by Kim Lawrence
Wondering where this was leading, Nell nodded warily. ‘I think they do.’
‘And you are fond of them?’
‘Is that a trick question?’ She closed her eyes and hissed in exasperation, ‘Just cut to the chase.’
‘As you wish.’ He gave one of his inimical shrugs. ‘I have a business proposition to put to you.’
‘Oh?’
‘I have heavy work commitments. My mother is not a young woman, her eyesight is failing and she is making herself ill trying to look after her grandchildren.’
‘There must be some way to make her slow down.’
‘There is. You move into our London house to ease the children through the transition they must make.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘ME, MOVE into your house!’ Nell exclaimed, her eyes widening in horror.
A significant proportion of her horror could be accounted for by the first, knee-jerk thought that popped into her head, namely—What are the chances I will bump into him wearing a bath towel or something similar?
Not only did this illustrate her growing unhealthy obsession with his body, it wasn’t even realistic. The Carrerases almost certainly lived in the sort of mansion where you could go two days without seeing another human being.
Face hot with shame, she grunted. ‘You must be joking.’
‘No, I am reliably informed I have no sense of humour,’ he explained, deadpan.
This drew a reluctant grin from Nell. ‘Katerina?’
Raul nodded.
Nell gave a grimace of wry sympathy—about time she started putting the children’s needs ahead of her own base instincts. Not that her concern for them was going to make her do anything as stupid as moving into the Carreras mansion.
‘I can see things are hard for you at the moment, but they’ll get better,’ she promised him.
‘I’m disappointed,’ he admitted with an air of candour. ‘I didn’t think you were the sort of person whose caring stopped at the point where it inconvenienced you.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You can cut out the moral blackmail right now.’
‘You must admit I have a point. They do not need a nanny, they need a friend, a familiar face in a strange place. You would not be there in an official capacity. You would simply be our guest.’
‘I’m not going to admit anything, and for the record I’m not bothered about being inconvenienced, I’m bothered about…’
‘Yes?’ he prompted.
Her eyes slid from his. ‘It’s just a daft idea.’
‘I’m not asking you to marry me.’
‘Pity, they say laughter is good for you. On the other hand it’s probably just as well,’ she interrupted loudly. ‘I doubt if your fiancée would like it.’
‘My fiancée? I don’t have a fiancée, so there is one obstacle removed.’
‘I suppose you’ll say next that Roxie Allan is just a good friend.’
‘No, I’m just sleeping with her.’
His expression grew faintly amused as her lips moved in a faint moue of shocked distaste.
‘Have I said something to offend you?’
Nell made a point of taking what she read in the tabloids with a pinch of salt, but this conversation went a long way to confirm the heartless womaniser image the media had consigned to him. His callous attitude to women horrified her.
‘Does the lady in question know she’s just sleeping with you?’
‘Roxie?’
‘You mean there are some others who are planning a spring wedding?’
‘I suspect that Roxie’s publicists are responsible for leaking most of those “exclusives”.’
‘And you don’t care?’ His casual attitude to having his business, or a version of it at least, plastered over the tabloids perplexed her.
‘The day I do decide to get married the newspapers will not be the first people to know, and, incidentally, I have never had to promise marriage to a woman to get her into bed.’
His assurance set her teeth on edge.
‘But then you’ve never tried it without the seductiveness of the Carreras millions behind you.’
Even as she made the sly suggestion, Nell was privately acknowledging that even if Raul had not had a penny to his name he would still have had women falling over themselves to catch his attention.
What Raul had money couldn’t buy.
‘No, but Javier did.’
‘You’re not Javier.’
A flinty gleam entered his eyes in response to her angry taunt. ‘Why do you need to flaunt the fact you were my brother’s mistress every two seconds?’ Anger emanated from every inch of his rigid, disapproving frame.
Nell shook her head; even by his standards this hypocrisy was breathtaking. ‘You’re the one who introduced Javier into the conversation,’ she reminded him. ‘And I don’t recall saying I was his mistress.’
The muscles of his strong brown throat worked as he regarded her with extreme distaste. ‘No, you just happened to live in the same house as him for two years. How dare you look down your little nose at someone like Roxie?’
The insult stung. ‘I was looking down my nose at you, not her!’
His expressive lips formed the definitive sneer. ‘Are you trying to tell me you didn’t sleep with my brother?’
‘What would be the point?’ she demanded sarcastically. ‘A man and a woman can’t have a relationship that doesn’t include sex, can they?’
Eyes dark as night swept over her face. ‘Not if one of them is Spanish.’
The throaty observation sent a secret shiver of excitement shuddering through her hopelessly receptive body. ‘Spaniards didn’t invent sex, you know,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘No, we merely perfected it. You have personal experience—Javier, even without his seductive Carreras millions, still managed to lure one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen into his bed.’
‘Did you know Cathy?’ she began, an eager note entering her voice. She had seen photos of the wife Javier had adored and had thought her very lovely. ‘Kate looks very like her, don’t you think?’
‘No doubt.’ His interest in family resemblance seemed minimal. ‘However, I wasn’t talking about Cathy.’
‘Then who—?’ She stopped, her eyes widening to their full extent when his meaning sank in. Her body went through a series of extreme temperature variations before settling to an all-over tingling glow.
‘Save the tired old chat-up lines for someone who appreciates them, please.’ Nell tried to sound bored and not breathless, though she didn’t know why she bothered to keep up the pretence. It was far too much like locking the stable door after the proverbial horse had bolted. Raul was far too experienced not to pick up on what she was feeling; besides, she had responded to his kiss with all the subtlety of a sex-starved bimbo!
Raul studied her flushed cheeks with interest. ‘Does me finding you attractive make you nervous?’
And wouldn’t you like that? she thought grimly. Actually, him finding her attractive was something she didn’t—couldn’t—deal with. Her adolescence had not involved being a victim to her hormones in a problematic way and she was not enjoying the experience now it had caught up with her. Caught up with a vengeance!
‘I won’t even dignify that with an answer,’ she returned loftily. Then almost immediately contradicted herself by adding, ‘Actually, it makes me nauseous.’
Raul, obviously not a man with a self-esteem problem, laughed.
‘Well, if I ever had any doubts about taking you up on your so kind offer—I don’t now!’ she declared coldly. ‘Sleep in the same bed as you?’ She winced to hear her voice rise to an unattractive, scathing squeak.
One dark brow lifted to a satirical angle. ‘Bed?’
‘What?’ she snapped, with an impatient frown.
‘Bed. You said “sleep in the same bed as you.”’
Nell went hot, cold and then hot again. ‘I did not!’ Did I? ‘I said under the same roof.’
/> ‘Freudian slip?’ he suggested. ‘Or wishful thinking?’
Her face flamed. ‘You really do think a lot of yourself, don’t you?’ she choked.
‘You don’t find confidence an attractive trait in a man? Most women do.’
‘That’s what they say to your face.’
Her hissing retort made him grin. It was perverse that when she actually tried to make him mad he acted as if it were some big joke, and yet when she said something perfectly innocent he acted as if he wanted to throttle her.
Definitely perverse!
‘You mean they are willing to overlook my character defects because of my wealth?’ A hard edge crept into his languid tone as his deep-set eyes swept over her heated face. ‘Was it Javier’s name that drew you to him?’
The interrogative note that had entered his voice made her frown.
‘Did you move on when you discovered he had the name, but not the money?’ he persisted.
‘It would hardly have taken me two years to discover he had no money, and, as for leaving him, I didn’t. He chucked me out.’ She had been reluctant to leave the security and set up alone, but Javier had been firm. It had been time she’d moved on; being with him had been stopping her forming new relationships; she’d needed to spread her wings, he had said.
Nell had stopped resisting when she had realised that this had applied equally to himself. Her presence might have made it difficult for Javier to form new relationships and perhaps he’d been feeling ready to do so.
For a moment Raul looked totally disconcerted by her response. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘That’s sweet of you, but not everyone finds me as irresistible as you. Even the most warm and appealing of us have our faults, though you probably don’t hang around long enough to find out about your girlfriends’ irritating habits,’ she added drily. ‘Do you ever see them without their make-up?’
‘Are you trying to tell me my brother seduced a girl young enough to be his…?’ Raul broke off, closed his eyes and inhaled. His struggle for control was written visibly on his taut, strong-boned features. ‘My brother would not seduce a teenager and then discard her when the novelty had worn off.’
The penny finally dropped.
A look of comprehension spread across Nell’s face. Raul needed to see her as a scheming hussy because the alternative made his brother, the brother she was beginning to realise that he had idolised, the sleazy sort of guy who targeted young, inexperienced girls. It was so blindingly simple she didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her earlier. The more she considered the theory, the more sense it made. It certainly explained his hostility.
‘Javier did not seduce me,’ she said quietly.
‘It is unnecessary for you to tell me this.’
‘And,’ she continued firmly, ‘I did not seduce him. It wasn’t about anyone being used. We just needed one another.’ Raul received this information with a stony expression.
‘You do not need to draw a picture for me.’ The pictures Raul was seeing in his head were altogether graphic enough. ‘I do not need a lesson in needing.’
Nell’s blue eyes sparkled with anger. ‘You always have to sink everything to the lowest common denominator, don’t you? I’m not talking about sex.’
‘So you consider sex the “lowest common denominator”?’
Nell flushed and looked away from his mocking eyes. ‘There are other things. Things that are equally important. I…I cooked and cleaned.’
‘You cooked and cleaned?’ he echoed.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, warming to her theme. ‘And looked after the children.’
‘You are trying to tell me you were some sort of au pair?’
‘No, it wasn’t a formal arrangement.’
‘Very much like the one I am suggesting, then.’
‘Nothing like.’
The dark lashes dipped over his eyes before slowly lifting. He angled his head so that their glances sealed. The sharp contours of his carved cheekbones were accentuated by two bands of dull colour. Nell could see the silver flecks deep in his eyes; they had a hypnotic quality.
A shiver rippled through her body. Painfully conscious of the heat low in her belly, she tried to swallow, only couldn’t. Her throat muscles seemed to be paralysed. She pulled nervously at the neck of her sweater; she wanted to look away but couldn’t.
Couldn’t or didn’t want to…?
‘It could be?’ Sinfully soft, seductively suggestive, his words hung in the air between them.
Raul was under the impression her arrangement with Javier had reached the bedroom. She released the breath she had been unconsciously holding in a fractured gasp as her brain made the necessary connections.
‘I don’t even like you.’ She had never been tempted by casual sex…but would it be such a terrible thing? Shocked by the direction of her thoughts, she took a deep breath. ‘And you don’t like me.’
His mobile mouth twisted in a cynical smile as he shrugged. ‘Does that matter?’
Nell stared at him, seeing only his careless attitude and not the tension that held his lean body taut. Her anger stirred. ‘To me it does.’
‘You’re not going to deny that things happen whenever we are in the same room?’
She didn’t deny or confirm his observation. ‘When I sleep with a man it won’t be someone who looks on the experience as no more important than ordering a meal or choosing a bottle of wine.’
‘I drink very little, and I leave what I eat to my chef. Sex is something I give a great deal more thought to and I am not considered a selfish lover.’
The physical craving when she looked at him was almost a physical pain. ‘I’m not looking for a lover!’ she blurted before she could say or do something that would reveal how sorely she was tempted.
To her total chagrin he took her rejection of his advances pretty calmly. With a philosophical shrug, to be precise. Nell had seen people get more emotional about missing a bus!
‘But you will be looking for a job, apparently.’
‘It looks like it,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘And I don’t suppose your landlord will be prepared to wait for the rent? But I expect you have savings put aside for such a rainy day.’
Nell, who hadn’t yet had time to seriously consider the practical aspects of being unemployed, regarded his classic profile with simmering dislike. ‘Of course,’ she lied airily.
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘All right,’ she flared. ‘I don’t, but, before you get excited about the idea of me being thrown out onto the street, I should explain that working here isn’t my only source of income.’
‘Oh?’
‘I work the late shift in a convenience store three nights a week. They’ll be more than happy to extend my hours.’
‘A convenience store?’ he repeated, looking at her as though she had just disembarked from a spaceship.
‘Yes, a convenience store, and I have had an offer to be a life model at the art school. It pays good money. I have a couple of friends who did it when we were at college.’
The muscles in his brown throat worked. ‘You would take off your clothes in front of strangers?’ Raul was conscious of the dull roar in his head building in volume as his imagination provided a picture of a bunch of drooling, lascivious men lusting over Nell’s naked body.
Nell gave a disdainful little sniff. ‘There’s nothing smutty about it,’ she flared defensively. ‘The human body is a perfectly natural, beautiful thing.’
A muscle clenched in Raul’s cheek. ‘Some more beautiful than others.’ The studied insolence of his bold survey brought Nell’s arms up in an instinctively protective gesture.
‘Do you really think you have what it takes to be an artist’s model?’
Nell’s arms fell away; she was unsure whether this comment referred to her body or her modesty. She could have told him that she was only self-conscious about her body when he was around.
‘Modelling is art,
’ she contended.
‘Oh, well that makes it all right, then,’ Raul drawled with acid sarcasm that brought an angry glitter to her eyes. ‘And how can you be so sure that all the people who come to draw naked women are inspired to do so by such pure and elevated motives as you ascribe to them?’ he demanded. ‘Do you not think it conceivable that some actually come to ogle nubile young women who they would not normally get within five feet of?’
‘Just because you have a disgusting mind, don’t assume that everyone else has.’
Raul released a dry laugh. ‘I find if you assign the worst possible motives to people you are rarely disappointed.’
‘Which means you wouldn’t recognise someone who was actually on the level,’ she cried, appalled by his cynicism.
He gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘I’ll take that chance.’
‘And I,’ she retorted, ‘will take off my clothes if I wish, despite narrow-minded bigots like you!’
‘I would pay you more not to.’
This driven, extraordinary statement took the wind out of her sails. ‘You would do what?’
A self-conscious expression slid across his face before his extravagant lashes came down, brushing the slashing contours of his bold cheekbones before lifting.
‘I mean that living in my home would solve your financial problems and my domestic ones. Unless taking off your clothes in public is the culmination of a lifelong ambition?’
Before Nell had chance to respond to this outrageous suggestion he took her elbow and led her towards the door. ‘You should never make a decision on an empty stomach. Let me buy you dinner. Your bag?’ he asked, picking up her leather satchel.
Shocked into temporary submission by his hands-on approach to taking charge of the situation, Nell nodded.
‘Coat?’
She shook her head.
Raul clicked off the light switch. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ he asked, looking down at her as they stepped out into the night.
Nell shivered as the cold night air penetrated her sweater. When she had dressed that morning it had been a fine autumn morning, but it had been raining for the better part of the day and the street lights were reflected in the rain-soaked pavements.
