‘If you say so.’
He pulled out his top-of-the-range sleek tablet and flicked it on.
Emily interpreted that as a signal that their conversation was over. She had brought her book with her, a lightweight crime thriller, but would he launch into a sarcastic aside about her choice of reading matter if she fished it out of her handbag? So instead she extracted some material she had printed off the last day she had been at work—background reading on the holiday compound to which they were headed—and buried herself in it.
Leandro, working his way through a series of emails from his family to which he owed replies, glanced across to where her lowered head and stiff body language were visible signs of her armour.
What was it about this woman? And why was he suddenly so obsessed with finding out what made her tick? He wasn’t taking her to the Caribbean to remove her from possible secret-sharing with competitors. She would never do any such thing and he knew that. No. He was taking her with him because...he wanted time with her. Time in which he could indulge his sudden curiosity. Or maybe it irked him that she could just walk out on him when he needed her? Since when did women walk out on him? Even though it might be on a professional basis...
One thing was for sure: it was going to be a hellishly long flight if they both maintained the tight-lipped silence she seemed to want.
Attuned to her on a level that was frankly irritating, he boarded the plane, settled into his seat—a comfortable recliner that could convert into a full bed at the press of a button—and he noted with some amusement that even when all the lights had been switched off and they could do as they pleased she remained upright, reading a book which she had ferreted out of her bag.
He reclined his seat, switched off the little reading light, debated whether to rescue her from her obvious discomfort by introducing a little light work-related banter and then decided against it.
How, Emily thought crossly, could the man just fall asleep? On a plane?
He was way too long for his seat, even when it was fully down, converted into a bed. She stole a sidelong glance at his averted profile. There was something vulnerable about a person when he was asleep. The lines that gave his face definition were smoothed out into peaceful tranquillity and she found herself mesmerised by the way he looked.
He was no longer the hard-edged boss who’d so recently been threatening her with the force of his personality and the animal magnetism of his physical presence. There was a boyish handsomeness to his face that made something inside her squirm.
She returned to her book, but found herself glancing across again and again to him, her eyes lingering on his face, then drifting down the length of his body to the broadness of his chest, the strength in his hands which were lightly clasped on his stomach, the muscular length of his legs...
She gulped and looked away quickly, her heart thumping inside her, as she took in the obvious bulge of his crotch.
What on earth was happening to her?
If she had been really and truly engaged, anticipating marriage to the man of her dreams, then she knew that her thoughts would not be striking off at a tangent now—that she would be able to look at Leandro and not feel this unaccustomed rush of forbidden attraction. But she wasn’t really and truly engaged, was she?
Abruptly she turned away and thought about Oliver—the guy her boss thought she was crazy about...the guy who should have been jealous and possessive of her. What a joke. Yes, she would be marrying him, but her reasons were all cynically practical.
She needed the money and he would be her passport to that.
* * *
She must have drifted into a sleep of sorts, and to feel herself being shaken awake was so disorientating that she gave a little yelp of alarm and jerked forward. It took her a few seconds to register where she was. Not in her bed but on the plane, her seat still fully upright. Her heart was going like a jackhammer inside her and she could taste the remnants of her dream as it was chased away by Leandro’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her.
Her immediate instinct to pull away fought against the lethargy of being abruptly awakened and she stared at him.
‘What are you doing?’ She had left her linen jacket on and it had rucked up. Through the stiff fabric his hand was warm and heavy, burning a direct path to her shoulder. It acted like an anchor, weighing her down so that she felt she couldn’t move.
‘What the hell were you dreaming about?’
‘What?’
His face was so close to hers that she could feel his warm breath fanning her cheek. His hair was tousled and he looked achingly, sinfully sexy, all rumpled and bedroom-eyed.
‘Dreaming,’ Leandro repeated, his hand moving from her shoulder to absently caress her neck and jawline. ‘You were dreaming, Emily.’
‘I woke you up. I’m sorry.’
She could scarcely breathe. She was hyper-conscious of his hand on her face. She was certain that he barely realised what he was doing, but she was all too aware of it, and yet she found that she couldn’t budge an inch, couldn’t retreat to the safety of her own side of the seat.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he cut in impatiently.
His eyes roved over her flushed face and lighted on her parted mouth. Immediately and without warning he felt the pain of sudden arousal. Her cheeks were pink, her hair was struggling free of its constraints and appeared to be longer than he had imagined, and her wide blue eyes were hazy with the remnants of confusion. She looked every bit the young girl she was—the girl she tried so hard to conceal beneath an icy, untouchable veneer.
A wayward thought insinuated itself into his head. She looked sexy. Sexy and, with those parted lips, eminently kissable.
‘What were you dreaming about?’
‘Nothing.’ Emily drew back and he removed his hand from her shoulder. She felt its absence in a way that disturbed her, but she kept her gaze as steady as she could on his face.
Yes, she had been dreaming, and the dream came back to her now in jagged bits and pieces. Oliver. Actually marrying him. What that would entail. A nasty dream of dark shadows and fear. And wrapped up inside the dream had been Leandro—although now, awake, she couldn’t remember what exactly he had been doing there.
‘Quite an extreme reaction for a dream about nothing.’
‘Did I...mention anyone...?’
Leandro stared down into her blue eyes and wondered what accounted for that wary look.
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But you yelped as though you were scared.’
‘I’ve never been a quiet sleeper,’ Emily said truthfully, if only to explain herself.
‘No?’
She hesitated and threw him a reluctant smile which he found unreasonably captivating—perhaps because it was such a rare occurrence.
‘I went through a period of sleepwalking when I was...younger...when I was in my early teens. Ever since then I’ve been a jumpy sleeper.’
Leandro imagined her as a young teenager and immediately wanted to know more about her, wanted her to open up to him before she released the shutters and returned to hide behind them.
‘That must have driven your siblings mad,’ he murmured encouragingly.
‘I don’t have any siblings. I’m an only child.’ No big secret there, and yet it felt like a confidence of huge proportions.
‘So this marriage must be a big deal for your parents...?’
‘I...’
Leandro continued to lock her with his dark eyes, making retreat from the conversation difficult.
‘It’s just me and my mum.’ Emily’s mouth tightened. As soul-baring went, this was as far as it was going to go—she was amazed that she had actually got to this point in the first place.
Leandro waited and then into the deepening silence said lightly, ‘Peace and quiet...’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, as an only boy with four sisters, peace and quiet was never something I could bank on from one day to the next.’
‘Four sisters...?’ Emily grinned and stole a glance at him. When he raised his eyebrows and smiled at her she felt her pulse quicken and her skin prickle. Aeroplane chatter, she thought a little nervously. No harm done.
‘Four sisters—and they all liked experimenting with their make-up on me...’
Emily burst out laughing and Leandro thought that she didn’t do nearly enough of that. He wondered whether her fiancé brought out that side of her—the side that would spontaneously laugh, would make her shed the look of someone carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders... And he felt a spurt of irritation towards the man...
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘Believe it.’ He grinned with wry amusement. ‘Clearly I was only four or five at the time, but I still bear the scars.’
‘And you didn’t develop a taste for wearing make-up in later life?’
Leandro burst out laughing. ‘So far I can happily avoid cosmetic counters...’
‘Then the scars can’t have been so ingrained.’