His gaze drifted down over her neat summer tunic which showed the delicate hollows either side of her collarbones and hinted at her firm breasts before it skimmed the tops of her feminine thighs. She’d been soft and firm pressed up against him yesterday. Svelte, he decided, glancing at her fitted jeans and ankle boots.
His body reacted predictably and he told himself it was past time to stop looking at her.
* * *
The flight from East Hampton to Acapulco took five hours. It might as well have been five days. Cruz had barely uttered a word to her since leaving The Farm—not much more than ‘This way’, ‘Mind your step’ and ‘Buckle up; we’re about to take off’. And Aspen was glad. She didn’t think she’d be able to hold a decent conversation with the man right now. He wasn’t a rat, she decided. He was a shark. A great white that hunted and killed without compunction.
And she was playing the game of her life against him.
Thank heavens she had her uncle on her side. But could she trust Cruz to give her the money? He’d looked startled and not a little angry when she had questioned his integrity. Yes, she was pretty sure she could trust him. His pride alone would mean that he upheld his end of the deal.
The deal. She had just made a bargain to sleep with the devil. She shuddered, glancing across the aisle to where Cruz was seated in a matching plush leather chair and buried in paperwork. It was beyond her comprehension that she should still want him. Which was scary in itself when she considered that she didn’t even like sex. And, yes, she’d enjoyed kissing him, but that wasn’t sex. She knew if they’d been anywhere near a bed she would have clammed up.
Urgh... She hated the thought of embarrassing herself in front of him. He was so confident. So arrogant. She hated that he just had to look at her and she had to concentrate extra hard to think logically. His touching her made her want to do stupid things. Things she couldn’t trust.
And she particularly hated the thought of being vulnerable to him. Especially now. Now when he had made it clear that he’d win anyway. That she was doing this for nothing. It just made her more determined that he wouldn’t.
Aspen pulled out her textbook. Questioning whether she had done the right thing in coming with him wouldn’t change anything now. She’d signed the document she herself had drafted and she’d assured him that she wouldn’t ‘welsh’ on him.
It would mean that her beloved home was hers. It would mean she would have the chance to put all the naysayers who didn’t believe that a girl on her own could run a property the size of Ocean Haven in their places. And it would mean that for the first time in her life she would be free and clear of a dominating man controlling her future. That alone would be worth a little embarrassment with the Latin bad boy she had once fantasised about.
It was a thought that wasn’t easy to hold onto when the plane landed on a private airstrip and a blast of hot, humid air swept across her face.
Cruz’s long, loose-limbed strides ate up the tarmac as if the humid air hadn’t just hit him like a furnace. He stopped by a waiting four-by-four and Aspen kept her eyes anywhere but on him as she climbed inside, doing her best to ease the kinks out of shoulders aching with tension.
Still, she noticed when he put on a pair of aviator sunglasses and clasped another man’s hands in a display of macho camaraderie before taking the keys from him.
He was just so self-assured, she thought enviously, and she hated him. Hated him and everything he represented. Yesterday she’d been willing to greet him as a friend, had felt sorry for the part she had played in his leaving The Farm. Now she wished her grandfather had horsewhipped him. It was the least he deserved.
But did he?
Just because he wanted to buy her farm it didn’t make him a bad guy, did it? No, not necessarily bad—but ruthless. And arrogant. And so handsome it hurt to look at him.
‘You know I hate you, don’t you?’ she said without thinking.
Not bothering to look at her, he paused infinitesimally, his hands on the key in the ignition.
‘Probably,’ he said, with so little concern it made her teeth grind together.
He turned the key and the car purred to life. Then his eyes drifted lazily over her from head to toe and she felt her heart-rate kick up. He was studying her again. Looking at her as if he was imagining what she looked like without her clothes on.
‘But it won’t make a difference.’
His lack of empathy, or any real emotion, drove her wild. ‘To what?’