The Alcolar Family

CHAPTER THREE

THAT comforting delusion stayed with her at least through the rest of the night. The truth was that she didn’t have time to think of anything else.

She had barely recovered from the whirlwind assault on her senses of Joaquin’s lovemaking, her breath still coming raggedly and unevenly, the sheen of perspiration drying on her skin in the cooling sun of the evening, when he had picked her up and carried her into the house.

‘Joaquin…’ she tried to protest feebly, but he blithely ignored her, padding over the tiles in his bare feet as he took her through the hall and up the staircase to the bedroom.

There, he laid her carefully on the bed, coming down beside her, and drawing her close, crushing a hard, impassioned kiss onto her mouth.

And Cassie surrendered all thought of protesting further, or even of trying to talk. She simply melted into the sensual appeal of his embrace, revelling in the feel of his hot, hard body against her own flesh, the scent of his skin in her nostrils.

Tonight, she told herself, for tonight she would forget her worries, put aside her concerns. Tonight she would not think of a tomorrow or ask for a future. Tonight she would simply enjoy what Joaquin offered, and only that. And she would not ask for more.

And right now what Joaquin did offer was good enough for her. More than good enough, she thought on a swooning sense of pleasure, as, muttering a litany of praise in his native Spanish, his lyrically accented voice roughened by growing desire, he kissed his way once more down from her lips to her throat, from her throat to her shoulders, her breasts… And as his mouth closed, hard and hot and hungry, over the tightened tip, still achingly sensitive from his attentions just a short time before, she felt the sting of desire speed along every nerve path, making her writhe restlessly against him.

‘Joaquin…’ she muttered again, but this time in open yearning, hungry demand rather than protest. ‘Oh, dear Lord, Joaquin…’

And it all began again.

She had no idea what time they surfaced from the wild, erotic storm that had raged over them. She only knew that at some point Joaquin left their bed and went downstairs. He came back a short time later, carrying with him a tray laden down with plates of bread, cheese, fresh fruit and a bottle of one of the very best wines from his own vineyard, together with two beautiful, fine crystal goblets.

He fed her by hand, breaking off small pieces of bread or cheese, picking the finest grapes, the freshest apricots, and offering them to her as a mother might feed a child, so that all she had to do was to accept the delicacies from his hands. He held the glass to her mouth, tilting it so that she could sip the rich red liquid, finally kissing away the faint stain that marked her lips with a gentleness that made her heart clench in sharp response.

When the simple meal was done, he put aside the tray, laying it on the table at the far side of the room, before coming back to take her hands in his, drawing her from the bed and taking her with him into the bathroom. There they showered together, Joaquin brushing the breadcrumbs from her skin, washing the faint stickiness of fruit juice from where it had dribbled onto her breasts. There too, inevitably, they made love yet again. This time with a slow, tantalising sensuality, that built up and up, taking them both totally out of themselves and into a world where nothing mattered but their bodies, their touch, their kisses, and the heat that flamed between them. And ultimately that heat, that passion pushed them over the edge into a pulsing, shuddering climax that drained what little was left of even Joaquin’s strength and left them with barely enough energy to make the brief journey from the shower to the bed before they tumbled headlong into the total oblivion of a sleep so deep it was like unconsciousness.

They had barely spoken a word to each other all night, Cassie reflected now. Talking hadn’t been needed; it had seemed superfluous. They had let their bodies, their hands, their mouths, their senses do all the contacting that was necessary and they had communicated on such a basic, primitive level that there had been no need of words at all.

But that had been then, and this was now, she told herself uncomfortably. Last night had been an experience enclosed in a bubble, a moment out of time. A time when she had told herself that she would let things ride and not spoil what was happening by stirring up things that would only muddy the waters of their relationship.

Now she had to face those things, whether she liked it or not. Now she had to talk. There were things she had to ask Joaquin; things she needed to discuss with him, and she couldn’t let it wait any longer.

But Joaquin wasn’t in the bed beside her. The pillow still bore a dent where his head had rested, and the scent of his body lingered on the cover, in the sheets, but of the man himself there was no sign. A hasty check of the bathroom showed that it too was empty, something Cassie noted with an inward sense of relief.

Even though the room was cold and still, no trace of the steam and heat that had filled it last night, she still felt the echoes of the hungry coupling they had shared. The reverberations of the passionate climax still seemed to hang in the atmosphere, making her senses quiver, her nerves clenching in response, so that she hurried out of the bathroom, too uneasy to linger longer.

It was as she hurried back into the bedroom that the door opened quietly and Joaquin came in, the sight of him stopping her dead in surprise.

‘Cassandra…’

His voice betrayed almost as much surprise as she was feeling. ‘I thought you were still asleep.’

‘You meant you hoped I was still asleep.’

The words were a mistake; she knew that as soon as she heard them hit the air. But she hadn’t been able to hold them back.

It was the way he was dressed that had done it. The sleek, elegant suit and crisp shirt, even the tie that spoke of formality and discipline and—damn it—work!

‘I didn’t want to disturb you, that’s true.’

Taking his cue from her, Joaquin was coolly formal. Not quite cold, but most definitely lacking in any warmth.

‘I thought you might want to sleep in after…’

The way his eyes slid to the bed, and the gleam she had caught in them before they moved away from hers, sent prickles of irritation sparking along her spine. But what made the sparks turn into open flames of resentment was the faint but definitely triumphant edge to the sudden smile that curled up the corners of his mouth before he ruthlessly imposed a new control and determinedly forced them down again.

And that smile pushed her over the edge, into words that she knew were a mistake even as they left her mouth.

‘After you had your way with me?’ she snapped viciously, bringing his head up sharply, something much stronger than her own annoyance flaring in the darkness of his eyes.

‘After we had our way with each other,’ he corrected stiffly, the exotic notes of his accent contrasting stunningly with the cold crispness of each word.

‘Whatever…’ she forced herself to mutter ungraciously.

If the truth were told, she much preferred to stay on the side of righteous indignation, even if it wasn’t actually justified. It felt more comfortable. And it seemed to square better with an uneasy conscience.

She didn’t want to feel this way, but she just wasn’t strong enough to stop herself.

One of the problems was the way that Joaquin was dressed, and the physical effect that was having on her.

She had always adored the way he looked when—as she had once put it—scrubbed and spruced up ready for work. Apart from the fact that he looked stunning, the dark good looks dramatically enhanced by the white shirt, every powerful line of his strong, lean body emphasised by the superb fit and tailoring of his suit, she had never been able to resist the appeal of the contrast between the controlled formality of his clothing and the fiercely uninhibited, passionate man she knew he really was underneath.

He had looked that way the very first time she had seen him, cool and sleek and totally in control. She had been working as a translator for an English wine importer who had been negotiating a major deal with the Alcolar Vineyards and who had asked her to attend this vital stage of the negotiations to make sure he got everything quite right. She had been sitting with her employer and his second in command at the huge, polished mahogany table in the Alcolar boardroom when the door had opened and Joaquin strode into the room.

It had seemed to Cassie as if the world had careered to a halt, jolting her out of her sense of reality and into a place where everything she had always believed in no longer had any sway. She had looked, stared, blinked, unable to believe what she saw, looked again and from that moment she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off him. It was as if he were the most powerful magnet in the world and she were some tiny, pin-fine compass needle. She was drawn to him in an instant, held fast by the powerful pull of his burning sexual appeal, and she had never been able to tug herself free ever since.

And Joaquin had been the same.

She could remember the moment he had been introduced, the sear of electricity up her arm as he’d taken her hand, the murmur of, ‘Buenos dὶas, senorita,’ in that stunningly accented voice. Their eyes had met, locked together, and it seemed that from then on she had never looked away again.

But she must have done, because somehow the meeting had gone on, and the deal had been struck. She didn’t know if her employer had got the terms he’d wanted, or if Joaquin had arranged things his way, her concentration on the matter in hand so totally shot that it had been a miracle she had been able to translate at all. She only knew that when she’d spoken those jet-black eyes had been drawn to her face, fixing on it and watching her so intently that she’d actually feared that his gaze might mark her face, bruising it faintly where his eyes had rested. At first she had thought that he had been concentrating on following her translation; it was only much later that she’d learned that Joaquin Alcolar spoke English almost as well as she did herself, and that he would have been perfectly capable of conducting the meeting in his second language, if he had chosen to do so.

‘So you concede that it was not just me forcing my wicked attentions on you.’

Joaquin’s sharply enunciated words slashed into her memories like a sword slicing through silk, forcing her back to the present with an abruptness that had her blinking in unfocused confusion.

‘I—yes—of course…’ she managed, hoping she was answering what he had really said and not just what she thought she had heard.

She really must concentrate. This was too important just to let drift.

‘I—it was mutual,’ she managed hastily and saw his brusque nod of satisfaction, though none of the worrying expression in his eyes eased in any way.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he commented cynically. ‘I have never forced a woman yet and I certainly do not intend to start with you.’

He didn’t have to, and well he knew it, Cassie told herself. If anything offended him it was the thought she might just be implying that his seduction technique was not the carefully honed skill that it was. The number of women, all of them beautiful, successful and rich, nearly as beautiful and rich as he was himself, who had passed through his life from the time that he had reached adulthood attested to his almost legendary prowess with the opposite sex, and he wasn’t likely to want to see that reputation threatened in any way.

‘No, I’m not claiming you forced me.’

‘Then what the hell is the matter with you?’

Joaquin was having a hard time adjusting to the woman he had discovered since he had come back into the room. He had left his bed reluctantly this morning, only forced out of it by the knowledge that there were business matters he had to deal with. Business matters that wouldn’t wait. And so, in spite of the fact that both his hungry body and his deepest instincts had been demanding that he stayed right where he was, taking Cassandra into his arms and kissing her softly awake, stern common sense and duty had forced him to get up and head for the shower.

He should have gone straight to work after that, aiming to reach his office well before the heat of the day really kicked in and made conditions much less tolerable. But he hadn’t been able to resist coming back into the bedroom to see Cassandra one more time before he left.

Only to find that she was no longer the softly sensual sleeper he had left curled up in the bed, as if still feeling his presence beside her. Instead she had turned back into the woman he had been having so much trouble with over the past weeks. The woman who was edgy, touchy, sharp-tongued and impossible to understand. The woman whose moods were difficult to predict, whose mind seemed so often to be elsewhere, lost in thoughts he couldn’t discover.

‘I thought—’

‘You thought that because we’d had a—a hot night—that I would be quite content to lie here, stark naked, and just wait for my lord and master to come back and take up from where we left off?’

‘Yes—no! Well—what the devil would be wrong with that?’

Okay, so he hadn’t expected her to lie there and wait for him, but he certainly wasn’t going to object to the idea of it! But how he wished she hadn’t said ‘stark naked’. He’d been aware of the fact that she had no clothes on, of course. No red-blooded male could look at that luscious body and not be aware of that. But they were often naked with each other, usually totally comfortably, and he was trying to be relaxed about it.

But the words stark naked, together with the implication of her just lying there, combined with heated memories of the night before, had served to scramble his brain. That was rubbing his nose in things, reducing his thought processes from efficient to single-minded so that they could run on only one track. And a very basic one at that—one that was in no way conducive to holding a rational argument with an illogically furious woman who was standing right in front of him stark damn naked!

‘What the devil…?’ Cassandra repeated, the words rushing through her teeth on a violent breath. ‘Do you really think that I would be prepared to do that?’

‘Well, you are still here in my room,’ Joaquin pointed out, ‘Waiting for me. And…’

He let his eyes drop, his gaze skimming over the soft curves, the slender limbs exposed to him, the shadow of curls between her legs. He immediately recognised his mistake as his body subjected him to a sharp, stinging twist of desire that changed the fit of his trousers from comfortable to way too tight in the space of a heartbeat.

‘And you are naked,’ he muttered, roughly, struggling with the feeling.

Cassandra’s reaction disturbed him.

For the first time since they had been together, she looked totally shocked, embarrassed at realising that she was wearing no clothes. Her hands came up to cross over her chest, her eyes darkening, and her mouth actually fell open slightly in horror. Not even on the first time they had slept together had she looked like this. This was new. And it was something he didn’t like at all.

‘Here…’

Reaching for the nearest thing to hand, he flung the black cotton robe at her.

‘Put that on.’

As she scrambled into the concealing garment, her haste betraying the way she was feeling, he had to admit to himself that he didn’t know whether he had offered her the robe to ease her evident embarrassment or to soothe his own disturbed state of mind. He just couldn’t think straight with her standing there before him. Totally nude. Indignation had put a spark in her eyes, brought a rush of blood to the surface of her skin—even her body was washed with the flush of pink—and it was damnably distracting.

In spite of the fact that she obviously wished it weren’t, her nakedness was pure provocation to any living, breathing male. Everything that was masculine in him urged him to respond in the most primitive, basic way. But he knew from Cassandra’s expression that to do so would be the most foolish move he could make.

So he had to get her covered up—and fast! And the black robe was the only thing he could find.

Not that it really helped, he acknowledged a moment later as Cassandra pulled the soft cotton firmly round herself, belting it tightly at her waist. The robe was his and it totally swamped her, coming almost to her ankles, the sleeves hanging way down at the ends of her arms, the wrap-over front gaping loosely at her throat and revealing the beginning of the curves of her breasts. In its own way, the item of clothing was a whole new form of torture, making her look even more feminine and vulnerable, emphasising the fragility of her bones at ankle and wrist, the slender, satin-skinned lines of her neck.

But it was the look in her eyes that stung so sharply.

‘Maldito sea!’ he muttered violently as she tied another knot in the belt for good measure. ‘There’s no need to act as if just my look will contaminate you!’

The dark savagery in his tone brought her head up, her eyes widening in shock. He supposed he should explain that his anger was more at himself, and the conflict that was going on between his brain and his groin, than at her. But the truth was that he didn’t think he could put it into words. And besides, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to try to explain something that he really didn’t understand himself. Didn’t want to reveal raw, unformed thoughts when he had no idea at all what her response might be.

‘I—I wasn’t thinking that.’

‘No—then what were you thinking, querida?’

He laced the term of affection with an acid that turned it into something the exact opposite of loving.

‘Why should my seeing your body—the body I have seen, touched, kissed a thousand times before now—why should that suddenly turn into a crime?’

‘I never said that!’

‘No, but you sure as hell implied it!’

His eyes raked over her now carefully concealed body and he didn’t trouble to try and hide the hot anger that was forcing its way up through his control, like lava pushing through the surface of a volcano, and pouring out down the sides.

‘But don’t you think that it’s a little too late to suddenly turn prim and proper? You weren’t so coy about being with me last night.’

‘Last night was last night!’ Cassandra flung at him, blue eyes flashing defiance. ‘It was different!’

‘Different how?’ he demanded. ‘And today is—what? A time for second thoughts?’

Her inability to answer, the way that her eyes dropped away from his, almost destroyed him. Holding on tight to what little was left of his shattered self-control, he forced himself to speak through lips that might have been carved from wood, they felt so stiff and unresponsive.

‘I thought you enjoyed it!’

The need to fight the heavily erotic images that his brain was throwing at him, and the knowledge that his body was reacting hard and fast to just the thought of the things he remembered, the things he had done, the things he would love to do again, loosened his control over his tone. The comment came out harder, coarser than he had ever planned, and to judge from Cassandra’s face that was what she felt too.

‘And enjoyment is everything?’

Blazing defiance burned in her eyes, warning him that he had well overstepped the line, wherever the line that she now laid down might be.

‘It’s a pretty damn important part of things!’ he tossed at her in furious exasperation. ‘I never heard you complain before!’

‘And because I never complained, that means that nothing is wrong?’

‘Cassie, if you mean to complain about something—then at least do me the courtesy of letting me know what I’m accused of.’

Cassie. There it was again, Cassie thought. There was Joaquin’s own particular usage of the shortened form of her name. The one that warned, that spoke ominously of danger to come.

Just the thought of it dried her mouth, shrivelling all hope of an answer into ashes on her tongue. She couldn’t find a word to say to him, no way of broaching the fears that burned so sharply in her mind that she was afraid he might be able to look into her eyes and read them there.

‘Well, Cassie?’ Joaquin asked, the smile that accompanied the words sending a cold, creeping shiver down the length of her spine. ‘Nothing to say? Nothing to complain about?’

What could she say? She had to say something. But with Joaquin in this mood, this dangerous, alien, disturbing mood, she didn’t dare just launch into the real reasons for the way she was feeling.

‘You’re going to work!’ she blustered and heard his short, harsh bark of totally sceptical laughter.

‘I’m going to work,’ he endorsed cynically. ‘As I do nearly every day. Is there a problem with that?’

‘I…’

Cassie pulled the edges of the robe closer together over her breasts, feeling even more than ever the desperate need to hide away from his burning, searching eyes and the way they were fixed on her face, seeming to probe right into her soul.

‘I didn’t think you would—at least not today.’

Coward! she reproached herself. If she was honest, then today was not what mattered—but Friday. The anniversary of the day they had first come together. That was what was really important to her.

‘And why particularly not today?’

Abruptly Joaquin swung away, pushing his hands deep into his trouser pockets as he paced across the floor to the window and back. And then back again. Then just as Cassie, unable to bear the resemblance to the restless prowling of a sleek, caged, restless jungle cat, feared her tongue might run away with her, he suddenly whirled round again and looked deep into her unhappy eyes.

‘Oh, I see—because of last night? You didn’t want me to go because…’

‘I thought we needed to talk!’ Cassie rushed in, desperate to try and bring the conversation round to the topic of their future. Clearly Joaquin simply thought that all she wanted was a long, luxurious day in bed, and that was not at all the way she wanted things to go.

‘And I have to work. If you recall, I came home to work yesterday, but I didn’t get the work I had planned done, did I?’

And whose fault was that? the look in his eyes, the faint curve to his mouth, demanded. Who had distracted him, seducing him away from his desk with the enticement of her body? Who had offered sex instead of work?

‘You don’t need to work,’ Cassie muttered mutinously.

If he never worked again, it wouldn’t matter. The wine business was so firmly established, so hugely profitable, that he could appoint a manager, sit back and enjoy a luxurious income for the rest of his life. She admired the fact that he did work, that he didn’t just live the life of a playboy, but right now she wasn’t prepared to concede that. She wanted to get her point across and, feeling the way she did, she would argue that black was white if that was what was needed to win her case.

‘I want to work.’

Joaquin’s tone had hardened, and the half-smile that had been on his face a moment before had vanished like mist before sun. It was only when she saw how bleak and icy his expression looked without it that Cassie realised just how much easier, more approachable that smile had made him look and found herself wishing for it back.

She was suddenly desperately, painfully aware of the fact that she might have lived with this man for almost a year, but she didn’t really know him at all. Deep down, there was a dark, buried part of him that he kept hidden from her.

‘I have a lot to get done before Friday. You know Friday is a very important day.’

Oh, she knew that all right. But was he thinking of it as important for the same reasons she was?