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In her pride, Shontelle knew she had wounded his. It hadn’t seemed to matter at the time. But it did. She had the strong conviction it especially mattered now.
“You were talking to Luis about me,” she said, drawing Alan’s attention.
He flashed her a pained look. “He asked about you,” he answered dismissively.
“No. It was more than that.” She frowned, trying to recall what she’d heard. The call had ended abruptly, just after Alan had said it was too dangerous for a woman to be out during curfew. “Tell me what he wanted, Alan.”
“I said, forget it!” he snapped impatiently.
“I want to know. I have a right to know,” she argued. “I’m just as responsible for this tour group as you are.”
He paused in his pacing but aggression still pumped from him. His eyes glittered with a fury of frustration. “I will not have my little sister grovel to Luis Martinez for anyone!” he bit out.
More pride.
It was heart-thumpingly obvious that Luis had turned the deal for the bus into something personal. Very personal. Which again was her fault. Shontelle took a deep breath to calm a host of skittish nerves. She couldn’t let this pass. It wasn’t fair to Alan. Besides which, the tour group was depending on them to rescue them from the situation.
“I’m not little,” she pointed out determinedly. “I’m twenty-six years old and I can take care of myself.”
Alan rolled his eyes. “Sure you can! Like you did two years ago when you talked me into leaving you with Luis.”
“I’m over that. I can deal with him,” she insisted hotly.
Too much personal knowledge sliced back at her. “You didn’t want to come back to South America. You wouldn’t be on this trip but for Vicki getting glandular fever. And you were as nervy as hell while we were in Buenos Aires.”
Her cheeks burned. “I came to assist you. That’s my job.” She pushed her chair back from the table which was littered with the evidence of failed attempts at solutions. Resolution drove her to her feet. “I’ll go and talk to him.”
“No, you won’t!”
“Luis Martinez was your last resort, Alan. Two years ago he would have got you the bus, no problem. I caused the problem and I’ll deal with it.”
He argued.
Shontelle stood firm.
Nothing was going to stop her; not the curfew, not the danger—which she considered very limited with the Plaza Hotel being virtually next door—not any of Alan’s big-brotherly concerns. She’d lived with guilt and shame too long. She’d spent two years being eaten up by memories she couldn’t change or bury. Luis Martinez wanted a face-to-face meeting with her. Then let it be. Let it be.
Maybe something good would come out of it
The bus, if nothing else.
She owed Alan that.
CHAPTER THREE
GOOD intentions were all very fine when made from a safe distance. Shontelle stared at the door which led into the suite occupied by Luis Angel Martinez and her heart quailed. A suite contained a bed...
She wasn’t over him. She doubted she ever would be. Luis Angel... She’d even been besotted with his name. Dark angel, she thought now, barely suppressing a shiver. It took all her willpower to raise her hand and knock on the door.
In the next few stomach-knotting moments, Shontelle tried to steel herself against revealing the vulnerability she felt. This meeting would only be a matter of pride to the man she had to face. He undoubtedly wanted to rub in that she was the loser, not him.
Somehow she had to let that wash over her, do a bit of grovelling if need be. Remember the bus, she fiercely told herself. She had to get the bus.
At least Luis couldn’t mistake the fact she was dressed for business. Her dark red T-shirt was printed with the Amigos Tours logo and her khaki trousers with pockets running down both legs were plainly practical, as were her sturdy shoes. This was strictly a business visit.
The door opened.
And there he was, hot flesh and blood, simmering in front of her. His thick, wavy black hair was brushed away from the beautifully sculpted features of his face, as always, framing them with a kind of dark, savage splendour. His skin gleamed with almost a magnetic vitality. His deeply set eyes, lushly outlined by their double rows of lashes, projected more power than any one man should ever have.
Shontelle stood rooted to the floor, speechless, breathless, mindless, her good intentions instantly zapped out of existence. Her scalp tingled. Every millimetre of her skin tingled. Her fingers curled into her palms, nails biting into flesh. Her toes scrunched up in her walking boots. Her heart swelled, throbbed, its heavy beat of yearning echoing through every pulse point.
She wanted him.
She still wanted him.
“Welcome back to my part of the world.”
His voice jolted her back to the chilling reality of why she was here. She’d loved his voice—its deep, rich, flowing tones—but there was no caress in it now, nothing warmly intimate. No welcome in his smile, either. The full-lipped sensual mouth that had once seduced her with such passion, was curled into a sardonic taunt, and the dark blaze of his eyes held a scorching intensity that shrivelled any hope of reviving good feelings. Or even a workable understanding.
He stepped aside to make room for her to enter, derisively waving her into his domain. For one nervejangling instant, the highly civilised Plaza suite blurred in Shontelle’s mind and the Amazon jungle leapt into it—its overwhelming sense of the primitive pressing in on her, vampire bats biting for blood, big black tarantulas hiding in trees, ready to pounce on their prey...
“Scared?” Luis mocked, his eyes raking her with contempt.
It goaded her forward. “No. Should I be?” she tossed at him as she passed by, determined on holding a brave front.
He closed the door behind her.
The metallic click felt ominous.
“Spurned Latin lovers are notoriously volatile,” he remarked, still in a mocking tone.
“A lot of water under the bridge since then, Luis,” she answered, shrugging off the implied threat and walking on through the sitting room of the suite, aiming for the big picture window on the other side of it.
The spectacular view of La Paz at night was not the drawcard. She desperately needed to put distance between her and the man who’d deliberately raised memories of their affair. And its ending.
“I must say you look as dynamic as ever,” she threw at him, forcing herself to attach a conciliatory smile. “I’d say life has been treating you well.”
“It could be better,” he replied, watching her move away from him with a dark amusement that raised Shontelle’s sense of danger several notches.
“I expect you’re married by now,” she added, trying to drive a moral wedge between them.
His white shirt was half unbuttoned, revealing a provocative arrowhead of his broad muscular chest, dark skin tipped by a glimpse of the black curls she knew spread across it. His forearms were bare, too, sleeves rolled up, flaunting his strong masculinity. She hated the thought of his wife knowing him as intimately as she had.
“No. As it happens, I’m not married.”
The cold, hard words were like nails being driven into Shontelle’s heart. Had she made a mistake? A flood of hot turmoil hit her. Fortunately she’d reached the window. She swiftly turned her back on him, hiding her wretched confusion, pretending to be captivated by the spectacular view.
Surely to God he was lying! He’d been betrothed to another woman—the Gallardo heiress—before and during their affair two years ago. He’d lied then, by omission. He’d left Shontelle blindly believing she was the only woman who counted in his life when there were two others who had a longer, deeper claim on him.
How could anyone not count Elvira Rosa Martinez?
More to the point, it had been totally unconscionable of Luis to remain silent about the young woman designated as his wife; the sweet, convent-raised, beautifully mannered Claudia Gallardo.
His silence had spelled out where Shontelle stood in his life—a handy bit of foreign fluff on the side, out of his mainstream, suitable only for fun and relaxation. But then he hadn’t made any promises, she savagely reminded herself.
“I assume you’re not married, either, since you’re travelling with your brother,” he drawled, each word sounding closer.
He was coming after her.
“I’m here on business, Luis,” she said tersely, wishing she hadn’t raised anything personal. He couldn’t be believed anyway. He’d undoubtedly say—or not say—whatever suited his purpose.
“Do you have a lover tucked away at home, waiting to serve your inclinations?” His voice had the stinging flick of a whip.
“I’m all out of lovers at the moment,” she answered flippantly, disdaining even a glance at him.
“Which is why you came on this trip, mmh?”
The silky taunt hit her on the raw. The urge to swing around and let him have the sting of her tongue almost blew her mind off her purpose here. She gritted her teeth, folded her arms to hold wayward impulses in, and stared fixedly at the myriad of lights beyond the window.
“It looks like a fairyland outside, doesn’t it?” she remarked as lightly as she could.
It was true. La Paz was the highest capital in the world and it appeared to be built in a moon crater. From where she was viewing it from the low downtown area, the lights of the city rose in a great circular curve, going up so high they seemed to be hanging in the sky. Incredible there were actually people living behind them.
“You need a magician to get you out of it,” Luis mocked, standing right behind her now.
“We need a bus,” she said quickly, fighting her intense awareness of his nearness.
“The curfew doesn’t lift until six in the morning.”
Her heart skittered. What was he implying? They had all night to negotiate?
“I don’t like your hair constricted in a plait,” was his next comment, confusing Shontelle further.
Her spine crawled at his touch as he lifted the rope of hair away from her back. She knew what he was going to do but her mind couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t still love her hair. He couldn’t still want her!
Or maybe he didn’t.
Maybe he was playing some cruel cat-and-mouse game.
She wanted to look at his face but she was frightened to. What if he was waiting to feed off her feelings? Pride insisted she deny him the satisfaction of knowing she was rattled. Could he hear the mad thumping of her heart? Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, she recited feverishly.
He’d worked off the rubber band and was separating the twisted swathes, seeming to take sensual pleasure in the feel of her hair. Impossible to ignore it. Impossible to stay calm.
“What do you want from me, Luis?” she blurted out.
“What I had before.”
Her mind fragmented under the force of her own desire to have him again, and his apparent desire to recall and repeat the passion they’d shared. Some tattered shreds of reason shrieked that he was only playing with her, using his power to make her succumb to him, but she had to know, had to see.
As she jerked around to face him, her arms flew out of their protective fold and lifted into an instinctive plea for truth. “What do you mean?” she cried.
He still held a skein of her hair and he wound it around his hand as his eyes blazed their dark purpose into hers. “I mean to seize the day, Shontelle. Or to put it more graphically...the night. You want a bus. I want one more taste of you.”
Shock waves slammed through her.
One more taste...
Only one...
Payment for the bus.
“Not such a difficult deal, is it?” he taunted. “Just a matter of giving me what you gave of yourself two years ago...in your desire to get what you wanted of me.”
“I didn’t get what I wanted then,” she protested, her voice thin and shaky under the appalling weight of devastated hopes.
A savage fury flared into his eyes. “Was I not all you wanted of a Latin lover?” His mouth curled with cruel intent. “Well, let me try not to disappoint you tonight. We have many hours ahead of us. I promise you a feast of hot-blooded sensuality.”
Hot and hard and ruthless.
The awful part was, Shontelle could not stop her body from pulsing with excitement at what he offered. Only with him had she ever known intense physical ecstasy. She hadn’t even felt a twinge of attraction towards anyone else in the past two years. Just the thought of touching Luis again, feeling him...quivers of anticipation shot through her.
But he was treating her like a whore, laying it out that she could only get the bus in return for sex.
Sex...not remotely connected to love. Not even the slightest semblance of love. It was wrong, wrong, wrong! Her heart twisted in torment as he twisted her hair more firmly around his hand and tugged her closer to him. Then his other hand slid over her breasts, his palm rotating caressingly, his eyes glittering their triumphant knowledge of what had pleasured her in the past, and to prove him right, her nipples instantly stiffened into begging prominence.
“Stop it!” she hissed, hating his power to arouse her even as she revelled in the sharp sensation that stimulated a host of nerves, arcing from her breasts to the innermost core of her sexuality.
One black eyebrow arched mockingly. “You no longer like this?”
He was the devil incarnate, tempting her. The truth was, she didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t want him to ever stop. But he would. This was only to be one more taste. Unless...
Something deeply primitive stirred in Shontelle.
He wasn’t married, so he said.
And he still wanted her.
He also wanted a payback for his wounded pride.
Well, so did she. So did she!
“I don’t normally go for one night stands,” she said.
“But these are special circumstances,” he returned silkily.
“Just let me understand you clearly, Luis...”
With her heart thumping to a wild beat, Shontelle flicked open the shirt button over his chest curls and slid her hand inside, seeking and deliberately tweaking one of his nipples. His sharply indrawn breath was music to her ears. She had power over him, too. It wasn’t a one-way street.
