The Buenos Aires Marriage Deal

Just in time Briana held onto the already precariously rattling tray. Was she dreaming? As her heart pounded out a shocked tattoo, she had to struggle to maintain her balance. Pascual was the VIP guest? How could she not have known that? Suddenly her equilibrium and professionalism fled altogether, and she was left feeling so painfully vulnerable, exposed and inadequate that tears were a mere breath away.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

For a moment his accent sounded heavier than she remembered. The naturally sensuous timbre of that arresting voice still had the power to turn her limbs to the fluidity of water Briana discovered disturbingly. ‘I’m working…and I’ve brought you your coffee,’ she managed through numbed lips, giving him a nervous lopsided smile. ‘Do you mind if I put the tray down? I’m afraid I might drop it.’

Holding the door wide so that she could enter, Pascual allowed his dark, accusing gaze to follow her like sharpened daggers as she crossed the room to deposit the tray on a small carved oak side-table.

‘What is the meaning of this?’

He was studying her as if she were a nasty trick being played on him…a trick he abhorred and detested.

‘I told you…I’m here working. Your hosts hired my company to provide hospitality services for your stay. I didn’t realise that you were the VIP guest. I’m sorry, Pascual…’

Biting her lip, she felt herself blush hard at the old familiar use of his name and instantly regretted voicing it. Especially when his handsome face demonstrated no pleasure whatsoever in seeing her again…in fact the exact opposite!

‘This is probably the last thing you need. Seeing me again, I mean,’ she murmured. Her confidence drained away as his eyes tracked slowly and devastatingly up and down her body, in a simple but professional black A-line skirt and jacket, as if checking her out for flaws.

What was he going to do? If he dismissed her and she couldn’t carry out her job it would be the last straw as far as her finances and her reputation went. Briana prayed he wouldn’t go as far as that. And at the same time as she worried about losing this job—and laying the hurt of the past aside—her hungry eyes wanted to weep with joy at the flesh-and-blood evidence of the man she had loved and had secretly dreamed of one day seeing again.

He looked wonderful. ‘A sight for sore eyes’, as her mum would say. And he’d hardly changed at all—though his stature seemed more imposing than ever. His physique was still leanly muscular, and underneath the sublimely tailored clothes he wore no doubt still in tip-top, enviable condition. And with that arrestingly gorgeous face Pascual Dominguez was not the kind of man who appeared on a girl’s radar every day. At least not where Briana came from.

Right from the start she had been smitten, and in no time at all had found herself blissfully and madly in love with him. When she’d discovered that he felt the same way about her she had hardly been able to believe her luck. But that had been five years ago—five years in which she’d had to come to terms with being a single mother, because Pascual had no clue that he had fathered a child with her when she left. Not a day went by when the dreadful guilt of that reality didn’t weigh her down…

When he still didn’t speak, but continued to stare at her as if not knowing whether to shake her senseless or verbally rip into her until her ears rang, Briana twisted the suddenly chilled fingers of her slim hands together and glanced back at the ornate little table where she had put down the tray she had brought. ‘Shall I pour you some coffee?’

‘Forget the damn coffee! What do you think you’re playing at?’

His bitter, chastising tone shocked her blood to ice. ‘I’m not playing at anything. This situation is as unexpected and shocking for me as it is for you.’

‘But you did play me for a fool—didn’t you Briana?’ His dark eyes narrowed furiously beneath their long-lashed hooded lids. ‘I still find it hard to believe you did what you did…even after all this time!’

‘It was never my intention to make you feel like a fool.’

Feeling her lips tremble, Briana desperately sought to hold it together—not to break down in front of him and confess all. What would it serve to fully explain now why she had left him? Five years had passed by. He hadn’t wanted to listen to her then, so why should he listen now? Anyway…right then she was hardly prepared or willing to rake over old coals and engage in a row—which was no doubt what would happen. As for Adán’s existence—she couldn’t tell him about that just yet. She needed more time…

‘I’m really sorry things turned out the way they did, but perhaps it was for the best?’

It was a stupid thing to say, and it sounded totally banal.

‘For the best?’

The words reverberated round the room on a savage breath, and Briana registered the emotion Pascual was feeling like a punch. Confusion, anger, frustration…it was all there.

Scraping his fingers agitatedly through silken layers of rich dark hair, he moved his head from side to side, staring at her hard. ‘I can get over being made a fool of in front of my friends and family, but what I cannot come to terms with or forgive is that you gave me no indication that your professed feelings for me could be broken off so easily. Or that you would leave without even giving me a chance to hear why from your own lips instead of reading it in some cold, unemotional letter! You must be a consummate actress, Briana…You seemed happy and in love and I believed you. What an idiot I was!’

CHAPTER TWO

HIS heart was thundering as hard and as fast as any express train. It was difficult to take in the fact that the woman he had once loved, who had so callously deserted him mere days before their wedding, was standing there in front of him.

Pascual discovered that his memory of her had not served him as well as he’d thought. In the flesh Briana Douglas was far more beautiful than any mental picture he could call up. Right then she reminded him of an exotic intense port wine, and even though he deplored what she had done he still wanted to drink in every inch of her until he was intoxicated. She had always had a figure to make his pulse race, and in the slim pencil skirt and smart tailored jacket she wore he saw that it was Marilyn Monroe hourglass perfect. Her very presence exuded an earthy sexiness that heated his blood. Would heat any man’s blood! But it was her face that arrested his attention the most.

With her almost feline smoky-grey eyes, apple cheeks and lush enticing mouth, she was a woman to entertain the most sensual private fantasies about. With that face and body she would stop rush-hour traffic in any major city of the world in a heartbeat. Suddenly Pascual was intensely excruciatingly jealous at the idea of her with somebody else—the idea that she might have left him because she preferred another man to him. It took him a moment to get his bearings as well as his sudden inconvenient and shocking desire under strict control.

‘There must have been some other reason you left me besides the one that you stated in your letter. Did you leave me for another man? Is that it?’ However controlled he strove to be, he still had to voice the question that had been burning in his mind all these years. She flinched, and his gaze clung to hers, fear of her answer making him as tense as a string on a harp.

‘Of course I didn’t! I’m sorry if you thought that, but there was no one else…there still is no one else.’

Exhaling a long, relieved breath, he was still infuriated by her apparent calmness when inside everything in him was churning as turbulently as the Atlantic in a squall.

‘And what about you?’ she ventured tentatively. ‘Did you get back with your ex?’

‘My ex?’

For disturbing seconds Pascual recalled something that had happened the night before Briana had left. The Brazilian model he had briefly dated before he had met her had unexpectedly turned up at the family party, on the arm of his cousin Rafa. His mother, being the perfect hostess, had not turned her away. During the evening Claudia had drunk a little too much cachaca, and when Briana had been out on the terrace talking to Marisa and Diego she had pulled a stupid stunt on him. She’d circled his neck with her arms, pressed her body hard against his and kissed him full on the mouth…

Pascual’s blood ran briefly cold as he remembered the incident with renewed distaste and anger. He wasn’t remotely interested in taking up with Claudia again…either then or now. It was Briana he had loved. But clearly she had not loved him. Why else had it been so easy for her to walk away? The idea pierced his very soul. No man liked to think the loving relationship he believed to be real was based on a lie. A lie that meant his sweetheart did not feel as strongly for him, her lover, as she had insisted she had. Renewed hurt and fury coursed through his bloodstream that the woman in front of him had treated him so abominably.

Raising her bewitching gaze to his, she attempted a smile of sorts. She wasn’t quite successful, and he saw the worry and concern reflected clearly in her eyes. Good. He was glad he had unsettled her. God knows, she had unsettled him!

‘When she showed up at that party…I just thought that you and she—’

‘Well, you were wrong. She was dating my cousin and he brought her with him. End of story!’

‘Well, then…I’d better just leave you to have your coffee,’ she remarked. ‘Your hosts are waiting for you in the drawing room downstairs. Shall I tell them you’ll be ready in about twenty minutes or so? I can meet you in the lobby and take you to them.’

‘I will be ready when I am ready, and not before!’ Pascual snapped, turning his back on her and moving towards the tray of coffee.

Choosing to remain silent for a few moments, he poured some of the hot aromatic beverage into the porcelain cup and took a sip. Definitely particular about the type of coffee he drank, he found he could not fault whoever had chosen this particular blend on his behalf.

Facing Briana again, he observed the slight pink flush across her cheekbones. ‘You are here the entire weekend?’ he asked, knowing this conversation they had started had only just begun.

‘Yes…my job dictates it.’

‘And how long have you been working for this company that provides “hospitality services”?’

‘About three years. It’s my own company.’

‘So you are a businesswoman now? You have managed to surprise me again!’

Unable to keep the cynicism from his voice, Pascual was actually genuinely taken aback by the revelation. The Briana he had known had never given any indication of being remotely interested in starting up her own business. Back then she had vowed she was only happy working with children and animals. On her arrival in Buenos Aires she had found work as a professional dog-walker, then as a children’s nanny. But he had learned to his cost that she had not been entirely frank with him about many things, and her dishonesty still cut him to the quick.

‘I’ll leave you to enjoy your coffee in peace and go and wait downstairs.’

Moving towards the door, Briana could not disguise her eagerness to get away, and it incensed Pascual that she should want to effect distance between them again.

‘Before you run away I want you to tell me something of these businessmen I am meeting with. No doubt you have some information that might be useful?’ Staring at her pointedly, he knew a sudden desire to test her out and see if she was at all competent at the business she had chosen for herself. If he himself had been in this line of work the first thing he would want to know was about the kind of people who were employing his services.

‘What do you want to know?’ she asked, clearly discomfited that she could not escape as easily as that.