LITMIR.BIZ

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while Caroline just stood there dumbfounded.

      ‘I d-don’t understand…’ she stammered. ‘W-what do you m-mean?’

      Smoothly, he repeated it for her. ‘I just upped the ante.’ With a deft tug he pulled bright white cuffs with black and gold cufflinks into view. He worded it differently. ‘The deal has just changed.’

      ‘But—you can’t do that!’ she protested.

      He looked at her. ‘How,’ he oh, so tauntingly enquired, ‘are you going to stop me?’

      ‘But—I’ve already agreed to your sordid little deal,’ she cried out in complete bewilderment. ‘What else can you possibly want from me, Luiz?’

      ‘That’s it.’ He nodded, as if she’d said something memorably fortuitous. ‘Sordid,’ he explained. ‘I’ve decided that I don’t want sordid.’ He moved briskly to check out his bow tie in the sleek gold-framed mirror hanging on the wall above a rosewood tallboy. ‘In fact sordid doesn’t suit my plans at all, which is why I’ve decided to up the ante.’

      ‘To what, for goodness’ sake?’ she asked in pure frustration.

      His fingers stilled against the bow tie. Via the mirror he looked at her. Via the mirror his cold, dark inscrutable eyes captured hers. And Caroline found herself holding onto her breath in a way that starved her brain of oxygen during a pause that seemed to go on for ever—before he answered her with the silk-voiced simplistic use of a single word that completely blew her mind.

      ‘Marriage,’ he said.

      Seconds, minutes—Caroline didn’t know how long it was that she just stood there staring at him, as if he was on one planet while she was on another.

      Then she gave a shaky laugh. ‘You’re joking,’ she decided.

      But his deadly smooth, deadly calm, deadly serious expression told her that this was no joke. He meant it. Marriage. Luiz wanted marriage. To her.

      Without a single word, she turned and walked back to the bedroom door. This had gone far enough, she was telling herself grimly. And it had gone on long enough. Now she was—

      ‘We have been here before, Caroline, but I am quite happy to act out the scene again if you need me to do it…’ Luiz’s voice slid snake-like after her. ‘So, walk out of that door and I will play your father tonight at poker…’

      Her fingers curled around the brass doorhandle, actually gripped and began to turn it before she lost the will. Slowly she turned, weakly she leaned against the door now behind her, defeatedly she stared across the room to where Luiz was now propped up against the rosewood tallboy, with his ankles crossed casually and his hands resting comfortably in his trouser pockets.

      Tall, dark, undoubtedly the most attractive man she had ever met in her entire life, he exuded self-assurance from every supremely relaxed pore.

      The self-assured kind of man who wanted his pound of flesh, for some utterly obscure reason. ‘I suppose you have a good reason for making this proposition?’ she prompted shakily.

      His lashes flickered, hiding dark brown eyes as they slid over her. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

      Caroline’s mouth tightened. ‘Am I to know what that reason is?’ she asked.

      ‘Not until you agree to do it,’ he replied. ‘And maybe not even then, depending on how you agree to it.’

      ‘Then how would you like me to agree to it?’ she enquired ever so, ever so sweetly, beginning to pulse with anger at the way he was making her pull answers out of him.

      A smile touched his mouth, a very wry smile that acknowledged her sarcasm. ‘Well, a simple yes would do for starters,’ he drawled. ‘But to hear you say yes because you simply can’t imagine the rest of your life without me in it would be absolutely perfect.’

      Since the chances of that happening were less than nil, she didn’t even bother to remark on the suggestion. ‘And what are the chances of the ante going up again before you’re finished with me?’ she asked instead.

      ‘Finished with you?’ Curiously he picked up on the word, then gave a shake of his head. ‘In this case, my ever being finished with you doesn’t apply,’ he told her. ‘I may sound like a fully emancipated all-American guy,’ he said, thickening his accent to suit the remark, ‘but remember that I am Spanish. And, being Spanish, I marry once and for life. So take that on board while you make your decision,’ he advised her. ‘I want your life Caroline,’ he spelled out. ‘And, because I have raised the stakes,’ he added, ‘I will not only not play your father tonight, but I will also agree to pay off all his outstanding debts, get your home out of hock and ensure that it remains that way for the rest of your life. At the same time I will take over your watchdog role with your father.’ He seemed to decide that covered it nicely. ‘Does that sweeten the deal a little for you?’

      Sweeten it? It made it positively compelling, she thought with heaviness that took her that little bit closer to defeat—though if she had any choices at all she wished someone would point them out to her. ‘If this is for life, then why me?’ She frowned, wishing she understood what was really going on. And she knew there just had to be something going on that Luiz wasn’t talking about.

      ‘Why not you?’ Luiz countered with a shrug. ‘You are beautiful, you are well bred, and you would enhance the arm of any man,’

      ‘A trophy, in other words,’ she likened bitterly.

      ‘If you like.’ He wasn’t going to argue with that belittling description. ‘But honesty forces me to add that I still fancy the hell out of you or you wouldn’t be standing here at all, believe me.’

      His dry smile made her flinch. But she received the message well enough. Be glad I do still fancy you, Caroline, or you would now be standing in deep trouble somewhere else entirely.

      ‘Yes. I will marry you,’ she said, that briefly and that simply.

      To give him credit, Luiz didn’t try to draw out his victory. ‘Good,’ was all he said, then, straightening his lean frame away from the tallboy, turned to slide open the top drawer.

      Standing there, watching him, Caroline thought she saw the merest glimpse of a tremor in his hand as he took it out of his pocket to open the drawer. But by the time he turned, with a clean handkerchief in a hand that revealed only super-sure steadiness, she decided that she must have been mistaken.

      ‘You now have ten minutes to make yourself feel better about meeting our guests,’ he said, with a subtle alteration in the possessive that didn’t pass Caroline by. ‘Bathroom through that door.’ He indicated. ‘Clothes in the cupboards. I have a few phone calls to make.’

      With that he began walking towards her, looking the cool, calm, inscrutable Luiz Vazquez who utterly scorned the idea that anything so weak as a tremor could dare to touch him.

      She was blocking the door he obviously wished to go through to make his precious calls, but for the life of her Caroline couldn’t give another single inch to him by stepping meekly to one side.

      He reached her, stopped. Her heart began to thump. Taller than her, wider than her, darker than her in every way there was, he intimidated her on levels she had not known existed before she knew him.

      His eyebrows arched. ‘Is there something we missed?’ he prompted, softly mocking her stubborn refusal to budge.

      She had to swallow through a terrible tension before saying what was on her mind, but she was determined to say it anyway. ‘Didn’t you hurt me enough seven years ago without continuing this vendetta you seem to have going for my family?’

      His hand came up, touched her pale cheek, and the skin beneath began to burn as if branded. ‘Seven years ago you would not have needed to ask that question,’ he murmured.

      ‘Seven years ago I thought you loved me,’ she replied

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