Kat And The Dare-Devil Spaniard

Carlos slid the cork from the bottle of wine and slanted her a look of irritation as he poured some into her glass. ‘Infierno, Kat—why won’t you give up on that?’

‘Because I’m curious, that’s all. You know pretty much everything there is to know about me, Carlos, but you always get so tight-lipped about your own past.’

Staring at him across the table, which tonight—like most nights—she’d laid on deck beneath the stars, Kat didn’t bother pointing out that they had to talk about something. They couldn’t spend every spare minute having glorious sex and revelling in its lazy aftermath, as the luxury yacht skimmed the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean and they waited to find out if she was having his baby. It was the elephant in the room. The subject they never touched on.

Yet it was funny how life sometimes adapted to the strangest situations. Or maybe that was the enduring wonder of the human spirit—that you always got on and made the best of things. And with Carlos conducting business deals and Kat cooking up increasingly ambitious meals, sometimes it felt like playing house. Even if deep down she knew that all they were doing was a form of displacement therapy, while they tried to ignore the great question mark which hovered over them.

Sometimes it frightened her—the ease with which she had been able to push the burning issue far from her mind and to concentrate instead on the proud, dark allure of her Spanish lover. Even if she knew that she was storing up danger for the future—because she had started to care for him in a way which would never be reciprocated.

She had become his eager and responsive lover—though time after time she had told herself it was crazy to become emotionally involved with a man whose heart was famously as cold as ice. Why, hadn’t he warned her of that himself when he’d recounted with amusement just why his yacht had been given its unusual name of Corazón Frío? A Spanish newspaper had nicknamed him ‘Cold Heart’ because of a particularly ruthless takeover bid he had executed—which had coincided with a starlet selling her story of their doomed relationship. And Carlos had shown complete contempt for the article by adopting the name for his superyacht.

As the days ticked by, Kat found herself in a terrible dilemma—knowing that she should be praying that there was no baby. Because Carlos di

dn’t want a baby—he had made that quite clear.

‘If you are pregnant, then we will cope,’ he had stated in a flat voice which she had found especially chilling. ‘And our child will never want for anything.’

Except two parents who loved each other, Kat realised miserably.

Her troubled thoughts cleared and Kat found Carlos staring at her across the table, his expression curious as he pushed away his plate.

‘You were miles away, Princesa,’ he observed softly.

Grateful for the candle-light which disguised a multitude of emotions, Kat shrugged. ‘Well, there’s a lot to think about.’

‘And it makes you frown?’ he prompted.

‘Sometimes.’ She met the question in his eyes. ‘Well, it’s not exactly…ideal—this situation we find ourselves in,’ she said carefully. ‘Is it?’

There was a pause and Carlos gave a ragged sigh, knowing that evasion would be kinder. But ultimately, what could he say—other than the truth? ‘No, of course it isn’t. But there’s no point in discussing it until we know one way or the other, is there? I thought we’d already decided that.’

‘Which is why I was asking you about bullfighting.’ Kat’s voice lowered defensively. ‘I’m certainly not trying to invade your precious privacy, Carlos—just trying to make conversation.’

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. Was he really the tyrant she sometimes hinted at? And if she was expecting his child, then did she not have the right to know something of his past?

But where to begin? He stared at her across the flickering candle-light. ‘We were poor,’ he said simply. ‘And I mean dirt poor. My mother used to work around the clock to provide for us—in fact, I hardly saw her when I was growing up.’

Kat remembered some of the remarks he’d made about spoilt, wealthy women. Was that why he had sounded so caustic—because his own mother had had nothing? ‘And…your father? What about him?’

‘My father?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, my father was too busy chasing his dreams of being Spain’s best matador to care about anything or anyone.’

‘So he was a bullfighter too?’

He drank a little more wine. ‘He was, until a horrific accident in the ring led to the loss of his arm—and the even greater loss of his dreams. For a while he was a broken man, until he realised that he might be able to live out those ambitions through his son. And that is what he set about doing.’

There was an odd, brooding kind of silence. ‘So?’ she prompted softly.

His mouth twisted. ‘So he sat me on my first bull at three.’

‘Three?’ Kat echoed in horror.

‘At five he armed me with my first sword,’ continued Carlos implacably. ‘And because Spanish law decrees that novice bullfighters must be at least sixteen, at ten he uprooted us all to Central America—where the rules are more…relaxed.’

He shrugged and there was another odd kind of silence while Kat watched a series of conflicting emotions chasing across the hard, handsome face of her Spanish lover. ‘And did you like it?’ she whispered. ‘Bullfighting, I mean.’

‘I loved it,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘And I was good at it.’ There was a pause, before he gave a brief, hard smile. ‘Too good.’

‘How can you be too good at something?’