A Price Worth Paying?

‘Bianca, hola,’ he said into the intercom, feeling a kick of interest from beneath his towel and thinking it fortuitous he wouldn’t have to waste any time getting undressed.

His greeting met with silence until, ‘It’s not Bianca,’ someone said in faltering Spanish, her husky voice tripping over her words and making a mess of what she was trying to say. ‘It’s Simone Hamilton, Felipe Otxoa’s granddaughter.’

He didn’t respond for a moment, his mind trying to join the dots. Did he even know Felipe had a granddaughter? They might be neighbours but it wasn’t as if they were friends. But no—he rubbed his brow—there was something he remembered—a daughter who had married an Australian—the one who had been killed in some kind of accident some months back. Was this their daughter, then? It could explain why she was murdering his language. ‘What do you want?’ he asked in English.

‘Please, Señor Esquivel,’ she said, and he could almost hear her sigh of relief as the words poured out, ‘I need to speak to you. It’s about Felipe.’

‘What about Felipe?’

‘Can I come up?’

‘Not until you tell me what this is about. What’s so important that you have to come to my apartment?’

‘Felipe, he’s … Well, he’s dying.’

He blinked. He’d heard talk at the estate that the old man wasn’t well. He wasn’t unmoved but Felipe was old and he hadn’t exactly been surprised at the news. He still didn’t see what it had to do with him.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, but what do you expect me to do about it?’

He heard noises around her, of a family back fresh from the beach, the children being scolded by their mother for tracking sand back to one of the lower apartments, a father, grunting and grumpy and wearying of his so-called holiday and probably already dreaming about a return to the office. She tried to say something then, her words drowned out by the racket before she sighed and spoke louder. ‘Can I please come up and explain? It’s a bit awkward trying to discuss it like this.’

‘I’m still not sure what I can do for you.’

‘Please. I won’t stay long. But it’s important.’

Maybe to her. As far as he was concerned, Felipe had been a cantankerous old man for as long as he could remember and, whatever the distant reason for the feud between their two families, Felipe had done nothing to build any bridges over the intervening decades. But then, neither had his father during his lifetime. In a way it was a shame he hadn’t been alive the day some lucky gambler had knocked on Alesander’s door and offered him the acres of vines he’d won from Felipe in a game of cards. His father had been trying to buy the old man out for years.

He raked his fingers through his hair. The vines. That must be why the granddaughter was here. Had Felipe sent this hesitant little mouse with some sob story to plead for their return? He would have known he’d get short shrift if he tried such a tactic himself.

Maybe he should let her in long enough to tell her exactly that. He glanced down at his towel. Although now was hardly the time. ‘I’m not actually dressed for visitors. Call me at my office.’

‘My grandfather is dying, Señor Esquivel,’ she said before he cut the connection. ‘Do you really think I care what you are wearing?’ And the hesitant mouse with the husky drawl sounded as if she’d found a backbone, and suddenly his interest was piqued. Why not humour his neighbour’s granddaughter with five minutes of his time? It wasn’t as if it was going to cost him anything and it would give him a chance to see if the rest of her lived up to that husky voice.

‘In that case,’ he said, smiling to himself as he pressed the lift release, ‘you’d better come right up.’

Simone’s heart lurched as the lift door opened to the small lobby that marked the entrance to the top floor apartment, her mind still reeling with the unexpected success of making it this far, her senses still reeling from the sound of Alesander’s voice. Her research might have turned up his address and told her that Alesander Esquivel was San Sebastian’s most eligible bachelor, but it hadn’t warned her about his richly accented voice, or the way it could curl down the phone line and bury itself deep into her senses.

Yet even with that potent distraction, she’d somehow managed to keep her nerve and win an audience with the only man who could help her right now.

Alesander Esquivel, good-looking heir to the Esquivel fortune, according to her research, but then how he looked or how big his fortune was irrelevant. She was far more interested in the fact he was unmarried.

Thirty-two years old, with no wife and no fiancée, and he’d agreed to see her.

She dragged in air. It was a good start. Now all she had to do was get him to listen long enough to consider her plan.

‘Piece of cake,’ she whispered to herself, in blatant denial of the dampness of her palms as she swiped them on her skirt. And then there was nothing else for it but to press on the apartment’s buzzer and try to smile.

A smile that was whisked away, along with the door, somewhere between two snowy towels, one hooked around his neck, stark white against his black hair and golden skin, the other one lashed low over his hips.

Dangerously low.

She swallowed.

Thought about leaving.

Thought about staying.

Thought about that towel and whether he was wearing anything underneath it and immediately wished she hadn’t.

‘Simone Hamilton, I presume,’ he said, and his delicious Spanish accent turned her name into a caress. She blinked and forced her eyes higher, up past that tightly ridged belly and sculpted chest, forcing them not to linger when it was all they craved to do. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you.’

His dark eyes were smiling down at her, the lips on his wide mouth turned up at the corners, while the full force of the accent that had curled so evocatively down the telephone line to her now seemed to stroke the very skin under her clothes. She shivered a little as her breasts firmed, her nipples peaking inside her thin bra and, for the first time in a long time, her thoughts turned full-frontal to sex, her mind suddenly filled with images of tangled limbs and a pillow-strewn bed and this man somewhere in the midst of it all—minus the towels …

And the pictures were so vivid and powerful that she forgot all about congratulating herself for making it this far. ‘I’m disturbing you,’ she managed to whisper. I’m disturbed. ‘I should come back.’

‘I warned you I wasn’t dressed for visitors.’ He let that sink in for just a moment. ‘You said you didn’t care what I was wearing.’

She nodded weakly. She did recall saying something like that. But never for one moment had she imagined he’d be wearing nothing more than a towel. She swallowed. ‘But you’re not … I mean … Maybe another time.’

His smile widened and her discomfort level ratcheted up with every tweak of his lips. He was enjoying himself. At her expense. ‘You said it was important. Something about Felipe?’

She blinked up at him and remembered why she was here. Remembered what she was about to propose and all the reasons it would never work. Added new reasons to the list—because the pictures she’d found hadn’t done him justice—he wasn’t just another good—looking man with a nice body, he was a veritable god-and because men who looked like gods married super-models and heiresses and princesses and not women who rocked up on their doorstep asking for favours.

And because nobody in their right mind would ever believe a man like him would hook up with a woman like her.

Oh God, what was she even doing here?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Coming here was a mistake.’ She was halfway to turning but he had hold of her forearm and, before she knew it, she was propelled inside his apartment with the promise of fresh coffee on his lips and the door closed firmly behind her.

‘Sit down,’ he ordered, gesturing towards a leather sofa twice the length of her flat at home and yet dwarfed here by the sheer dimensions of the long, high-ceilinged room that seemed to let the whole of the bay in through one expansive wall of glass. ‘Maybe now you could tell me what this is all about.’

She sat obediently, absently rubbing her arm where he’d touched her, the skin still tingling as if his touch had set nerve endings dancing under her skin. But then, why wouldn’t she be nervy when she didn’t know which way to look to avoid staring at his masculine perfection; when every time her eyes did stray too close to his toned, bronzed body, they wanted to lock and hold and drink him in?

How could she even start to explain when she didn’t know where to look and when her tongue seemed suddenly twice its size?

‘All right,’ she said, ‘if you insist. But I’ll give you a minute to get dressed first.’

‘No rush,’ he said, dashing her hopes of any relief while he poured coffee from a freshly brewed jug. He didn’t ask her how she wanted it or even if she wanted it, simply stirred in sugar and milk and handed it to her. She took it, careful to fix her gaze on the cup, equally careful to avoid brushing her fingers with his and all the while wondering why she’d ever been crazy enough to think this might work. ‘So tell me, what’s wrong with Felipe?’ he asked, reminding her again of the reason why she was here, and she wondered at his ability to make her forget what should be foremost in her mind.

Giving Felipe a reason to smile.

She’d made it this far. She owed it to Felipe to follow through. She’d return to Melbourne one day after all. The humiliation wouldn’t last for ever …

So much for wondering if she matched her husky voice. Instead she looked like a waif, he thought, lost and lonely, her grey-blue eyes too big and her mouth almost too wide for her thin heart-shaped face, while her cotton shirt bagged around her lean frame. She stared blankly at the cup in her hands, whatever fight she’d called upon to secure this interview seemingly gone. She looked tiny against the sofa. Exactly like that mouse he’d imagined her to be when she’d first spoken so hesitantly on the phone.

‘You said he was dying,’ he prompted. And suddenly her chin kicked up and she found that husky note that had captured his interest earlier.

‘The doctor said he has six months to live. Maybe twelve.’ Her voice cracked a little on the twelve and she put the cup in her hands down before she recovered enough to continue, ‘I don’t think he’ll last that long.’