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‘A cold shower,’ he repeated patiently, as if trying to coax a child into action.
And, if she had wanted some reassurance of his intentions, there was not a hint of seduction on his face. Last night it had been the easiest thing in the world to adapt to Ramon’s sybaritic lifestyle, but mornings were something else! Perhaps he would mellow over breakfast. The tone of his voice when he crossed the stateroom to fling open the curtains extinguished that hope.
‘I’ll have a tray of fruit juice and croissants brought to you.’
Hard to believe that dinner had placed her in such a hypnotic trance… How else could she explain how she had come to be leaning her head on his shoulder? Annalisa frowned as she tried to remember just when Ramon had removed his dinner jacket, opened the buttons on his shirt, turned back the cuffs, revealing strong, tanned arms shaded with dark hair? It was all so hazy…
‘I’ll run the shower for you,’ he barked, interrupting her reverie with an impatient gesture. ‘And then I’ll wait for you on deck. If you care about the finca at all, you have exactly half an hour to get ready.’
She shook her head as she struggled to recall a single clear detail from the night before. She vaguely remembered leaning forward to reach for the champagne flute…somehow their fingers had touched. Then, removing the glass from her hand, Ramon had settled her back against the sofa—
‘Annalisa! How can you expect to do business with me when you won’t even get out of bed? I thought I told you to get up.’
‘I’m sorry… I…I was thinking about last night—’
His expression was like a slap in the face. ‘There’s no time for that now.’
Stiffening her resolve, she sat up and confronted him. ‘Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’
‘The meal was good,’ he admitted impatiently.
‘And the rest?’ She watched as he mashed the door handle impatiently.
‘The champagne was a good year—other than that I have no idea what you are talking about.’
Angrily she turned her back on him.
For a brief moment he remained silent and then he gave a short, virile laugh. ‘Allow me to reassure you, Annalisa. If there had been anything else between us apart from a meal last night you would remember.’
‘So, we didn’t…?’ Her glance flickered up to his face and away again.
‘You are not accustomed to champagne,’ he observed coolly. ‘Do you think I would take advantage of you?’
She studied the stitching on the amethyst silk counterpane and made no reply.
‘This is a very large boat,’ he said dismissively. ‘Let me reassure you that I slept alone. Now, get in the shower before I throw you over my shoulder and hose you down myself!’
During the meeting in Don Alfonso’s dignified wood-panelled office it soon became clear that Ramon’s legal team was picking holes in every suggestion made by the older man. Or perhaps it was just that he represented a different age and things had moved on, Annalisa thought, glancing around the table. The average age of Ramon’s team couldn’t have been more than thirty, and, boy, were they sharp. She was being forced to jump in constantly to defend her corner, knowing that many a fatal barb could be clothed in legalese.
The old adage, ‘Why pay a dog and bark yourself?’ sprang to her mind, but Don Alfonso had come highly recommended by… No. That was it. Don Alfonso had written to her stating that he had been one of her father’s most trusted legal representatives. Everything about the bequest had come as such a bolt from the blue and she had had no reason to doubt him. However, the situation concerning agreed boundaries and water rights was far more complicated than she could ever have imagined…perhaps even beyond Don Alfonso’s capabilities.
But with Ramon’s gaze likely to fall on her at any moment it was the wrong time to admit that she had made so little enquiry into the details before jumping headlong into her new life. And after last night’s fiasco she was determined to keep what little remained of her pride intact. She tensed as Ramon stopped the meeting with an imperative gesture.
Looking straight at her across the table, he said, ‘I take it that Señorita Wilson has been fully apprised of every aspect of this dispute?’
Dispute? Annalisa looked questioningly at him and then at Don Alfonso. Out of respect for her mother’s feelings she had made no enquiries whatever during her lifetime about the mysterious Spaniard who was her father, let alone any disputes that might have affected him. And Don Alfonso had volunteered no information beyond what she had requested.
Don Alfonso’s warning glance urged her to let him speak for her as he rose to his feet. At once Ramon yielded the floor to the older man.
