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Tall, dark, handsome Luis, with the beautiful English accent and the sensational smile. Her heart gave a pained little throb, and, curling up against Gabriel, she told him everything—almost everything—from their instant attraction to each other to her moving into his apartment to live with him.
Her missing year had been a wonderful year, filled with love and passion and laughter, an introduction to the kind of world she had never believed really existed outside the pages of romantic books. His apartment on the Copacabana had been a haven in which they’d lost themselves.
‘…then his papa died in a car accident and he had to go back to England,’ she concluded.
‘End of story?’
End of them, Cristina thought bleakly. ‘Sim,’ she said.
‘You simply waved this passionate lover farewell, then went back to Santa Rosa?’
That came three months later, Cristina remembered bleakly. ‘We did not part—pleasantly,’ was all she said out loud.
‘He wanted you to go with him?’
No answer to that one.
‘But you preferred to marry Vaasco Ordoniz instead?’
No answer to that one either. But he felt her fine shudder of revulsion when he mentioned her dead husband’s name.
‘And now your passionate ex-lover is back?’
‘Sim.’ She did answer that one. No use denying it. Luis was back. Bigger than she remembered him to be, leaner and harder, and colder than she remembered him to be, and so much more potently desirable than she remembered him to be—and the memories had been potent enough.
‘He has offered to bail me out,’ she admitted.
‘And the price?’
Cristina moved restively. Sex was the price. Retribution was the price. Last time he had offered her marriage. This time she would be offered—something else. She could deal with something else. In fact, she was truly shocked and terrified by how much she wanted to have something else with Luis again.
‘I will find that out tomorrow, when I meet with him.’
‘You have already arranged this?’
‘Sim.’
Gabriel sat up. ‘And when were you going to get around to telling me of this meeting?’ he demanded.
‘I’m only just getting used to the idea for myself!’
He made a sound of impatience. ‘You had better give me the time, so I can free myself up. I have a very busy schedule tomorrow, and if Senhor Scott-Lee is moving this quickly then we will—’
‘No, Gabriel,’ Cristina cut in softly, placing a hand on his arm. ‘I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to my aid tonight, but from now on I will deal with this by myself.’
‘Don’t be foolish, Cristina.’ He frowned down at her. ‘The man is a shark beneath that smooth cloak of English sophistication. And he’s hungry. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at you. He wants to eat you, querida. If he is about to offer you a rescue package then he means to play with you a little first.’
And he is powerful enough to play with you too, if I let him, she thought sadly. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I know him. I can deal with him better if I do it by myself.’
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS all right to be brave, and determined to go it alone like this, but from the moment Cristina stepped into the hotel lift that would take her up to the top floor suite she knew that she wasn’t feeling brave at all.
Gabriel was right. She had to be a complete fool to come here alone. She was just asking for trouble—begging for it.
The lift came to a stop. Her insides began to tingle, but what worried her most was that the tingle was not entirely to do with fear. As she stood facing the doors, waiting for them to open, those tingles went chasing down her arms and her legs in tight anticipation of—what?
Seeing Luis waiting for her dressed in one of those white bathrobes he’d always used to favour? Luis with his long tanned legs peppered with crisp black hair on show, and the triangle of hair that used to curl temptingly around the lapels of the robe?
