Exotic Nights

He couldn’t.

“You surprise me,” she said softly, her tongue darting out to tease her full lower lip.

His body grew hard. In spite of everything, he wanted to possess her. Now, tonight. He was still angry with her, but he was also damned by this need for her. He needed to prove his mastery over her, to exorcise the demons of his past in the body of a woman. This woman. The reprieve wouldn’t last, he knew, but at least he could have a few hours of blissful silence in the echoing chambers of his mind.

He stopped moving to the music and drew her closer. She trembled in his arms, her breath catching when she came into contact with his blatant need for her. Her eyes grew wide as she blinked up at him.

“Sí,” he whispered, “I want you.”

His head dipped toward hers, her mouth parting—in surprise or need he did not know. The moment their lips touched, the moment the electricity sparked and sizzled between them, a woman cleared her throat beside them.

“Señor Navarre, we are ready for your speech now.”

Francesca’s heart rate refused to return to normal, even after Marcos escorted her back to their table and held out her chair for her. A fine sheen of sweat rose between her breasts, on her limbs, heating her from the inside out. Her feelings were tangled and torn.

She watched her husband mount the podium and stand there, waiting a few moments for everyone to reach their seats before he launched into his speech. A single light shone down on him, making him seem completely alone in this crowded room.

He was so much more than she’d thought, and yet he was dangerous as well. That he’d actually approved an expensive treatment for Jacques stunned her. She knew he had the money—that wasn’t it at all—but the obligation? He had no reason, no incentive, to do so.

He said he’d done it for her. Even now, that thought had the power to shorten her breath. Why would he do such a thing?

Because he was decent. Because he wasn’t as cold and cruel as she’d accused him of being. Another feeling rose in her breast, a feeling she didn’t want to acknowledge but had to nonetheless.

Shame.

She was ashamed that she’d stolen the Corazón del Diablo from him, that she’d held him at gunpoint and cuffed him to the bed. If she’d gone to see him, perhaps he would have helped her after all.

You have no way of knowing, Francesca. You did what you had to do.

Yes, she’d done what she’d had to, and the result was far better than she perhaps deserved.

If she weren’t careful, if she didn’t keep her emotional distance, she was in as much danger of falling for Marcos Navarre as she’d ever been. And that was something she could not afford to do. No matter

how compassionate he might be toward Jacques, no matter how he claimed to want her in his bed, this was a temporary arrangement and the only heart at stake, if she allowed herself to feel as she once had, was hers.

Soon, Marcos lifted his head and the crowd quieted. When he began to speak, his voice rolled over the Spanish words with authority. She wished she could understand what he said, but she would have to content herself with the crowd’s reaction.

“I will translate for you.” A woman dipped gracefully into the open seat beside Francesca. “Marcos has told me you do not speak Spanish yet, so I will tell you what he says.”

Francesca thanked her even as she tried not to imagine how Marcos knew this elegant woman. It did not matter. Francesca was a contract wife, not a real wife. She wasn’t in love with him. Nor would she be.

“He is speaking of the orphans,” the woman said. “Of our duty and responsibility to provide for the poor children of Buenos Aires. It is his passion, his life’s work to create opportunity and stability for them, to lift them from the circumstances in which …”

Francesca’s heart contracted as the woman talked. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes at the horror of Marcos’s words. He told of children who stole food to survive, who ate garbage and hunted rats, of children who learned to be hard and angry. Who joined gangs and became menaces to society.

She could see the passion in his expression, hear it in his words, and understand it thanks to the woman translating for her. When he finished speaking, the room erupted in applause. He looked alone, angry, and perhaps even a bit lost. Francesca glanced at the others, wondering if they saw it too. But no one seemed to see anything more than a very powerful, very rich man who asked for their support.

And she saw what she did not want to see: a man with heart and soul.

“He is quite a man, your husband.” The woman held out her hand. “I am Vina Aguilar, an old friend of the Navarre family. I went to school with Marcos’s mother.”

Francesca blinked as she took Vina’s hand. Though this woman was old enough to be Marcos’s mother, she didn’t look a day over forty. She was tall, lean, and dressed in a Prada silk gown that showed her trim figure to perfection. Her face was unlined, except for a few crinkles around the eyes when she smiled.

“You are not what I expected,” Vina said after they’d chatted for a few moments. “But I am pleased for Marcos. He deserves all the love and happiness he has never had. I am sure you will give it to him.”

“Yes, he does.” Francesca dropped her gaze, hoping Vina would take it as shyness instead of the confusion currently pounding through her.

“Are you filling my wife’s head with tall tales, Vina?”