had the circumstances been different, who knew…?
The comment drew Maggie’s gaze to the fingers still curved around her upper arm. She made no attempt to break the contact; in fact she was conscious of a strange reluctance to do so.
She could feel the warmth in his long brown fingers through the thin fabric of her cotton top and sense the strength in them…in the man himself.
Her eyes lifted and the impression of strength she picked up from the light contact intensified. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and athletically built—he was both lean and hard.
He projected an undiluted force-field of raw masculinity. It was utterly overwhelming and…seductive?
The latter question made Maggie’s eyes widen with shock. Curbing the imaginative dialogue in her head, she began to pull her arm away, then stopped as she encountered the flash of concern in his silver grey eyes.
She swallowed past the sudden emotional thickness in her throat and blinked as her eyelids prickled. She looked away, embarrassed by her emotional response to this cursory show of concern.
‘I’m fine…oh!’ Maggie grunted as a passerby bumped into her. ‘Sorry…’
‘You are sorry?’ Her rescuer mumbled something under his breath and directed a glare of such autocratic outrage at the retreating back of the clumsy culprit that Maggie would not have been surprised to see the burly figure disintegrate into a pile of dust.
‘You’re very kind.’
Her low-pitched voice with the husky timbre came as a surprise—not an unpleasant one. ‘You’re English?’
Had he needed confirmation, this would have been it. He knew that Angelina had been shipped to England to have her baby.
She had not gone into details, but he could only imagine that the experience of being sent away from family and friends at such a time must have been a terrifying ordeal for a sixteen-year-old.
Maggie saw the flicker of expression move at the back of his incredible eyes and interpreted it as surprise. She had seen a lot of that when people realised she was not Spanish. There had been several occasions on this trip when unable to respond when, someone spoke to her in Spanish, she had had to explain that she was English.
It was difficult not to think about her genetic heritage when for the first time in her life her colouring made her blend in, not stand out.
She lifted a hand to smooth her tousled hair, a frown settling on her brow as she blinked to clear the unbidden image of Simon’s excited expression when he had revealed that the firm he had employed to investigate her background without telling her had discovered her real mother did not have, as his own mother had suspected, Romany blood, but was in fact a member of one of Spain’s oldest families.
‘Like Mother said, it explains your temperament and your colouring, doesn’t it, sweetheart? The way I see it,’ he had mused, ‘if this family are willing to acknowledge you it would do us no harm at all. Obviously we have to approach them sensitively…’
Sensitive—he actually said sensitive and with no trace of irony. ‘You told your mother about this?’
Simon had remained oblivious to the danger in her voice and stilted manner. ‘It was her idea.’
He had not appeared to notice her flinch as he’d smiled indulgently before announcing confidently, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
Maggie had been pretty sure Simon hadn’t or he wouldn’t have been standing that close to her clenched fists.
She could remember clearly staring up at his handsome face, and thinking, I’ve never actually seen you before.
She was engaged to a man who didn’t know her at all, a man who under the caring exterior he liked to cultivate, was utterly and totally self-centred.
‘You’re thinking how did the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat come to be adopted by an ordinary English couple.’
Maggie had recovered her voice in time to silence any further revelations and assure Simon that she had no interest in her birth mother or a family who were strangers to her, and neither did she have an interest in marrying him.
It had taken some time to convince Simon that she wasn’t joking, but when he had realised he had been furious, revealing a side to his nature that she had never glimpsed previously.
Maggie flicked her ponytail firmly over her shoulder and equally firmly pushed away the memories.
She had moved on and in a rather unpredictable way, she thought, directing a bold direct stare at the face of the dark, devastatingly handsome Spaniard. Communication was not a problem; he spoke perfect English.
The problem was her inability to stop staring at him or speculate on how good his non-verbal communication skills were.
‘You are here with your family?’ He arched an ebony brow, his eyes travelling up from her toes to her glossy head.
She shook her head, feeling ridiculously tongue-tied and unable to shake the crazy conviction he could read her thoughts.
Rafael arched a dark slanted brow. ‘Boyfriend…?’
Maggie rubbed the finger that had recently sported her engagement ring. ‘No’
Rafael’s sharp gaze noted the action and he filed it away for future reference. She was young to be divorced, but he did not discount the possibility.
‘I’m here alone. On holiday.’ Nice move, Maggie—you’ve just told a total stranger that you’re a vulnerable target. ‘With friends,’ she added quickly as her natural caution kicked in.
‘You are alone with friends?’
She flushed and gave a self-conscious laugh and struggled not to look guilty. Her inability to lie without blushing remained a constant source of irritation. ‘I’m with a group of friends,’ she lied.
The corners of his sensual mouth lifted as he arched an ebony brow. ‘Public place and I’m totally harmless,’ he drawled, displaying an uncomfortable ability to read her mind as he stood there looking about as far removed from harmless as a wolf. She tilted her head back to look into his face and qualified further—of the big and bad variety.
‘I’m sure you are,’ she lied politely, adding, ‘Excuse me,’ as she fished her phone from her pocket and scanned last night’s text from her mum with an expression of interest.
For some women, of course, the bad part would have been a plus, but she had never been drawn to danger. Danger was for women who could live in the moment, and men like him were for women who did not worry about how it would feel the next day.
Maggie had never been swept away by the moment, she had never said to hell with tomorrow and she didn’t see the attraction of dangerous men any more than she felt the urge to walk along a crumbling cliff edge because the view was nice.
She studied her companion’s dark lean face and couldn’t deny that the view was very nice…The skin on her scalp tingled as her glance drifted to his mouth and she corrected her assessment. This man was many things but nice wasn’t one of them!
Uncomfortably conscious of the flash of heat that washed over her skin, she pressed her hands to her stomach where a flock of butterflies were rioting and lowered her eyes back to her phone.
‘Bad news?’ he asked, not fooled by the little pantomime but playing dumb and for time.
His thoughts raced.
He needed to warn Angelina and give her the opportunity to tell Alfonso. He owed her that much, as he was the one who had encouraged her in her lie of omission to her husband in the first place.
That one had really come back to bite him, he reflected grimly. The next time he got asked for advice he would politely refuse.
This