Margaret Mayo - The Spaniard's Pleasure - The Spaniard's Pregnancy Proposal / At the Spaniard's Convenience / Taken - the Spaniard's Virgin

The helpful nurse had been wrong. She didn’t have to wait thirty minutes—it was nearly an hour before she received her painkillers. With time on her hands her imagination went into overdrive.

Had they argued over something trivial? Had both been too proud and stubborn to be the first one to say they were wrong?

She supposed that she was never going to know the real story.

Antonio stayed for a while after Tamara had fallen asleep. Sometimes she seemed so adult, but in repose, the defiance and belligerence absent from her face, his daughter looked like the child she actually was.

Her vulnerability touched him, aroused a fierce protectiveness in him.

Was this the way fathers felt? He wouldn’t know because the blonde had been right—there was more to fatherhood than matching DNA.

It suddenly hit him all the things he had missed. What had she been like as a baby, a toddler…? He would never know. The sense of loss hit him with a force so strong that it felt like a blade sliding between his ribs.

He felt a volatile mixture of emotions as he looked at this child who was a part of him. He suddenly realised the enormity of having the responsibility for another life. He found himself admiring single parents who raised their children alone.

Fleur had made it through the glass turnstile exit of Casualty when she saw Antonio.

He looked so alone.

He was standing, his hands dug deep in his pockets, his back set to the wind. He wasn’t looking in her direction and even if he had been she wasn’t sure he would have noticed her. His expression in profile suggested he was a man with a lot on his mind. Vulnerable …mentally she deleted the word that flashed into her head.

Do not even think about feeling sorry for him, she lectured herself sternly. If ever there was a man who could look after himself, it was Antonio Rochas.

Just walk past, Fleur…walk past and keep walking.

It was sound advice.

She nearly made it, very nearly. She had almost readied the rank of taxis when her conscience proved stronger than her instincts for self-preservation.

‘You’re an idiot, Fleur,’ she muttered to herself as she hurried back up the rain-slick path.

She stopped just a little out of his line of vision and studied him, trying to figure out what it was, beside the obvious, which made her react to him differently from the way she ever had to any other man.

It defied logic.

‘You’re still here…?’

Antonio turned his head and levered his broad shoulders from the wall. ‘I came out here for some fresh air while I waited.’

‘For what?’

‘You.’

‘Why?’

‘When I arrive with a lady I like to see that she gets safely to her destination.’

‘How sweet and gallant.’ She lifted her eyes to his and sketched a smile. ‘Though less sweet and gallant when you take into account your bed is usually her destination. So I suppose you have a vested interest in making sure she gets there.’

Antonio released a startled hissing gasp through his clenched teeth. Then to her dismay grinned. His blue eyes danced with mockery as he asked, ‘Is that where you are expecting to end up…?’

Wondering when she was going to stop blurting out the first thing that came into her head, Fleur willed her fiery cheeks to stop burning.

‘I would prefer to spend the night in this place—’ she tipped her head in the direction of the big building behind them ‘—and you know how much I love hospitals.’

Antonio didn’t dispute her angry claim. ‘They tell me they are letting you go home?’ His grin faded as his glance dropped to her leg.

She nodded, relieved that he had dropped the subject of his bed, then stiffened. ‘ They should not have been telling you anything.’

Irritatingly her annoyance seemed to amuse him. ‘I promise they did not reveal any medical details. I don’t even know if you had stitches?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘And a tetanus shot. You were right.’

‘I usually am.’

‘Infallible and modest.’ He would have been even smugger if he had heard the doctor tell her that a fraction deeper and a tendon would have been severed.

Her comment drew a grin from him, this time it seemed more tired than sardonic.

‘Do you have to come back to the clinic?’

‘No, they topped up my tetanus cover and gave me an antibiotic jab.’ She shook the paper bag in her hand. ‘Painkillers.’ Which she did need; now the local had worn off her leg was aching with a vengeance. ‘And I can go back to my GP to have them taken out. So I’m sorted. How’s Tamara?’

Antonio visibly tensed at the name. ‘They’re keeping her in overnight,’ he said abruptly.

‘But she’s…’

‘They say she’ll be fine, but—’ his eyes swept across her upturned features and a disturbing expression slid into his eyes ‘—you already know that, don’t you?’

Fleur stiffened and looked up at him warily through her lashes. ‘I do…?’ Overplaying the innocence big time, mocked the voice in her head.

‘The nurses mentioned our visitor,’ Antonio revealed, stretching one arm above his head and rotating first one shoulder and then the other to relieve the knots of tension in his spine and shoulders.

A distracted expression slid across Fleur’s face as she imagined the things going on under his shirt…Things like taut muscle rippling beneath satiny golden skin. A hoarse sound escaped her throat as she lowered her eyes and grunted. ‘Why do you automatically assume that was me?’

‘The interesting limp, blond hair and golden eyes were clues,’ he revealed drily.

Her eyes flew upwards. ‘They did not notice what colour my eyes were!’ she scoffed.

‘No, but I did.’

His eyes locked onto hers and as she registered the explicitly sensual gleam Fleur’s stomach took a diving lurch. ‘I thought I’d look in,’ she admitted, tugging at the neckline of her borrowed top.

One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But changed your mind?’

‘I got as far as the door, but…’

‘You saw me,’ he inserted drily. ‘Were you worried I would kiss you again?’

Hoped. The colour in her cheeks perceptibly heightened. Fleur shrugged while fighting to contain her growing panic. ‘Not really. I thought I was quite safe from your unwanted attentions in front of your daughter.’

‘Unwanted…?’

She squared her jaw. ‘You think I enjoy being mauled by strange men?’

‘I can’t speak in general, but if we’re talking specifics—’

Fleur, who didn’t want to talk specifically or any other way about that kiss in the car, cut across him with a high-pitched, ‘I just didn’t want to intrude.’

The muscles around his mouth quivered as his lips compressed into a hard line. ‘An intrusion might have been welcome.’

‘Well, it’s good that there was no real harm.’ At least not to Tamara. Fleur was less sure that she could claim the same, and she wasn’t thinking about her leg! ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

‘They said there’s not much point—they gave her something to help her sleep—but I will anyway,’ he said, flexing his shoulders once more before shoving his hands back into his pockets.

‘Then you couldn’t take me home, could you?’ she pointed out. ‘Unless your talents include the ability to be in two places at once.’

‘The idea was I take you home and then come back.’

Get in a car with him again…It would be like an alcoholic getting a job in a distillery! Accepting you have a problem is the first step, Fleur, she told herself. And, oh, boy, do I have a problem!

‘There’s absolutely no need, and anyway you wouldn’t want to risk Tamara waking up and you not being there.’