Had the world got it wrong about him? Or did he cash in on his racy reputation because it fitted the image of the sporting superstar? Who was he behind that mask of sophisticated playboy? If she had offered herself to him so shamelessly and he’d refused, then he must surely have far more to him than met the eye.
She held her purse in front of her stomach with both hands, suddenly feeling terribly gauche…well, even more so than usual. ‘About last night…’ she began.
‘Don’t mention it. I won’t.’ Another glinting look. ‘It can be our little secret.’
She gnawed her lip as she thought of all the thousands of followers he would have on Twitter or other social media. He could make an absolute fool of her with a couple of hash tags. What if he’d taken pictures of her without her knowing? Her stomach dropped. The stripper routine. Oh, God. What if he’d recorded it? Uploaded it? Sent it out to cyberspace. What if he blackmailed her? What if—?
He reached into his trouser pocket and handed her his phone. ‘You can check it if you like.’
Daisy stared at his phone as if it were a grenade with the pin pulled out. ‘I really don’t think that’s—’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’ He came and stood shoulder to shoulder with her, accessing the camera roll on his phone. ‘See?’
She peered at the images he was scrolling through, conscious of the way his light lemony and citrus cologne sharpened the air. She could feel the slightest brush of his hair-roughened arm against her smoother one. Her traitorous mind began assembling images of them in bed together, limbs entangled, lips locked, tongues mating. ‘Good gracious, is that a dress that girl is almost wearing?’
He gave one of his deep rumbly chuckles that sent her senses spinning all over again. ‘For a simple scrap of fabric it was damn hard to get off.’
Daisy gave him a wry glance. ‘What? She didn’t offer to help you?’
‘Can’t remember.’ He carried on thumbing through another few photos.
‘How long ago was it—erm, she?’
‘Ages ago.’ He flashed her a sudden grin. ‘A couple of weeks at least.’
Daisy rolled her eyes and then pointed to a picture on the photo stream of a slightly older woman standing next to Luiz at what looked like a cocktail party. ‘Who’s that?’
‘My mother, Eloise.’
Something about the way he said his mother’s name alerted her to an undercurrent of tension. ‘She looks very beautiful. Very glamorous. Like a movie star.’
His lips moved in the semblance of a smile. ‘Yes, she likes the spotlight, that’s for sure.’
‘You’re not close?’
He looked at her briefly, his eyes meshing with hers in a moment of silence. There was a vacancy in the back of his gaze, as if he was looking in the past for something but was having trouble finding it. ‘We were once, or so I thought.’
‘When was that?’
He clicked off the screen of his phone and slipped it back into his pocket in a subject closed manner. ‘What do you normally eat for breakfast?’
‘Well…ideally, I would eat an egg white omelette and drink a herbal tea.’
His brow lifted. ‘Ideally?’
She gave him a self-deprecating look. ‘I’m rubbish at sticking to diets. I last about three days and then I cave in and eat everything that isn’t nailed down.’
‘How does bacon and eggs, pancakes, maple syrup and a side of hash browns sound?’
Daisy swayed on her feet as if about to go into a swoon. ‘Like heaven. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse and chase the rider.’
He stood looking down at her with a gleaming look in his dark as pitch eyes. ‘I’ve heard there are some riders out there who like to do all the chasing.’
Daisy held his look with an aplomb she had no idea she possessed. Who knew flirting could be so much fun? ‘Then perhaps those riders should make sure they never get caught.’
He picked up a lock of her hair and twirled it a couple of times around his tanned finger. She felt the gentle tug as one by one the roots of her hair lifted off her scalp. His eyes slipped to her mouth, lingered there as if he was weighing up whether to kiss her or not.
Do it. Do it. Do it, a voice chanted in her head.
His head came down in a slow motion action, blocking out the light shining in from the window. He stopped a mere millimetre away from her mouth, close enough for their breaths to mingle. His smelt of toothpaste. God alone knew what hers smelt like after a night on the tiles. Bathroom ones included. Ack!
Daisy put a fingertip against his lips, her voice coming out as little more than a husky whisper. ‘Wait.’
He nibbled her fingertip with his lips, making her legs unlock at the knees. ‘What for?’
‘I haven’t even told you my name.’
He turned her hand over and kissed a tickling pathway from her wrist to her elbow. ‘So, tell me.’
She shivered as his lips came back down to the sensitive skin on the underside of her wrist. ‘Daisy…Daisy Wyndham.’
He held her wrist to his mouth as his eyes meshed with hers. ‘Nice.’
Daisy had trouble breathing. His eyes were so dark she felt as if she were drowning in their bottomless depths. His stubble-surrounded mouth against her skin was making her belly do somersaults worthy of a Cirque du Soleil performance. She even heard the rasp of his skin as he moved his mouth to the heel of her hand as his tongue made one flicking lick against the ridge of flesh. A flashpoint of heat triggered a tumult of sensation in her core. She hadn’t even realised that part of her hand had an erogenous zone.
The doorbell sounded behind him and he dropped her hand with a regretful smile. ‘Breakfast.’
CHAPTER THREE
FOOD HAD NEVER been further from Daisy’s mind, which was saying something as normally it was always on her mind. Forbidden food. The yummy stuff she secretly craved but rigorously denied herself in fear of losing control. Her father had drummed it into her from early childhood that being in control of one’s mind and body and physical appetites was the mark of a well-disciplined person. In order to win his approval she denied herself anything that was the slightest bit sinful. But the years of self-denial hadn’t made her stronger and more disciplined. If anything, they had made her all the more conflicted and confused about what she wanted and why she wanted it.
She watched with her mouth watering and her stomach rumbling as Luiz opened the door to the hotel attendant, who wheeled in a loaded trolley of silver domed dishes. The delicious aroma almost knocked her off her feet. Crispy bacon, soufflé-soft scrambled eggs, deep-fried hash browns, fluffy buttermilk pancakes, the sweetness of maple syrup—not the cheap imitation but the real stuff—a platter of tropical fruit, coffee and even a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.
The attendant left with a sizeable tip in his hand, closing the door on his exit.
‘Wow.’
Luiz tossed his wallet on the sofa. ‘Hungry?’
‘I meant the tip.’ Daisy’s eyes were still out on stalks. ‘Did you really give that young man two hundred dollars?’
He shrugged a loose shoulder. ‘I can afford it.’
‘Do you light your cigarettes with a fifty?’
He flashed her a quick smile. ‘I don’t smoke.’
Another point in his favour, she thought as he began to take the lids off the food. He handed her a plate. ‘Help yourself.’
Daisy tried to be circumspect. She really tried. But the food was so scrumptious and she hadn’t had a proper cooked breakfast in years. Before she knew it, her plate was loaded with a mountain of monstrously wicked calories that would at some time in the future have to be worked off. But it would be worth it.
She took the chair opposite his at the table near the window overlooking the Nevada desert in the distance. She unw
rapped her silver cutlery from the snowy white napkin it was encased in and then glanced across at Luiz but all he had in front of him was a steaming cup of black coffee. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘I’ll have something later.’
‘But there’s so much here.’ Most of it on my plate.
‘I like to work out first.’
The gym or the bedroom? Daisy blushed as the thought slipped into her mind. ‘I suppose you have to be super fit to be a polo player.’
‘If you want to be the best then that’s exactly what you have to be.’
She looked up from her forkful of eggs. ‘I’ve never been to a polo game. Is it fun?’
A smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. ‘I enjoy it.’
‘So…that’s all you do? Fly around the world to play polo?’
‘I have business interests with my older brother Alejandro. Resorts, investments, horse breeding, that sort of thing. But yes, I mostly fly around the globe to play polo.’
Daisy took a mouthful of the delectable bacon, trying not to groan in ecstasy as it went down. ‘Don’t you ever get bored?’ she asked after a moment.
He cradled his coffee cup in one hand, the handle pointing away from him. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Living out of hotel rooms all the time. Doesn’t that get a little boring year after year after year?’
Something about his expression subtly changed. The half smile was not so playful. The chiselled contours of his jaw not so relaxed. His eyes a little more screened than before. ‘Not so far.’
‘Don’t get me wrong—’ she scooped up some more egg ‘—I love hotel rooms, especially ones as nice as this. But there’s no place like home.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘London.’
‘Want to narrow that down a bit?’
Daisy gave him a coy look over her loaded fork. ‘Why do you ask? Are you thinking of visiting me?’
His eyes didn’t waver as they held hers. ‘I don’t do relationships, especially long distance ones.’
She squashed a little niggle of disappointment. Last night she had thought him the most obnoxious upstart.
But now…
She gave a mental shrug and loaded up her fork again. ‘I live in Belgravia.’
His brow lifted ever so slightly. ‘So you’re no stranger to money in spite of your comment about the tip earlier.’
Daisy gave him a sheepish glance. ‘It’s not my flat. It belongs to my father. I pay him a nominal rent. He insists I live in a high security complex. He’s kind of overprotective, to put it mildly.’
He leaned forward to refill his cup from the silver percolator on the table. ‘You’re lucky to have someone watching out for you.’
Daisy wondered if he’d think she was so lucky if she told him the rest. Like how her father often turned up unannounced at her flat, checking her fridge or pantry for contraband food. Not to mention dates. Making comments about her clothes and appearance or the amount of make-up she was wearing. Offering his opinion on every aspect of her life. She had put up with his controlling ways for too long. The trouble was she had no idea how to get him to change without hurting him. So many of her friends didn’t have fathers, or had fathers who weren’t interested or involved in their lives. She had already lost one parent. The thought of losing another—even through estrangement—was too daunting.
She studied Luiz’s face for a moment. ‘You mentioned your mother. What about your father? Is he still alive?’
His expression gave the tiniest flinch as if the mention of his father was somehow painful to him. ‘He died a couple of years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He stirred his coffee with a teaspoon even though she hadn’t seen him put sugar or cream into it. ‘He was glad to go in the end.’
‘Was he ill?’
‘He had a riding accident when I was a kid. He wasn’t expected to survive but he did—much to my mother’s despair.’
Daisy frowned. ‘But surely—?’
His expression was cynical. ‘It wasn’t my mother’s idea of marital bliss to be shackled to a quadriplegic who couldn’t even lift a cup to his mouth. She left six months after the accident.’ He swirled the coffee in his cup until it became a dark whirlpool. Daisy watched with bated breath for some to spill over the sides but it didn’t. It told her a lot about him. He was a risk-taker but he knew exactly how far he could push the boundaries.
‘Did she take you and your brother with her?’
He laughed a brittle-sounding laugh. ‘She hadn’t wanted kids in the first place. She only married my father because her family pressured her into it once she got pregnant with my brother.’ He put the cup down again with a precise movement before he sat back, hooking one ankle over the top of his muscled thigh. ‘She came back a couple of years later to get me but our father wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘Would you have wanted to go?’
His lips rose and fell in a shrug-like movement. ‘It was no picnic being brought up in a sickroom. My brother did his best but he wasn’t able to be both parents and a brother to me. But I wouldn’t go unless he came too and there was no way he would ever leave my father.’
‘So you stayed.’
‘I stayed.’
A silence crept in from the four corners of the room.
There was no outward sign on his face but Daisy got the impression he regretted revealing so much about his background. His fingers began to drum on the arms of the chair he was sitting on. It was barely audible but it spoke volumes. He wasn’t a man to sit around chatting. He was a man of action. He lived life on the edge. He didn’t sit on the sidelines and ruminate about what might have, could have, or should have been.
‘Why did you come to my rescue last night?’
His eyes took on that teasing glint again but she noticed his smile looked a little forced. ‘You seemed like a nice kid. I didn’t want you to come to any harm on your first night in Vegas.’
‘So you tucked me safely up in bed and gallantly slept on the sofa.’
‘Correction. I didn’t sleep.’
She frowned. ‘What did you do?’
‘I kept an eye on you.’
‘Why?’
‘Your drink was doctored. I heard it from the horse’s mouth.’
Daisy’s mouth dropped open. ‘You mean a drug of some sort?’
‘He only confessed to getting a friend to put a couple of extra shots of vodka in your glass while you weren’t watching,’ he said. ‘I asked the hotel doctor to give you the once-over. He seemed pretty confident it was just a case of a little too much to drink. Your pupils and your breathing were normal.’
She stared at him with burgeoning respect. How had she got it so wrong about him? He had acted so responsibly last night. Taking care of her. Protecting her. Sacrificing his evening to stay with her. How had she thought he was shallow and arrogant? He wasn’t the devil she had taken him for. He was a guardian angel. Her guardian angel. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for watching out for me.’
‘Yeah, well, how about being a little more careful when you’re out on the town? They’re a lot of opportunistic guys out there who’d not think twice about taking advantage of a girl who’s three sheets to the wind.’
Daisy chewed her lower lip. ‘I can see now why my father always insists I travel with a bodyguard.’
His brows snapped together. ‘You have a bodyguard?’
She gave him another sheepish look. ‘I did up until last night. I slipped away from him to join the girls in the nightclub downstairs.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Probably handing in his notice to my father.’
His frown cut into his forehead like a deep V. ‘Don’t you think you should call h
im to let him know you’re safe?’
‘I guess…’
He snatched up her purse where her phone was stored. ‘Better do it before the cops put out a missing person’s alert—if they haven’t already.’
Daisy took out her phone to find thirty-three missed calls from her father. She had forgotten she’d put her phone on silent before she met the girls last night and hadn’t got around to turning it back. She pressed the call button and mentally counted to three to prepare herself for the fallout. ‘Dad?’
‘Where the hell are you?’ her father blasted. ‘I’ve been worried sick. I was about to get every cop in Vegas out looking for you. Are you all right? What happened last night? Bruno told me you gave him the slip. Just wait until I see you, young lady. Do you think I’m not serious about your safety? There are creeps out there just waiting to get their hands on a good old-fashioned girl like you. I swear to God if anyone’s hurt my baby girl I’ll have their balls for breakfast.’
‘I’m fine, Dad, please stop shouting.’ Daisy tried to cover the mouthpiece but it was obvious Luiz had heard every word because he was grinning. ‘I’m fine, really I am. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.’
‘Where are you?’ her father demanded.
‘I’m at a hotel with a…a friend.’
‘Which friend? You don’t know anyone in Vegas apart from those silly girlfriends of yours.’
‘A new friend.’ Daisy looked at Luiz with a can-I-mention-your-name? look but, before he could give her an answer, she told her father, ‘I’m with Luiz Valquez, you know, the famous polo champion?’
‘What?’ her father roared.
‘I met him last night. He was terribly nice and took me to his—’
‘That profligate time-wasting party boy?’ Her father was apoplectic. ‘Wait till I get my hands on him. I’ll tear him limb from—’
Luiz signalled for her to give him the phone. ‘I’ll talk to him.’
Daisy gingerly handed the phone to him as her father continued his audible tirade. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.
THE VALQUEZ SEDUCTION Page 4
