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Anton stiffened. She di
dn’t know—not all of it anyway.
‘Well, you cannot do that with me,’ she went on. ‘S-so you can go now and—and marry that h-horrible Kinsella Lane
person,’ she suggested with tremulous bite.
He laughed. It was bad of him to laugh with so much anguish creasing the atmosphere, but that was what he did. Because here stood this beautiful, proud, tragic woman telling him to go—yet she was protecting that damn door as if her life depended on it!
He heeled his shoes off. For a moment he thought she was going to leap on him in a rage. ‘Luis—!’
‘That’s me,’ he acknowledged, and pulled his shirt off over his head.
She stamped a foot. Now, that’s more like it, he thought as he began to undo his trousers.
‘If you don’t stop this I will—!’
He reached her so fast that it was all she could do to gasp out a protest as he clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Now, listen to me…’ he said, bringing his head down so he could look right into those dark pools of tragedy. ‘I am not going to stop loving you because you think that I should, and I am not going to walk away from this. I am going to marry you, whether you like it or not, and I am going to keep on loving you until I draw my last breath—so get used to it.’
After that he straightened up, took his hand from her mouth and lowered it to grasp both her arms, where they still linked defensively across her front. He used them to pull her over to the bed. It took him five seconds to get rid of the tray, another two to grab her again, then stretch out on the bed, pulling her down on top of him so she had no option but to unwrap her arms to support herself.
Her eyes were dark and her mouth small, and as he looked up at her he knew she had not given in to him yet.
‘Sad little thing,’ he murmured, and stroked a gentle finger across an unhappy cheek. ‘Am I such a bad bet?’
She gave a sombre shake of her head, ‘Arido,’ she whispered.
It came then. Six years of grief and misery pouring out of her as she lowered her face to his chest and wept.
Anton said no more. He did not attempt to stem the flow. He just held her. Held her and wished there was something he could do to make it all go away for her—but there wasn’t.
Arido, he thought bleakly, and rolled with her, pulled the covers up over them, then curled his body around her as much as he could.
Of course he ended up kissing her out of it. How long was a man supposed to lie passive while the woman in his arms broke her heart all over him?
And he used words—husky, soft, honest words—like, ‘Eu te amo.’ I love you. ‘Nada matérias outras.’ Nothing else matters. ‘Eu te amo. Eu te amo.’ Until words became warm, thick, tear-washed kisses, and kisses became—something else. It even shocked him how an overdose of heartache and anguish could generate the driving depths of passion they ended up sharing.
Anton still wasn’t over it when he carefully slid from beneath her and stood up from the bed. She was asleep, coiled around the pillow he’d slipped into the place where his body had been. Turning away, he hunted down his discarded clothes and put them on again with a dry promise that this time they’d stay on. Then he let himself out of the room as quietly as he could do.
He needed some time alone to think.
Cristina came awake to find she was hugging the pillow. She sat up, blinking owlishly, trying to decide if the grey light she could see seeping into the room was the fading day or a new day just come.
She felt hot and sweaty, and every one of her muscles ached as if she hadn’t moved them for hours and hours. She had a cloudy recollection of the events that had led up to her falling into a deep sleep here in this bed, but in truth she did not want to think about them.
Luis’s bag still sat on the ottoman, but a swift glance around the room told her that he was not here. She got up, discovered she was wearing his T-shirt again—though she did not recall when she’d pulled it back on after—
She sucked in a sharp breath, not wanting to go there—not yet anyway. Instead she crossed the room to look out of the window, then bit out a very unladylike curse.
It was daylight out there! She had slept the evening and the whole of the night away—plus most of the morning too!
Spinning around, she headed quickly for her own bedroom, where she showered and pulled on clean jeans and a fresh green T-shirt, then tried to soothe her fidgety nerves before she went to find Luis. Only to receive the shock of her life when she found a man—a complete stranger—dressed in a suit, wandering the hall with a clipboard.
‘Good morning, senhorita,’ he greeted her politely when he saw her standing there on the stairs, then just continued with what he was doing!
Anger began to fizz. ‘Do you happen to know where Senhor Scott-Lee is?’ she demanded.
‘I think most of them are in the kitchen,’ he replied absently as he wandered off into one of the reception rooms.
