The Buenos Aires Marriage Deal Read Free Page B

slim pencil skirt and smart tailored jacket she wore he saw that it was Marilyn Monroe hourglass perfect. Her very presence exuded an earthy sexiness that heated his blood. Would heat any man’s blood! But it was her face that arrested his attention the most.
    With her almost feline smoky-grey eyes, apple cheeks and lush enticing mouth, she was a woman to entertain the most sensual private fantasies about. With that face and body she would stop rush-hour traffic in any major city of the world in a heartbeat. Suddenly Pascual was intensely excruciatingly jealous at the idea of her with somebody else—the idea that she might have left him because she preferred another man to him. It took him a moment to get his bearings as well as his sudden inconvenient and shocking desire under strict control.
    ‘There must have been some other reason you left me besides the one that you stated in your letter. Did you leave me for another man? Is that it?’ However controlled he strove to be, he still had to voice the question that had been burning in his mind all these years. She flinched, and his gaze clung to hers, fear of her answer making him as tense as a string on a harp.
    ‘Of course I didn’t! I’m sorry if you thought that, but there was no one else…there still is no one else.’
    Exhaling a long, relieved breath, he was still infuriated by her apparent calmness when inside everything in him was churning as turbulently as the Atlantic in a squall.
    ‘And what about you?’ she ventured tentatively. ‘Did you get back with your ex?’
    ‘My ex?’
    For disturbing seconds Pascual recalled something that had happened the night before Briana had left. The Brazilian model he had briefly dated before he had met her had unexpectedly turned up at the family party, on the arm of his cousin Rafa. His mother, being the perfect hostess, had not turned her away. During the evening Claudia had drunk a little too much cachaca, and when Briana had been out on the terrace talking to Marisa and Diego she had pulled a stupid stunt on him. She’d circled his neck with her arms, pressed her body hard against his and kissed him full on the mouth…
    Pascual’s blood ran briefly cold as he remembered the incident with renewed distaste and anger. He wasn’t remotely interested in taking up with Claudia again…either then or now. It was Briana he had loved. But clearly she had not loved him. Why else had it been so easy for her to walk away? The idea pierced his very soul. No man liked to think the loving relationship he believed to be real was based on a lie. A lie that meant his sweetheart did not feel as strongly for him, her lover, as she had insisted she had. Renewed hurt and fury coursed through his bloodstream that the woman in front of him had treated him so abominably.
    Raising her bewitching gaze to his, she attempted a smile of sorts. She wasn’t quite successful, and he saw the worry and concern reflected clearly in her eyes. Good. He was glad he had unsettled her. God knows, she had unsettled him!
    ‘When she showed up at that party…I just thought that you and she—’
    ‘Well, you were wrong. She was dating my cousin and he brought her with him. End of story!’
    ‘Well, then…I’d better just leave you to have your coffee,’ she remarked. ‘Your hosts are waiting for you in the drawing room downstairs. Shall I tell them you’ll be ready in about twenty minutes or so? I can meet you in the lobby and take you to them.’
    ‘I will be ready when I am ready, and not before!’ Pascual snapped, turning his back on her and moving towards the tray of coffee.
    Choosing to remain silent for a few moments, he poured some of the hot aromatic beverage into the porcelain cup and took a sip. Definitely particular about the type of coffee he drank, he found he could not fault whoever had chosen this particular blend on his behalf.
    Facing Briana again, he observed the slight pink flush across her cheekbones. ‘You are here the