Page 19 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Caitlin admitted with a smile. ‘I have no idea how I would have coped. I would probably still be in a taxi trying to get the driver to understand where I needed to go.’
Dante shot her a sideways glance. ‘I’m surprised you don’t know any Spanish at all, given the fact that you’re engaged to a Spaniard.’
For once, there wasn’t that jagged edge of suspicion underlying his remark. He sounded genuinely curious as they began to walk along the corridor to the room previously indicated by the consultant.
‘Alejandro did try,’ she admitted. ‘It only took him five seconds to realise that he wasn’t going to get anywhere when it came to me picking up a second language.’
‘Not interested?’
‘Very interested but my brain just doesn’t seem equipped to handle it.’ She laughed.
Dante’s dark eyes slid over to her. That laugh... As infectious as her smile. Unconsciously he glanced down at her sexy, round curves, the softness of her fair skin, the vibrant colours of her copper hair, which she had tied back into something resembling an untidy bun. She smelled faintly of flowers and sunshine. There was something intensely appealing about her lack of artifice and that appealingsomethingdragged on his senses, made him hyperaware of her in ways he knew he shouldn’t be. He knew the dangers ofdifferent. He knew what shame and wounded pride tasted like and he knew that the road that led there started with irrational temptation. It had that one and only time. It was a road he was never going to walk down again. On so many levels, the woman standing here was wrong and yet...
When he thought of the sort of woman he was destined for, a woman like Luisa, other thoughts pushed their way through, discomforting, uncontrollable thoughts that had no place in his life. Of course, he would never go there. He was supremely confident when it came to his ironclad willpower, but the mere fact that he couldn’t stop his mind from wandering rankled.
‘Somewhere along the line, I think my parents gave up on me being academic and so, in my head, I just ended up assuming that I couldn’t do anything that wasn’t creative. Hence my love of art and photography.’
‘You should learn.’
‘Why?’
‘It might come in useful,’ Dante interposed drily. ‘Considering the circumstances.’
Caitlin laughed again. ‘Oh, Alejandro and I won’t be...’ She went scarlet and came to a grinding stop.
‘Won’t bewhat?’ Dante encouraged softly, his ears pricking up.
‘Nothing,’ Caitlin muttered. How could she have let all her defences drop with him? How had she managed to let that charm get under her skin and very nearly pull the rug from under her feet?
He was staring at her. She could feel the insistence of his eyes boring into her skin and she purposefully kept her head averted and, thankfully, they had landed up outside Alejandro’s room so she had a very good excuse to ignore the guy towering next to her so that she could focus on her supposed fiancé, who was lying on the bed, for all the world looking as if he just happened to be in a deep sleep.
As peaceful as a baby, she thought, leaving her to deal with the fallout on her own.
‘If it’s okay, I’ll go see him...on my own, if you don’t mind.’
Dante didn’t mind. He was still trying to work out what she had just said. It had slipped out and she had immediately regretted the oversight. He knew that and it wasn’t just because she had gone a beetroot-red shade of intense discomfort, the intense discomfort of an adult who had very nearly broken the tidings to a gullible four-year-old that Santa wasn’t real. He hadsensedit, had sensed her horror at something that had very nearly been said.
What was it, though?
He was excellent when it came to reading people and reading, more importantly, what was between the lines. It was a talent he had ruthlessly exploited over the years, because it had always given him the upper hand when it came to the cut and thrust of dealmaking.
You never made it far by believing anything anybody said to you. He certainly never trusted anyone unless they had gone the distance to earn it. Few ever had.
Dante believed every word Caitlin had told him about her relationship with his brother, namely that they went back a way and had started out as great friends. He could see thefriendbit clearly enough. It was what sheomittedto say he found so intriguing, and that near slip-up she had narrowly escaped had compounded his suspicions.
She’d hurried into the room, closing the door behind her, and he watched through the pane of glass in the door as she pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down, taking one of Alejandro’s hands in hers for a quick pat and then leaning forward to talk.
There was no gentle caressing of the brow or tender kiss on the mouth, and after that perfunctory pat she had dropped his hand with shameless speed.
He would have given his right arm to have been a fly on the wall because, whatever she was saying, it didn’t appear, reading her body language from behind, that she was soothing him with sweet nothings.
Dante spun round and was helping himself to some drinking water from a plastic cup when she approached to briskly thank him for delivering her.
‘I can make my way to the shops from here,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re in the centre of things. I won’t need you to traipse behind me. If you want to visit with Alejandro, I can either meet you back here or else I’ll grab a taxi to the house.’
‘How did you find him?’
‘He seems comfortable enough.’ She sincerely hoped he’d heard every word she’d said when she’d told him in no uncertain terms that he’d been an idiot to have consumed his body weight in champagne and that she was really out of her depth having to cope with Dante, who watched her so closely that she felt uncomfortable every time she drew breath.
