Page 33 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

‘Ramos?’ she called out.

‘In the bathroom,’ he called back.

She remembered his majestic bathroom suite all too well. They’d shared a shower before he’d given her a lift to her hotel and asked if he could see her again that night.

She walked as far as the archway that led into it and, without actually looking into it, said, ‘Where’s my stuff been put?’

Seconds later, Ramos’s towering figure appeared wearing only a dark blue towel around his snake hips.

Her zen practically flew out of the window.

Painfully aware her cheeks were burning with colour, Flora took a hasty step back and averted her eyes from the muscular bronzed torso that had plagued her thoughts every night before she drifted into sleep for years.

A gleam flickered in his eyes before he inclined his head. ‘I will show you.’

With long, languid strides, he led her past the humongous bed, the tight muscles of his buttocks clearly outlined beneath the towel. She only just managed to avert her eyes when he stopped at an archway and turned to her.

He swept an elegant arc. ‘Your dressing room.’

Flora had thought her last dressing room was big. This one could rival a department store...okay, a slight exaggeration. But, still, wow.

‘I’m going to take a shower,’ Ramos informed her. ‘So I will leave you to it...unless you wish to join me?’

She answered with a glare that had him sauntering off chuckling.

Managing to stop herself ogling his backside again by a breath, Flora dragged the heavy drape across its rail to give herself privacy, but, instead of changing into her pyjamas, sat on the red velvet chaise longue and buried her face in her hands.

So much for her zen.

Why, oh, why had she kissed him? Her awareness of him had been bad enough before but now it was all a hundred times worse.

After changing into her pyjamas, she hung around in her dressing room until she was certain he’d left the bathroom and had had time to get into bed.

She counted to ten then darted across the room, not looking at him.

The first section of the bathroom suite had vanity units running along opposite side walls. Her toiletries had been placed neatly on one of them and she cleaned her face and brushed her teeth, then brushed her hair, dragging out the process as long as she could and searching desperately for her zen.

Ramos, lying on his side of the bed staring up at the ceiling, turned his face at the sound of her footsteps. ‘Did you find everything, querida?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ Cheered that she’d managed to sound normal, she lifted the sheets and slid under them.

The double emperor bed was so big she had acres of space to call her own. Ramos was far enough away that they could both stretch like starfish and not touch.

After they wished each other a polite goodnight, Ramos deactivated the lights.

It was one of the longest, most torturous nights of Flora’s existence.

The sleep Flora had rediscovered had been snatched away from her again, this time by a six-foot-three hunk who slept nude in the same bed as her. Slept soundly. Three nights she’d lain awake burning inside, her mind consumed with the hunk beside her, knowing all she would have to do was prod him with a finger and he would wake up and put her out of her frustrated misery. And then her mind would go into overdrive imagining all the things he would do to her, pushing sleep even further away. After all that torture and the long days of his gregarious company, she now had to deal with the torture of sitting by his side on the leather sofa of his home office interviewing potential candidates for the role of nanny for their son. It was the closest they’d been in a physical sense since the night of the ballet.

‘Which one did you prefer?’ Ramos asked once the final interview was done, twisting to face her.

None of them.

They’d interviewed five women for the role. She had no idea how Ramos had been able to organise it all in such super-quick time but, as she had learned, when Ramos had an idea in his head he was single-minded until it was accomplished. Unfortunately the potential candidates made her feel a little like the children inMary Poppinslooking out of the window with dread at all the stern-faced women lined up, knowing one of them would be tasked with caring for them. Except none of the nannies they were interviewing were in the slightest bit stern-faced. On the contrary. They were all smiley, fresh-faced and, without exception, beautiful.

Flora hated herself for it, but her imagination ran riot whenever Ramos was away. How would she cope with a beautiful woman sleeping under their roof with them?

‘They all seem nice,’ she said truthfully.

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