LITMIR.BIZ

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good for my ego, do you know that?’

      ‘I aim to please.’

      ‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’ The colour in her cheeks deepened becomingly. ‘I wonder why?’

      Now it was Raul’s turn to pull a face. ‘That sounds suspiciously like a criticism,’ he remarked drily. ‘Has no one told you what an attractive woman you are?’

      ‘Not recently, no,’ Ally admitted. ‘Who are you? Some kind of guardian angel employed to comfort lonely women?’

      ‘My name’s Raul, not Gabriel,’ he retorted, refilling her wine glass. ‘Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve invited a woman I’d never met before to have dinner with me. I know you think I’m stringing you a line, but I’m not. I genuinely am enjoying myself.’

      ‘So’m I.’ Ally looked down into her glass, amazed at her own audacity. ‘I’m glad you asked me to have dinner with you.’

      ‘Yeah. Me, too,’ he conceded, touching his glass to hers. ‘Here’s to us.’

      ‘To us,’ she repeated obediently, wishing they had longer than tonight to get to know one another better, and was aware of him watching her as she sipped her wine.

      The main course was just as delicious as the first, although in all honesty Ally was hardly aware of what she was eating. Afterwards, all she remembered was that Raul had offered her a taste of his steak, and the intimacy of sharing his food had extinguished everything else.

      She also knew she had never been as relaxed with a man in her life. Not even Jeff, who had usually dominated their conversations with his work, his problems. Looking back, she was forced to acknowledge that although she had always thought they had a good marriage, it had hardly been a partnership in the real sense of the word. For years, she’d let Jeff make all the decisions and, because she’d seldom objected, he’d begun to believe that she didn’t have an opinion of her own.

      Still, she could hardly blame him for that…

      She declined a dessert and, instead of staying at the table, they went to have their coffee in the adjoining lounge. They were shown to a table in the shade of a palm. There were two comfortable armchairs and a low sofa set around the table and Ally chose the sofa, expecting Raul to take one of the armchairs opposite.

      But he didn’t.

      ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked, when his thigh brushed against hers as he seated himself beside her. She managed to get, ‘Not at all,’ past the sudden constriction in her throat. She was intensely aware of his closeness, however, and of the fact that his weight depressed the cushion beneath her hip.

      ‘I suppose you’re staying at the hotel, too,’ she said quickly, to distract herself from the powerful length of his legs that he was forced to fold beneath the table, and Raul waited until the waiter had served their coffee before replying.

      ‘Fourth floor,’ he told her easily. ‘How about you?’

      ‘Oh, I’m staying here—’

      ‘I know that.’ The look he gave her assured her that he hadn’t been deceived by her attempt at subterfuge. ‘Which floor?’

      ‘I—the first, I think.’

      ‘Don’t you know?’

      Of course she did. And it wasn’t the first.

      Pretending to be indignant, she exclaimed, ‘Naturally I know which floor my room’s on.’

      Raul’s eyes were far too discerning. ‘I happen to know the first floor is given over to offices and conference suites,’ he remarked levelly. ‘If you don’t want to tell me where your room is, okay. You don’t have to lie about it, Diana.’

      Diana!

      Ally felt awful. ‘I—my name’s not Diana,’ she admitted weakly. ‘It’s Ally. Ally Sloan.’

      ‘No kidding?’

      He didn’t sound surprised and she looked at him a little warily. ‘You knew?’

      ‘Well, if you were prepared to lie about which floor your room was on—’

      ‘I wasn’t lying, exactly.’

      ‘No.’ He was sceptical. ‘Don’t tell me, they’re accommodating you in one of the banqueting halls?’

      ‘You don’t have to be sarcastic,’ she said, hurt by his tone. ‘If I were better at this I wouldn’t have chosen that floor in the first place.’

      ‘Why would you want to be better at lying to people?’ he demanded in a low disturbing voice. ‘Have I given you any reason to be suspicious of me?’

      ‘No.’ Ally’s tongue circled her lips in innocent provocation. ‘But I didn’t know that when you spoke to me in the bar.’

      Raul’s eyes darkened. ‘And you feel you know me better now?’

      Ally swallowed. ‘Well—yes.’

      His smile troubled her, but before she had had a chance to wonder what it meant, his hand covering hers in her lap drove all other thoughts out of her head. ‘I’m glad,’ he said, and she was supremely conscious of his knuckles digging into her thigh, causing a wave of heat to dart upwards into her groin. ‘You don’t have to be afraid of me.’

      ‘I’m not.’

      The words came out automatically but she wasn’t at all sure she believed them. Something was warning her that he hadn’t been completely honest with her either, and while it was easy to put it down to her own over-active imagination, she still found his attention hard to justify. She simply wasn’t the type to attract a man like him—a man as young as him—and she wasn’t sure how he expected her to proceed.

      But he was attractive, and the hand holding hers in her lap was strong and masculine. It reminded her that it had been too long since she’d had a man’s hands on her body, and she wondered what he would say if she confessed that she’d only ever been to bed with one man in her entire life. She was hopelessly naïve when it came to the way men and women conducted themselves today, and although Sam had done her best to educate her, she’d never expect her mother to find herself in a situation like this.

      However, thinking about Sam made her realise how shocked her daughter would be if she could see her now. It was one thing for Sam to expound the sexual advantages women enjoyed today and quite another for her to face the fact that her mother was still a comparatively young woman and might be sexually attracted to some other man. Sam was disgusted with her father’s behaviour but that didn’t mean she’d forgive her mother’s transgressions, even if the circumstances were totally different now.

      Tugging her fingers out of Raul’s grasp, Ally took refuge in her coffee, almost spilling it when he squeezed her thigh. As he did so, all the bones in her limbs turned to water and a pulse she’d hardly been aware of before beat insistently between her legs. Dear God, she thought, did he know what he was doing to her; had he guessed how emotionally starved she was?

      ‘Would you like another drink?’

      To her relief, he removed his hand from her thigh and contented himself with turning sideways to face her. His knee nudged her leg and she had to steel herself not to move away. But perhaps another drink wasn’t a bad idea, she thought breathlessly. It might help to calm the nerves jumping in her stomach.

      ‘Why not?’ she said, promising herself she’d have one more drink and then say goodnight. She wanted to be up bright and early in the morning. After all the effort Suzanne had made, the least she could do was not to miss the plane.

      Raul summoned the waiter and ordered himself a Scotch over ice and Ally another vodka and tonic. Even the drink she’d chosen was a cliché, she thought impatiently. Why couldn’t she have ordered a champagne cocktail or a spritzer?

      She noticed that Raul had

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