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Moving her hand from where it lay tucked against his thundering heartbeat, she lovingly traced the line of his hard, sensual mouth with the tips of her fingers. ‘You probably thought it was a teenage infatuation. It wasn’t,’ she confirmed softly. ‘It just grew and grew. Why else did you imagine I would ever agree to the sort of marriage you proposed? Kiss me again.’
With a low groan Javier obeyed the best order he’d ever been given, fingers tangling in her bright hair, disposing of the pins that held it in driven haste, one hand rucking up the skirt of her dress to press her hips against the hard evidence of his arousal, and it was a long time before either of them had the breath to spare for speech.
A long time before the break of the early summer dawn, long hours of mindblowing pleasure, of immeasurable ecstasy. And the words were drowsy when they came, Javier’s hand lovingly stroking her tumbled hair from her damp forehead as he murmured, ‘We need breakfast. Got to keep our strength up.’ Smoky eyes glinted an explicit message that needed no verbal translation and Zoe ran her hands over the impressive breadth of his satin-skinned power-packed shoulders, dizzy with love for him, silently vowing to make him happy for the rest of his life.
‘Patience,’ he adjured softly, swinging his long legs off the bed, allowing her to just adore the smooth length of his bronzed back. ‘I’ll forage before Ethel surfaces.’
And then he was gone, leaving her to wonder how she could ever have doubted him, how she could ever have believed Glenda’s vicious lies, knowing she was far too happy to eat anything, ever again!
But the combined aromas of fresh coffee and hot buttered toast swiftly changed her mind, and having him taste her warm buttery lips with his own was something out of this world and definitely to be repeated every time they breakfasted together.
Which reminded her. ‘May I take it that you won’t be dashing away all over the world on business without me in future?’
‘You may.’ His charismatic grin flooded her with warmth. ‘I admit to poking my unnecessary nose into far-flung projects because every time I looked at you I wanted to make wild love to you, and our stupid marriage wasn’t about that. I thought I was doing the honourable thing. And while we’re on the subject of mixed-up wiring—where did you get the crazy idea that I’d proposed to you to—what did you call it? Get wedded to your future fortune?’
Finishing the last of her coffee, Zoe dismissed her folly as lightly as possible. ‘Something Glenda said.’ She wasn’t about to drag his mother into this; she would hate to cause any ill feeling.
Javier took the empty cup from her hand and leaned over to put it on the tray at the bedside, his voice gruff as he eased himself closer to the sinful temptation of her beautiful body. ‘Didn’t you stop to think? If I’d wanted to marry your money, scatterbrain, I would never have proposed a two-year paper marriage in the first place. And as for the other charge you threw at me, Glenda and I didn’t sit around for half a week deciding whether or not she should face you with what she’d done.’
He hoisted himself up on one elbow, the better to devour her lovely face with his greedy eyes. ‘Though, thinking about it, I can’t blame you. Something that did require the presence of my poking nose did crop up the day after I got back to the apartment after leaving you with your grandmother. A suspension-bridge project on the outskirts of Milan.
‘I phoned through to warn you I’d be out of the country until Thursday—yesterday. You were with Alice and her GP. I asked Miss Pilkington to pass on the message. She forgot to, as I discovered when I phoned to let you know I was back yesterday mid-morning. When she told me you’d left for the London apartment on the previous Monday I went cold all over and guessed you’d walked in and found Glenda. It only needed the threat to stop the cheque I’d given her to get her to confess to what had happened.’
He moved closer, stroking a hand over her swollen, sensitised breasts, a hard thigh insinuating itself between the limpid length of hers. ‘I think I have my strength back, my darling.’
Stifling a moan of need, Zoe wriggled away. ‘There are a couple of things I need to know,’ she stated emphatically, then gasped with helpless excitement as he hauled her back again. ‘What was that woman doing in our apartment and why did you give her money?’ she got out in breathy stabs as his roving hands found the hot, melting core of her.
‘Oh, that.’ He, too, was having difficulty in the breathing department. She was so sweet, so soft, so ready, so adored—
‘Yes. That.’ Her futile attempt to push him away turned into an eager exploration of her own.
Calling on his last remnants of self-control, Javier got out, ‘Just after I called you from the hotel reception area in Cannes—I was waiting for the site manager—a working dinner—who should swan up but that wretched woman on the arm of her French lover. Then, when we were in Spain, Mama told me she’d been trying to get in touch with me. I thought nothing more of it until that first day back at the apartment I found a message from her on the phone. She sounded pretty desperate so I returned the call. She was almost incoherent. She’d been dumped, ejected from the flat the French guy had installed her in. Was homeless, fast running out of money, would I advance her a loan until she got back on her feet.’
His mouth hardened. With hindsight he should have told her to get lost. But he’d been sympathetic.
‘I felt sorry for her. We’d had a brief fling, way in the past, no strings, no come-backs. But after it was over she had done me favours in return for payment—accompanying you on those trips abroad when I’d been too busy pitching for new projects to spare the time. By then I knew I’d be flying out to Milan on the following morning so I told her to go to the apartment, and to ask the janitor, on the instruction I gave him, to let her in if for some reason you and I weren’t there. Wanting somewhere to lay her lying head, she obviously moved in. The rest you know. Or is there anything else before I explode with frustration?’
He smiled but it was the smile of a jungle cat just about to pounce on its prey. Zoe loved it. Loved him and everything about him to pieces.
Tilting her head on one side, she squirmed against him. ‘Just one more question. Have you really got your strength back?’
His ragged groan, the expertise with which he lowered his mouth to kiss her senseless, were the perfect answer to her question.
