At first, as she’d stomped down tree-lined boulevards in the warm sunshine, she had felt quite pleased with herself. It had been immensely gratifying, picturing the shocked expression on his handsome face when he discovered she was missing. Easy to picture herself staying in some little hotel, just as she had imagined on the limo ride to Basa’s home.
Now, though, she was hot and tired, and for some inexplicable reason all the hotels seemed to be full.
Glancing up, she spotted another one, the sixth she had tried, and edging through a large group of men, she made her way to the front desk.
Smiling at the receptionist, she glanced down at her phone at the Spanish phrase on the screen. ‘Hola! Tienen una habitación para dos noches?’
The receptionist smiled. ‘You are English, yes? I am sorry, we have no rooms available. I think you will need perhaps to go further out from the centre.’
Mimi leaned against the desk, a quiver of apprehension pulsing down her spine.
‘Why is it so busy? Is something happening?’
‘Yes, today is the Superclásico.’ Catching sight of Mimi’s baffled expression, the receptionist laughed. ‘It is a football match. A very important game today.’
A football match. Of course.
Leaving the hotel foyer and gazing around, she felt her cheeks grow warm. She was such an idiot! She’d noticed earlier that everybody seemed to be wearing identical coloured shirts, but she’d been too distracted to give it much thought. Now she realised that the streets seemed to be filling up with crowds of people wearing blue and yellow shirts, some wrapped in flags, others waving them. Even moving forward was suddenly so much harder, for there were so many people.
Where was she going to stay?
Across the square, she glimpsed a flash of red and white, and above the chanting she heard the sound of police sirens. Just like that, the crowd began to move. She didn’t want to go with them but it was impossible to resist the tide of bodies. Telling herself that if she just went with the flow everything would be fine, she tried not to panic. But she could feel herself losing her balance.
And then, as she started to fall forward, someone grabbed her arm from behind and hooked her through the surging tide of fans.
Head spinning, pulse racing, she was about to turn and thank her rescuer when she found herself face to face with Basa and her words of gratitude turned to ashes in her mouth.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he snarled.
CHAPTER FIVE
GAZING DOWN INTO Mimi’s stunned face, Basa felt his pulse surge.
For a moment his relief that he had found her and she was safe fought with anger at her reckless, impulsive behaviour, and then almost immediately his anger won and, oblivious to the security team hovering behind him, he crowded her back against a shopfront, his dark eyes locking on hers.
‘Have you completely lost your mind?’ He almost spat the words at her.
Breathing in, he mentally replayed the fraught minutes that had accompanied his swift, discreet search of the house and grounds after he’d found her rooms empty. His initial shock had hardened to an icy fury as he’d realised he was right. She had cut and run. Packed her bag and left, without so much as a note. But then she was good at sneaking off...
His mouth tightened.
It had taken an hour to find her. An hour of driving down street after street, his eyes feverishly hunting the crowds for a tell-tale glimpse of a blonde ponytail among the mass of mostly dark heads. It had been the longest, most stressful hour of his life, and the bar was set high.
It was pure chance that he’d spotted her, and the randomness of that fact only made him feel more agitated, for with each passing minute his imagination had grown ever more flexible—particularly when it had dawned on him that the Superclásico was happening in the city.
The match was a legendary fixture in the football season. There was a fierce rivalry between Boca Juniors and River Plate fans that frequently erupted into violence, and the sight of Mimi being swept along on a sea of blue and yellow had made panic hum in his veins.
Shouldering his way through the crowd, he had only just managed to haul her to safety. But now, instead of thanking him like any normal person, she was glaring up at him as though he had just stopped her winning gold in the Olympics.
‘No, actually, I haven’t. Unless you think looking for a hotel room is a sign of madness.’ She shrugged her arm free and took a step backwards, her wide blue eyes resting on his face.
He stared at her in silence, trying to swallow the adrenaline and ignore the scent of her warm, jasmine-scented skin at the same time.
Much as he would like to bury his face against her throat and forget what was happening, right now, there were more pressing matters to address. Like the fact that she would almost certainly have been trampled underfoot had he not found her when he had.
‘Do you have any idea what’s going on here?’ He gestured past her head to where clumps of police officers were shepherding fans away from the square.
She lifted her chin. ‘Yes, of course I do. It’s the Superclásico.’