Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key

Flustered, Maggie swept the hair from her eyes. ‘Yes, that is, no, I…’

‘You wish for references perhaps?’

She flushed and shook her head feeling gauche, foolish and excited; her eyes widened in recognition of this last emotion. ‘Of course not.’

‘I am Rafael. Rafael-Luis Castenadas.’ Holding her eyes, he bowed formally from the waist. He straightened, pushing a dark hank of hair back from his wide brow as he did so, then angled an enquiring brow and waited.

Not recognising the cue to give her own name, Maggie heard herself say, ‘That’s a lovely name.’

She squeezed her eyes closed and thought, Please, please, let the ground open up and swallow me.

He watched as she bit her lip hard enough to bruise the soft pink flesh and break the skin. He saw a bead of bright blood form and thought about blotting it with his tongue before…He stopped the thought but was unable to stop his body reacting lustfully to the image.

He had never met anyone with a more expressive face. Did she allow every emotion she felt to register on those lovely features?

It made his task easier that she was so easy to read though he wondered how many men had taken advantage of her transparency—as he was.

He pushed aside the sliver of guilt. He had an excuse and he wasn’t trying to get her into bed…though in other circumstances that might, he conceded, have been a tempting idea.

Maggie opened her eyes and found he was watching her; the unblinking intensity of his regard was unsettling.

‘And you?’ he prompted.

‘Me?’ she echoed, wondering about the expression she had glimpsed on his face.

‘You have a name?’

She flushed and struggled to get her brain into gear. She could not believe the effect this total stranger was having on her. ‘I’m Maggie. Maggie Ward, well, Magdalena really, but nobody calls me that.’

‘Everyone starts out as strangers, Magdalena.’

His deep voice had a intimate quality. Maggie, uncomfortably conscious of the forbidden shiver trickling down her spine, told herself it was his accent. Just because he made her name sound exotic didn’t mean she was—she was still the same Maggie who was far too sensible to get silly because a man with a pretty face and a more than all right body noticed she existed.

Her glance skimmed the long, lean, male length of him and the breath left her parted lips in a tiny sigh of appreciation that she hurriedly covered in a cough. Ruefully she admitted to herself he was better than all right—actually he was better than stupendous though a person would have to see him without the clothes to be sure.

Maggie stopped dead mid-speculation, her eyes widening to saucers. I’m mentally undressing a man!

‘Even lovers…’

Her wide eyes leapt to his face. ‘Lovers?’ she echoed, thinking if ever there was a cue to walk this was it. This was not a subject that total strangers discussed. His next comment made it clear he did not share her inhibitions. She was starting to think he might not have any.

‘Lovers start out as strangers.’

He smiled at her with his eyes and her stomach flipped and quivered.

She recalled Millie’s friendly advice on how to add some spice to her holiday.

‘Act available, Maggie,’ she had counselled. ‘When your eyes meet his and your heart starts to thud and you get that delicious fluttery kick in your belly, don’t look away. A guy needs some encouragement.’

Maggie took a deep breath and didn’t look away.

It was just dinner, there would be other people, and she’d be experiencing some of the local culture, which was what she liked about foreign travel.

‘Will they have room at this paella place?’

Just for once it would be good to break away from her sensible image—not too far, obviously. And they were not talking the head banging, no-strings sex thing—this was dinner.

Where would be the harm?

As his strangely hypnotic eyes swept slowly across her upturned features. It probably made her pathetic, but she really wished she’d put on more make-up than a swipe of lip gloss and a smudge of eyeshadow.

As he examined the fine-boned features Rafael was struck once more by the startling resemblance between mother and daughter, but now he was equally conscious of the dissimilarities. The younger woman would be considered by most to have less claim to classical beauty, but when it came to sex appeal she was streets ahead.

‘They will always make room for me. Come…’

No shocker that he should issue commands—he had that written all over him. The shock was that she allowed him to steer her through the throng.

Looking back on the moment and the ones that followed later, Maggie was left to wonder if her body had not been taken over by an alien.

Maggie paused, ducking her head to look through the door he held open for her. The sumptuous interior looked just as impressive as the exterior of the long, low, powerful-looking car.

‘This is yours?’

‘You are going to lecture me on my carbon footprint or car theft?’

She slung him a cross glance and slid inside, lifting the newspaper that lay on the passenger seat. The headline was in Spanish but the image was one that had graced several front pages across the world that week—a well-known Hollywood star with his long-term partner making their relationship official at a civil ceremony.

The image of the two hand-in-hand, smiling men shifted her thoughts back to her dad’s parting words when Maggie had been startled to realise that her dad, at least, had his own ideas about what had caused her to break off the engagement.

‘I respect the fact you don’t want to talk about it, love, but the fact is, Maggie, some men…just because Simon has issues with his…leanings…’

Maggie had stared, astonished, as her father, red-faced, had cleared his throat before finishing huskily. ‘Never think you were the problem or it was your fault.’

‘No,’ she had responded faintly, thinking, Was I the only one who didn’t have a clue?

And she hadn’t—not until that final argument when things had got pretty ugly.

Maggie had never seen the normally restrained Simon so angry before, and the trigger to him losing it totally had of all things been a throwaway comment in the heat of the moment, because he didn’t have the faintest idea why she was angry. ‘I don’t think you even like women!’

‘Who have you been listening to? I am not gay!’

Before Maggie had been able to assure him she hadn’t meant that at all he had grabbed her arm and wrenched her towards him, lowered his face to her and snarled, ‘If you spread lies like that I’ll…’

Startled by his aggressive reaction, Maggie had frozen with shock, but had not lowered her gaze from his menacing glare. She knew from past experience it was a mistake to show fear to bullies. And Simon was a bully.

Why had she not known that before?

Anger had come to her rescue; her chin had come up and she had asked with cold disdain, ‘You’ll what, Simon?’