She struggled to tear her eyes from the sternly sensual outline of his wide mobile mouth and cleared her throat as she recalled his kiss.
‘It’s these shoes.’ She glanced down at her sensible shoes and Luiz followed the direction of her gaze. ‘The soles have no grip.’
More of a grip than she had, she reflected with a small grimace of self-disgust. It was a struggle to keep focused and concentrate. Her mind kept drifting off on dangerous tangents.
And you’re not the sort of girl who has sexual fantasies, she reminded herself as she felt his steadying hand on her arm.
‘You have very small feet.’ Luiz’s glance lifted, the distracted expression she saw in his eyes vanishing as he scanned her face and added in an accusing manner, ‘Are you all right?’
She kept her eyes trained on the floor and lied through her teeth. ‘Fine.’ So the man was sexy—it wasn’t as if she had some sort of uncontrollable sex drive.
Luiz watched as a warm tide of colour rose up her slender neck until her face was aglow with colour. Moments earlier she had been deadly pale. ‘You don’t look fine.’
Her chin came up, though she continued to dodge his gaze, studying a point over his left shoulder.
‘I can’t help the way I look.’
And he, Luiz realised with a sense of shock, could not help liking the ways she looked—a lot. He had not wanted more than sex from a woman in a long time, to do so now with a woman he barely knew felt like a betrayal to Rosa’s memory. Not that there could be a comparison with his feelings now. Rosa had known him inside out and he her, they had grown up together and their bond had grown and blossomed.
‘Well, are you ready?’
Nell responded to the grouchy enquiry with a robust reminder that she was the one who had been waiting.
CHAPTER SIX
THE big off-roader, unlike the car Nell had arrived in, was equipped with air-conditioning. She got in and Luiz immediately irritated her by telling her to fasten her seat belt as though, she reflected crankily, she were an imbecile or a small child.
To ignore him would unfortunately have proved she was at least one, so Nell fastened herself in.
‘Where are we going?’ A little late in the day to display this basic curiosity but better late than never.
He flashed her a quick sideways look. ‘A cottage the other side of the mountain.’ He nodded towards a blue-tinged peak that framed the castle. ‘By the sea.’
‘What makes you so sure that they are there?’
‘Felipe has always liked the place. He has mentioned on more than one occasion it’s his idea of the perfect love nest.’
Or lair, she thought darkly.
Luiz showed no further inclination to talk and a silence not of the comfortable variety stretched between them.
The road turned out to be as bad as he had suggested and the gradient steadily increased, until it became so steep the back wheels struggled to gain purchase on the potholed ground.
On one occasion Nell winced.
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