He was already waiting for her when she walked down from the house towards the small, sandy beach. He was dressed in nothing more than a pair of black swimming shorts, and her eyes flickered reluctantly over his long, tanned legs with their coating of crisp, dark hair that curled all the way up to the bulging apex at his thighs.
She swallowed, feeling that warm rush of awareness explode inside her. For a few dragging moments it held her helpless and distraught. Then she managed to close her eyes, shut out the pulsing cry of her awakened body, shut out the sight of the man who had incited it all to life.
‘Ready?’
He sounded strange, as though something was constricting his throat. Glancing at him again, she felt a fine sweat break out on her skin at the expression on his dark, chiselled features as his eyes ran over her skimpy sugar-pink one-piece then came burning back to her face.
He knew. He knew why she had stopped walking and what was happening to her. He knew because she could see that the same thing was happening to him.
And it’s getting worse, she accepted starkly. Stronger.
He looked away with a sharp, jerky gesture of denial, his solid jaw tightening, his big chest heaving, his hands clenching into two tight fists at his sides. Then he seemed to get a hold of himself. ‘I thought we would borrow Pedro’s boat,’ he said. ‘He keeps it in the next bay.’ A hand lifted to indicate across the headland covered in lush tropical undergrowth. ‘We can take it out and anchor it over the reef. That way we will see more.’
He didn’t wait for an answer but bent to snatch up the snorkelling gear piled by his feet and strode off, back rigid, that black silky tail of hair covering the tension in his spine.
Her own inclination was to turn and run in the opposite direction. But, shaken and disturbed as she was by the power of need he had awoken inside her, she was also tensely aware that his needs were just as strong, and she had a horrible suspicion that if she did turn and run he would follow, and, as sure as hell, the eruption she could feel building steadily between them would happen. She could feel its threat to her bubbling fretfully beneath the thin surface of her self-control.
So she began to follow him, reluctant but aware that at least this way they both had time to pull themselves together.
She was right—well, half right—she noted wryly several tense minutes later as they emerged from a narrow pathway that led over the top of the rocky headland and through the lush undergrowth to a tiny circle of sand, where she could see a small boat with an outboard motor lying lopsidedly just above the tide line.
They were fine so long as they did not make eye contact with each other. And the fact that César was of the same mind made it easier to remain calm as he threw the snorkelling gear into the bottom of the boat then began dragging it, his muscles rippling in the sunlight, into the water before inviting her to get in.
‘Pedro uses this for fishing,’ he explained, once the motor had sprung into life and they were moving slowly across the top of the clear, calm sea. ‘He catches something fresh and different every day.’
‘They live very quietly here,’ Annie remarked, her eyes fixed on the cut and swell of water around the boat. ‘Don’t they get lonely with no other company than their own?’
‘They visit their family on the mainland quite often,’ he told her. ‘I have a launch anchored at Union Island. It is at their disposal whenever they feel the need to make use of it.’
‘But no phone.’ Annie frowned. ‘How do they let anyone know what they want without some line of communication?’
‘Been searching for a way to cry for help, Angelica?’ he drawled.
Her cheeks flushed, because that was exactly what she had done yesterday after he’d left her alone. She’d wanted to ring Lissa—not Todd but Lissa—and beg her to find a way out of this mess without involving Todd.
Todd. Even white teeth buried themselves anxiously into her lower lip. If Todd found out what had been going on here there would be hell to pay. She was sure of it.
‘There is a radio,’ César inserted smoothly, ‘linked directly with my head office in Caracas. But, other than that, they are, I assure you, content with their lot or they would not stay.’
‘What kind of office?’ she asked him, reluctantly curious about this man she had married. ‘I mean,’ she continued mockingly, ‘what do you do when you’re not being Adamas?’
He smiled at the way she had put that last bit. ‘Actually, my fascination for precious stones and metal is really just a hobby.’ He shrugged, as though a billion-dollar hobby was peanuts to him.
‘But as DeSanquez—’ wryly he used that mockery she’d used on himself ‘—I head the DeSanquez Organisation—oil, a couple of diamond and gold mines, a beef ranch or two, several other business interests which bring in a good revenue. All this I inherited from my father,’ he informed her. ‘But my mother was the family artist. From her I learned to develop my skill with precious metal and stones. From my father I learned to succeed in big business.’
The double persona. Annie had always known it was there in him. ‘And the hair?’ she asked, because it was the hair that first had made her suspect that he was two people. ‘Do you wear it so long because of some DeSanquez tradition? Or—?’
His laughter was warm and resonant, and it shimmered through Annie like a heatwave. ‘Nothing so—romantic,’ he replied, still smili
ng. ‘I simply—like it this way. Call it the artist in me, if you like, needing to make a stand against the businessman.’ he cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her. ‘Does it bother you?’ he asked curiously. ‘Would you rather I had my hair cut in a more conventional style?’
‘No!’ she denied impulsively, then flushed as his green eyes began to gleam. ‘It—it doesn’t bother me one way or the other,’ she said offhandedly.
‘Doesn’t it?’ he murmured softly. And she had to look away from those dark, knowing eyes, wishing that she hadn’t mentioned his ridiculous hair!
She went quiet after that. And César turned his attention to guiding the little boat out of the shelter of the tiny cove and towards the mouth of Hook-nose Bay, where he stopped the engine and tossed the small anchor out onto the reef.
‘Have you snorkelled before?’ he asked.