‘Enough,’ Nick exploded. He was not used to having his actions questioned by anyone, and certainly not by a slip of a girl. Acting on impulse, he swung her off her feet and carried her through the kitchen, oblivious to the astonished looks of Manuel and the staff, and didn’t stop until he reached her room, and flung her on the bed.
‘Right, Liza, let’s have it,’ he demanded roughly.
For a stunned moment Liza thought he was referring to sex. Her face paled, and then a swift tide of red suffused her cheeks. ‘Why, you—’
‘My, but you do have a one-track mind…’ Nick drawled mockingly, the knowing light in his deep brown eyes telling her he had read her mind.
‘Hardly surprising around the Spanish Stud,’ she flung back.
‘Ah, Liza,’ he glanced down at her, viewing her angry expression with an indulgent smile, ‘you should not believe everything you read in the gossip columns.’ He grinned smugly. ‘Though I didn’t hear you complaining this morning—quite the contrary.’
His impregnable confidence in his masculine prowess made her temper rise to boiling point, and, leaping off the bed, she marched up to him.
‘I am glad you think it is funny.’ She poked him in the chest with a finger. ‘You conniving bas—’ Her wrist was caught in an iron grip and the insults stuck in her throat.
‘No one talks to me like that.’ Nick’s hard jawline clenched and glittering black eyes scanned her angry face. ‘Especially not a woman of your kind,’ he told her icily.
‘My kind?’ Liza repeated, a terrible coldness taking the place of her anger that he could be so callous.
‘You know what I mean, Liza. I was not your first lover and I certainly won’t be your last, though if your overreaction is anything to go by your past lovers must have been pretty ineffectual. You were as up for it as I was from the moment we met again. Why the outrage now?’ he demanded with a cruelty she would not have thought him capable of. ‘Simply because you found yourself in a stable that held a memory of a past indiscretion?’
Colour tinged her cheeks; she did not need to be reminded of her helpless surrender to his sexual expertise, and certainly not of her juvenile reaction to him years ago. ‘That is a filthy thing to say…but about what I would expect from a man of your morals.’ And, blue eyes flashing flames, she stared furiously up into Nick’s face. ‘But this isn’t about sex,’ she said, fighting to retain her temper. ‘There is something going on here that I don’t understand. Who the hell is Carl Dalk? Your mother thought you had an urgent meeting with him yesterday, and I can’t believe you would lie to your own mother but you told me you had just come from the airport when we met, and you spent the whole day with me. I am not conceited enough to think a man like you would dump an emergency meeting for me.’ Once Liza started listing her suspicions she could not stop. ‘Your mother thought this Carl chap was coming back with you.’ She fixed angry, assessing eyes on his hard face. ‘And another thing, last night you let me think your mum was ill, and yet when I met your mum she said she has never felt better in her life. Don’t take me for a fool, Nick.’
Nick absorbed her flushed and angry face with arrogant detachment. He had known it was coming but he had hoped to divert her. Liza’s mention of Carl was a little too close for comfort. Narrowed dark eyes met brilliant blue and he was impressed—not many people stood up to him or even tried. He supposed he should be flattered that at least Liza did not want to think him capable of lying to his own mother, but what to tell her?
‘Watch it, Liza, your paranoia is showing,’ he tried to tease, but she met his attempt at humour with an elegantly elevated brow. She was an intelligent woman and wanted answers, Nick recognised, and humour wasn’t going to do it for her.
‘Just answer the question,’ Liza demanded.
‘Carl Dalk is an old friend of mine and, contrary to what you assumed, I did speak with him yesterday afternoon, after I left you at your hotel.’
‘Oh.’ Liza supposed that was possible, but it didn’t strike her as very urgent if he could wait all day to meet the man. ‘Not that much of an emergency, then,’ she prompted defensively, beginning to wonder if maybe he was right and she was being paranoid…
‘My, my, Liza, you do have a suspicious mind in that very lovely body. As for Mamma, I told you she was feeling down.’ He shrugged a shoulder. ‘You drew your own conclusion.’
‘And you let me!’ Liza exclaimed, amazed at the sheer gall of the man. ‘You dragged me a thousand miles to sle…to Spain…’ She stuttered to a stop, having almost said to sleep with me and stared at him, scanning his strong dark features, the devastating face, looking for some guilt… She found none. Instead to her shame her anger faded beneath the mesmerising effect of his powerful presence. She shook her head; she didn’t understand. ‘Why?’
‘First, I don’t recall any force involved. You accepted my mother’s invitation, before I told you she had been ill. I just helped reinforce your decision when, like a typical woman, you looked like changing your mind,’ Nick contradicted silkily as two strong hands curved around her shoulders. ‘As to the why—because I wanted you; it is that simple.’ His dark head lowered, his lips feathering across hers, and she trembled as the pressure of his kiss deepened, the hard heat of his mouth burning on her own.
‘No,’ Liza groaned in denial, but couldn’t prevent the familiar heat igniting in her traitorous body.
Nick stifled a groan of pent-up desire and ended the kiss. He could not tell her the whole truth, not if he wanted to keep her safe and in his bed, and suddenly he discovered keeping her in his bed was becoming of vital importance to him. The enormity of the thought shocked him.
Defence mechanisms clicking in, Nick stilled then eased away slightly. ‘OK.’ Her head was thrown back, her eyes were closed and her cheeks were hot with colour. He couldn’t resist so he nuzzled the elegant line of her throat, heard her soft moan and sensed her fluctuating inclinations as expertly as he read the stock market.
When he finally lifted his head he saw her eyes open and the flicker of disappointment in their depths she was unable to hide. His smile was a battle between contrition and triumph. He was still in control. ‘Be honest, Liza, you know the sexual chemistry between us is too powerful to ignore,’ he prompted with total conviction.
The chemistry she could not deny, and did not try to. ‘But why did you want me to speak to your mother in the first place?’ she asked shakily, feeling her way through a minefield of conflicting emotions. He implied it was because he wanted her… She should be flattered…but something still niggled. He was an experienced man, and her own innate honesty forced her to admit she would have gone to bed with him anywhere, and he had to know that. ‘We could have stayed in Lanzarote,’ with no family and friends to bother them, she thought, but didn’t say it.
Nick slipped a hand around the nape of her neck; as she felt his fingers lacing through her hair and trying to ignore the racing of her pulse and the heat curling through her at his closeness, she repeated, ‘Why?’
‘Simple expedience, Liza.’ His dark gaze held hers with a narrow-eyed intensity that tore at her fragile control. ‘I had to return to Spain, because my mother and I are the hosts of this party tonight.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Liza murmured. She had forgotten that and felt a fool.
‘Yes, Liza.’ And he tilted her head towards his. ‘And, having just found you, I could not bear to let you go.’
Fantastic as it sounded, Liza wanted to believe him, she wanted Nick to feel just a fraction of what she felt for him, and she told herself his e