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‘Oh, only ten minutes, but if traffic is heavy it could take longer. We ought to leave by a quarter to twelve to be on the safe side, so you have plenty of time for a swim first.’
‘We?’
He looked into her blue eyes, smiling crookedly, and her stomach sank as though she were in a lift which had suddenly dropped down at tremendous speed.
‘I’ll drive you there.’
‘There’s no need to... I can take a taxi.’
Coolly he said, ‘I promised the police I’d take you myself, to interpret. You don’t speak Spanish, do you?’
She had to admit that she only knew a few polite phrases. Her stomach tightened; it would be a nerve-racking experience, visiting a Spanish police station to identify the man who attacked her last night. She would rather never see the man again. But if she had to go she would be grateful for a little moral support and some help with the language. Only—why did it have to be him?
‘I’m—I’m sure you’re very busy, running the hotel,’ she stammered. ‘Couldn’t one of your staff take me?’
‘No, I said I’d do it and I will,’ he said coolly, watching her in a way that made her even more nervous. What was he thinking?
She picked up her bottle of suntan lotion and began smoothing it into her sun-warmed legs again, to steady herself, give her something to do which also provided a good excuse for not looking at him.
‘Well, thank you; it’s very kind of you to take so much trouble,’ she said stiltedly.
Behind their barrier of lowered black lashes her blue eyes were humiliated and angry. Once again she wished to God she had never gone out on the balcony yesterday while he was swimming in the pool, had never seen him climb out of the water, golden and beautiful, had never felt that incredible, helpless surge of attraction.
She still found it hard to believe that this was happening to her. She had loved Rob before she understood sensuality. Her first love had been innocent, as virginal as untrodden snow; at eighteen she had been dewy-eyed and romantic, full of dreams, quite unaware of the potential that her body held. But she wasn’t an unawakened eighteen-year-old any more. She was a woman who had learnt to enjoy physical passion, whose body clamoured for satisfaction it had not had for three years. Since Rob’s death she had been so full of grief that she had forgotten she had a body, had put her sensuality to sleep, in a sense. Now it had woken up and Bianca was alarmed by her body’s increasing insistence.
There’s a word for the way I feel but I don’t like it, she thought. Lust—that’s what this is... lust for a man I only met yesterday and who is married anyway—it’s disgusting. I must be out of my head. I can’t believe this is happening to me.
‘You hurried off last night without a word,’ he drawled. ‘I was going to walk you to your apartment, but you had gone before I could catch up with you.’
She looked up and found him staring at her, his gaze fixed on the rise of her breasts out of the tight cups of the swimsuit, the soft pale flesh glistening now with oil where she had applied the suntan lotion.
She looked away, her flush deepening, then said angrily with a pointed intonation, ‘I thought you were going to have a drink with your sister-in-law.’
There was a little silence, then he said softly, ‘Freddie told me she had met you. She liked you. If you hadn’t hurried off like that you could have had a drink with us.’
‘I was very tired,’ Bianca said, hoping she sounded convincing. ‘I liked her too—she’s very friendly, isn’t she?’ She took a breath, then asked deliberately. ‘Is she your wife’s sister?’
He showed no sign of embarrassment or reluctance to discuss his wife. ‘Yes, Mady is Freddie’s younger sister.’
‘Are they alike?’ She was making herself talk about his wife in the hope of reasoning herself out of this stupid feeling for him. He was a married man, unavailable— she had to stop this permanent drag of attraction somehow and facing the fact that he was married should do it.
‘They’re both blondes and built more or less the same, but they aren’t alike in character—Freddie is a darling and Mady is...’ He stopped and shrugged, his mouth twisting cynically. ‘Mady was the baby of the family, very spoilt; both her parents doted on her and gave her whatever she wanted. Freddie was the eldest, though, and grew up with a strong sense of duty and responsibility. Nobody could accuse Mady of that!’
Startled, she stared at him. It didn’t sound as if he liked his wife much—or was she reading too much into his words? That would be wishful thinking; she must stop doing it. ‘Do you have children?’ she forced herself to ask him, expecting an affirmative.
‘None, thank God.’
Even more taken aback by that response, she stared, frowned, and asked, ‘Do you both live here at the hotel?’
There was a silence, then he said drily, ‘Freddie didn’t tell you? I imagined she would have—Mady and I were divorced within a year of getting married. She left me and eloped with the man she’s now married to—they live in Germany; he’s older than her father but he is worth millions and Mady is even more spoilt now than she was as a child.’
A pulse began beating in the side of her throat; she hoped he couldn’t see it but he was watching her so closely that she was afraid he could. Increasingly she felt as if she was made of glass, and he could see everything that was going on inside her.
He put out his hand suddenly and took the bottle of suntan lotion from her. She tried to hold on to it but it was slippery with oil, and slid easily from her grasp.
‘Turn over,’ he ordered.
‘What?’ She was still so absorbed in the realisation that he was not married any more that she was too bemused to understand what he meant.
