Книга - Bound To A Billionaire: Protecting His Defiant Innocent (Bound to a Billionaire) / Claiming His One-Night Baby / Buying His Bride of Convenience
Bound To A Billionaire: Protecting His Defiant Innocent (Bound to a Billionaire) / Claiming His One-Night Baby / Buying His Bride of Convenience
Michelle Smart
Claimed by the most powerful of men! Travelling to a dangerous island to continue her late brother’s work, Francesca Pellegrini finds herself under the protection of security tycoon Felipe Lorenzi. Independent Francesca is infuriated by his commands, but Felipe’s every look invites her to give up her innocence. *Seeing Natasha Pellegrini at her husband’s funeral propels Matteo Manaserro back to a time before she shattered his trust. Caught in a potent mix of emotion, they surrender to their explosive passion… *Daniele Pellegrini must wed or lose his family inheritance. Eva Bergen is the perfect candidate. Especially because she can’t stand him – this hard-hearted tycoon won’t risk his wife falling in love!
About the Author (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby, and she would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading and writing them ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire with her husband, and two young Smarties.
Bound to a Billionaire
Protecting His Defiant Innocent
Michelle Smart
Claiming His One-Night Baby
Michelle Smart
Buying His Bride Of Convenience
Michelle Smart
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-09606-5
BOUND TO A BILLIONAIRE
Protecting His Defiant Innocent © 2017 Michelle Smart Claiming His One-Night Baby © 2017 Michelle Smart Buying His Bride Of Convenience © 2017 Michelle Smart
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#udd271cb8-6098-5516-9f00-a5ee0e5070d1)
About the Author (#u1185c44a-4f85-5152-9990-03c76a4528ad)
Title Page (#u4b09ebc3-7076-5182-9dac-67ba4031a947)
Copyright (#ua60ba402-8947-5d19-8f31-3ed7dfe8009d)
Protecting His Defiant Innocent (#ufda598e7-5a75-5f6f-ba4f-7f9c7a7c988d)
Back Cover Text (#udceea3a7-15da-580e-95df-02e22e914928)
Dedication (#u957980be-b6d8-509f-a369-934c3d0f925c)
CHAPTER ONE (#u101a26dd-3cfb-59d1-b28b-c0cc6726fd1f)
CHAPTER TWO (#ud2d3a690-d46b-5900-9ea8-35c254f4d539)
CHAPTER THREE (#u21587dd5-8c31-58e0-8ad5-d4e13b47ed9e)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u7750f481-024c-5754-8e02-5242b3511523)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u537a1498-7400-519b-a22b-48ed7b091cc3)
CHAPTER SIX (#u484d85c8-a4f0-5b30-9681-64225b51e8d8)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u687792df-070d-53e5-a34a-c4d0a198f11b)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ue8b15e59-0f7c-5ed4-9509-6ca724945a62)
CHAPTER NINE (#ub70b4e92-f3b1-533b-a6f0-3ff6a1917635)
CHAPTER TEN (#uc3da41ec-c70e-51ad-a500-f2a448af4a96)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Claiming His One-Night Baby (#litres_trial_promo)
Back Cover Text (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Buying His Bride Of Convenience (#litres_trial_promo)
Back Cover Text (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Protecting His Defiant Innocent (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
Michelle Smart
Tempted by her billionaire protector...
Traveling to a dangerous Caribbean island to continue her late brother’s charitable work, Francesca Pellegrini finds herself under the protection of security tycoon Felipe Lorenzi. Independent Francesca is infuriated by his commands, but Felipe’s every look invites her to give up her innocence to him...
With his body and heart as hard as stone after his military career, Felipe has no time for Francesca’s seductive games. Until this captivating young woman entices him beyond all measure, and this lone wolf decides to throw away his strict rules and take her as his own!
This is for Nicky,
the best friend a girl could wish for. xxx
CHAPTER ONE (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
‘ARE YOU WITH ME?’ Francesca Pellegrini tightened her ponytail and glared at the two men sitting opposite her in the small draughty room of the family castle. ‘Will we work together and build the hospital in Pieta’s memory?’
Daniele threw his hands in the air. ‘Do we have to discuss this now, in the middle of his wake?’
‘I am talking about building an enduring legacy for our brother,’ she reminded him crossly.
Francesca had known Daniele and Matteo would need a little convincing but had complete faith she would get their agreement. Hurricane Igor had decimated the Caribbean island of Caballeros only ten days ago. Twenty thousand people had died and the island had been left with only seven working hospitals for a population of eight million. Pieta, the eldest of the Pellegrini siblings, had seen the devastation on the news and had sprung straight into action in the way she had always so admired.
Despite running an international law firm, he’d always looked at practical ways to help those suffering at the hands of natural disasters, donating money, hosting fundraisers and getting his hands dirty. He’d been famed and honoured for his philanthropy and she’d been so proud to call herself his sister. She could hardly believe she would never see him again, his life cut short when his helicopter crashed in thick fog.
‘I’m not asking you for the moon,’ she continued, ‘I’m asking you to put your skills into building the hospital Pieta was planning for a country that has lost everything and to do it in our brother’s memory.’ Daniele earned a fortune—he’d just taken delivery of a brand-new yacht!—but what good did he do with it? Who did her brother serve other than the god of money?
Francesca knew she was being unfair to the brother who’d always doted on her but what did it matter? Pieta was dead and the only thing she could focus on to endure the pain was continuing with his plan and thus continuing his legacy.
‘I’m not saying it’s a bad idea,’ he snapped back. ‘Just that we shouldn’t be rushing into anything. There are security concerns for a start.’
‘The country has been flattened. The only concerns are dysentery and cholera.’
‘Don’t be so naïve. It’s one of the most dangerous and corrupt countries in the world and you want me to send my men to work there and for Matteo to send his staff there.’
Matteo Manaserro, their cousin, owned private medical clinics across the western world, performing vanity services for people who refused to age gracefully. He’d also launched a range of youth enhancing products that had made him world famous and as rich as Croesus. Francesca’s mother was an enthusiastic wearer of the entire range and swore she’d only had a couple of nips and tucks since using them. Pieta had often said Matteo could have been one of the greatest and most eminent surgeons in the world but that he’d thrown it away in the pursuit of money, just like Daniele.
‘I’m travelling to Caballeros tomorrow. I’ll confirm myself that your security fears are unfounded,’ she informed him without dropping her stare.
Daniele’s face went the colour of puce. ‘You are not.’
‘I am. It’s all arranged. Pieta had already earmarked the site to build the hospital on and put aside money for it and arranged meetings with government officials and...’
‘You’re not going. You don’t have the authority for a start.’
‘Yes, I do.’ She played her trump card. ‘Natasha’s given me written authority to act as her representative as Pieta’s next of kin.’
Her sister-in-law, who had sat in on the meeting like a mute ghost, looked vaguely startled to hear her name mentioned. Francesca knew she’d taken advantage of her fragile state of mind to get the authority but squashed her conscience. This was Pieta’s legacy and she would do anything to achieve it. She had to.
Maybe if she finished what Pieta had started her guilt-ravaged dreams would stop.
I’m so sorry, Pieta. I didn’t mean it. You were the best of us and I loved you. Forgive me, please.
‘It’s not safe!’ Daniele slammed his hand so hard on the old oak table that even Matteo flinched.
But Francesca was beyond listening to reason. She knew it but could do nothing about it, like a child thrown into the deep end of a pool and needing to use its limited strength to swim to the shallows. That’s how she felt; that she needed to reach the shallows to find forgiveness.
‘Come with me and keep me safe if you’re that concerned. That hospital will be built with or without you even if I have to build it myself.’
Daniele looked ready to explode. Maybe he would have done if Matteo hadn’t sighed, raised his hand in the gesture of peace, leaned forward and said, ‘You can count me in. I’ll work with Daniele, if he agrees, on how the basic set-up should work, and when the construction’s complete I’ll personally come in and get it up and running, but only for a month and only because I loved Pieta.’
‘Excellent.’ If her cheeks had been able to curve upwards, Francesca would have smiled.
‘But I agree with Daniele that security is a major concern. You’re underestimating how dangerous Caballeros can be. I suggest we bring Felipe in.’
Daniele straightened like a poker. He looked at Matteo and nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I can go with that. He’ll be able to keep Francesca safe when she’s ordering dictators around and protect any staff we hire for it.’
‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Francesca interjected. ‘Who is this Felipe?’
‘Felipe Lorenzi is a Spanish security expert. Pieta used his services many times.’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’ She supposed this wasn’t very surprising. She’d only started her traineeship in Pieta’s law firm a few months before, after graduating. Up until his death she’d never had any direct involvement in his private philanthropy.
‘He’s ex-Spanish Special Forces,’ Matteo explained. ‘He set up his own business providing security to businesses and individuals who need to travel to places most right minded people run away from and earned a fortune with it. Pieta thought very highly of him and I imagine he would have brought him in to act as security for this project if he’d...’
If he’d lived.
‘Then we bring him in,’ Francesca said after a pause she could see was painful for all of them. She would never admit it but the thought of travelling alone to Caballeros did scare her a little. She’d never travelled alone before. But she would be brave, just as Pieta had always been. ‘But I don’t need a babysitter.’
‘You might have to wait a few days for him to organise his men,’ Matteo said, ‘but whoever he sends will be ex-special forces like himself and trained to handle any situation.’
‘I can’t wait,’ she told them. ‘I’m not being difficult but I have a meeting set up about the sale of the land tomorrow. If I cancel it, I don’t know when they’ll let me rearrange it for. We can’t afford any delays.’
The whole project rested on her getting the sale of the land agreed. Without it there would be no hospital and no legacy. She had to get that land.
Daniele’s eyes flashed on her. ‘And you can’t afford to take risks.’
‘Pieta did,’ she informed him defiantly. ‘I can decide for myself what risks I’m willing to take and personally I think the risks are exaggerated.’
‘You what...?’
The fight between them was diffused by Matteo raising another hand for peace. ‘Francesca, we both understand how much you want to honour Pieta’s memory—we all want to—but you need to understand we are only concerned for your safety. Felipe has a large network of men working for him, I’m sure it won’t be a problem for him to put something in place for your arrival in Caballeros tomorrow.’
She caught the warning look he gave Daniele.
Daniele must have understood whatever the look meant for he nodded shrewdly before turning his attention back to her. ‘You will do whatever they tell you. You are not to place yourself at unnecessary risk, is that understood?’
‘Does this mean you’re in?’
He sighed. ‘Yes. I’m in. Can we return to the rest of our family now? Our mother needs us.’
Francesca nodded. The cramping in her chest loosened a little. She’d got everything she’d wanted from them and now she wanted to find her mother and hold her tight. ‘To summarise, I’ll take care of the legal side, Daniele takes care of the construction and Matteo takes care of the medical side. What about you, Natasha? Do you want to handle publicity for it?’
Although only married to Pieta for a year, they’d been engaged for six years and she’d thought her shy sister-in-law should have the chance be involved if she wanted. Publicity was important. Publicity brought donations and awareness.
Natasha shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘I can do that,’ she whispered.
‘Then we are done.’ Francesca got to her feet and rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension in them. Knowing she had Daniele and Matteo onside meant she could now, for one night only, mourn the brother she had loved.
From tomorrow, the hard work began.
* * *
Francesca clumped up the steps of the jet, shades on to keep the glare of the sun from her bleary eyes, to be greeted by the sombre flight crew. Her brother had been a man to inspire devotion and loyalty from his staff, and their obvious grief touched her.
If her heart didn’t feel so heavy and her brain so tired from all the wine she’d drunk and the two hours of sleep she’d managed to snatch in the freezing room she’d always slept in when they’d stayed at the castle in her childhood, she would be excited to be on Pieta’s personal jet. She’d never been in it before and it saddened her that now she would never travel in it with him.
The document Natasha had signed gave her carte blanche to do whatever was needed and use whatever resources were necessary from Pieta’s foundation and personal estate for the project. She knew Daniele was angry with her for taking advantage of Natasha’s fragile state and she did feel guilt for it but honestly, if she’d asked Natasha to sign over her house, car and bank account to her, she would have done so with the same glassy-eyed look. Before leaving the wake Francesca had pulled Matteo to one side and asked him to keep an eye on her. Matteo was more than just a cousin to them. He’d lived with them since he was thirteen and, being the same age as Pieta, had been his closest friend. Like the rest of the world, he’d been devoted to him. He would look out for Natasha.
Francesca was led into the main area of the jet, which was as luxurious as she’d imagined but before she had a chance to take it all in, she was startled to find a man sat on one of the plush leather chairs, a laptop open on the foldaway desk that covered what she could see were enormously long legs.
She stopped in her tracks.
Not expecting to be travelling with anyone, she glanced from the stewardess, who showed no surprise at his presence, back to the stranger before her.
The darkest brown eyes set in the most handsome face she had ever seen stared back.
Her breath caught in her throat.
It seemed as if an age passed before he spoke. ‘You must be Francesca.’
The English was spoken with a heavy accent and from firm, generous lips that didn’t even hint at a smile.
She blinked herself back to the present, realising she’d been staring at him. ‘And you are?’
‘Felipe Lorenzi.’
‘You’re Felipe?’
When Matteo and Daniele had spoken of the ex-special forces man she’d formed a mental image of a thuggish squat man with a shaven head and a body crammed with tattoos who wore nothing but grubby khaki trousers and black T-shirts.
This man was something else entirely. This man had a headful of thick hair that was darker even than his eyes and touched the collar of his crisp white shirt, which he wore with an immaculate and obviously expensive light grey suit with matching waistcoat and thin green checked tie.
He raised a brow. ‘Were you expecting someone else?’
Unsettled for reasons she couldn’t begin to decipher, Francesca took the seat opposite him, fighting her eyes’ desire to stare and stare and stare some more.
‘I wasn’t expecting anyone.’ She pulled the seat belt across her lap, doing her utmost to sound together and confident and unaffected by his presence. ‘I was told I’d be meeting one of your men in Caballeros.’
Daniele and Matteo had made the arrangements, working their phones like a whirlwind throughout the wake to ensure there would be protection for her when she arrived on the island. She’d hadn’t been told to expect company on her flight. If she had she’d have made an effort with her appearance, not thrown on the first clothes that had come to hand. She hadn’t had time for a shower or even to moisturise her face.
The face that stared back didn’t moisturise, she thought, feeling rather dizzy. This face was intensely, masculinely beautiful. But battle-hardened. This was a face that had seen sights the horrors of which were etched in the lines around his eyes and mouth, in the bump on the bridge of his strong nose and in the white flecks in the thick untamed beard that covered his jaw. This man had an aura of danger about him that sent thrills she couldn’t understand racing through her bloodstream.
‘Caballeros isn’t stable. It isn’t wise to go there without protection.’ Especially not for a woman such as this, Felipe thought. He would have risen to shake her hand but her appearance had thrown him.
Both the Pellegrini brothers were handsome so it was to be expected that their younger sister would be good looking too. He hadn’t expected her to be so truculently sexy, in tight ripped jeans, a billowing white blouse, and glittery thongs on her small, pretty feet.
‘I didn’t know it would be you personally,’ she explained warily. ‘I was under the impression you supplied the men to undertake the protection.’
‘That is the case but there are times, such as this, when I undertake it myself.’
In the years he’d provided protection for Pieta on his philanthropic missions he’d got to know the man well. Throughout his career Felipe had dealt with death and loss many times; had almost become inured to it. The shock of Pieta’s death had hit him harder than he would have expected. He’d been an exceptional man, intelligent and for all his daring, naturally cautious. He’d known how to handle situations.
Felipe had been propped at a hotel bar in the Middle East drinking the malt whiskey Pieta had liked in his memory when both Daniele and Matteo had called to say Pieta’s little sister was travelling to Caballeros, a country quickly descending into anarchy, first thing in the morning, and that nothing they said would deter or delay her. He’d known immediately that he owed it to the great man to protect his sister himself and had set into action. Within ten hours he was in Pisa, showered, changed and sat on Pieta’s jet. The only thing he hadn’t had time for was a shave.
Francesca removed her shades and folded them into her handbag. When she looked at him, he experienced another, more powerful jolt.
Her height was the only thing average about her. Everything else about her was extraordinary, from the sheet of glossy black hair that hung the length of her back to the wide, kissable lips and clear olive skin. The only flaw on her features were her eyes, which were so red raw and puffy it was hard to distinguish the light brown colour of her pupils.
She’d buried her brother only the day before.
He recalled Daniele’s warning about her state of mind. This was a woman on the edge.
‘I was very sorry to hear about Pieta’s death,’ he said quietly.
‘Not sorry enough to attend his funeral,’ she replied archly although there was the slightest tremor in her hoarse voice. Hoarse from crying, he suspected.
‘Work comes first. He would have understood.’ On his next visit to Europe he intended to visit Pieta’s grave and lay a wreath for him.
‘You were able to juggle your work commitments to be here now.’
‘I did,’ he agreed. He’d had to pull a senior member of his staff away from his holiday to take over the job he’d been overseeing to make it to Pisa on time for the flight. ‘Caballeros is a dangerous place.’
‘Just so we’re clear, you work for me,’ she said in the impeccable English all the Pellegrinis spoke. ‘My sister-in-law has given me written authority to represent her as Pieta’s next of kin on this project.’
Felipe contemplated her through narrowed eyes. There had been a definite challenge in that husky tone.
‘How old are you?’ At thirty-six he was a year older than Pieta, the eldest of the three Pellegrini siblings. He recalled Francesca once being referred to as the ‘happy accident’.
‘I’m twenty-three.’ She raised her chin, daring him to make something of her youth.
‘Almost an old woman,’ he mocked. He hadn’t realised she was that young and now he did know he was doubly glad he’d disrupted his schedule to be there as her protection. He would have guessed at mid-twenties. Sure, only a few years older than her actual age but those years were often the most formative of an adult’s life. His had been. They’d been the best of his life, right until the hostage situation that had culminated in the loss of his best friend and a bullet in his leg that had seen him medically discharged from the job he loved at only twenty-six.
She glared at him. ‘I might be young but I am not stupid. You don’t need to patronise me.’
‘Age isn’t linked to intelligence,’ he conceded. ‘What countries have you travelled to?’
‘I’ve been to many countries.’
‘With your family on holiday?’ Francesca’s father, Fabio Pellegrini, had been a descendant of the old Italian royal family. The Pellegrinis had long eschewed their royal titles but still owned a sprawling Tuscan estate near Pisa and had immense wealth. Vanessa Pellegrini, the matriarch, also came from old money. None of Vanessa or Fabio’s children had ever wanted for anything. When Felipe compared it to his own humble upbringing the contrast couldn’t be starker.
‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘I’ve visited most of Europe, the Americas and Australia. I would consider myself well-travelled.’
‘And which of these many countries have been on a war footing?’
‘Caballeros isn’t on a war footing.’
‘Not yet. In which of those countries was sanitation a problem?’
‘I’ve got water-purifying tablets in my luggage.’
He hid a smile. She thought she had all the answers but didn’t have a clue what she’d be walking into. ‘That would make all the difference but you won’t be needing them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re not staying in Caballeros. I’ve booked you into a hotel in Aguadilla.’ Aguadilla was a Spanish-Caribbean island relatively close to Caballeros but spared by the hurricane and as safe a country as there was in this dangerous world.
‘You did what?’
‘I cancelled the shack you’d been booked into in San Pedro,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, referring to the Caballeron capital. ‘We’ve a Cessna in place to fly you between the islands for all your meetings.’
Her cheeks flushed with angry colour. ‘You had no right to do that. That shack was where Pieta was going to stay.’
‘And he would have hired my firm for protection. He wasn’t a fool. You’re a vulnerable woman...’
‘I am not.’
‘Look at yourself through Caballeron eyes. You’re young, rich and beautiful and, like it or not, you’re a woman...’
‘I’m not rich!’
‘Your family is rich. Caballeros is the sixth most dangerous country in the world. Things were bad enough when the people had roofs over their heads. Now they have lost everything and they are angry. You will have a price on your head the second you set foot on their soil.’
‘But I’m going to build them a hospital.’
‘And many of them will be grateful. Like all the Caribbean islands it’s full of wonderful, hospitable people but Caballeros has always had a dangerous underbelly and more military coups than any other country since it gained its independence from Spain. Guns and drugs are rife, the police and politicians are corrupt, and that was before Hurricane Igor destroyed their infrastructure and killed thousands of their population.’
It was a long time before Francesca spoke. In that time she stared at him with eyes that spat fire.
‘I was already aware of the risks,’ she said tremulously. ‘It’s why I agreed for your firm to be hired to protect me. Not babysit me. You had no right to change my arrangements. No right at all. I will pay you the full amount but I don’t want your services any more. Take your things and get off the plane. I’m terminating our contract.’
He’d been told she would react like this. Both Daniele and Matteo had warned him of her fiery nature and fierce independent streak, which her grief for Pieta had compounded. That’s why Daniele had taken the steps he had, to protect Francesca from herself.
‘I’m sorry to tell you this but you’re not in a position to fire me.’ He gave a nonchalant shrug, followed by an even more nonchalant yawn. Dios, he was tired. He hadn’t slept in two days and could do without the explosion he was certain was about to occur. ‘Your sister-in-law has made an addendum to the authority she gave you. If at any time I report that you’re not following my advice with regard to your safety, her authority is revoked and the project disbanded.’
CHAPTER TWO (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
THE SHOCK ON Francesca’s face was priceless. ‘Natasha did that? Natasha?’
‘At Daniele’s request. I understand he wanted her to cancel the authority altogether. This was their compromise.’ As he spoke, the aeroplane hurtled down the runway and lifted into the air.
Now her features twisted into outrage. ‘The dirty, underhanded...’
‘Your brother and all your family are worried about you. They think you’re too emotional and impulsive to get this done without falling into trouble. I am here to keep you out of trouble.’ He leaned forward and spoke clearly. He needed her to understand that this wasn’t a game and that he meant everything he said. ‘I have no wish to be a tyrant but if you push me or behave rashly or take any risks I believe to be unnecessary, I will bring you straight back to Pisa.’
Her lips were pulled in so tightly all that showed was a thin white line. ‘I want to see the addendum.’
‘Of course.’ He pulled it out of his inner jacket pocket. She leaned forward and snatched it from his outstretched hand.
The colour on her face darkened with each line read.
‘That’s a copy of the original,’ he said in case she was thinking of ripping it into pieces.
She glared at him with malevolence. ‘I spent five years working for my law degree. I know what a copy looks like.’
Then she took a deep inhalation before placing the document on her lap and clenching her hands into fists. ‘Do not think you can push me around, Mr Lorenzi. I might be young but I’m not a child. This project means everything to me.’
‘I appreciate that,’ he replied calmly. ‘If you act like the adult you claim to be there won’t be any problems and the project will be safe.’
Her answering glare could have curdled milk.
* * *
Francesca was so angry she refused to make any further conversation. If Felipe was perturbed by her silence he didn’t show it. He worked on his laptop for a couple of hours whilst eating a tower of sandwiches, then pressed the button on his seat that turned it into a pod bed.
Doing the same to her own seat, she tried to get some sleep too. She’d found only snatches since Pieta had died in the helicopter crash and that had been haunted sleep at best, waking with cold sweats and sobbing into her pillow. She didn’t know which was the harder to endure, the guilt or the grief. Both sat like a hovering spectre ready to extend its scaly grip and pull her into darkness.
Had it really only been a week ago that her mother had called with the news that he’d been so cruelly taken from them?
For the first time since his death, tears didn’t fill her eyes the second her head hit a pillow. She was too angry to cry.
She knew it was Daniele she should be angry with and not Felipe. Her brother was the one who’d gone behind her back and drawn up the addendum that effectively put Felipe in charge of her as if he were a teacher and she a student on a school trip. But Felipe, the hateful man, had signed it and made it clear he would enforce it.
It would be different if she were a man. He wouldn’t be throwing his authority in her face and patronising her with her lack of worldliness if she were Daniele or Matteo. Her age and gender had always defined her within her family and it infuriated her to see it spread into the rest of her life.
She appreciated she’d been a surprise arrival, being born ten years after Daniele, twelve years after Pieta and their cousin Matteo, who had moved in with them when she was still a baby. The age difference was too stark not to be a factor in how they all treated her. To her father she’d been his princess, for her mother a female doll to dress in pretty clothes and fuss over. Daniele had fussed over her too, the big brother who’d brought her sweets, teased her, tormented her, taken her and her enamoured girlfriends for drives in his succession of new cars. She’d been his baby sister then and was still his baby sister now.
Only Pieta had treated her like a person in her own right and she’d adored him for it. He’d never treated her like a pet. His approval had meant the world to her and she’d followed his footsteps into a career in law like a puppy sniffing its master’s heels.
How could she have reacted the way she had when she’d learned of his death? He deserved so much better than that.
She found her thoughts drifting back to the man whose care she’d been put under. Who cared if he had a face that could make a heart melt and a physique that screamed sex appeal? One conversation had proved him to be an arrogant tyrant. Francesca had spent her life fighting to be taken seriously and she was damned if she would allow him or anyone else to have any power over her...
She sat up sharply. She would call Natasha and get her to cancel the addendum! Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner?
Phone in hand, she put the call through. Just as she was convinced it would go to voicemail, Natasha answered it, sounding flat and groggy.
‘Hi, Natasha, sorry to bother you but I need to speak to you about something.’ As quietly as she could so as not to wake the sleeping figure in the pod opposite her, Francesca explained her fears.
‘I’m sorry, Fran, but I promised Daniele I wouldn’t let you talk me out of it,’ she replied with sympathy. ‘It’s for your own safety.’
‘But it’ll be impossible for me to be effective if this man can veto all my decisions.’
‘He can’t veto anything.’
‘He can. If he decides it isn’t safe for me to be somewhere or to do something he can put a stop to everything. Your addendum gives him all the power.’
‘It isn’t that bad.’
‘It is. He can call a halt to the whole project if I don’t do exactly as he says!’
Natasha sighed. ‘I’m sorry but I made a promise. Daniele is very concerned about your state of mind. We all are. Pieta’s death...’ Her voice faltered then lowered to a whisper. ‘It’s hit you hard. Felipe will keep you safe and stop you making any rash decisions while you’re there. Please, try to understand. We’re only doing what’s best for you.’
If Francesca didn’t know how fragile Natasha’s own state of mind was she’d be tempted to shout down the phone that she was perfectly capable of deciding what was best for herself. But shouting would only prove that she was unstable when right now she needed to convince them all that she was perfectly sane and rational.
Daniele had brainwashed her sister-in-law. It was him she needed to speak to. If she could convince him the addendum was unnecessary then Natasha would agree to cancel it.
‘Thanks anyway,’ she whispered.
Her next call was to Daniele. She wasn’t surprised when it went to voicemail. The rat would be avoiding her.
She left a short message in as sweet a tone as she could muster. ‘Daniele, we need to talk. Call me back as soon as you get this.’
Proud that she hadn’t sworn at him, she put her phone on the ledge by her pod bed. She had never failed to bend Daniele to her will before but this was a situation unlike any other. Cajoling him into buying her a dress for a ball—she was independent but not stupid—was one thing; persuading him to scrap a contract drawn up to keep her safe was a different matter.
‘You won’t get him to change his mind,’ came the deep rumbling tone from the pod bed opposite, not sounding the slightest bit sleepy.
So the sneak had been awake all the time, listening to her conversations.
She threw the bedsheets off and got to her feet. ‘I will. Just watch me.’
With no chance of getting any sleep she might as well have a shower and get herself ready for their arrival in the Caribbean.
* * *
Felipe ate eggs Benedict while waiting for Francesca to finish using the bathroom and adjacent dressing room. After nine hours on the plane he could do with another shower too. They’d be landing in Aguadilla in an hour, his Cessna at the ready to take them straight on to Caballeros and her meeting with the Governor.
He just hoped she was mentally prepared for what she would find there.
He understood her hostility. He’d never liked being subordinate to anyone either. Being in the forces had taught him obedience to orders but that had been a necessary part of any soldier’s training. There was a chain of command and for anyone in that link to break it would see the whole chain collapse. He hadn’t liked it but had seen the necessity of it and so had accepted it. Eventually he had climbed the chain so he had been the one giving the orders and now he commanded hundreds of men whose jobs took them all over the globe. Francesca would have to accept his authority in turn. Her safety was paramount. He wouldn’t hesitate to pull her out if he thought it necessary.
Eventually she emerged from the dressing room.
‘You look better,’ he said, although it was an inadequate response to the difference from when she’d stepped onto the plane. Now she wore a tailored navy suit with tiny white lines racing the length of the jacket and tight trousers. Under the jacket was a black shirt and on her feet tan heels. Her lustrous black hair had been plaited and coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck. The effect managed to be professional and, he would guess, fashionable. It would certainly get her taken more seriously than the outfit she’d originally worn.
She answered with a tight smile and removed her laptop from the drawer a member of the cabin crew had put it in.
He got to his feet and stretched. ‘I’m going to have a shower. Make sure you eat, we’ll be landing in an hour.’
As he strolled past her he inhaled a fresh, delicate perfume and almost paused in his stride to inhale it again. Francesca smelled as good as she looked.
It didn’t matter how good she smelt or how sexy she was, he reminded himself as he stripped off his suit, this was work where liaisons of anything but the professional kind were strictly forbidden. He had the clause written in all his employees’ contracts for good reason. Their work was dangerous and needed a clear head. Any hint that the relationship between employee and client had crossed the line was grounds for instant dismissal.
Francesca could be Aphrodite herself and he would still keep his distance.
He switched the shower on and waited for the water to warm. And waited some more. Francesca had spent so long in it she’d used all the hot water.
He shook his head as he realised it had likely been deliberate.
‘How was your shower?’ she asked innocently when he returned to the cabin.
‘Cold.’
Her lips twitched but she didn’t look up from her laptop.
‘After eight years in the forces where bathing of any kind was rare, any shower’s a good one,’ he said drily. ‘But that’s irrelevant to the job in hand so tell me what the game plan is.’
‘You’re not going to tell me what it is now you’re in charge?’ She didn’t attempt to hide her bitterness.
‘It’s still your project. I’m in charge of your safety. If you’re prepared to accept my authority with that, I’m happy to follow your lead.’ He wanted this project to succeed as much as she did and knew the best way to stop her doing anything rash was to let her think she had some control. ‘You have a meeting with the Governor of San Pedro in four hours. What are you hoping to achieve?’
Looking slightly mollified, she said, ‘His agreement for the sale of the land that Pieta earmarked.’
‘That’s it?’
‘The Governor is married to the Caballeron President’s sister and given the job directly from the President himself. If he agrees there’s no one left to object and I can start organising everything properly.’
‘And if he refuses?’
She grimaced. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’
‘You don’t have a contingency plan?’
She closed the lid of her laptop. ‘I’ll think of something if it comes to it.’
‘Why didn’t Alberto come with you? He’s got plenty of experience with this.’ He watched her reaction closely. Alberto had been Pieta’s right-hand man for his foundation. The pair had always travelled together, Alberto doing much of the legwork to get things moving. He knew his way around countries hit by natural disasters better than anyone and how to schmooze the people running them.
‘He’s taken leave,’ she said with a shrug. ‘You should have seen him at the funeral, he could barely stand. He’s given me all the foundation’s files but he’s not capable of working right now.’
‘Yet here you are, Pieta’s sister, travelling to one of the most dangerous countries in the world only a day after you buried him, continuing his good work.’
Her jaw clenched and she closed her eyes, inhaling slowly. Then she nodded and met his gaze. The redness that had been such a feature of her eyes when she’d boarded the plane had gone, along with the puffiness surrounding them, but there was a bleakness in its place that was almost as hard to look at.
When she replied her voice was low but with an edge of steel. ‘This project—doing it in Pieta’s memory—is the only thing stopping me from falling apart.’
She had courage, he would give her that. He just hoped she had the strength to see the next five days through.
* * *
Francesca hardly had time to appreciate the beauty of Aguadilla before they stepped into the waiting Cessna. All she had time to note from the short car ride from Aguadilla International Airport to the significantly smaller airfield four miles away was the bluest sky she’d ever seen, the clearest sea and lots of greenery.
There were three men including the pilot waiting in the Cessna for them. Felipe shook hands with them all and threw their names at her while she nodded a greeting and tried to convince herself that the sick feeling in her belly wasn’t fear that in twenty minutes they’d be landing in Caballeros.
‘Are you okay?’ Felipe asked once they were strapped in.
She jerked a nod. ‘I’m good.’
‘Is this your first visit to Caballeros?’ the man who’d been introduced as James asked in a broad Australian accent.
She nodded again.
He grinned. ‘Then I suggest you make the most of the beautiful Aguadillan scenery because where we’re going is a dump.’
She gave a bark of laughter at the unexpected comment.
‘Do these men all work for you?’ she asked Felipe in an undertone when they were in the air.
‘Yes. I’ve three more men posted around the governor’s residence. All my employees are ex-special forces. James and Seb have both been posted here before. You couldn’t be in better hands.’
‘You managed all this in one night?’ That was seriously impressive.
His dark brown eyes found hers. The strangest swooping sensation formed in her belly.
‘While we’re in Caballeros you’re in my care and under my protection. I take that seriously.’
His words made her veins warm.
Francesca took a breath and turned away to stare out of the small window. When she put a hand to her neck she was further disconcerted to find her pulse beating strongly, and closed her eyes in an attempt to temper it.
During their last hour on Pieta’s jet when she’d been working on her laptop, she hadn’t been able to resist doing some research on Felipe’s company. She supposed she should have done it before, when Daniele and Matteo had insisted Felipe’s men be employed to protect her, but the thought hadn’t occurred to her then.
What she’d learned had astounded her.
Matteo had said Felipe had earned a fortune from his business but she hadn’t realised how vast his enterprise actually was. In one decade he’d built a company that spanned the globe, employing hundreds of ex-military personnel from dozens of nationalities. The company’s assets were as startling, with jets of all shapes and sizes ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice, and communications equipment reputed to be so effective the military from Europe to the US now purchased it for their own soldiers.
She could laugh to think of the macho meathead she’d imagined him to be. Felipe Lorenzi owned a business worth billions, and had the arrogance to prove it.
He’d struck up conversation with his colleagues who were seated in front of them. Their words went over her head. Her eyes drifted back to him.
He really was heavenly to look at. The more she looked, the more she wanted to look.
Coming from a wealthy family of her own, she’d met and mixed with plenty of wealthy, handsome men in her time, but none like him, none who carried strength and danger like a second skin.
As he gave a low rumble of laughter at some wisecrack of James’s—shocking in itself as she hadn’t thought he could laugh—she found herself admiring the size of his biceps beneath the expensive fabric of his suit jacket.
Her gaze drifted lower, to the muscular thighs. They had to be at least twice the size of her own...
As if he could sense her attention on him, Felipe turned to look at her and in that moment, in that look, all the breath left her lungs and her mouth ran dry. Fresh heat flushed through her.
It was like being trapped. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the dark gaze before he gave a sharp blink and turned his focus back to his colleagues.
Francesca let out a slow, ragged breath and pressed her hand to her wildly beating heart.
Never mind being ruggedly handsome, Felipe Lorenzi was the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on.
What a shame he was also the most horrid.
* * *
Felipe had never thought he’d be pleased to land in Caballeros but as the Cessna touched down he sent a silent prayer of thanks.
He’d been busy chatting with James and Seb, the usual repartee, nothing important that couldn’t be said in front of an outsider, when he’d suddenly become intensely aware of the outsider. It had happened so quickly it had taken him unawares, a thickening in his loins, an electricity over his skin, a lazy wonder of how her lips would feel beneath his, of what she would taste like...
Then, just as quickly, he’d pushed the awareness away and focussed his mind as he’d spent almost two decades doing, dispelling anything that wasn’t central to the job at hand. An attraction to Francesca Pellegrini went straight into that category. Not central. Not even on the fringe. It couldn’t be.
It was no big deal. He’d dealt with unwanted attraction before without any problems. It really was a case of just focussing the mind on what was important and the only thing of importance was her safety.
But there had been something in the look she’d returned that made him think the attraction could be a two-way thing. He could handle it.
Francesca Pellegrini was off limits as a matter of course. Never mind his no-sex-with-the-clients stipulation with his employees—and if he were to enforce a rule then fair play meant he had to stick to those rules himself on the occasions he went out in the field—but she was grieving for her brother. He’d seen hardened men lose their minds with grief. He’d almost lost his mind with it once, the pain excruciating enough to know he never wanted to go through anything like it again. And he never would.
He’d spent his childhood effectively alone and where once he had yearned to escape the solitude, now he welcomed it. All his relationships, from the men he employed to the women he dated, were conducted at arm’s length.
‘Ready, boss?’ Seb asked, his hand on the door.
Like much of the island, Caballeros’ main airport had been badly damaged. Pellegrini money and Felipe’s own greasing of the wheels had ensured a safe strip for them to land on. Looking over Francesca’s shoulder to stare out of the window he could see for himself the extent of the damage. The terminal roof had been ripped off, windows shattered, piles of debris as far as the eye could see. Feet away from them lay a Boeing 737 on its side.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked Francesca quietly. She was staring frozenly out of the window, taking in the horror. ‘We can always rearrange the meeting.’
She lifted her shoulders and tilted her neck. ‘I’m not rearranging anything. Let’s go.’
CHAPTER THREE (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
THE DRIVER OF the waiting car, another of Felipe’s men, Francesca guessed, drove them carefully over roads thick with mud and so full of potholes she knew the damage had been pre-hurricane. Seb travelled with them, James staying in the Cessna with the pilot.
The Governor’s residence was to the north of the island, far from the city he ran, an area relatively unscathed by the hurricane. To reach it, though, meant travelling through San Pedro, the island’s capital, which along with the rest of the southern cities and towns had taken the brunt of the storm. She shivered to think this was the city she’d planned to stay in during her trip here.
They drove through towns that were only recognisable as such by the stacks of splintered wood and metal that had weeks before been the basis for people’s homes. Tarpaulin and holey blankets were raised for shelter to replace them. People crowded everywhere, old and young, naked children, shoeless pregnant women, people with obvious injuries but only makeshift bandages covering their wounds. Most stared at the passing car with dazed eyes; some had the energy to try to approach it, a few threw things at them.
At the first bottle to hit their car, Francesca ducked into her seat.
‘Don’t worry,’ Felipe said. ‘It’s bulletproof glass. Nothing can damage it.’
‘Where’s all the aid?’ she asked in bewilderment. ‘All the aid agencies that are supposed to be here?’
‘They’re concentrated to the south of the island. We just landed in the main airport and you saw the state of that. The other one is worse. They’re having to bring the aid in by ship. The neighbouring islands have done their best to help but they’re limited with what they can do as the hurricane struck so many of them too and the government isn’t helping as it should. That airport should be cleared. There’s much it should be doing but nothing’s happening. It’s a joke.’
By the time they arrived at the Governor’s compound Francesca was more determined than ever to get the hospital built, not just for her brother’s memory but for the poor people suffering from both the hurricane and its government’s incompetence in clearing up after it. She felt she could burst with determination.
The Governor’s residence was a sprawling white Spanish-style villa that made her hate him before she’d even laid eyes on him. There were armed guards everywhere protecting it, men who should be out on the streets clearing up the devastation.
As if reading her dark thoughts, Felipe stared at her until he had her attention.
His eyes were hard. ‘Keep your personal feelings for the Governor to yourself. You must show him respect or he will kick you out and never admit you again.’
‘How do I show respect to a man I already loathe?’
He shrugged. ‘You’re the one who wants to play the politician’s role. Fake it. You’ve read Alberto’s reports on Pieta’s old projects. Think what your brother would do and do that. You’re playing with the big boys now, Francesca. Or do I take you home?’
‘No,’ she rejected out of hand. ‘I can do this.’
‘You can fake respect?’
‘I will do whatever is needed.’
Breathing deeply, Francesca got out of the car and walked up the long marble steps to the front door with Felipe at her side, leaving Seb and the driver in the car.
‘Is there something wrong with your leg?’ she asked, noticing a slight limp.
‘Nothing serious,’ he dismissed, his attention on their surroundings. She had a feeling nothing escaped his scrutiny.
After being frisked and scanned with metal detectors, they were led into a large white reception room filled with huge vases of white flowers and lined with marble statues, and told to wait.
The sofa in the reception room was so pristinely white that Francesca wiped the back of her skirt before sitting.
When they were alone, she said in an undertone, ‘If this is the Governor’s home I dread to think how pretentious the President’s is.’
‘Be careful.’ Felipe leaned close to speak into her ear. ‘There are cameras everywhere recording everything we do and say.’
She didn’t know what unnerved her the most: knowing they were being spied on or Felipe’s breath warm against her ear. She caught his scent, which was as warm as his breath, an expensive spicy smell that filled her mouth with moisture and had her sitting rigidly beside him to stop herself leaning into him so she could sniff him properly.
Clasping her hands together, she focussed on a painting of a gleaming yacht on the wall opposite.
She could not let her body’s reactions to Felipe distract her from the job in hand. She’d spent her adult life rebuffing male advances. She’d turned down plenty of good-looking undergraduates at university, always with an appeasing smile and zero regret.
She hadn’t wanted the distraction of a romance—not that romance itself played much of a part in a student’s life—when she was determined to graduate with top honours. Sex and romance could wait until she was established in her career.
She sneaked a glance at the hands resting on the muscular lap beside hers. Like the rest of him they were big, the fingers long and calloused, the nails functionally short, nothing like the manicured digits the men at Pieta’s law firm sported. Felipe was all man. You only had to look at him to know a woman’s body was imprinted like a map in his memories.
A tall, lithe woman impeccably dressed in a white designer suit entered the room. The Governor was ready for them.
Pulling herself together, Francesca got to her feet, smoothed her jacket with hands that had suddenly gone clammy and picked up her laptop bag.
Her heart beat frantically, excitement and nerves fighting in her belly.
She could do this. She would do this. She would get the Governor’s agreement for the sale of the land. She would make Pieta proud and, in doing so, obtain his forgiveness.
* * *
Felipe felt undressed without his gun, which he’d left in the car with Seb. He didn’t expect any trouble in the Governor’s own home but could see the bulges in the suits of the guards who lined the walls of the ostentatious dining room they were taken to.
The Governor himself sat at the dining table alone, eating an orange that had been cut into segments for him. The tall woman who’d brought them in arranged herself a foot behind him.
He didn’t rise for his guests but gestured for them to sit.
Felipe hadn’t expected to like the man but neither had he expected the instant dislike that flashed through him.
‘My condolences about your brother,’ the Governor said in Spanish, addressing Francesca’s breasts. ‘I hear he was a great man.’
From the panicked look Francesca shot at him, Felipe guessed she didn’t speak his native tongue. Without missing a beat, he made the translation.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, smiling at the Governor as if having a lecherous sixty-year-old ogle her whilst speaking of her dead brother was perfectly acceptable. ‘Do you speak Italian or English?’
‘No,’ he replied in English, before switching back to Spanish to address Felipe. ‘You are her bodyguard?’
‘I’m here as Miss Pellegrini’s translator and advisor,’ he answered smoothly, avoiding giving a direct lie.
The Governor put a large segment of orange in his mouth. ‘I understand she wants to build a hospital in my city.’
Felipe smothered his distaste at being spoken to by someone chewing food. ‘She does, yes. I believe her brother had already been in contact with your office about the land it could be built on.’
He sensed Francesca’s agitation at being cut out of her own meeting. She had the air of a pet straining at its leash. He shot her a warning look. Calm down.
Another segment went into the wide mouth, the gaze fixing back on Francesca’s breasts as if he were trying to see through the respectable clothing she wore. From the gleam in his beady eyes he was mentally undressing her. From the angry colour staining her face she knew it too but the quick look she threw at him told him to say nothing.
‘Two hundred thousand dollars.’
‘Is that for the land?’
The mouth still full of orange smiled. ‘That is for me. The land itself is another two hundred thousand. All in cash.’
Felipe stared hard at Francesca as he made the translation, sending another warning to her with his eyes. He would have spoken his warnings but was damn sure the Governor spoke perfect English.
To his incredulity she agreed without a second’s thought or consideration.
‘Done.’
‘The hospital is to have my name.’
Here she hesitated. Felipe knew why—she wanted to name it after her brother.
The Governor saw the hesitation. ‘Either it has my name or permission is denied.’
Felipe translated again, adopting a harder edge to his voice in the vain hope she would pick up on it, slow down and negotiate properly.
But she was too keen to get the agreement made to see the danger she was walking into.
‘Tell the Governor we will be honoured to name it after him,’ she said in a tone so grateful Felipe braced himself for the Governor to pick up on it and demand even more from her.
A full mouth of pristine white teeth beamed. ‘Then it is a deal. I am having a party here next Saturday.’ That was a full week away. ‘Bring her to it. I’ll have the documents ready for you. Tell her to bring the cash.’ He snapped his fingers and the tall woman stepped forward. ‘Escort my guests back to their car. They’re leaving.’
As they stood, Francesca, full of smiles, said, ‘Please give my thanks to the Governor for his co-operation.’
She virtually skipped with joy out of the villa.
Only when they were safely in the back of the car and out of the compound did Felipe turn on her.
‘What are you playing at?’ he demanded. ‘Where was the negotiation? And what were you thinking agreeing to pay a bribe?’
The smile on her face fell. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘You’ve agreed to pay a cash bribe. You’ve agreed to bring in four hundred thousand dollars into the Caribbean’s poorest country. Can’t you see what’s wrong with that? Can’t you see the danger?’
‘I’ve done what needed to be done,’ she said defiantly. ‘Thank you for making the translations, but you’re being paid to protect me and advise on my security. If I want your input with anything else, I’ll let you know.’
This was exactly what Daniele and Matteo had warned him about. Francesca was so determined to get the hospital built in Pieta’s memory that she was a danger to herself.
Francesca didn’t understand why Felipe was being so negative. The meeting had gone a hundred times better than she’d expected. She’d expected to be drilled for hours about the hospital itself, its capabilities and the number of people they hoped to be able to treat. She’d made sure to have all the relevant figures and documents ready for him but in the end it had boiled down to one simple thing: money. And Pieta’s philanthropic foundation had plenty of it.
Felipe was taking his job as protector too far.
‘What about your career?’ he ground out. ‘Did you think about that? Do you want it ruined before it’s even started?’
Excited that they were heading straight to the site the hospital would be built on, his words took a moment to sink in. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘If word gets out that you paid a bribe to the Governor of San Pedro your career will be over. Lawyers are supposed to be on the side of the law.’
Dear God, that hadn’t even occurred to her.
She swayed in her seat as hot dizziness poured into her head. For one dreadful moment she really thought she was going to faint.
In her eagerness to get the site signed over to the foundation, it hadn’t crossed her mind that she could be jeopardising her career by paying the Governor’s bribe.
‘Pieta paid bribes,’ she said, more to herself and for her own mitigation.
‘No, your brother was always smart enough not to pay them and not as openly as you’re doing and not verbally with secret cameras recording every word said. He would never have put himself or his foundation in such jeopardy. He acted with discretion and had other people pay any bribe through intermediaries. You should know that.’
‘I would if anyone had ever told me. It wasn’t in any of the files.’ But it wouldn’t have been, she realised, her blood running colder still. Alberto had told her to prepare to ‘grease the wheels’ with the Governor but Alberto had been half crazed with grief and there had been nothing written down and for good reason; who would be stupid enough to leave a paper trail advertising law-breaking, even if for good reasons and intentions? ‘Why didn’t you tell me seeing as you know so much?’
She’d been so proud and relieved to have got the Governor’s agreement that she’d been oblivious to anything else.
‘I assumed you did know. I could hardly tell you in the middle of the meeting—’
‘We’re being followed.’ It was Seb’s voice that cut through their angry exchange.
Felipe turned to look out of the back window.
‘Black Mondeo.’
‘I see it.’
Felipe’s left hand gripped Francesca’s shoulder, preventing her from turning to look too.
‘Keep down,’ he said tautly.
‘But...’
A silver gun appeared in his right hand.
‘What do you need that for?’ she virtually screeched.
‘Someone’s following us.’
‘How do you know that?’ she asked, her eyes on his gun. ‘They might just be travelling the same route as us.’
His eyes were hard. ‘It’s my job to know and if I don’t know then I don’t take risks. Now hold on.’
The hand that had been holding her shoulder moved so his arm covered her chest like an additional seat belt. A second later she learned why when Seb put his foot down.
She only just held back a scream when she found them suddenly hurtling along the bumpy roads. Caballeros passed by in a blur, the roads narrowing and deteriorating the further south they travelled.
When they missed hitting an oncoming truck by inches, she squeezed her eyes shut and clung to Felipe’s arm and didn’t let go until with a squeal of brakes the car came to a stop.
‘You can look now, we’re at the airport,’ Felipe said, his voice tight. ‘We’ve lost them.’
She let go and was pleased to see him wince as he shook the arm she’d been holding with the grip of a boa constrictor. The gun was still nestled comfortably in his right hand.
‘On what planet is travelling at a hundred miles an hour over potholed narrow roads keeping me safe?’ she demanded, all the contained fear spewing out in one swoop. ‘We could have been killed!’
Her door opened and James stood there, a big grin on his face. ‘That looked like some ride.’
‘Your colleague’s a maniac.’
‘Who? Seb? Don’t worry about him, he’s done an advanced motoring course.’
‘Shut up, James,’ Felipe bit out, then to Francesca said, ‘I’m sorry if we scared you but I did warn you of the dangers.’
‘You warned me of kidnap and robbery. You said nothing about a car ride turning into the rollercoaster ride from hell. You said nothing about being armed.’
‘Would you have preferred we let them catch us? Should I have asked them nicely why they were following us and what they wanted? Should I arm myself with a feather duster to protect you?’
‘Well...no...’
‘Then let’s get in the plane before they find us and tell us in person what they want.’
‘We’re supposed to be going to the hospital site.’
‘That can wait.’
‘But...’
The look on his face stopped her arguing further. It was a look that spoke plainly. If she didn’t get out of the car and onto the plane right now he would carry her to it.
The adrenaline racing through her peaked to imagine what it would be like carried in his arms...
Humiliating, that’s what it would be, carted off like a recalcitrant child.
Jutting her chin in the air, she twisted round and got out, snubbing James’s offered hand.
‘I don’t know why you’re ignoring me, I wasn’t in the car,’ he complained.
She couldn’t help but smile weakly at his boyish charm even though he too had a gun in his hand. ‘Shut up, James.’
‘Yes, shut up, James,’ Felipe muttered as he followed her, scrutinising their surroundings, his hand on her back, ready to throw himself on her should anything happen.
His heart still pounded from the adrenaline surge of the race back to the airport and he was as angry about that as he was about Francesca’s idiocy. Adrenaline was part of the job—for most of them it was the job—but not like that.
Only when they were airborne did he put the gun back in his inside jacket pocket.
He’d seen Francesca’s fear when he’d produced it.
Good.
Fear could be a useful tool provided one knew how to control it. She had controlled her fear well enough, he admitted grudgingly, but she had to learn her safety wasn’t a game. There would be no compromises in that regard.
He closed his eyes and breathed welcome oxygen into his lungs.
He hadn’t experience a charge like that since the hostage situation a decade ago that had ended in such destruction and his own medical discharge from the forces.
* * *
When they landed back in the safety of Aguadilla, Francesca found she could breathe again. Caballeros had frightened her more than she wanted to admit. The guns Felipe and his men carried frightened her too; a physical reminder of the danger Daniele and Matteo had been so keen to ram into her but which she had naively thought they were exaggerating.
Felipe took the wheel, taking them through rural byways where coconut sellers lined the road and men sat at tables playing board games. One minute they were driving through what looked like jungle, the next in the open air with the Caribbean Sea gleaming before them, then back into the jungle. Twenty minutes after they left the airport, they pulled up outside a pretty single-storey lodge.
‘This looks nice,’ she said, attempting a conciliatory tone at the rigid figure driving the car who hadn’t exchanged a word with anyone since they’d left the airport.
Now that her adrenaline had settled she could appreciate that a combination of her fear and the awful realisation that she’d screwed up had made her come across as a spoilt brat. Felipe and Seb had done nothing more in the car than they were being paid for—keeping her safe. And Felipe had tried to warn her in the meeting, she remembered. But they’d been non-verbal warnings she’d ignored in her determination to seal the deal.
She would have to apologise.
‘This is where we’re slumming it,’ James said, his eyes twinkling.
‘Hardly slumming it,’ she protested. ‘It’s charming.’
‘Nah, not you. Seb and I have to slum it while you and grumpy here get to live it up in a seven-star paradise up the road. Don’t party too hard.’
Both men slammed the doors behind them, leaving her in the back alone with Felipe up front.
He switched the engine back on.
‘Hold on, I’ll come and sit up front with you,’ she said, but found the door wouldn’t open. ‘Have you turned the child lock on?’
He turned the car round, saying, ‘Put your seat belt back on, we’ll be there in a few minutes.’
She slumped back and folded her arms, her warmed feelings towards him disappearing in an instant at his arrogant highhandedness.
‘“Put your seat belt back on,”’ she mimicked under her breath. ‘“Don’t do this, don’t do that, just do exactly as I say.”’
He could forget an apology.
Not even the long private driveway dotted with security guards that opened up to reveal their perfectly named Eden Hotel could lift her mood, or the thought of calling Daniele with the good news. When the contracts were signed a week from now he’d fly over and check the site and get the architectural plans, which he’d promised to get started on, finalised.
But she would have to tell him too about her foolishness. He would be rightly furious with her. She was furious with herself.
She followed Felipe out of the car and into the sweet air, and hurried to follow him into the hotel.
And what a hotel it was. Francesca had stayed in many luxury resorts with her family while growing up but nowhere that could compare to this. The Eden Hotel was like a tall, sprawling villa set back from its own private sandy cove, its pristine white fascia covered in all manner of colourful climbing flowers and vines.
It oozed money, a feeling compounded when she stepped into a giant oval atrium with a waterfall as a centrepiece that managed to be both bustling with life yet utterly serene, evoking the sense of calm she so desperately needed. It made the Governor’s residence seem like a trifling town hall.
Felipe strolled to the horseshoe-shaped reception desk and used the time spent checking in getting a handle on the turbulence still coursing through him. All he wanted was to get into the privacy of his suite before he said or did something he regretted.
Once they’d been given their respective keys he said, without looking at the woman who’d caused all the turbulence, ‘Your luggage has been taken to your suite. I’ll meet you in here after breakfast on Monday...’
‘Monday?’
‘None of the officials you want to see will be available tomorrow. Not on a Sunday.’
‘But Caballeros is in a state of emergency!’
‘Have you made any appointments?’
‘Not yet,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I didn’t want to get ahead of myself before I got the Governor’s agreement. I’m planning to call everyone on my list when I get to my room.’
‘They won’t see you tomorrow. For all its faults Caballeros is a religious country and Sunday is considered a day of rest so we will meet on Monday.’
‘If I can get appointments made for tomorrow then we go back tomorrow.’
‘We go back on Monday.’ He stared hard at her angry face. ‘You can use tomorrow to do some proper research on what you’re dealing with and be fully prepared.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The contract I signed was to provide you with protection for five days only. The Governor wants his bribe next Saturday, a week from now. If you want my agreement to stay the extra days then you need to stop acting like a brat, meaning you need to slow down and get your head straight before you make any more slip-ups. The deeds to the site aren’t yours yet and the way I’m feeling right now I could call your brother and tell him his fears have come true and that you’re a danger to yourself and should go home. Buenas noches.’
As he strode away, leaving her open-mouthed behind him, knowing perfectly well that only the threat of him calling her brother was stopping her from shouting at him and calling him all the names under the sun, he thought a day of rest would do him good too.
One day in Francesca Pellegrini’s company and he was ready to punch walls.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
A PORTER SHOWED Francesca to her room, where her luggage was already waiting for her.
She’d assumed she’d be staying in one of the cheap rooms—if a hotel of this magnificence had anything that could be regarded as cheap—but found herself in a ground-floor suite so large, airy and luxurious she could only ogle in wonder.
She’d thought James had been joking about them staying in a seven-star hotel and while she was thrilled to be here in this sun-drenched paradise, she was worried enough to temporarily forget all the ways she’d been imagining inflicting pain on Felipe Lorenzi, the horrible, arrogant, patronising man.
She knew what a blunder she’d made but he acted as if she were the only person to have ever made one.
In one respect he was right. She did need to slow down and get her head straight.
Pulling her phone out of her bag, she called Daniele. This time he answered. He took the good news about the agreement for the site with muted enthusiasm. The only real animation from him came when she asked—nicely—if he would sack Felipe and get another security firm to take over her protection. He laughed. ‘I told you that you wouldn’t be able to wrap him around your little finger. He stays.’ And then he disconnected the call before she could confess about the bribe.
She rubbed her eyes. Maybe it was best to leave it a couple of days before telling him. She didn’t think she could handle any more rebukes that day. But Felipe was bound to tell him...
She could scream. What a mess she’d made of things.
Had she really? She’d gone to Caballeros to get the Governor’s agreement and had achieved it. The hospital would be built. And she understood the foundation had paid bribes in the past. She just needed to speak to Alberto and discuss how it could be done without endangering the foundation. Or her career.
Knowing her emotions were too charged to think clearly enough to make any further calls, she selected a bottle of white wine from the fully stocked bar, poured herself a large glass and took it into the bathroom so she could have a long soak in the enormous jetted bath.
It was too late to change hotels now. She might as well enjoy it for tonight and see about getting them moved to a cheaper hotel in the morning.
But instead of relaxing like she so wanted, her mind refused to switch off. Everywhere she looked, from the gold taps to the marble flooring, increased her worry. This hotel was too much.
With a sigh, she got out and dried herself, dressed quickly and put a call through to reception.
‘Can you tell me what room Felipe Lorenzi’s staying in, please?’ she asked. ‘We’re under the same booking but I can’t remember his number.’ She crossed her fingers as she gave the little fib.
When the number was relayed she gave a little start. ‘Room fourteen?’ she confirmed.
That was right next to hers.
Her heart hammering for no reason at all, Francesca decided to just go for it and slipped out of her room to knock on the one next door.
He answered on the second knock, opening the door a crack. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Can I come in for a minute?’ she asked, matching his frosty tone. All she could see of him was the shadow of his face.
He paused before answering. ‘I’m about to take a shower.’
‘I want to change hotels.’
‘Why?’
‘A hotel like this is expensive.’
‘The cost of the hotel does not concern you.’
‘It does. People work hard to raise funds for Pieta’s foundation and give generously to it.’
‘Do they give generously to pay bribes?’
‘That’s a necessity,’ she protested. ‘I know I went about it in the wrong way but you know as well as I that we wouldn’t get permission to build the hospital without it. It isn’t right to waste the funds on something as frivolous as a luxury hotel. Somewhere like where James and Seb are staying would be far more appropriate.’
The little of his face she could see darkened and when he replied it was in clipped tones. ‘The foundation isn’t paying.’
That alarmed her. ‘Then who is? I can’t afford it on my salary and I can’t—’
‘You’re not paying either,’ he cut in impatiently.
‘Who is footing it?’ It came to her in an instant. ‘Daniele! He loves flashing his money and—’
‘Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?’ Felipe cut in again, not making any attempt to hide his irritation. ‘Only I’m standing here without any clothes on and would like to take my shower, so if you don’t mind...’
Francesca was unable to halt the mental image of him naked shooting like a spring lamb into her mind.
Oh, dear heavens...
He was naked.
‘Was there anything else?’ he repeated curtly.
He was naked.
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll see you on Monday.’
Francesca stood before his closed door for a long time, her hand at her throat, her pulse beating like a hummingbird’s wings beneath her fingers.
* * *
Felipe shaved his neck and trimmed his beard for the first time in three weeks.
It was guilt, he knew, that made his concentration waver enough for him to nick himself with the razor.
Guilt had been rising in him since he’d dismissed Francesca from the door of his suite.
He’d never had such problems with a client before and he’d had many clients and jobs that had been a hundred times harder to manage than Francesca and this particular job. His last job in the forces had been a thousand times harder.
No, this was him. Like it or not, he damned well was attracted to her and somehow he had to find a way to manage it without letting it affect their working relationship. It already was affecting it. Affecting him.
He expected his clients to obey him and his men without question. It was in the terms of any contract. Clients signed it knowing their lives were being placed in his hands. His clients, though, were, on the whole, heads of international organisations and other VIPs, the only common denominator between them being that they were travelling somewhere dangerous.
He had drilled it into his men that they were only employed for protection. They were not advisors or aides. Their client’s business was not theirs.
The risks Francesca was taking by agreeing to pay the bribe were none of his concern and she was correct that Pieta himself had paid them, although with far more discretion than she’d employed. Felipe had turned a blind eye to much worse before and had no doubt he would turn a blind eye to much worse in the future.
He couldn’t fathom why it angered him so much to see her taking the kind of risks that had never concerned him from anyone else.
She’d turned up at his door while he’d been buck naked, her long hair damp, her beautiful face free from make-up, a long blue summer dress on with her pretty toes peeking out at the bottom and a hint of cleavage showing...
He’d become aroused just looking at her. He’d had to grip the door handle with one hand and press the wall tightly with the other to stop himself pulling her into his room and throwing her onto the bed.
This had only fired the anger already coursing through him.
After he’d closed the door he’d stood there for too long, not moving, just trying to quell his arousal, trying to ignore that her suite was adjacent to his.
A day off from her would be a blessing, especially as their time together had been extended to a whole week. He had to remember she was grieving and that grief made people act in wayward ways. She needed his help and support, not his condemnation and anger.
But God alone knew how he was going to cope with a week of her company without either throttling her or bedding her.
* * *
The early morning was so bright that one peek through the curtains lifted a little of the despondency in Francesca’s heart. The hotel’s ground staff were already up and about, weeding and watering the abundant blooming flowers, hosing the pathways, many yawning.
She yawned in sympathy but didn’t consider going back to bed. More sleep was the last thing she wanted. Sleep brought dreams and the ones she’d had during the night were still horribly vivid. Pieta had been sitting at the small kitchen table in her apartment in Pisa. She’d made him a coffee and laughed as she’d told him she’d thought he’d died. He’d laughed too and said it had been a misunderstanding. And then he’d stopped laughing and said he knew the truth about how she’d reacted when told he’d died.
She’d awoken muttering into her sopping wet pillow that she was sorry, sorry, sorry, over and over.
For some reason Felipe had been in the background of those dreams too.
She wiped fresh tears away with the palm of her hand.
She needed to get a grip on herself and get her head back to where it had been before she’d fallen asleep with her face buried in the thick file Alberto had given her before she’d left Pisa. She’d sat on the huge bed to re-read it, determined that from now on all her actions would be above board. She would be prepared for any situation that came her way. She would not do anything else that could jeopardise her career or Pieta’s foundation.
After dressing she made her way to the main hotel restaurant, where she was the first to be seated for breakfast. She didn’t want to be on her own. She’d ordered room service the night before and stayed in her suite. Now she craved company.
There was no company to be found here, though. All the other guests were still sleeping. Even if they’d been up she would still have been alone. This wasn’t a hotel for the solo traveller.
There was one other solo traveller staying here too, she reminded herself glumly, but he didn’t want her company. He didn’t even like her, that much was patently obvious.
And she didn’t like him. The less she had to do with Felipe Lorenzi the happier she’d be and today she didn’t have to deal with him at all.
She managed to avoid him until early afternoon.
She’d returned to her suite to start calling the names of the officials she’d need to meet for the hospital development. Half the numbers were either wrong or their phone lines had been disconnected by the hurricane. The others were, as Felipe had predicted, taking a day of rest and had no wish to speak to her, telling her to call back tomorrow. Only the Blue Train Aid Agency, the only aid agency to be up and running in Caballeros, had been available to talk. The worker she spoke to, Eva Bergen, had been full of enthusiasm for the project and readily agreed to meet her the next day. Eva’s experience in the country would be tremendously useful and Francesca ended the call feeling much better about everything. So much better that she decided to buy a swimsuit from one of the hotel’s exclusive boutiques and go for a swim.
There were four pools to choose from. Opting for the huge rectangular one, she swam a few laps then settled on a sun lounger with her book, shades on to keep the glare of the sun from her eyes.
But she couldn’t settle. The words on the page blurred into a mass as she found her thoughts constantly drifting, not to the forthcoming week and everything it entailed but to her protector. In truth he’d been in her thoughts constantly.
She was glad of the book, though, when she spotted the tall figure in the tight black swim-shorts walk to the other side of the pool to where she lay, a towel slung over his shoulder.
If she wasn’t already on hyper-alert to any sign of him she would still have noticed him. She doubted there was a woman poolside whose eye he didn’t catch, young and old alike.
Quickly she raised her book so it covered her face, hoping it was enough to hide her.
Please don’t let him see her.
The next time she faced him she wanted to be fully dressed and feeling confident in herself, not wearing a two-piece swimsuit that would put her at a further disadvantage.
Like it or not, she was stuck with him for the coming week and had no idea how she was going to get through it without slapping his arrogant, handsome face.
Pretending to be engrossed in her novel, she couldn’t resist a surreptitious glance and found him at the edge of the pool, testing the temperature of the water with his toes.
Even with the distance between them his muscular beauty made her breath catch in her throat. All thoughts of hiding disappeared as she drank in the magnificence Felipe’s clothing had only hinted at.
His darkly tanned skin gleamed under the bright afternoon sun, his chest broad and muscular, a light smattering of hair across the pecs thickening the lower they went over an abdomen she just knew would be hard to the touch.
With a grace that belied his size and muscularity, he dived in.
She heard the distinct sound of a woman sucking in a breath. It took a few beats to realise the sound had come from her.
His arms powered him to the far side then he rolled in the water and swam fluidly back.
Back and forth he went, streaking through the pool as if he’d been born to water, born to swim.
She couldn’t tear her eyes from him. It was as if she’d been hypnotised.
She lost count of how many laps he swam before hauling himself out.
The ache that had steadily formed while she’d watched turned into a throb to see water drip from his body and she almost forgot she was trying to hide from him.
Shoving her book back over her face, she closed her eyes and took some long breaths in an attempt to get her heart rate back to one that didn’t make her fear it would beat out of her chest.
Only when she opened her eyes again did she notice she was holding her book upside down. When she next peeked over it, Felipe had gone.
* * *
Fifty laps of the swimming pool and Felipe still felt wired.
Eight years in the forces had taught him to snatch sleep wherever he could. He’d slept without any problem leaning against jagged rocks, under prickly shrubs, in trenches of mud, with gun fire ringing in the distance, yet put him in a four-poster bed in a sweet-scented suite for a power nap and sleep remained stubborn. It had been stubborn all night.
It was that damned woman in the suite next door who was the cause of it.
He’d spent the morning working out tactics for the next few days, sending his plans over to James and Seb and his men situated on Caballeros.
He would feel better if he knew what those men who’d followed them had wanted but they’d proved harder to find than sleep.
Two more of his men were, at that moment, en route to Caballeros. When he returned there with Francesca in the morning there would be eyes and ears everywhere, keeping watch. Keeping her safe.
Felipe rubbed his eyes, sighed and swung his legs off the bed.
The guilt at his anger towards her had grown and his self-chastisement with it.
Control and discipline were the two most important elements needed for his job. He’d learned both in the forces and had carried it through to his business. He demanded the men he employed have the same qualities. When danger was rife, keeping a cool head was a necessity even when, as he’d learned to his bitter cost, it wasn’t always enough.
He’d lost that cool head with Francesca.
He’d overstepped the mark. He would have to apologise. That had been his intention before he’d left his suite for a swim. He would do his fifty laps then seek her out and apologise.
She’d been at the poolside. He’d seen her the moment he’d stepped onto the tiles surrounding the pool, spotting her as she pulled a book over her face, pretending not to have seen him.
He’d swum his lengths with more vigour than usual, pounding the water as if the strokes could sweep away the image of Francesca on a recliner wearing nothing but a tiny pale yellow bikini.
Dios, she had curves that could make a man weep.
He’d sensed her watching his every stroke.
When he’d finished, he hadn’t been able to resist another look while he’d dried himself. She’d been holding her book over her face again.
With the tell-tale tingles of arousal curling through his loins, he’d beaten a hasty retreat back to his suite and taken a cool shower.
Apologising could wait.
He couldn’t entertain the thought of knocking on her suite door. That would be putting temptation in his path when he needed to divert around it.
It was standard practice to sleep in the adjacent room to the client. He’d arranged with the hotel manager to beef up the hotel’s already tight security, the memory of the black Mondeo that had followed them hovering in the background of his mind a constant presence. Here, in this hotel, Francesca was safe. But not safe enough for him to contemplate changing suites to one on the other side of the complex, even though his every sinew strained to run.
Not wanting to be stuck with his own morose company and already bored with room service, he donned a pair of smart black chinos and a grey shirt, and decided to check out one of the hotel’s many restaurants.
There were half a dozen eateries to choose from. The only one that appealed was the Mediterranean Restaurant and Bar, which seemed the most informal of them and promised live music.
If he could have chosen anywhere he would have found an American diner and eaten the largest burger on the menu but he didn’t want to drive. He wanted to surround himself with people, eat and then sleep.
The restaurant was busy. A bar covered one wall while a small stage and dance area was set up on the wall opposite.
A waiter led him to an available table and as they went through the room Felipe spotted a lone figure sitting at a table tucked away in the corner, reading a menu.
His heart managed to sink and leap at the same moment, and in that same moment Francesca gazed absently around the room and found him. There was one quick blink before she put her head back down.
He rubbed the back of his neck. At the pool it had been easy for them both to pretend they hadn’t see each other but now there was no avoiding her.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
‘DO YOU WANT some company?’ Felipe asked when he reached her. She wore a pretty floral dress with tiny straps. He caught a glimpse of thigh.
Francesca eyed him warily then gave a small nod.
He took the chair the waiter held out for him and sat down, noting the tall multi-coloured cocktail glass with an umbrella and straw in it. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Tequila Sunrise. Do you want one?’
‘I’ll stick to beer. Have you ordered?’
‘I’m still making my mind up.’
The waiter scuttled off to get Felipe’s beer.
Opening his menu, he watched Francesca studiously read hers, her teeth gnawing at her bottom lip.
‘Have you had a good day?’ he asked conversationally.
She shrugged but didn’t look at him, reaching for her drink with a hand that shook. ‘I’ve had worse.’ She took a long drink through the straw.
‘This isn’t an easy time for you,’ he observed, knowing it to be an understatement. She’d buried her brother only a few days before.
Her shoulders rose in another shrug and to his horror he watched her blink frantically in an attempt to hold back glistening tears.
She yanked her napkin and dabbed at her eyes, laughing morosely. ‘Look, Felipe, you don’t have to eat with me. I know you’re just being polite. If you want to find another table, I won’t care.’
‘No.’ Feeling like a complete ass, he ran his fingers through his hair and stared at her until she met his gaze. ‘I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you.’
That surprised her. She took another drink of her cocktail, the light of the candle flickering off her eyes.
Eventually she said in a small voice, ‘Have you spoken to Daniele about what happened yesterday with the Governor?’
‘No.’ He’d thought long and hard about it but had come to the conclusion that while she’d acted rashly, his condemnation had been too harsh. Francesca had been appalled when he’d pointed out the danger she’d put her career and the foundation in but it seemed she was far angrier with herself than he could be. She deserved the chance to see it through.
She closed her eyes. ‘Thank you. I think I was overwrought yesterday. It’s not an excuse but I’ve not been sleeping well since Pieta died and all that’s been keeping me going is the thought of getting this hospital built. I promise I’ll be considered in my approach from now on.’
‘Why don’t we draw a line through yesterday?’ he suggested gently. ‘Forget any cross words and start again?’
‘I would like that,’ she whispered. Reaching again for her napkin, she dabbed some more at her eyes then rolled her neck, took a deep breath, straightened and flashed him a smile that made his heart turn over. ‘What are you going to eat? Seeing as Daniele’s footing the bill, I’m going to select the most expensive items on the menu.’
Before he could correct her assumption, as he should have done the day before, she said, ‘Have you met him?’
‘Daniele?’
She nodded.
‘I met him a few years ago in Paris with his girlfriend. Pieta introduced us.’
The bleak veil cloaking her since he’d joined her lifted in its entirety.
‘Girlfriend? Daniele?’ She leant forward, eyes alight. ‘He’s never had a girlfriend. Lots of scandalous flings, though.’
He shrugged. ‘She was with him. I assumed she was his girlfriend. They acted like a couple.’
‘Daniele with a girlfriend? That’s amazing. Pieta knew they were together?’
‘I assumed so.’
The waiter returned with Felipe’s beer so they ordered their food and Francesca quickly finished her cocktail and ordered another.
‘What were you all doing in Paris?’ she asked when they were alone again.
‘Attending a party at the US Embassy.’
‘What did you think of Daniele?’
‘Very different from Pieta.’ He looked at her shrewdly. ‘I would say you’re more like him.’
‘More like Daniele?’
‘Pieta was intense and thoughtful.’ At her darkening colour he added, ‘You’ve an energy about you. You’re impulsive and, I think, competitive. Daniele struck me as the same.’
She nodded slowly, her pupils moving fast as she thought. ‘Yes. Daniele’s highly competitive. He has to be first with everything and he hates losing.’
‘And you? Am I right that you’re also competitive?’
She grinned. ‘I grew up wanting to be better than my brothers in everything.’
‘Have you ever beaten them?’
‘My aim throughout my education was to smash all their exam results.’ She gave a mischievous smile. ‘Which I achieved. It was very fulfilling. I even skipped a year. I like to tell people I’m the clever one of the family.’
Not so clever when it came to negotiating and agreeing bribes, he thought but didn’t say. For the first time since they’d met they’d found relative harmony and he wasn’t ready to break it.
‘But when it comes to true competitiveness, Daniele’s worse,’ she continued. ‘He’s ferocious.’
‘Has he always been like that?’
‘As long as I’ve been alive. He grew up knowing the family wealth would pass on to Pieta—’
‘Only to Pieta?’
‘The oldest inherits the estate. It’s always been like that, for centuries. Pieta inherited when our father died.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘She has rights to the income during her lifetime but the physical assets transferred directly to Pieta.’
‘Will it go to Daniele now?’
‘Everything that’s family wealth will so long as Natasha isn’t pregnant.’
‘Do you think she could be?’
‘I don’t know and none of us can bear to ask her. It would be cruel. We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘So if she is pregnant...?’
‘Then we have the first in the next generation of Pellegrinis.’ A sad smile played on her lips. ‘If it’s a boy he will inherit, if it’s a girl then Daniele will inherit.’
‘That doesn’t sound fair.’
‘Natasha will inherit Pieta’s personal wealth whether she’s pregnant or not. She will have enough to provide for a child and we will all love and cherish it whatever its gender.’
‘And what do you get from your family estate?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not right either.’
‘Right or not, that’s how it is.’
‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’ He didn’t know why he was asking. Francesca’s personal life was none of his concern.
Her second cocktail was brought to the table and she took it with a grateful smile and immediately sucked half of it up her straw. Done, she put the glass on the table. ‘It’s not just the wealth that’s inherited, it’s the responsibility. I was glad not to have it as it meant I could do whatever I wanted with my life without having to consider anyone else and, believe me, the life I’ve chosen is very different to the one expected for me.’
‘In what way?’
She pulled a rueful face. ‘I was expected to marry young and have babies, like all the women in my family have done for generations. It isn’t supposed to matter that us weak females don’t inherit anything because we’re supposed to be provided for by our husbands.’
‘You didn’t want that?’
‘I wanted to provide for myself and have a career, like my brothers.’ The thought of being a kept woman filled Francesca with horror. Her mother had inherited money but had blithely given it to her husband to invest for her, believing herself too stupid to manage it herself.
She remembered being a small child and her mother casually asking her father for money to buy some new shoes. It had been a nothing incident, her father going straight into his wallet and handing the money over, but it had crystallised in Francesca’s mind as the years passed. What if he’d said no? What would her mother have done then? Why should her mother not manage her own money? And why should she, Francesca, not be expected to go out and make a living of her own just because she was born a girl? Why could she not be like her brothers?
‘I’ve no idea how Daniele will handle having the future of the Pellegrini family on his shoulders if it comes to it,’ she carried on, shrugging off the old memories. ‘He was so competitive with Pieta that he drove himself to make a fortune that was twice what Pieta would have inherited just to show that he could, but was able to live his life as he wanted without the responsibilities Pieta had. If he does inherit he’ll have to marry so he’ll say goodbye to his freedom too.’
Francesca’s chest tightened, all this talk of her family reminding her of her mother stumbling at Pieta’s funeral. She’d spoken to her briefly the night before, letting her know she’d arrived in the Caribbean safely. Her mother had been too used to Francesca’s stubbornness to try and talk her out of going but had made her swear she wouldn’t put herself in any unnecessary danger.
‘Forget your brothers, I’m curious about you. Do you even have a trust fund?’
‘No, but all my education was paid for and I never wanted for anything when I was growing up. That’s enough for me. I want to forge my own life.’ One where she didn’t have to ask for money to buy essentials.
‘By following in Pieta’s footsteps?’ he said with obvious scepticism.
She paused, considering. ‘There are—were—no better footsteps for me to follow in but don’t think I wanted to make myself into his female clone. I saw the good Pieta was doing with his law degree and wanted to do it too.’
‘Corporate law?’
She grimaced. ‘No. I meant how he used it for the benefit of his philanthropy. Corporate law was a means to an end for him and that’s what it is for me while I complete my traineeship.’
‘What will you do when you’re fully qualified?’
‘I’m going to specialise in human rights.’ She looked back up at him, straining to stifle the lump pressing in her chest. ‘Can we stop talking about me and my family now? Just talk about nonsense? Otherwise I’m going to embarrass both of us by crying.’
* * *
A couple of hours later, Francesca’s belly was full and her melancholy gone. The quick meal she’d intended to have before retiring to the unwelcome solitude of her suite had extended over three courses.
As time had passed, her animosity towards Felipe had melted, which she thought the handful of cocktails she’d consumed might have helped with.
A jazz band was playing on the stage, thankfully uplifting tunes, and there was a buzzing atmosphere she’d enthusiastically embraced. After the trauma of the past week it felt good to be letting her hair down. The gorgeous company helped.
Felipe was proving to be not quite the dictator she’d painted in her mind. But still arrogant, although not in the entitled way most men she’d come across in her life were. Felipe’s arrogance came with an authority earned and built over an adulthood of having orders obeyed without question.
His apology had shocked her. She’d never known a man to apologise before, was quite sure the word ‘sorry’ didn’t exist in any of the male Pellegrinis’ vocabulary. Or her own, she had to admit.
She thought the more of him for it. A man who could hold his hands up when he was in the wrong without emasculating himself only soared in her estimation.
Francesca knew she could be pig-headed. It wasn’t a part of her character she liked and, while in her head she would want to be saying sorry for whatever mishap or argument she’d caused or contributed to, her tongue would stubbornly resist.
Idly she wondered if Felipe’s authority extended to the bedroom. What sort of lover would he be? She’d seen hints of fire beneath the calm, authoritative exterior—that fire had been aimed firmly at herself—and imagining those strong hands touching her made her skin tingle. What would it be like to have those intense dark eyes staring into hers in the height of passion...? Her lower belly clenched just to imagine it, the intensity of it shocking her.
She’d never had thoughts like these before.
Once their desserts were cleared away she ordered them Irish coffees.
She laughed at his arched eyebrow. ‘It’s not that late,’ she defended.
‘I’m more concerned about your head in the morning.’
She waved a hand airily. ‘My head will be fine. I’ve not drunk that much.’
He fixed her with a stare that made her laugh when it should have quelled her.
‘I might have drunk a little more than is good for me but I’m not drunk. And you’ve had as many as me.’
‘I’m twice your size and have a much greater tolerance.’
‘You are huge,’ she agreed, leaning over to put a hand on his bare forearm. ‘I bet you work out a lot.’
‘Whenever I can.’
The dark hairs resting under her fingers were much finer than she’d expected, his skin smooth and warm.
‘Are you married?’ she asked impulsively.
‘No.’ Felipe moved his arm away from her touch and drained the last of his beer.
Her touch had felt too good for comfort.
‘Have you ever been married?’
‘No.’
‘Ever come close to getting married?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
He sighed. His love life was not a discussion he wanted with Francesca.
He should have gone to bed a long time ago.
‘No. There’s no room in my life for a relationship.’
‘No room in your life? What a strange thing to say.’
Their Irish coffees were laid before them. Francesca popped two sugar cubes into hers and gave it a vigorous stir.
‘That spoils it,’ he reproached. ‘See? You’ve mixed the cream into it.’
‘I need the sweetness.’
She would taste sweet. His weak-willed imagination that couldn’t stop picturing her in that damned bikini was certain of it.
‘Why is there no room for you to have a relationship? Do you need a bigger house?’
He almost laughed at the wink she finished her question with. As the evening had progressed she’d relaxed, her antagonism towards him now but a memory. Francesca had proven to be fun company, far removed from the spoilt brat he’d assumed her to be.
He had to keep reminding himself that she was his client—a grieving, vulnerable client—and that he needed to keep his guard up. This wasn’t a date. It wouldn’t end with a nightcap in one of their suites followed by...
He refused to allow his mind to wander any further.
‘It’s my life as a whole. When my job with you is over I’m going back to the Middle East and then on to Russia. I run a business with three hundred employees. It takes a lot of management.’
‘Why does that stop you having a relationship?’
‘I doubt there’s a woman out there who would be happy with a man she went months at a time without seeing and weeks without any communication at all.’
‘Natasha and Pieta often went months without seeing each other,’ she pointed out. ‘It didn’t do them any harm and they were together for years.’
That’s what she thought.
But Felipe wouldn’t say anything negative about her brother when his coffin had only just been lowered into the ground. One day the truth he suspected—and he had no proof, only a gut instinct—about her brother would come out as the truth always did. He just hoped she was in the right mental space to cope with it when it did.
‘Pieta was a very different man to me and when I disappear it’s usually into danger. My business comes first. It has to. My men are deployed to the world’s most dangerous hotspots where situations are fluid. Every eventuality has to be catered for. A call can come in at any time for an evacuation.’
‘What if something were to go wrong with one of the jobs while you’re here dining with me?’ she asked reasonably.
He held his phone up. ‘This is a satellite phone. It’s standard military issue. All my men have one. They allow us to communicate with each other wherever we are in the world and the encryption means no one can hack them.’
‘So if one of your clients or men were to get into trouble right now, you’d sort it all out sitting here with me?’
‘My headquarters are manned twenty-four seven. There are protocols in place for every eventuality. But if anything untoward were to happen I’d be kept informed throughout.’ Situations happened all the time. It was the nature of the job. People needed his protection for very good reasons and they hired his firm because they were guaranteed the best. In the ten years since he’d formed the firm, no client had ever come to harm.
‘But if anything were to happen right now, you wouldn’t personally be involved with solving it,’ she persisted. ‘So if you have the staff in place to keep everything running during your absences, there’s nothing to stop you having a relationship.’
‘I’m only ever absent from headquarters when I’m on a job. Being the boss means having all the responsibility if anything goes wrong.’ He would not allow anything to go wrong.
Her eyes narrowed then began to dance. ‘You sound like a man making excuses. Has a woman broken your heart?’
‘No woman has ever got close.’ And no woman ever would. During his army career he’d been happy to play the field—many women loved a man in uniform. He’d watched friends and colleagues settle down and seen the pressure starting families had had on them, how it could affect their focus and priorities, and had decided to wait until he left the forces before finding someone to settle down with. Then his unit had been flown in to handle a hostage situation, his life had gone to hell and thoughts of a family destroyed with it. He was better off on his own. Solitude was what he’d grown up with, what he was used to. Safer.
He thought of Sergio. He thought of Sergio’s wife and unborn child. He thought about the hostages they’d been trying to save, half of whom hadn’t made it out alive. Sergio hadn’t made it out alive either, a memory that still had the power to sear him. His child was now a healthy nine-year-old growing up with a father he would only see in photographs.
Francesca didn’t say anything, just stared at him with those beguiling light brown eyes that seemed to drink him in...
Without warning, she got to her feet, her face breaking into a beaming smile. ‘I love this song! Let’s dance.’
The jazz band had finished their set and now a DJ was playing to the full crowd.
‘I don’t dance.’
‘Then I shall dance on my own.’ And with that she finished her coffee and glided to the dance floor, her shoulders and hips swaying to the music he vaguely recognised, her long ebony hair shimmering in the lights.
Without an ounce of self-consciousness, Francesca threw her arms in the air and began to dance. The joy on her face must have been infectious because a couple of women hurried onto the floor to join her, the three of them immediately dancing and singing together as if they’d known each other for years.
He should leave her on the dance floor and go to bed. He wasn’t her babysitter. His protection of her did not involve making sure she was safely tucked up at night. Judging by the animation on her face and in her body she’d found her second wind and wouldn’t be going to bed any time soon.
Felipe sighed and signalled to a passing waiter for another beer.
He couldn’t leave her.
And neither could he take his eyes from her.
He accepted his beer with a nod of thanks.
He sipped it slowly, watching her dance.
How could someone be so uninhibited? Did it come naturally to her or was it something she’d forced herself to be? He suspected it was the former, that this woman on the dance floor was the closest to the real Francesca he’d seen in their short time together.
It felt as if he’d been in her company for weeks.
She kept glancing at him, sometimes overtly, beckoning him with a finger to join her, to which he always shook his head.
Hell would freeze over before he’d dance with anyone, let alone Francesca Pellegrini. Watching her move and imagining her body flush against his own was enough torture to inflict on himself.
And sometimes her glances were fleeting, as if she couldn’t help but look. Just as he couldn’t help but look at her.
He shifted in his seat then smiled sardonically when a waiter brought the three dancing ladies a cocktail each. So much for his keen attention to detail—he’d no idea how or when she’d ordered them but seeing as they were Tequila Sunrises, he knew damn well they’d come from Francesca.
She met his eye again and winked, then drank her cocktail and returned to dancing with gusto.
The bubble of laughter swelling inside him died on his lips when one of her straps fell down her slender arm. She giggled and pulled it up, only for it to fall straight back down again.
The attraction Felipe had been trying to contain all night seemed to burst through him, the pulsing music dimming to a background noise as blood roared through his ears.
Shoving his chair back, he got to his feet.
It was time to call it a night before he did something he regretted, like joining Francesca on the dance floor and holding her so close she’d be able to feel his desire for herself.
CHAPTER SIX (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
FELIPE MADE IT out of the restaurant and was halfway across the atrium when he heard light footsteps behind him.
‘You left without me!’ she accused.
He closed his eyes tightly and prayed for strength.
When he opened them he found Francesca’s beautiful face gazing up at him, her skin glowing from her exertion on the dance floor. She didn’t look upset at him leaving. If anything, she looked far too knowing.
‘We weren’t on a date and it’s late,’ he felt compelled to remind her. And remind himself. When she looked at him like that...
‘Have I annoyed you again?’
He could laugh at her lack of guile. How many times had he heard his colleagues complain that women never made it easy for them, always expecting them to read their minds and know when something was wrong rather than just coming out and saying it? There was none of that with Francesca. Her emotions were always on the surface.
‘No, you haven’t annoyed me.’
‘Good.’ She tucked her arm through his. ‘Then you can walk me back to my room.’
If she didn’t look so unsteady on her feet he would shake her off.
He was annoyed enough with himself for allowing their meal drag on so long and for hanging around to watch her dance when he should have taken the earliest opportunity to escape.
His heart sinking in rhythm with his warming skin, Felipe took a deep breath and led the way.
‘I’ve had a wonderful evening,’ she said. ‘Thank you for keeping me company.’
‘No problem.’
‘And you?’ When he didn’t answer, she prompted, ‘Have you had a nice evening?’
That was a question he was not prepared to answer with anything more than a noncommittal grunt.
Thankfully they’d reached her door, allowing him to remove his arm from her hold and step back.
She rummaged in her bag and found her key card and immediately dropped it.
‘Oops.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he muttered.
He scooped it up and swiped the lock for her, then opened the door.
‘Do you want to come in?’
He shook his head.
‘The bar’s got beer in it,’ she said temptingly.
‘I’ve had enough to drink.’ He’d drunk only half of what she had but, as he’d reminded himself a dozen times throughout their meal, he was working. All that dancing had probably worked a lot of the alcohol out of her system but she was by no means sober. And she’d had the extra cocktail on the dance floor...
Yes, there was no way she was sober. Felipe was used to drinking with hardened men, not slender—but curvy, Dios, he could not get those curves out of his mind—women.
She bit her lip then tilted her head. ‘Don’t you find me attractive?’
God give him strength.
‘I need to get some sleep.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. You didn’t answer my last question either.’
The strap of her dress fell down again. He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not going to answer it.’
Heavy footsteps trod towards them. He turned to see a man around his own age heading their way.
‘Get into your room.’ Felipe took hold of her wrist and walked her in. He didn’t want to advertise the fact she would be alone in her suite.
The door closed quietly behind them.
Resolutely, he kept his back pressed against it. He would count to ten and then leave.
One. Two. Three.
‘You do find me attractive,’ she whispered, eyes shining as she stood before him.
Four. Five. Six.
She raised herself onto her toes and palmed his cheeks with hands as soft as anything he’d ever felt. ‘I find you attractive too,’ she breathed.
Seven. Eight...
He lost the count when her breath danced over his lips and her mouth found his.
Holding his breath, he clenched his hands into fists and willed himself not to respond.
He couldn’t. He mustn’t.
Francesca’s lips didn’t move. Not for a long time. He felt her breathe him in and fought not to inhale. Then she did move. Just a little. A turn of her head to cover his mouth better, a gentle, tentative exploration of his lips while her fingers made a gentle, tentative exploration of his cheeks and jaw, rubbing against his beard and up to trace the contours of his ears.
He fought to hold on, fought to deny the sensation burning through him.
He might have won had he not opened his mouth to let in air and her tongue darted through his parted lips. In an instant he was filled with the sweet heat of her kiss and the fingers he’d raised to yank her hands away from him were cradling her skull as he kissed her back as deeply as a parched man drinking from a cup.
She tasted sweeter than he could have dreamed.
Her arms wrapped around his neck while his arm hooked around her waist to crush her to him. She melted into him with a breathy sigh, charging his desire like a rocket.
He roamed her curves, finding her waist, her hips, her bottom, which was round and pert and felt delectable beneath his fingers. She was delectable. Soft and womanly beyond imagination.
Rising onto her toes had the effect of lifting her dress. When he skimmed down her thigh he came to bare skin that had him sucking in a breath at its satin sheen and holding her tightly so he could devour her mouth again.
It was her response that so blew his mind. Her hunger was as acute as his own and it fed his.
He could take her now if he wanted and she would welcome him with the breathy sighs that were growing in intensity. God knew, he wanted to take her, this craving like nothing he had ever known.
His exploring hands ran up her bare thighs to find her panties and he slipped a finger under the skimpy material and almost groaned aloud to feel the hot dampness there.
She squirmed against him, one foot running up and down the length of his leg, kissing him, licking him, her teeth grazing his neck then kissing up to brush her cheeks against his beard like a purring cat. He could taste her desire in her kisses, smell it in the heat radiating off her.
Tugging the panties down her hips, he pressed the palm of his hand over the soft, downy hair and felt the gasp that flew from her throat. She pressed her pubis into him but before he could explore any further, her nails suddenly dug through his shirt and into his flesh and she collapsed into him, crying out and shuddering.
And then she stilled.
For a long, drawn out moment Felipe couldn’t find his breath. Francesca didn’t seem to be breathing either.
The only sound he heard with any clarity was the roar of blood in his ears.
It was like the room was clearing of fog. Slowly they released their hold on each other and took wary steps back.
What the hell did he think he was playing at? Had he lost his mind?
Francesca put trembling hands to her mouth, covering it as if in prayer, her eyes wide and dazed.
He felt pretty dazed himself.
He breathed out deeply.
He’d been minutes away from making love to her. There were no excuses he could make.
For the first time in his life he’d let his desire guide him and his loathing for himself tasted like salt on his tongue.
He was a thirty-six-year-old man. He knew better than this. He demanded better than to behave like this.
He should never have followed her into the suite, not when his awareness of her and the desire in his loins had been simmering since the first moment he’d set eyes on her.
‘I need to go.’
She jerked her head and took another step back. He took it as agreement.
His heart hammering, he backed away to the door and left.
* * *
Francesca put the pillow over her head to drown out the sound of the knocking on the door. She knew who it was and she did not want to see him. She didn’t want to see him ever again. She couldn’t. It was just too mortifying.
She’d rather dance naked through the streets of Caballeros with the lecherous Governor ogling her than see Felipe again.
Her cheeks scalded to remember how she’d come undone with one touch.
One touch.
Why didn’t she know that could happen? How could she have known when she hadn’t even kissed a man before?
His face. He’d been horrified.
No wonder he’d run from her suite.
And to think she’d gone into the restaurant hating him.
She’d just wanted to kiss him.
It was his smile that had done it, one unguarded curve of those gorgeous lips that had made her own lips tingle and her pulses quicken.
She’d spent almost their entire meal fantasising about the feel of his lips on hers.
Curiosity had certainly killed the cat.
She couldn’t even blame it on the alcohol, although she wished she could. It had loosened her inhibitions considerably but she’d been the one to drive the kiss, not the Tequila Sunrises.
She’d played with fire and been burnt for her trouble. She certainly wouldn’t open the door to the man who’d lit it.
The phone beside her bed rang.
She wanted to scream. Just leave me alone!
She snatched the receiver up. ‘What?’
‘You have one minute to open your door or I break it down.’
The dial tone played out before she could summon the words to answer back.
Throwing on her robe, she hurried to open the door a crack before Felipe could follow up on his threat.
He was already there.
He didn’t wait for an invite, simply pushed the door open and strode in, glass of fizzing water in hand.
‘Drink that,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘It’ll help your hangover.’
‘I don’t have a hangover.’ She was quite sure the sickness in her belly was nothing to do with alcohol. Her banging head might be, though.
‘Just drink it.’
How could he look so fresh? He’d showered, his charcoal suit crisply pressed, his hair still damp.
Sulkily, she did as she was told and gulped the liquid down. It tasted much less disgusting than she expected.
He took a deep breath. ‘May I sit down?’
No. Go away and let me sleep away my mortification. ‘If you want.’
He sat on the armchair in the corner and indicated for her to sit on the sofa.
Perching herself gingerly, aware of the humiliation ravaging her, she tried to put on a brave face. Tried to show she didn’t care what he thought of her.
But she did care. She really did.
‘I must apologise for my behaviour last night,’ he said heavily. ‘I should never have taken advantage of you as I did.’
The last thing she’d expected was an apology.
His choice of words made her study him properly.
Her heart loosened to see he wasn’t angry with her. Felipe’s anger was directed at himself.
His self-recrimination also loosened her tongue. ‘You didn’t take advantage of me. If anything I took advantage of you. I started it.’
‘You were drunk,’ he refuted flatly.
‘Not drunk enough that I didn’t know what I was doing.’
Heat pulsed between her thighs as she remembered how wonderful it had been in that moment and how she’d ached to do so much more. She’d had no idea such feelings existed in her. Desire and curiosity had erupted into something she’d had no control over.
And he’d been a full participant. She’d been so busy castigating herself and so busy focussing on his abrupt departure from her suite that she’d pushed aside his response. She might not have had any prior experience but she’d felt his arousal pressed hard against her belly and known what it meant. He’d wanted her as much as she’d wanted him.
He dug his fingers into the back of his skull, a set look in his jaw. ‘I run my company with strict rules. No relations with the client.’
‘Is that what you call it? Relations?’
‘We both know what it means.’ Now he pressed his hand to his forehead. ‘It’s not just the rules I abide by. It’s you. You’re too young to be messing around with men old enough to be your...’
‘Big brother?’ she supplied.
His jaw clenched. ‘Francesca, you are in my care for a very good reason. You’re too young and too vulnerable to be party to a tawdry affair.’
‘My mother got married at nineteen. She was pregnant with Pieta when she was my age. If my family had had their way, I would be married with kids by now. If I want to be party to a tawdry affair, then I’m more than old enough to make that choice.’
‘But you are vulnerable and grieving. You can’t argue with that.’ He got to his feet. ‘You’re my client. There can be nothing between us. Do you understand that?’
She stared at him for a long time, taking in the tension radiating from him. He hadn’t looked her in the eye since entering her suite.
‘Answer me one thing,’ she said. ‘One of the questions I asked last night, and this time I want an answer. Are you attracted to me?’
‘Whatever attraction I feel is irrelevant,’ he answered roughly.
‘It wasn’t irrelevant last night.’
‘Last night was a mistake that will not be repeated.’
‘Says you?’
Jaw clenched, he strode to the door. ‘This conversation is over. If you still want to visit the hospital site and meet up with the charity, then I suggest you get dressed. We leave in thirty minutes.’
He left her suite without further comment.
Alone, Francesca drew her knees to her chin and hugged her legs. She felt she could start dancing again.
For all her fears that she’d made another monumental mistake, Felipe did desire her and that knowledge took away the sting of his rejection. If he’d flat-out denied it she thought it possible she might be tempted to curl into hedgehog-like ball and hibernate until she could be sure of looking at him without toe-curling shame and embarrassment. That the attraction was mutual made it a whole lot easier to bear even if he was adamant that last night was a one off.
Eventually she straightened and took some long breaths, forcing herself to concentrate on what was important. She was in the Caribbean for a reason and that reason wasn’t for a holiday or for a man.
The woman she was meeting from the Blue Train Agency had promised to discuss the hospital, the needs of the people and how Francesca should navigate her way around the additional bureaucracy she would find.
She needed to be alert and have her professional head on, not be fantasising about what it would take to wear down Felipe’s defences.
* * *
The day passed quickly and much more productively than Francesca could have hoped. Eva Bergen from the Blue Train Agency had been there to meet her at Caballeros’ airport, as she’d promised, escorted by a couple of Felipe’s men, and they’d spent the day visiting the site where they hoped to build the hospital and met some of the officials she’d have to deal with when the site was signed over to Pieta’s foundation on Saturday. After arranging meetings with the other officials for the next day, they headed back to Aguadilla.
When they dropped Seb and James off at their lodging, she stayed in the back of the car to make more calls without the distraction of Felipe’s strong thighs in her eyeline.
Her first call was to Alberto. It went to voicemail.
‘Problem?’ Felipe asked from the driver’s seat when she cursed under her breath, adopting the same grim tone he’d used since he’d left her suite that morning.
Clearly his regret of their relations meant he was now determined to keep his distance as much as the situation allowed. Today he’d left it to Seb to stand at her side as principal protection but had still been close enough to listen in on every conversation, close enough to ward off any perceived threat that might come her way.
Not once had he met her eye.
In a way she was grateful for his distance as it had allowed her to concentrate on what needed doing.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Alberto to arrange for the cash to be sent over in time for the Governor’s party,’ she explained. ‘He’ll know what to do about the bribe too without getting the foundation into trouble but he’s not answering his phone.’
Until everything was sorted out with Pieta’s estate and businesses, Alberto controlled the finances for the foundation. When she’d spoken to him at Pieta’s funeral he’d assured her he would sign off the funds when a deal was brokered.
‘It’s already in hand,’ Felipe informed her. ‘My men will transport it. The money arrives in Aguadilla on Saturday.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I made the arrangements.’
‘What? When?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘But... How...? Why?’ She couldn’t get a coherent question to form.
‘I decided the best way to get you out of the mess you’d got yourself into was to sort it out myself before you dragged yourself in deeper.’
It took a long time for Francesca to find her voice. ‘This has nothing to do with you. You’re here as my protection...’
‘Exactly. A young woman with a suitcase of cash? Four hundred thousand dollars is a fortune to the people of Caballeros. You’ll be a magnet for every thief out there and you’re already a target.’
‘How’s anyone going to know about the money?’ she protested. ‘It’s a private transaction between myself and the Governor.’
‘A private transaction—or bribe—agreed in a residence I warned you was filled with cameras recording every word you said. This is damage limitation. The cash for the site will be paid in full from the foundation but the bribe money will come from a different source. There will be no trail leading it to you or your brother’s foundation.’
‘You’ve done all this? The damage limitation?’
‘Yes. Don’t ask me how. I have no wish to lie to you.’
Francesca clenched her hands into fists and forced herself to breathe. She knew she should be grateful to him for saving her from herself, not wanting to bash him over the head with her handbag.
‘I thank you for thinking of my career.’ She spoke carefully, struggling for breath. ‘But don’t ever go over my head like that again. If anything else occurs, speak to me before acting.’
‘If you’d been thinking clearly in the first place I wouldn’t have had to go over your head.’
‘That was then,’ she contested tightly. ‘What happened to drawing a line under it all? I made one mistake...’
‘My actions prevented you making another.’
‘I made one mistake that I’m doing my best not to repeat and it’s not fair to keep throwing it in my face. Have you never made a mistake? Or were you born perfect?’
He didn’t answer.
They drove the rest of the route back to the hotel in silence and went to their respective suites without a further word.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
FRANCESCA CLOSED THE folder sprawled on her lap with a sigh and rubbed her eyes. It was gone midnight. She’d been in her suite since their return to the hotel, having another re-read of the foundation’s files. She wished she’d brought some of the case files she was supposed to be studying for her traineeship with her, could kick herself for not even thinking about it. When she returned home to Pisa she would get her head down and get stuck back into her studies.
In the hours spent reading, she’d ordered room service and drunk nothing stronger than black coffee but even all the caffeine couldn’t stop the heaviness of her eyes. All those Tequila Sunrises from the night before had finally caught up with her. She was exhausted.
She really needed to get some sleep but was terrified of closing her eyes, wondered if there was some magic pill out there that guaranteed a dreamless sleep.
Her thoughts, as always, drifted back to Felipe. As the night had gone on her fury at his high-handed behaviour had slowly evaporated.
She wondered where he was. Had he left his suite that evening or stayed in as she had done? The hotel’s walls were so solid that no sound penetrated.
On impulse she leaned over, picked up the telephone receiver from the bedside table and dialled his room number.
He answered on the second ring. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s me. Francesca Pellegrini.’
She pulled a disgusted face at herself. Why did she give him her surname?
There was a small pause before he said, a slight tinge of amusement in his voice, ‘What can I do for you, Francesca Pellegrini?’
His words sounded like a caress. He really had the dreamiest of voices.
‘I wanted to say thank you...for digging me out of the hole I’d put myself and the foundation in...and...and...’ She forced the word out. ‘Sorry...for being so ungrateful about it.’
‘Apology accepted.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘You don’t want me to crawl over broken glass to show my penitence?’
A low rumble of laughter blew into her ear and curled its way down her spine. ‘An apology is enough. I’m not without blame. You weren’t being ungrateful. You were right to be angry with me. I should have consulted with you before I went ahead with my plans.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I was angry with you and the whole situation. I thought you’d behaved insanely.’
‘I did behave insanely,’ she conceded. ‘Do you normally try and fix the holes your clients dig for themselves?’
A small pause. ‘No.’
‘Do you often get angry with your clients?’
Another small pause. ‘No. It’s not my place to get angry with them or fix their problems. I’m paid to protect them, not have an opinion.’
His confession made the most wonderful warmth spread through her. She pulled her knees up and curled against the headboard and murmured, ‘I must be special then.’
Another rumble of laughter. ‘That is one way to describe you.’
‘Am I the most annoying client you’ve ever had?’
‘You’re the most challenging,’ he answered drily.
‘I’ve always been challenging.’
‘I’ll bet.’
A silence formed.
‘It’s late. I should let you go,’ she said, breaking it. But she didn’t want to let him go. She wanted to have that glorious voice speak into her ear all night. A thought occurred to her. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘I’m watching a film in bed.’
‘Is it any good?’
‘It’s bad enough to remind me why I hate television.’
‘You can’t hate television,’ she said, feigning outrage.
He groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those television addicts?’
‘I love television,’ she informed him gleefully. ‘If I was put on a desert island and only allowed to take one thing that would be it.’
‘You’re a heathen.’
‘A heathen with a large collection of box sets.’
His laughter rumbled down the line again, warming her from her lobes all the way down to her toes.
To think Felipe was lying in his bed too...
‘Did you go anywhere for dinner?’ she asked.
‘I had room service in my suite.’
‘So did I.’
‘What did you have?’
‘Jambalaya. You?’
‘The same.’
There was no reasonable answer as to why Felipe independently eating the same meal as her should make her glow.
Another silence formed, this time broken by Felipe. ‘We should get some sleep.’
‘I’m not tired.’ A lie. She was exhausted. But speaking to Felipe had recharged her. She wanted more than a conversation down the phone. The easiness of their talk, the subtle undertones racing beneath it propelled her to say, ‘Do you want to come to my suite for a nightcap?’
There was another prolonged pause with time enough to make her heart expand with anticipation.
‘Goodnight, Francesca,’ he eventually said in such a gentle tone her heart flipped over on itself and her unanswered offer didn’t sting as much as it should.
She hugged the receiver to her chest for a long time after he’d hung up.
* * *
When Felipe strode into the hotel lobby the next morning, the first person he saw was Francesca, sitting on a sofa with her legs elegantly crossed, reading a newspaper.
As if she had a sixth sense to his presence, she tilted her head and immediately fixed her gaze on him. Her lips curved into a smile that made his chest compress.
He nodded a greeting in return.
He’d given himself a sharp talking to that morning, reminding himself of all the reasons he needed to keep his distance from this mesmeric woman. He’d put the phone down after their late-night conversation with an ache in his groin that had still been there when he’d woken.
Her call had caught him off guard. Her husky voice had played down the line, into his ear and into his veins before he could put the mental blocks in place to deflect it.
Her apology had taken him off guard too. Francesca was not a woman who found apologies easy.
That he knew such a thing about her disturbed him on many different levels but nowhere near as disturbing as the strength it had taken to refuse her suggestive offer of a nightcap. He hadn’t been able to refuse in words, not when his tongue had been clamouring with the rest of his body to say yes.
He should have ended the call after she’d made her apology, not allowed that husky voice draw him into further, more intimate conversation.
They had five more days left together and in one respect he was glad they would now be able to get through it without a wishing well full of antagonism between them.
He could laugh at his optimism. He’d only known her a short time but knew perfectly well Francesca was not a woman one could expect to have an easy life with, not even for five short days. Everything she did, she did with passion. Everything she felt was with passion.
He’d felt that passion for himself and, Dios, he craved to feel it again.
He’d never met anyone like her. He’d never desired anyone as he did her. He’d never become aroused at a voice before.
He’d had to force himself to say goodnight.
‘Ready to go?’ he said briskly. He would not allow the spell they’d fallen into during their late-night call seep into the job in hand.
It had been one phone call, he told himself irritably. They’d hardly shared a naked sauna together.
But, naturally, his thoughts immediately turned to the image permanently lodged in his retinas of her sunbathing in that tiny yellow bikini.
Thankfully, today she was fully covered in a simple blue knee-length dress, black fitted jacket and black heels, her dark hair plaited and coiled. She looked ready to step into a courtroom. She also looked as sexy as a siren.
Her light brown eyes widened a little at his tone but her poise remained. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
They collected Seb and James at their lodgings and then drove onto the airport, keeping conversation light and professional. If not for the gleam in her eyes every time she looked at him he could believe he’d mistaken the sensual undertone in her nightcap offer. But the gleam shone brightly. She shone brightly even though she was more together and composed than he had ever seen her.
When she met with the official in charge of the island’s medical service, who in turn expected his own bribe, he was impressed with the way she used a combination of facts, charm and intelligence to deflect him and get him to agree to naming a wing of the hospital after him in lieu of a backhander.
‘Weren’t you tempted to use that technique when dealing with the Governor?’ he asked on the drive back to the airport.
She shook her head and pulled her lips together ruefully. ‘I wish that meeting could be scrubbed away so I could pretend it never happened. I was so excited to get his agreement that, frankly, if he’d asked me to serve him the moon on a dish I would have accepted. I didn’t think the ramifications through clearly. I should have been a lot more prepared.’
He admired her ability not to pull punches at her own faults. The more he observed her, the more he found to admire, from her professionalism to that inherent zest for life she carried with her. ‘You didn’t make the same mistake this time.’
She met his eye and her lips curved. ‘I make it a point to learn from my mistakes, not repeat them.’
That was so close to his own personal beliefs that for a moment he was tempted to pull her to him...
Ever since those crazy, heady few minutes in her suite he’d done his damnedest not to think of it, not to remember the sweet heat of her passionate kisses or the softness of her lips and silkiness of her skin. It was the cry of surprise she’d made when she’d come with virtually one touch that he couldn’t eradicate. Remembering that sound made his every sinew tighten.
He knew he could never make the mistake of being alone in a room with her again.
‘Boss?’
James’s voice broke into his thoughts. They’d pulled into Caballeros airport where the pilot was waiting for them. ‘Yes?’
‘See that black Mondeo?’
Felipe followed his gaze. Roughly ten metres away from their Cessna sat the car that had followed them from the Governor’s house three days ago.
He thought quickly as he scanned their surroundings.
‘Stay here,’ he told Francesca before getting out of the car. Seb and James, who’d already recognised the danger and armed themselves, didn’t need to be told to stay with her or to keep the engine running.
Gun in hand, keeping the black car in his eyeline, he strolled with deceptive casualness to the Cessna. If this was an ambush he wouldn’t have Francesca caught in any crossfire.
‘How long has that Mondeo been there?’ he asked his man who he’d left with the pilot.
‘Three hours. Three men.’
‘Any activity?’
‘None. I’ve run a trace on the licence plate but you know what this island’s like—even before the hurricane I doubt I’d have got any information from it. We’re working on facial recognition as we speak.’
Felipe nodded grimly and said to the pilot, ‘Get ready to leave.’
The small plane’s engine was switched on before his feet hit the tarmac and he was heading back to Francesca.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked when he opened the car door. ‘Is it the men who were following us before?’
‘It appears so.’ He held out his hand, preparing to throw her over his shoulder if she gave any resistance. ‘Time to move.’
He gave her credit. She didn’t hesitate or demand more answers. Her eyes held his—he could almost read her thoughts, Francesca saying ‘Okay, I’m trusting you here,’—and she took his hand and held it tightly on the quick march back to the plane, James flanking her other side, Seb bringing up the rear.
Only when they were seated, their belts hardly buckled before the pilot had them airborne, did she quietly say, ‘I assume those men mean trouble.’
‘I have to assume that too.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Them being at the airport can’t be a coincidence. What do you think they want?’
‘That’s the million dollar question.’ A question he’d give one of his kidneys to answer.
She didn’t speak for the longest time. ‘Do you think they know about the money?’
‘I would put my savings on it.’ He wiped perspiration from his brow. He already knew what he would have to do.
Unbuckling himself, he moved to the front of the plane to share his thoughts with his men.
He waited until they arrived at James and Seb’s lodgings and the two men had got out of the car before sharing it with Francesca. She’d proved remarkably stoical about the situation. He must have made a dozen phone calls and she’d sat quietly beside him, not interrupting, not talking, letting him get on with what he needed to do.
‘James and Seb are getting their gear together. They’re coming with us.’
‘To our hotel?’
‘I’ve also arranged for three of my men staying in Caballeros to fly here. Between them they’ll cover all entry points to the hotel and keep watch.’ Now that the threat against Francesca was unequivocal he would not trust her safety in the hotel to the security guards. Guards could be bribed. His men could not. His men wouldn’t miss anything.
The face she pulled was sceptical. ‘You think those men at the airport are going to come here?’
‘I don’t know what those men are going to do so I’m preparing for any eventuality.’
‘Aguadilla has really tight security. Our hotel has really tight security. They haven’t got a hope of getting to us.’
‘You may be right but I’m not taking any risks.’ He wasn’t prepared to leave anything to chance. Security at Aguadilla airport was as tight as any in the US or Europe, its waters heavily patrolled. In theory Francesca should be safe for as long as she remained in Aguadilla. In theory.
Felipe had learned a long time ago that ‘in theory’ didn’t mean a damn thing. People were unpredictable, especially those under pressure.
His gut told him it was the money the men were after and not Francesca personally. They’d initially followed them from the Governor’s residence. That had to mean they’d been tipped off about the money from a member of the Governor’s personal staff.
But what if he was wrong? What if they wanted both, the cash and a hostage for ransom?
What if they weren’t merely staking them out, waiting for signs of the cash, and were instead only waiting for an opportunity to snatch her? He’d been at the forefront of a hostage situation that had gone wrong. The thought of Francesca being held...
His stomach roiled violently.
He’d watched the light die in Sergio’s eyes and the eyes of his other fallen comrades. He could not allow himself to imagine it draining from Francesca’s eyes too. To protect her and keep her safe he had to keep his focus.
There were too many what-ifs. Far too many.
* * *
Francesca was quite sure she should be biting her nails in terror. That would be a normal reaction to being followed by unknown persons on one of the most dangerous islands in the world.
But she was safe in Aguadilla with Felipe and his army of warriors protecting her. Unlike Caballeros, Aguadilla was a true paradise.
She’d definitely experienced fear when she’d realised the men who’d followed them after her meeting with the Governor had been staking out their Cessna but one look into Felipe’s dark eyes had been all the reassurance she’d needed. He hadn’t needed to spell it out, his eyes had told her everything she needed to know. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Once they’d made the brief walk from the car to the plane without incident, she’d been able to breathe. If they’d wanted to take her, they’d had their chance.
It was the money they were after. The money she’d foolishly agreed to bring in cash into Caballeros.
So, no, it wasn’t fear currently gripping her. It was guilt, and mingled with it a strange form of exhilaration, an awareness of her blood pulsing through her veins. She’d never been so aware of being alive, of the sun’s rays beaming onto her skin, of the soft material of her dress caressing her body, of the sweet scent of the air filling her lungs, all the small things she took for granted in her daily life sharply in focus as if she were experiencing them for the first time.
The closest she had come to this feeling before had been two nights ago in Felipe’s arms.
She followed him through the hotel, marvelling at the strength of his frame, noticed again the slight limp, the only imperfection she could find on this magnificent man whose arms she longed to be in once more.
When they reached their suites, she opened her mouth to thank him and to apologise—again—for all the trouble her actions had brought on them.
Before she could speak, though, Felipe said, ‘Come into mine for a minute while I get my stuff together.’
‘Why? Are we changing hotels?’
‘I’m changing rooms.’ His features darkened. ‘I’m moving into your suite. Until we trace those men and know who they’re working for and what their intentions are, you’re not to be alone.’
Far from sharing the thrill that raced through her at the thought of them sharing a suite, he had the face of a man tasked with guarding a hungry Venus flytrap.
She tailed him into his suite, a mirror image of her own, and took a seat on the sofa, watching as he pulled a large khaki kitbag from a cupboard and put it on the bed. He then walked into his dressing room and returned with an armful of clothes.
‘Do you normally do sleepovers?’ she asked, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
She was rewarded with a biting glare. ‘This isn’t a joke.’
‘I know.’
‘Then don’t act as if it is.’
‘What do you want me to do? Cower in a corner? Hide under a bed? It’s obvious that they’re after the money. All they’re going to do is watch us until they know the cash is here... When is the money due?’
‘Saturday. And it’s obvious, is it? I thought you were training to be a lawyer. There’s no clear evidence for a scenario so we’re going to act as if any scenario is a possibility.’
‘If it’s me they want then they would have tried to take me already.’
‘How do you know that?’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘An educated guess.’
‘But still a guess.’
But she wasn’t saying anything Felipe hadn’t already thought. Whoever these men were, they’d had the opportunity to make a grab for her if it was indeed Francesca they wanted. These were cautious people he was dealing with, not hot-headed druggies. Stupid too. Parking just feet away from their Cessna and waiting for three hours without attempting to give themselves a cover story was the height of stupidity, and stupid people were the most dangerous.
His gut agreed with Francesca that they were after the money.
He could stay in his own suite in good conscience, content that she was safe in hers.
But he couldn’t take the risk. Not with her. Just thinking it was enough for him to break out in a cold sweat.
What if his gut instinct born from almost two decades of risk assessments in dangerous situations was wrong?
This was why one didn’t mix business with pleasure, he thought grimly, storming into the bathroom to get his toiletries. It clouded judgement. It made one doubt oneself.
Like it or not, his attraction to Francesca and the weight in his chest from being around her was accelerating. All his senses were attuned as if she were a magnet they were straining towards.
It was a fight to contain it. To protect her effectively he needed his head clear, a task made harder by the way she kept looking at him. If he could tune her out he would be fine. But he already knew tuning Francesca Pellegrini out was near on impossible.
One night alone in a suite with her he could handle. Any longer than that...
‘I’m taking you back to Pisa in the morning,’ he told her as he placed his toiletry bag with the rest of his kit, bracing himself for the furious protest that was bound to follow.
‘No way,’ she snapped, her nonchalance gone in an instant, just as he’d expected.
‘It’s too dangerous for you here. Pisa is safe. If I could take you back now I would but the quickest I can get a jet here is for early tomorrow morning and there’s no commercial flights leaving any sooner. We’ll leave first thing.’
‘I’m not abandoning the project. No way.’
‘You won’t be abandoning it.’ He would not allow her to set foot in that country again. ‘You’ve got the agreement for the sale and met with the government’s health representative. I’ll get the cash to the Governor. Everything else can be handled by Daniele—he’s the one who’ll be getting the hospital built.’
‘I’m going to the Governor’s party,’ she told him obstinately. ‘If I don’t attend he will see it as an insult and withdraw his permission and the hospital will never be built.’
Felipe swore loudly.
Damn it, she was right.
He thought quickly. The party was four days away. Plenty of time to draw up effective plans to protect both Francesca and the money.
‘I’ll fly you back for the party,’ he said with a curt nod. ‘But we leave here first thing in the morning. You’ll be a sitting target if you stay. I’m taking you home where you’ll be safe and I will have no further argument about it. When I bring you back, you will have nothing to do with the handover of the money. You will do exactly as you’re told.’
He zipped his kitbag with more force than necessary and waited for another onslaught.
He knew he sounded like a tyrant but didn’t care. The cold fear he’d experienced when he’d recognised that car had been like nothing he’d ever felt before, not even when he’d realised too late he’d led his men into a trap.
But no explosion came.
When he next looked at her, Francesca’s legs were crossed, her fingers laced together, a thoughtful expression on her beautiful face as she studied him. Then her lips curved into a smile and she said, ‘Does this mean we get to share a nightcap now?’
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
‘I’M HUNGRY.’
A whole hour they’d been in her suite. A whole hour in which Felipe had ignored her existence, setting himself up with his laptop on the bureau in the corner.
For her part, Francesca had sat herself on the huge bed and watched him as studiously as he’d ignored her.
She could sense his awareness of her. It was in his every move, as strong as her awareness of him. The only difference was his resolve to pretend it didn’t exist. His ridiculous rule of no relations with the client meant he was determined to fight it.
He regarded her as his responsibility and was doing everything in his power to keep her in the box he’d cast her in.
Well, she was determined to do everything in her power to pull herself out of that same box.
‘I’m hungry,’ she repeated.
He didn’t look up from his laptop. ‘You’re always hungry. Order room service.’
‘I had room service last night. It’s only seven o’clock. If I spend another evening stuck in here, I’ll get cabin fever. I’m going to get something to eat—are you coming with me?’
Now his eyes darted to hers and narrowed.
‘I’ve agreed to go home in the morning,’ she said sweetly, ‘and I understand why you feel I need your full protection tonight. But I’m not going to be a prisoner in this suite. If you don’t want to eat with me, call one of your men stationed around the hotel to join me instead.’ She knew he would never go for that. She also knew that trying to draw him into conversation while in her suite would be akin to drawing blood from a stone. Without a laptop to hide behind he would be forced to talk to her.
Fury mounted in his returning glare but Francesca kept her gaze steady.
Then his glare turned into a look that could solidify gel. ‘We eat, we come back. No drinking and no dancing. Is that understood?’
‘Why don’t you write it on a piece of paper so I don’t forget? I’ll sign it for you if you like.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he growled.
‘I’m doing my very best there.’ She rose to her feet. ‘I’m going to take a shower and make myself look beautiful before we leave. Is that okay with you, my lord and master?’
Certain he was cursing her in Spanish under his breath, Francesca sauntered to the bathroom.
Felipe waited for the click of the bathroom door’s lock. When it didn’t come he swore again. She’d deliberately left it unlocked.
He rubbed a knuckle to his forehead, trying not to think about what was going on behind the unlocked door.
Making herself look beautiful? It wasn’t possible for Francesca to be more desirable than she already was.
The sound of the shower running came through the walls.
Do not think of her naked.
An email pinged into his inbox and he seized on the distraction; a recce report by a team of his men in North Africa in preparation for a business trip by the head of an American petroleum company.
He’d almost finished writing his reply when the bathroom door opened.
He looked up before he could stop himself.
Dios, Francesca had only a towel around herself.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said demurely, brushing past him and leaving a cloud of fruity scent in her wake, ‘I’m just going to get changed.’
Gritting his teeth to counteract his thickening blood, he looked again at the email he was replying to.
She might as well have fired a bullet into his brain his concentration was so shot.
He blinked to refocus but, even when she disappeared into her dressing room, all he could see were bare slender arms and long black hair that, when wet, fell all the way to the base of her spine, almost touching the curvaceous bottom the white towel hugged so beautifully.
He knuckled his forehead and swore violently. She was taunting him. Tempting him. It was in her every look, her every movement.
The vows he’d made to himself in recent days were tested to the limit when she emerged some time later.
She’d changed into a Chinese-style red dress that was perfectly modest, not displaying any unnecessary flesh, falling to a decent length just above the knees, but...it clung to her every softly rounded curve...
And then he noticed she’d put make-up on. Not a huge amount but enough to make her light brown eyes even more seductive than they already were and her lips even more kissable. She’d blow-dried her hair and it hung like a silk sheet. On her feet were high black strappy sandals.
‘Did you want to take a shower before we go?’ she asked, appraising him with one of the gleams that fired straight into his groin.
He slammed the lid of his laptop down. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
* * *
Francesca swirled the white wine in her glass and watched Felipe study his menu.
He’d looked at her only once since they’d sat down, a piercing glare when she’d ordered her wine. She’d given an unrepentant shrug in return.
They were in one of the hotel’s outdoor restaurants on a patio area that encircled a large swimming pool aglow with soft lighting.
Her intention had been to get Felipe out of the suite and get him talking. Whenever they’d had a proper conversation together they’d proved things could be harmonious between them. She wanted to find that harmony again.
She knew he desired her but what good was that when he fought it every step of the way? She wanted him to desire her company as well, to see her as herself. Francesca. Not Pieta’s little sister. Not Daniele’s little sister. Not the foolish client who’d agreed to a bribe because she hadn’t been thinking straight and who needed saving from herself as well as the bad guys, whoever they were.
She waited until their order had been taken before asking, ‘Where are you going when this job’s done with?’
‘Back to the Middle East.’
‘You’re not going home for a few days or anything?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m making conversation. Annoying, I know, but one of us has to make the effort.’
Felipe tore his gaze from the distance he’d fixed on to look at her.
She tilted her head, her features softening. ‘Please, Felipe, can’t we just have a normal conversation like normal people?’
He smothered a sigh. It was far easier for him to ignore the tightening of his loins that occurred just by being around her if he didn’t have to listen to the husky voice that stroked his skin like a caress and stare into the beguiling eyes that had the power to hypnotise him.
Her request wasn’t unreasonable.
He was the one being unreasonable.
She couldn’t help it that every look made the yearning to touch her grow and his self-loathing ratchet up another notch.
‘Do you still live in Spain?’ she probed, taking his silence for assent.
‘No.’
‘Where do you live then?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere?’
‘Nowhere,’ he confirmed. ‘I have no home. I am of no fixed abode.’
‘But...’ She smoothed a long strand of hair behind her ear. A teardrop diamond earring winked at him. ‘Where do you call home?’
He shrugged. ‘Wherever I happen to be. I have a bedroom on my plane. Hotels are easy to come by. Everything I own is easily transported and as easily stored.’
She rocked forward slowly, a crease in her forehead. ‘Where do your letters go? Bills? Bank statements? You have to have an address to have a bank account.’
‘Not all banks require it if you know where to ask. My business isn’t a typical one. My work is my life. It has been since I joined the army.’
She pulled a face. ‘Yes, I get that. You’re a macho man who runs around the world protecting the weak and helpless.’
A laugh crept up his throat. ‘The majority of the people I protect are far from weak. It’s generally business people, government officials and aid agencies. People who go to war zones and countries with high crime rates where they know they’re going to be a target. My job is to let them do their jobs in safety.’
‘Why does that stop you having a home of your own? Everyone needs a home.’
He shook his head. This was why he would have preferred to stay in the suite. There, he would have been able to work on his laptop, catch up on reports from his staff around the world, issue orders and directives, and ignore Francesca while ensuring her absolute safety. Here, there was nothing to do but talk while they waited for their food to be cooked and as he’d learned the other night in the hotel’s main restaurant and their late-night conversation the night before, he enjoyed talking to Francesca far more than was good for him.
When they talked she became more than the alluring woman who made his blood thicken to look at her. She became flesh and blood.
The sooner this meal was finished the better.
‘What about family?’ she asked, oblivious to his wish—his need—for her silence. ‘Do you see much of them?’
‘No.’
‘But you do have family?’
Felipe sighed. She didn’t know when to give up. If Francesca made it to the bar she would be an excellent cross-examiner. ‘I have a mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Yes. Family.’
‘Do you see much of them?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m too busy.’
‘Too busy to see your own mother?’
‘I visit her whenever I can. The rest I was never close to so it’s no loss.’
‘No siblings?’
‘I’m an only child.’
‘Spoilt?’
He laughed harshly. Chance would have been a fine thing. ‘No.’
‘A father?’
‘He died five years ago.’
The inquisitiveness on her features softened. ‘I’m sorry. I lost my father last year. It’s hard, I know.’
‘It wasn’t much of a loss. I hardly knew him.’
Seeing her open her mouth to ask another question, he leaned forward. ‘My mother raised me as a single parent. They were married but my father was rarely there and rarely gave her money. She worked so many different jobs to put a roof over my head and food on the table that she was hardly there either, but she wasn’t absent by choice as my father was. She didn’t have the time or money to take me to Madrid to visit her family. We lived in Alicante, hundreds of miles from them. If my father hadn’t been such a selfish chancer our lives would have been very different so, no, I didn’t find his death hard. I went to his funeral out of respect but I am not going to pretend I grieved for him. I barely knew the man.’
His father had been unsuited to family life, a man always on the road searching for the next big thing, which had never turned into anything, but that next big thing had always been more important to him than his wife and child.
So unimportant was his father to his life that he rarely thought about him, never mind talked about him, but with Francesca seemingly keen to interrogate him about his life, it was simpler to give her the full impartial facts and be done with it.
‘That must have been hard for you. And your mamma,’ she said, her eyes full of sympathy.
Thankfully their food was brought over to them by the cheerful waitress, T-bone steak for him and seared tuna pasta salad for Francesca.
She dived into hers and for a while he thought he’d escaped further interrogation.
Wrong.
‘How often do you see your mother?’
‘I try and visit over Christmas and for her birthday.’
‘Is that it? Two visits a year?’
He took a large bite of his steak and ignored the implied rebuke. He didn’t need to justify himself to her.
‘If I only saw my mother twice a year she’d kill me,’ Francesca mused. ‘She thinks I live too far from her as it is and I’m only a twenty-minute walk away.’
‘You’re her daughter. It’s a different relationship.’
‘Tell that to my brothers,’ she said with a roll of her eyes that immediately dimmed, the vibrancy in them muting.
With a pang, he knew she was thinking of Pieta.
‘Pieta was a good son to her,’ she said quietly. ‘He travelled all around the world but always remembered to call her every night. Daniele’s the opposite—I’m always annoying him by sending reminders for him to call. She worries about us. Pieta’s death has devastated her.’
‘You’re a close family,’ he observed.
She nodded. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’
Lucky until the brother she’d adored had been so tragically killed.
‘Your life and background are very different from mine.’
‘My life and background are different from most peoples. But, then, everyone’s is. None of us are the same. We all have our worries.’
‘You grew up rich and with a loving family. What worries did you have?’
‘Me, personally? None that were serious. I was lucky and privileged but I know I’m one of the fortunate ones and it’s why I want to go into human rights law.’
‘You want to spread some of your good luck?’
‘You may mock me but I’m serious. I could have settled down with a husband and babies by now but I want my life to mean something.’
He could only guess how hard she’d had to work to prove herself. He knew how old money worked—he’d protected enough of the people who lived in that world to know it was still male dominated. It couldn’t have been easy for her to go against her family’s expectations and wishes.
‘You could run Pieta’s foundation.’
Her pretty brow rose. ‘Are you mocking me again?’
‘Not at all. You were the consummate professional today. Pieta would have been proud of you.’
Her face flushed with pleasure. ‘You think?’
‘I’m sure of it, and I’m sure Alberto will be back at work soon. He could help and guide you. And keep you out of trouble,’ he couldn’t resist adding.
She half grinned and half scowled then shrugged ruefully. ‘It isn’t for me. I want to get the hospital on Caballeros built for Pieta’s memory but his philanthropy isn’t the route I want to go. That was his and once things have settled we’ll work as a family to make sure the foundation continues, but it won’t be me running it. Maybe Natasha will.’
She fell silent after that, eating her food quietly, her thoughts obviously thousands of miles away with her family.
He watched her carefully. Underneath the front she put on she was grieving. He’d caught snatches of it during their time together, moments when she’d be talking to someone and, just like that, her eyes would lose their focus and her brow crease as if in confusion. And then, just as quickly, she would pull herself together and snap her focus back to the person before her.
She did it now. ‘When was the last time you spoke to your mother?’
He could laugh at her single-mindedness. ‘A couple of months ago.’ At her exaggerated incredulity, he felt compelled to add, ‘We’ve never been close in the way you are with your mother. Her whole life revolved around me and making sure all my needs were met but to get that she had to work fifteen hour days. I hardly knew her.’ He hardly knew her now.
He took a long breath.
He really needed a beer.
Felipe raised his palm before she could ask anything else and said, ‘It was a long time ago. I haven’t lived with her for almost twenty years. We respect each other but she’s not like your mother. She’s not the clinging sort.’
‘My mother doesn’t cling,’ she said defensively, then covered her mouth to hide a snort of laughter. ‘Yes, she does cling. But I don’t mind. I like it.’
‘And I like the relationship my mother and I have. It suits us both.’
She cast him with a look of pure disbelief then shrugged as if to say it was a point she couldn’t bother arguing. ‘Is her life easier now?’
‘Much easier. I’ve bought her a house and a car, I send her regular money. She doesn’t need to work. She has friends and goes on dates. She has a life now, which she never had before.’
That perked her up. ‘You bought her a house?’
He groaned, sensing a new thread of his life for her to delve into. ‘Can we not talk of something else?’
‘Okay, tell me why you joined the army.’
‘Because I was turning into a juvenile delinquent with no parental authority and no hope of getting a decent job because there was no one there to make sure I attended school.’
‘How long were you in the army for?’
‘Eight years in all.’ And they had been the best years of his life. The camaraderie, the companionship...after a childhood spent alone the army had given him the family he’d always craved. In Sergio he’d found the brother he’d always longed for.
How could the woman sitting opposite him understand any of this? Her family was as close as a family could be. She’d never eaten her childhood meals alone with only the television for company. She’d never been alone. She’d never wanted for anything, not materially or emotionally. It had all been handed to her on a plate.
So why was he fighting his own tongue from spilling the rest of it out to her?
It was those eyes, the way they smouldered and hung on to his every answer.
Every time he stared into those honest eyes a pulse would flow through him. He’d scrubbed his hands over and over but could still feel the softness of her skin and the silkiness of her hair on his fingers as if they’d marked him. When she’d been standing with Eva, the charity worker, he’d distinguished Francesca’s scent without even thinking about it.
He knew her scent.
During their conversation, without him realising how, they’d both cleared their plates.
It was time to bring to a close this ordeal he’d enjoyed far too much.
He got to his feet. ‘We can go back to the suite now.’
She stared up at him with such hurt at his brusqueness that he felt much as he would have if he’d kicked a puppy. Like a heel.
Instead of obeying, she folded her arms, the obstinate look he was becoming accustomed to setting on her jaw. But her eyes were knowing as she said, ‘I think I’ll stay for dessert.’
CHAPTER NINE (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
‘YOU’RE WELCOME TO share my bed,’ Francesca said brightly as Felipe made a bed on the floor for himself close to the door, using the duvet, spare sheets and pillows from his suite.
He didn’t look at her. He’d returned to ignoring her and speaking in monosyllabic grunts ever since she’d insisted on staying for dessert.
Her insistence on staying had been a deliberate kick-back. Felipe had relaxed over their meal and opened up to her, not by much but enough for her chest to lighten and hope to spring free. A proper conversation between two adults enjoying each other’s company. There were times he’d looked at her as if he wanted to eat her, the desire in his eyes vivid... But then he’d withdrawn as quickly as if he’d pulled the trigger on a gun.
Now he was back to looking at her as if he’d like to chuck her in the sea.
‘Why don’t you stop talking and get ready for bed?’ he growled. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’
‘I’m not tired.’
‘Read a book.’
She wished she knew what it would take to pull his barriers down long enough for him to forget his reasons for resisting and simply treat her as a woman. That’s all she wanted.
‘I’ll put my nightclothes on in the bathroom, shall I?’
‘Yes!’
‘Okay. I won’t be long. Try not to miss me.’
It didn’t take long for her to change into the over-sized T-shirt she slept in, wash her face and brush her teeth, all the while wondering if she had the courage to go for full-scale seduction.
She could hardly believe she was having these thoughts.
Pieta’s death had brought home how short and fickle life could be. The dangers of Caballeros had reinforced that notion. All those years she’d spent studying, any thought of a romantic life pushed aside so as not to distract her from her dreams... It had stopped her feeling life rather than just going through the motions of living it.
Felipe was nothing like the rich, boring, single men her parents had brought in a steady trickle to the family home before she’d escaped to university, hoping their darling daughter would snare one of them and marry into luxury and be doted on. The only similarity he had with them was that he was fabulously rich.
Francesca hadn’t wanted to be doted on. Her mother had married young and was content to live the life of a social butterfly where the biggest daily problem would be matching her nail varnish with her outfit. Francesca had wanted so much more. She had wanted to be like her brothers and cousin Matteo. They were also expected to settle down and breed but at a much older age. They were expected to have fantastic careers first, whereas she’d been expected to adorn her husband’s fantastic career. She hadn’t wanted to adorn or be beholden to a man. She’d wanted a fantastic career of her own and had known from a very young age that the only way to get it was by studying as hard as she could to get the highest possible grades so her parents had no choice but to take her and her aspirations seriously.
She had succeeded. There had been many fights and many tears but eventually they had accepted her wishes. That hadn’t stopped them parading eligible rich men in front of her but the tone had changed; become hope rather than expectation.
If she continued working hard, in two years she would sit her bar exams and qualify as a lawyer, then spend a few more years establishing herself in the career she’d devoted her life to achieving. Only then would she think of making a marriage, safe in the knowledge that, whoever she chose, her hard-won independence would not be compromised and the marriage would be conducted as equals.
That had been the plan.
What she hadn’t expected was this awakening, this heady desire for a man that no amount of logic could explain.
She didn’t want to explain it. She wanted to explore it, to reach out and touch it and experience these wonderful feelings that had soaked into her being, all of which were for Felipe.
He was not a man to dote on a woman. He was strong and protective but would never treat a woman as a pet.
And he didn’t want a relationship either.
If anything were to happen between them it would be nothing but a short, sweet affair that wouldn’t compromise either of their chosen paths.
The problem, Francesca acknowledged ruefully, came with the if.
It would help if she knew how to seduce a man, let alone one so determined to keep her at arm’s length. And wasn’t seduction supposed to be conducted wearing sexy lingerie? She wore pretty underwear but nothing that could be considered sexy or lingerie.
All she had was herself.
When she walked back into the suite she found Felipe kneeling by his huge khaki kitbag.
He looked at her briefly then closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath before pulling out his washbag. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’
A moment later came the telling click of the bathroom lock.
Taking a deep breath, Francesca turned all the lights off apart from her bedside one, giving the room a soft seductive quality. Then she got onto the huge bed and arranged herself into what she hoped was a seductive pose. Instead of making her feel wanton it made her feel like a fool so she tried a different pose. That made her feel a bigger fool. After trying a variety of others she settled for sitting with her legs stretched out and hooked at the ankles, her head resting on the headboard.
Felipe spent so long in the bathroom that doubts began to crowd her. Did she have his feelings for her all wrong?
Were those times when she looked in his eyes and saw pained desire burning back at her nothing but creations of her own tortured mind, like a child desperate to see Father Christmas swearing blind they saw him flying his reindeer past their bedroom window? Nothing but a hopeful, overactive imagination?
She sensed when he was ready to leave his sanctuary and swallowed, placing a hand to her rapidly beating heart.
The bathroom door opened. Their eyes met.
He held her gaze a beat too long then broke it, striding past her to the nest he’d made by her door.
She watched his every step with her heart in her mouth.
Francesca had seen Felipe with nothing but tight swim shorts on at the swimming pool but she had been some distance away. Up close his magnificence was stark enough to steal her breath and set her already ragged pulses soaring. Up close there was no escaping the bulge in the snug black boxers he wore.
Even a straight man would do a double take at him.
A silvery mark on his right calf caught her eye, pulling her out of the trance she’d slipped into. ‘What happened to your leg?’
‘Gunshot,’ he answered gruffly.
His answer had her pressing the switch behind her to turn the corner light on.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
It wasn’t just a silvery mark; there was a hollowed out section of flesh around his shin bone that covered half his calf.
Thick icy sludge crawled up her spine and through her veins, freezing her from the inside out.
She could hardly get her vocal cords working to whisper, ‘What happened to you?’
‘The perils of army life.’
‘You were shot in battle?’
‘Something like that.’
Feeling faint, she took a long breath, unable to look away from the ugly wound that made her heart hurt.
Felipe was a military man. She’d known that before she’d met him. It was his career in the army, including his time in the Special Forces, that made him so effective at what he did, that had given him the solid foundations to build the hugely successful enterprise he had now.
Yet whenever she thought about the armed forces—admittedly, before she’d met Felipe that had been rarely—she’d imagined it to be like those computer games she’d been banned from watching Daniele play when he’d been younger and she much younger still but, of course, had sneakily peeked in on. She hadn’t seriously thought about what it must be like to be in a real war, to have people firing at you not for fun but because they wanted to kill you.
Someone had shot Felipe with the intention of killing him.
He must have noticed her horror for his expression hardened. ‘I apologise if my wound disgusts you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to refocus her eyes. ‘Don’t think that. I don’t think that. Felipe...’ She shook her head some more.
Now the limp she’d often noticed made sense.
As if to distract her attention from his wound, Felipe slid into the makeshift bed he’d made for himself on the floor, thumped the top pillow and lay on his back, gazing at the ceiling with his arm crooked above his head.
Francesca turned the corner light off so the only illumination in the suite came from her bedside light.
She felt chilled to her core. If whoever had shot at him had had a better aim the vital, intense man who lay in a nest of bedding at her door would not be here. He would be gone from this earth like Pieta, nothing but a memory. But not a memory to her because she never would have met him.
She remembered Daniele—or was it Matteo?—saying Felipe had been discharged from the army on medical grounds.
‘Was that the reason you left the army?’
Even with the limited light she saw his grimace. ‘Yes. The wound meant I was no longer an effective soldier. It’s standard procedure. It wasn’t personal.’
‘Would you have stayed if you could?’
‘I would have stayed for as long as they’d had me. I loved the life.’
‘You loved going into war zones?’
He let out a low rumble of laughter. ‘Believe it or not, yes. I thrived on the danger. We all did. I loved everything about army life. Passing selection for the Special Forces was the best day of my life. Receiving my discharge was the worst.’
Felipe had known as soon as the bullet had hit him that it was the end of his army career and the end of everything he’d held dear. The bullet had splintered in his leg, shrapnel lodging in the bones. There had been talk of amputation.
The long months spent in rehabilitation, working into a sweat just to walk again, dealing with the pain of his wound and the darkness of what he’d lost...it had all brought home to him that he was meant to be alone.
When it was just you in the world the only threat of pain was the physical kind. He’d proven he could deal with that. Physical pain was mind over matter. Determination. It hurt but didn’t leave you bereft and empty inside.
For once Francesca was silent. He knew it wouldn’t be for long. He was right.
‘Is that why you went into protection? So you could still get the adrenaline buzz?’
‘The world is full of dangers and people still need to visit those danger zones. I knew I could provide the protection they needed and that there were many other soldiers like me who were fit and ready for the next challenge.’ But not Sergio. The first bullet that had hit him had gone straight into his heart.
‘Do you get the same fulfilment you got from the army?’
‘It’s a different kind of fulfilment.’ Even though he’d thrown all his energy into it, he could never have guessed how successful his business would be. He had more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes, was on the speed dial of the world’s most powerful people, but knew that given the choice of swapping his riches for a return to his army days he would discard his worldly goods without a second thought.
‘Don’t you ever wish for a normal life?’ she whispered in the silence.
‘What’s your definition of a normal life?’
‘One that’s not completely nomadic.’
‘No.’ Yet as he spoke his rebuttal he found his mind meandering for the first time ever to a real home with an ebony-haired beauty...
He pushed the thought away. A normal, regular life was not for him.
‘That’s enough talk. We’ve an early start. Get some sleep.’
‘But—’
‘I mean it. No more conversation.’
But he knew the chances of his getting any sleep were slim, not when he was certain that beneath her oversized T-shirt Francesca lay naked.
He closed his eyes and willed his mind not to think of her naked.
Dios, this was torture. He ached to join her in that bed.
In his head he counted out the reasons why he needed to stay exactly where he was.
One. She was his client.
Two. She was grieving.
‘It’s not even ten o’clock. I’m not tired. I never go to bed this early.’
Just the sound of her voice was enough to make Felipe’s loins tighten.
‘Read your book,’ he said through gritted teeth.
There was another long period of silence but he sensed a shift in the atmosphere, a change in her mood.
‘“Read your book, stop talking, go to sleep”,’ she mimicked suddenly. ‘It’s one step forward and two steps back with you, isn’t it? One minute you’re opening up and talking to me like a normal human being, the next you act like you’re trying to forget my existence. Do you treat all your clients like this?’
He smothered a groan at the hurt echoing in her voice. ‘Like what?’
‘Like they’re an encumbrance to be endured. Sometimes it feels that you don’t even like me.’
He clenched his jaw. What did she want him to say? Mere liking had nothing to do with his feelings for her.
‘It’s different with my other clients.’ He’d never struggled with professional detachment before. He’d never wanted to rip any of their clothes off.
‘So it’s true!’ As quick as a flash she threw her covers off and jumped off the bed. ‘You don’t like me. I thought it was the attraction between us you hated.’ She stormed into her dressing room and slammed her hand against the switch, bathing the room in fresh light. ‘I didn’t realise the problem was that you actively dislike me.’
‘I don’t...’ But his words fell from his lips when she pulled her T-shirt off. Even with the distance between them, he could see her clearly, from the divine weighty breasts with their dark aureoles to the soft womanly hair between her legs.
Oh, dear heaven...
Francesca was heaven. A taste of paradise wrapped up in beautiful, womanly form.
But then she grabbed the dress she’d been wearing earlier and he understood what she was doing.
Springing to his feet, he strode over and blocked the doorway of her dressing room. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘For a drink. Anywhere away from you.’
Fire blazed from her eyes, her whole body vibrating with anger. And, Dios, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop his eyes from devouring her, naked before him, not an ounce of embarrassment in her returning fury.
Then she tilted her chin and pulled the dress over her head. The delectable curves disappeared as she smoothed the dress down and tugged her trapped hair free. As it tumbled down her back he couldn’t help but fantasise what it would feel like to have that hair tumble over him in all its silken glory.
‘Get out of my way,’ she said coldly.
‘No.’
Slowly, her fiery gaze holding his, she stepped to him. When she was close enough for his senses to be hit with her scent, she put her wrists together and held them out to him. ‘If you’re intending to treat me as a prisoner you might as well tie me up because that’s the only way you’re going to stop me leaving this room.’
Electricity shot between them, so real he could almost hear the crackle. It heated him too, tiny jolts bouncing on his skin, his heart thrumming...
His hand rose by its own volition, his fingers stretching towards her.
A throb of need burst through him, so powerful he had to dig his feet into the floor to stop from hauling her into his arms.
‘You are not leaving this suite.’ His speech was long, drawn out, ragged.
‘I’m not staying with someone who can barely look at me and gets irritated every time I open my mouth.’
Without him knowing how it happened, his fingers closed around the delicate wrists. A moment later he’d pulled her to him so their bodies were flush, her breasts pressed against his chest.
‘I don’t dislike you,’ he ground out, gazing down at the spitting eyes, the luminous skin, the lips that begged to be kissed... ‘Don’t you see that? I like you too much.’
For long, long moments they did nothing but stare at each other until the anger that blazed so brightly in her eyes softened to blaze with something that struck straight into his loins.
Francesca stared helplessly at the man who had her in a grip so tight she could never break free yet which elicited not the slightest amount of pain.
The humiliation that had washed over her like a cold shower at the realisation she’d been longing for a man who hated her vanished as awareness filled her in its stead, awareness of his heat, of being held against this dangerously masculine man her body craved.
She had no conscious reckoning of the change in him, of how the fury deepened into something so dark and molten her chest filled, of the deepening of his breaths as he continued to gaze down at her...
‘I can’t hear your voice without becoming aroused,’ he said, his voice low, pained. ‘I can’t look at you without wanting to kiss you. I can’t breathe your scent without wanting to possess you. Wanting you like this is torture.’
‘Then stop fighting it,’ she whispered.
Later she would have no conscious remembrance of the moment his lips moulded onto hers. It was like a beast that lived inside them both suddenly became unleashed.
There was nothing gentle about his kiss or her response to it. It burned her, ravaged her. All her nerve endings exploded and leapt onto him. The hand that had been holding her wrists was now wrapped tightly around her waist, her arms now looped tightly around his neck, kissing as if they needed the other for air, lips parted, devouring each other.
She grabbed at the back of his head and raked her fingers through his hair, nuzzling, kissing, nipping, her senses filling with his very essence, all the hunger she had for him soaring free.
His arousal pressed hard and huge against her belly, his hands roamed her contours, kneading, fingers biting. The evidence of his desire for her was dizzying and heightened her own. The desire she’d experienced during the alcohol-induced fumble that had gone further than either of them had expected had been like a carnal dream but this...sober...everything felt gloriously, dizzily heightened and urgent, no slow sensual build-up, her body craving nothing less than full possession.
He broke the kiss to place his hands at her waist and lift her into the air like a ballet dancer lifting his partner. Her hair fell onto his shoulders and he turned his face to breathe the scent of it in. ‘Dios, I want you,’ he muttered raggedly.
Without another word said he sat her on the edge of the bed and pressed her down so he lay on top of her, crushing her, his heart drumming strongly enough for her to feel it against her own hammering heart. Their lips entwined in another deep, hungry kiss and he ran a hand up her thigh to take the hem of her dress and raise it to her waist.
Needing to touch him, she ran her fingers down his back and revelled in the smoothness of his skin, the muscles that bunched beneath her touch, then traced lower to the tight buttocks. Grasping frantically, she found the waistband of his boxers and tugged at them. Felipe’s hand covered hers and together they shifted them down his hips, allowing his erection to spring free.
Her eyes flew open to feel the weight of his excitement against her inner thigh, a deep throb pulsing through her to know this was for her. Her own arousal had melted into a mass of heat and dampness, all concentrating in the one area he was so close to taking possession of.
Francesca had never dreamt she was capable of such wanton, reckless carnality, that her flesh could feel like a living being, that desire could beat like a drum with a rhythm felt in her every pore.
This, she thought dreamily... This...
Instinct had her raising her thighs and wrapping her legs around Felipe’s waist, urging him on, her body speaking the language she had never learned.
The tip of his erection found where it needed to be with no guidance from either of them and in one driving thrust he was inside her.
It happened so quickly that it took a few beats for her brain to register the sharp pain and when it did register, the gasp of relief at his possession that had flown from her mouth turned into a gasp of shock and stilled on her lips.
Felipe froze.
The heady urgency of his desire deflated like a punctured balloon. He gazed down in horror at Francesca’s whitening face.
It wasn’t possible...
His head pounded loudly, bells clanging, sirens wailing.
It wasn’t possible.
With as great a care as he could manage, he withdrew from her and swung his legs over to rest on the floor then grabbed the back of his neck and dug his fingers into it.
The beat of his heart was out of time.
She didn’t move.
He didn’t move.
For the longest time he sat on the bed staring incomprehensibly at the thick carpet while she lay on the bed gazing mutely at the ceiling.
He wanted to be sick. There was movement beside him as Francesca slowly sat up.
A trembling finger was placed lightly on his shoulder.
‘Felipe...’
Slowly he raised his head and caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall.
The reflection gazing back was a man he didn’t recognise.
He didn’t think he would ever recognise himself again.
CHAPTER TEN (#u11800846-8f89-5170-a4c6-b3cb934c29db)
WHEN HIS THROAT had loosened enough so he could breathe, Felipe got to his feet and put his boxers on. Only then did he turn to the hunched figure in the centre of the bed. She still had her dress on.
Francesca’s eyes were huge but when he met them he saw they were filled with defiance as well as misery.
With a sigh, he sank back onto the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. ‘You should have told me.’
Her voice was low but steady. ‘If I’d told you, you would have stopped.’
‘Damn right I would have stopped.’ He swore loudly as he remembered something else that made the hairs on arms lift. ‘We didn’t even use protection.’ Not that they’d needed it. It had been over almost as soon as it had begun.
‘I’m on the Pill,’ she mumbled.
‘Are you?’ he demanded. ‘You’re not just saying that?’
A quick shake of her head. ‘I used to have terrible pains every month. The Pill helped.’
‘Francesca... Dios...’ He raised his head and met her gaze. ‘What were you thinking?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Was it your intention to make me hate myself?’
She shook her head and blinked rapidly. If she cried, he thought there was every chance he would lose the plot completely.
How was it possible she’d been a virgin?
‘For God’s sake, will you say something? Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?’
‘I thought you wanted me to shut up,’ she whispered with a forlorn smile.
His hands clenched into fists and he swore loudly.
She screwed her eyes tight shut.
He fought to control his tone, to soften it. ‘Francesca, please, tell me why you didn’t think fit to inform me you were a virgin. Don’t you understand how sick I am at myself for what just happened? My self-loathing would have been high enough but discovering that...’ He threw his hands in the air. His affairs had always been conducted with experienced women who knew better than to expect anything from him. Did Francesca giving her virginity to him mean she wanted more? ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘Because I wanted it to happen,’ she said so quietly he had to strain to hear.
‘But why? There can never be anything between us, don’t you understand that? Even when this is all over and you’re no longer my client, you and I can never be.’
‘Why? Because I’m too young for you?’ Her voice shook. ‘I’m twenty-three, not thirteen, old enough to marry, to vote, to drive, to work, to make mistakes and be judged old enough to know better.’
‘No!’ His voice rose as he lost the battle with his temper. ‘I don’t do relationships. I told you this. You were a twenty-three-year-old virgin for a reason, I assume because you were waiting for the right man or for marriage. I could never be that man!’
‘I don’t want you to be that man!’ Francesca shouted back. Her shame and Felipe’s anger had pushed her to breaking point. ‘Stop making assumptions about me. I wasn’t saving myself. Haven’t you listened to me? I’ve told you more than once I don’t intend to settle down for years, not until I’ve set up my own law firm. I want a career first, thank you, and when I do marry it will be to someone who can treat me as his equal. You are not that man.’
‘Then why?’ He gripped the back of his head and breathed deeply. ‘Please, explain it to me so I don’t spend the rest of my life hating myself for taking advantage of your vulnerability. And do not deny that you’re vulnerable, you buried the brother you loved only days ago and something like that does affect you even if you don’t see it at the time.’
She dragged her fingers down her face and tried to control the violent trembling racking her body.
Whenever she’d imagined them together, and in the past few days it had seemed that was all she’d thought about, she’d blithely assumed he wouldn’t notice she was a virgin and that she would have the wit to smother any pain because everyone said the pain only lasted a moment.
She’d known perfectly well he would reinforce the barrier he’d put between them if he knew she was a virgin and seeing his self-loathing horror at what they’d done made her feel more wretched and ashamed of herself than she had believed she could feel.
Had it been such a bad thing, keeping quiet about her virginity? It was her body. Wasn’t she free to do with it as she wished?
Silence filled the room as she composed her thoughts and tried to compose herself, biting back the tears that were right there, waiting to be unleashed.
‘I know Pieta’s death’s affected me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s made me see how short life can be. I could get a terminal illness or get hit by a car or be the victim of a natural disaster... People die every day. You’ve walked the streets of Caballeros with me...you’ve been in battle, you must feel life’s fragility.’
A tear leaked down her cheek. She wiped it away before continuing. ‘I’m not trying to be morbid. Before Pieta died... I’m trying to make you understand what it was like. I knew from the time I could speak that I would never inherit anything and I remember my mamma stroking my hair when I was seven and saying what a pretty girl I was and how lucky I was that I would have my pick of rich husbands and always live a life of luxury. My looks and my family name were expected to be enough for me to have a great future but I remember feeling sick at the thought of it.
‘Daniele wasn’t going to inherit but he was expected to build a great life for himself—why should it be different for me because I was girl? Why should my future depend on what would, essentially, be the goodwill of a man I hadn’t even met? Why should I be forced to beg for money to buy the clothes I need when I can earn it myself and control my own life? I think that was the moment I decided I would take my own path and prove that anything my brothers could do, I could do too, and do it better. I’ve spent my whole life working towards that. But I didn’t live like a recluse. I partied and had fun but relationships... I saw how my friends were with their boyfriends and how their relationships consumed their lives and knew I couldn’t afford that distraction.’
While she spoke, Felipe didn’t say anything, listening with narrowed eyes without comment.
She met his gaze and tried to smile but instead found herself wiping away another tear. ‘Until eleven days ago I never had the sense that it could all end at any moment. My father’s death was awful but he’d been in his seventies and had been ill for years. In many ways the end was a relief for him. Pieta was only thirty-five, young, fit, recently married, a whole future to look forward to and it was all taken away in a moment by something as innocuous as fog. Fog!’ She could laugh at the madness and cruelty of it.
To watch her father slowly disintegrate had been heart-breaking but his faculties, his sense of humour...they had all survived in him to the very end. They’d had time to prepare. Nothing could have prepared her or any of them for Pieta’s death.
‘All those people who died in the hurricane in Caballeros, they’d had futures and family too, people who loved them. If it could happen to Pieta and to them, then why not me?’
Felipe made to speak but she raised a hand to stop him.
‘Whether I have days left to live or years or decades, I want to live it to be the best I can but I want to feel it too. You make me feel things I’ve never felt before. Good feelings. Scary feelings. But real feelings.’ Feelings she’d ached to explore to see where they would take her because what if she never felt them again? ‘Do you understand that?’
His dark eyes held hers as he gave a sharp inclination of his head.
‘I don’t know if it was this new awareness of life and its fragility that woke these feelings up or if it was just the catalyst...’ She attempted a smile. ‘No, I do know. If I’d met you under different circumstances I still would have wanted you. What I don’t know is if I would have had acted on it. I don’t expect anything from you or want anything more than this. Don’t think you took advantage of me. I gave my body to you freely as a consenting woman, just as you gave yours freely to me as a consenting man.’
She tried to smile again but her chin wobbled too much for it to form. ‘And that’s it.’
As Felipe listened, his fury with both Francesca and himself slowly seeped from him.
Curled on the huge bed, she looked so intensely vulnerable that his heart ached.
His pulses hammering, he shifted closer to her and took her cold hands, which just a short time ago had been warm, and rubbed them gently between his own then pressed a kiss to them.
She attempted another shaky smile that made the ache in his heart expand.
‘I hurt you, didn’t I?’ he said quietly.
She drew her lips in and nodded. ‘That was my own fault. If you’d known...’
‘If I’d known it was your first time I would have taken it slowly, not taken you like a rutting bull.’
She pulled a face. ‘If you’d known it was my first time you wouldn’t have taken me at all. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
He laughed, his chest lightening at her wry quip.
‘You’re right, I have made many assumptions about you, querida,’ he said, reaching out to stroke her pale cheek. ‘It’s the nature of my life. I work with men, the people I protect are normally men too.’
Women had always been on the periphery of his life, even his own mother, too busy working to feed him for him to learn any feminine secrets. Women were a mystery. He’d shared his bed with many of them through the years but had no clue as to how their minds worked. Francesca was the closest he’d come to understanding.
‘Women have always seemed like a different species to me,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I accepted your family’s description of you being a danger to yourself at face value, which I wouldn’t have done if you’d been a man.’
‘Maybe they were right,’ she whispered.
He shook his head, knowing she was thinking back to her gung-ho response to the Governor’s demand for a cash bribe. ‘To begin with you were on the edge but you soon found the strength you needed. What I am trying to say in my clumsy way is that I’ve not been able to look past my initial assumptions and too busy fighting my attraction to you to see you as you really are.’
‘How do you see me now?’
‘As strong.’ And beautiful. ‘You’re a fighter, querida.’
Another tear rolled down her cheek. She screwed her face up as he wiped it away with his thumb.
‘Not very strong now,’ she mumbled.
He leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ve seen men bigger than me cry. It’s nothing to do with strength and nothing to be ashamed of.’
She sighed and nodded then seemed to gather herself together, her back straightening. ‘I should put my nightshirt on.’
Her legs made a slight wobble as she padded to the dressing room and closed the door behind her, re-emerging moments later with her nightshirt on.
She stood in the doorway and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘What happens now?’
His heart hurt to see her vulnerability. He couldn’t turn his back on it, not yet.
‘Now, querida, we get some sleep.’ Sliding under the bedsheets, he opened his arms to her.
Tentatively she walked to him. When she climbed onto the bed he switched the bedside light off then gently laid her down so she was nestled against him.
Holding her tightly, he lay with her in silence, his mind still reeling from everything that had just happened, his loins still aching from unfulfilled desire.
Instead of acting on it, he did nothing more than stroke her hair and trace his fingers gently over the top of her back.
He’d never held a woman like this before. It was an intimacy he’d always steered away from.
He couldn’t stay here holding her like this. Equally, he couldn’t leave her. Not yet.
Only when Francesca’s breathing had become deep and regular, her limbs weighty on him, did he extricate himself and settle in his makeshift bed on the floor, attempting to calm his racing head and thrumming heart enough to find some sleep of his own.
* * *
Felipe opened his eyes, instantly alert to any sound.
The suite was in darkness. All was quiet. But something had woken him.
Then he heard it again, the sound that had roused him from his sleep. A whimper.
He threw his covers off and climbed onto the bed where he found Francesca curled in a ball, crying into her pillow.
‘Querida?’ Tentatively, he put a hand on her head.
She stilled at his touch. After a moment she turned her face and opened her eyes. ‘Felipe?’
He smoothed damp hair from her wet face. ‘What’s the matter?’
Her face crumpled and tears fell down her cheeks, silvery in the shadowed darkness.
‘A bad dream?’
She gave a jerky nod.
He scooped her up to pull her to him and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
‘Hush,’ he whispered, kissing the top of her head. ‘It’s over now.’
Clinging to him as if he were a life raft, she sobbed into his chest.
‘It’s over now,’ he repeated, feeling as ineffectual as it was possible to feel.
He’d held fellow soldiers in his arms when they’d sobbed over a fallen comrade, but never had he held them and heard the cracks of his own heart.
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- Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 530 стр. 3 иллюстрации
- ISBN: 9781474096065
- Дата выхода книги: 30 ноября 2019
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
Claimed by the most powerful of men! Travelling to a dangerous island to continue her late brother’s work, Francesca Pellegrini finds herself under the protection of security tycoon Felipe Lorenzi. Independent Francesca is infuriated by his commands, but Felipe’s every look invites her to give up her innocence. *Seeing Natasha Pellegrini at her husband’s funeral propels Matteo Manaserro back to a time before she shattered his trust. Caught in a potent mix of emotion, they surrender to their explosive passion… *Daniele Pellegrini must wed or lose his family inheritance. Eva Bergen is the perfect candidate. Especially because she can’t stand him – this hard-hearted tycoon won’t risk his wife falling in love!
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