Natalie Fox - Torn By Desire

The modern suite of offices tucked away at the back of the villa intrigued Kate. It was cool and comfortable and the perfect environment to work in away from the heat of the day. She longed for lunchtime, though, so that she could return to that lovely courtyard with its evocative scents and its Andalusian ambience. Already she was seeing it as a sanctuary. A place to gather her thoughts.

Though she had worked hard this morning and tried to block out Guy’s awful warnings, they had broken through at intervals. The fact that Guy had noticed the way she had looked at his brother had deeply shocked her. She hadn’t realised her feelings had shown. In fact she hadn’t realised her feelings were that strong to have shown. She respected Conrad enormously and allowed herself a few fluttering fantasies, but was she really looking for love?

‘How are you settling?’

Kate swung round in the airy, marble-floored corridor that separated the offices and faced Conrad, her heart fluttering again at his kindly query.

‘Just fine.’ She smiled shyly. ‘You’re very well equipped here.’

A dark brow rose with humour at her choice of words and Kate saw the double entendre she had unwittingly uttered. She felt the colour rise to her cheeks and it deepened as his smoky grey eyes locked with hers.

‘Of course,’ he uttered softly. ‘I aim to please whenever possible.’ The words hung in the air till he added, ‘Do feel free to speak up if I can offer you more.’

Kate’s insides lurched and Guy’s warnings thrummed in her head. But no, she was taking this all the wrong way. Conrad was a gentleman and it was because of Guy’s ridiculous suggestions that she was seeing this exchange of words as something it wasn’t. Conrad wasn’t a flirt. Conrad was simply being the perfect boss and the perfect host as usual.

Kate smiled. ‘Everything is lovely. I feel very privileged to be here, Mr Latham—’

‘Conrad, please. The environment is very informal here,’ he told her with a beguiling smile, teeth as sparklingly perfect as his brother’s.

It was Kate’s turn to raise a brow. That wasn’t what Guy had implied earlier and when she had called him Mr Latham on their dinner date he hadn’t insisted on Conrad.

‘Conrad, then,’ she murmured.

‘That’s better. Now don’t forget, any problems come to me. I want your stay here to be as pleasurable as possible. I’m afraid Guy takes life far too seriously at times. Do you swim, Kate?’

The question took her aback for a second. ‘Yes, yes, I do.’

‘Splendid. You must join us by the pool this afternoon, during siesta.’

‘Thank you; I’d like that.’ The thought was already revitalising her stretched nerves. She smiled again and was about to open her mouth to thank him for the guest house when a distant phone ringing diverted Conrad’s attention.

‘Please excuse me.’ He smiled and turned away and Kate nodded.

Her heart was pounding happily and she was stepping on clouds as she went back to her own office. As soon as she opened the door she landed back to earth with a bump. Lorraine had her arms wrapped around Guy and jumped guiltily as Kate entered the room. Guy threw her a dark look which Kate found herself returning with equal black poison. She wouldn’t have cared if they had been writhing in passion on the leather couch against the wall, but what stung her was all those warnings he had meted out to her about this being work and not pleasure.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she uttered, not without sarcasm.

‘Knock in future before you come in, Kate,’ Lorraine scythed at her, and straightening her laceedged top over her narrow pencil skirt, she strode towards the door Kate had left ajar. ‘I’ll be ready at two, Guy.’ The door slammed after her.

Kate sat at her console, punched the keyboard viciously and stared obliquely at the screen.

‘Yes, knock before coming in, Kate.’ Guy repeated into the uncomfortable stillness that had enveloped the room after Lorraine’s brittle exit.

Kate held her lips tightly clamped. She wasn’t going to say one word and she didn’t.

They broke for lunch and siesta at one o’clock, Guy reminding her to be back on duty at four-thirty before leaving the room. Kate nearly stuck her tongue out at the back of the door but resisted the temptation for fear of Guy poking his face round the door and catching her. He already thought her…

What exactly did he think of her? she wondered as she left the office suite, the hot Mediterranean air hitting her, in sharp contrast to the cool of the air-conditioned office. He thought she had a good brain for one thing; not much else, though. Oh, she’d forgotten, a gold-digger. Huh! She should care.

The perfumed courtyard was a welcome refuge. After the morning’s idiosyncrasies she couldn’t face a swim, even with the thought of joining the man she so admired. She understood why everyone broke off for a siesta in the afternoon; fatigue was dragging at her very bones.

‘Charo?’ she called out as she stepped into the coolness of the stone-floored guest house.

Silence. Kate was relieved. She didn’t want to talk or even breathe in this heat. Her head was enough to cope with. She changed into a cool sarong over her lacy underwear, made herself a coffee and cut a chunk of crispy bread and a slice of goat’s cheese, sat in the shade of the vines to eat it, and then shifted to the tiny garden that led off an archway from the courtyard.

‘Heaven,’ she breathed as she collapsed into a cushioned cane lounger under a knobbly old olive tree. Her eyes were heavy as she gazed up at the clumps of fat green olives amidst the spiky silvery leaves. Virgin oil, she mused, and it was her last thought.

‘You idiot!’

Kate woke with a start, blinked fearfully and tried to sit up. She was alone and yet she could have sworn someone had shouted her awake.

‘Oh, no!’ she breathed in agony, and gazed down at her left leg. Her sarong was gaping open, right up to her thigh, and the whole of one long, shapely leg was exposed to the punishing rays of the sun. The top of her leg was worse than the rest, the more tender skin red with inflammation.

‘Stay still,’ Guy Latham growled as he came through the archway to the secret garden, his hands full of stiff, spiky green… cactus!

Kate squealed in alarm as Guy came towards her with them.

‘What the hell—?’

‘Yes, well you might cry hell, sweetheart,’ he growled again as he dropped the spikes at her feet and in one deft movement hauled her, in the chair, further under the shade of the olive tree. ‘Don’t you know never to sunbathe at this time of day in Andalusia?’

‘I wasn’t sunbathing,’ Kate defended herself angrily, and then winced painfully as she tried to move her stiffened leg. It felt as if her skin had shrunk and was too small for her bones. ‘I…I must have fallen asleep. The sun moved,’ she bleated weakly.

‘Well, it does that,’ he grated sarcastically, and proceeded to split open the succulent, spiny leaves he had brought with him.

‘What on earth are you doing with those?’ she cried, shrinking away from him.

He sat on the edge of the lounger and grasped her ankle firmly with one hand and with the other scooped out a pale jelly-like substance from the insides of the spines.

‘No!’ Kate cried, and then instantly let out a small cry of relief as he slapped the cooling jelly over the worst of her raw thigh. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it!’ she gasped, and slumped back against the lounger and sighed deeply. It was bliss, sheer heaven as he gently patted the jelly over her fiery skin to cool it.

She opened her eyes when the crisis was over and stared at his fingers as they smoothed over her thigh. Then she was in crisis again as one delicious sensation moved over for another. His touch was so sensuous—astonishing, coming from him. Her whole body tensed and she wanted him to stop but he wasn’t about to. More cooling jelly was applied till she thought she couldn’t stand the wondrous feeling a second longer. She tried to pull her leg back out of his reach but he held onto her ankle firmly.