A Spanish Passion

As if to demonstrate her spiky inner thoughts a sleek black cat jumped through the open window behind her and with a chirrup of pleasure settled high on her chest, much to Boysie’s annoyance.

Javier’s dark brows met as compassion flooded his veins. She’d said a girl needed fun but what this girl needed was love. She’d been starved of it since she was eight years old and that had made her tricky. Tricky and needy, easy prey for the likes of Sherman. It was up to him to keep her safe. There was no one else.

Venting a sigh, he joined her on the window-seat and took the hairy little dog onto his own lap. The black cat settled more comfortably on Zoe’s knee. She was stroking it, her hair falling forward, veiling her face from him. His eyes were strangely mesmerised by the movements of those long, slender fingers.

Gathering himself, he pointed out flatly, ‘You have to know that I’d veto any suggestion that you have your own place at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we have to fight over it.’

No verbal reaction. Just a slight stiffening of her slender shoulders. He resisted the strong urge to pull her towards him, give her a reassuring cuddle. It would ease his conscience but, recalling the incident in Spain, she might get the wrong idea.

‘What I suggest is this—we book you a crash course of professional driving lessons and keep the Lotus locked in a garage until you’re capable of handling it. And we’ll decide what you want to do with your life. I’ll make sure I’m around to help you,’ he impressed heavily, continuing more lightly, ‘You once said you were interested in charity work; that might be the way to go. On the other hand,’ he ploughed on—difficult to keep sounding like a kindly uncle in the face of her total lack of response—‘you could enrol for a course in anything that takes your fancy.’

Setting the cat down, Zoe got to her feet, her movements fluidly dismissive. Wordlessly, she left the room, her golden head high. The little dog leapt from Javier’s lap and pattered after her. Javier’s chest tightened with an inward tug of breath. Guilt swamped him. He blamed himself for her wayward noncooperation; he should have been around far more often. When she’d been a kid he’d known how to handle her, she’d always responded to him. He didn’t know what made the newly adult woman tick.

Zoe hadn’t let herself cry. She never cried. But the hurt was difficult to push away. As little as an hour ago she would have welcomed his interference in her life with open arms if it meant he was going to be around more often. Bent over backwards to please him, knowing he would be giving her his time and attention, clinging onto the childish hope that he would grow to feel something for her.

But that wasn’t going to happen. She had finally accepted it. At long last she had stopped fantasising.

When Oliver Sherman rang her mobile she sat cross-legged on her bedroom carpet to take his call. His run-in with Javier hadn’t fazed him. Merely, ‘Your guardian’s a bossy bastard, Zo, but it needn’t spoil our plans. Obviously, I can’t pick you up this evening, but Guy’s willing. He’s bringing Jenny, and the three of us will collect you at seven—I thought we’d eat first so I booked us in at Anton’s for half past and we’ll go on from there. OK? Oh, and while I think about it, you can give me the keys and I’ll pick the Lotus up when we bring you back, provided the boss is tucked up in bed! I hate being without wheels and until I hear from the insurance bods about my latest write-off, I’m stuck. You still there, Zo?’

She pulled in a deep breath. Because Javier was home she’d fully intended to cancel. But things had changed. Her determination to stop herself loving him was still a touch shaky so it would be better if she didn’t have to spend too much time around him.

A fun evening with her friends, even if she did end up picking up the tab, was probably just what she needed to take her mind off Javier. And she’d grab the opportunity to take Ollie aside and tell him that if he wanted to keep her friendship and have the loan of her car in return for teaching her to drive, there must be no more repetitions of what had happened this afternoon.

‘Seven it is, then,’ she said coolly and cut the connection.

Zoe was on the doorstep at five to. All trigged out in her finest, making a statement.

Her freshly washed hair was caught back from one side of her face with a sparkling gold clip, echoing the gold of the band she wore on one wrist, picking up the tawny bronze of her sleeveless, almost backless silk sheath, the finishing touch of strappy bronze sandals adding four inches to her height.

Her mirror had told her she looked flirty. Expensive and flirty, startlingly reminiscent of the Glendas and Sophies of unfond memory. Set for a fun evening with smooth friends who knew their way around. Which should show Javier that he couldn’t interfere in her life.

Even Ethel, catching sight of her as she’d sauntered down the stairs, had popped her eyes. ‘I take it you won’t be in for dinner?’

‘Full marks for observation,’ had been her less than friendly response, pay-back time for snitching on her, a response she had immediately regretted because she liked Ethel in spite of her habit of handing out boring lectures. She would apologise tomorrow, she vowed as Ethel turned on the heels of her sensible shoes and bustled away. She wouldn’t want to hurt her for the world.

And quite why she’d been in such a sudden rush was made clear when moments later Javier appeared at her side.

The inside of his head felt hot and churned. She looked stunning. The thought of her out on the loose made his brain boil.

‘Going somewhere?’ he gritted, his eyes sliding with involuntary precision down the length of her exquisite naked spine, dragging them smartly away as she dipped her head in acknowledgement, adding, not looking at him, ‘With my friends,’ laying cool emphasis on the final word.

‘Including Sherman?’

‘Naturally.’ Zoe didn’t have the courage to look at him. He was so close. Everything inside her seemed to leap out, strain to touch him. Her body was needy for him, for the strong warmth of his arms, the touch of his beautifully made hands, for his mouth, his wanting mouth…

She was getting nowhere in her useless attempt to stop loving him! Still fantasising about how his mouth would feel if he kissed her! Her teeth gritted together, her shoulders tensing as she willed Guy’s car to appear on the long sweeping drive so that she could jump in and escape.

As her ears strained for the sound of an engine Javier’s words came like an electric shock. ‘Go to the study. Now,’ he added with deadly purpose as he watched her head jerk up and back in what he knew had to be defiance. Tacking on with grim determination, ‘Go under your own steam or I carry you. It’s your choice. I’ll let Sherman know you won’t be available to see him.’

Which was no choice at all, Zoe acknowledged on an inner flutter of dread mixed up with a treacherous vein of excitement. Javier didn’t make idle threats; he always meant what he said. Her mouth went dry. If she didn’t do exactly as he’d told her to he would scoop her into his arms and carry her. If he touched her she wouldn’t stand a chance. She would go up in flames of delirium.

She turned on her spiky heels and walked back through the house and heard the sound of Guy’s engine. So much for a wild evening out, the prospect of getting Javier out of her head for a few hours.

The prospect of getting him out of her heart would take more than that, she acknowledged glumly. She’d been a fool to think it could be easily accomplished. And now, she supposed, she was in for another lecture!

Zoe was standing in front of one of the tall study windows that overlooked the garden. She turned slowly at his approach, tall, graceful and stunningly lovely. Something tightened around his heart. The golden eyes, so like the topaz ear droppers he’d picked out while passing through London this morning to mark her birthday tomorrow, might be flashing defiance but there was an aching vulnerability about her soft mouth that sent rivers of sweetly sharp compassion flowing through his veins.

He tugged in a deep, shuddering breath and crossed to the drinks cabinet. He took his time over selecting a bottle of red wine, opening it, pouring it into two glasses. Laying down the law over the lack of structure in her present lifestyle would get him nowhere. Her grandmother and the teachers at her boarding-school had tried harsh discipline, resulting not in the desired meek compliance but in open defiance.

Zoe wouldn’t be pushed, but she could be led.

Trouble was, she was no longer a child, a fact brought home as he turned, a glass in each hand, his eyes veiled as he watched her sink into a chair, her long, elegant legs displayed as the narrow skirt of her dress rode up to well above her shapely knees.

A loose cannon was his immediate and uncomfortable thought.

Slender fingers closed round the stem of the glass he offered, one delicate brow rose as she drawled, ‘Wine. How liberal of you. I’d rather expected a can of fizzy pop or a beaker of milk.’

Javier acknowledged the dig with a grim smile. Maybe he had been guilty of treating her like a kid—he’d been guilty of too many things where she was concerned. Time to make amends.

Pale blonde tendrils of hair curved around the slender line of her throat. He could see a pulse beating just above the fabric of her dress where it flowed down to skim the outline of perfectly rounded, unfettered breasts.

His throat tightening, Javier stalked over to the desk, leaned against it, half sitting, facing the glorious creature who was like a bomb primed to go off at any moment. With her stunning looks, her need for the love that had been denied her, she would be easy prey for a man on the make. A man like Oliver Sherman.

And she was his responsibility. A strange idea was forming at the back of his mind. He thrust it aside. Time to get the ball rolling.

‘Picking up on our earlier conversation, what do you intend to do with your future?’ How strangely thick his voice sounded!

Zoe’s tummy lurched. She buried her nose in her glass. Despite all her good intentions she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him. Tension emanated from the tight, burning knot low in her pelvis. Her vow to slice him out of the place in her heart he’d occupied for so long was wretchedly feeble in the face of the magnetic power he wielded over every last one of her senses.

Tough talk, a show of indifference to whatever lecture he might be about to hand out, was the only defence she could think of. Counter-productive to allow him to know she’d been already thinking along the lines of working to help the homeless, but didn’t know how to go about it.

Confessing that, admitting to inadequacy, would simply ensure he stayed around, driving her mad with wanting him, her sensible decision to stop loving him biting the dust with a vengeance. He would pull out all the stops to set her on the right road, make time for her, choosing the right charity, making sure the trustees agreed to her finding a small flat near her place of work, probably even visiting sometimes, checking up on her, doing what he would see as his duty—

‘Don’t worry about me.’ She essayed a tiny throwaway shrug and put her empty glass down on a handy side table. ‘I’m no longer your responsibility, remember. I might even marry Ollie,’ she threw in idly. A bare-faced lie—she wouldn’t dream of doing any such thing—but it would get Javier off her case. If she were an about-to-be-married woman his self-inflicted duty to her could be crossed off his list of tiresome responsibilities. ‘He’s asked me often enough.’ She levelled a hopefully dismissive look at him. ‘I’ll send you an invitation.’

Blind rage darkened Javier’s eyes, set his shoulders tautening beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. So her relationship with that low-life scum was more serious than he’d hoped. How could he stand by and see her ruin her life by marrying a man who, to his certain knowledge, had never done a day’s work in his rotten life, whose reputation locally was lower than a snake’s belly! The weird idea jumped back into vision. It wasn’t as crazy as he had at first thought.

‘You want to be married? Marry me.’

Some impulses were crazy. This was not. He could keep her safe from predatory males.

Silenced by shock, Zoe could only stare, her eyes widening by the second. How many times had her foolish heart driven her to dream up marriage-proposal scenarios? Millions!

At last she managed a strangled, ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘Never more so.’

Something inside her crumpled. It was what she had dreamed of for years. Yet—‘You don’t even like me,’ she accused thickly.

Javier released his breath on an incredulous sigh. Not like her? The Spanish in him brought his proud head high. ‘I’ve cared about you since you were a bereaved eight-year-old transplanted into a cold, unloving environment. I cared enough to take you off your grandmother’s hands. I admired your spirit when you dug your heels in and decided to go your own way—even if you had turned yourself into a fright,’ he admitted with one of those smiles guaranteed to take her breath away. ‘And it is precisely because I care about you that I’m suggesting we marry.’

Dared she translate ‘care’ into ‘love’? Unconsciously Zoe shook her head. But could she stop herself? Her bones tightened. Fine tremors attacked every inch of her tense frame.

Flaring black brows drew together as the episode in Spain came back to taunt him. From her attitude towards him this afternoon, her worrying relationship with Sherman, he was as sure as dammit that she’d outgrown that schoolgirl crush. In any event, it was time to spell out precisely what he had in mind.

‘Needless to say, it would be a marriage on paper. I wouldn’t expect you to share my bed. Simply my life and my home for the next two years when, with guidance, you’ll be able to prioritise your values and decide what you really want to do with your life and how best to manage your future inheritance. Naturally, an annulment would follow,’ he impressed gently, concerned for her.

He could see how her slender hands were shaking, even though they were tightly clasped together in an attempt to disguise it. And all the natural colour had ebbed from her face. His voice lowered with soft persuasion. ‘In the meantime as my wife you would be protected from the likes of Sherman, men who would marry you for your money, exploit your open, generous nature and make your life a misery. Try to remember, your future inheritance is no secret. Word gets around and brings the low-life out of the woodwork.’

Zoe got to her feet with difficulty. She felt giddy and nauseous with the pain of hearing his proposal, featuring so often in her soppy daydreams, turn into such a nightmare. But she managed, albeit shakily, ‘As a proposal of marriage, that sucks!’

She wasn’t going to cry. She never cried! But her wretched eyes had other ideas and flooded her face with scalding, humiliating rivers. Scrubbing furiously, she shot at him, ‘So by your reckoning no one could love me for me. Only for my money! That makes me—’ her voice threatened to disintegrate ‘—feel—feel really good about myself!’

Her objective was the door. She managed six inches before she was cradled in his arms, the free-flow of her tears soaking his shirt.

For a few short moments Javier held her in self-loathing silence. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. The muffled sobs that were shaking her supple frame mortified him. ‘Don’t cry,’ he murmured against the silky top of her head. He had to comfort her. Had to. Her hair smelled of summer flowers. ‘Of course you’ll be loved for yourself, I promise you. You are beautiful, intelligent and spirited. How could you not be?’ he impressed.

No more sobs. Her body had stilled within the circle of his arms. Poor scrap! He patted her shoulder blades, the avuncular intention somehow getting lost as his hands slid down to the narrow span of her waist and lingered there.

‘I was clumsy,’ he confessed. How soft and warm her skin felt beneath the thin fabric. ‘But the thought of you throwing your life away on the likes of Sherman got me on the raw. You deserve better. Much better. I just want to protect you.’

Slowly, Zoe’s head came up. She could hardly breathe for the welter of emotions that were making her heart beat as if she’d just run a marathon. When he’d said she was beautiful he had sounded sincere. He must mean it. And he’d been so quick to recognise how hurt she’d been, quick to offer the comfort of his arms. More than comfort. She felt her body stir, the core of her melt; her eyes swept up to mesh with his.

Eyes awash with tears. Glowing and golden, damp, naturally dark lashes tangled. Lush mouth vulnerably parted, very slightly quivering. Was she still hurt, unsure of her own worth? A solitary tear slid down to the corner of her soft lips. He vented an interior savage oath for his earlier crassness just as a wash of tenderness drenched through him. This girl needed kissing…

CHAPTER TWO

ZOE was having a hard time keeping her cool. She wanted to throw her arms in the air, punch holes in the sky, shout and leap all over the place. Sheer joy made her feel as if she were about to explode.

She’d got a silly grin on her face and didn’t care who saw it. Her love-drenched, sparkly eyes swept the length of the lodge’s wide terrace to where her brand-new husband was keeping a watchful eye on his father as he confidently coped with his walking cane and the broad flight of steps down to the south lawn where the buffet table was ready for the guests.

His six-feet-plus athletic frame was clothed in formal pale grey suiting, his dark hair gleaming in the early July sun. He was so spectacular. Her heart jumped beneath the fitted jacket of her cream silk suit as she lovingly assimilated every line of his impressive profile. Lingering on the perfect blade of his aristocratic nose, then the set of that sensual mouth, the high slashing cheekbones.

Now he was hers!

She blithely discounted the time limit, the hands-off rule he’d put on their marriage. Javier didn’t know it yet, poor deluded darling, but she would do all in her power to make him rethink that preposterous scenario!

That kiss had had her changing her mind at the speed of light about vehemently turning down his hurtful suggestion of a paper marriage. True, he had stepped back, gently put her away from him, but in those blissful, mind-blowing moments when that kiss had turned into something eager, primal and shattering she had felt that strong body harden in raw response and had known, just known, that she could turn their marriage into a proper one, make him happy, give him children.

During the three weeks since she’d accepted his less-than-flattering proposal—with an equally unflattering, ‘I might as well marry you, if it will get you off my case for a couple of years’—she’d been sorely tempted to instigate another of those wild and cataclysmic kisses. But with new maturity she knew she had to be patient, play the waiting game, because if he knew how she really felt about him he’d retract it and probably run a mile.

‘Come and join your guests, nuera. They are few but they expect you, sí?’ Isabella Maria, wildly elegant in a flowing peacock-blue brocaded silk coat topped by a cartwheel hat, tucked her hand beneath Zoe’s elbow. ‘I am too happy to know my son has at last taken my advice to marry to complain too much about that quiet civil ceremony or the wedding celebrations that could be mistaken for a wake.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Zoe swallowed a giggle as she fell in step beside her mother-in-law, her eyes glowing beneath the shallow brim of a cream tulle hat decorated with tiny yellow rosebuds. Seated stiffly at the table, Grandmother Alice and her ancient companion/ housekeeper looked like black crows and the Ramsays, Ethel and Joe, in their Sunday best didn’t look much more festive.

‘Javier wanted a really low-key wedding,’ Zoe confessed cheerfully. ‘Just our immediate family and the Ramsays who would have been very hurt to be left out—he’s always treated them like equals, not a bit like paid servants.’

‘And this is what you wanted?’ Isabella Maria had no interest in the Ramsays’ standing in her son’s household. ‘You could have had the wedding of the year, a marquee packed with the great and the good, the cream of society, music and dancing, everyone admiring and envying you.’

Not giving Zoe the chance to explain that she would have married Javier in the back of a dustcart with two tramps hauled up off the street as witnesses if he had so directed, Isabella Maria slowed her steps and lowered her voice, ‘A word of advice, nuera, in future don’t let Javier get all his own way. He is tough when he needs to be and can appear remote. But underneath he has the soft heart. And you, my dear, have emerged into quite a beauty. Use the gifts nature gave you wisely and you will twist him round your smallest finger.’

As Zoe had been thinking along similar lines since the revelation of that steamy, X-rated kiss the advice was unnecessary. But Isabella Maria had thrown in a remark about having given her son advice on the subject of marriage. She was about to ask what pearls of wisdom had been offered, but the words died in her throat as Javier strode to meet them. If he was impatient of their painfully slow progress he didn’t show it. The smoky eyes were slightly veiled and his voice was light as he told them, ‘The caterers are waiting.’

The smile he shafted in her direction was full of knee-buckling charm, his hard jawline faintly blue-shadowed. Zoe’s heart began to race as she firmly quelled the almost imperative need to trace the lines of that devastatingly handsome face with the tips of her fingers.

Instead, she tucked her hand beneath his arm, her fingertips tightening all on their own, seeking his male warmth, the taut male flesh beneath the fine fabric of his jacket. Her body swayed close to his as they descended the terrace steps. Curvy hip against the narrow male equivalent, thigh brushing thigh, creating unbelievable tension. Wild rose colour mounting to her cheeks, Zoe was making no apologies. No one but she and Javier knew this was supposed to be a paper marriage, excluding intimacies. But wouldn’t everyone think it highly peculiar if the newly wedded bride and groom avoided each other like the plague?

But his urbanity as he handed her to her place opposite her grandmother couldn’t be faulted. Zoe laid her bouquet of pale yellow and cream roses on the pristine white table-top, her heart still crashing around like a wild bird in a cage. Hadn’t Javier felt anything of the sexual excitement that had been making her breathless, weak at the knees? He had shown no sign of being similarly affected.

Her spirits took a momentary dip and to comfort herself she reached for the topaz ear droppers he had gifted her on her birthday and reminded herself that it was early days.

As Javier settled his mother opposite his already seated father Alice Rothwell inclined her severely sculpted white head. ‘Normally, I would consider a gel of nineteen far too young to marry. But in your case I congratulate you. Javier will make sure you toe the line; you couldn’t be in better hands. Already there is a vast improvement since I last saw you.’

Which made Zoe feel like an infant again, but the reference to the day she’d been handed over to Javier, the rebellious make-over, the sight she must have presented to her starchy relative made her want to apologise for the headaches she must have inflicted on everyone around.

But Javier slipping into his seat beside her stilled her tongue. The caterers had been busy filling champagne glasses and he lifted his flute to her. His smile was everything that could be expected of a man toasting his new bride but his eyes were remote as the icy, empty tracts of the South Pole.

A shudder fell down the length of her spine. Had she bitten off more than she could hope to chew? Then, annoyed with the unknown wimpishness that had had her nearly backing off at the sight of the first hurdle, she tucked into the first course of caviare and blinis, her smile at its stunning brightest, instigating a light conversation, making sure the guests joined in.