the bathroom and wardrobe then we can go.’

  He just nodded, watching her as she shoved her meagre possessions into her suitcase then strugged to zip it up.

  ‘Here, let me do that,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and gently but firmly guiding her out of the way so he could get to the case.

  She saw him wince with pain as his cracked rib protested when he bent down and started tugging at the zip.

  ‘Caleb, stop! I can do it.’

  Without thinking, she pressed her hand against his chest, feeling the dips and peaks of his muscles shift under her touch as he tensed with surprise.

  It suddenly felt too seductive in that small room—the two of them standing so close together, only inches away from the bed. She could feel the heat from his body throbbing against the palm of her hand and his enticing scent flooded her nose, making her senses reel.

  When she looked up into his face he was gazing at her with such intensity in his eyes she thought she might melt under the heat of it.

  Little shivers of excitement raced over her skin and she drew in a shaky breath, feeling her blood pulse thickly through her veins.

  No, no, no, this shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t be looking at the full firmness of his mouth and thinking how wonderful it would be to feel it on hers again, or about how much she wanted the comforting strength of his arms around her, or how she longed for him to guide her over to the bed and lay her down, trapping her underneath him so she could experience the feeling of their bodies pressed closely together.

  She shouldn’t be wanting all that.

  But she was. She was.

  Denying herself was almost too much to bear.

  But she had to.

  Withdrawing her hand from where it still lay over his heart, she forced her mouth into a wobbly smile.

  ‘I don’t want you in pain because of me,’ she muttered, the tormenting subtext of the words not lost on her.

  He frowned, his eyes dark with confusion.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she mumbled, turning away and hurriedly zipping up the final side of the case, not daring to look at him again in case he saw how much she ached for him to touch her reflected in her expression.

  They didn’t say a word to each other as they left the room and walked side by side down the corridor and into the lift, the air around them throbbing with a strange new tension.

  Once back on the street, Elena stood blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight feeling as if they’d moved into some kind of parallel universe up there in the hotel room.

  ‘Let’s grab a bite to eat from that café on the beach,’ Caleb said, pointing to the place in question, his voice sounding a little rough.

  ‘Okay, sure. I could eat,’ Elena said, deciding the best thing to do was just pretend the incident in the hotel had never happened. That was the only way she was possibly going to get through the next twenty-four hours.

  After locating a suitable table, she watched him stroll over to the counter and place their order for food and coffee. The woman serving him gave him a coquettish grin and leant forward in a seductive manner to ask him a question and Elena experienced a pinch of jealousy as she saw him return her smile.

  She put her hand over her heart where it hurt the most and gave a gentle rub there.

  Oh, no.

  She was in such trouble.

  He returned a minute later, balancing a couple of plates of food in one hand and grasping the handles of two mugs of coffee in the other.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ Elena said, rising to take the plates from him so he could put the mugs down on the table without spilling the hot liquid everywhere.

  She was horrified to find her hands were shaking and sat down quickly, placing them in her lap before he noticed.

  When she looked up to say thanks for the drink he’d put in front of her she saw he was frowning, as if something was bothering him.

  ‘Did we spend a lot of time together at university?’ he asked.

  The memory of her and Caleb sharing a bottle of wine in his room after a study session flitted across her vision, stealing her breath away. It had been on that night that everything had changed between them.

  That fateful night, in a drunken haze, when she’d admitted her true feelings for him and he’d dragged her into his arms and kissed her, making her insides melt and her blood fizz with excite
ment.

  Forcing herself to unclench her now sweaty hands, she gave him as composed a smile as she could muster.

  ‘Yes, we were pretty close back then. We were doing the same course so we had a lot in common. Our tutor put us together as partners on a project at the beginning of the first term and found we worked well together.’

  The memory of her broken promise to Caleb that she’d return to university after the Christmas holidays a free woman after breaking up with Jimmy, ready to commit her newly unchained heart to him, pressed heavily on her.

  Picking up her drink to give her restless hands something to do, she took a tentative sip of the hot liquid.

  ‘So why haven’t we seen each other for so long?’ Caleb asked, the look in his eyes so searching she choked on her drink.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked with amusement in his voice as he reached over to pat her gently on the back.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she gasped, taking the opportunity to wipe her eyes with the napkin that had come with the sandwich so she didn’t need to look at him while she answered.

  ‘I guess life just got in the way. We’ve both been so focused on our careers.’

  When she finally looked up at him again he nodded slowly. ‘Tell me more about our time together at university,’ he said, giving her the impression that he needed to hear about it to help him understand something.

  So she did. She told him about the way they’d met on the first day of term and how grumpy he’d been with her when their tutor had paired them up.

  ‘I was so annoyed with you I gave you a real dressing-down at the end of that lesson. I think I said something about how just because I was a woman it didn’t mean I couldn’t beat your arrogant arse at engineering.’ She smiled at the memory, remembering how it had taken a lot of guts to say that to him, and how proud she was of herself afterwards that she hadn’t let him just walk all over her.

  He’d been taken aback by her defensiveness at first, but once he realised she meant every word he’d challenged her to a quiz on engineering terms.

  ‘And I won,’ she told him, smiling at his raised eyebrow. ‘But you were a good loser. You just gave me this respectful kind of nod and then offered to take me to the nearest pub to toast my win. We ended up staying there all night and by the end of it we were firm friends.’