He crossed the room and pulled back the curtains, allowing the blistering brilliance of the morning sun to illuminate the room. Penny blinked at the harsh light, and the even harsher expression on Raul’s dark face.
‘Really, Raul, aren’t you overreacting a bit?’ she responded drily. ‘I can’t see myself being kidnapped out of the Hyatt Regency, somehow.’ And, sliding out of bed, dragging the sheet around her naked body, she crossed to where he stood lounging against the window-frame. ‘And you did promise to take me to England,’ she reminded him peevishly. ‘I’ve arranged—’
‘Not now, Penny; I haven’t the time to argue.’ He cut her off in mid-sentence. ‘I don’t want you here. I want you back in Spain, where Ava and Carlos can look after you.’ Pushing away from the window, he swatted her bottom as he brushed past her. ‘Do as you’re told and hurry. You now have only eight minutes.’
The master has spoken, Penny thought angrily, but still she did as she was told. Packing took a matter of minutes, and after a lightning-fast shower she pulled on her briefs, a pair of white cotton trousers and a blue halter-top, slipped white espadrilles on her feet and she was ready. But silently simmering with resentment.
She marched into the sitting room, ready to demand an explanation. Raul knew perfectly well that she had arranged to meet her friend Amy in London at the weekend. Now he was suggesting that she stay in Spain and wait for him like a dutiful little wife. Except she wasn’t his wife! And what had he said earlier? ‘The honeymoon can’t last for ever.’
She paused. Was that how Raul viewed the past few idyllic months that they had been together—a honeymoon for him, without the complication of having to marry the girl in the first place?
‘Dios, Penny, are you determined to make a spectacle of yourself?’ Raul’s angry voice sliced the air.
‘Spectacle?’ She glanced up at his frowning face. What had she done wrong now?
‘No bra, bare arms, bare back—is there no end to your stupidity?’
Penny looked down at her neat blue halter-top and back up at her lover’s grim face. ‘Apparently not,’ she muttered, and she wasn’t just referring to her clothes.
‘No matter; you haven’t time to change.’ And, grabbing her arm, he bustled her out of the suite and into the waiting elevator.
‘Even if I had, I wouldn’t,’ she snapped defiantly. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, it is the middle of June, the temperature is over a hundred degrees, and it will not be much different in Andalusia. I couldn’t give a fig if the women here go around covered from head to foot. I am Christian and British and will wear what I please.’
She almost added, So there. Much as she loved Raul, he could be the most arrogant, chauvinistic man in the world sometimes.
‘Happy you got that off your chest?’ Raul drawled mockingly, with a cynical, sensual glance at that particular part of her anatomy.
Penny felt the colour surge in her face but wasn’t sure whether it was anger or arousal that was making her blush. ‘Yes,’ she snapped back, and turned her head away as he slipped one arm around her waist, his head lowering towards hers. She wasn’t in the mood to kiss and make up. She was angry, confused and bitterly disappointed.
Perhaps it was just as well that they were parting for a while. The events of the last twelve hours had left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. She had glimpsed herself through a stranger’s eyes—those of an Arab prince—and she did not like what she saw. Plus, Raul’s attitude did not help one bit.
It was as if coming to an Arab country had heightened in him the characteristics of his Moorish forefathers. The Moors had once dominated southern Spain for nearly eight hundred years, and, watching Raul now, she could quite imagine him locking her away in purdah, given half a chance.
His home, situated west of Granada, was built in the Moorish style—all graceful arches and elegant balconies but with iron grilles at the windows. A central courtyard, sheltered from the burning heat of the summer by ancient olive and lemon trees, also effectively blocked off the outside world.
The land had been in Raul’s family for generations—a huge estate with vast expanses of olive groves stretching across the gently waving plains and higher up into the hills where roamed cattle and the horses which Raul kept as a hobby. She loved the place, but it was isolated...
She glanced up at him, her disturbing thoughts clearly reflected in her blue eyes. But at that moment the elevator doors swished open and Raul straightened to his full height, his dark face impassive as he ushered her across the elegant foyer and out into the scorching heat of the morning sun.
A chauffeur opened the door of a waiting limousine and, without a word being spoken, Penny found herself in the back seat with Raul beside her.
‘I suppose I should be honoured you can actually spare the time to take me to the airport,’ Penny sniped, still hurting at his high-handed action in shipping her back to Spain. A long arm curved around her slender shoulder and Raul’s other hand caught her chin and turned her face towards his.
‘Penny. My darling girl. Please don’t be angry.’ One long finger traced the outline of her mouth and a soft sigh escaped her. Why was she fighting with him? She loved him; one touch, a tender word and she ached for him.
‘I’m not angry.’ She smiled slightly. ‘Only sad. It’s just hit me that we have never spent a night apart from the day I moved in with you. I will miss you,’ she confessed with blunt honesty.
Raul hugged her to him as his dark eyes caught and held hers. ‘I hate for us to be apart even for one night. You must know that, honey. But I wasn’t totally honest with you last night. I was furious that you met the Sheikh but it wasn’t just that. The trouble at the plant was a contributing factor for my appallingly bad temper.’
‘Oh, Raul, you should have confided in me. That’s what partners do, you know,’ she chided him gently, adding, ‘I’m not dumb; you can discuss your work with me.’
‘I should not have called you dumb,’ he admitted, planting a brief kiss on her nose. ‘Naive, maybe, but I had no right to insult your intelligence. Only, it is hard for me, this relationship thing! I have been too many years on my own. But I will try and do better, I promise.’
His dark head bent and his mouth gently covered hers. A long, satisfying kiss followed, Raul finally ending it by easing her head back against the seat and groaning, ‘I have a suspicion that kissing in public, even in a car, is against the law here.’
Penny snuggled into the curve of his broad shoulder. Once more at ease, she prompted, ‘So tell me about the plant. It sometimes helps to talk out a problem with a third party, I find.’ And it might stop her thinking about the hardness of his thigh against her own, and what she would really like to be doing.
‘Such wisdom from one so young,’ he mocked, but continued in a more serious vein. ‘I was your age—twenty-three—fresh out of university with a degree in engineering specialising in design. I thought I would work at a large firm in Granada and live happily at the hacienda, helping out on the estate for the rest of my days. Unfortunately my father died. I discovered the ranch was mortgaged to the hilt, and that a salary, however good, would not allow me to redeem the mortgage in one lifetime. That is why I started my own business—’
‘I didn’t realise. I simply assumed you had always been disgustingly wealthy,’ Penny interrupted teasingly.
‘So did I,’ he said with dry irony. ‘Until I found out different. It is only in the past ten years I have actually been solvent. And this desalination plant in Dubai was to be my crowning achievement.
‘I designed it. It is an innovative and slightly controversial design. Unfortunately one small part needs to be rethought. I have to stay here and solve the problem, because the rewards if I succeed are astronomical—not solely in monetary