At the Spaniard's Pleasure Read Free

up her arm. ‘My mother speaks about you often and it is really good to see you again,’ he said and squeezed her hand.
    Good to see her! He had to be kidding… He could not stand the sight of her… Liza felt the colour rise in her cheeks. She had told herself she hated him for years and yet incredibly his touch sent a frisson of excitement flooding through her. Her stunned blue gaze clashed with deep dark brown—was it sincerity she saw in their depths? Never in a million years… She wasn’t falling for his Latin charm ever again. ‘Yes. Well…’ she murmured inconsequentially.
    â€˜Forgive me for surprising you. I caught a glimpse of you and could not believe my eyes. You have developed into a stunning woman, Liza.’
    Niculoso Menendez giving her a compliment! He had to be joking after the scathing things he had said about her in the past. ‘Thank you, I think,’ she said with a trace of sarcasm. She pulled her hand free from beneath his and lowered her eyes from his too astute gaze.
    Liza remembered all too well every second of their encounter in the stable years ago.
    After dispensing with the stable boy, Nick had hauled her hard against him and kissed her savagely, and to her undying shame she had responded in a way she had never imagined in her wildest dreams, clinging to him like a limpet. Then he had shoved her back into the stall, and insolently touched her tight breasts, and completely humiliated her. His words were engraved on her brain.
    â€˜My God! A stable boy! How wrong I was about you. For two years I have watched you flirt and flaunt yourself around me. I thought it was innocent, a young girl learning the power of her emerging sexuality. But you obviously know it all, have done it all. You’re nothing but a cheap slut.’
    The memory still had the power to hurt, but Liza drew some consolation from the fact that, young as she was, at least she’d had the sense to slap his arrogant face.
    Nick leant back in his seat and eyed the woman before him. She had been a delightful, impulsive child, a thorn in his flesh as a very independent, precocious teenager, and a bitter disappointment to him when he’d found her cavorting with the stable boy. But she had developed into an exquisitely beautiful woman, and he didn’t like the way she still affected him after years of blanking her from his mind. His gut reaction last night when he’d realised she was involved had been to protect her any way he could, and the strength of his own feeling had surprised him.
    But he was no fool; she had inherited her mother’s features and pale, almost translucent skin, and at the moment the red tinge to her cheeks and the evasive look in her brilliant blue eyes told him she was as guilty as hell about something. Whether it was because she was involved in the theft of the diamonds or not he did not know, but he was determined to find out for Carl’s sake.
    â€˜I can see life has been good to you, Liza,’ Nick opined, his dark eyes sweeping over her face and lower to the soft curve of her breasts with blatant male appreciation. ‘It is great to see you happy and on holiday.’
    â€˜Yes, well, the sunshine is a treat in the winter,’ Liza offered lightly. She was older and wiser now, and not prepared to accept his friendly overtures so easily.
    Nick’s gaze narrowed intently on her lovely face, and he saw the swift tightening of her luscious lips; she was beingevasive—hardly the reaction of an innocent, he was forced to conclude. ‘You are on holiday?’ he queried, pressing on in an attempt to discover exactly what Liza knew. ‘Or is it business? It has been so long since we last saw each other, I have no idea what you are up to now.’ For a fleeting moment he was tempted to ask, A bit of diamond-smuggling, perhaps, as my agency’s report implies? His lips twitched in the briefest smile at the thought.
    The