‘Well, at least it’s not pink,’ he said, reaching out and casually brushing her outstretched hand in the process. ‘I don’t think my male pride could have stood it.’
‘Stood what?’
Keep your eyes focused on his face, my girl, and you’ll be all right. Definitely don’t give in to the temptation to stare at the way his muscles ripple whenever he moves his arms. Or the fact that he has flat brown nipples and a tangle of dark underarm hair.
‘Being on public display wearing a girlie colour.’
This was a different Cesar to the grim-faced one who laid down laws and issued threats. This one was smiling at her. A crooked, amused smile that made her toes curl.
‘Real men aren’t afraid to wear pink,’ she said automatically, and Cesar kept her eyes locked to his.
‘Trust me. I’m all man.’
‘I should go and get us both something to eat. You must be famished after a morning chopping wood. I have some…er…pasta…’ she gabbled, taking a step back towards the kitchen. ‘I can rustle something up. I’m not great, I have to warn you…but I do a good carbonara…spaghetti…nothing fancy…’ The pale blue
T-shirt sported a cartoon character but somehow he didn’t look silly in it. If anything, it made him more frighteningly masculine, accentuating his biceps and the lean hardness of his stomach.
‘Carbonara…spaghetti…nothing fancy…will do just fine, and yes, I’m famished, but I didn’t want to start rummaging in your kitchen for food. I know how territorial women can be about men rummaging through their cupboards…I’m surprised you managed to work with your hand bandaged…’
‘It doesn’t hurt.’ She stumbled over her words, instinctively flexing her fingers to prove her point. ‘You made a big deal over nothing.’
‘Maybe I enjoyed it,’ he came back, quick as a flash. ‘Don’t you know that there’s nothing a man finds more appealing than a damsel in distress…?’
‘I’m not the damsel in distress type. If you wait right here I’ll go and fix us lunch.’
She might have guessed, five minutes later, that giving him an order to do something would have the opposite effect because, in his new, confusing good mood, he appeared in the kitchen just as she was fumbling with an onion and debating whether to get rid of the wretched bandage so that she could actually move slightly quicker than a snail.
‘Allow me.’
Jude stiffened but didn’t look at him as he relieved her of the knife and began expertly peeling and chopping the onion, giving her the far less onerous task of pouring them both a glass of wine because, he told her, it was as dark as night outside and, besides, when did he ever get the chance to consume alcohol at lunch time?
It was a passing remark but it struck him that he very rarely gave himself any chance to really enjoy his leisure time. He had wined and dined many women over the years but courtship was a game he played and the final outcome was already written on the cards before the first meal was even halfway through.
This was different. He might not have been here of his own volition but now that he was, and without the benefit of work as a distraction, he found that he was actually enjoying chopping an onion, frying bacon, playing the domestic man that he never was because his interaction with women never evolved into doing tasks together. He took them to expensive restaurants and sat next to them in theatres and made love to them in his vast bed, but never this.
He saluted her with a raised glass once their concoction was made and nodded to the kitchen table.
‘Aren’t you a little bored being cooped up here?’ she asked tentatively. ‘I don’t suppose this is what you usually get up to on a weekend.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘What do you get up to?’ Curiosity got the better of her and she looked at him over the rim of her glass.
‘I work by day and play by night. Occasionally, I skip the play bit if I’m busy.’
‘Who do you play with?’ Jude blushed, confused to have asked the question but the wine had loosened her tongue, as had his change of attitude. She was no longer on the defensive, wondering where the next barb was coming from, and, released from that constraint, she went beyond her surreptitious appreciation of his masculinity to an even deadlier appreciation of the complex, intelligent, witty person behind that formidable, unbearably handsome mask. She began to really see why he was such a killer with the opposite sex. He wasn’t being remotely flirtatious and yet there was something indefinably magnetic about him.
She barely noticed how much she was drinking. She was too busy listening to his casual admission that he hadn’t, actually, played with anybody for the better part of six months. Had she? With the tables neatly turned on her, Jude heard herself ruefully admitting that her playtime stretched a whole lot longer than his. Then, even more surprising because she had never really talked about her ex-boyfriend to anyone, not even to Imogen, who had obviously known the bones of what had happened, she heard herself baring her soul to Cesar.
‘So there you are. You were right on one count—men are pretty predictable in the kind of women they go for and it’s not the kind of woman I am.’
For some reason Cesar felt a spurt of anger towards the unknown stranger who had brought home to her that life was a pretty disillusioning business.
‘And stop me now before I get even more maudlin.’ Jude laughed and stood up so that she could begin setting the table. ‘Too much wine, I’m afraid. One more glass and you’d better watch out. I’ll start feeling weepy and sorry for myself.’
‘I have very broad shoulders.’
‘I know. I’d noticed.’
There was an electric silence. She may have only consumed one glass of wine but not even that slight tipsy, reckless feeling could blind her to the fact that she had just blurted out something horribly private that should have been kept to herself.
And he was looking at her in a very peculiar way.
‘When you were…stoking the fire…’ she continued lamely, dropping her eyes. At times like these, wouldn’t a curtain of long hair have been convenient! She could have hidden behind it. ‘I don’t often get semi-clad men in my cottage…’
‘No, not for a few years, at any rate…’
‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you that,’ Jude said with a hint of bitterness in her voice. She brought the pan over to the table and curtly told him that he could help himself. Guests first and he had, after all, cooked it all himself.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Say what?’
‘That you shouldn’t have told me about your ex.’
‘Because I don’t need you, or anyone, being in a position to use information against me at some later date. I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me. I made a choice to give myself a break from guys after James and I’m not ashamed of that.’ She attacked her food fiercely and glared down at the coil of spaghetti around her fork.
‘You really loved this guy, didn’t you.’
‘I cared about him,’ Jude said stiffly. ‘I wouldn’t have stayed with him for over two years if I hadn’t.’
‘Stayed with him in the expectation that the relationship would eventually lead to marriage?’
‘I suppose.’
‘And you never spotted the cracks?’
‘I honestly don’t want to talk about this.’
‘Fair enough. Although…’
It was just one word but it drew her in and she said sullenly, ‘Although what? I know you’re just dying to tell me what’s on your mind.’
‘We’re stuck here.’ Cesar shrugged. ‘A little conversation passes the time of day and it’s not as though I can get through to any of my colleagues. Have you tried the phone? Lines are down. I could always use my mobile…’ though the temptation wasn’t there, for some reason ‘…but no charger, so I’m conserving the battery.’
‘They’re not!’ She went over to the phone and then looked at him. ‘They are.’
‘Yep. Only outside contact I’ve had
is with Fernando to let him know I’m safe and sound and not buried under ten foot of snow somewhere on the outskirts of the city. And you’ll be relieved to know that I didn’t mention that I had spent the night here. So…no landline, no computer access, limited mobile access—what choice do we have but to make do with each other’s company?’
‘Is that why you’ve started to be a bit more pleasant?’ It was almost a relief to snipe at him. Just back then—talking to him with the wine flowing through her veins and his smile making her feel all hot and bothered and self-conscious—she had felt like someone walking on the edge of a precipice, with a sharp drop on one side and the comfort of safety on the other.
‘I’m intrigued by the irony of someone who is at liberty to psychoanalyse my relationships with women as a response to the death of my wife twelve years ago and yet seems unable to see that her self-imposed exile from emotional involvement with men is her response to a failed relationship.’ Cesar forked some food into his mouth and carried on looking at her. ‘You’re not eating.’
‘My appetite seems to have disappeared.’
‘Because you’re uncomfortable being asked about some guy who led you down the garden path and then dumped you. I’m not the monster you seem to think I am and I’m not laughing at you because you’ve been celibate for a while.’ What he could have added but didn’t was that, with no access to the outside world, he now found himself doing something he had never done before. Cesar was taking an interest in a woman beyond the physical. Mostly, his conversations with the opposite sex, unless conducted in the working arena, were laughably superficial. He didn’t encourage emotional outpourings.
‘Okay, maybe I’m a bit over-cautious when it comes to men, maybe I just don’t like getting too close. In fact, your brother is the first guy I’ve really felt comfortable with for ages,’ she admitted and she knew why. Freddy was no threat. He wasn’t going to try and pounce on her. He was wrapped up with Imogen and was therefore a safe bet for friendship and it had to be said that having a man as a friend was a huge plus because men brought a different take on all sorts of things. She had forgotten how invaluable they were when it came to putting things into perspective.
‘Is that a fact?’ Cesar murmured softly, watching the smile on her face.
‘I know.’ She looked at him, still smiling to herself. ‘I know you’ve had your problems with Freddy, but you’d be surprised at how practical he can be when it counts.’
‘Practical…’ Well, that, Cesar thought, was a first when it came to recommendations. He stood up and, when she followed suit, told her to go and make herself comfortable in the sitting room. Why waste the fire?
‘I should help tidy these things away.’
‘You’re an invalid.’
‘Hardly. Oh, yes, forgot. Damsel in distress.’ She glanced down at the bandaged hand with sudden amusement. ‘I’m beginning to see that I’ve played things all wrong. Maybe, instead of trying to be independent, I should have been dropping hankies on the ground and batting my eyelashes so that dashing men would fall at my feet in their eagerness to help me out.’
Cesar was tempted to tell her that he couldn’t picture her batting her eyelashes although, when he looked at her, he could see that she had very long eyelashes indeed, eminently suited to playing coy. Where other women enhanced theirs with mascara and eye make-up, for her there was no need.
‘Maybe you should,’ he said non-committally, but as she disappeared towards the sitting room, leaving him with a sink-load of dirty dishes and the novel experience of washing them, he had plenty more to think about. That faraway, dreamy look in her eyes when she had sung his brother’s praises. What did that mean? The random thoughts that had been playing around in his head since the night before now coalesced into something a lot more concrete and a lot more disturbing.
So she hadn’t yet slept with Fernando. He was convinced of that. The woman didn’t seem to have the ability to dissemble. He also believed that she had been hiding out from involvement with any man because she had been burnt before.
Where Fernando figured in this jigsaw puzzle was now becoming a little more obvious. He had no one in tow at the moment. Cesar knew that because there had been no charges recently for classy weekend breaks or expensive items of jewellery. For Fernando, whose lifestyle was nothing if not predictable, that could only indicate one thing. He was currently without a woman and, from the looks of it, had been for a while.
Cesar rested both hands flat on the edge of the kitchen sink and gazed thoughtfully at the steadily falling snow.
He had dropped his accusations, had adopted a different approach and, sure enough, he had got what he wanted or at least he had got the pieces he had needed to turn the puzzle into a mathematical equation he could solve.
Jude, reading between the lines, had been in a deep freeze and he didn’t know whether her thaw when she met Fernando had been deliberate or whether it had been accidental, but thaw she had. He had seen that in the expression on her face when she had talked about him and heard it in the tone of her voice.
She had given him a load of spiel about not being materialistic but that, he now cynically considered, was something that had to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. People were fond of throwing their hands up in the air and spouting forth about the best things in life being free, but show them a shed-load of cash and the free goodies suddenly didn’t seem quite so tempting.
Had she decided somewhere along the way that a friendship, played right, could lead to financial security for the rest of her life?
He thought of her and irritably shrugged off the nagging unease that her sharp, straightforward, argumentative personality was at odds with the picture he was piecing together. She seemed as keen, in her own way, as Fernando was in getting hold of the precious trust fund. How many times had she mentioned all his brother’s marvellous and hitherto unseen virtues of common sense and responsibility? Sure, she might be innocently complimenting him because she was his friend and nothing more. On the other hand, she could be fuelled by motives that were a hell of a lot more suspect.
He ignored the little voice in his head that was telling him that Fernando was a big boy now, well capable of taking care of himself, that he could make his own choices as far as women were concerned and that really, maybe the two of them genuinely had a good thing going and that hell, she was a damn sight better than some of his other catches.
Instead, he focused on the fact that their interaction at that club had not been the interaction of a man and a woman in the throes of a passionate affair after months of mutual teasing. There had been a few whispered conversations, a few furtive looks when they had thought themselves unobserved, but no accidental brushing of bodies and no mysterious disappearances.
So where did that leave him? Was she an out-and-out gold-digger? And, even if she was, was it really any of his business? Hand over the trust fund and walk away. He could do that. Leave Fernando to make a mess of his life in the full understanding that rescue down the line would not be part of the deal. Or withhold the trust fund and protect his brother’s financial interests, except at what point would the protection end?
He frowned darkly, waiting for an answer to come to him the way it always did. There was no situation over which he couldn’t have complete control and this, surely, was another but no answer materialised in his head. Instead, he just found himself thinking that he wanted her. It was something elemental. It defied logic and had caught him on the hop but it was still there, that powerful surge of his body when he looked at her and when he caught her looking at him.
He pushed himself away from the counter top and headed for the sitting room, where she was sitting on one of the sofas with a magazine in her hand and her feet tucked under her.
Although it was not yet completely dark, she had switched on the lights. Outside, with the falling snow, there was a twilight hue that made it feel much later than it was and the scene of roaring log fire and woman curled up on sofa just nee
ded the addition of faithful Labrador to turn it into a picture from a magazine.
She looked up from whatever she was reading and Cesar strolled into the room and sat at the opposite end of the sofa.
‘Does it bug you that you can’t get in touch with anyone?’ she asked, just to break the silence. The way he was looking at her made her stomach flip into knots.
‘I’m getting used to it. I might have to start having the occasional retreat without my computer or mobile.’
‘But with a change of clothes.’
‘That would work,’ Cesar drawled. ‘I’ve washed my boxers and I’m more than happy to put them on and stick these things in the wash, but if you find that offensive…’ He grimaced at the trousers, which had now seen a night at a club and a stint in the driving snow gathering logs, not to mention the grubby business of chopping them and getting the fire going.
‘I’m not sure that that’s a very good idea.’ Suddenly the room seemed a lot smaller, the fire a lot hotter and her skin as tingly as if electric currents were pulsing underneath it. ‘And I haven’t got any tracksuit pants that would fit. I…er…’
‘So you would find it offensive…’
‘Not at all. I’m not a prude.’ She laughed lightly and reminded herself that he was just a guy and a guy who had been pretty insulting towards her. More to the point, she might be able to recognise that obvious sexual appeal of his but her effect on him was rather different. Not only, by his own admission, was she not the sort of woman he found attractive, she was the sort of woman he found the least appealing. He liked them subservient and background. She was independent and outspoken. He had made the most of being cooped up in her house and had seemed to enjoy the unexpected break of having to indulge in doing things which he never did because he could pay someone else to do them for him but that didn’t mean that he was no longer the cold-eyed, suspicious man who had quizzed her on her motives. It would make him suspicious if she became jittery at the thought of seeing him in a pair of boxer shorts. Which were, in effect, no more revealing than swimming trunks.
The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress Page 21
