The Spanish Aristocrat's Woman (2 page)

Those, and the fact that her friend Courtney had been certain that Kara didn’t know him. Didn’t really know the gorgeous and most sought-after bachelor in the room.

“Pardon?”

She cleared her throat. Man, if he turned her down, she was going to die. “I asked you to dance.”

“Dance?”

“Unless there is something official you should be doing.”

“I have a few moments. Enough time to dance with a beautiful woman.” He smiled at her, his expression very charming. “It would be my pleasure to dance with you.”

She flushed as a totally inappropriate thought drifted through her mind. Then she shook her head and led him to the dance floor and her group of friends. “Do you know everyone?”

He shook his head. “Hello, ladies.”

Kara introduced him to Emily, Katie and Courtney. They were her best friends and some of the only people she was truly comfortable around.

“This is Count…Gui. I’m sorry I don’t remember your entire title.”

He smiled at that. “I’m Count Guillermo de Cuaron y Bautista de la Cruz. But please, just Gui.”

He bowed and the girls all dropped into low curtsies as they’d been taught long ago. Gui smiled at them and Katie giggled.

The music changed from lively to a slow ballad. Kara started edging her way off the dance floor but Gui stopped her with his hand on her arm.

“I believe you asked me to dance.”

“Yes,” she said.

He drew her back toward the center of the dance floor and into his arms. Even in her heels he was taller than she was. He smoothed his hands down her back, resting them just above the curve of her hips.

He was a good dancer, which made sense. He owned several nightclubs and had probably spent a fair amount of time frequenting the trendy nightspots. Each with a different woman.

She sighed. Why had her thoughts turned to that?

“What are you thinking?”

She shook her head. There weren’t enough martinis in this room to get her to admit what she’d been thinking. “Nothing.”

“You sighed.”

“I did.”

“So…”

“Gui?”

“Yes, Kara.”

“Stop being charming.”

He laughed and lifted his head. “I can’t. It’s a curse of mine.”

“And you use it very well.”

“You say that as if it were a bad thing.”

“Well, it makes you seem like the kind of man who always knows the right thing to say.”

“Fake?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip. “Yes. Fake. I mean, you say things to me that sound like you really care, but you hardly know me.”

“Perhaps you’re easier to care about than you think.”

She shook her head. “I know I’m not. No man ever sees me as anything other than an heiress.”

“Then they aren’t really looking at you,” Guillermo said.

Kara felt something shift inside her as she looked at Gui. He drew her even more closely to him until her breasts brushed his chest and her head rested on his shoulder.

She feared this was a martini-induced dream, but it felt incredibly real to her and she wanted it to last for a little while longer. Tomorrow she could go back to being the pudgy heiress. Tonight, she wanted to revel in the feeling of being a fairy-tale princess with her count.

“Guillermo,
querido?
”

The voice was low and husky and very feminine. And there was a hint of possessiveness in that voice as its owner spoke to Gui.

He stiffened and his features tightened, but she didn’t know him well enough to really read his reaction. “
Si,
Elvira.”

“Introduce me to your lovely friend,” the woman named Elvira said.

Kara heard the criticism in the other woman’s voice. That note that said, why are you dancing with this pudgy girl instead of me? It was a tone that Kara had heard often enough over the years.

“Countess Elvira de Castillo y Perez, meet Kara deMontaine. Kara, this is the Countess Elvira.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Kara said, curtsying to the older woman.

“Aren’t you a sweet child,” the countess said. “Run along and play with your friends. I’d like a word with Guillermo.”

Kara started to step away but Gui’s hand tightened on her arm. “Kara is my fiancée, Elvira. Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of her.”

Gui danced her away from the other woman. And she just stared up at him, for the first time in her life completely unsure of what to do next.

“Um…”

“Don’t say anything just yet. Dance with me and look up at me the way a woman in love would.”

“And how is that?”

“With adoration, of course.”

She had to smile at him. And he leaned down to once again touch his mouth to hers. She opened her mouth this time, hoping to taste him again. That first kiss had been too quick, too brief, and it left her wanting more of him.

He angled his head and his tongue touched hers. She breathed into his mouth and felt the contact of his lips and tongue on hers all the way to her core. Chills raced down her body, making her breasts feel fuller and her nipples harden.

She pulled back from him and held tightly on to his shoulders, having the very real feeling that she was in way over her head. This was different than asking a cute guy to dance…this was passion.

Something that had always been lacking in her life.

“Gui…”

“Kara. You have the most kissable lips.”

She shook her head. Her mouth tingled. Tingled! She wanted to touch her lips but knew she’d give away just how inexperienced she was to him.

“Trust me,” he said, bending down to take her mouth one more time. She shivered in his arms. She knew the music changed, because the couples around them seemed to be moving, but time stood still for her as she stood there with Gui. As she felt the warmth of his big body next to hers. The way he wrapped his arms around her waist and let his hands drift lower to cup her buttocks and draw her more fully into his body.

She melted against him. For the first time she felt like one of those delicate girls she’d always envied. In Gui’s arms she wasn’t too big. She didn’t tower over him. And when he touched her, his hands were strong and sure.

She pulled back, afraid that she was losing her perspective, and looked up into his warm hazel eyes. But they weren’t the same light brown-green they’d been earlier. Now they were stormy with a bit of gray moving in around the rims of his irises.

“Your eyes,” she said, raising one hand to trace his eyebrow.

“What about them?”

“They’re changing color.”

He quirked an eyebrow, the one she wasn’t touching, at her.

“They were this light earth tone…like a spring lake…earlier, but now there’s more gray in them…like the Northern Atlantic Ocean.”

“Do you like the water,
querida?
”

He was calling her darling again. She told herself it was probably an affectation, something he did with every woman, but it didn’t stop the little thrill from going through her each time he said it.

“I love it,” she said. In the water it didn’t matter that she was taller and bigger than everyone else. She felt svelte and slim.

“Do you sail?” he asked.

“Yes. I just ordered a new yacht,” she said. “I’m picking it up in Monte Negro soon.”

“I love Monte Negro,” Gui said, stroking one finger down the side of her face. “Why there?”

“One of my cousins took a job there. I am going to Italy in a few weeks with a group of inner-city teenagers who are interested in fashion design.”

“Fashion?”

She pulled away. “I know I might not seem like the right woman to guide them—”

“I wasn’t questioning your fashion sense. You’re incredibly beautiful in this dress. It’s just not often that I hear about fashion design programs for the underprivileged.”

“That’s precisely why I did it. I have a program for plus-sized girls, too. I hate the way that fashion magazines and the fashion industry just focus on skinny women.”

She put her hand over her mouth. That comment was way too revealing. Why were they talking about her? She should be demanding to know why he’d said she was his fiancée.

“We need to talk, Gui.”

“I know,
querida.
”

“Please call me Kara. I don’t like being called by a generic endearment.”

“
Querida
isn’t generic when it’s applied to you,” he said.

But he must use it for Elvira. Because she’d called him
querido,
which was the masculine version of that endearment. “All the same.”

“You aren’t what I expected.”

“Why would I be?” she asked. “You don’t know me at all.”

“Well,
mi dulce,
I think that’s going to change rather quickly.”

“Why do you think that? Because we’re ‘engaged’?” she asked.

She heard a gasp and turned around to look down into the face of her sister, Rina.

“You’re
engaged
to Count Guillermo?”

But saying that Kara was his fiancée had given him a glimpse of change. Elvira’s eyes had narrowed and he knew that he’d finally jarred her from that safe position she’d held over him for years.

Of course, he didn’t intend to marry a woman he hardly knew. But seeing the blood drain from Kara’s face as her sister asked if they were engaged…well, he couldn’t just walk away from her. His father was big on personal responsibility, and walking away from a woman in a situation like this wasn’t something he could do.

He wrapped his arm around Kara and drew her more fully against the side of his body. Rina was a beautiful woman and, seeing the way she regarded him now, he realized Christos had been right when he’d said that she was very protective of her little sister.

“Well, it’s been a secret until now, Rina. We didn’t want to steal any of Sheri and Tristan’s day,” Gui said.

Kara looked up at him and he could see the panic rising in her. He was used to managing people and taking control of situations and he did exactly that now. “Right, Kara?”

She nodded and tried to smile but failed miserably.

“You okay?” Rina asked Kara.

“I’m fine. Really. I just didn’t expect anyone to hear about this…”

“Does Dad know?”

Their father was on the West Coast, closing a business deal, and hadn’t been able to make the wedding.

“No.”

Rina nodded. “Let’s go someplace quiet so we can talk.”

“I’m sorry, Rina, but we’re already committed to joining Christos and Ava after this dance. I’m making the wedding toast. We’ll see you later.”

“We’re available for breakfast, Rina,” Kara said.

Gui squeezed her arm in warning. He didn’t want to dine with her sister and field questions to which he had no answers.

Kara tipped her head to the side and gave him a level stare. “
Querido,
you said that you’d always have time for my family.”

“Of course, I did.”

He needed to get Kara alone to talk to her. Seriously. Until he laid some ground rules, she was going to run amok saying whatever she wanted to. And he was going to have to agree.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Nine?” Rina asked.

“Sounds good,” Kara said.

Gui cupped her elbow and led her off the dance floor and out of the reception ballroom. The hotel lobby was filled with gawkers who weren’t invited to the reception and who were hanging out, hoping for a glimpse of the glamorous wedding guests.

He was always relatively incognito in the States because he was a lesser royal from Spain. In Europe he would have been mobbed, but here he wasn’t.

“Where are we going?” Kara asked. She tried to slow their pace, but Gui kept his arm around her waist and forced her to keep moving forward.

“Somewhere where we can be alone,
mi dulce.
”

“Gui,” she said, flat-out stopping.

“Si?”

“This is getting out of hand.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. In his entire life, there’d been nothing he couldn’t manage and make work to his advantage.

He knew this “engagement” wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever gotten himself into, but he was confident he’d be able to think of something that would get the both of them out of it.

“I think it is. I’ve never been engaged before. I’m almost thirty and chubby and everyone knows that the only reason men are interested in me is the fortune I bring with me.”

Gui shook his head. “Almost thirty isn’t a curse. I’m nearly forty. You’re not chubby, and I don’t want to hear you refer to yourself that way again. You are a goddess among women—”

“Don’t lie to me about my body,” she said, interrupting him. “I’ve been this size for most of my life and know I’m not a goddess.”

Gui nudged her out of the main traffic path and into a nearly deserted hallway. She spun to face him and pressed back against the wall. He put his hands on either side of her head and leaned in close, so close that he felt the exhalation of her breath against his cheek.

Her eyes were wide as she gazed up at him. There were doubts and insecurity in her eyes. He was suddenly angry at all of his sex for allowing any woman to feel unattractive because of something as silly as height and weight.

“Kara,
mi dulce,
I’m not a man who says things because I think they will win me favor. I do know how to be charming, I’m not going to deny that, but you should know right now that when I say something to you, I’m not lying.”

“All I know is that I’ve always been too big to be really fashionable and—”

He leaned down and brushed his lips over her forehead and then dropped a few soft kisses on her lips. He pulled back and looked down at her.

“You are certainly not like anyone else. You are an Amazon goddess. Your skin is so smooth and soft, I can’t get enough of touching it.”

“Yeah, but I’m too tall,” she said.

“For other men, perhaps, but for me you are a perfect fit,” he said, drawing her into his arms. Her head rested comfortably on his shoulder.

He didn’t let himself dwell on the sweetness he felt toward her. It was unlike anything he’d felt for any woman. With Elvira, he felt passion and jealousy. And he doted on his sisters, but this affection—and passion—that he felt for Kara seemed so different.

He had no idea what it meant. He’d used her as a weapon in his private war with Elvira. To show the other woman that she no longer had the power to make him insanely jealous. Which had led to this current insanity.

“Gui?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

She shrugged. “Never mind. Are we going to talk here?”

“No. But we aren’t moving until you acknowledge that you are an attractive woman.”