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She thought she had an ally in his mother.
She thought she was about to break into the inner circle of his close family, consolidate the two and end up with happy-ever-after. Having had his eyes opened wide by Max, Anton was seeing everything with such crystal clarity it actually shook him cold.
The dress was most definitely red, Cristina dryly confirmed as she followed its smooth and sensuous lines, cut to mould every curve she possessed and show off her long slender legs. The fact that she had not tried on a single one of Luis’s purchases in the shop said a lot about his unfailing eye for size and style. The dress had long sleeves that began at her wrists and hugged like a second skin all the way up to the under-curve of her arms, leaving her smooth shoulders bare. And the bodice shot straight across her chest, just low enough to show a shadowy cleavage and the gentle slopes of her breasts.
Sexy, she thought as she viewed herself in the long mirror. Definitely very thought-provoking, without revealing too much naked flesh. Her mother’s fake diamonds sparkled at her ears and her throat, and she’d put her hair up because she knew that Luis would not like to see it like that. But then she’d gone for compromise by teasing a few glossy twists free to fall around her neck and her face. Her makeup was heavy—the dress seemed to demand it—dark and sultry shaded eyelids, a double lick of black mascara on her curling eyelashes and of course a matching red lipstick that enhanced the passionate shape of her mouth.
And because it was a long time—more than six years—since she’d worn anything so openly gorgeous and sexy, she could not resist striking a flirty come-and-get-me pose and adding a lush-lipped pout.
‘Now, that is the woman called Cristina Marques,’ a deep voice murmured in appreciation.
On a soft gasp Cristina spun around so quickly that she almost fell off her new backless high stiletto shoes, a hectic blush mounting her cheeks at being caught girlishly playing up to the mirror.
Luis was leaning in the bedroom doorway looking everything he was in a black dinner suit and bright white dress shirt. All long lean lines of laid-back sartorial elegance, with that ever-present tummy-tingling underlying vibration of latent, purring, sexual male.
‘I was beginning to think she had been banished for ever,’ he went on in the same low lazy attitude. ‘But here she is, beautiful and exotic in her new fine feathers, vivacious and sexy and loving it.’
The last two razor-tipped words pinned his mood. He was still angry. Cristina’s chin came up, challenging, defiant. If her hair had been loose it would have been flying back from her shoulders.
‘Even viuva de Ordoniz can enjoy dressing up on occasion,’ she retaliated.
The relaxed lines of his face hardened. ‘You claim never to have used that name. Don’t use it now.’
Straightening away from the door, he moved across the room with the grace of a prowling panther. Arriving a short foot away from her, he came to a stop, overwhelming her with his height and his masculine presence, fluttering her heart muscles and turning her knees weak when she did not want to feel like that.
Reaching up to flick a fingertip at the diamond droplet dangling from her ear, he then hooked the same finger beneath the matching necklace she wore at her throat.
‘Diamonds?’ he murmured.
Opening her mouth to tell him they were paste, her pride stopped her—what bit she had left after the way he had been scraping her clean of such a vice.
‘They were my mother’s,’ was all she said.
‘Ah,’ was all he said, and he gently withdrew the finger, leaving her to wonder if he would have ripped them from her if she’d told him that Vaasco had given them to her.
‘I don’t want to fight with you, Luis,’ she heard herself say in a husky whisper, and wished she knew why she did.
‘Who’s fighting?’ he said, dipping his hand into his jacket pocket.
Cristina shivered out a sigh. ‘What happened between us six years ago was—’
‘Six years ago,’ he inserted. ‘Forget it, Cristina. It is what’s going to happen in the future that counts now.’
But for her the past and the future were as indelibly linked as night following day. ‘You cannot—’
‘I can do anything I like while I’m in the driver’s seat.’
‘Will you let me speak one full sentence before you interrupt?’ she flashed.
‘Not right now.’ His hand came out of his pocket. ‘Give me your left hand…’
She sucked in a tense breath. ‘What for?’
‘Just give…’
He took possession of the hand without bothering to wait for her to yield it. Cool fingers with a thumb pressing lightly against her palm dragged her eyes downward. It did not occur to her that he meant anything ground-shaking by the gesture. Even when he stroked a light touch across the base of her ring finger she still did not catch on.
‘No mark,’ he observed.
