Ally Blake - At His Service - Flirting with the Boss - Crazy about her Spanish Boss / Hired - The Boss's Bride / Blind Date with the Boss

“Let’s just say I was struck by your interest and your enthusiasm for something that’s a living part of me. You have no call to be embarrassed, Jillian. In fact, you’ve given me an idea.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “What do you mean?”

He rubbed the side of his hard jaw with his hand. “I haven’t told you why I went to Toledo the other day.”

“No, but you indicated it was important.”

“That’s true. This has been one of the driest years on record. There isn’t going to be enough rain in the coming months to fill the reservoirs.”

She nodded. “Someone in the office told us Spain hasn’t had normal rainfall in a long time.”

“Forty percent less,” he informed her. “In Castile-La Mancha some of the reserves are as low as thirteen percent, and the government has imposed water restrictions. In some places the country has depended on tankers for their water.”

Jillian shook her head. “How awful.”

“We need heavy rain, but it probably won’t happen.” He pushed himself away from the table and walked over to the window, where she could see the groves in the distance. As he looked out at the vista he said, “In the last eight months there’ve been massive crop failures.”

“On your estate, too?”

Lines marred his hard features. “We’ve had our share along with fires.”

“Were they devastating?” she asked, her voice throbbing.

He turned to her. “They could have been. Fortunately on our property we have emergency wells we’ve opened as a last resort. However, as my accountant pointed out the other day, I’d be wise to diversify as an insurance policy against more hard times to come. At the time I’m afraid I didn’t give him much heed in that department.”

She rose to her feet, clinging to the chair. “Why?”

A nerve throbbed along his jawline. “My parents grew other crops that could be harvested at a different time of the year to bring in income, but they too were afflicted with droughts and it became a doomed project.”

She could hear what he wasn’t saying, that he and his family had worked unceasingly without the expected results. Her heart went out to him.

“For the last two years I’ve been working with a skeleton crew to reverse our losses.”

“And have you recovered?” She held her breath waiting for his answer.

His gaze collided with hers before he nodded. “I’ve finally rounded the corner.”

“So the other day you were driving home from Toledo filled with the joy of that knowledge, only to be run off the road by a crazy American driver whose mind was on your olive groves. An idiot who didn’t have the sense she was born with to avoid catastrophe!”

Her little sob resounded in the air. In the next instant Remi closed the distance between them. She felt arms of velvet steel go around her.

Without saying anything he rocked her back and forth the way her husband would have done if he’d been there. The contact caused the floodgates to open. She sobbed against his broad shoulder and clung to him, unaware of the passage of time.

Jillian was crying over so many things she didn’t know where one pain left off and another began. It was all mixed together with Remi’s own pain. He whispered words she didn’t understand, but they comforted her. Somehow—she didn’t know quite how—she ended up lying full length on the bed without remembering being carried there. Slowly the tears subsided and she felt his weight as he sat down next to her. His fingers smoothed the tear-moistened hair off her brow and temples.

“Lie still.” His voice was soft. “I’ll change the dressing on your eye.”

It was like déjà vu. She lay on the ground at the side of the road and he was kneeling over her, urging her to be calm until help arrived.

With aching tenderness he eased the wet strips of tape off her face and pulled the patch away.

She looked up into those black pools tinged with concern and something else she couldn’t decipher. “I can’t see anything out of my right eye. Is it still there?”

That pulse at his jaw was throbbing again. “I’ll prove it,” he said deep in his throat. Then he lowered his head and kissed both her eyes like a benediction. The gesture reassured her as nothing else could have done.

“Forgive me for falling apart on you,” she said, her voice trembling.

Their breath mingled. “I’m glad you did. Now I know you’re not superhuman. For a while I wondered.”

Her eyes filled with liquid once more. “Thank you, Remi.”

“If you start crying again, the new tape I’m trying to put on you will get soaked,” he said, gently teasing her.

She bit her bottom lip. “I’ll be good.”

Remi blotted her eyelids with a tissue, then proceeded to affix the patch. “How does that feel?”

“You do excellent work, Doctor.”

A smile like none other broke the corner of his sensuous mouth. And for the first time, there was no darkness in it. When he looked like that, she could feel herself falling through space.

“You have magic in your touch. I bet your olive trees love you.”

To her chagrin his expression sobered.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” he murmured. “You just reminded me of something my father used to say when I was a boy.”

“What was that?” She wanted to know all there was to know about him.

“The trees are alive, Remigio. Be gentle with them.”

“I believe that.”

There was an electric current flowing between them, but all too soon he got up from the bed. The last thing she wanted was for him to walk away.

He checked his watch before staring down at her. “Right now I have a meeting with Diego that can’t be put off. Stay the night, Jillian. Tomorrow we’ll talk about an idea I have in mind that could be good for EuropaUltimate Tours and solve a problem for me at the time same.”

Joy arced through her body. Another night with him, this time under his roof … She knew she shouldn’t, but she was dying to know what was going on inside his head. In the end her curiosity won out over common sense. Since meeting him, she didn’t have any.

“If I’m going to stay, I’d better call the Prado Inn and cancel my reservation.”

Her capitulation seemed to please him. “The phone’s right there at your bedside. See you in the morning. Buenas noches. ”

Once he’d left she phoned the Prado, then called her brother’s cell. He answered on the second ring.

“Hi, Dave. It’s moi.”

“It’s about time. I just called your hotel and they told me you hadn’t checked in yet. You should be in bed. What’s going on?”

“Actually I am in bed, just not in Madrid.”

“Where then?”

“I’m being waited on hand and foot at the Soleado Goyo. The Senor put me in the master bedroom.”

There was a long silence. “Jilly … honey … do you know what you’re doing?” he asked quietly. “Is he married?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You mean, you don’t know?”

“No, I don’t, and he hasn’t offered any information.”

“I don’t like it.”

She grinned. “First you tell me I need to start living again and now you think I’m living a life of debauchery. You can’t have it both ways, brother dear.”

“Come on, Jilly—”

“Dave, calm down. I’m in his parents’ old bedroom. He doesn’t even sleep in the main house.”

“What do you mean ‘main’ house?”

“Remi’s full name is Count Remigio Goyo.”

“Count—As in—”

“The Spanish aristrocracy. The Goyo estate is huge and so fabulous you can’t believe it. He has his own house besides the main one, and there’s a third house. I don’t know who lives there.”