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The first when she was nineteen, with a boy she had convinced herself she fancied because he fancied her, and his enthusiastic pursuit had broken down her natural caution. But the spark had been missing and it had eventually fizzled out into a nondescript friendship which, in turn, had disappeared in the mists of time. She had no idea what had happened to him.
The second, four years later, had been a similar disaster, she knew at least in part driven by her guilty knowledge that she was young and couldn’t live the rest of her life in nun-like celibacy. A little tipsy, she had gone back to his place. Yet again there had been no spark, and they had returned to the point from which they had started. Just friends.
And since then...nothing.
Except, she considered with painful awareness, life had not been quite a desert of cobwebs gathering on her sexuality, had it? Because she had to admit grudgingly that beneath the contempt she had strenuously told herself she felt for her wretched boss there had been something else. Something that had put a spring in her step every morning when she had set off for work—something that had made her never resent it when she had been asked to work ridiculously long hours...when she had been cooped up with him as he nailed down one of his legendary deals...
And now here she was. She could feel herself staring up at him for an inappropriately long time, barely breathing, drawn irresistibly like a moth to a flame.
‘Do I?’ she croaked, defending herself with what little was left in her armoury. She was so hotly aware of that absent-minded caress on her ear that she felt she might faint.
‘Of course you do,’ Leandro asserted, in the voice of someone stating the obvious.
He dropped his hand and began walking, so that she fell in step with him. He could feel her presence beside him, nervous, quivering, and yet she was driven to remain even if a part of her might be telling her to flee back to the safety of the hotel.
‘You’re getting married for reasons that escape me,’ Leandro murmured. ‘You’re not attracted to the man and you don’t love him... Okay, security might be an appealing part of the deal, but I honestly can’t think that it would constitute reason enough...’
‘I never said that I didn’t love—’
‘Of course you did.’
‘Stop pretending that you know what’s going on in my head!’
‘An arrangement. Isn’t that what you called it?’
Emily heard the hard edge in his voice and cringed. Put like that, it sounded...sordid. At best. And yet he didn’t know the half of it. But it wasn’t his business! None of it was!
‘There’s nothing wrong with an arranged marriage,’ she muttered impotently. ‘It happens. Some people might say that the most successful marriages are the ones that are made for sensible, practical reasons.’
‘And you’re one of those people...?’
‘You’re a practical man. You can see where I’m coming from!’ There was a desperate, pleading tone to her voice that made her cringe inwardly.
How had she got to this point? Girls should have dreams, shouldn’t they? She never had. Not as far as she could remember. Or maybe her dreams were so far in the past that she could scarcely remember the sensation of having them, of ever having dreamt of the walk up the aisle, the blushing bride dressed in white, bursting with happiness and anticipation.
‘I’m practical, Emily, but when it comes to the institution of marriage I still believe in it. I would no sooner dream of arranging a marriage for myself because it suited me for practical reasons than I would consider freefalling off the side of a building without a harness. Of course...’ He thought of his one failed gold-digger mistake. ‘I would be sensible when it came to choosing a woman... I would pay particular attention to the fact that people from similar backgrounds tend to forge lasting relationships. But within those parameters...well...a marriage without love and good sex as a foundation is a marriage without a point.’
‘Well, we can’t all be the same, can we?’ Emily muttered, breaking their intense eye connection to spin away and begin walking shakily towards the far end of the beach.
The further they walked away from the hotel, the darker the beach and their surroundings became. The strip of sand narrowed towards the end, tailing off into an outcrop of dramatic rocks of different shapes and sizes—some towering upwards, others flat and squat—and between them the sea surged and fell back in a repeated motion, sending up flicks of spray as it did so.
Emily turned away from the dark mass of menacing rock to find that Leandro was right there, a few paces behind her, just as menacing.
With a sigh of pure frustration she headed towards the trees and sat down on a fallen trunk that lay on the beach like the body of a long, slender, inert snake.
She drew her legs up and folded her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees and staring sightlessly out to the ocean as he sat heavily next to her.
‘I believe in marriage because I had the example of my parents,’ Leandro said slowly. ‘So, whilst I might fool around with women, like I say, they always know the score. And when the time comes for me to marry my head might play a part, but I intend to do it for all the right reasons. So tell me, Emily, how is it that you have no such illusions that it’s possible for two people to marry because they actually believe in love...?’
Emily didn’t say anything. If anyone had told her two months ago...two weeks ago for that matter...that she would be sitting on a beach having a conversation with her boss that defied all rules of propriety, she would have laughed in disbelief.
‘It occurs to me that I don’t know a damn thing about your background...’ Leandro broke his own rule of allowing silence to propel a conversation. He raked his fingers through his hair.
‘Why would you?’ Emily finally volunteered. ‘Updating you on my background was never part of my job description.’
‘And you were always so damned efficient when it came to sticking strictly to the job description and never putting a foot out of line... So here’s what I’m thinking: you don’t believe in marriage and you don’t believe in the fairytale concept of falling in love because of something that happened to you in the past. Either a disastrous relationship with some guy or else your family background...something there... Tell me if I’m heading in the right direction with either of those theories...’
‘I don’t have to tell you anything,’ Emily protested weakly.
‘But there’s where you’re wrong. Because you’ve just been thrown a curve ball in your neatly arranged plans for your neatly arranged marriage to this mystery guy who does nothing for you but apparently fits the bill because he’s convenient.’
Emily turned to stare at him. His eyes glittered in the darkness. She could sense the dangerous intent inside him even though his body language was relaxed and casual, his arms resting loosely on his knees.
‘What curve ball?’
‘Why, us, of course. You and me and the sizzling flare of attraction we feel for one another. And don’t bother trying to deny it, Emily. Maybe it was there lurking all along and it took this...’
He looked around him and she knew that he was not only referring to the lush tropical setting but to the fact that they were so far removed from the comfort blanket of surroundings with which they had always been familiar and which had always imposed strict guidelines to their interaction.
He returned his dark gaze to her mesmerised face. ‘...to bring it out into the open. But there you go. It’s out in the open. Maybe I would have forced it back into the box if I had believed for one second that you were truly in love with your fiancé, but you’re not, and that explains why you’re drawn to me just as I’m drawn to you... What you have might be convenient, but it’s no protection when it comes to the pull of raw, physical sexual chemistry, is it...?’
Raw...physical...sexual...chemistry... Just those four words, verbalising what had been going on between them underneath the surface, sent a slow, rolling tidal wave of intense excitement coursing through her body. Suddenly breathing was difficult, and she was vibrantly aware of every part of her body, from her tingling nipples to the dampness between her legs, wetting her underwear, making her want to shift and squirm.
‘My father...’ She rushed desperately into speech, terrified that her body was going to let her down and vaguely aware that she had never felt anything like this for any man in her life before. Although she knew she could never, ever like Leandro, despite what he had said about his fair treatment of women, she still didn’t want to go there. Or rather she knew, just knew, that she shouldn’t.
‘Your father...?’ Leandro was so focused on what his own body was doing and the heat between them that it took him a few seconds to latch on to this surprising turn in the conversation.
‘When I was fourteen I found out that he had been unfaithful to my mother...’ Her voice hitched. This was a story she had never related to anyone before. She felt as if she was buying time, sharing this confidence, putting off the inevitable...
