A Spanish Inheritance

But there was an edge to his sensible words that betrayed a very male interest in her lapse.

‘So,’ he began when they were both seated across a table made of some pale wood, ‘what’s your problem, Annalisa?’

‘You,’ she began honestly. And you can take that smile you’re trying so hard to hide off your face right now, she thought, squaring up to him. ‘Water rights, marina, and now my orange trees,’ she ticked off briskly.

‘Orange trees?’ he demanded. ‘What am I supposed to have done to your orange trees?’

Annalisa gave a short, incredulous laugh. ‘If you saw them you wouldn’t need to ask.’

‘I’d like that very much, as it happens.’

The speed of his capitulation threw her for a moment. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘What about right now.’

‘Why not?’ His expressive lips curved in a wry smile of assent. But there was a lot more going on behind his eyes as he stood up and indicated that she should too.

‘When we get to the finca you’ll see why I’m so upset,’ she promised.

‘Mud-fights?’

She stopped dead, feeling his gaze on her back. ‘Don’t tease me, Ramon. This is serious.’

‘Well, I can’t see anything that a nice warm bath won’t cure,’ he said in a deep, sultry tone that made her bristle defensively.

‘You might change your mind when—’

‘I doubt it,’ he cut in. ‘When you’re all cleaned up you can make a list of your demands and I promise to consider each one of them in turn. Come on, I’ll drive,’ he added. ‘The sooner we get to the finca, the sooner we can get all this straightened out.’

Lifting her chin, Annalisa walked straight past him.

He glanced at her car when they got outside. ‘I’ll get someone to look at that for you.’

‘There’s no need—’

‘You’re not taking that vehicle off my property until I’m certain it’s safe,’ he said bluntly. ‘Get in,’ he ordered when she hesitated beside his car. ‘I don’t have all day.’

‘There,’ Annalisa declared dramatically, standing back so that Ramon could have a clear view of her ruined orchard.

‘Who did this?’ he said, looking around.

‘Enrique Caradonda.’ She watched him relax. ‘And don’t pretend you don’t know who that is, because Enrique told me that you sent him.’

‘I asked Enrique if he would consider paying you a visit,’ Ramon corrected evenly. ‘No one commands Enrique Caradonda. He’s almost a legend.’

‘What?’ Annalisa burst out. ‘For destroying perfectly good fruit trees?’

‘No,’ Ramon said, going on to explain, ‘Enrique is the best tree surgeon on the island. He is always in demand—particularly now, in the spring.’

‘But there was nothing wrong with my trees that a little care and attention couldn’t put right.’

‘They might have looked all right to your untrained eye, but years of neglect were masking disease in some and a serious lack of pruning in all of them,’ he informed her. ‘If I could have warned you he was coming I would have done so, but Enrique is a law unto himself.’

‘There should be a law against him,’ Annalisa muttered as she viewed the devastation. ‘So,’ she said, ‘having organised this chaos, how do you intend to put it right?’

Levelling a hooded stare at her, he hummed in consideration. ‘Dinner?’ he suggested, raising his upswept ebony eyebrows a fraction.

‘Dinner!’ It would take more than a meal to make up for this, Annalisa thought as her glance swept over the orchard again.

He threw her a challenging look. ‘Would you rather I got some glue and we spent the evening sticking branches back on?’

‘It’s not funny, Ramon!’

‘The hungrier I am the less funny I become,’ he warned.

Dusk was falling quickly. Annalisa glanced impatiently at her wristwatch. ‘What time are we expected at the restaurant?’ It made her mad to admit it, but Ramon was right; the damage was already done. If she went ahead with dinner she could pin him down over some form of reparation for the damage.

‘We can eat whenever we want to,’ he said.

Did that mean dinner on his boat? She felt herself heating up. Of course it did. He wouldn’t want to risk being seen with her in public, would he?

‘Plenty of time for you to take that bath,’ he said, allowing his gaze to track over her slowly.

She felt her body responding as his perceptive stare lingered on her breasts, where mud streaks drew attention to her generous cleavage. ‘Why don’t we just call it off?’ she suggested huskily, remembering that he didn’t want to be with her in private either unless she made herself presentable for him.