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‘Hi,’ he said as he arrived beside her, touching her warm sun-kissed shoulder with his fingertips and bending to brush a kiss to her cheek.
‘Hi,’ she greeted him huskily.
Swinging out the chair next to hers, he turned it around, then straddled it.
Cristina glanced up and felt not just her heart but everything else take a warm, swooping dive inside her. He looked so very good to her hungry eyes, with his neat dark hair and warm golden skin, and a smile on his lips that made her vulnerable heart ache. He was wearing a pale cream silk-linen suit that did disturbing things for his broad-shouldered figure, and the silk shirt he wore beneath the jacket was an almost exact match to the colour of her dress.
‘Now I know why my mother bought this shirt and insisted I wear it,’ he said. Reaching out then, he flicked a finger at the cream ribbon she was wearing in her hair. ‘And you’ve been filching my bow ties again.’
Cristina flushed and looked away. ‘Don’t tease,’ she shook out.
A waiter appeared beside their table. Without hesitation Luis ordered two glasses of champagne. The waiter moved away—curious, Cristina could tell, because it had to be obvious that they were the bride and groom supposed to be getting married in the Blue Room right now, instead of sitting here. Luis was even wearing a creamy rosebud in his jacket lapel.
‘Luis…’ she whispered anxiously.
‘Mmm?’ he responded, in an intimately seductive way that brought some colour into her pale cheeks.
Leaning forward, he rested his arms across the back of the chair, then placed his chin on his arms. ‘You look amazingly, beddably gorgeous, meu querida,’ he told her softly. ‘Will you come upstairs and marry me?’
Cristina sucked in a breath. ‘Can you be serious for a moment?’
&nbs
p; ‘Not today, no,’ he refused.
‘But I need to talk to you—’
‘You could try looking at me when you say that, my darling. At the moment you are talking to your poor mangled fingers.’
Her chin shot up; her eyes flashed. ‘Will you please listen to me for one moment without—’
‘Listen to you try to kick me out of your life again? No way.’ Anton shook his head.
‘I don’t want—’
‘Then what do you want?’ he asked, and the humour was starting to leave him, no matter what he’d said about refusing to be serious.
‘I want to talk about what you really want,’ she told him.
‘I want you as my wife.’
The champagne arrived, delivered to the table with a flourish in two fluted glasses. ‘With the compliments of the hotel, senhor—senhora.’ The waiter smiled, then melted away.
‘He thinks we are already married.’ Cristina sighed.
‘Optimistic of him—but then he doesn’t know my bride’s penchant for pulling my strings.’
‘You’re cross.’
‘Getting there,’ Anton agreed as he handed her a glass. ‘Now, drink,’ he commanded. ‘You are going to need Dutch courage to sustain you when I become weary of this and decide to pick you up and throw you over my shoulder—and don’t kid yourself I won’t do it,’ he added warningly. ‘Because you know very well that I will.’
‘This just isn’t fair! If you had agreed to speak to me on the telephone we would not be sitting here at all!’
A sleek black eyebrow made a sardonic arch. ‘You wanted to dump me by telephone this time?’
‘I’m going to hit you in a minute.’ She glared at him.
‘Well, that would be a whole lot healthier than sitting here giving the impression that you are about to attend a wake,’ Anton snapped, then uttered a sigh. ‘You know that I love you, Cristina,’ he declared wearily. ‘I’ve tried to show you I do in every which way I can. But if you cannot find it in you to love me enough to want to spend the rest of your life with me, then I will accept that and let you go.’
