Cesar saw how Lexie shrank back and everything in him rejected that even as he saw the signs of mutual attraction: the hectic pulse at the base of her neck, flushed cheeks.
Almost accusingly she said, ‘You don’t look like the type of guy who relishes PDA.’
Cesar bit back the urge to clamp his hands around that tiny waist and haul her into him to show her exactly what he thought of PDA. Every time she moved her breasts moved with her, deepening that enticing line of cleavage. But a warning bell went off in his head. She was right, and it irked him that she’d read him so easily.
He didn’t like public displays of affection at all. In fact he really wasn’t a tactile person. He usually discouraged his lovers from touching him, preferring to keep their contact confined to the bedroom.
Human touch had been non-existent when he was growing up in the castillo. When it had come it had been rough, perfunctory. Unloving. A minute shove. A clip around the ear for some transgression. Worse after he’d been caught rolling around in the dirt with Juan Cortez, swinging punches at each other.
If a lover slipped her hand into his, or wound her arm through his, his first instinct was to flinch away. Except right now all he could do was see the wide chasm of distance between him and Lexie in the back of the car and resent it.
Salamanca wasn’t far. And it was for that reason, Cesar told himself, that he said softly, ‘Come closer.’
‘You come closer,’ Lexie responded spikily.
Unbidden, Cesar felt a burgeoning...lightness within him. He even felt a rare smile tip the corners of his mouth.
‘I asked first.’
Lexie’s expression turned mutinous and had a direct effect on Cesar’s already raging blood. Arrowing directly to his groin.
‘Lexie,’ he growled, ‘if you can’t bring yourself to move closer in the back of a car, with no one watching, how do you expect us to convince a wall of paparazzi?’
With palpable reluctance Lexie huffed a sigh and moved across the seat, still keeping a healthy few inches of space between them. Cesar was intrigued. She was spiky, confident. And yet she showed these tantalising glimpses of another side altogether...one less sure of herself.
Her faintly floral scent tickled his nostrils. He fought not to just grab her and haul her onto his lap.
‘So, tell me something about yourself...’
‘Like what?’ Lexie’s voice was almost sharp.
Even more intriguing. She was seriously unsettled.
‘How did you get started as an actress?’
Lexie glanced at Cesar. The sensation that he was seeing a part of her that no one else cared to observe was acute and uncomfortable. Once again all of her deepest secrets and vulnerabilities felt very close to the surface, as if he might just peel a section of her skin back and see them all laid bare.
Right now, facing a barrage of photographers and pretending to be this man’s lover would be infinitely preferable to this intimate cocoon in the back of the car. Then she remembered the awful, excoriating feeling of seeing her life spread across his desk in a series of lurid pictures and she said with faux sweetness, ‘You mean you skipped the part about the casting couch in that extensive research file?’
That earned her a twitching muscle in his jaw that distracted Lexie momentarily. His jaw was so hard, so resolute. As if hewn from a lifetime of clenching it.
His voice was equally hard. Clearly he did not welcome her sarcasm. ‘I’d like to know how you really got started.’
Lexie’s belly dipped ominously and she looked at him suspiciously. He seemed to be genuinely interested. But that reminded her uncomfortably of how she’d once believed someone else had been genuinely interested. That experience had left her splashed all over the tabloids, with her reputation ground into the muck. Mocking her for how quickly she’d trusted the first person who had appeared to want to know the real her. After she’d lived a lifetime protecting herself.
The reminder was not welcome now.
In a desperate bid to avoid this, Lexie racked her brain for a pithy and superficial answer. But his gaze was too direct. Too...unforgiving.
‘Well,’ she started reluctantly, ‘I was in a shop one day... I’d just moved to London from Ireland. I was sixteen.’
He frowned. ‘You’re Irish?’
She nodded, hiding the dart of pain. ‘Originally, yes.’ When he said nothing more, she continued. ‘I was in this shop...and a young kid was in front of me. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the owner accused him of shoplifting—which he hadn’t done. So I stepped in and defended him.’
Lexie shuddered slightly when she recalled the oily owner’s eyes devouring her overly buxom curves. She’d developed early—another unwelcome reminder right now.
‘The next thing I knew,’ Lexie went on, eager not to think of that time, ‘I was shouting at him. I told the kid to run...and then a woman arrived.’ Lexie looked at Cesar, but he was just watching her. She felt silly. ‘Look, this is a really boring story...’