Maggie Cox - The Spaniard's Summer Seduction - Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key / The Secret Spanish Love-Child / Surrender to Her Spanish Husband

‘All right, I can see you’ve guessed—you always do. The studio are meeting this weekend and there have been rumours flying around that they are going to cancel the show. The viewing figures were low, but that was because they killed off my love interest… I always said—’

‘Cami!’

‘All right, all right. I arranged for the photo to be taken as an insurance policy, and it turned out I needed it, and,’ she added, clapping her hands and releasing a squeal of delight, ‘it has worked. The photos are all over the Internet, your name guarantees that, and the studio have been on the phone all morning. They are definitely going to commission a third series and give me a pay hike. Aren’t I brilliant?’

Rafael was at his most dry as he responded, ‘Not the word I would have used.’

Cami gave a wide complacent smile. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be mad if I explained things.’

‘You are a very devious woman, Cami.’

Maggie had struggled to follow the explanation—the American spoke very quickly and her brain was on a go-slow—but if she had got the facts even half right Rafael’s attitude made no sense. The woman had used him and the apparent public appetite for stories about him, and he didn’t even seem mad.

That made no sense at all unless…unless he was in love with the beautiful actress.

‘Darling, a girl has to watch her back in this business if she doesn’t have a man to do it for her.’

‘Your agent would sell his soul for you, always supposing he ever had one.’

‘Gus is a treasure but he doesn’t do it for free.’ She picked up a croissant from the table. ‘You know, I’m totally starving.’

Rafael put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. ‘Say goodbye, Cami.’

She gave a philosophical smile. ‘Goodbye…’ She waved over her shoulder to Maggie, who stood like a small statue and watched Rafael steer her through the door.

When he returned a few moments later she was still standing in exactly the same place.

‘Your luggage has arrived,’ he said, setting her cases on the floor.

Maggie expelled a deep shuddering sigh and felt the life return to her body, and the anger and the burning humiliation.

She marched over to him and picked them up. ‘I won’t be unpacking.’

‘Fine. I will buy you new clothes.’

She scrunched up her face in a grimace of loathing. ‘I would prefer to walk around naked!’ she yelled.

‘I can work with that.’

She compressed her full lips into a thin line. ‘I have no interest in being part of your harem!’

He studied her angry face for a moment in silence. ‘Do you not think that perhaps you are overreacting?’ he suggested calmly.

‘Mildly!’

She stood her ground as he walked across to her, though by the time he reached her side her knees were shaking.

‘You’re crying.’

‘Not because I give a damn about your sleazy sex life, I’m mad, that’s all.’

‘You’re jealous.’ The first display of jealousy was his signal to walk, but Rafael could see that this situation was different.

In what way exactly? asked the pedantic voice in his head.

Different required a different approach—not compromise, because he did not do compromise, but an explanation perhaps?

‘You have no cause. Cami and I were lovers…’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Shock, horror, call the press—oh, I forgot,’ she trilled. ‘They already know.’ The world knows and he appears to care less. ‘And save your explanations. I’m just someone you picked up—you don’t owe me any.’

‘Do not speak of yourself in that manner!’ There was a reason he had spent his life facing problems head-on and not manipulating and nice talking his way around them—nice talk didn’t work!

She blinked at the lash of anger in his voice.

‘It’s the truth.’

‘It is a crude version of the truth and you are deliberately trying to provoke me.’ A spasm of impatience tightened his lean face as he snapped, ‘Shut up and listen. Past tense—we were lovers. I do not have a harem, I have one lover in my bed at a time and at the moment it is you.’ And for some reason even though she drove him insane he wanted it to stay that way.

‘You’re not sleeping with anyone else.’

‘I do not make a habit of explaining myself to people.’ So what was he doing now?

‘All right, you may not be sleeping with her, but you wish you were. It’s obvious. You weren’t even angry with her and she used you.’

‘That was always a possibility.’

The calm admission made her stare.

‘Cami is without scruples—charming,’ he conceded, ‘but utterly self-centred.’

‘And good in bed,’ Maggie, slightly mollified by his scathing assessment, inserted with a sniff.

He did not deny it, but no matter how expert a lover he had taken he had always been conscious of an empty, knowing sense of dissatisfaction even after the most satisfactory sex.

The feeling had been absent last night and this morning. Possibly her inexperience added a challenge that he needed?

‘There are a hundred Camis—a thousand. I meet them wherever I go.’ He studied the tear-stained face turned up to his and wondered if he would ever meet a Maggie again.

As she watched him dismiss the actress with a click of his long fingers she wondered if he would dismiss her in the near future in a similar fashion. He almost certainly would and the knowledge gave her a horrid sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘Look, I could lock myself away behind high walls and massive security and never have an unflattering photo of me snapped. But I consider the price too high.’

‘But you have a lot of money.’

The observation drew a grim smile from Rafael. ‘It is not a question of cost.’

‘Something only a very rich person would say.’

Rafael ignored her wry interjection and said quietly, ‘I would become a virtual prisoner. Instead I walk the middle ground. I do not actively seek publicity and on occasions I go out of my way to avoid it, but I do not lose sleep over every insane story that appears about me.’

Maggie frowned, considering his words. ‘All right.’

He regarded her warily. ‘I believe you and I might have overreacted slightly.’ Slightly! She had broken out with a bad case of the green monster; the amazing thing was he hadn’t run for the hills.

‘So we can go back to where we were before the interruption?’

The sultry look she flashed him through her lashes sent a pulse of lust through his already aroused body. ‘I think we’d got past the foreplay.’

‘Do not be so impatient,’ he charged, slipping his hands around her waist. It was so tiny that he could almost span it. ‘I am still waiting for you to score me on my kisses.’ He pressed an open-mouth kiss to her neck and her head fell bonelessly back. ‘Be generous,’ he pleaded huskily.

MAGGIE forced her heavy eyelids open. Rafael’s face was so close she could see the gold tips on his lashes and feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. ‘I’m thinking possibly above average.’

He inclined his dark head fractionally without taking his eyes from hers. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, breathing in his warm male musky scent and feeling dizzy—in a good way.

‘You’re a very beautiful woman.’ He slid a hand into her hair and let the silky strands run through his fingers. ‘A sensual woman.’

‘You really think so?’

The indentation between his brows deepened. ‘If you have any doubts, then I’ve been doing something wrong.’

‘No, Rafael, you do everything right…so right it hurts.’ She pressed a hand low on her stomach to show him where her agony was centred.