Page 38 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
Caitlin looked at him seriously. ‘I have a job to go back to.’
‘Jobs can wait.’
‘That’s fine for you to say. You’re your own boss and you can afford to do what you want.’
But that invitation was so tempting, even though she could read the corollary...Stay awhile because pretty soon I’ll get fed up anyway...
‘Don’t you want to...to do this all over again?’
She hesitated, and in that pause he smiled slowly.
‘Because I really want to.’
‘I have responsibilities.’
‘I’m not talking about a long-term arrangement, Caitlin. I’m talking about a few days of uncomplicated fun before we go our separate ways.’ He stroked her side and her eyelids fluttered. ‘Your responsibilities will be waiting for you when you get back to London, I’m sure.’
They would, Caitlin thought. Her parents...the stress...the uncertainty...none of that would be going anywhere any time soon. Alejandro had told her that he had instructed his bank to deposit the promised money into her account. She had no intention of keeping any of it so she would be back to square one when she returned to London.
But was she really the sort of person who could enjoy a few days of guilt-free pleasure without consequences? She’d shrugged off the whole business of relationships but, looking back at it, she hadn’t been tempted into any anyway, so shrugging them off hadn’t been an issue.
But she and Dante had slept together.
Lust.
That was what it had all been about. Lust and maybe the allure of being in a different country, where grim day-to-day reality could be kept at a distance... It was as real as stardust.
He wanted days. She could do days. Lust faded. And what was wrong with snatching a little time out?
His parents wouldn’t know. Alejandro would probably suspect but he would be amused. They would live in a little bubble for a week and then the bubble would burst and that would be that. No harm done.
‘Okay.’ She blushed. She reached out and did what he was doing to her: she stroked him, her fingers sliding over taut sinew and muscle, then lower to where his stirring erection left her in no doubt that what he felt for her was very, very genuine. ‘You’re right. Responsibilities can wait awhile...’
His parents wouldn’t know. They would be spared the bewilderment of thinking that she had been engaged to one brother only to move on to the next. Without the complexities of the situation being explained, how could they think otherwise? They lived some distance away so it wouldn’t be an issue. Somehow, Caitlin had managed to avoid another dinner invitation and she suspected that that was because they were too wrapped up with events to even think about entertaining their son’s fiancée, however much they might have wanted to.
Dante, perhaps, had engineered things so that they could have time to themselves, in that very special bubble where the past and the future didn’t exist, just a very physical and very exciting present.
‘It’s extraordinary,’ he had told her the evening before, when they had lain together, their limbs entangled so that they were almost a single unit, ‘but this is the best sex I’ve ever had.’
Caitlin had laughed and quelled the unexpected hurt she had felt.The best sex...Maybe there were women who would have seen that as a compliment. She could understand that. Dante was a man of experience, a man who could have any woman he wanted at the snap of an imperious finger, so doubtless when he’d said that, it had been said as a compliment.
But for Caitlin...since when had that ever been her dream? Since when had she ever thought that she would end up snatching time with a guy who wasn’t interested in anything beyond a romp in the sack? Had she ever thought that she would be helplessly sucked into the sort of non-relationship she had been schooled to avoid at all costs?
And yet, those words had filled her with a guilty pleasure.
She had to keep reminding herself that none of that really mattered because she would soon be gone.
Alejandro would soon be leaving hospital. She had visited him first thing this morning and he had been upbeat. He had shrewdly asked her about Dante and she had not committed to any kind of answer, but he had gone ahead and warned her off him again anyway, as if she had needed that warning.
Right now, Dante would be on his way back from the hospital. He had gone to work—an urgent meeting, he’d said, but he would much rather have lazed in bed with her—and would be stopping on the way back to his house.
Caitlin had already been there for an extra three days. Mentally, she had dealt with extending her stay by a week. That gave her four more days to bask in their short-lived relationship. When she thought about boarding that plane back to London, her mind skittered away from the unpleasant feeling that that was the last thing she wanted to do and, she told herself sternly, that had nothing to do with the fact that she hated the thought of never seeing Dante again. It was simply because she was having a holiday from all her stress and who ever wanted a holiday to come to an end? No one.
Standing in the kitchen now, with a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge and a meal in the oven, prepared by one of the three members of staff permanently employed to make sure that no need of Dante’s ever went untended, including the need to eat extremely fine food and drink extremely fine wine, Caitlin glanced down at her outfit.
She had forgone the usual uniform of loose skirt and loose top, which Dante referred to as herhippie chick outfits, and was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a fitted top, which she had bought the day before. Huge extravagance and she had no idea why she had done that, except she’d been out with Dante and he had practically shoved her into the shop and then had declared the outfit an amazing fit when she had grudgingly paraded it for him. She’d been squirrelling every spare penny into an account for her parents and hadn’t spent anything on herself for ages and suddenly, for no reason, she’d felt reckless.
Regrettable, considering her arrangement with Alejandro had bitten the dust, even though, up to this morning, he’d pressed her to take the money, which he didn’t need and she desperately did, and not be silly. He’d refused to give her his bank details. She would sort that out as soon as he was out of hospital, she’d decided.
