The Spaniard's Pleasure: The Spaniard's Pregnancy Proposal / At the Spaniard's Convenience / Taken: the Spaniard's Virgin

Her eyes flew upwards. ‘They did not notice what colour my eyes were!’ she scoffed.

‘No, but I did.’

His eyes locked onto hers and as she registered the explicitly sensual gleam Fleur’s stomach took a diving lurch. ‘I thought I’d look in,’ she admitted, tugging at the neckline of her borrowed top.

One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But changed your mind?’

‘I got as far as the door, but…’

‘You saw me,’ he inserted drily. ‘Were you worried I would kiss you again?’

Hoped. The colour in her cheeks perceptibly heightened. Fleur shrugged while fighting to contain her growing panic. ‘Not really. I thought I was quite safe from your unwanted attentions in front of your daughter.’

‘Unwanted…?’

She squared her jaw. ‘You think I enjoy being mauled by strange men?’

‘I can’t speak in general, but if we’re talking specifics—’

Fleur, who didn’t want to talk specifically or any other way about that kiss in the car, cut across him with a high-pitched, ‘I just didn’t want to intrude.’

The muscles around his mouth quivered as his lips compressed into a hard line. ‘An intrusion might have been welcome.’

‘Well, it’s good that there was no real harm.’ At least not to Tamara. Fleur was less sure that she could claim the same, and she wasn’t thinking about her leg! ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

‘They said there’s not much point—they gave her something to help her sleep—but I will anyway,’ he said, flexing his shoulders once more before shoving his hands back into his pockets.

‘Then you couldn’t take me home, could you?’ she pointed out. ‘Unless your talents include the ability to be in two places at once.’

‘The idea was I take you home and then come back.’

Get in a car with him again…It would be like an alcoholic getting a job in a distillery! Accepting you have a problem is the first step, Fleur, she told herself. And, oh, boy, do I have a problem!

‘There’s absolutely no need, and anyway you wouldn’t want to risk Tamara waking up and you not being there.’

‘I seriously doubt if seeing my face when she wakes up would speed her recovery. But then you already know that too, don’t you? You’ll have such a lot to tell your friends.’

‘I’m not a gossip and I didn’t ask to be a witness to your private family arguments,’ she reminded him, stung by the suggestion she couldn’t wait to rush out to share his secrets with the world. Why exactly had he shared them with her? ‘And, frankly, I’ve got enough problems of my own without sharing yours.’

‘You didn’t ask to be kissed either, but you enjoyed that.’ His eyes skimmed over her face and his voice dropped a husky octave as he added a husky, ‘So did I.’ His long lashes swept upwards from the angle of his chiselled cheekbones as his blue eyes meshed with hers.

‘You sound surprised,’ she observed huskily.

His brows lifted as he looked struck by her remark. ‘I suppose I was,’ he admitted.

‘Because I look like someone who doesn’t know how to kiss.’

This spiky comment drew a laugh from Antonio. The uninhibited and extremely attractive sound made several people look curiously in their direction. It made Fleur’s hopelessly receptive stomach muscles quiver frantically.

‘With that mouth…’ The last traces of laughter faded from his face as his glance came to rest on the lush outline. ‘You could not fail to be a good kisser. That mouth,’ he said, staring at it hard, ‘was made for kissing.’

Not surprisingly Fleur, who was standing there with her feet nailed to the floor with dark waves of sheer longing lapping around her ankles, couldn’t think of a suitably glib retort.

The perplexed pucker that pleated his forehead deepened. ‘No, it was my reaction that surprised me,’ he admitted, still staring at her mouth.

I really wish he wouldn’t.

‘The last time I made love in a car I was in my teens.’

‘Knowledge I could have lived without.’ But not for the reason her caustic tone suggested.

In her head she could see female hands sliding under his shirt and along the smooth golden skin of his strong, supple back just the way she had wanted her to.

‘Around you my control is…not good,’ he revealed with admirable understatement. Around her he had less control than a kid deluged by the first rush of male hormones.

‘And we did not make love!’ That had only happened in her head and, though her mind was pretty messed up, she could still differentiate between what was real and what was a figment of her feverish imagination. Just!

‘That had very little to do with good judgement. If that car hadn’t sounded its horn…’

‘What car?’ she said without thinking.

Antonio tilted his dark head fractionally, as if acknowledging a compliment. ‘I’m flattered.’

And so pleased with himself that she wanted to kick him. ‘Oh, that car…’

‘Yes, that car.’

His indulgent tone set her teeth on edge. ‘Right, well, I should be getting home. I have to pick up Sandy.’

‘Don’t bother. I’ll drop him over in the morning.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I want to.’

His tone was far more forceful and emphatic than the subject warranted. Now if he’d been saying, I want you…

Trying to act as if she weren’t shaking feverishly and her body hadn’t been engulfed by a flash of heat, Fleur gave a shrug that suggested she didn’t care one way or the other and began to walk away.

She had gone a few yards when she looked back over her shoulder. ‘You’re really not that good a kisser, you know.’

‘You are.’

If he’d smiled it would have passed as a joke, but he didn’t smile.

Hunching her shoulders, Fleur almost ran down the path, oblivious to the pain in her leg. Clearly he was a man who had to have the last word…The alternative was, well, actually, the alternative was plain ridiculous.

Chapter Eight