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‘Because he was a drifter. Luisa met him when she was on holiday in Mexico. He was a lifeguard at one of the beaches. She was young and he swept her off her feet, or so the story goes. The minute they were married, the demands began. It turned out that Brad James had very expensive tastes. The rolling estate and the cars weren’t enough; he wanted a private jet, and then he needed to be bankrolled for ventures that were destined for disaster. Maria knows nothing of this. She only knows that her father was killed in a light-aeroplane crash during one of his flying lessons. Luisa never forgot the mistakes she made.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that. It must have been hard growing up without a father.’ She bit into a slice of toast that tasted like cardboard. ‘But I don’t want anything from you and neither does my brother.’
‘You don’t want anything from anyone. Am I right?’
Aggie flushed and looked away from those dark, piercing eyes. ‘That’s right.’
‘But I’m afraid I insist on buying you some replacement clothes. Accept the offer in the spirit in which it was intended. If you dislike accepting them to such an extent, you can chuck them in a black bin-bag when you return to London and donate them all to charity.’
‘Fine.’ Her proud refusal now seemed hollow and churlish. He was being practical. She needed more clothes through no fault of her own. He could afford to buy them for her, so why shouldn’t she accept the offer? It made sense. He wasn’t to know that she wasn’t given to accepting anything from anyone and certainly not charitable donations. Or maybe he had an idea.
At any rate, if he wanted to buy her stuff, then not only would she accept but she would accept with alacrity. It was better, wasn’t it, than picking away at generosity, finding fault with it, tearing it to shreds?
* * *
With Christmas not far away, the town was once again bustling with shoppers, even though the snow continued falling. There was no convenient department-store but a series of small boutiques.
‘I don’t usually shop in places like this.’ Aggie dithered outside one of the boutiques as Luiz waited for her, his hand resting on the door, ready to push it open. ‘It looks expensive. Surely there must be somewhere cheaper?’ He dropped his hand and stood back to lean against the shop front.
They had walked into town in silence. It had irritated the hell out of Luiz. Women loved shopping. So what if she had accepted his offer to buy her clothes under duress? The fact was, she was going to be kitted out, and surely she must be just a little bit pleased? If she was, then she was doing a damned good job of hiding it.
‘And I’ve never stayed in a bed and breakfast before the one we’re in now,’ Luiz said shortly. ‘You’re fond of reminding me of all the things I’m ignorant of because I’ve been insulated by my background. Well, I’m happy to try them out. Have you heard me complain once about where we’re staying? Even though you’ve passed sufficient acid remarks about me being unable to deal with it because the only thing I can deal with are five-star hotels.’
‘No,’ Aggie admitted with painful honesty, while her face burned. She wanted to cover her ears with her hands because everything he was saying had a ring of truth about it.
‘So I’m taking it that there are two sets of rules here. You’re allowed to typecast me, whilst making damned sure that you don’t get yourself typecast.’
‘I can’t help it,’ Aggie muttered uncomfortably.
‘Well, I suggest you try. So we’re going to go into that shop and you’re going to try on whatever clothes you want and you’re going to let me buy whatever clothes you want. The whole damned shop if it takes your fancy!’
Aggie smiled and then giggled and slanted an upwards look at him. ‘You’re crazy.’
In return, Luiz smiled lazily back at her. She didn’t smile enough. At least, not with him. When she did, her face became radiantly appealing. ‘Compliment or not?’ he murmured softly, and Aggie felt the ground sway under her feet.
‘I’m not prepared to commit on that,’ she told him sternly, but the corners of her mouth were still twitching.
‘Come on.’
It was just the sort of boutique where the assistants were trained to be scary. They catered for rich locals and passing tourists. Aggie was sure that, had she strolled in, clad in her worn clothes and tired boots, they would have followed her around the shop, rearranging anything she happened to take from the shelves and keeping a close eye just in case she was tempted to make off with something.
With Luiz, however, shopping in an over-priced boutique was something of a different experience. The young girl who had greeted them at the door, as bug-eyed in Luiz’s presence as the waitress had been on Saturday in the café, was sidelined and they were personally taken care of by an older woman who confided that she was the owner of the shop. Aggie was made to sit on the chaise longe, with Luiz sprawled next to her, as relaxed as if he owned the place. Items of clothing were brought out and most were immediately dismissed by him with a casual wave of the hand.
‘I thought I was supposed to be choosing my own outfits,’ Aggie whispered at one point, guiltily thrilled to death by this take on the shopping experience.
‘I know what would look good on you.’
‘I should get some jeans…’ She worried her lower lip and inwardly fretted at the price of the designer jeans which had been draped over a chair, awaiting inspection. Belatedly, she added, ‘And you don’t know what would look good on me.’
‘I know there’s room for improvement, judging from the dismal blacks and greys I’ve seen you wear in the past.’
Aggie turned to him, hot under the collar and ready to be self-righteous. And she just didn’t know what happened. Rather, she knew exactly what happened. Their eyes clashed. His, dark and amused…Hers, blue and sparking. Sitting so close to each other on the sofa, she could breathe him in and she gave a little half-gasp.
She knew he was going to kiss her even before she felt his cool lips touch hers, and it was as if she had been waiting for this for much longer than a couple of days. It was as if she had been waiting ever since the very first time they had met.
It was brief, over before it had begun, although when he drew back she found that she was still leaning into him, her mouth parted and her eyes half-closed.
‘Bad manners to launch into an argument in a shop,’ he murmured, which snapped her out of her trance, though her heart was beating so hard that she could scarcely breathe.
‘You kissed me to shut me up?’
‘It’s one way of stopping an argument in the making.’
Aggie tried and failed to be enraged. Her lips were still tingling and her whole body felt as though it was on fire. That five-second kiss had been as potent as a red-hot branding iron. While she tried hard to conceal how affected she had been by it, he now looked away, the moment already forgotten, his attention back to the shop owner who had emerged with more handfuls of clothing, special items from the stock room at the back.
‘Jeans—those three pairs. Those jumpers and that dress…not that one, the one hanging at the back.’ He turned to Aggie, whose lips were tightly compressed. ‘You look as though you’ve swallowed a lemon whole.’
‘I would appreciate it if you would keep your hands to yourself!’ she muttered, flinty-eyed, and Luiz grinned, unperturbed by this show of anger.
‘I hadn’t realised that my hands had made contact with your body,’ he said silkily. ‘If they had, you would certainly know about it. Now, be a good girl and try on that lot. Oh, and I want to see how you look in them.’
Aggie, the very last person on earth anyone could label an exhibitionist, decided that she hated parading in front of Luiz. Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny the low-level buzz of unsettling excitement threading through her as she walked out in the jeans, the jumpers and various T-shirts in bright colours. He told her to slow down and not run as though she was trying out for a marathon. When she finally arrived at the dress, she held it up and looked at him quizzically.
‘A dress?’
‘Humour me.’
‘I don’t wear bright blues.’ Nor did she wear silky dresses with plunging necklines that clung to her body like a second skin, lovingly outlining every single curve.
‘This is a crazy dress for me to try on in the middle of winter,’ she complained, walking towards him in the high heels which the sales assistant had slipped under the door for her. ‘When it’s snowing outside…’
Luiz could count on the fingers of one hand the times when he had ever been lost for words. He was lost for words now. He had been slouching on the low sofa, his hands lightly clasped on his lap, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Now he sat up straight and ran his eyes slowly up and down the length of her small but incredibly sexy body.
The colour of the dress brought out the amazing aquamarine of her eyes, and the cut of the stretchy, silky fabric left very little to the imagination when it came to revealing the surprising fullness of her breasts, the slenderness of her legs and the flatness of her stomach. He wanted to tell her to go back inside the dressing room and remove her bra so that he could see how the dress looked without two white bra-straps visible on her narrow shoulders.
‘We’ll have the lot.’ His arousal was sudden, fierce and painful and he was damned thankful that he could reach for his coat which he had draped over the back of the chair and position it on his lap. He couldn’t take his eyes off her but he knew that the longer he looked, the more uncomfortable he was going to get.
‘And we’d better get a move on,’ he continued roughly. ‘I don’t want to be stuck out here in town for much longer.’ He watched, mesmerised, at the sway of her rounded bottom as she walked back towards the changing room. ‘And we’ll have those shoes as well,’ he told the shop owner, who couldn’t do enough for a customer who had practically bought half the shop, including a summer dress which she had foreseen having to hold in the store room until better weather came along.
‘Thank you,’ Aggie said once they were outside and holding four bags each. A coat had been one of the purchases. She was wearing it now and, much as she hated to admit it, it felt absolutely great. She hadn’t felt a twinge of conscience as she had bid farewell to her old threadbare one in the shop, where it had been left for the shop owner to dispose of.
‘Was it as gruelling an experience as you had imagined?’ He glanced down and immediately thought of those succulent, rounded breasts and the way the dress had clung to them.
‘It was pretty amazing,’ Aggie admitted. ‘But we were in there way too long. You want to get back. I understand that. I just…have one or two small things I need to get. Maybe we could branch off now? You could go and buy yourself some stuff.’
‘You mean you don’t want me to parade in front of you?’ Luiz murmured, and watched with satisfaction the hectic flush that coloured her cheeks.
He hadn’t expected this powerful sexual attraction. He had no idea where it was coming from. He wasn’t sure when, exactly, it had been born and it made no sense, because she was no more his type than he, apparently, was hers. She was too argumentative, too mouthy and, hell, hadn’t he started this trip with her in the starring role of gold-digger? Yet there was something strangely erotic and forbidden about his attraction, something wildly exciting about the way he knew she looked at him from under her lashes. He got horny just thinking about it.
Problem was…what was he to do with this? Where was he going to go with it?
He surfaced from his uncustomary lapse in concentration to find her telling him something about a detour she wanted him to make.
‘Seven…what? What are you talking about?’
‘I said that I’d like to stop off at Sevenoaks. It’ll be a minor detour and I haven’t been back there in over eighteen months.’
‘What’s Sevenoaks?’
‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?’ She assumed that, after the little jaunt in the clothes shop, his mind had now switched back to its primary preoccupation, which was work, and in that mode she might just as well have been saying ‘blah, blah, blah’.
‘In one ear, out the other,’ Luiz drawled, marvelling that he could become so lost in his imagination that he literally hadn’t heard a word she had been saying to him.
‘Sevenoaks is the home we grew up in,’ Aggie repeated. ‘Perhaps we could stop off there? It’s only a slight detour and it would mean a lot to me. I know you’re in a rush to get to Mark’s hotel, but a couple of hours wouldn’t make a huge difference, would it?’
‘We could do that.’
‘Right…well…thanks.’ Suddenly she felt as though she wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of their time in the town with him. In response to that crazy thought, she took a couple of small steps back, just to get out of that spellbinding circle he seemed to project around him, the one which, once entered, wreaked havoc with her thought processes. ‘And I’ll head off now and see you back at the bed and breakfast.’
‘What are you going to buy?’ Luiz frowned as he continued to stare down at her. ‘I thought we’d covered all essential purchases. Unless there are some slightly less essential ones outstanding? There must be a lingerie shop of sorts somewhere…’
Aggie reacted to that suggestion as though she had been stung. She imagined parading in front of him wearing nothing but a lacy bra and pants and she almost gasped aloud.
‘I can get my own underwear—thank you.’ She stumbled over the words in her rush to get them out. ‘And, no, I wasn’t talking about that!’
‘What, then?’
‘Luiz, it’s getting colder out here and I’d really like to get back to the bed and breakfast so…’ She took a few more steps back, although her eyes remained locked with his, like stupid, helpless prey mesmerised by an approaching predator.
Luiz nodded, breaking the spell. ‘I’ll see you back there in…’ he glanced at his watch. ‘…a couple of hours. I have some work to do. Let’s make it six-thirty in the dining room. If we’re to have any kind of detour, then we’re going to have to leave very early in the morning, barring any overnight fall of snow that makes it impossible. So we’ll get an early night.’
‘Of course,’ Aggie returned politely. She was gauging from the tone of his voice that, whatever temporary truces came into effect, nothing would deflect him from his mission. It suddenly seemed wildly inappropriate that she had thrilled to his eyes on her only moments before as she had provided him with his very own fashion show, purchased at great expense. She might have made a great song and dance about her scorn for money, her lack of materialism but, thinking about how she had strutted her stuff to those lazy, watchful eyes, she suddenly felt as though without even realising it she had been bought somehow. And not only that, she had enjoyed the experience.
‘And I just want you to know…’ Her voice was cooler by several degrees. ‘That once we’re back in London, I shall make sure that all the stuff you bought for me is returned to you.’
‘Not this rubbish again!’ Luiz dismissed impatiently. ‘I thought we’d gone over all that old ground and you’d finally accepted that it wasn’t a mortal insult to allow me to buy you a few essential items of clothing, considering we’ve been delayed on this trip?’
‘Since when is a summer dress an essential item of clothing?’
‘Climb out of the box, Aggie. So the dress isn’t essential. Big deal. Try a little frivolity now and again.’ He couldn’t help himself. His gaze drifted down to her full lips. It seemed that even when she was getting on his nerves she still contrived to turn him on.
‘You think I’m dull!’
‘I think this is a ridiculous place to have an ongoing conversation about matters that have already been sorted. Standing in the snow. The last thing either of us need is to succumb to an attack of winter flu.’
With her concerns casually swatted away, and her pride not too gently and very firmly put in its place, Aggie spun round on her heels without a backward glance.
She could imagine his amusement at her contradictory behaviour. One minute she was gracefully accepting his largesse, the next minute she was ranting and railing against it. It made no sense. It was the very opposite of the determined, cool, always sensible person she considered herself to be.
But then, she was realising that in his presence that determined, cool and always sensible person went into hiding.
Annoyed with herself, she did what she had to do in town, including purchasing some very functional underwear, and once back at the bed and breakfast she retreated up to her bedroom with a pot of tea. The landline at the hotel to which they were heading was still down and neither could she make contact with her brother on his mobile.
At this juncture, she should have been wringing her hands in worry at the prospect of the scene that would imminently unfold. She should have been depressed at the thought of Luiz doing his worst and bracing herself for a showdown that might result in her having to pick up the pieces. Her fierce protectiveness of her brother should have kicked in.
Instead, as she settled in the chair by the window with her cup of tea, she found herself thinking of Luiz and remembering the brush of his lips on hers. One fleeting kiss that had galvanised all the nerve-endings in her body.
She found herself looking forward to seeing him downstairs, even though she knew that it was entirely wrong to do so. Fighting the urge to bathe and change as quickly as possible, she took her time instead and arrived in the dining room half an hour after their agreed time.
She paused by the door and gathered herself. Luiz was in the clothes he had presumably bought after they had parted company, a pair of black jeans and a black, round-necked jumper. He had pushed his chair back and in front of him was his laptop, at which he was staring with a slight frown.
He looked every inch the tycoon, controlling his empire from a distance. He was a man who could have any woman he wanted. To look at him was to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. So why was she getting into such a tizzy at the sight of him? He had kissed her to shut her up, and here she was, reacting as though he had swept her off her feet and transported her to his bed.
Luiz looked up and caught her in the act of staring. He shut his computer and in the space of a few seconds had clocked the new jeans, tighter than her previous ones, and one of the new, more brightly coloured long-sleeved T-shirts that clung in a way she probably hadn’t noticed. It was warm in the dining room. No need for a thick jumper.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting your work,’ Aggie said, settling in the chair opposite him. There was a bottle of wine chilling in a bucket next to the table and she eyed it suspiciously. Now was definitely not the time to over-indulge.
‘All finished, and you’ll be pleased to know that the deal is more or less done and dusted. Jobs saved. Happy employees. A few lucky ones might even get pay rises. What did you buy in town after you left me?’
He poured her some wine and she fiddled with the stem of the glass.
‘A few toys,’ Aggie confessed. ‘Things to take to the home. The children don’t get a lot of treats. I thought it would be nice if I brought some with me. I shall wrap them; it’ll be hugely exciting for them. ‘Course, I couldn’t really splash out, but I managed to find a shop with nothing in it over a fiver.’
Luiz watched the animation on her face. This was what the women he dated lacked. They had all been beautiful. In some cases, they had graced the covers of magazines. But, compared to Aggie’s mobile, expressive face, theirs seemed in recollection lifeless and empty. Like mannequins. Was it any wonder that he had tired of them so quickly?
‘Nothing over a fiver,’ he murmured, transfixed by her absorption in what she was saying.
Having pondered the mystery of why he found her so compellingly attractive, Luiz now concluded that it was because she offered more than a pretty face and a sexy body. He had always tired easily of the women he had gone out with. No problem there; he didn’t want any of them hanging around for ever. But the fact that Chloe, who had hardly been long-term, could be classified as one of his more enduring relationships was saying to him that his jaded palate needed a change of scene.
Aggie might not conform to what he usually looked for but she certainly represented a change of scene. In every possible way.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Aggie asked suspiciously.
‘I was just thinking about my own excessive Christmases.’ He spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘I am beginning to see why you think I might live in an ivory tower.’
Aggie smiled. ‘Coming from you, that’s a big admission.’
‘Perhaps it’s one of the down sides of being born into money.’ As admissions went, this was one of his biggest, and he meant it.
‘Well, if I’m being perfectly honest…’ Aggie leaned towards him, her face warm and appreciative, her defence system instantly defused by a glimpse of the man who could admit to shortcomings. ‘I’ve always thought that pursuing money was a waste of time. ‘Course, it’s not the be-all and end-all, but I really enjoyed myself in that boutique today.’
‘Which bit of it did you enjoy the most?’
‘I’ve never actually sat on a chair and had anyone bring clothes to me for my inspection. Is that how it works with you?’
‘I don’t have time to sit on chairs while people bring me clothes to inspect,’ Luiz said wryly. ‘I have a tailor. He has my measurements and will make suits whenever I want them. I also have accounts at the major high-end shops. If I need anything, I just have to ask. There are people there who know the kind of things I want. Did you enjoy modelling the clothes for me?’
‘Well…um…’ Aggie went bright red. ‘That was a first for me as well. I mean, I guess you wanted to see what you were paying for. That sounds awful. It’s not what I meant.’
