Kept at the Argentine's Command

She’d been using it all day.

He felt even more like a bully.

‘Forgive me, Lulu, it’s been a long day and I’ve unfairly taken it out on you.’

Lulu hadn’t expected an apology, and she hadn’t expected him to be on his feet so fast and standing behind her. She didn’t want to turn around because she knew her face would be red and her mascara streaky.

More, she didn’t want to turn around because she suddenly felt at a loss as to what was expected of her, and she wasn’t quite sure what this tension between them was.

‘Lulu?’

‘I accept your apology,’ she said stiffly.

There was an odd little silence, in which Lulu suffered the indignity of knowing he probably just felt sorry for her. Which was about as sexy as porridge.

‘We could try to just be civil to one another, do you think?’ she said in a small voice.

‘Agreed. But I’m finding being civil to you taxing.’

‘Why?’ She looked up over her shoulder at him.

Why was he looking at her like that? He could probably hear her heart beating. Beating? It was fairly stomping, like the chorus at L’Oiseau Bleu when they were still learning new moves.

‘I think you know why.’ There was a faint smile on his lips but those eyes were serious, and they promised things she couldn’t quite get a clear visual on. She knew only that they would probably put what they’d done in the car into the shade.

It was the unknown, and Lulu knew she was losing traction on all her firmly held beliefs about herself as she began the slide towards it. A little too fast for her…a little too soon. But everything seemed to go fast when she was around this man.

One minute she truly hated him, and the fact that he’d seen her at her most foolish made it worse.

But now she was tempted beyond belief just to step up to him, pull at his shirt and make him kiss her again.

But that wasn’t going to happen now.

‘I really think I should go to bed,’ she said, and told herself she wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t argue with her.

*

Alejandro returned from the bathroom freshly shaven, dressed in boxer shorts and with bare feet, to find Lulu in the armchair.

He’d assumed she’d take the bed as her due. Obviously not. Her expression in the lamplight was serious, and there was something about the way she was evidently trying to find a way to make herself comfortable that he recognised in other things she’d done today. It was crazy, but he got the idea she was trying her hardest.

Alejandro looked at the bed, and then at the girl curling herself up in the chair.

Dios.

Deep down he’d known from the start that he’d have to take the chair. She’d never been going to share that bed with him.

She would sleep in the bed and he’d play footman in her fairytale, try to arrange his large frame on that armchair and get what shut-eye he could.

He’d slept in the saddle before.

He could manage a badly sprung armchair in a Scottish farmhouse.

He dumped his toiletries bag, strode over and scooped her up, blanket and all. It was a mistake, because everything suddenly felt incredibly intimate between them. The lovely weight of her, his arms around her… She felt like his.

She seemed to know it, because she didn’t struggle.

He put her on the bed.