‘Maybe I should have offered you wine,’ she ventured.
‘Is that what you want?’
She shook her head. She was already distracted by his proximity—wine was the last thing she needed. ‘Good heavens, no,’ she said briskly. ‘This will be fine. Just so long as it doesn’t keep you awake.’
His lips curved into a mocking smile. He looked as if he was about to make a comment, then seemed to change his mind, leaning back against the old armchair behind him and spreading his long legs out in front of him.
For a moment everything in the room became very still—like the preternatural calm which sometimes comes before a storm. The crackle of the fire and the pounding of her heart were the only sounds Hollie could hear and, in the soft light, his eyes looked ebony-dark as he turned his head to study her.
‘Have you lived here long?’ he questioned.
‘Just over a year now. I lived in London before that.’
‘Where you didn’t have a car.’
She beamed, pleased he’d remembered. ‘That’s right.’
‘So what was the lure of a place like Trescombe?’
Hollie wondered how to answer him. No need to tell him she’d been ripped off. Or that a supposed good friendship had hit the skids as a result. Nobody wanted to hear that kind of downbeat detail and she certainly didn’t want to start re-evaluating whether she’d been a hopeless judge of character. And wasn’t her new-found motto that she was going to look forward, not back?
‘My dream has always been to run a traditional English tea shop,’ she told him. ‘And when London didn’t work out, I heard about an opportunity opening up down here. There’s a great site in the town but it won’t be available until springtime and until that happens I need regular work so I can save up as much as possible. That’s why I’m working for Janette. I’m sorry, I should have asked you before—would you like anything to eat to go with that?’
Reluctantly, Maximo smiled in response to her question. He could sense her eagerness to keep him entertained and knew he ought to cut the visit short rather than get her hopes up, yet he stayed exactly where he was. For the first time in a long time, he felt comfortable. Uncharacteristically comfortable. The simply furnished room and warm fire were strangely seductive and so too was her undemanding company. In fact, for someone who was notoriously restless, he might have been able to relax completely—were it not for the undeniable tension which had begun to build in the air between them.
His senses seemed heightened. He could see the thrust of her breasts against the soft jersey of her dress and the pebbled outline of her nipples. He swallowed. It might have been a while since he’d been intimate with a woman but the subliminal message of desire which Little Miss Christmas was sending his way was unmistakable.
And it was driving him crazy.
Was she aware that her eyes grew dark whenever she looked his way, or that she kept trailing the tip of her tongue over her mouth, like an unobserved cat contemplating where its next meal was coming from? And didn’t he want to pull her into his arms, to test if those lips tasted as sweet as they looked?
‘Why don’t you wear your hair down more often?’ he said suddenly.
His question seemed to startle her, for she touched her fingers to the silky waves which rippled almost to her waist. ‘Because it isn’t...’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Practical, I guess.’
‘And do you always have to be practical?’
‘As much as possible, yes. Life is easier that way,’ she asserted, when he continued to look at her. ‘You know, more dependable.’
‘Really?’ he pondered reflectively, the pad of his thumb brushing over the beard-shadowed jut of his jaw—a movement which seemed to fascinate her. ‘But surely dependability can get a little boring sometimes. How old are you?’
‘Twenty-six,’ she said, a little defiantly.
‘Don’t you ever want to throw caution to the wind and do something unpredictable?’
‘I’ve never really thought about it much, to be honest.’
He noticed that her fingers were trembling, making her coffee cup rattle against the saucer as she quickly put it down on the hearth.
‘Well, think about it now,’ he said. ‘What would you do, for example, if I were to acknowledge the unspoken desire in your eyes and touch you? If I were to brush my fingers against your hair, to discover whether it feels as soft as it looks in the firelight?’
‘I can’t...’ Her words sounded husky and he could see the swallowing movement of her throat. ‘I can’t imagine you doing something like that.’
‘No?’ He heard the note of repressed hope in her voice and silently, he answered it, reaching out to imprison a single lock of hair and stroking it between his thumb and forefinger, like a merchant examining a piece of valuable cloth. ‘The funny thing is neither can I. But I am. And it does. Like silk, I mean. Rich, dark golden silk.’
‘Mr Diaz.’
‘I’ve been thinking about touching you all night long,’ he husked unsteadily, skating his palm down over the abundant waves. ‘And you like it, don’t you? You like me stroking your hair.’
Her shuddered word was barely audible. ‘Y-yes.’
For a while he listened to her uneven breathing and felt his own corresponding leap of desire. ‘And you know what comes next, don’t you?’
She shook her head and gazed at him in silence.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Tell me,’ she whispered, like a child asking to be told a story.
‘I kiss you,’ he said, a note of urgency deepening his voice to a growl.
Their eyes met. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, nodding her head with eager assent. ‘Yes, please.’
It was the most innocent yet the most provocative thing he’d ever heard.
And suddenly her hair was a rope and Maximo was using it to guide him towards her waiting lips and he felt his body tense with a sweet and tantalising hunger.
CHAPTER THREE
MAXIMO WAS KISSING HER until she had started to make mewling little sounds of hunger. Until she was moving her body restlessly against him in a gesture of unspoken need.
She should have been nervous about what was about to happen, but fear was the last thing on Hollie’s mind as the Spaniard drew away from her, his black eyes blazing with passion in the glow of the firelight.
He laced his fingers through the fall of her hair, and his breath was warm against her lips as he spoke. ‘I think it’s time we found ourselves somewhere more comfortable, don’t you?’