‘I did not make love to her.’
Kat’s heart pounded. ‘So a woman’s gold bikini top just happens to be lying discarded on the floor of your dining room, along with evidence of some intimate little meal à deux—and yet you claim to know nothing about it?’
‘That’s not what I said,’ he snapped. ‘I said that I didn’t make love to her.’
‘But…but she wanted to?’
There was a pause. ‘Of course she did,’ he agreed softly. ‘All women want me to make love to them. Didn’t you demonstrate that yourself only moments ago?’
Kat flinched at the accusation, but she couldn’t deny it, could she? ‘So who was she?’ she questioned.
‘A journalist.’ Carlos allowed himself a brief, hard smile. ‘Who I heard was doing a feature on me—and so I invited her here to find out what angle she was taking, and whether or not I needed to persuade her to adopt a different one.’
‘Why would anyone want to do a feature on you?’
Black eyes challenged her. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Because you’re rich? Or because you’re unbearable?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Wealth is hardly an achievement in its own right. You of all people should know that, Princesa.’
And then she remembered the photo. That startling photo. The young Carlos wearing the richly ornate jacket of the bullfighter—his face just as proud and as beautiful as it was now, but without the cynicism which time had etched onto the features of his older self.
‘Bullfighting,’ she said slowly. ‘She wanted to talk to you about bullfighting.’
There was the beat of a pause. ‘Of course she did,’ he said slowly. ‘They always want to talk about bullfighting.’
‘But why?’ Kat stared at him. ‘Because it’s exciting—or because hardly anyone does it as a career choice?’
‘Both those things, but it is a little more complex than that.’ He met the question in her eyes. ‘It’s fifteen years since I left the ring, and she’s just digging around because she wants to know why.’
‘And why did you leave?’
‘You think I want to talk about it with someone like you?’ he queried softly. ‘A woman whose definition of a hard day’s work is painting her own nails because the manicurist happens to be off sick?’
He saw her flinch but Carlos didn’t care. Couldn’t she take the truth about the kind of woman she was? He had vowed never to talk of those days, to relive the pain and the torture which had raged inside him during his tumultuous years in the ring. A pain which had little to do with the noble bullfight itself, and more to do with the cruel father who had made his life such a torment.
The journalist had tried every trick in the book to get him to talk, and a couple more besides. She had certainly been enterprising, he would say that for her. The editor had probably selected her for her beauty and her sheer ruthlessness. So that when the lunchtime interview had not been progressing as she’d wished, she had suggested sunbathing. And then laughingly stripped off her bikini top as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.
He had been aroused, yes—of course he had. The woman’s breasts had been full and pale and her glossy lips had parted as if to demonstrate that she was very accomplished with her mouth. But sex offered to him on a plate had never been his thing.
He looked down into the blue eyes of the Balfour girl. Maybe he should tell her that and have done with it—because, in effect, wasn’t she doing exactly the same? Tr
ying to twist him round her little finger with her come-to-bed eyes and pouting lips. Perhaps he should tell her that no matter how much she tried to tempt him, she was here to do a job and nothing more. He had given his word to her father that he would teach her something in the way of commitment, and Carlos always kept his word.
So why had he kissed her? And why was the memory of that kiss making him grow hard even now? So hard that he would have liked to have taken hold of her aristocratic hips and thrust right into her.
‘You’d better have some breakfast,’ he said harshly. ‘And then start by clearing away the mess in the dining room.’
Kat met the stony black gaze. ‘And if I don’t?’
He thought how beautiful she looked when she defied him. ‘If you don’t? Then, Princesa, I will quickly lose patience with you, and I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ he answered. ‘You might do well to remember that the sooner you start fulfilling your obligations, the sooner you can leave—and free us both from this infernal incarceration.’
Shaken, Kat stood watching as he walked away from her, her eyes drawn to the graceful movement of his white-jeaned physique and the way the silk shirt billowed slightly in the breeze. Unthinkingly, she touched her fingertips to her lips—to where the tender flesh still tingled with the heat of his passionate kiss—and she felt the corresponding thunder of her heart as she remembered it. But the kiss meant nothing, she reminded herself—and Carlos couldn’t have made that clearer.
She wondered if he’d gone off to work in one of the warren of luxurious rooms which lay below the deck, but it wasn’t until a few minutes later when she heard the throaty roar of a powerful engine that she realised that he’d gone. Properly gone.
Racing over to the side of the yacht, she saw a flash of silver as a powerful little motorboat cut through the sapphire waters. The wind streamed through the wild black curls of the man who stood at the helm and the sun had illuminated his olive skin into dark gold. He looked, she thought, like some powerful and formidable god of a man.