The Spaniard's Woman

A horrible thought struck her and made her feel physically ill. He had doubtlessly decided that, after her lustful earlier display, she made a habit of inviting all and sundry into her bed and he might have to face the distasteful experience of finding a string of rampaging males queuing up outside!

The ridiculous scenario made her feel hysterical. She pulled in a steadying breath. She could at least put his mind at rest on that score!

‘I have never had a boyfriend.’ Red flags of embarrassment flamed over her face. Girls at school had teased her mercilessly because, unlike them, she’d never had loads of boyfriends and experimented with sex. Her mother had vetoed out of school friendships with the rough crowd who lived on their estate. Besides, she hadn’t been interested. She had the first-hand knowledge of what a casual fling had done to her mother.

Angry regret at that sorry fact tightened her voice as she scrambled to her feet and informed him, ‘I left school to look after my mother. She was ill. Dying. Inoperable cancer. Towards the end she could have gone to a hospice, but she didn’t want that. Neither did I. I nursed her. It didn’t leave any time for socialising. So don’t worry.’ She huffed out a bitterly angry breath and put him straight. ‘I’m not about to hang a red light outside Sir Marcus’s front door!’

Placing her empty glass on the tray beside the half empty bottle with an angry little click, she bade Sebastian a cool goodnight and headed off up the stairs. She had never felt quite this assertive before in her entire life, or so cross. She placed her feet firmly on the treads and lifted her chin in the air. Right at this moment, she almost hated the gorgeous Sebastian Garcia!

In fact, when she really thought about it, she was damn sure she did!

Dismissed and firmly put in his place! Sebastian’s mouth slanted wryly. Just like that!

A totally new experience and he rather liked the challenge it presented. Always provided he wanted to take it up, of course. Which he didn’t. His eyes narrowed, he watched Rosie Lambert mount the broad staircase.

Never had a boyfriend? Did he really believe that? Initially, he’d been struck by her aura of naivety, his instinct to protect. He’d have believed anything she chose to tell him. But her shattering response when his lips had brushed hers, the immediate arousal of her body, had told him she’d been down that road many times before.

Not that he’d seen it that way, not to begin with. He’d been fuddled by lust himself and had felt a real heel for getting so close and intimate in the first place. Only when his mind had cleared had he recognised the signals she’d been sending out. He could have taken her there and then and she would have encouraged him.

A dewy-eyed innocent? With instinctive male appreciation he watched the sway of her seductively rounded bottom as she neared the top of the stairs, and thought not.

Definitely not.

A girl that lovely would have had males swarming round her since she reached puberty.

He drank his wine and did his best to relax back on the sofa. Lying, or not, what did it matter? He’d be back in Spain in a couple of weeks and Rosie would be out of his life. Not that she was actually in it, he reminded himself forcibly. She was simply a temporary member of staff. Different from the women he normally mixed with and therefore intriguing in an odd sort of way. And sexy with it.

Shooting to his feet, he gave himself a refill and shrugged out of his suit jacket, removed his tie and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. He felt strangely overheated.

He had to concentrate on what was really important, put Rosie Lambert right out of his mind. Opening Marcus’s eyes to the type of woman Terrina really was before he brought her back to England as his future wife was his immediate priority. Once the greedy little gold-digger was here at Troone Manor, with her feet under the table, so to speak, and an engagement ring on her finger, there would be no getting rid of her. It was up to him to see that things didn’t get that far.

Turning back to the sofa, wine glass in hand, he glimpsed a corner of the book Rosie must have stuffed underneath the cushion and swore softly. Just as he was getting her out of his head she had jumped right back in there again!

In her rush to pull him down a peg she had forgotten her bedtime reading matter. His brows peaking again at her strange choice, he came to a snap decision. He would take it up to her. She’d only been gone a few minutes, not long enough to already be in bed. It would give him the opportunity to hand it over with some polite pleasantry, letting her know there were no feelings—hard or otherwise—over the happenings of this evening and thereby close the chapter completely.

Rosie had had the quickest shower on record. She felt all churned up as she pattered barefooted back to her bedroom, tying the sash of her old cotton robe around her overheated body.

Her clothes were still in an untidy heap on the floor, just as she’d left them. She and Sharon had been expressly instructed to take their daily washing down to the laundry room every evening, where Mrs Partridge would deal with them first thing in the morning and avoid a backlog.

Rosie kicked them under the bed. She was venturing nowhere. She couldn’t run the risk of bumping into Sebastian again. Not this evening. Not ever, if she could somehow avoid it.