‘Yes, sir.’
Feeling the car slow, his heartbeat accelerated.
‘I just need to speak to someone,’ he said. ‘Take the car round the block and I’ll call you when I need to be picked up.’
Without waiting to hear his driver’s reply he opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement. The air was sweet and humid, tinged with cigarette smoke, and behind the buzz of chatter and laughter he could hear bursts of reggaeton and salsa from the nearby bars. But he barely registered anything other than the bright yellow door through which Kitty had just disappeared.
He glanced at the sign. Bar Mango. He didn’t know it, but he didn’t need to. He could picture exactly what it would be like: the heat, the hormones pulsing in time to the sound system...the heaving crush of strangers acting like lovers.
Moving quickly through the crowds, he took the steps two at a time, sidestepping a group of American tourists and pushing open the door. Inside the bar the music was deafening and the temperature was several degrees higher than on the street. The room was jammed with people shouting to one another.
‘Oye, asere, qué hacemos hoy?’
‘Qué vola, hermano?’
He surveyed the crowd, feeling his heart beating exponentially faster as each dimly lit corner failed to reveal her. Surely she couldn’t have left already?
His shoulders tensed against an unreasonable rush of disappointment—and then tensed again as suddenly he saw her.
A pinwheel of relief spun inside his chest as he wondered how he had missed her. She was standing next to the bar, talking to the same dark-haired woman he’d seen before, and clearly they were part of a larger group of girls, all about the same age as Kitty—chicas, his mother would have called them.
They were all young, beautiful, and confident in their vivid, lustrous beauty, but he could feel them fading away as he continued to stare at Kitty. She seemed to glow in the darkness, her glossy hair and mouth, the contours of her cheekbones a masterclass in chiaroscuro.
The word whispered against his skin, and he felt his body reacting both to the seductive lure of the syllables and the association in his mind between shadows and silence—and sex.
He breathed out unsteadily.
In another life, with any other woman, he might have hesitated, but watching her lean in closer to the barman, and the man’s flirtatious smile, he felt his heart throb in his throat—and then he was shouldering a path through the sweaty, shifting tangle of bodies.
He had no idea what he was going to say, much less how she would react to seeing him there, but there was no time to worry about the unknown. For, as though sensing the gap opening up behind her, Kitty turned away from the smiling barman and glanced over her shoulder.
‘Señor Zayas?’
Her grey eyes widened and he felt a swell of excitement as her gaze collided with his. He glanced at her, his spine tensing as it had on the bike just before he lost control. This time, however, it was her, and not the ground, that was causing his body to brace for impact.
‘Ms Quested.’
It sounded so formal, so completely at odds with the way he’d been thinking about her just moments earlier, that suddenly he was struggling to find words. His one consolation was that she seemed more dazed and taken aback than he was.
Cheeks flushing, she stared at him uncertainly. ‘I didn’t know you were back.’
He found her confusion and the blush that accompanied it oddly satisfying. Back in control, he held her gaze. ‘I arrived this evening.’ Over her shoulder, he could see a trio of women glancing over at him. ‘Are you out with friends?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘Actually, I met them for the first time tonight. There’s an online group for expats. I got in touch and we arranged to get together this evening.’
Her eyes met his and her expression was—what? Defiant? Scared? Tense? Determined?
‘How about you? Are you with friends?’
For a moment he thought about telling the truth—how she had got under his skin in a way that he didn’t understand, or like, but that he couldn’t seem to resist, so that when he’d seen her on the street he’d been compelled to follow her.
And then his brain caught up with his body, and he nodded. ‘I’ve just left them,’ he lied. ‘I noticed you come in, so I thought I’d come and...you know...say hello.’ His body twitched. ‘Introduce myself properly.’
Beneath the throb of the music he felt something pulse between them, and he knew from the flare of response in her eyes that she had felt it too.
‘About what happened—’ she began.
‘Kitty? We’re thinking of going down the street to Candela. It’s another bar, but not so quiet, you know? Is that okay?’ Glancing up at him, the dark-haired woman feigned surprise, her mouth curving upwards. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.’