Nevertheless his rogue body could not be dictated to by his mind. Desire was hot and instantaneous.
He put a smooth smile on his face and tried to ignore the increasing heat in his body. ‘Welcome to my home.’
Maddie tried not to let Nicolás de Rojas see how affected she was just by watching him walk towards her. She felt like snorting incredulously. Home was a woeful understatement for this seriously palatial house. Once, a long time ago, her home had been as grand, but now it was a crumbling shell.
She didn’t trust his urbane charm for a second. His eyes were like shards of ice and she shivered imperceptibly. Forgetting her resolve to appear nothing but aloof, she blurted out, ‘Why did you invite me here?’
Quick as a shot he answered, ‘Why did you come?’
Maddie flushed, all of her reasons for coming feeling very flimsy and transparent now. She should have just sent the invitation back in tiny pieces as she’d intended. But she hadn’t.
She squared her shoulders. ‘I came because it’s been two weeks and I want to let you know that I’ve still no intention of going anywhere.’
Nicolás tipped his head slightly. She barely saw him make the gesture, and then a man appeared at his side.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Madalena Vasquez, I’d like to introduce you to my house manager, Geraldo. He will show you around and see that you have everything you need. If you wouldn’t mind excusing me? I have some new guests to attend to.’
And just like that he had turned and was walking away. Maddie felt inexplicably bereft, dropped …
The intensity of emotion he aroused so effortlessly was still high. Maddie cursed herself for allowing any hint of vulnerability through. She had to be strong enough to withstand Nicolás de Rojas and his brand of arrogance or she’d never survive.
She turned to the man waiting by her side with a big forced smile. ‘Thank you.’
Maddie’s head was spinning by the time Geraldo, who had proved to be a charming host, showed her back into the main courtyard, which was now thronged with people. Men were in tuxedos and women glittered in long dresses and jewels.
The reality of the sheer opulence she’d just seen was a little hard to take in. The home itself—the few main rooms she’d been shown—was exquisitely furnished but also comfortable. Accessible. It was a home. And that had affected her deeply. Her own home had always been more like a cold and austere show house, full of dusty antiques. Unfortunately all of them had long since been sold to fund her father’s downward spiral.
‘I’ll leave you here now … if that’s okay?’
Maddie swung her gaze back to the pleasant house manager and realised he was waiting for her answer. ‘Of course. You must be busy. I’m sorry to have taken you away from your duties.’
He said urbanely, ‘It was a pleasure, Señorita Vasquez. Eduardo, who is our head winemaker, will see to it that you taste from the best of our selection of wines tonight.’
Another equally pleasant man was waiting to escort Maddie over to where the wine-tasting tables had been set up. It was only when she looked up and caught the coolly sardonic expression on Nicolás’s face, where he stood head and shoulders above the crowd across the room, that she understood she was being effectively herded in exactly the direction he wanted her to go. And being shown exactly what he wanted her to see.
The transparency of his actions and the way she’d almost forgotten what was happening here galled her. So she merely skated her own gaze past his and made Eduardo the focus of her attention as he explained the various wines to her.
After a few minutes Maddie managed to take advantage of someone coming up to ask Eduardo a question and escape, turning instinctively away from the direction where Nicolás de Rojas was holding court with a rapt crowd. She hated being so aware of where he was at any moment, as if some kind of invisible cord linked her to him. And yet, a small snide voice reminded her, as soon as puberty had hit she’d had that awareness of him as a man.
She walked through a silent, dimly lit room full of luxuriously stuffed couches and rosewood furniture and out onto a blissfully quiet decked area which hugged the outside of the house. Little pools of golden light spilled out onto the ground, and Maddie went and curled her hands over the wooden fence which acted as a perimeter.
The strains of a jazz band playing for the very select crowd wafted through on the breeze. She smiled cynically. Nicolás de Rojas could have stopped her at the front door and she would have already been in awe of his screaming success and wealth.
The wide gravelled drive, the rows upon rows of well-tended fertile vines and gleaming outbuildings had been enough of a display. That was what she wanted for her own estate—to see it flourishing as it had when she was a young girl, with rows of vines full of plump sun-ripened grapes …
She heard a noise and whirled around. Her heart thumped hard in her chest at the sight of Nicolás de Rojas in the doorway of the room behind her, shoulders blocking out the light, hands in pockets. He was so rakishly handsome that for a moment she forgot about everything and could only see him.
Maddie called up every shred of self-control and smiled. But it was brittle. Seeing Nicolás’s house up close like this had affected her far more deeply than she liked to admit.
‘Did you really think that showing off your success would make me scurry to the nearest airport with my tail between my legs?’
His jaw was gritted but he stepped out of the doorway, making Maddie’s breath hitch in her throat when his scent reached out and wound around her. She couldn’t back away. The wooden posts were already digging into her soft flesh.
‘It must feel very dull here after the bright lights of London … not to mention the ski slopes of Gstaad. Aren’t you missing the season?’
Maddie flushed deep red. She smiled even harder, hiding the hurt at that particular memory. ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a Celebrity Now! reader, Mr de Rojas.’
Maddie had long since berated herself that she should have been suspicious when her flighty mother had expressed a desire to see her—even offering to fly her out to meet her in the wealthy ski resort for a holiday. This was the same mother who had refused to help Maddie out because she believed that she’d already sacrificed enough for her daughter.
As soon as she’d arrived at the ski resort it had become apparent that her mother needed her daughter to help foster an image of dutiful motherhood. She’d been intent on seducing her current husband, who was divorced, but a committed and devoted father. Maddie had been too disappointed and heartsore to fight with her mother, and had given in to a cloying magazine shoot in which for all the world they’d appeared the best of friends.
Nicolás answered easily, ‘I happened to be on a plane on my way home from Europe. The air hostess handed me the wrong magazine, but when I saw who was gracing the cover I couldn’t resist reading all about your wonderful relationship with your mother and how you’ve both moved on so well from the painful split with your father.’
Maddie felt sick. She’d read the article too, and couldn’t believe she’d been so hungry for affection that she’d let her mother manipulate her so crassly. She pushed the painful reality of her mother’s selfishness aside.
‘This evening was a wasted exercise on your part, de Rojas. You’ve merely made me even more determined to succeed.’
The fact that he thought he had her so neatly boxed up and judged made fresh anger surge up inside Maddie.
‘I’ve just spent two weeks in a house with no electricity, and as you can see I’m not running screaming for the