The Spanish Connection

‘You don’t have to feel under any obligation to entertain me while I’m here,’ Lauren protested. ‘You must have work to do.’

‘Nothing beyond Gabriel’s ability to take care of, for the next few days at least,’ came the smooth reply. ‘Tonight we have guests at dinner, all of them eager to meet you.’

Curious would be more like it, she thought, stifling her trepidation. It stood to reason that the sudden appearance of Francisco’s wife and children would give rise to speculation. No doubt many would believe her an opportunist, here only for what she could get from the family coffers. It shouldn’t matter what people she neither knew nor cared about thought, but it did.

They arrived back at the Plaza de España to find two of the coaches on the point of departure and few other tourists in immediate evidence.

‘Now, while it is quiet, would be the best time to take a walk across the bridge and back,’ suggested Rafael. ‘The only way to deal with vertigo is to accustom oneself gradually to heights instead of trying to avoid them altogether.’

Which was true enough, Lauren knew. The bridge itself had been there for more than two hundred years; it was hardly going to choose the very moment she set foot on it to collapse into the abyss.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said, trying to sound positive. ‘It’s high time I conquered it.’

All the same, the thought alone of all that empty space beneath caused her lower legs to tingle as they moved on to the bridge. Iron-railed embrasures set within the side-walls afforded dizzying glimpses of the gorge, drawing her eyes despite every effort not to look. Rafael put a steadying hand under her elbow, causing a tingle of a different nature, and brought her to a halt at the central viewpoint.

‘Stand here for a moment or two and look at the view beyond rather than below,’ he bid her.

Standing right behind her, he rested both hands on her waist, holding her firmly. She could feel his breath on her hair, his body heat at her back. Vertigo became secondary to other, more imperative responses. She had to forcibly stop herself from leaning into him.

‘I’m all right,’ she got out. ‘Really, I am!’

‘I can feel the tension in you,’ he said softly. ‘In a moment or two, as your senses adjust, it will begin to lessen.’

Not while he continued to hold her, it wouldn’t, Lauren knew. She doubted that he was unaware of her response to his touch. It probably amused him to know how he affected her.

‘Your waist is so small,’ he murmured. ‘I can almost span it between my hands. One would never guess that you had borne even one child, much less two!’

‘I suppose I’m just naturally thin,’ she countered, and sensed his smile.

‘The word suggests shapelessness, and you’re far from that.’

Her heart was thudding against her ribcage, her every sense alive to the sheer seductive quality of his tone. It meant nothing, she told herself with emphasis. She was his brother’s wife; his interest in her went no deeper than that. She just wasn’t used to compliments. These last two years, Francisco had treated her more like a piece of furniture than an attractive woman.

‘I’m all right now,’ she said abruptly. ‘You don’t need to hold me any longer. The railing is safeguard enough.’

She made herself move on as he dropped his hands, more afraid of being touched again than she was of falling. Feeling this way over a man she didn’t even like very much was not only wrong, it was disgusting! He was her brother-in-law, for heaven’s sake!