Мишель Смарт – Bound To A Billionaire: Protecting His Defiant Innocent (Bound to a Billionaire) / Claiming His One-Night Baby / Buying His Bride of Convenience (страница 21)

Her insistence on staying had been a deliberate kick-back. Felipe had relaxed over their meal and opened up to her, not by much but enough for her chest to lighten and hope to spring free. A proper conversation between two adults enjoying each other’s company. There were times he’d looked at her as if he wanted to eat her, the desire in his eyes vivid... But then he’d withdrawn as quickly as if he’d pulled the trigger on a gun.

Now he was back to looking at her as if he’d like to chuck her in the sea.

‘Why don’t you stop talking and get ready for bed?’ he growled. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’

‘I’m not tired.’

‘Read a book.’

She wished she knew what it would take to pull his barriers down long enough for him to forget his reasons for resisting and simply treat her as a woman. That’s all she wanted.

‘I’ll put my nightclothes on in the bathroom, shall I?’

‘Yes!’

‘Okay. I won’t be long. Try not to miss me.’

It didn’t take long for her to change into the over-sized T-shirt she slept in, wash her face and brush her teeth, all the while wondering if she had the courage to go for full-scale seduction.

She could hardly believe she was having these thoughts.

Pieta’s death had brought home how short and fickle life could be. The dangers of Caballeros had reinforced that notion. All those years she’d spent studying, any thought of a romantic life pushed aside so as not to distract her from her dreams... It had stopped her feeling life rather than just going through the motions of living it.

Felipe was nothing like the rich, boring, single men her parents had brought in a steady trickle to the family home before she’d escaped to university, hoping their darling daughter would snare one of them and marry into luxury and be doted on. The only similarity he had with them was that he was fabulously rich.

Francesca hadn’t wanted to be doted on. Her mother had married young and was content to live the life of a social butterfly where the biggest daily problem would be matching her nail varnish with her outfit. Francesca had wanted so much more. She had wanted to be like her brothers and cousin Matteo. They were also expected to settle down and breed but at a much older age. They were expected to have fantastic careers first, whereas she’d been expected to adorn her husband’s fantastic career. She hadn’t wanted to adorn or be beholden to a man. She’d wanted a fantastic career of her own and had known from a very young age that the only way to get it was by studying as hard as she could to get the highest possible grades so her parents had no choice but to take her and her aspirations seriously.

She had succeeded. There had been many fights and many tears but eventually they had accepted her wishes. That hadn’t stopped them parading eligible rich men in front of her but the tone had changed; become hope rather than expectation.

If she continued working hard, in two years she would sit her bar exams and qualify as a lawyer, then spend a few more years establishing herself in the career she’d devoted her life to achieving. Only then would she think of making a marriage, safe in the knowledge that, whoever she chose, her hard-won independence would not be compromised and the marriage would be conducted as equals.

That had been the plan.

What she hadn’t expected was this awakening, this heady desire for a man that no amount of logic could explain.

She didn’t want to explain it. She wanted to explore it, to reach out and touch it and experience these wonderful feelings that had soaked into her being, all of which were for Felipe.

He was not a man to dote on a woman. He was strong and protective but would never treat a woman as a pet.

And he didn’t want a relationship either.

If anything were to happen between them it would be nothing but a short, sweet affair that wouldn’t compromise either of their chosen paths.

The problem, Francesca acknowledged ruefully, came with the if.

It would help if she knew how to seduce a man, let alone one so determined to keep her at arm’s length. And wasn’t seduction supposed to be conducted wearing sexy lingerie? She wore pretty underwear but nothing that could be considered sexy or lingerie.

All she had was herself.

When she walked back into the suite she found Felipe kneeling by his huge khaki kitbag.

He looked at her briefly then closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath before pulling out his washbag. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

A moment later came the telling click of the bathroom lock.

Taking a deep breath, Francesca turned all the lights off apart from her bedside one, giving the room a soft seductive quality. Then she got onto the huge bed and arranged herself into what she hoped was a seductive pose. Instead of making her feel wanton it made her feel like a fool so she tried a different pose. That made her feel a bigger fool. After trying a variety of others she settled for sitting with her legs stretched out and hooked at the ankles, her head resting on the headboard.

Felipe spent so long in the bathroom that doubts began to crowd her. Did she have his feelings for her all wrong?

Were those times when she looked in his eyes and saw pained desire burning back at her nothing but creations of her own tortured mind, like a child desperate to see Father Christmas swearing blind they saw him flying his reindeer past their bedroom window? Nothing but a hopeful, overactive imagination?

She sensed when he was ready to leave his sanctuary and swallowed, placing a hand to her rapidly beating heart.

The bathroom door opened. Their eyes met.

He held her gaze a beat too long then broke it, striding past her to the nest he’d made by her door.

She watched his every step with her heart in her mouth.

Francesca had seen Felipe with nothing but tight swim shorts on at the swimming pool but she had been some distance away. Up close his magnificence was stark enough to steal her breath and set her already ragged pulses soaring. Up close there was no escaping the bulge in the snug black boxers he wore.

Even a straight man would do a double take at him.

A silvery mark on his right calf caught her eye, pulling her out of the trance she’d slipped into. ‘What happened to your leg?’

‘Gunshot,’ he answered gruffly.

His answer had her pressing the switch behind her to turn the corner light on.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

It wasn’t just a silvery mark; there was a hollowed out section of flesh around his shin bone that covered half his calf.

Thick icy sludge crawled up her spine and through her veins, freezing her from the inside out.

She could hardly get her vocal cords working to whisper, ‘What happened to you?’

‘The perils of army life.’

‘You were shot in battle?’

‘Something like that.’

Feeling faint, she took a long breath, unable to look away from the ugly wound that made her heart hurt.

Felipe was a military man. She’d known that before she’d met him. It was his career in the army, including his time in the Special Forces, that made him so effective at what he did, that had given him the solid foundations to build the hugely successful enterprise he had now.

Yet whenever she thought about the armed forces—admittedly, before she’d met Felipe that had been rarely—she’d imagined it to be like those computer games she’d been banned from watching Daniele play when he’d been younger and she much younger still but, of course, had sneakily peeked in on. She hadn’t seriously thought about what it must be like to be in a real war, to have people firing at you not for fun but because they wanted to kill you.

Someone had shot Felipe with the intention of killing him.

He must have noticed her horror for his expression hardened. ‘I apologise if my wound disgusts you.’

‘No.’ She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to refocus her eyes. ‘Don’t think that. I don’t think that. Felipe...’ She shook her head some more.

Now the limp she’d often noticed made sense.

As if to distract her attention from his wound, Felipe slid into the makeshift bed he’d made for himself on the floor, thumped the top pillow and lay on his back, gazing at the ceiling with his arm crooked above his head.

Francesca turned the corner light off so the only illumination in the suite came from her bedside light.

She felt chilled to her core. If whoever had shot at him had had a better aim the vital, intense man who lay in a nest of bedding at her door would not be here. He would be gone from this earth like Pieta, nothing but a memory. But not a memory to her because she never would have met him.

She remembered Daniele—or was it Matteo?—saying Felipe had been discharged from the army on medical grounds.

‘Was that the reason you left the army?’

Even with the limited light she saw his grimace. ‘Yes. The wound meant I was no longer an effective soldier. It’s standard procedure. It wasn’t personal.’

‘Would you have stayed if you could?’

‘I would have stayed for as long as they’d had me. I loved the life.’

‘You loved going into war zones?’

He let out a low rumble of laughter. ‘Believe it or not, yes. I thrived on the danger. We all did. I loved everything about army life. Passing selection for the Special Forces was the best day of my life. Receiving my discharge was the worst.’