The Valquez Seduction

His eyes glinted some more. ‘Can I tempt you with your own personal trainer?’

She tossed her napkin on the table and pushed back her chair. ‘Sold.’

* * *

Luiz pushed back the bedcovers at two a.m. and wandered over to the windows to look at the busy strip below. He hated not being able to sleep. Hour after hour of tossing and fidgeting and ruminating made his head pound. Normally he would work off his restlessness in the gym but he hadn’t wanted to leave Daisy. He scoffed at his uncharacteristic sentimentality. It wasn’t as if this was the end of the affair. He would be seeing her on and off in London. He was still in the driving seat. He would say when and where and for how long. The Grand Slam was supposed to be his focus, not a slip of a girl who was looking for the fairy tale. The closest he got to the fairy tale was the role of the big bad wolf. He was good at being bad. He’d spent most of his life playing up. It was his trademark.

He turned from the window to look at Daisy. She was still sleeping soundly, clearly not worried this was their last night together. She was curled up on her side, her cheek resting on one of her hands in that childlike manner she had and her hair splayed out over his pillow. The scent of her was on his sheets, on his skin, burned in his memory. He would never be able to walk past honeysuckle without thinking of her.

How had he got himself in this situation? He was feeling sick to his stomach at the thought of saying goodbye to her at the airport. He hated goodbyes. He loathed them with a passion. He still remembered the way his mother had swept him up in a goodbye hug and poured kisses all over his face as she left for her ‘holiday’. He hadn’t seen her for two years. He had spent every single day of them waiting. Hoping.

What if he never saw Daisy again? What if she changed her mind when she got back to London? Would the intimacy they’d shared be enough to keep her tied to him until the Grand Slam was over?

And then what?

He brushed the errant thought aside. His credo was ‘for fun, not for ever’. He was only interested in the here and now.

Not the, then what?

CHAPTER TEN

DAISY WOKE IN the night and found the space beside her in the bed was empty. She brushed her hair out of her face and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The bedside clock showed it was almost five in the morning and while down below on the strip there was a seething mass of revellers still spilling out from hotels and clubs, the suite felt unnaturally, eerily quiet. She slipped on a bathrobe and loosely tied the waistband, and pointedly ignoring her packed suitcase in the corner, padded out to the lounge area.

Luiz was sitting in front of the large-screen television with the sound turned off. He was watching a twenty-four-hour sporting channel—she would rather watch paint dry—or at least he had been watching. Right now, he was soundly asleep.

Daisy took the opportunity to soak in his features. His dark hair was still tousled from where her fingers had threaded through it. He had slipped on a pair of boxers but the rest of his body was gloriously naked. She had run her hands over every inch of his body, worshipping him with kisses and caresses, imprinting his scent and the feel of his skin on her senses so she could revisit them when their affair was finally over.

She drifted over to the sofa, drawn to him like a magnet drew metal. Her fingers lightly touched his hair, moving through the thick dark strands as lightly as fairy feet. His breathing was deep and even, but there were shadows beneath his eyes, as if he’d taken a long time to get to sleep. His stubble was heavily shadowed along his jaw and she couldn’t resist placing her fingertips on it to feel the sexy rasp of it. His eyelids flickered but his breathing remained steady.

She couldn’t stop herself from touching him. He was a temptation she had no power to resist. Forget about forbidden food. He was her new vice.

Just as well she was leaving this morning…

She traced the outline of each of his eyebrows. She travelled her finger down the length of his nose. She leaned in close and pressed her lips to his in a kiss as soft as a moth’s wing.

His eyes opened and locked on hers. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Watching you sleep.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping.’

‘Yes, you were.’

His brow lifted. ‘On the contrary, I was watching golf.’

Daisy gave him a wry smile. ‘Well, I would be sleeping too if I had to watch that.’

His gaze went to her mouth. ‘What time do you leave?’

‘Eight.’

He traced her mouth with a lazy finger for a long beat of silence. ‘You could stay a couple more days. I don’t have to fly back to Argentina until the weekend.’