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‘I’m serious. You’ll have to be polite to me so people don’t notice anything’s wrong.’
But something is wrong, thought Lulu, checking him out surreptitiously. Why did he have that sexy half-smile sitting at the corner of his mouth? He kept looking at her and she didn’t want him to look at her. It made her feel most unlike herself.
‘The best man has duties with the maid of honour,’ she persevered staunchly, feeling as if she was drowning in something and holding on to talk of the wedding as a life buoy.
‘Sí, I believe he does.’
Not those kind of duties. The thought just appeared in her head. It should have embarrassed her, and her heart was racing crazily, but a big part of her was actually enjoying the attention.
Alejandro du Crozier was flirting with her and she wasn’t diving for the nearest manhole to escape.
Probably because she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again after this weekend.
It wasn’t as if he was going to ask her out. This was just a straightforward few hours in a car together, and then there was the weekend... Maybe it would be okay just to pretend for a few hours that she was normal and he was...interested?
That was when the car gave a bit of a lurch, and the sound of rubber dragging on the road had Lulu gripping her seat.
Alejandro said something filthy in Spanish even as he braked, and all the heat that had been building between them dissipated with the reality of the car coming to a stop at the side of the road.
Lulu forgot how much she’d been enjoying herself as her old friend panic set in and she looked around wildly. ‘What’s going on? Why are we stopping?’
There was no way she was getting out here, in the middle of nowhere!
‘It’s a flat. The back left tyre is shot.’
At least it wasn’t electrical. Lulu slumped a little in her seat. She could stay where she was, safe and sound, and it wouldn’t take too long. She could manage this. But she needed to dial down the panic. She cast about for something to pin her focus to in the car and remembered her phone.
In the silence that followed she glanced up, only to find he was watching her. She really didn’t want him to notice how nervous she was. ‘Well, fix it,’ she said defensively, before returning her attention to the screen.
Fix it?
Alejandro cut the engine and eased back in his seat to take a good look at what exactly he had on his hands.
One hundred and thirty pounds, at a guess, of Paris-bred entitlement—and he damn well wasn’t her mechanic. His gaze dwelt on her soft, petulant mouth. Although there was something he wouldn’t mind fixing.
He reached across, plucked her phone from her hands and tossed it onto the back seat.
Time to take the edge off his distracting sexual interest in her.
Lulu gave him a puzzled look. He’d sort that out for her too.
He leaned in.
Her eyes widened, her breath came short, but she didn’t exactly push him away as he slid his fingers through the astonishingly silky weight of curls behind her head and fitted his mouth with practised ease to hers.
Her muffled yelp gave him the opportunity to invade her warm mouth. He had planned to make this quick. He didn’t linger where he wasn’t wanted. Only Lulu wasn’t struggling, and she made no attempt to push him away. Instead her hands unfolded over his shoulders and then, almost tentatively, she was kissing him back.
He let her.
This wasn’t about proving a point any more.
Her hand stroked gently against his shoulder as she moved her mouth sensuously against his.
She was seducing him. And it was working. His body was suddenly as hard as a pick axe.
Which was inconvenient, given neither of them could do anything about it right now, in a broken-down car on the side of a quiet Scottish road.
Sí, not one of his smarter moves.
He began to think about leaping into ice holes in Reykjavik, of losing to a lesser team, about the very real possibility that a photo of him making out like a teenager with this girl might all too easily end up on the internet.
But what should have killed his desire stone-dead was the wave of tenderness that came over him as she drew away and hid her face in his neck in a gesture of embarrassment that oddly, crazily, had a rush of male protectiveness surging up from nowhere.
He found himself stroking the back of her neck, the urge to be affectionate with her amazingly strong.
Fragile, he told himself again. She’s fragile.
Lulu was aware that Alejandro was moving away from her and she had nowhere to hide. One minute she’d been trying to control her panic, the next she’d been tipped into something she hadn’t had a lot of in her twenty-three years—the feel, the scent, the excitement of a man kissing her. And not just any man. This man. This very masculine man, who knew exactly what he was doing.
Her heart had slammed against her chest as his mouth had slid against hers. It had been the most invigorating experience of her life.
She waited for him to say something, because for the life of her she had nothing. Zero.
‘All fixed now,’ he said, dropping the words into her lap as if he’d tossed her his hotel room key.
It wasn’t his words but the deliberation with which he wielded them that had her gaze flying to meet his. And then his meaning became clear.
Fixed? Lulu floundered with the concept. He’d done it on purpose? He hadn’t been carried away like her at all?
Mon Dieu, what a little fool she was.
Her heart was still galloping like a wild horse, and now it picked up pace for all the wrong reasons.
She was aware of him watching her from beneath hooded eyes...aware that he now knew a great deal more about her than he had minutes ago. More than any man knew, to her deep embarrassment. And he’d set her up. He’d done it to humiliate her.
Her hand shot out but he caught it before she found her target. ‘No slapping, mi belleza.’
Alejandro watched the struggle on her face and, as much as he welcomed the status quo between them being lodged once more in place, he knew he’d acted like a bastard.
And that was when he heard it. The rumble.
His attention moved across to the side rear-vision mirror and he saw what was coming.
Lulu wrenched her wrist out of his hold and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand to give him the message. ‘You’re never to do that again.’
‘Fine.’ He kept his eye on what was coming.
‘There’s a name for men who force themselves on unwilling women.’ She addressed him directly, unbuckling her belt.
That had his attention.
‘I didn’t use any force, querida.’ He was frowning at her. ‘You were with me the whole way. It’s called chemistry.’
‘I know what it’s called.’ She opened her door.
‘Where the hell are you going?’ he growled, not liking her spin on this.
‘Somewhere far away from you.’ Which was when she gave a shriek and slammed the door shut again.
Around them a sea of black-faced sheep surged, like something out of a biblical plague. The car rocked slightly with the force.
‘I probably should have mentioned that,’ Alejandro drawled, winding down his window. ‘We’ve got company.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_9f6786cb-c70c-5148-b889-ea5bdff5685f)
I’M GOING TO DIE.
Lulu went stiff as a board as all around her the road just seemed to fill up with sheep.
‘Welcome to Scotland,’ said Alejandro, propping one arm casually on the door, as if floating in a sea of sheep happened regularly in Argentina.
A whimper had buried itself at the base of her throat, and she just knew that if she opened her mouth it would come out and humiliate her. But, really, how much worse could it get?
She had to speak. To make something happen.
‘Drive, why don’t you?’ she hissed at him a little desperately.
‘Where?’ He gestured at the woolly tide. ‘This is Scotland, chica. Here we give way to sheep.’
Lulu didn’t know if this was true or just more of him tormenting her. She suspected a little of both.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘the back tyre’s shot.’
Forget the tyre! She was shot. Her mouth pulsed from his kiss and her body felt oddly light, but that might be shock setting in. Because those big, woolly mammoths with their black faces were turning her tummy to cold liquid and her pulse was going so fast she thought she might pass out.
This was worse than a two-hour flight from Paris to Edinburgh, or letting a man she had only known for a few hours at most plant a kiss on her.
This was her worst nightmare.
Because she couldn’t escape. And the knowledge that she was only inches away from a full meltdown in front of this man was probably the only thing keeping her upright and frozen in her seat.
She knew she should never have got in this car with him.
She had no more control over her anxieties than she’d possessed this morning before the flight, when she’d knelt over the porcelain bowl at home in her flat and lost her breakfast.
Dieu, what if she was sick again? In this car? He wouldn’t be kind. There wasn’t a kind bone in his body.
There was a click, and Lulu realised he’d opened his door.
‘What are you doing?’ she almost shrieked.
He looked surprised by her vehemence. ‘I’m going to have a word with the farmer,’ he said mildly. ‘It’s a damn sight better than sitting here. Come on.’
‘No!’ She clutched hold of his arm.
‘Or we could stay here and neck like a couple of teenagers,’ he said dryly.
Lulu let him go in a flash, and discovered she really was between a rock and a hard place.
‘Come on,’ he said more patiently. ‘Stretch your legs.’
Lulu flailed around for a reason not to—any reason. ‘I don’t like sheep. They’re smelly, and—’ she cast about for something...anything ‘—and I’ll wreck my shoes.’
He gave her a look that in all honesty she knew her comments deserved and her toes curled under inside said shoes. The last of the confident, take-on-the-world Lulu died inside her. The Lulu who had sprung to life in his arms and kissed him back barely had time to take flight. She was back to being useless.
What made it worse was that he shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to him either way, which she guessed it didn’t.
‘Suit yourself, chica.’ He swung open his door and Lulu realised he was serious.
He was also back to calling her chica.
Lulu watched in tense dismay as he took off in easy strides down the road, all shoulders and masculine confidence, shouting out something to the two men driving the sheep. Obviously magic words, given they waited for him and then stood around conversing with him like old friends.
She sat forward, her nose almost to the glass, wondering what on earth they had to say to one another that was causing such a friendly, animated discussion. When he spoke to her all he did was rile her and growl. Or kiss her. Lulu hesitantly touched her mouth and swore she could still feel tingling.
A loud, long bleat sounded over her right shoulder and Lulu almost shot through the roof, any thoughts of kissing him shattering into a thousand pieces.
To her relief he came strolling back to the car. He leaned in.
‘Some of the connections are probably loose, I could fix it but it might happen again. Tell you what, I’ll give road assistance a call and organize another car. There’s a pub just down the road. We can wander down and wait for them there.’
Lulu knew this was the moment a normal, sensible woman would confess her problem. She would explain why there was no way she could get out, due to her difficulties, and they would come up with a solution together.
Only there wasn’t really a solution, was there? And right now she wasn’t a sensible woman. She was in the grip of a building panic attack.
Lulu heard herself say, ‘I have no intention of going anywhere.’
He straightened up, and for a long, awful moment Lulu thought he was going to turn around and leave her here.
Please don’t abandon me.
The words were forced up from deep inside her, where a small frightened girl was still cowering.
Then she realised he was walking away, and an awful cold feeling began to invade her limbs, only for him to stop at the front of the car.
‘Pop the hood,’ he called to her.
Lulu scrambled to obey him, jamming her middle with the gearstick but hardly noticing. He would never know how grateful she was that he wasn’t going anywhere, and she knew she was safe as long as she stayed in the car.
