Page 83 of His Innocent for One Spanish Night

‘Emily,’ Alejandro said. ‘I don’t like how we ended things.’

‘No...’

‘We can do better than that, surely?’

She said nothing in response, but he thought he heard her swallow.

‘What are we going to do?’

He asked her the question he had asked on the first morning they’d kissed. What were they to do with this attraction, this ache, this desire and perpetual want?

Did he ask to upend her life?

Or did he upend his?

It was a bewildering landscape and like nothing he knew.

Or possibly he had once known—but his parents were such a poor example that he didn’t want to draw on them.

Yet, here he was, doing just that.

How do you ask someone you love to stay?

How do you let someone you love leave?

Then she gave her response. ‘You said it didn’t have to be complicated.’

‘I didn’t know you were a virgin then.’ He smiled as she gave a strangled laugh. ‘And you hadn’t danced for me then,señorita.’

There was a stretch of silence, but it was the nicest silence he’d ever known. Not a word was required for them to go back and live that night again.

It was a shared silence, he in his luxurious hotel suite and Emily, he guessed, outside the office thousands of miles away.

Then the silence was broken as Carmen called Emily by the wrong name.

‘Emile!’ Carmen said.

Emily, he wanted to say.

‘Tell her to wait...’

But of course she wouldn’t do that.

‘I’d better go.’

‘I’ll call you tonight.’

‘We’re having a pre-launch party this evening,’ Emily said.

‘Since when?’

‘Carmen suggested it and managed to get Sebastián to agree. It will be nice for the IT guys...they’ve been brilliant—’ Her voice was cut off as he heard his sister’s impatient tone again.

‘Emile?’

He gritted his jaw.

‘I really do have to go.’

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