I hate how his arrow hits its mark, no matter how well I armoured myself, and I hate how I want to shoot a few in return. I can’t resist, even as it betrays me. ‘How sweet,’ I say acidly. ‘I didn’t know you cared about my feelings.’
He lets out a short, hard laugh. ‘I don’t.’
‘So why are you here, then? If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’re looking to replace your father in my bed.’ They’re careless, heedless words, and as soon as they’re out of my mouth I know I’ve made a mistake.
I shouldn’t have acknowledged the electricity that still hums between us, even though it’s been eighteen months since that night in London. I haven’t forgotten. The electricity that I’ve never felt before or since, and never at all with Antonio. An electricity I have no control over and no choice about, and that I can’t ever surrender to.
Fury leaps in Santiago’s black eyes and he takes a step towards me. ‘You wish,’ he says, low and hard, his Spanish accent making music of the threat. ‘No, Stepmother. I’ve come for something else.’
Stepmother? Really? Even though he’s technically correct, I’m twenty-five and a good ten years younger than he is. And the way he loads the word, with as much contempt as he can, disdain dripping from every syllable…
Yet even as he says the words, my mouth goes dry. Because the smell of cold stone and incense is mixing with the warm, spicy scent that’s all Santiago, and all I can think about is that night at the bar when he stood close to me. When that scent of his filled my head, and I regretted so much that I was here with someone else. That someone else having been his father, though I didn’t know it then.
I swallow yet again, staring up at him through the black lace of my veil. I know why he’s here, of course I know. ‘This is about your inheritance, isn’t it?’
‘So sharp,’ he purrs. ‘You’ll cut yourself if you’re not careful.’
I ignore him. ‘Your father left everything to me. And you know that.’
He takes another step forward, and I find myself taking a step back, trying to keep some distance between us. He’s far too tall, looming over me, filling the alcove with his fierce, electric presence. ‘I do know that,’ he says silkily. ‘Mi padrewas very clear.’
My heartbeat races and I hate the way I react to him. I hate how my body is springing to attention exactly the way it did that night, my skin tightening, something needy and desperate throbbing between my legs. Even when I saw him a year ago, through the window, the effect he had on me was the same.
But more than anything else, I hate how I feel as if I have no control over myself whenever he’s near. Because it’s dangerous to want things, especially things you can never and should never have.
‘So?’ I’m thankful for the veil that hides the sudden heat in my cheeks. ‘There’s nothing to discuss, Santiago.’
‘Mr Veracruz, if you please,’ he murmurs, looking down at me from his great height, his black eyes piercing me right through. ‘You have not earned the right to my first name.’
I can hear the beat of my heart in my head, a loud thump in my skull. ‘The service will be starting soon,’ I say, hoping my voice sounds as hard and flat as his. ‘So whatever you have to say—’
‘Whatever I have to say,’ he interrupts, stepping completely into the alcove and forcing me back against the stone wall, ‘I will say right now, right here, my fucking father and his service be damned.’
The cold stone is at my back and I’m conscious of the warmth of the man at my front. He’s like a furnace, radiating heat even as the flames in his black eyes are cold.
He lifts one hand and before I can stop him he flips back my widow’s veil and looks down at me. ‘Dry eyes,’ he murmurs. ‘I thought so.’
I want to snatch the veil back down to protect myself, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how badly he rattles me. So instead I stare back, letting him see. ‘I’m sad he’s dead,’ I say, because there’s no point in pretending otherwise, not with him, ‘but Antonio and I didn’t love one another. We had an arrangement and that—’
‘If it was money you wanted, you could have had mine,’ Santiago snarls, suddenly fierce. He puts one hand on the stone either side of my head, slowly and deliberately, the black flames of his anger burning in his eyes. ‘But you didn’t want it, did you?’
I’m trembling, yet not with fright. Santiago is an intimidating man, but it’s not him I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of this tense, burning thing between us, this irresistible pull, this need that I’ve never quite forgotten, no matter how hard I try. The one I can’t ever talk about or name, because in the end it wasn’t him I chose. It was his father.
He’s too close and if he gets any closer I might lose myself, which again is why I didn’t choose him. Antonio was always the safer choice for me.
‘No,’ I say huskily. ‘I didn’t. I wanted your father, not you. Now get out of my face.’ I lift my hands, put them straight on his hard chest and push him away.
But he doesn’t move.
And then something between us catches fire.
Chapter Two
Santiago
Her small handsland on my chest, the heat of her palms tearing through the wool and cotton of my clothes like a bullet tearing through flesh. My entire body tenses, every breath I have gone as a possessive, almost overwhelming physical desire floods through me.
I’ve wanted her from the moment I saw her at that fundraiser in London eighteen months ago. I didn’t know then that my father was at the same fundraiser—I wouldn’t have attended otherwise—or that she was there as his date. All I know is that the moment our eyes met, she was mine.
