Brilliant. So they were both on the same page. They were hot for each other and wanted to burn it off with a wild night together. “Just so you know, with me, sheets are optional.”
Awareness tightened the atmosphere as she let her gaze travel down his chest and rest on the bulge in his pants. He could hardly keep his attention on the road. Who wanted to watch the scraggly countryside of Alma when a goddess sat in the adjacent seat?
“By the way,” she said. “I think we just passed the road we were supposed to take.”
With a groan, he did a quick U-turn and drove down the street barely noticeable in the overgrowth of trees and groundcover. “I didn’t know we had directions. Maybe you could speak up earlier next time?”
“Sorry, I’m a little distracted. Maybe you could stop being so sexy for a couple of minutes.” Fanning herself as if he’d heated her up, she trailed a finger down his bicep muscle and toyed with the crook of his elbow.
“Me?” he growled. “You’re the one in that knockout dress. All I can hear in my head is your voice on repeat, when you said the next time we were together, you’d be naked.”
“Oh, did I forget to tell you?” She kissed the tip of her finger and pressed it to his lips, but she pulled away too quickly for him to suck the finger into his mouth the way he wanted to. “I’m naked under this dress. Wanna pull over?”
He nearly whimpered. “I cannot possibly explain how much I would like to do exactly that. But we are not getting it on in the car like a couple of horny teenagers. You deserve to be treated right and that includes a bed and me taking my time enjoying you.”
Besides, they might be headed into the heart of rural Alma, but the roads were not deserted. They passed cars constantly. People knew who drove the only green Lamborghini on the island and all it would take was one idiot with a camera phone for another risqué picture of James and Bella together to land in the public eye. It was a dirty shame he hadn’t tinted the windows on his car.
Until they straightened out the marriage announcement, it would create so much less of a jumble if they kept a low profile.
“Then drive faster,” Bella suggested, and her hand wandered over to rest on his inner thigh, where she casually stroked him. Innocently, as if she touched him all the time, except she hadn’t touched him like that before and his vision started to blur with unrequited lust.
He stepped on the gas. Hard.
“Where are we going?” Driving around until they stumbled over a farmhouse that may or may not exist had started to sound like the worst idea he’d ever agreed to.
“This is the main road to Aldeia Dormer, right?” When he nodded, she pointed at the horizon. “The assistant I talked to thought she remembered that the farmhouse was on the outskirts, before you hit the village. If you keep going, we’ll find out.”
“What if I just take you to a hotel and we check in under an assumed name?”
He had plenty of practice with parking in an obscure place and passing out discrete tips to the staff so he and his lady friend could duck through the kitchen entrance. Why hadn’t he insisted on that in the first place? The text from Will had muddled him up, obviously. There was a former castillo-turned-four-star-bed-and-breakfast on the south side of Playa Del Onda that he wouldn’t mind trying.
She shook her head with a sad smile and it was so much the opposite of her normal sunny demeanor, he immediately wanted to say something to lighten the mood. But what had caused such an instant mood shift?
“My aunt asked me to find the farmhouse. It’s important to her and maybe to Gabriel. She said it was part of the Montoro legacy. We’re already so close. I promise, if we don’t find it soon, I’ll reconsider the hotel.”
Her earnestness dug under his skin and there was no way he could refuse. “Sure. We’ll keep going.”
Okay, maybe she was a little different from other women he’d dated. He certainly couldn’t recall catering to one so readily before, but that was probably due to the degree of difficulty he’d experienced in getting this one undressed and under him.
They drove for a couple of miles, wrapped in tension. Just when James started to curse his flamboyant taste in cars, they crested a hill, and she gasped as a white farmhouse came into view.
Wonders of wonders. “Is that it?”
“I’m not sure.” Bella pursed her lips as he drove off the main road onto the winding path to the farmhouse and parked under a dangerously dilapidated carport.
Would serve him right if this ill-conceived jaunt through Alma resulted in a hundred grand worth of bodywork repairs when the carport collapsed on the Lamborghini. “I thought you said it was off this road.”