Anne Weale - The Man From Madrid

So long that she had almost forgotten how it felt to have a large hand cupping the back of her head and warm lips exploring her face. She closed her eyes and relaxed into his embrace, her heart thudding against her ribs as his lips found hers.

When she opened her eyes he was looking intently at her, his dark eyes brilliant with desire.

“Let’s go somewhere more comfortable and more private,” he said huskily. He stood up, drawing her with him. “My room…or yours?”

Dear Reader,

This is the second story I have set in Valdecarrasca, an imaginary Spanish village inspired by about twenty real villages in the lovely part of rural Spain where I’ve lived for the past ten years. The first book in the series was A Spanish Honeymoon (#3789). Other characters in this book have appeared before. The story of Richard and Nicola Russell is told in Turkish Delights, published by Harlequin® in 1993, while Simón and Cassia Mondragon appeared in A Night To Remember (1996).

Nowadays many readers buy their books online and join in discussions about their favorite romances on message boards such as the one at www.eHarlequin.com.

As a World Wide Web enthusiast, I believe the Web can be used to enhance our enjoyment of reading. While writing this book, I made a list of Web sites with pictures and text related to the story and its background.

If you would like to have this list of URLs (Web site addresses), e-mail me at anne@anneweale.com. Please bear in mind that I do a lot of traveling and may be away when your e-mail arrives. I’ll reply as soon as possible.

Happy reading!

Anne Weale

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

THE muffled jangling of a distant bell made Cally give a soft snarl, the way Mog did when something annoyed him. Though, by nature, both she and the large tabby cat were good-tempered beings from whom smiles and purrs were more characteristic. It was just that right now she was busy preparing the bedrooms for tonight’s guests and didn’t want to be interrupted.

Leaving the floor mop propped against the wall, she crossed the landing, catching a glimpse of herself as she passed a large mirror. Any resemblance between the figure in jeans, T-shirt, sneakers and household gloves and her real self, the high-flying young businesswoman, designer-suited and always immaculately groomed, was ‘purely coincidental’ as the disclaimers in books said, she thought with wry humour. Who, seeing her now, would guess that a week ago she had been chairing a meeting in London?

Running down the three flights of stone stairs that connected the floors in the tall old Spanish house, she hurried to open the left-hand section of the massive door. In times gone by, when it was fully open, it had allowed a mule and cart to pass through to the stable at the rear of the premises.

In the street outside the great door stood a man of the type Cally had sometimes imagined but never actually met: a Spaniard to die for.

Well over six feet tall and built in proportion to his height, he had hair as dense and glossy as a black labrador’s coat and features that were a replica of those on the Moor’s head fountain in the village. Unlike the Moor he didn’t have a beard, only what might be designer stubble or merely the result of a mountain walker not bothering to shave for a couple of days ‘on the hill’ as the British walkers called their excursions into the mountains.

It was the heavy backpack he had shrugged off his broad shoulders and propped against his long legs that made her think he was a walker looking for a bed for the night.

He said, in Spanish, ‘Good afternoon, señorita. I’ve reserved a room for three nights. My name is Nicolás Llorca.’

When someone, a woman, had made the reservation by telephone, Cally had assumed that Señor Llorca was a company representative, using the casa rural owned by her parents as an inexpensive base for his sales sorties in the area. During the week they rarely had Spanish guests and not many at weekends. Most of their visitors were foreigners like her father and mother.

‘Please come in, señor. We weren’t expecting you to arrive until later, but everything is ready for you,’ she answered, in the fluent Spanish he was unlikely to guess was not her native tongue.

‘Have you come far?’ she asked, as he ducked his head to avoid hitting the lintel of the wicket door made in an era when Spanish country people were rarely if ever six-footers.

‘Not far.’ He left it at that. So far he had not smiled as men usually did when they met her—especially Spanish men.

Not the friendly type, thought Cally.

She said, ‘I expect you’d like to dump your pack before you do anything else. I’ll show you your room.’

Leading the way back to the top of the house, she wondered if the bed in the room she had planned to give him would be long enough for someone of his height. Perhaps it would be better to switch him to the room with a cama de matrimonio where he could lie diagonally.

The other double rooms had twin beds, but then most of the couples who came here looked as if, like her parents, they had given up sex some time ago. Cally had been told by a Spanish friend that, in rural Spain, the hurly-burly of the marriage bed came to an end at the menopause. After that husbands had to look elsewhere for those pleasures. If true, it seemed a sad state of affairs.

Opening the door of the room she had decided to give him, Cally walked in ahead of him.

‘I hope you’ll be comfortable here. There’s a shower with plenty of hot water.’ She indicated the door leading off the bedroom. ‘Dinner is from half-past seven because we have a lot of foreign guests. We’d be grateful if you’d be at the table not later than nine. Our cook doesn’t live in and likes to go home by ten. If there’s anything you need, you have only to ask.’

While she was speaking, Señor Llorca had been giving the room a comprehensive glance, taking in the furniture that had seen better days before being refreshed and made harmonious by a coat of paint and some simple stencils, the inexpensive rush mats and the pictures picked up for a few hundred pesetas at rastros.

What he thought of it—whether it was better or worse than the rooms he was used to sleeping in—was impossible to tell.

‘Thank you,’ he said politely.

‘There’s a roof terrace with a nice view of the valley just across the landing. If you’d like a cold beer, there’s an honour bar on the landing,’ Cally informed him. ‘It would be helpful if you’d bring used glasses down to the main bar when you’ve finished with them.’

With that she removed herself from his presence.

Left to himself, Nicolás opened his pack, took out his wash pack, put it on the end of the bed and started to strip off.