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Her eyes widened. I am tempted. I’m really tempted!
He gave a sardonic smile. ‘I was offering dinner.’
The mortified colour flew to her cheeks. ‘Of course you were…sorry…that is, I was…’ Wondering if no strings sex was such a terrible thing. And why shouldn’t she? It wouldn’t hurt anyone; it might even be liberating…it might even be fun.
She doubted this was the sort of fun her mum had had in mind.
He grinned, immediately achieving the impossible and looking even more rampantly gorgeous—he really was the most incredibly male man she had ever met—and looked amused.
‘That is a yes.’
Flustered, Maggie swept the hair from her eyes. ‘Yes, that is, no, I…’
‘You wish for references perhaps?’
She flushed and shook her head feeling gauche, foolish and excited; her eyes widened in recognition of this last emotion. ‘Of course not.’
‘I am Rafael. Rafael-Luis Castenadas.’ Holding her eyes, he bowed formally from the waist. He straightened, pushing a dark hank of hair back from his wide brow as he did so, then angled an enquiring brow and waited.
Not recognising the cue to give her own name, Maggie heard herself say, ‘That’s a lovely name.’
She squeezed her eyes closed and thought, Please, please, let the ground open up and swallow me.
He watched as she bit her lip hard enough to bruise the soft pink flesh and break the skin. He saw a bead of bright blood form and thought about blotting it with his tongue before. He stopped the thought but was unable to stop his body reacting lustfully to the image.
He had never met anyone with a more expressive face. Did she allow every emotion she felt to register on those lovely features?
It made his task easier that she was so easy to read though he wondered how many men had taken advantage of her transparency—as he was.
He pushed aside the sliver of guilt. He had an excuse and he wasn’t trying to get her into bed…though in other circumstances that might, he conceded, have been a tempting idea.
Maggie opened her eyes and found he was watching her; the unblinking intensity of his regard was unsettling.
‘And you?’ he prompted.
‘Me?’ she echoed, wondering about the expression she had glimpsed on his face.
‘You have a name?’
She flushed and struggled to get her brain into gear. She could not believe the effect this total stranger was having on her. ‘I’m Maggie. Maggie Ward, well, Magdalena really, but nobody calls me that.’
‘Everyone starts out as strangers, Magdalena.’
His deep voice had a intimate quality. Maggie, uncomfortably conscious of the forbidden shiver trickling down her spine, told herself it was his accent. Just because he made her name sound exotic didn’t mean she was—she was still the same Maggie who was far too sensible to get silly because a man with a pretty face and a more than all right body noticed she existed.
Her glance skimmed the long, lean, male length of him and the breath left her parted lips in a tiny sigh of appreciation that she hurriedly covered in a cough. Ruefully she admitted to herself he was better than all right—actually he was better than stupendous though a person would have to see him without the clothes to be sure.
Maggie stopped dead mid-speculation, her eyes widening to saucers. I’m mentally undressing a man!
‘Even lovers…’
Her wide eyes leapt to his face. ‘Lovers?’ she echoed, thinking if ever there was a cue to walk this was it. This was not a subject that total strangers discussed. His next comment made it clear he did not share her inhibitions. She was starting to think he might not have any.
‘Lovers start out as strangers.’
He smiled at her with his eyes and her stomach flipped and quivered.
She recalled Millie’s friendly advice on how to add some spice to her holiday.
‘Act available, Maggie,’ she had counselled. ‘When your eyes meet his and your heart starts to thud and you get that delicious fluttery kick in your belly, don’t look away. A guy needs some encouragement.’
Maggie took a deep breath and didn’t look away.
It was just dinner, there would be other people, and she’d be experiencing some of the local culture, which was what she liked about foreign travel.
‘Will they have room at this paella place?’
Just for once it would be good to break away from her sensible image—not too far, obviously. And they were not talking the head banging, no-strings sex thing—this was dinner.
Where would be the harm?
As his strangely hypnotic eyes swept slowly across her upturned features. It probably made her pathetic, but she really wished she’d put on more make-up than a swipe of lip gloss and a smudge of eyeshadow.
As he examined the fine-boned features Rafael was struck once more by the startling resemblance between mother and daughter, but now he was equally conscious of the dissimilarities. The younger woman would be considered by most to have less claim to classical beauty, but when it came to sex appeal she was streets ahead.
‘They will always make room for me. Come…’
No shocker that he should issue commands—he had that written all over him. The shock was that she allowed him to steer her through the throng.
Looking back on the moment and the ones that followed later, Maggie was left to wonder if her body had not been taken over by an alien.
Maggie paused, ducking her head to look through the door he held open for her. The sumptuous interior looked just as impressive as the exterior of the long, low, powerful-looking car.
‘This is yours?’
‘You are going to lecture me on my carbon footprint or car theft?’
She slung him a cross glance and slid inside, lifting the newspaper that lay on the passenger seat. The headline was in Spanish but the image was one that had graced several front pages across the world that week—a well-known Hollywood star with his long-term partner making their relationship official at a civil ceremony.
The image of the two hand-in-hand, smiling men shifted her thoughts back to her dad’s parting words when Maggie had been startled to realise that her dad, at least, had his own ideas about what had caused her to break off the engagement.
‘I respect the fact you don’t want to talk about it, love, but the fact is, Maggie, some men…just because Simon has issues with his…leanings…’
Maggie had stared, astonished, as her father, red-faced, had cleared his throat before finishing huskily. ‘Never think you were the problem or it was your fault.’
‘No,’ she had responded faintly, thinking, Was I the only one who didn’t have a clue?
And she hadn’t—not until that final argument when things had got pretty ugly.
Maggie had never seen the normally restrained Simon so angry before, and the trigger to him losing it totally had of all things been a throwaway comment in the heat of the moment, because he didn’t have the faintest idea why she was angry. ‘I don’t think you even like women!’
‘Who have you been listening to? I am not gay!’
Before Maggie had been able to assure him she hadn’t meant that at all he had grabbed her arm and wrenched her towards him, lowered his face to her and snarled, ‘If you spread lies like that I’ll…’
Startled by his aggressive reaction, Maggie had frozen with shock, but had not lowered her gaze from his menacing glare. She knew from past experience it was a mistake to show fear to bullies. And Simon was a bully.
Why had she not known that before?
Anger had come to her rescue; her chin had come up and she had asked with cold disdain, ‘You’ll what, Simon?’
The ruddy colour rising up his neck had reached his cheeks, darkening the skin to magenta as he’d glared at her in furious frustration. ‘I… I’ll…’
Pretending not to notice the fingers tightening painfully around her wrist, she had cut across him. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I touched a raw nerve, but your sexuality is not a subject that interests me.’
Simon had looked at the ring she held out to him and released her arm.
She had dropped it into his palm, walked away and not looked back.
Maggie threw the newspaper into the back seat and fastened her belt with a click. Her chin lifted. Being sensible had got her nothing but humiliation; it was time for a bit of recklessness.
But maybe not this much, she thought half an hour later as they seemed to finally arrive at their destination. The village cut into the hillside was small, in a matter of moments they had driven through.
Keeping her voice carefully casual, Maggie turned her head in time to see the village lights disappear as the road began to climb steeply and asked, ‘Aren’t we stopping?’
Maggie recognised the extreme vulnerability of her position; she was in a car miles from anywhere with a man who could, for all she knew, be a homicidal maniac and nobody knew where she was.
She should be seriously scared, so why wasn’t she?
‘Relax, Maggie, I’m quite harmless.’
She looked at his profile and thought, If you were I wouldn’t be here. It was a bit late to recognise that it was the danger he represented that had drawn her here.
He was her rebellion against the self-imposed rules she had lived her life by.
‘Relax—you will enjoy yourself, you know.’ She looked at him with big wary eyes and he expelled a sigh. ‘That was not a threat, you know, and you can take your hand off the door—it’s locked.’
‘Why didn’t we stop in the village?’
‘Because,’ he said, pulling the car onto a patch of rocky ground beside a number of other vehicles, ‘the villagers are all here.’ He released the central lock. ‘You are sorry now that you came?’
Maggie, her lips curved in a happy smile, shook her head. ‘No.’ When he’d said the village was here he had not been exaggerating; the area of flat ground fringed by trees was full of people.
She felt his eyes on her and turned her head.
Her own smile faded as their glances connected and locked. The raw hunger in his deep-set eyes made her breath quicken and her stomach muscles quiver receptively.
For a moment their glances clung until Maggie, her heart beating hard, allowed her lashes to fall in a concealing veil.
The heavy thrum of her pounding blood in her ears was deafening. Confused, excited and scared by the strength of her reaction she ran ahead, anxious to distance herself from him and her feelings.
She used the moment to gather her calm around her like a comfort blanket—she wasn’t comforted but after a little deep breathing she was able to speak without babbling anything stupid like, ‘You’re beautiful,’ when he reached her side.
The tremors that hit her body intermittently she could do little about, so she jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans, blissfully unaware that while the first-aid measure hid her shaking hands it also pulled the denim tight across her bottom, riveting Rafael’s eyes on the feminine flare of her hips.
‘This is incredible,’ she said, not feigning her enthusiasm as she looked around the mountainside clearing. ‘However did you find this place?’
Eyes shining, Maggie stared at the scene, drinking it in: the flickering flames of the open fires, smoke in the night, the strings of fairy lights in the tall pines twinkling above the heads of the people of all ages sitting at the rustic tables, eating, drinking, laughing and some dancing to the music supplied by an accordion player.
The smell of the food cooking in the giant pots filled the air and mingled with the wood smoke, the scent of damp grass, and the wild thyme crushed underfoot.
‘Rafael.’ The man who greeted her companion stared at Maggie with open curiosity before smiling and making a comment in his native tongue.
The men spoke for a moment before Rafael turned back to Maggie. ‘I did not find it,’ he said, responding to her previous question. ‘I was brought up not far from here.’
‘A country boy!’
He arched a dark brow as he placed his fingers under her elbow to guide her to a seat at one of the long trestle tables. ‘That surprises you?’
Considering his aura of sophistication it did, but she had to admit he did seem very relaxed and at home in the surroundings and, judging by the number of people who greeted him with warmth and familiarity, he had not forgotten his roots.
She smiled as people moved to make way for them; Rafael told her to save him a seat while he left to bring her back food.
Maggie sat quietly drinking in the sights and smells, trying to commit this very special moment to memory, she was pretty sure that by the morning it would all seem like a dream.
Rafael returned carrying two plates of steaming paella and, setting one before her, pulled a stray chair to the table and straddled it.
Maggie speared a prawn with her fork and put it in her mouth. She gasped. ‘That is incredible!’ and refilled her fork.
Her plate was half empty when she realised that Rafael was spending more time watching her than eating himself.
She lifted her eyes to his face and once again he responded to a question before she had framed it. ‘I like watching you eat. It is rare to see a woman who enjoys her food.’
‘Well, I’d enjoy it more if you weren’t watching every mouthful,’ she admitted frankly.
Maggie tapped her foot as the fiddler struck up a fresh tune. The man on the accordion finished off his glass of wine before he joined in too. There was a ripple of clapping as people flocked onto the makeshift dance floor. This was clearly a popular choice.
‘They all look as if they’re having a good time.’
The wistful note in her voice was not lost on Rafael, who was starting to find her undisguised enthusiasm for everything wearing. Every time she looked at him with wide trusting eyes he experienced a need to justify his actions to himself that he did not enjoy.
He knew he was doing the right thing.
So why, asked the voice in his head, do you feel like such a lowlife?
‘The paella is very lovely.’
Of course it was.
