A Spanish Inheritance

Dinner had sounded so harmless…so innocent. But dinner on Ramon’s yacht was pleasure squared. Romantic, sensuous, seductive… It wasn’t even as if he had made any secret of his wider intentions. As far as Ramon Perez was concerned there was no urgency. Even the sequence of events was irrelevant to him. But he would own finca Fuego Montoya…and take her to bed.

‘What are you doing?’

Annalisa jumped guiltily and grabbed the sheet to cover herself as Ramon strolled back into the stateroom. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut until they burned as hot as her face, she sent desperate mind messages for him to leave. He was a married man—out of bounds, out of the question! Where was her common sense? Her sanity? As remorse bludgeoned her emotions she stretched out her long legs, searching for some cool spot to soothe her overheated senses. But she only succeeded in setting up some delicious after-shocks in a region of her body that insisted on responding to Ramon however hard she fought to remain detached.

‘Get up.’ His voice was sharp.

And was that contempt too?

‘Look at me, Annalisa,’ he warned when she only buried herself deeper under the sheets. ‘This won’t work.’ And, crossing to the bed, he deftly flipped back the covers.

With an exclamation of alarm Annalisa snatched out a hand to grab them back, then realised that instead of being naked, as she had expected, she was in fact wearing the top half of a pair of rather elegant pyjamas. Clearly made for a man, in burgundy-coloured silk piped with black, they did an excellent job of preserving her modesty. With her vision partly obscured by tousled hair, she slowly raised her head.

Fresh from the shower, Ramon was wearing a dark grey impeccably tailored suit, which he had teamed with a crisp white shirt and a sober silk tie in shades of blue. Business uniform, she realised, vaguely recalling a phone call to Don Alfonso some time the previous evening to arrange a meeting in his office.

‘What time is it?’ she asked, trying desperately to instil some normality into the situation.

‘That’s better,’ he said approvingly, seeing that she was at last making some effort to wake up.

There was amusement in his expression and, watching his lips, Annalisa found her mind wandering back—or rather stumbling back through a half-remembered tangle of impressions… Shock rippled through her when she thought what must have happened between them.

‘You might want to drag your focus away from me and go and freshen up,’ he suggested coolly.

It wasn’t that easy, not when you had just spent the night together…and his arrogance pointed to there being another notch on his bedpost. But if that were the case would he not show some reaction? Even scorn would be better than nothing.

‘The meeting with our legal teams is at eleven,’ he said pointedly, ‘and it is now—’ he shot a glance at his wristwatch ‘—a little past ten o’ clock.’

His commanding voice managed to convey any manner of things, but nothing of a personal nature. Mortified, Annalisa drew her knees up to her chin as he went on.

‘As there is no time for you to return to the finca, I have taken the liberty of having a suitable outfit delivered to the yacht. I hope you will find it to your liking.’ With a look he drew her attention to an Armani suit hanging inside an otherwise empty wardrobe.

Under anything approaching normal circumstances she would have been ecstatic. But right now it was the final humiliation! No doubt this was his way of paying her off. Or maybe he was just cruelly underlining the fact that unwittingly she had been more suitably dressed for seduction than business the previous evening. The black slip-dress had seemed a good idea at the time, simple yet sophisticated. Her only nod towards frivolity had been a pair of high-heeled mules. And she had taken care to see that her unusually full breasts were safely concealed beneath a dove-grey cashmere shawl…

But in a sudden flashback she remembered the shoes going even before she embarked! She had taken them off to preserve the teak decks as they’d approached the gangplank, steadying herself with her hands planted tentatively on Ramon’s arm… And as the white cruiser had slipped its moorings the sea breeze had plucked at the shawl until Ramon took it and handed it to a member of his uniformed crew.

Dinner had been set out on deck under a protective glass canopy. Just the two of them, waited on by men like shadows who had known just when to attend and when to disappear. As the sleek hull had sliced through a mirror-flat sea she had begun to sip the first glass of champagne…

‘I think you’d better take a cold shower,’ Ramon observed briskly.

Her dazed eyes transferred slowly to his face. ‘What?’