Page 34 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
‘I’ve already emailed my guy at the bank,’ he warned her. ‘A deal’s a deal. Now, you go.’ He smiled wryly. ‘People are queuing to visit, including Luisa, for reasons best known to her. Can’t remember her paying me a scrap of notice and I’ve known the woman since she was twelve.’
Something stirred in Caitlin. She remembered the venom on the other woman’s face when she had bumped into them on the hospital ward not long ago, and shivered. Why would Luisa still be hanging around? Not her business. She was an old family friend. Did those ever really go away?
‘That fall,’ Alejandro’s parting words were, ‘might just have saved my life, Caitlin.’ His voice was pensive. ‘You should do what you feel you have to do. Take it from me, when you have a scare it makes you realise that life is precious and you only get to live it once...’
Her mind was on so many things when, much later, she let herself back into the house, having remembered this time to take a spare key. Two were kept in a metal safe in the kitchen and she had had to sign it out.
Having not seen Dante before she left for the hospital, she had taken it for granted that he would be similarly absent when she later returned.
He wasn’t. Just as she was about to enter her bedroom to pack her bags to leave, he appeared at the opposite end of the corridor. Coincidence or not? Was he intending to continue his interrogation? Hadn’t they both said enough? She desperately wanted a surge of inner strength to accompany those bracing thoughts, but it failed to materialise as he strolled towards her.
‘How was he?’ Dante asked quietly. He was holding his laptop under his arm, on his way to the important business of catching up on work, she thought. And it was pure coincidence that they had collided in the wide corridor. She could tell because he was in a rush, stopping only because politeness dictated that he did. That was the feeling she was getting. Their intimate conversation of the evening before had been buried for him. Maybe he felt that too much had been shared.
‘Good,’ Caitlin returned. ‘I think he’s going to get bored of being in hospital very soon. Apparently the broken bones are healing nicely. He’ll be hobbling about before you know it. He’s going to go stay with your parents and then, I guess, in due course, he’ll return to London.’
‘A single man...’ Dante looked at her as her eyes shifted from his. He’d had time to think overnight. He couldn’t remember a time when he had ever had as open a conversation with anyone as he had had with her and that, he had concluded, wasn’t a good thing. Telling her...about that incident in his past had felt like a weakness, but it was too late to retrieve confidences shared and he wasn’t going to waste time beating himself up about it.
He’d also had time to think about what she had told him about herself, her startling confession that she had never slept with anyone. She had been neither ashamed nor proud of her virginity. It was as it was, her attitude had implied and, while he admired her for that, he was in no doubt that she wasn’t nearly as casual about her relationship status as she claimed to be.
She was so...fiery...so full of personality...soopinionated. How could she really be the sort to accept the reality of a relationship that delivered on all fronts except the single one that mattered, which was passion?
She might kid herself that she had squashed any romantic streak she might have had because of some broken heart back in the day, but she hadn’t, and Dante had firmly made up his mind that, temptation or not, and whether she was now a free woman or not, he wasn’t going to go there. Wasn’t even going to think about it. She lacked the experience to deal with a sex-with-no-strings-attached situation.
Yet the delicate flush in her cheeks, the nerves she was trying hard to conceal, the intensely femininesmellof her...were all beginning to wreak havoc with his high-minded, well-intentioned resolutions.
‘I’m keeping you. I was just about to pack my bags.’
‘Pack?’ That felt like a punch to the gut. Wrong reaction on every front.
‘I told you, I intend to head back to London and the sooner, the better.’
That single sentence clarified everything in Dante’s mind. It was one thing to be sensible when temptation wasn’t staring you in the face. It was quite another when...it was.
She would leave and he wouldn’t be seeing her again. He would be left wonderingwhat if...?whether he liked it or not. The woman had got under his skin, and if she walked away now she would remain under his skin for ever. A burr he would not easily be able to yank free. An annoying itch that he would regret not having tried to scratch.
‘Don’t.’
That single word hung suspended in the air between them. Caitlin marvelled that a single one-syllable word could have such a dramatic effect on her senses. Her heart sped up. Her mouth went dry. Her pulses began to race.
‘Yet. Don’t leave yet.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
She did.
‘There’s noyou and Alejandroany more,’ Dante breathed thickly. ‘Once upon a time, there was a convenient charade. That’s over. You’re a free woman.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘What wouldn’t? Are you telling me that when you look at me...you don’t want to touch?’
His voice had sunk to a husky murmur that felt like feathers brushing against her skin. She shivered. So many things were going round in her head right now, but top of the list was—I want you... I don’t know why, or how I could feel so attracted to you, but I want you...
‘That’s not the point,’ she responded, angry at the telltale weakness in her voice.
‘Why?’ All his natural aggression and instinct to pursue what he wanted surged to the surface, wiping out every mental obstacle in its path.
