Second Chance in Barcelona Read online

What had she been thinking? That he’d come see her? He’d been an entertainer and she had certainly been entertained. Aroused, in fact. Had she expected him to come across and chat?

  And yet, out of the darkness and across the wooden floor to their table, the dancer strode her way. His heated body suddenly loomed beside her and he leaned close, the scent of steaming male and some amazing masculine cologne mixed, the sensual aroma heady. His eyes captured hers, dark and dangerous, as he held out a large elegant hand.

  ‘I am Felipe.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  FELIPE APPROACHED THE table where the woman with the blue scarf and Diego’s Jen were sitting and he knew this was a bad idea. What was wrong with him?

  His return to Spain on Monday had been arranged and yet the moment he’d seen this woman—felt this woman—she’d cast her net over him like that powerful woman in history. Diego had said, when he’d asked his cousin at the end of the dance, that her name was Cleo. Fitting. Cleopatra. Queen.

  He wanted her. And couldn’t have her. He knew that. He’d never been a believer in casual sex. But perhaps a little post-dance distraction would be acceptable. For that was all it could be—if it could even be that. He would talk to her. Find something to banish the fascination that pulled him to her.

  Already he’d done something frowned upon for his station. To bare his soul in a public performance, let loose his anger and sadness, and find the hope that the dance always gave him since he’d first learned the moves. The dance allowed him to shed who he was, his responsibilities, the emotions of the last days, and yet all through that dance, every turn, he’d seen her.

  Been drawn to her.

  Danced for her.

  Something in her eyes grabbed his chest and squeezed and he was aware that throughout the dance he’d shared that connection with her.

  So here he was.

  Standing beside her in the bright lights of post-performance with his hand out.

  When she put her fingers into his he carried them to his lips and breathed in her scent... He closed his eyes to savour her and smiled at the small tremor he felt go through his mouth from her skin. Opened eyes again to catch her gaze and kiss her wrist.

  Her hand caught warm and precious in his. Destined. Which was ridiculous.

  Clear, cool sapphire-blue eyes, fine features and a determined chin... There was nothing classically beautiful but he found her face utterly arresting. Compelling. Incredibly fascinating. Her brows rose at his intimate salute.

  Not so amusing was his sudden aching thirst for more than that small taste of her. To wrap himself around her and breathe her in as if she could fill his lungs with life.

  ‘Diego says your name is Cleo. Like Cleopatra.’ He lifted out the chair next to hers. ‘Will you allow me to share a drink with you?’ He did not give her his family name. This could go nowhere, after all.

  Diego lifted his hand in acknowledgement and smiled, and then walked around the table to Jen, whose eyes were fixed on his cousin.

  Felipe signalled to the waitress who had appeared with the bottle of sparkling wine he’d ordered and four empty glasses on a tray.

  She put them down and opened it beside them. He indicated the bottle. ‘This is Lonia Cava, from Catalonia. It tastes of white peach, melon and apple.’ His eyes met Cleo’s. ‘I believe it is your birthday?’

  He watched her eyes widen, enough to see the gold amidst the brilliant blue of her irises and then the irises expand enough for him to fall in even further. Her blue gaze seemed bottomless.

  ‘It was. Yesterday,’ she said, her voice low and pleasing. What was it about this woman that made him dream of foolishness he shouldn’t even contemplate? And with a woman from the same country as Sofia’s conman?

  If he wasn’t careful, this would end with piercing sweetness and an unfamiliar longing on his empty flight home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CLEO STRUGGLED WITH his presence, so large and almost vibrating with heat and sex and all the images in her brain from the dance. But she tried very hard not to show it.

  The music started again in the background, taped this time, and after a brief acknowledgement of the newcomer and some compliments on his dance, Diego and Jen became engrossed in their own conversation.

  She was left alone with the dancer. ‘Thank you for the wine.’

  But under the table her hand still tingled. Just that feel of this man’s lips on her wrist had made her belly kick. Which was ridiculous. She was thirty. No virgin.

  She’d been married and divorced, for goodness’ sake. But what she’d felt for Mark had been slow to grow and stupid in hindsight and she wouldn’t do that again. On her side anyway, it had been nothing like this instant, searing awareness and aching need for him to pull her closer.

  This was raw. Crazy. Pulsing with the promise of experiencing something way out of her normal world and she wondered what she’d done to draw someone like him to her. But he was here now.

  There was that temptation to be mad. A magnetic pull to do something out of character for once. To consider whether she could pretend she knew the rules of the game. To feel captured and appreciated and not feel discarded afterwards.

  She didn’t know where it could go. Or even if it should go anywhere. ‘Are you in Australia long?’ It was the least she could ask.

  ‘I leave on Monday.’

  She allowed her eyelids to close as she considered that. Two days and he would be gone. Opened her eyes and nodded. ‘That’s too bad.’ Or maybe not.

  She glanced at her watch. Eleven o’clock. Not yet the witching hour but she was under some kind of spell that she didn’t want to wake from. Something with no future.

  * * *

  She took a sip of her wine and it sparkled and fizzed on her tongue, light and delicious, and divine. Like him. ‘Thank you for the wine.’ She lifted her glass to him. ‘And the birthday wishes. I’ll just have this but then I’ll have to go.’

  He bent his head in her direction, apparently content with her answer, and she thought with a flicker of disappointment that he could’ve asked her to please stay.

  His fingers waved to the door. ‘It is warm. I wish to be outside. Would you like to walk from here? Along the street? Away from this room?’

  And suddenly she knew she would like that. Very much. Just a walk. She wasn’t planning on more, especially with a sexy Spaniard leaving on Monday, not for one night. But she did want to get out of there and spend a few moments with the man opposite and fizz and bubble like the wine and be daring.

  Before she went home.

  To be alone.

  ‘I could walk with you. For a few minutes.’ Whoa. And she’d actually said it. Sometimes she surprised herself.

  Jen looked up, as did Diego, and they both nodded. ‘I vouch that he is a gentleman,’ Diego said, and grinned that sexy, sunbeam smile that had won her friend. Then added more teasingly, ‘Unless you wish otherwise.’

  ‘A walk.’ Felipe drained his glass and stood. ‘A fine idea. Shall we go?’

  Who said, ‘A fine idea’? This sexy Spanish guy apparently. Well, then, she felt like doing something unlike Cleo Wren. Not her usual cautious behaviour.

  She drank the last contents of her own glass, and the pale magic wine tingled and bubbled and made her smile as she reached for her bag.

  Out on the street the alley seemed alive with laughter and the chink of glasses and the glow from streetlamps and pseudo Spanish cantinas. Far too alive and alert for nearly midnight in her usual world. ‘Don’t these people ever sleep?’

  ‘Siesta allows the use of the night.’ He took her hand. The fun came back with the rush and sizzle of a firecracker ready to explode as his fingers wrapped confidently around hers.

  Her face turned up to his. ‘Tell me about Spain. Where do you live?’

  The dark skin around his eyes crinkled. ‘Barc
elona. The most beautiful city in the world.’

  She tossed a smile up at him. ‘How funny. I live in Sydney.’ She spread her free hand in an arc in front of her. ‘The most beautiful city in the world.’

  He laughed and she grinned at the pleasure it gave her to see him relax. He’d seemed so self-contained and serious as he’d danced, and when he’d first come to the table as well. This outside man was easier to walk with.

  Their hands swung lightly between them, entwined, warm, and she glanced down, surprised how easy she felt holding hands with a stranger. She shook her fingers. ‘And why does this feel so relaxed when I don’t know you at all?’

  He tilted his head at her. ‘You forget. We met through the dance. I saw you. It is magic when that happens.’

  ‘Have you been dancing long?’ Did he do it for a living, like Diego sang? Did he own a similar club in Barcelona? All questions she wanted to ask but she bided her time. Impatience didn’t fit in with this night.

  He looked away from her. Pensively. ‘I have danced all my life.’

  She remembered his passion and power. ‘You’re very good.’

  He turned to look down at her and laughed at that. ‘No. I am not very good. I am brilliant.’

  She shook her head at his boasting but his confidence delighted her. ‘Really?’ She arched her brows at him. ‘You’re certainly not shy.’

  This raised his brows. ‘Do you know many Spanish men?’

  She did have limited experience of the Spanish. ‘I know Diego.’

  ‘Diego is a good man. But he, also...’ another amused smile ‘...is not shy.’

  She could vouch for that. But to Jen he was kind and funny as well.

  They’d walked from the alley now and onto the footpath that led to Coogee, away in the distance, past two-and three-storey houses that had glimpses of the ocean from their top balconies. Their hands still swung between them. Cars zoomed past, sweeping them with more light than that cast by the streetlamps, but the number of vehicles was slowing as the night progressed.

  Each time he was illuminated she admired his presence more.

  Maybe he would be back in Australia someday. ‘How do you know Diego?’

  ‘From Barcelona.’

  He asked another question, instead of offering more information about himself. ‘Do you live near the beach?’

  ‘I do.’ Two could play at minimal answers.

  His brows went up as if aware she was retaliating in kind. ‘And does anyone else live with you?’

  And why would you want to know that? But she didn’t say it. ‘I could tell you,’ she agreed, ‘but then I’d have to kill you.’

  He laughed. ‘I like you, Cleopatra.’

  Lord, she was sick of that name. ‘Cleo, please. Nobody calls me Cleopatra.’

  ‘Your mother did.’ He bumped her with his shoulder. Something fun and silly and she bumped him back. As if they’d known each other for many years, not just minutes.

  ‘True. But she was heavily into the queens of Egypt during her pregnancy. I suppose I should be glad I wasn’t called Hatshepsut.’

  He laughed again and she didn’t know why she felt so pleased every time he did. With every chuckle a little more tension seemed to ease from his broad shoulders and his face softened. ‘I like the sound of your mother,’ he said.

  She would have liked you as well. Or fallen for your looks at least. ‘I wish I could tell her that.’

  His face turned sad and she looked up at him, brows drawn, but he went on. ‘I’m sorry. My mother, too, is gone. But we are adults. Is there a husband for Cleopatra?’

  A roundabout way to ask. She enjoyed his odd use of English. ‘There was a husband. A very conceited man. He is gone now, figuratively and legally.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘My condolences. And to clarify, I am not conceited at all. Do not be concerned that I know all. I can dance. But I cannot paint or sing or write a great novel.’

  ‘Do you have a wife?’

  He laughed. ‘No. Much to my grandmother’s despair. There is nobody who would complain that I walk a beautiful woman home in the dark.’

  It had been a long time since a handsome man had called her a beautiful woman. ‘Thank you for the compliment.’ She didn’t believe him but it was nice to pretend. She’d needed this. ‘Are you walking me home? I thought we were just walking down the hill.’ Her cheeks felt hot.

  He looked down at her and his eyes had warmed. ‘Your husband was a fool.’ Said very softly.

  ‘Let’s not discuss him.’ Talk about a mood-breaker.

  He snapped his fingers. ‘Easily.’

  She laughed. He had an unexpected humour. ‘Have you been in Sydney long?’

  ‘Four days.’

  And two more until he flew out again. ‘Six days seems barely enough to get over the flight.’ She knew about rapid long-distance flights. ‘Was there a reason for such a rushed visit?’

  He looked at her and his gaze shifted away to the bottom of the hill where the sounds of the ocean were beginning to whisper to them as they drew closer. ‘Yes.’

  She felt the wall as a cool breeze between them. The harsh-faced man she’d first seen was back. His reasons were not for her information. She didn’t know this man. What was she doing here, alone with him?

  She stopped walking. Looked ahead to the lights of her unit, now in sight. Did he need to know where she lived?

  ‘I can walk from here. Thank you.’

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. Gave a crooked, apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry. I am not the open, sharing person I begin to think you are. To say what I think out loud is hard for me. Unlike you.’

  ‘That’s a sweeping statement, Felipe.’ She saw something flit across his face, a bitterness, as he compressed his lips.

  She decided. ‘But, still, perhaps it is better if I go on alone.’

  She searched his face in the gold light of the streetlamp and something in his eyes made her sad. ‘It was very nice to meet you.’ She reached up and very gently put her lips against his. ‘Goodbye, Felipe.’

  * * *

  Felipe inhaled the scent of her, savoured the feather-light touch of her lips on his, and pulled her closer for a moment in time. She was right. He should let her go.

  Yet he reached forward with his mouth softening, gently exploring, waiting for her to pull back.

  When she remained compliant, he slid his hand around her neck and pulled her snugly against him. Gently brushed her lips with his own, back and forth, and to his satisfaction she opened to him like a flower and he explored the wonder that was Cleo.

  Her taste and scent and softness warmed parts of him that had been cold for too long. Her hand, between their chests, squeezed tighter around his and he pulled her more firmly against his heart.

  After many long, long moments that held the breath of time in the darkness on a footpath near the bottom of the hill, they stepped back and searched each other’s faces—seeing the answer to a question that hadn’t been spoken out loud.

  Still her hand was held warmly and softly and they smiled at each other. ‘Or I could come a little further with you?’

  He slipped his hand further up her wrist to feel her pulse pounding beneath his fingers and she nodded.

  A few minutes later she stopped at a door. Or at least an entry to a block of units.

  In the distance he could hear the pound of crashing waves quite loudly and even taste the tang of salt, but close to her he could mostly smell the enticing scent of Cleo and feel the warmth of her skin brushing against his.

  She lifted keys from her handbag and opened the bottom entry door, turning back to face him. She searched his face and something, he didn’t know what it was, that she saw made her relax. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  ‘Very much,’ he said softly, ignoring the voice of re
ason in his head that told him to move away. Step back. He could not.

  He followed her straight back and charmingly rounded bottom up the stairs, admired her long, slim legs and the way her hips moved as she climbed one flight and then a second. Tension coiled inside him, his attraction to her expanding like a chemical reaction, and by the time they reached her door his heart pounded from proximity to and promise from this mesmerising woman.

  She glanced back at him as she turned the key in the lock, but she didn’t hesitate to push open the door.

  When she moved inside, he followed. Reached back with a steady hand and removed the keys she’d left dangling, then pushed the door shut behind them with a gentle click.

  To the left in the dimly lit room lay a small table and he dropped the keys on his way to reach for her.

  ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered.

  ‘Is there something wrong with crazy between two consenting adults?’

  She sighed but curled her fingers into his shirt and tugged him closer. ‘No. Now is good. You’ll be gone soon.’

  ‘We have tonight. And I am prepared,’ he patted his pocket, ‘to keep you safe.’

  He saw in her eyes that she chose to accept him and she relaxed against his chest. They kissed. His hands slid reverently over her soft breast and slid the blue scarf from her shoulders to kiss her beautiful neck.

  Tomorrow he would think about Monday and going home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CLEO FELT THE slide of silk from her neck as this tall, muscular stranger kissed her skin. Heat flooded her. She should be feeling nervous, or wary, or guilty, but the emotions most prominent were excitement and arousal, and possibly impatience.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured against her skin. ‘Bella.’ When she looked into his eyes they were almost black, yet warm, and totally focussed on her with a wonder she didn’t expect.

  When he’d kissed her before, on the street, it was as if she’d tasted the man within and trusted him without reason but with complete faith. She saw that again now. As if she recognised his moral ground as one she, too, could live with. She’d seen her own need to be someone else for the night reflected in his eyes. What was it about their connection that had brought them to this point so fast and with such a sureness that what they shared would be right? Later, perhaps, she would find the answer. If there was time. But they had all night.