CATHY WILLIAMS - The Ultimate Persuasion - A Tempestuous Temptation / The Notorious Gabriel Diaz / The Truth Behind his Touch

Luiz had never done anything like this before. In fact, he had never been in the presence of a woman quite so violently sick after a bout of excessive drinking and, if someone had told him that one day he would be taking care of such a woman, he would have laughed out loud. Women who were out of control disgusted him. An out-of-control Chloe, shouting hysterically down the phone, sobbing and shrieking and cursing him, had left him cold. He looked at Aggie, who now had her arm covering her face, and wondered why he wasn’t disgusted.

He had wet a face cloth; he mopped her forehead and heard her sigh.

‘So I guess I should be thanking you,’ she said, without moving the hand that lay across her face.

‘You could try that,’ Luiz agreed.

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I watched you from the dining room. I wasn’t going to let you stay out there for longer than five minutes.’

‘Because, of course, you know best.’

‘Staggering in the dark in driving snow when you’ve had too much to drink isn’t a good idea in anyone’s eyes,’ Luiz said drily.

‘And I don’t suppose you’ll believe me when I tell you that this is the first time I’ve ever…ever…done this?’

‘I believe you.’

Aggie lowered her protective arm and looked at him. Her eyes felt sore, along with everything else, and she was relieved that the room was only lit by the small lamp on the bedside table.

‘You do?’

‘It’s my fault. I should have said no to that second bottle of wine. In fact, I was barely aware of it being brought.’ He shrugged. ‘These things happen.’

‘But I don’t suppose they ever happen to you,’ Aggie said with a weak smile. ‘I bet you don’t drink too much and stagger all over the place and then end up having to be helped up to bed like a baby.’

Luiz laughed. ‘No, can’t say I remember the last time that happened.’

‘And I bet you’ve never been in the company of a woman who’s done that.’

No one would dare behave like that in my presence , was what he could have said, except he was disturbed to find that that would have made him sound like a monster.

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘And now I’m going to go and get you some painkillers. You’re going to need them.’

Aggie yawned and looked at him drowsily. She had a sudden, sharp memory of how it had felt being carried by him. He had lifted her up as though she weighed nothing and his chest against her slight frame had been as hard as steel. He had smelled clean, masculine and woody.

‘Yes. Thank you,’ she said faintly. ‘And once again, I’m so sorry.’

‘Stop apologising.’ Luiz’s tone was abrupt. Was he really so controlling that women edited their personalities just to be with him; sipped their wine but left most of it and said no to dessert because they were afraid that he might pass judgement on them as being greedy or uncontrolled? He had broken off with Chloe and had offered her no explanation other than that she would be ‘better off without him’. Strictly speaking, true. But he knew that, in the face of her hysterics, he had been impatient, short-tempered and dismissive. He had always taken it as a given that women would go out of their way to please them, just as he had always taken it as a given that he led a life of moving on; that, however hard they tried, one day it would just be time for him to end it.

Aggie bristled at his obvious displeasure at her repeated apology. God, what must he think of her? The starting point of his opinions had been low enough, but they would be a hundred times lower now—except when the starting point was gold-digger, then how much lower could they get?

She was suddenly too tired to give it any more thought. She half-sat up when he approached with a glass of water. She obediently swallowed two tablets and was reassured that she would be right as rain in the morning. More or less.

‘Thanks,’ Aggie said glumly. ‘And please wake me up first thing.’

‘Of course.’ Luiz frowned, impatient at the sudden burst of unwelcome introspection which had left him questioning himself.

Aggie fell asleep with that frown imprinted on her brain. It was confusing that someone she didn’t care about should have any effect on her whatsoever, but he did.

She vaguely thought that things would be back to normal in the morning. She would dislike him. He would stop being three-dimensional and she would cease to be curious about him.

When she groggily came to, her head was thumping, her mouth tasted of cotton wool and Luiz was slumped in a chair he had pulled and positioned next to her bed. He was fully clothed.

For a few seconds, Aggie didn’t take it in, then she struggled up and nudged him.

‘What are you doing here?’

Belatedly she realised that, although the duvet was tucked around her, she was trouserless and jumperless; searing embarrassment flooded through her.

‘I couldn’t leave you in the state you were in.’ Luiz pressed his eyes with his fingers and then raked both hands through his tousled hair before looking at her.

‘I wasn’t in a state . I…yes…I was…sick but then I fell asleep.’

‘You were sick again,’ Luiz informed her. ‘And that’s not taking into account raging thirst and demands for more tablets.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Sadly, God wasn’t available, so it was up to me to find my way down to the kitchen for orange juice because you claimed that any more water would make you feel even more sick. I also had to deal with a half-asleep temper tantrum when I refused to double the dose of painkillers…’

Aggie looked at him in horror.

‘Then you said that you were hot.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You threw off the quilt and started undressing.’

Aggie groaned and covered her face with her hands.

‘But, gentleman that I am, I made sure you didn’t completely strip naked. I undressed you down to the basics and you fell back asleep.’

Luiz watched her small fingers curl around the quilt cover. He imagined she would be going through mental hell but she was too proud to let it show. Had he ever met anyone like her in his life before? He’d almost forgotten the reason she was with him. She seemed to have a talent for running circles round his formidable single-mindedness and it wasn’t just now that they had been thrown together. No, it had happened before. Some passing remark he might have made to which she had taken instant offence, dug her heels in and proceeded to argue with him until he’d forgotten the presence of other people.

‘Well…thank you for that. I…I’d like to get changed now.’ She addressed the wall and the dressing table in front of her, and heard him slap his thighs with his hands and stand up. ‘Did you manage to get any sleep at all?’

‘None to speak of,’ Luiz admitted.

‘You must be exhausted.’

‘I don’t need much sleep.’

‘Well, perhaps you should go and grab a few hours before we start on the last leg of this journey.’ It would be nice if the ground could do her a favour and open up and swallow her whole.

‘No point.’

Aggie looked at him in consternation. ‘What do you mean that there’s no point? It would be downright foolhardy for you to drive without sleep, and I can’t share any of the driving with you.’

‘We’ve covered that. There’s no point because it’s gone two-thirty in the afternoon, it’s already dark and the snow’s heavier.’ Luiz strode towards the window and pulled back the curtains to reveal never-ending skies the colour of lead, barely visible behind dense, relentlessly falling snow. ‘It would be madness to try and get anywhere further in weather like this. I’ve already booked the rooms for at least another night. Might be more.’