Kat And The Dare-Devil Spaniard

Of course she realised, he told himself cynically. Women like her used their clothes to showcase their sexuality. A sexuality which she seemed to have no qualms about putting out at every opportunity and which he was just going to have to ignore. His mouth hardened as he averted his eyes from her magnificent breasts.

‘So you have decided to grace us with your presence at last,’ he observed coolly.

And stupidly, despite his disparaging tone, Kat’s heart began beating furiously. ‘Wh-what time is it?’

‘Eleven.’

‘In the morning?’

He glanced around at the gold-dappled splendour of the deck. ‘We don’t usually have sunshine at eleven in the evening,’ he answered sardonically. ‘Even in the Mediterranean.’

‘Eleven!’ she exclaimed, ignoring his sarcasm. ‘You mean I’ve slept for…for…’

‘Hours,’ he agreed tightly. ‘Too much burning the candle at both ends, no doubt. Either that or the wine you drank made you sleep.’ He lifted the dark shades away from his eyes and stared directly into her face, fixing her with a glittering black gaze. ‘And I see that you opened the Pétrus.’

Kat remembered the anger she had felt at being trapped and told she was to work on the Spaniard’s yacht. Remembered too the discarded gold bikini top—and once again a stab of something which felt uncomfortably like jealousy unsettled her. So what if she had drunk half a bottle of his very expensive wine? ‘Sorry. I just couldn’t resist it,’ she said guilelessly. ‘Was it very expensive?’

There was a pause. ‘Very.’

‘Oh.’ She opened her eyes very wide. Maybe if she annoyed him enough he might drive her to the nearest shore himself. ‘And did you mind?’

Mind? What he minded more than anything was her careless attitude and the way those bright blue eyes sparked at him so defiantly. She wanted him to mind, he realised, and would have liked to have shown his displeasure in a very primitive way indeed. By upending her on his lap and slapping the palm of his hand against her delectable bottom. ‘You have very good taste in wine, querida,’ he observed.

Kat stared at him suspiciously. This was not the reaction she was expecting. ‘I…I have?’

‘Sí. Absolutamente. There will, of course, have to be some adjustment to your wages as a consequence.’ He shrugged as he saw her perfect lips part in a disbelieving circle. ‘Though naturally, it will simply be a token gesture, since no galley-hand could ever afford to pay the full price for such a bottle of wine.’

Suspicion turned to frustration. ‘You’re not still maintaining this fiction about me working on your boat, are you?’ she demanded.

Carlos pushed his laptop into a shady corner beneath the lounger and rose effortlessly to his feet. ‘I can assure you that it is not a fiction, Kat. It is a done deal and I have given my word to your father that I will employ you—despite the fact that you do not seem to have a single useful qualification to your name.’

‘That’s none of your business—’

‘I’m afraid it is. I have agreed to take you on—and one of the first things you’d better learn is that as a member of my crew you will be expected to be punctual at all times.’

‘But I’m not—’

‘I am not interested in your objections.’ Once again, his clipped words sliced through her stumbled responses. ‘All I know is that you’ve made an appalling start.’ His gaze flicked over the mutinous tremble of her lips and he felt an undeniable beat of pleasure. ‘However, in view of the exceptional circumstances, I’ll let you off this time—just don’t try it again. In future I want you on deck by seven. The crew can fix themselves breakfast, but I expect you to attend to what I like. Good coffee, a little fruit and some bread. My needs are very simple.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘You’ll make a light lunch for everyone and a rather more elaborate meal for the evening. And you’ll be expected to keep the decks and cabins clean, though obviously not the crew’s. Understand?’

There was a moment of disbelieving silence while Kat looked at him with shock and dislike as he shot out his list of outrageous demands. ‘No, I don’t think you understand,’ she answered furiously. ‘You’ve had your little joke, Carlos, but it’s gone on for long enough. I don’t want to stay here and I don’t want to work for you. I…I want to go back to shore.’ There was a pause while he looked at her expectantly and she forced herself to say it, even though the word felt as if it might choke her. ‘Please.’

Carlos clapped his hands in mock applause. ‘¡Bravo!’ he said silkily. ‘We make progress! The spoiled Englishwoman—she learns what it is to be polite!’

Kat looked at him hopefully. ‘So you’ll take me?’

‘I cannot,’ he snapped. ‘Surely your attention span isn’t so short that you’ve already forgotten the letter from your father which you read last night?’

She thought back to that ridiculous set of rules her father had set out—the one Carlos had presented her with when he’d arrived on board. ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten, but my father has clearly taken leave of his senses!’

‘Wrong again.’ Carlos’s lips flattened into an uncompromising line. ‘In fact, I think his intervention is long overdue and it’s time you stopped acting like a spoilt little princess. One who snaps her fingers and thinks the world owes her a living. An overindulged rich girl who sees just what she wants and then takes it. I cannot believe that nobody has ever accused you of it before. Princesa.’

Kat stood as he taunted her with the word, but now her heart had begun to thunder erratically as ice-cold tentacles of fear began to tiptoe down her spine, in spite of the warmth of the morning sun. Fear that she usually kept battened down, hidden away like a dark secret. Didn’t he realise that she, of all people, couldn’t cope with the idea of being trapped? That she had witnessed enough violence and horror to last a lifetime—and that sometimes she needed to run from those memories. Quite literally, to run.

Like a dark and acrid poison, reminders of that time rose up in her mind, but she blocked them. The way she’d been blocking them ever since her world had been turned upside down by the death of her stepfather and nothing had ever been the same again. She never talked about it with anyone. Anyone. Not all the counsellors or psychologists they’d paid for over the years. Not her mother or her father. Nobody. And she certainly wasn’t going to start with this arrogant beast of a man who seemed to bring out the very worst in her.

‘I am not going to stay here slaving away for an arrogant man who insults me,’ she blurted out. ‘And what is more, you can’t force me to!’

‘Oh, but I can. A