One Night in Madrid: Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife / The Spaniard's Defiant Virgin / The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride

‘I’m fine.’

As if to prove it she tossed back the damp strands of her hair and shrugged out of her jacket, dropping it on a nearby chair before heading across the room to where a door stood open into the kitchen.

‘And I should make you that coffee.’

Raul’s dismissal in his native Spanish was terse and to the point. There was a tension about her slender body that reminded him of a suspicion that had flashed through his mind in the moment she had first invited him in. She was edgy and uneasy, her mood communicating that there was more to this than met the eye. She didn’t really think that he believed she had brought him up here for coffee?

Just coffee wouldn’t put the ragged edge to her voice, make some unreadable emotion darken her eyes.

But she was obviously going to ignore him as she turned and headed through the door into the kitchen.

‘Bathroom,’ he said sharply, making her stop so abruptly that it was almost as if she had been expecting him to speak.

But obviously not what he had said, he realised as she frowned faintly in some confusion.

‘Where is your bathroom?’ he repeated.

‘Oh—down the corridor …’ She pointed in the right direction. ‘First door on the left.’

It took him just moments to stride down the corridor, enter the bathroom and snatch up the towel that was hanging on a rail against the wall. With the soft white cotton dangling from his fingers, he was back in the kitchen while she was still filling the kettle at the tap.

‘Here …’

With one hand he removed the still dripping kettle from her grip and set it down on the worktop. With the other, he draped the towel over her head and began to gently blot the soaking strands of her hair.

Alannah froze. Every inch of her slim frame became stiff with tension and rejection.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded from under the towel.

‘I should have thought that was obvious. I’m drying your hair.’ ‘Then stop!’

It came from between gritted teeth, venom in every word. Enough to freeze his hands, still holding the towel.

‘I never asked you to do that—or anything like it. I said I was fine.’

‘You don’t look fine—’

‘I’m fine—so take your hands off me.’

‘Sure!’

Raul’s tone was clipped and hard. He dropped the towel on the floor and took a step backwards, hands coming up between them, bronzed fingers splayed wide in what looked like a defensive gesture.

But the expression in his eyes made a nonsense of any thought of defensiveness. There was nothing wary or unsure in the gaze that clashed with her. Instead a cold anger turned those burning bronze eyes translucent and challenge blazed out of them, defying her to take this further.

‘But in the terms of strict accuracy, my hands were never on you. So it seems that you, Alannah querida, are exaggerating just a little. More than a little.’

‘I’m …’ Alannah began but Raul ignored her attempt to protest, or apologise—she wasn’t quite sure which—and when he ploughed straight on, talking right over what she had been about to say, she found she was grateful that she hadn’t got so far as the apology.

‘If I had touched you then you might have something to complain about. Or if I’d kissed you …’

Alannah saw his intent in those devastating eyes, saw the way his head tilted, his gaze going to her partly open mouth.

‘You wouldn’t …’

She wanted to run—to get away—but even as the thought came into her mind she knew that he had got there first. Any chance of escape was cut off as one strong hand came down on the edge of the sink on either side of her body, enclosing her, trapping her and holding her unable to move.

He was so close—too close—and all the disturbing, worrying sensations that had sprung to life in the car now flared through her again but this time more sharply, more intensely, making her shift uncomfortably in the confined space of his imprisoning arms. But that only brought her up close against their warmth, their strength, and the hard, lean length of his body in front of her. Her heart was racing, sending blood pounding through her veins, and the sound of it was like thunder inside her head.

He was going to kiss her, she could be in no doubt at all about that. It was there in the smokiness of his gaze, the total stillness of his powerful body. He was going to kiss her and this time there would be no sudden stopping of the car, no announcement from Carlos to distract him from his purpose.

Nervously she slicked her tongue over dry lips, waited, watched as his handsome face came nearer.

And stared in disbelief as this time he was the one who called a halt, the slow movement stopping, his dark head moving in a gesture of denial.

‘I think not,’ he said harshly and spun on his heel, turning to march out of the door, leaving her staring blankly after him, wondering just what she had done to change his mind.

Was it some small reaction she couldn’t control? Had he seen something in her face? What—just what had stopped him, changing his mood and driving him away from her like that?

‘Raul …’

She tried for his name but the sound died in her mouth, shrivelling on her tongue. And she was only talking to his back, the long, straight line of his spine, the proud set of his dark head that was all she could see as he walked away from her. If he heard her at all then he made no sign.

And to Alannah’s shaken consternation that made her feel terrible, stunned and bewildered, shaking in reaction, and with her legs suddenly unsteady beneath her.

He might as well have kissed her; she was reacting as if he had. If he had actually wrenched her into his arms, plundered her mouth with his, ravaged her senses, he could not have made her feel any worse than she did now—or did she mean that she might actually have felt better? Shaking her head bemusedly, Alannah admitted to herself that she didn’t know. She only knew that she was trembling with reaction to just the closeness, the burn of the heat from his body along her senses. Her skin had prickled as if under assault from sensual pins and needles, her nerves twisting tight in anticipation of his kiss and then there had been the terrible sense of let-down when it hadn’t happened.

Let-down.

Even in her own thoughts, the word sounded wrong.

She had spent the last two years putting her time with Raul Marcín behind her, determined to forget about it, get him out of her life for good. She didn’t want to remember him, didn’t want to be with him, didn’t want him to have any part in her life, she told herself as she grabbed at the kettle again and shoved it fiercely under the tap. She could only feel thankful that Raul was no longer in the room to see the way that her jerky, clumsy movements betrayed her, giving away the unsettled way she was feeling, the conflict that was raging inside her.

‘Oh, no—no!’ The words slipped from Alannah’s lips, hidden under the rush of water as she turned on the tap to fill the kettle. ‘No—it can’t be this way!’

But she had loved him once and what was it that they said—that you never forgot your first love? She had adored him, fallen hopelessly, helplessly, irredeemably in love with him in the space of a heartbeat and she had put her own foolish, vulnerable, naïve and innocent heart into his hands and his keeping, only to have him crush it brutally, tearing it into pieces. But at the same time, in the way that long ago dinosaurs left their footprints etched into stone, so he had left his mark on her and her senses, her memories, had responded to his touch, his closeness at the most basic, most primitive level of awareness.

She made a terrible, a stupid mistake in the hospital when, weak and despairing, she had flung herself into his arms and sobbed out her misery on his shoulder. She’d allowed herself to know, just for a very short time, the dangerous, the forbidden comfort of having his arms around her, his strength supporting her, the lean power of his body close to hers. And doing that had weakened her defences, opened cracks in the armour she had built up around herself so that something about Raul could get through to her and stab at her cruelly, leaving her more vulnerable to him than she had been before.

So when he’d tried to dry her hair she’d reacted—overreacted—like a scalded wildcat, turning on him hissing and spitting, so that she had only herself to blame for his cold anger, the way he had walked out on her. And by being overly defensive she had given away too much of the vulnerability she was really feeling.

But not again, she determined as she slammed the lid onto the kettle before banging it down on the stove; never, ever again.

‘If that is for the damned coffee you seem so insistent on, then I have to say yet again that I really do not want one.’

Raul had appeared in the doorway again, big, dark and dangerous-looking, a disturbing scowl on his face.

‘Then what do you want?’