Page 222

How had she got here? To a place where this physical pull to him felt so unbearably overwhelming? Inevitable, even? She didn’t want to be attracted to this man. She was desperate to draw parallels with her mother’s poor choices that had always led to terrible outcomes. Yet no amount of logic could stifle a craving that was eating her up.

She didn’t want this, but it seemed that this wanted her.

She was so aware of him that every nerve in her body was jangling.

She felt sunburnt, exhausted and underneath the coolness of her voice as she tried to fight this attraction and the mildness of his as he stood his ground, the atmosphere shimmered with unspoken tension and excitement.

He’d told her that if she really wanted to close down this conversation, then he would oblige. But now, sitting here and dipping into the offerings on the table, she realised that no, she didn’t want to back away from this.

Her heart was beating fast and her nerves were all over the place but the thought of retreating behind a wall of feigned indifference didn’t appeal.

He was sitting so close to her that, with his chair angled the way it was, she could feel the light brush of his knee against hers.

It made her shiver.

‘I’m just here because I care about Carlos and I’m willing to act as a buffer between the two of you if that might help things progress without any further bad feeling,’ she said, trying to give them both a timely reminder that might ground the conversation and bring them both back down to earth. ‘I know the two of you haven’t had the easiest of relationships and so I thought that if I came on this trip with you, I might…well, I might persuade you to really listen to what Carlos has to say without thinking that the solution is to tell him he’s making a mistake. That’s the only reason I’m here right now.’

She glanced across at him as she bit into some bread and cheese and reddened because she honestly couldn’t read what was going on in his head. The only thing she could think was…he fancies me.

‘I know all that,’ Javier said patiently. ‘You don’t have to go over old ground to try and remind me what prompted you to agree to do this. You want to join dots to try and make sense of what’s happening between us, this crazy chemistry, but there are no dots to join because it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense but we can’t just write it off as a trick of the imagination. We both embarked on this journey with one thing uppermost in our minds. Somewhere along the way our bodies hijacked the plan and here we are.’

Hope focused on the food on her plate.

‘You’re not my type,’ she protested but her voice lacked conviction.

‘Somehow, you’ve managed to make that pretty clear,’ Javier responded drily. ‘You have no idea how unusual it is for me to be on the receiving end of a woman who keeps insisting how unsuitable I am.’

‘That’s not my problem. All I’m saying is that even if I happen to find you attractive, it’s not going to go anywhere.’

‘Going somewhere? Whoever said anything about this chemistry between us going somewhere?’

‘Well,’ Hope huffed. ‘I just didn’t want you to start thinking that…that this is anything more than a stupid physical attraction for me.’

‘You told me that your last big dream is to be happily married to Prince Charming, with a couple of kids, living somewhere in the country in a chocolate box cottage with a white picket fence.’

‘I don’t believe I said anything about a chocolate box cottage or white picket fences. I also don’t think I said it was my last big dream.’

‘I’m using broad strokes of the brush to paint the picture.’ Javier looked at her levelly. ‘Am I more or less on the right track?’

‘I don’t intend to repeat my mother’s mistakes,’ Hope said, with just a hint of edgy bitterness in her voice. ‘From the second she hooked up with my loser father, her love life just teetered from one car crash to another. It was exhausting.’

‘I’m being serious when I say that I’m staggered you still have a romantic bone in your body,’ Javier confessed.

‘Maybe I’m just one of those eternal optimists,’ Hope shrugged. ‘My mum always bounced right back after heartache.’

‘But you didn’t, did you? Bounce right back after your heartache?’

‘I told you, Jimmy didn’t break my heart. In fact, I was the one who ended things between us. After Jimmy, I stepped back from men because the whole dating game was too much of a bother. It can be like the Wild West out there and I’ve had better things to do than get embroiled in all that.’

She pushed some food around her plate and looked at her wine glass, which appeared to be nearly empty although she couldn’t remember drinking any of it.

‘Or maybe,’ Javier said in a silky soft voice, ‘you just didn’t meet any guys who got you interested enough to look at them twice.’

‘I don’t go for guys just because I happen to be attracted to them!’ Just in case he thought that he was somehow special. Belatedly, she heard how that sounded and sighed. ‘What I’m saying is…’

‘I’ve never heard that take on starting a relationship before. The one where you find someone physically unappealing, at which point you conclude that they’re exactly who you’re looking for.’

‘That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that physical attraction is way down the list when it comes to the attributes I look for in someone. Which is where you come in. I might be physically attracted to you but you don’t have what it takes for me to think about you in any way other than as a good-looking man with more money than sense.’