Which was why, taking her time with her soup and letting her mind toy with the fantasy of a time ahead when she could barely remember his name, let alone what he looked like, Tessa almost managed not to see the tall, dark figure that was suddenly looming at the far end of the room. He was talking to Bill Winters, the owner of the hotel while his eyes drifted slowly across the expanse of the dining area. And those blue eyes connected with hers just as realisation hit home with a resounding crash. Even so, the sight of Curtis here was sufficiently unbelievable for her to take it in. So she watched as he crossed the room, blinking in disbelief. The vision didn’t clear. It continued to come closer until her shocked brain forced her to acknowledge that this was no dream. Curtis Diaz was here. At which point she gently returned her soup spoon to its bowl, before it clattered to the floor, and eyed him with gaping horror.
‘Your sister told me where you were,’ he said heavily. ‘Carry on eating. I don’t want to disrupt your meal.’
Disrupt her meal? What about disrupting her life? He had no right to be here, Tessa thought with uncurling anger. He had no right to just show up when she was trying so hard to forget all about him!
‘I seem to have lost my appetite.’ He was staring at her and she couldn’t fathom what was in those dangerous, deep blue eyes. ‘Why have you come here?’ she demanded in a low, shaking voice. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve…shouldn’t you be out somewhere?’ With a leggy blonde?
‘Do you think I want to be here?’ Curtis rasped, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I came because I had to.’
Which smelled to Tessa of work. Curtis Diaz only felt obligated to do things that impacted on his professional life. Mr No Commitment had no such qualms when it came to emotions, she thought bitterly.
‘If it’s to do with work, forget it. My replacement can deal with whatever I left behind. There’s no way I’m going back to hold anyone’s hand and walk them through my filing system.’
‘It’s not to do with work, for God’s sake!’ He banged one fist on the table and Tessa started back in alarm, heart beating like a sledgehammer.
‘Then what? We’ve talked already. Too much. There’s nothing left to say.’
‘You never told me that you loved me.’
His words dropped like lead pellets into the thick pool of silence and every ripple that spread outwards was more horrifying than the last. Tessa felt her face whiten. She opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out.
‘I…I…well,’ she finally managed to say in a voice she didn’t recognise as her own, ‘I didn’t because it’s a ridiculous idea.’ As if to lend edge to what she had said, she laughed hysterically, a little too hysterically.
Someone came to remove her soup bowl and she was aware of Curtis telling him to wait a while before he brought the next course. The instruction was accepted with a deferential nod. Tessa watched all this through a haze of sickening panic.
‘It’s not a ridiculous idea,’ Curtis said quietly, leaning forward so that his elbows were on the table and the space between them was diminished to suffocating proportions. ‘You’re not the kind of girl to sleep with a man for no better reason than she wants to test the water or have a bit of fun. You’re the kind of girl who sleeps with a man because she’s involved with him, because her heart tells her it’s the right thing to do.’
‘I thought we’d established that,’ Tessa muttered uncomfortably. ‘Which is why I wasn’t interested in a fling with you…’
‘We established that,’ Curtis agreed. ‘Which made me wonder why you slept with me in the first place…’
Tessa’s struggle to deny the truth collapsed. And she didn’t even feel angry with him any more. She still wondered what he had had to gain by coming here, by cornering her, but even that curiosity was a pale shadow compared to her own sense of utter defeat.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Did you think that this would be unfinished business unless you happened to drag the whole truth out of me?’ She gave a short, mirthless laugh, but her eyes stung from the pressure of unshed tears and her fingers were compulsively twisting the serviette on her lap. ‘Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we? After all, Curtis Diaz is a man who always finishes business, isn’t he? Even though this could have waited! So I’ll help you out here. Yes. I didn’t mean to and I knew that it was stupid, but once your heart starts galloping down a certain path, then it’s impossible to catch up with it. I fell in love with you. Against all my better judgement, I fell in love with you and you’re absolutely right. That’s why I slept with you, because it just felt right. My only saving grace was that I knew from the word go that you weren’t looking for a relationship. But I stupidly thought that maybe I could just enjoy something temporary. Thinking that you and Lucy were going to become an item made me realise that I couldn’t. So, there you go, Curtis. Happy?’
‘Amazingly, wondrously, fabulously happy.’ He sent her a slow smile that made her toes curl and her mouth tighten.
‘Good. I’m so glad for you. And now you’ve got that confession out of me, why don’t you do me a huge favour and leave? Let me ring in the new year without you around to spoil it for me!’
‘You seem to make a habit of asking me to leave when I don’t want to.’ He reached out and stroked her cheek before she had time to pull back. Now, it wasn’t just her toes that were curling, but everything inside her as well.
‘Do you really think that I just came here because I wanted the satisfaction of hearing you tell me?’
Tessa gave an eloquent shrug. Where he had touched her cheek burnt as though he had branded her.
‘I came here because…’ A dark flush spread across his cheekbones and he suddenly looked vulnerable and uncertain, two traits not normally associated with him.
‘Because…?’ Tessa prompted out of hateful, treacherous curiosity, when he lapsed into silence.
He met her eyes quickly and gave a slight shrug. ‘Because I was that man. The one you described. The one who never wanted to put roots down. I felt that I had all the roots I needed with Anna and, besides, work never left time to cultivate anything, not that I couldn’t have made the time if I’d wanted, but I didn’t. I liked the life I had, or at least I thought I did.’
Tessa felt her breath catch in her throat. She didn’t want hope to interfere with reality but the way he was looking at her…
‘As you said, different strokes for different folks,’ she said neutrally.
His hand reached out to cover hers, though, and she didn’t remove it. The pressure of his palm against hers was warm and still and strong and as seductive as she remembered. Everything about him was.
‘And I thought I meant it at the time, I really did.’
Tessa opened her mouth to speak and he briefly placed one finger over her lips.
‘In fact, I told myself a lot of things a couple of days back, including that I was relieved to have escaped the possibility of getting caught up in a relationship I couldn’t handle…no, wait, let me finish. I figured that I could walk away, breathe a sigh of relief, and get back to my life. I’ve been trying as hard as I could…’
‘I know. I saw the picture in the newspaper of you trying with a blonde.’
Curtis snorted. ‘I think trying would certainly be the word she would use to describe me. God, I can’t even remember her name. She was just part of my Master Plan to get my life back and, in all fairness, she didn’t mind being photographed with me. Upped her credibility in the world of glamour.’
He couldn’t remember her name! Tessa’s heart flipped a few times and reality gave up trying to put the dampener on hope.
‘All I’ve succeeded in doing is drinking more than I should, storming around the office like a bear with a sore head, bellowing at anyone who crosses my path, not that I’ve had much of an audience, thank God, and staring at computer screens without managing to achieve very much.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Tessa said weakly.
‘Do you? Can you? See, I mean? How much I miss
ed you? I don’t think you can. If someone had told me six months ago that I’d be running towards commitment as if my life depended on it, I’d have laughed them out of court.’
‘You’re saying…’
‘I’m saying that…’ He looked around uncomfortably and cleared his throat. ‘I’m saying that I love you. Not just lust after you, although I do that as well, excel at it in fact, but need you and want you and can’t bear the thought of you not being by my side. In fact…’
Their eyes tangled and Tessa smiled slowly back at him, reading his mind. ‘I don’t think anyone would miss us if we had a bit of a breather before the main course…’
They slunk out of the dining room like two teenagers, with Curtis just about managing to mutter something to their host on the way out about needing to fetch something before they carried on with the meal, that they would be back very shortly.
‘Very shortly?’ Tessa quizzed, half running up the stairs with him to her bedroom.
‘Oh, yes. Remember what I said about lusting after you…? Well, it feels as though it’s been years and I don’t think my body is capable of behaving itself properly right now…’ To demonstrate exactly what he meant, as soon as the key turned in the door he pushed it open and pulled her to him with a low groan, pressing her against the door to shut it, muttering thickly against her pliant mouth.
And his urgency matched hers. Hands collided as they tugged to free each other of unwanted clothes. Actually making it to the bed was not an option. ‘We can spend all the time we want in bed later,’ he promised roughly, ‘but I want you right here and right now…’
With perfect understanding and feeling shockingly debauched, Tessa coiled her hands around his neck and groaned as their bodies found the perfect position. Her legs wrapped round him and, with a gasp of absolute fulfilment, she felt him move strongly inside her, thrusting and manoeuvring her with expertise so that her breasts bounced against his chest.
They came as one, shuddering on that final thrust, and Tessa curved lovingly against him as he carried her to the bed.
‘Next time, my darling, we’ll take all the time in the world, but I just couldn’t wait…’
‘Nor could I…’ she murmured. She ran the palm of her hand against his chest and, with a smile, he did the same to her, pausing to cup her swollen breast in his hand and eliciting a tiny moan when he began rubbing her stiffened nipple between his fingers.
‘You’re the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth,’ he said solemnly. ‘Next to you, every woman seems to fade into the background.’ As if unable to help himself, he lowered his head so that he could take one nipple into his mouth and suckle on it and Tessa was more than content to let him stay there, feasting, with her hand resting lightly on his head. She smiled when he finally looked up at her.
‘My life only has meaning with you in it,’ he told her, and she tugged him up so that their faces were once more on a level and she could gently kiss his mouth, pressing her body against his and moving sinuously against his already stiffening member.
‘You don’t know how I’ve longed to hear you say that,’ she confessed, smiling and arching back as his hand curved along her thigh, seeking and finding the wetness that spoke of her desire. She drew her breath in sharply as his fingers rubbed insistently, sending shooting stars through her. ‘What about the meal waiting downstairs?’ She giggled, moving against his hand and then, reaching down, guiding his hardness against her sensitised softness.
‘Mmm. Good question.’ He grinned and rotated the tiny bud of femininity, loving the way she squirmed in response. ‘I just had to touch you, Tessa…had to tell you how much I love you…how much I’m committed to a lifetime with you. I want you to have my kids, brothers or sisters for Anna, and I want you to grow old with me. And, yes, I really want you to ask me how my day went when I get back from work and arrange dinner parties with people when I’d rather just stay in and have a meal with you.’
‘You mean with me and Anna and all those babies you want us to have…’ How was it possible that she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time?
‘That’s right, my darling. The old year is on its way out, just like my old life is. The significance of the timing wasn’t lost on me as I pulled out all the stops to get here, to see you. The end of something and the beginning of something else, something wonderful. For ever is in front of us…and it’s perfect…’
‘Yes,’ Tessa breathed. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘So what do we do? Go back down or just stay up here…?’
‘Go back down, I think…’ She smiled at him lovingly. ‘But now I don’t think I’ll be coming up to my room to avoid the midnight hour…’
Was it her imagination or did Bill and his wife exchange a look of satisfaction when she told them that dinner would now be for two and that they would both be enjoying the celebrations together?
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the man she loved was by her side and when the clock struck twelve, the lips that touched her own promised a future she had never dared dream of…
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6355-4
THE BILLIONAIRE BOSS’S BRIDE
First North American Publication 2005.
Copyright © 2004 by Cathy Williams.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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