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He pulled in a breath. His stunning eyes glittered as he commanded, ‘Say that again. Say you love me!’
‘Why else do you think I’m here? I knew I couldn’t go through the rest of my life without telling you how deeply I love you.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘But you weren’t here. Where were you?’
Completely consoled, Diego trailed loving kisses down the length of her throat. ‘In London,’ he murmured thickly. ‘Looking for you. I, too, had to tell you that I loved you more than my life.’ His lips encountered the top button of her cotton blouse. Slightly unsteady hands lifted to slip it out of its moorings, then stilled. With a supreme effort he controlled the fierce need to make love to his beautiful darling right here and now.
‘We are blocking the road, my angel. We must go.’ The lightest of kisses on her unbearably sensitised lips. ‘Wait in my car. I will move the Seat.’
No sooner said than he was behind the wheel, reversing the little car in a cloud of dust. And within moments he was striding back to where she was frozen to the spot, immobilised by the utter magic of what was happening. Diego loved her! She was to be his wife! Welded to his side for the rest of their lives! How could anything in the world possibly be more wonderful?
All macho confidence, Diego opened the passenger door and gently eased her poleaxed body inside, strapping her in with cool efficiency before walking round to get behind the wheel, telling her, ‘It is parked in a pull-in. And there it may stay,’ with a calm disregard for the need to get it back to the hire firm at the airport. ‘You, my most precious love, are going nowhere. And this time I keep you here with love. My bad behaviour is a thing of the past.’ His hand on the ignition key, he turned to her, his eyes drenched with tenderness. ‘For five years you h
aunted me. When I saw how I could take what I believed was my right to vengeance, I took it. Can you forgive me?’
‘I can’t blame you for thinking bad things about me,’ Lisa confessed earnestly. ‘Five years ago I behaved like a spoiled brat. I’d seen you with this fabulous woman. Twice. Once going into a jeweller’s, and again in the hotel foyer. I thought you’d dumped me for her, that you hadn’t meant it when you said you were in love with me. I—’ her voice almost disintegrated ‘—I took my own childish form of revenge.’
‘Querida—’ His hands took hers, pressing kisses into her palms. ‘That is all forgotten. But I need to hear you say you forgive me for my truly vile treatment once I had you to myself. I wanted you like crazy and I knew you weren’t indifferent to me. So I decided to let you stew, wondering when you would have to fulfil your part of the hellish bargain. Increase the sexual tension until you begged me to make love to you. How can you love such a monster?’
‘How can I stop?’ she replied, sincerity spilling from her eyes. ‘Besides, you gave me the option of leaving when it came right down to it, remember? So you can’t be all bad!’
And with that assurance he gave her the slashing grin that had always had the power to turn her knees to water and started the engine.
It was growing dark, a soft amethyst light stealing over the mountains. Lisa, watching for the first faint stars from the terrace, wondered where Diego had got to.
She’d bathed and changed as he’d suggested, dressing with immense care in one of the beautiful dresses that she’d never expected to see again. A honey-coloured silk shift that made the most of her slender curves, her hair loose around her shoulders, her make-up as perfect as she could manage given that her fingers, all the cells in her body, were trembling with delicious anticipation.
‘Come.’ He was behind her, his hands lightly on her shoulders as he turned her to face him. She hadn’t heard him approach. Her heart leapt.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he announced with betraying huskiness, beautiful himself in a formal white jacket over a pristine shirt and those narrow black trousers that made his sex-appeal positively killing.
Dreamily, she allowed herself to be led back through the silent house. And only when he opened the door to his bedroom did her love-drenched eyes sparkle with delight.
The softly lit room was full of flowers—someone must have denuded the garden and the courtyard! There was champagne on ice and hauntingly sweet music coming from a hidden tape deck.
Wordlessly, he led her to the bedside where the satin covered pillows had been heaped to resemble a throne. He eased her down then with a flourish went down on one knee and took her hand.
A dark flush emphasising his slashing cheekbones, his voice deep with emotion, he asked, ‘Lisa, will you marry me if I ask, leaving nothing to be desired?’
Her throat closed up. Speechless at first, her heart feeling as though it had no option but to burst, she lifted the hand that was gripping hers so tightly and kissed the back of each of those strong lean fingers with fevered intensity until she was able to whisper, ‘Yes! Oh, yes, my darling!’
Several breathless minutes later, after the throne-like position of the heaped pillows had been thoroughly disturbed, Diego eased himself away from her and slipped a ring on her finger. The beautiful sapphire gleamed in the soft light. ‘This is the ring I chose for you five years ago. It is now where it belongs.’
Her eyes brimmed with delirious tears and Diego took his time over kissing them away, only stopping when her fingers clamped around his wrist and she stated happily, ‘You didn’t throw it away.’
‘Throw what away, my dearest angel?’
‘The watch.’ She’d seen the glint of gold.
For a moment he looked discomfited. Then he grinned, kissed her with swift passion and confessed, ‘I have always worn it. Only when I got to London on my mission of vengeance did I replace it with some cheap horror bought from the airport duty free shop. If you’d seen it you would have known that you had been in my heart, had never left it. At the time giving you that knowledge was not on my agenda.’
‘I see.’ Her eyes sultry, Lisa trailed kisses down from his temples to his sensual mouth. ‘So what is on your agenda now, I wonder.’
His mouth smiled beneath hers as his body pinned her back against the tumbled pillows. ‘I’ll give you three guesses, my dearest darling.’
