Lisa was wearing the dress she had worn to the charity function, he recognised. Sexy. Silk. An understated design that hinted tantalisingly at the delicate curves and intriguing hollows of her divine body. He could feel the warmth of her under his palm, the way the silk slid against her body as she moved, and his groin ached fiercely. Had they been alone he would have dragged her into his arms…
And spoiled his plan to make her be the one to beg, go down on her knees and beg until she had no breath left and then, and only then…
The moral was, don’t touch. Not yet. Removing his hand smartly, he stepped ahead and held out a chair for her and took his seat opposite, furious that his control over his libido was worse than shaky where she was concerned.
Watching, as stony-faced as she could get considering how his touch had affected her, Lisa envied his urbanity as he approved the wine he had ordered to go with whatever it was the waiter had put on her plate. Diego was clothed in a pale grey suit that shouted class, a white shirt with faint pale grey stripes that accentuated the dusky olive tones of his skin and the permanent five o’clock shadow that had always made her want to run her fingers over the firm set of his jaw.
Still did! Lifting her fork as the waiter withdrew from the suite—she wasn’t remotely hungry but pushing the no doubt delicious food around gave her something to do—she challenged, ‘I believe you want to discuss my temporary status as your mistress.’ And hoped the business-like tone made him feel as wanted and desirable as a giant black slug in a plate of salad.
But the only effect was a vague upward drift of one slanting black brow, a dismissive, ‘The status of mistress is way above what I have in mind for you.’ He lifted his wine glass. ‘Can I take it that you have a current passport?’
That put-down cut her up. He really did despise her, didn’t he? But her voice was sharp as broken glass as she answered his question. ‘Of course. Why?’
‘We leave for one of my homes in Spain at the end of the week. In the meantime I’ll be tied up with lawyers and the ins and outs of putting my man in place to drag Lifestyle into the twenty-first century. We won’t meet again until early on Friday morning when I pick you up on my way to the airport.’
Lisa shouldn’t be poleaxed by that announcement but she was. During that morning’s interview with her father she’d been so taken aback by the speed of Diego’s movements, the way he’d spiked her guns when it came to changing her mind because she couldn’t bear to lose what she’d never had before—her father’s approval—she hadn’t absorbed the import of his ‘…your agreement to spend some time with him in Andalusia’. The fact that he’d told her to clear her desk hadn’t cut much ice, either. If clued-up editors were to be brought in no one would want her around because she’d be like a fish out of water.
Now her stomach performed one of the spectacular lurches that were becoming all too frequent since coming into contact with Diego Raffacani again. Here in chilly, early spring London she could maintain an indifferent façade. Just. And with supreme difficulty. But back in Spain with him, where it had all started, she wouldn’t be able to survive the bitter-sweet pain of it.
Laying down her fork, her eyes clashed with his. It took only a moment to subdue her twanging vocal cords and remark tautly, ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you said nothing to me about my going to Spain. I thought—’
‘Thought a couple of quickies while I’m here in England would pay off the debt,’ Diego interrupted drily, his long fingers tightening around the delicate stem of his wine glass. ‘Not so. When you recompense me for the way you behaved five years ago it will be at a place and time of my choosing.’
And the little minx wouldn’t be acting as though making love with him was a mundane and necessary task like sorting the washing. She would be as willing and eager as she had been five years ago, her sweet lips gasping for the fulfilment he had withheld out of genuine love for her. And when she was on the point of disintegrating he would take her, burn the frustration and anger that had been his private demon for far too long right out of his system. And dump her. Let her know for once what rejection really felt like.
Noting the sudden dark colour that stained his slashing cheekbones, the dark glitter of his eyes beneath the thick fringe of lashes, Lisa tried to block the images of her being used as a cheap sex toy right out of her mind and decided that the time had come to put the record straight. Then, surely, he would reconsider? And let her go. Maybe with an apology and a contrite promise not to withdraw his offer of investment in the magazine.
But did she really want that? the part of her she privately despised commented edgily. Didn’t she still hunger for him, despite pretending the opposite? Didn’t some perverse and childish hope prod her into fantasising about him falling in love with her? Really falling in love this time, not whiling his spare time away with a silly little teenager, telling her what he thought she wanted to hear because it amused him to see her fall headlong under his spell. Not meaning a single word of it because he spent his evenings, not working as he’d said, but making whoopee with a gorgeous, sophisticated female from his own exalted class who really knew how to please her man.
No, she owed it to herself to wriggle out of his wicked bargain if she possibly could. Owed it to what was left of her self-control and dignity, she vowed, fervently hoping she believed herself. Clutching the bowl of her so far ignored wine glass, she questioned, ‘Don’t you think we should talk about it?’
The slight upwards drift of one dark brow was the only expression on that lean and dangerously handsome face. ‘I believe we have been.’
‘No, not that. Not the terms and conditions,’ she dismissed thickly, horribly conscious of the hot colour creeping over her skin as the reminder of exactly what he expected of her jumped into her mind with the force of a nuclear explosion. ‘But why you’re still so angry with me over what happened that night all those years ago. It’s a long time to bear a grudge, Diego.’ She spoke softly, willing him to listen, to at least understand that the blame wasn’t hers entirely. ‘I know I acted like a total idiot, but—’
‘Basta! I have no wish to listen to the tissue of lies you’ve had time to dream up!’ Black eyes glittered with savage contempt. ‘You may look like an angel but you lie like the devil!’ he informed her with deadly intensity. ‘I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard—perdición!’ He got to his feet, pushing back his chair, looming over her.
Lisa flinched, cut to the heart that he should hate her quite that much. Her eyes swam with unwanted tears as he reminded more levelly, ‘The past is a distant country. Forget it. Concentrate on the future, on paying your dues, and, when that is done, it too can be forgotten.’
And she would be forgotten. Just like that! Lisa, too, sprang to her feet. He was cruel. Hard. And the hope that their relationship could develop into a mirror image of what it had been bit the dust. How could she have been so stupid to have fantasised that it might? He had changed out of all recognition.
Facing him, her inky eyes swimming as they collided with his, she acknowledged that he might not have changed at all. Had he always been this callous? The loving front of five years ago just that. A front, assumed for his own careless amusement?
‘I hate you!’ she spat with driven vehemence.
‘Ah! That is good.’ A slow, deliberate stride brought him round the table to her quivering side, the slightest of smiles curving a mouth that was far too kissable for her own good. Two strong and almost painfully gentle hands cupped her face, setting up a chain reaction that made her tremble with far more than outraged anger and deep hurt. ‘Any strong emotion is preferable to indifference, is it not?’ Then he did what she’d been secretly hoping and dreading in equal measure.
He kissed her.
The effect of that wide sensual mouth on hers set off a volcanic explosion deep inside her, pulsing the ripples of aftershock right through every nerve and vein in her body. Had her matching his hungry urgency with a driven desperation that shattered her int
o launching herself against his powerful frame, looping her arms around his neck, her avid fingers tangling in the soft midnight darkness of his hair.
He tasted of hot male passion and she couldn’t get enough of him. He was all she’d ever wanted, the only man she’d ever loved. Her body melted into him, her breasts peaking with open invitation, her lips matching his ravaging assault.
Her lips were still tingling, her knees shamefully shaky, when a short time later Diego handed her into the taxi he’d summoned to take her home. Her mind was still sickened by the ease with which he’d held her away from him when her response had threatened to get way out of hand. His coolly delivered, almost uninvolved comment that it was time she went home and a reminder that he’d call for her on Friday morning around seven-thirty was still ringing in ears that burned with shame. All capped off with the flatly delivered threat that he’d find her if she should be misguided enough to flee. It was a timely reminder of the humiliation he would dole out if she ever again was unguarded enough to demonstrate how she hungered for him.
An hour later she fell into bed still in a state of deep shock. Mostly induced by what her own behaviour had revealed about her. Diego Raffacani was a cruel blackmailing louse. So arrogantly sure of himself that he out and out refused to listen to a word she had to say in her own defence. He’d called her a liar and that alone should have put her off him for several lifetimes. But no, oh no! What had she gone and done? Shown him how needy she was, eager and straining against him, possessed by a frantic hunger for him.
She was still in love with him. She sobbed into her pillow. He was the only man she had ever loved. Far from being the promiscuous tramp of his imagining, she was still a virgin. Ben, the only other man she’d ever been involved with, had never inspired this wild yearning.
There had to be something drastically wrong with her if she could be in love with a man who was entirely without scruples or conscience. A man who intended to take her to his bed as an act of revenge, who had convinced himself that the blame for the way she’d insulted his precious pride, when she’d been too young to realise what she was doing, was hers entirely.
The immediate future looked bleaker than the lunar landscape. Lisa had no idea how she would survive it.
His car, a low sporty model, was waiting at the airport, delivered there by his Spanish minions, Lisa deduced grumpily, her spiky mood the legacy of a mostly sleepless night as she’d tried and failed to come to terms with what she was letting herself in for, the alarm clock ringing spitefully just as she had been finally dropping off. Her mood was not lightened by the sight of Diego arriving precisely at seven-thirty.
‘Ready?’ he enquired briskly, looking as if he’d had the benefit of a full eight hours sleep, a revitalising shower and a hearty breakfast.
‘I haven’t finished packing.’ A lie. She hadn’t started. Ever since that evening at his hotel suite she’d been hoping that something would happen to make him call this whole thing off. But he hadn’t miraculously lost his memory and she hadn’t broken a leg!
‘Then I suggest you get on with it. The taxi is waiting. If you are always this disorganised I’m amazed that you held down any sort of job at all, even one manufactured by a doting father.’
Her irritation level rose a thousand-fold. What did he know? ‘Dad doesn’t dote!’ she snapped and stamped into her bedroom to drag things out of drawers and cupboards and stuff them into a small suitcase.
Ever since then he’d been irritating the life out of her. Throughout the ride to the airport, the business of checking in and the flight itself he had been coolly polite and dutifully attentive. As if she were a virtual stranger he had found himself dragooned into escorting, when in harsh reality she was the woman he was callously blackmailing into becoming his temporary mistress.
Sub-mistress, she amended on a spurt of irrational anger. Though why she should object to the irrelevant point of being regarded as too low to be afforded even the slightly denigrating title of mistress only went to show what a muddle her mind was in. Whereas he, drat it, was calm and collected, single-minded, determined on one thing only—to take her to his bed and punish her for damaging his precious pride.
And then get rid of her.
Now, with the airport an hour’s drive behind them, Diego asked, ‘What did you mean when you said your father didn’t dote?’
Lisa dragged her eyes from the alarmingly twisty narrow road that snaked up into the mountains and fastened her gaze on his impressively chiselled profile. It was the first personal remark he’d made since they’d entered the waiting taxi back in London.
Shrugging slightly, she returned her attention to the view. Now and then she caught the glitter of the sea and, unlike London, the air cocooned her in welcome warmth. ‘I meant precisely what I said.’ Her relationship with her father was something she wasn’t prepared to discuss and, turning the subject, she asked, ‘So where are we going? How much further?’
Diego’s shoulders tautened as he handled the tortuous hairpin bends with practised ease. Who the hell did she think she was kidding? She would have been spoiled rotten from birth. What father worth the name wouldn’t slavishly lavish all his attention on such an outwardly bewitching little charmer, even more so after she’d been left motherless at a relatively tender age?
A memory from five years ago, as clear as all the myriad others that had haunted him for so long, assaulted him. The day he found he’d lost his watch. She’d held hers out to him. The thing would have cost a small fortune. And when he’d commented she’d simply shrugged. ‘My father’s birthday gift’, as if it were a mere trinket.
The spoiled brat had been given a responsible job on the magazine staff even though the whole enterprise was going pear-shaped and what had been desperately needed was an experienced editor. The fabulous dress she’d been wearing at her engagement party must have cost another small fortune, the where-withal doubtless supplied by doting daddy.
And that sparked a different train of thought.
‘How did Ben take the broken engagement?’ He’d noticed the absence of the diamond hoop. He noticed every damn thing about her. He remembered his own desperate pain when the spoiled brat had as good as told him to shove off and wondered, guiltily, if Ben Clayton had felt the same, wondered if his initial thought, that he’d actually been doing the poor sucker a favour, still held water.
‘That’s not really any of your business, is it?’ Lisa dismissed edgily. How could she tell him that hers and Ben’s would have been a passionless marriage, based on nothing more exciting than long-standing affection and mutual respect? That Ben had been wise enough to predict that even that kind of marriage couldn’t survive if one partner were still in thrall to a long-ago lost love?
‘And you haven’t answered my question,’ she reminded him snappily. ‘I have a right to know where you’re taking me.’
Fully expecting him to tell her she had no rights at all and to continue prodding about her broken engagement—did the cruel streak in him want to hear that Ben had been devastated, suicidal?—she was stunned when he answered equably, ‘To my favourite hideout. It used to be a monastery. The family rarely uses it these days. The area isn’t frequented by hordes of tourists; its beauty and tranquillity remain intact. Unlike Marbella,’ he added drily. ‘You will find no beautiful people, no glitzy shops, fabulous yachts or smart hotels to claim your attention. You will give it all to pleasing me.’
She should have kept her mouth shut, Lisa recognised sickly. Whatever she said he managed to come back with something designed to put her down.
The next days or weeks promised to be a nightmare of humiliation and pain, she acknowledged, the hauntingly beautiful landscape lost in a sudden blur of stingingly hot tears.
CHAPTER SIX
LISA couldn’t fault the beauty and comfort of Diego’s preferred hideout. Built centuries ago of mellow golden stone, the former monastery commanded an impressive view over fertile valleys, thickly wooded slopes and tantalising g
limpses of the sparkling blue sea between towering mountain crags.
She couldn’t fault Diego’s behaviour, either, she told herself edgily as she paced the flagged stone terrace in the soft dawn light.
She almost wished she could.
She would have better understood where he was coming from if he’d done as she had expected and taken her to his bed that first night. She might not have liked it—she might have liked it far too much, she corrected with painful honesty as her restless feet brought her to the end of the terrace—but at least she would have understood it.
What she was at a loss to puzzle out was why she’d been given her own suite of rooms. Beautiful, restful rooms that he had shown no inclination to visit. Why, during her nearly four whole days here now, he’d done nothing more alarming than treat her as a house guest. He had joined her for meals, during which his conversation had entranced her against her will—witty, perceptive and at times, hardest of all to bear, cool and painfully impersonal. And all the while he had seemed to look straight through her, not really seeing her at all.
Between meals he’d taken himself off to his study, explaining courteously that he had much work to get through, leaving her to her own devices. Her own thoughts.
Her hands tightened on the warm stone of the balustrade. She knew what he had planned for her, what she was expected to be. So what was he waiting for? Why was he behaving like a great jungle cat, stalking a prey he was not yet hungry for yet never really letting it out of his sight?
Her whole body was tingling with sexual tension, her mind edgy, her nerve-ends as jumpy as a flea on a griddle.
‘Quite the early bird. Couldn’t you sleep?’
The unexpected soft laid-back drawl made the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention, made her heart leap to her throat and jump about like a frightened trapped animal.
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