Page 5 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

‘You talk of me seducing you...?’ He shook his head, the smile twisting. ‘What a selective memory you have. Let me refresh it for you.Youcame tome. You shared a drink with me and while your mouth was pleading with me to show mercy to your brother, your big, beautiful, seductive brown eyes were eating me alive. You were as sweet and seductive as chocolate. A hot littlebombón.’

His voice had developed into a cruel, silken caress.

‘You leaned into me for that first kiss. You put your hand on my chestright here.’ He put a hand to the spot. ‘And then you touched my face.’

Flora covered her flaming cheeks and squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the invading memories of the moment she’d finally fallen into the hypnotic spell of Ramos’s eyes.

‘You waited until we were both naked before you saw fit to mention that you were a virgin.’ His laughter was bitter. ‘You must really love your brother to sell your virginity like that.’

‘It wasn’t like that and you know it,’ she whispered.

God help her, it had beennothinglike that. It had just happened. One minute they’d been talking, the next...

No, she didn’t want to remember that. Not that. Not the most thrilling, heady moment of her entire life.

Flora had spent years actively avoiding the Alejandro Ramos deli counter and then when she’d woken in his bed in the most delirious bubble of happiness, she’d been stupid enough to believe that what they’d shared had been so wonderful and beautiful that it had moved him as much as it had moved her.

For a few short hours she’d been stupid enough to believe that he felt something for her that went beyond sex.

An edge formed in his voice. ‘Yes,querida, it was like that. You came to me with the implicit intention of seducing me into mercy and you so nearly got away with it.’

She snapped her eyes back open.

His top lip curled and he shook his head disparagingly. ‘I read the message from him.’

‘What message?’ She didn’t have a clue what he was on about.

‘From your brother. In the morning. While you were sleeping. I went downstairs. I wanted to surprise you with breakfast in bed.’ He shook his head again. ‘Your bag had spilt over the coffee table.’

It had toppled when Ramos had lifted her into his arms to carry her upstairs to his bedroom and her foot had knocked the table. Her heart throbbed at the memory of it.

‘The message flashed on your phone when I picked it up to put it in the bag for you. Do you remember what it said?’

Flora remembered little of that day. She’d been floating too high on her delirious Alejandro Ramos bubble of bliss for anything else to reach her.

The evening had been a different matter. When she realised he’d deliberately stood her up, the bubble she’d been floating in had plummeted so hard and so fast the landing had bruised every part of her.

‘It said,Any news, Flo? Did your charms work their magic on him?’ He laughed, a horrid, bitter sound totally unlike his usual throaty laughter. His top lip curled again. ‘I should have guessed when you turned up at my door dressed for seduction that Hillier had sent you.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve interpreted it that way,’ she said hoarsely, her brain reeling. ‘And Justin didn’t send me. He knew what I was doing because I told him, but me coming to see you wasmyidea.’

Flora had driven her hire car from the Monte Cleure prison over the border into Spain and then on to Barcelona with her brother’s gaunt face lodged in her retinas, desperately wondering what words she could say to make the notoriously unforgiving Alejandro Ramos show mercy to his best friend.

Justin deserved punishment, she knew that, but he needed help too.

Her brother had always been there for her: the boy who humoured his baby sister when she demanded he play dolls with her, the young adolescent who walked her to school, made her packed lunches and helped with her homework when their mum was working, the adolescent who patiently taught her to play chess and made himself late for his school leavers party so they could finish a game of Scrabble, the young man who taught her how to drive and then forgave her when she reversed his precious car into a lamppost.

He’d always been there for her and she would always be there for him, even if the guilt and shame over what he’d done didn’t hang over him like a shroud.

‘Did your charms work their magic on him?’ Ramos repeated the quote in a snarl, and for the first time Flora saw real anger rise to the surface.

‘Do you really believe I traded my virginity to save my brother’s skin?’ The horror of it turned her blood to ice.

He just stared at her, only the tightening of his lips betraying his thoughts.

Dear heavens, hedidbelieve it.

Ramos thought she’d gone to him with the deliberate intention of exchanging her body for her brother’s freedom.

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