Irritated, he had to make a conscious effort to put his libido back in its box. There was a time and a place for such indulgences and this was neither… It seemed a good moment to remind himself that she was not even his type!
He liked tall, athletically built women and she barely reached his shoulder, he recalled as his glance slid down her slim bare legs.
His hooded lids came down. Not close to his type, he reminded himself.
‘A busman’s holiday?’
She jumped at the sound of his voice and slid the dusty tome balanced on her knee into the vacant space on the top shelf. She did it with the care such a rare treasure deserved, which gave her the time to gather the wits that had gone walkabout the moment she had heard his voice.
She cleared her throat and pitched her voice at a cool level, ignoring the shivery tremors in her stomach as she told him, ‘I was looking at your books.’ The book she had extracted had been the only one Nell felt able to touch without protective gloves and yet still would have been counted a gem in many collections.
Did he know, she wondered, just how many rare and precious books this room held?
‘Could you not have looked at them on ground level?’
Nell ignored the question. ‘Do you realise that there is no system here at all?’
His brows rose at the admonitory heat in her voice.
‘There are some incredibly rare books here.’
‘And it’s a great shame they belong to an unappreciative philistine?’
‘You said it.’
‘I believe my great-grandfather was something of a collector.’ Over the years he had suggested to his grandmother that the collection be catalogued, but she had considered the project a costly waste of money.
Nell’s indignation flared. That someone so uninformed should have access to such a treasure seemed sacrilege.
‘Well, he’ll be turning in his grave right now because the condition of some…’ She made a clicking noise of disapproval with her tongue and shook her head. ‘Actually it’s criminal. There are some incredibly rare—’
Luiz’s amused drawl cut across her animated protest. ‘I have rarely seen a woman display such passion for anything unless it is a designer handbag.’
Nell couldn’t let the sexist comment pass unchallenged. ‘Really, if the women you know only get excited by handbags it speaks volumes for your skill in bed, and,’ she added, thinking of her limited collection at home, ‘you probably know more about designer handbags than I do.’
Her satisfaction at delivering the cutting comeback lasted for the two seconds it took her brain to supply an image of tumbled sheets and entwined limbs, fair skin looking very pale against the dark.
It had been clearly a major error to introduce the subject of the bedroom when she was talking to this man. Nell squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the explicit mental images playing in her head.
‘I didn’t mean—’ To mentally undress you.
‘To issue a challenge?’
She opened her mouth to protest but before she could offer a hasty placatory reply he added, ‘Or cast a slur on my masculinity…’ There was something mingled with the sardonic amusement that sent a shivery surge of sensation along her nerve endings. In her eagerness to deny the suggestion Nell almost fell off her perch as she shook her head vigorously in horrified denial.
‘Be careful!’
His sharp warning echoed the voice in her own head, though the voice in her head was not so worried about falling off the ladder as the knot of excitement pulsing low in her belly!
Good God, Nell, get a grip, girl! This is what happens when you don’t have a life. You step outside your comfort zone and the first OK male you see makes your hormones go haywire.
Nell’s darting eyes connected for a split second with the dark gleaming gaze of the man below and a small sigh of alarm left her lips as adrenaline and desire surged through her. She drew back, her brows knitting in consternation as she shuffled her bottom back along the top step until she could feel the spines of the books dig into her back.
All right, better than OK.
She took a couple of calming deep breaths and injected a note of amusement into her voice as she leaned forward, her hair swinging like a bell around her face.
‘Truth told, I’m more interested in finding Lucy than exploring your male insecurities.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not that insecure.’
That was the problem, she thought.
‘Are you planning on coming down from there any time soon?’
In response to the question Nell gave a small shriek, drawn from her lips as her foot slipped. ‘Oops,’ she said as she grabbed at the rail to steady herself.
Below her she heard him growl something in husky Spanish that didn’t sound polite—not polite but very sexy. She made the rest of her descent more carefully until three steps from the ground a pair of big hands spanned her waist.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Set safely on the floor, she spun around pink-cheeked and indignant.
‘Preventing a potential accident.’
The cool explanation drew a derisive snort from Nell, or it would have if her choppy breathing had allowed anything but a faint sigh to emerge from her parted lips.
‘You shouldn’t climb ladders, Miss Frost, if you have no head for heights.’
Very conscious that his hands were still resting lightly on her waist, Nell lifted her chin and brushed a shiny skein of hair from her face.
To her intense relief Luiz’s hands fell away, but he was still standing close enough for her to feel the heat from his lean body.
‘Actually I have no problem with heights.’ Tall Spaniards with fallen angel faces were another matter.
She struggled to tear her eyes from the sternly sensual outline of his wide mobile mouth and cleared her throat as she recalled his kiss.
‘It’s these shoes.’ She glanced down at her sensible shoes and Luiz followed the direction of her gaze. ‘The soles have no grip.’
More of a grip than she had, she reflected with a small grimace of self-disgust. It was a struggle to keep focused and concentrate. Her mind kept drifting off on dangerous tangents.
And you’re not the sort of girl who has sexual fantasies, she reminded herself as she felt his steadying hand on her arm.
‘You have very small feet.’ Luiz’s glance lifted, the distracted expression she saw in his eyes vanishing as he scanned her face and added in an accusing manner, ‘Are you all right?’
She kept her eyes trained on the floor and lied through her teeth. ‘Fine.’ So the man was sexy—it wasn’t as if she had some sort of uncontrollable sex drive.
Luiz watched as a warm tide of colour rose up her slender neck until her face was aglow with colour. Moments earlier she had been deadly pale. ‘You don’t look fine.’
Her chin came up, though she continued to dodge his gaze, studying a point over his left shoulder.
‘I can’t help the way I look.’
And he, Luiz realised with a sense of shock, could not help liking the ways she looked—a lot. He had not wanted more than sex from a woman in a long time, to do so now with a woman he barely knew felt like a betrayal to Rosa’s memory. Not that there could be a comparison with his feelings now. Rosa had known him inside out and he her, they had grown up together