The Spaniard's Pleasure

‘Forgot! Give me strength,’ he gritted, rolling his eyes heavenwards. ‘We’re wasting time here.’

‘I’m not—’

‘I don’t want to hear it!’ he blasted. ‘Just tell me where you are injured and we will take it from there.’

‘You need to get to the hospital.’

‘Yes, I do. So just answer my question and stop wasting my time.’

Fleur sighed and reluctantly gestured towards her right thigh, careful not to touch the painful area.

‘Right, take off those jeans and let me have a look.’

Fleur saw an image in her head of his hands dark against the skin of her inner thigh and a jolt of sexual longing slammed through her body. Even as she stood there trying to banish the images she saw his mouth replace his fingers—in fact she could practically feel it!

‘I’m not taking off my jeans.’ She caught herself trying to remember which pants she had put on that morning and, flushing, shook her head. ‘I’m definitely not taking off my jeans.’ Modest white cotton with rosebuds…pink rosebuds.

‘If you don’t, I will. Yes,’ he said, smiling wolfishly into her shocked face, ‘you’re right; I would. And spare me the false modesty,’ he begged.

‘It’s really not necessary.’ Even as she spoke she knew the protest was useless. One thing Antonio Rochas did not come across as was a man to be diverted once he’d made up his mind about something.

‘Let me decide what is necessary, because if you bleed to death on my premises it will be me who will be held responsible.’

‘So you’re covering yourself and here was me thinking you cared,’ she trilled sarcastically. ‘Relax, Mr Rochas, you’re not responsible for me…and there’s no need to swear,’ she added with a disapproving sniff.

He looked at her mouth and thought about other ways he could release his feelings. Inhaling through flared nostrils, he pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead and told her, ‘You are enough to make a saint swear.’

‘Something nobody is about to accuse you of if the stuff I’ve read is even half true.’

‘How exciting for you,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘After reading the thrilling instalments of my life in the pages in your intellectually stimulating magazines you’re actually experiencing a day in my life firsthand.’ He angled an enquiring brow. ‘Are you enjoying it?’

‘Strangely enough, no. And please don’t insult me by lumping me together with your adoring fans.’ Poor misguided women all. ‘I admit I have seen your photo and even read a few lines about your charmed existence in the dentist or hairdresser’s…but I found it neither thrilling nor particularly interesting,’ she fired back.

‘I’m surprised,’ he admitted.

‘Because I can read?’

‘I’m surprised that you know what the inside of a hairdressing salon looks like.’

‘Very funny…I suppose the women you know never have a hair out of place.’ Except when he made love to them. Appalled by the maverick thought, Fleur, her hands curled into tight fists, allowed her eyelashes to flicker downward in a protective screen.

Antonio thought of the women in his life, each one poised, elegant, guaranteed to handle themselves in any company and all groomed to within an inch of their lives.

‘No, they don’t.’ His flickering glance touched to the tousled head of the woman who tilted her head to glare contemptuously up at him. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘But then neither would they leap into a lake to rescue someone they didn’t even know. I don’t think I’ve thanked you—that was a very brave thing to do.’

The totally unexpected compliment threw Fleur totally. She took refuge in flippancy. ‘I was after the reward.’

‘The pleasure of my company?’ he suggested. ‘No, don’t answer that,’ he pleaded quickly. ‘I’m not sure my ego will take any more bashing.’

‘Oh, I think it would survive a force-five hurricane. You know,’ she said injecting a note of discovery into her saccharine-laced voice, ‘if you took away your vanity, egoism and overly high opinion of yourself you wouldn’t have any personality at all.’

For a second she saw shock register in his eyes, but it was swiftly subsumed by amusement and, rather to her alarm, interest. ‘I have a confession…I have never had so much trouble getting a woman to take off her clothes for me.’

The husky rasp of his voice had an effect on every single nerve ending in her body. The horror on her face was very real as she begged hoarsely, ‘Spare me the details!’ Her over-stimulated imagination was already providing plenty of those.

The things going on in her head made it hard for Fleur to look him in the face. If he guessed she would die of shame…

‘Let’s just hope your reputation doesn’t suffer lasting damage,’ she said, lacing her words with as much insincerity as she could.

Frustratingly the acid jibe just made him grin some more and ask, ‘What’s your problem anyway?’ He studied her stubborn expression and produced a possible explanation. ‘Are you not wearing underclothes or something?’

Fleur, her mind still dealing with a number of erotic mental images involving women stripping for his pleasure, felt mortified colour fly to her face.

‘Of course I’m wearing knickers!’ A discussion of her underwear or possible lack of with Antonio Rochas…could this day get any more surreal?

‘Then the sooner you stop behaving like a petulant child and take off those jeans, the sooner I can get to the hospital to see my daughter.’

At that moment the middle-aged woman from earlier appeared. ‘I am so sorry, miss, I was so long, but—’ She stopped dead when she saw Antonio.

He turned his head. ‘You have dry clothes, Mrs Saunders?’

‘Some towels and a robe.’

Fleur smiled and said, ‘That’s very kind. I’ll be fine now with Mrs Saunders…’

‘Mrs Saunders has more important things to attend to,’ he cut in smoothly. ‘If you could get me some surgical tape and a dry dressing?’ He opened the door to Fleur’s right and took the bundle from the older woman before turning back to Fleur. ‘Come on, I haven’t got all day.’

‘Which charm school did you graduate from?’ she asked him sweetly as, left with little choice, she followed him into the room. Hovering in the doorway, she slid a curious glance around the bedroom. It was decorated in a feminine style in shades of lilac with sprigged wallpaper and a four-poster bed.

‘My sister’s,’ he said, watching her. ‘It was,’ he revealed with an expressive grimace, ‘her lilac period. Nowadays she and her husband, along with their litter of kids, take a suite in the west wing, but whenever decorating this room is suggested she comes down with a bad case of nostalgia.’

Fleur continued to hover as he dragged a chair that stood against the wall towards her. His attitude was impatient as he instructed her to, ‘Take off the jeans and take a seat.’ He stood there, his arms folded across his bare chest, shoulders braced against the wall.

She nibbled on her lower lip. Logically she knew that prolonging this and making a big thing of it was only going to make her look more of a fool than she already did. The knowledge did not affect her reluctance. Exhaling a gusty sigh, she lifted her chin and shrugged as if the problem were his, not hers.

Her hands were shaking as she unfastened the button on her jeans and fumbled with the zip. Sliding the fabric down her hips, she stood there feeling horribly exposed and totally ridiculous. She sat on the chair he had provided and eased the jeans lower until they reached her ankles.

‘I thought the secret of success was the ability to delegate…?’ she grumbled as he dropped down to his knees beside her.

His head lifted. He was so close she could see the gold tip to each individual eyelash. It made sense that if she could smell the soap he’d just showered with he could smell her fear. Fear…? Dear God, I’m going crazy. There’s no reason in the world for me to be afraid of Antonio Rochas.

And then it hit her, the truth—she wasn’t afraid of Antonio Rochas. She was afraid of the way he made her feel…She inhaled deeply. She was afraid of feeling!

It was one revelation she could have done without.

She turned her head as he scanned the injured area. His attitude was clinical and his light touch objective…an objectivity she wistfully envied.

‘Tell me if I hurt you.’

Fleur gave a noncommittal grunt.

His dark brows knit into a frown as he concentrated. ‘Relax!’ he ordered tersely.

If only it were that easy, she thought, looking at the top of his dark head. Almost immediately she found herself fighting a compelling need to sink her fingers into the glossy wet strands.

She closed her eyes and took a deep sustaining breath. The sooner she put as much space between herself and this man, the sooner she could get back to normality!

After a moment—it seemed a lot longer to Fleur—he gave his verdict. ‘It’s deep.’ It was still oozing blood and the area around the jagged tear in her smooth flesh was red, inflamed and angry-looking. It had to be hurting like hell.

‘But not life-threatening.’ She gave a nervous laugh, then winced as his fingers lightly brushed the sensitive skin of her thigh.

‘That depends on whether you intend to get it treated.’ Balanced on the balls of his feet, Antonio rested his hands on his thighs and angled a critical look at her face.

If I tried that, she thought, I’d fall flat on my face.

‘You look feverish,’ he observed critically.

‘I’m not feverish. Anyone,’ she accused, ‘would think you wanted me to be ill.’ This time her laugh just stopped short of hysterical. ‘Well, if you’ve seen enough,’ she added, lifting her bottom from the seat and yanking the jeans upwards. The fabric caught against the injured area and she winced, tears of pain filling her eyes.

‘You’ll start it bleeding again, you little idiot,’ he said, catching hold of her hand.

The protest shrivelled on her tongue as Fleur stared at the long brown fingers curled around her own. She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips. Her heart was banging so hard against her ribs that he should have been able to hear it.

‘Besides, you need to get into dry clothes,’ he added, easing her jeans carefully back down to her ankles.

She looked at the top of his sleekly wet head, felt her pulses quicken and thought, What I need is for you not to be here.

‘Are you covered for tetanus?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

The admission earned her a scornful look, but Fleur barely noticed. She shifted restlessly in the chair, and pondered some more the worrying discovery that the lightest and most clinical touch of his brown fingers could make her ache deep inside. She looked at the dark shadow of his jaw and caught herself wondering how it would feel to be kissed by a man with stubble.

These were very dangerous thoughts for a girl who had sworn off men, but then Antonio Rochas, she reminded herself—it might sink in at some point—was a very dangerous man.

‘I should think you’ll need a few stitches and probably antibiotics.’

Great! Her day was complete. Stitches equated doctors and the hateful smell of hospitals. ‘No way.’

Impatience coloured his voice as he suggested laconically, ‘Shall we let the doctors decide that?’

His tone set her teeth on edge. ‘The women in your life may enjoy being patronized, but I don’t,’ she informed him tartly. ‘I mean it—I’m not going to the hospital.’ The last time she had lost her baby.

‘You would prefer to bleed to death, or be permanently scarred…?’ he suggested.

Fleur drew a shaky breath as she dragged herself back to the present. ‘I don’t care about scars.’ To a man to whom appearances probably meant everything this probably sounded strange. ‘I’ll stick a plaster on it.’

‘What about infection? Do you embrace that so joyously too?’ he wondered sarcastically. ‘That water was hardly a sterile environment.’

She peered down at the cut on her leg and was quite shocked by what she saw. ‘It looks worse than it is,’ she protested weakly.

‘You can wheel out as many clichés as you like, it’ll still need more than a sticking plaster.’

‘You really think it’ll need stitching…?’

‘I’m not a doctor, but, yes, I think so.’

‘Right.’

‘Is that a right you’ll stop being obstructive? Or a reference to my lack of medical credentials?’

Mutely Fleur nodded. ‘I’ll go…I’m not very…’ her eyes slid from his ‘…not terribly…I don’t like hospitals much.’

He looked at her keenly but only shrugged and said, ‘Who does?’

At that moment the housekeeper returned carrying a box, which Fleur presumed held the items he had requested.

She grimaced as she saw the gaping wound and said sympathetically, ‘Oh, my, that does look painful.’

‘Not really.’

‘Very stiff upper lip,’ Antonio interrupted. ‘No, thank you, Mrs Saunders, I’ll do it. Could you ask John to bring the Mercedes around to the front? We’ll go straight off to the hospital.’

With a smile in Fleur’s direction the woman excused herself.

‘I’d prefer you let your housekeeper do this,’ Fleur said as she watched him extract a dressing pad and some tape from the box.

‘Don’t worry, I can cope with a dry dressing. I’ll be gentle,’ he promised when she remained silent.

It wasn’t his level of competence she was concerned about, and what really worried her most was the suspicion he knew that.

Antonio was actually as proficient as he had claimed. In a matter of moments he had covered the area with a clean dry dressing and secured it with tape.

‘Fine, that’s done,’ he said, leaning back on his heels and surveying his handwork.

It was actually a bit of an anticlimax. She barely even needed to call on the breathing technique she had been taught in her yoga class.

‘Thanks,’ she said, getting to her feet. As she pulled up her wet jeans he walked over to the wardrobe.

‘Try this,’ he suggested, pulling something off a hanger and tossing it to her.

Fleur automatically caught it. It was a cotton tee shirt. A pair of trousers landed at her feet a moment later.

‘My sister’s. You can’t stay in those wet things.’

Only too aware of the wet fabric chafing her skin, Fleur could not disagree.

However, she made no attempt to pick them up—just stood there.

‘I can’t find any underclothes, I’m afraid.’ His narrowed eyes moved in a casual assessing sweep over her slim body. ‘And I doubt if Sophia’s would fit you anyway.’

Fleur’s response to his scrutiny was anything but casual. She felt a compulsion to cover herself with her hands, but instead she lifted her chin and stared at him with what she hoped passed for cool defiance.

It was Antonio who finally broke the nerve-shredding silence.

‘I suppose you expect me to turn my back…?’ he observed, sounding amused.

‘No, I expect you to leave the room,’ she retorted, trying to inject as much dignity into her words as a person who looked like a drowned rat could.

She didn’t expect him to comply with her edict. When he did she felt weak with relief.

The moment he was out of the room she began to tear off what remained of her sodden clothes. The possibility of him walking in when she was practically naked made her perform the task with feverish speed.

Fleur had just pulled the loose-fitting trousers, which were several inches too long, over her hips when she happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the full-length cheval-mirror. She stopped dead, one hand still holding her hair back from her face, the other anchoring the waistband of the trousers, and let out an anguished groan of horror.

The fine silky tee shirt had been intended for a woman with a lot less up top than she had. It clung in a positively indecent way to her unfettered breasts.

‘Oh, my, I look like a…’ Fleur never got to voice the un-complimentary comment.

‘I was wondering what was underneath the layers…now I know.’

Antonio had used his time outside the room to ring the hospital. The doctor he had spoken to had been reassuring—to quote him, ‘She was a very lucky girl; she’ll be fine.’ It was Antonio who felt he was lucky; he had been given a second chance.

Filled with a new sense of purpose and buoyed by the news that Tamara was in no danger, he’d actually been able to feel the tension leave his spine as he had walked back into the room.

But one look at Fleur and he no longer felt relaxed or anything even closely related.

Fleur spun around so fast the unconsidered action sent a stab of pain shooting up her injured leg.

Wincing, she bent forward, her hand pressed to her mouth.

‘You little idiot!’

‘Thanks for the sympathy vote,’ she snapped as she straightened up.

‘Are you all right?’

She pushed the damp strands of hair from her eyes and found he wasn’t looking at her leg, but her breasts. Her lips tightened and she brought up her crossed hands in a protective gesture, hating the fact she had no more control over the hot colour that flooded her cheeks than she did her quivering stomach muscles.

‘Do you mind?’

His heavy-lidded eyes lifted, the predatory glitter in his cerulean eyes cancelling out his amused smile. For a moment they stood, their eyes meshed.

Then without a word he walked across to a chest. After opening several drawers he pulled out a cream cashmere cardigan. ‘Try this,’ he suggested.

Fleur, her eyes lowered, took it, and hoped the fact she had taken the utmost care not to let her fingertips graze his was not too obvious. By the time she had fought her way awkwardly into it her heart rate, if not normal, at least allowed her to breathe fairly normally.

If she had been given the option of jumping into an icy lake for the second time that day or getting into a car—an enclosed space—with this man there was no contest. She would opt for the lake every single time!

Only she wasn’t being offered that option, so the best she could hope for was that she didn’t make it too obvious that her hormones were totally out of control around him.

Chapter Six

‘YOU know I really don’t like leaving him,’ Fleur fretted.

Antonio took a deep breath. They were not at the bottom of the drive yet and she had mentioned the animal three times. This did not bode well for the journey.

‘Your dog will be fine,’ he told her, sounding fatigued. ‘I have given strict instructions that no male is to go anywhere near him.’

‘But—’

‘No buts!’

This autocratic decree brought Fleur’s chin up.

‘Anyway, you know the animal will be fine.’

As far as Fleur was concerned to have her concern so summarily dismissed was just another example of this man’s total egocentricity.

‘You can frown at me,’ he said without diverting his attention from the road, ‘but you know I am right. You have created a problem, and fixated on it, basically because you don’t want to think about what is really bothering you.’ His blue gaze briefly brushed her face. ‘I suppose hospital phobias are not uncommon.’

As he turned his attention back to the road ahead Fleur studied his profile with some alarm, glad that on this occasion at least his instincts had failed him. Having Antonio Rochas realise that she was almost equally worried about spending time alone with him as she was nervous about going to the hospital would be deeply embarrassing.

She didn’t even know why she felt that way. It wasn’t that she expected him to leap on her or anything.

It was the fact she might want him to that had her scared out of her mind. She wondered whether his raw masculinity affected all women this way…

She slanted him an unfriendly look. ‘I don’t have a hospital phobia—I just don’t like hospitals. If you want to spend the journey delving into my psyche feel free, but I have to tell you you’re not very good at it.’

‘I’m more concerned about my daughter than your tortured psyche.’

Fleur grimaced, aware that she deserved the rebuke. ‘Of course you are. I’m sorry.’

The unstinting apology drew a quick sideways glance from him, but no comment. As his electric eyes brushed her own, Fleur’s outstretched hand stilled above his thigh.

‘I’m sure she’ll be all right.’ Crazy enough she felt the need to offer him comfort even though it was clearly not required, but squeezing Antonio’s thigh…?

‘I appreciate your attempt to be supportive,’ he observed with silky sarcasm, ‘but believe me when I say I’d find silence infinitely preferable.’

‘Fine, that suits me perfectly,’ she bit back. ‘I was only trying to be…’ She bit her lip. ‘I won’t say another word.’ Then when he said nothing she added, ‘Look, when I’m nervous I talk.’ She glared at his smug I-told-you-so profile and gritted, ‘You don’t have to listen. Tune me out.’

‘Believe me, if I could I would. Your voice is…’

‘My voice is what? It grates on you? Is it too shrill, too loud…?’ She pitched her voice an octave lower and introduced a low sexy rasp as she asked, ‘Would you prefer I giggled or—?’ She stopped dead and closed her eyes. ‘Will you listen to me? You’re right,’ she confessed, holding up her hands in mock surrender, and let him believe the least humiliating of her two present concerns. ‘I think I must have a hospital phobia.’ What she did have was just as irrational as any phobia.

‘And a very sexy voice.’

The dry aside made her stiffen and slant a suspicious look in his direction. ‘And awful hair,’ she reminded him.

‘I didn’t say it was awful,’ he said, looking at the road and thinking about pushing his fingers into that lush, shiny mass, letting the silky strands slide like water through his fingers.

‘Adam would,’ she mused, a distant expression on her face as she absently twirled a strand. ‘He’d hate it. He liked my hair short and neat.’ And I listened to him. I cut my hair; I lengthened my skirts; I allowed him to make me look stupid in front of his friends. What does that make me?

‘Who is Adam?’ He was conscious of her stiffening before she replied in a voice that was wiped clean of all emotion.

‘I was engaged to him.’ She supposed the thing about repressive relationships was that you didn’t even begin to suspect you had been in one until you had escaped.

Antonio’s eyes slid to her slim finger. ‘Past tense…?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, these days I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to cut my hair.’

‘You don’t look like a woman who asks permission for anything.’

Her shocked eyes brushed briefly with his before she lowered them and he turned his attention back to the road.

‘I’m not,’ she said after a moment. ‘I just forgot it for a while.’ She swallowed to relieve the emotional constriction in her throat.

‘It happens,’ he agreed. In his experience you scratched the surface of the average control freak and you revealed a pathetic loser riddled with insecurities. ‘You lived with this Adam?’

She wondered how far it was to the hospital and considered telling him to mind his own business, and then thought, What did it matter? It wasn’t as if it were a secret or anything.

‘Yes, for nearly three years. We split up about eighteen months ago.’

‘Madre di Dios! How old were you when you moved in?’

‘Is that relevant?’ she countered spikily. ‘I was twenty…so what? People can be just as stupid when they’re thirty as they are when they’re twenty.’

‘Twenty? His breath escaped in a hissing sigh of disbelief. Insane! My daughter will be twenty in seven years’ time.’ The realisation hit him like a ton of bricks falling on his chest.

‘She’s going to be a knockout when she’s older,’ Fleur predicted. ‘You’re going to have trouble long before she’s twenty.’

As images of men with evil intentions pursuing his little girl flashed through Antonio’s mind he felt the foundations of his once-stable world shift even farther.