Torn By Desire

‘Conrad, then,’ she murmured.

‘That’s better. Now don’t forget, any problems come to me. I want your stay here to be as pleasurable as possible. I’m afraid Guy takes life far too seriously at times. Do you swim, Kate?’

The question took her aback for a second. ‘Yes, yes, I do.’

‘Splendid. You must join us by the pool this afternoon, during siesta.’

‘Thank you; I’d like that.’ The thought was already revitalising her stretched nerves. She smiled again and was about to open her mouth to thank him for the guest house when a distant phone ringing diverted Conrad’s attention.

‘Please excuse me.’ He smiled and turned away and Kate nodded.

Her heart was pounding happily and she was stepping on clouds as she went back to her own office. As soon as she opened the door she landed back to earth with a bump. Lorraine had her arms wrapped around Guy and jumped guiltily as Kate entered the room. Guy threw her a dark look which Kate found herself returning with equal black poison. She wouldn’t have cared if they had been writhing in passion on the leather couch against the wall, but what stung her was all those warnings he had meted out to her about this being work and not pleasure.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she uttered, not without sarcasm.

‘Knock in future before you come in, Kate,’ Lorraine scythed at her, and straightening her laceedged top over her narrow pencil skirt, she strode towards the door Kate had left ajar. ‘I’ll be ready at two, Guy.’ The door slammed after her.

Kate sat at her console, punched the keyboard viciously and stared obliquely at the screen.

‘Yes, knock before coming in, Kate.’ Guy repeated into the uncomfortable stillness that had enveloped the room after Lorraine’s brittle exit.

Kate held her lips tightly clamped. She wasn’t going to say one word and she didn’t.

They broke for lunch and siesta at one o’clock, Guy reminding her to be back on duty at four-thirty before leaving the room. Kate nearly stuck her tongue out at the back of the door but resisted the temptation for fear of Guy poking his face round the door and catching her. He already thought her…

What exactly did he think of her? she wondered as she left the office suite, the hot Mediterranean air hitting her, in sharp contrast to the cool of the air-conditioned office. He thought she had a good brain for one thing; not much else, though. Oh, she’d forgotten, a gold-digger. Huh! She should care.

The perfumed courtyard was a welcome refuge. After the morning’s idiosyncrasies she couldn’t face a swim, even with the thought of joining the man she so admired. She understood why everyone broke off for a siesta in the afternoon; fatigue was dragging at her very bones.

‘Charo?’ she called out as she stepped into the coolness of the stone-floored guest house.

Silence. Kate was relieved. She didn’t want to talk or even breathe in this heat. Her head was enough to cope with. She changed into a cool sarong over her lacy underwear, made herself a coffee and cut a chunk of crispy bread and a slice of goat’s cheese, sat in the shade of the vines to eat it, and then shifted to the tiny garden that led off an archway from the courtyard.

‘Heaven,’ she breathed as she collapsed into a cushioned cane lounger under a knobbly old olive tree. Her eyes were heavy as she gazed up at the clumps of fat green olives amidst the spiky silvery leaves. Virgin oil, she mused, and it was her last thought.

‘You idiot!’

Kate woke with a start, blinked fearfully and tried to sit up. She was alone and yet she could have sworn someone had shouted her awake.

‘Oh, no!’ she breathed in agony, and gazed down at her left leg. Her sarong was gaping open, right up to her thigh, and the whole of one long, shapely leg was exposed to the punishing rays of the sun. The top of her leg was worse than the rest, the more tender skin red with inflammation.

‘Stay still,’ Guy Latham growled as he came through the archway to the secret garden, his hands full of stiff, spiky green…cactus!

Kate squealed in alarm as Guy came towards her with them.

‘What the hell—?’

‘Yes, well you might cry hell, sweetheart,’ he growled again as he dropped the spikes at her feet and in one deft movement hauled her, in the chair, further under the shade of the olive tree. ‘Don’t you know never to sunbathe at this time of day in Andalusia?’

‘I wasn’t sunbathing,’ Kate defended herself angrily, and then winced painfully as she tried to move her stiffened leg. It felt as if her skin had shrunk and was too small for her bones. ‘I…I must have fallen asleep. The sun moved,’ she bleated weakly.

‘Well, it does that,’ he grated sarcastically, and proceeded to split open the succulent, spiny leaves he had brought with him.

‘What on earth are you doing with those?’ she cried, shrinking away from him.

He sat on the edge of the lounger and grasped her ankle firmly with one hand and with the other scooped out a pale jelly-like substance from the insides of the spines.

‘No!’ Kate cried, and then instantly let out a small cry of relief as he slapped the cooling jelly over the worst of her raw thigh. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it!’ she gasped, and slumped back against the lounger and sighed deeply. It was bliss, sheer heaven as he gently patted the jelly over her fiery skin to cool it.

She opened her eyes when the crisis was over and stared at his fingers as they smoothed over her thigh. Then she was in crisis again as one delicious sensation moved over for another. His touch was so sensuous—astonishing, coming from him. Her whole body tensed and she wanted him to stop but he wasn’t about to. More cooling jelly was applied till she thought she couldn’t stand the wondrous feeling a second longer. She tried to pull her leg back out of his reach but he held onto her ankle firmly.

‘Keep still,’ he ordered quietly.

Kate said a silent prayer of thanks that it was only her thigh that was affected. Supposing it was her chest that had been so painfully exposed to the sun’s rays? A hot flush engulfed her and she let out a small cry at the thought. What on earth was happening to her?

‘Don’t,’ she pleaded weakly. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Let me be the judge of that,’ he uttered under his breath.

There was a sliver of stinging skin on her inner thigh that had caught the sun as well, and he turned her ankle to gain access to it.

Kate pulled away, shrank back from him, her eyes wide with terror, her heart nearly seizing. Guy held on more firmly. He looked up to catch the panic in her eyes. He frowned.

‘I wonder if you would be quite so reticent with my brother if it was he tending your sunburn?’

Kate kicked out at that nasty suggestion, jerked her legs so sharply that the pain shot through the whole of her body.

‘Stop being so touchy and keep still. I’m doing this for your benefit, not mine,’ he growled.

‘Huh,’ she huffed angrily. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you were getting anything out of it for yourself, though you’re certainly taking your time about it! Give it to me!’ She snatched at the thick succulent and instantly cried out again as one of the sharp spines dug into her thumb. ‘Ouch!’

Guy tutted impatiently and grabbed at her hand. To Kate’s complete horror he stuck her thumb in his mouth and sucked at it. Eyes so wide that they hurt, Kate watched as he drew sensuously on her thumb, tenderly running his tongue over the spot the spine had jabbed. His eyes, hooded and oh, so dark, held hers as he did it.

Kate gasped with the shock of what he was doing and the way it was affecting her. Her insides twisted alarmingly. She wrenched her thumb, her thigh, her whole being out of his reach. She was on her feet in a trice, pain shooting down her leg at the sudden movement and rocking her with the horror of it all.

‘What are you, for heaven’s sake—some blood-starved vampire?’ she screeched.

She didn’t wait for an answer but hobbled painfully out of the garden, through the courtyard and into the house. She stood trembling at the kitchen sink, running the cold-water tap and trying in vain to catch her ragged breath. She felt sick, horribly so. She fought it, though, because she didn’t want to embarrass herself even more by fainting or actually being sick in front of him. Oh, misery. Why had she fallen asleep so carelessly?

She heard movement behind her, bottles in the fridge clinking.

‘Don’t drink the tap water; here—take this.’

She swung angrily to face him, afraid she was going to burst into tears. Her thigh ached miserably, her thumb stung, her head was about to split and she was going to be sick. She grasped at the tumbler of bottled water he held out for her and drank thirstily. It was just what she needed to bring her equilibrium back.

She sank the empty glass into the sink. ‘Anything else?’ she questioned fiercely. ‘It seems when you are around I can do nothing right!’

He looked at her and shrugged. ‘Your personal life does have a knack of going awry when I’m not around.’

‘You think?’ she retorted.

‘I know,’ he responded firmly. ‘You need wet-nursing.’

‘I need nothing of the sort. So I’ve made a few mistakes—missed dinner, overslept, dressed inappropriately, looked at your brother the wrong way, fallen asleep in the sun—crumbs, none of them certifiable!’

‘So why are you making so much fuss about them?’

‘I’m not! You are the one…the one…’

‘The one what?’

All the breath went from her then and she lifted her trembling fingers to knead her hot brow. What was happening here? He threw her all the time. Made her feel gauche and so terribly out of it. This assignment was going all wrong and he was at the root of it all.

‘I’m going up to shower,’ she uttered helplessly, and went to turn away.

He caught her arm and spun her back to face him.

‘No, you’re not, sweetheart. You haven’t time. Another faux pas. It’s nearly four-thirty and you only have time to get out of that scrap of cotton and into something decent before you are back on the job. Standards and all that,’ he mocked.

Wide-eyed, Kate glared at him. She couldn’t win with him whatever she did. Her eyes dropped contemptuously to his fingers gripping her wrist and then she gasped in horror.

‘I’m bleeding!’ There was blood on her arm where he was holding it.

He looked down and as he let her go he said impatiently, ‘You’re not but I am.’

He held his hand up and Kate was filled with remorse when she saw where the flow of blood was coming from. The tips of his fingers were cut where he had ripped open the spiny cactus leaves. Her sun-scorched thigh didn’t sting any more because of his quick, healing treatment. He hadn’t given a thought to himself, just torn those leaves apart to relieve her pain.

Without further thought she took his hand and thrust it under the still dribbling tap.

‘Who needs wet-nursing now?’ she breathed.

‘This is turning into a real kitchen-sink drama.’ he said as she held his fingers under the cooling water.

For the very first time in nine months Kate smiled at him. He was quite amusing when he dropped his arrogance.

‘What was that stuff anyway?’ she asked as she dabbed at his fingers with a piece of clean kitchen roll.

‘Aloe. Nature’s way of compensating. A natural balm for sunburn growing where it is needed. Isn’t life wonderful?’

He held her eyes with his. They were dark and smouldering and provoked another first for Kate: she could almost see what all the females in London saw in him. He had a certain jene sais quoi. But she wasn’t prone to falling for indefinable somethings.

She let go of his hand and smiled at him sweetly. ‘Yes, bloody amazing,’ she retorted, and left him to make the best of his injuries by himself.

CHAPTER THREE

DINING at the villa that evening was going exactly the way Kate had thought it would—disappointingly. Not that she had been brimming with expectations, because, thanks to Guy Latham, the whole assignment wasn’t proving to be a privilege as she had anticipated but more a slow death by underprivilege. She felt thoroughly put down by Lorraine’s appearance, in flowing, silver-threaded chiffon with sparkly bits around the plunging neckline. In comparison Kate felt dowdy in her mink-coloured silk dress bought in last year’s sales.

She sat stiffly across from Lorraine at the long, polished Spanish oak table on the front terrace of the villa. The Hollywood-style pool glittered beyond the white stone balustrade, blue and inviting, promising to balm this awful throbbing thigh of hers if she dared to take a plunge in it, which she so longed to do. It would certainly liven up the evening if she did strip off and take a sprint for it!

Kate wondered where Lorraine and Guy had gone during the afternoon, because for sure Lorraine hadn’t been exposed to the sun. She was as pale as ever, perhaps a little more so than usual. On returning to the office after siesta Kate had found herself ensconced with Guy in their office and she hadn’t seen any sign of Lorraine, or Conrad, come to that, till now.

Conrad looked wonderful in a white evening jacket and narrow black trousers. Kate reluctantly conceded that Guy didn’t look bad in similar attire either. The brothers sat at either end of the long table and intimate conversation, because of the distance, was difficult.

Kate’s heart flipped as Conrad’s voice boomed over the buzz of cicadas in the heavy, hot night air.

‘Kate, I’m disappointed you didn’t join me for that swim as you promised. I was looking forward to it.’

Lorraine glowered at her as she forked prawns between her pink lips. Kate felt Guy glowering at her but she couldn’t look at him; to do that and converse with Conrad she would have had to turn her head this way and that as if she were at a tennis match.

‘Kate is still acclimatising to the change of temperature, Conrad,’ Guy answered for her. ‘If you spent more time in miserable, wet London you might be able to understand why.’

Conrad laughed and Kate squirmed, hoping she might be wrong in thinking that there was a barb under Guy’s remark. It obviously hadn’t registered with Conrad.

‘I’m sure Kate is quite able to answer for herself, Guy,’ Conrad offered drily, the laughter short-lived.

Oh, yes, it had registered!

Because of the aloe, and only because of the aloe, Kate spoke up. ‘Guy is right,’ she directed at Conrad. ‘I think my biorhythms are out of sync. I fell asleep this afternoon and didn’t wake up till…till it was time for work again.’ Her thigh stung as a reminder of exactly how she had woken up. She wasn’t about to mention it, though. Lorraine would love it—sunburn on her first day here.

‘You’re driving her too hard, Guy. Ease up a bit.’

‘If I eased up this business would grind to a halt.’ Guy said, and Kate wondered if anyone but her had heard.

‘And you, dear Lorraine. What kept you out of the pool today? How you girls have disappointed me.’

So, Conrad had invited Lorraine too. Kate felt a small frisson of disappointment.

‘Guy was kind enough to offer to drive me down to Puerto Banus, Conrad. My cousin is thinking of investing in a time-share apartment overlooking the marina and I wanted to check it out for him.’

‘Time-share never was a good business investment,’ Guy commented. ‘The market is saturated with unsold properties.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.