Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

I T WASN ’ T JUST the jaw-dropping luxury of Joaquin’s private plane that struck her, it was the casual way he treated travelling in such luxury. She had only ever seen him on her home turf previously, but this was a glimpse into the life of a very different Joaquin, who enjoyed a lifestyle that few did.

A lifestyle she had been granted a peek into.

Don’t get used to it, the voice in her head cautioned.

‘You have gone very quiet,’ he said.

She turned in her seat, pushing her head into the soft leather to look at him. ‘Have I?’

‘Well, you haven’t babbled for at least five minutes.’

‘Sorry. I’ll try and be sophisticated and blasé the next time I fly on a private jet. I know it’s like catching a bus for you, but this is my first.’

He stared at the lips that had delivered all the sensual delight he had imagined they would. ‘You’re fitting a lot of firsts in.’

His comment sent the heat to her cheeks. ‘Have you ever caught a bus?’

He gave crack of laughter. ‘Yes, several times.’

‘Like royalty? With a security team sitting two rows back?’ She paused before adding, ‘I assume you do have security?’

‘Only when strictly necessary, and always discreet. Airports can be potential areas of concern, and lately the threat level has been...’

‘You have a threat level?’

He mistook her concern. ‘You are perfectly safe; I would never put you in danger.’

‘But you have been in danger?’

‘There was a rather determined stalker.’

The shocking admission chilled her blood. She could not believe how casual he was about it.

‘These days anyone with a public profile is a target for threats. The trick is to be aware, not to be afraid.’

‘I couldn’t live like that.’

He opened his laptop and said nothing, although she decided he was probably thinking she didn’t have to—she was just a visitor with sleeping rights.

She squared her chin and pushed away the thought. She was going to enjoy every moment and not allow thoughts of tomorrow spoil today.

‘Work?’

His head lifted from the screen. ‘No, the latest test match cricket results,’ he said, closing the lid of the laptop and sliding his arm across her shoulders. ‘You’re nervous.’

‘What makes you say that?’ she asked, allowing her head to fall onto his shoulder.

Joaquin smoothed a silky strand of hair from her cheek and, hooking a finger under her softly rounded chin, brought her face around to his. ‘You chatter like a five-year-old on a sugar high when you’re nervous.’

‘I do not—’ She closed her mouth and mimed a zipping action.

In response, Joaquin bent his head and fitted his mouth to hers, flicking his tongue along the sealed outline as he kissed across the plump, generous curve.

Clemmie groaned. ‘Cheating...’ she whispered huskily.

‘Like they say...’ His smile was caressing as he kissed the corner of her mouth, her chin, the tip of her nose. ‘All’s fair in love and—’

She silenced him with a fierce kiss, closing her eyes to prevent the emotional heat of tears she felt press against her eyelids.

Love ...the word he only ever spoke with sarcasm or irony. The word she didn’t allow herself to speak. Most of the time she was okay with that, but sometimes it just hurt so much. Because since she had acknowledged it she wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

‘Look, I might sit upfront for a bit, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Catch up with the pilot. He’s a friend.’

‘Go ahead. I’m fine. I’ve brought a book.’

When he returned half an hour later she had it propped up in front of her. The illusion that she was lost in the pages was ruined when he took it, turned it the right way up, and then put it back.

‘Good read?’

‘I was cloud-counting.’

‘Did you miss me?’

His careless manner annoyed her so much that she almost blurted the truth, but managed to bite her tongue in time.

Maybe he sensed something. She was hoping not anything specific.

But then he dropped the teasing manner and just said, ‘Time to belt up...we are landing.’

It was border control, but not as she knew it. The security check was literally a walk-through, and the waiting car was a chauffeur-driven limo.

She had always considered herself a ‘feet on the ground and muck in’ sort of person, but she realised as she pushed back into the leather upholstery and refused the offer of a glass of wine from the built-in bar, that it would be very easy to adjust to this sort of life.

‘Wake up, sleepyhead we’re here.’

‘Mmm?’ Clemmie blinked and lifted her head fractionally from his shoulder, claiming with a yawn, ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

‘Then you have a serious drooling issue,’ he said, patting his shoulder.

‘We’re here?’ Clemmie cried, suddenly becoming aware of her surroundings as she jerked upright. ‘How long have I...?’

She stopped as she took in the building they were approaching.

Maplehurst was considered grand by most people, but this place took ‘grand’ to a new level! Even though she had been prepared to be shocked, she stared in awe at the fortified castle that towered over them. It must dominate the landscape for miles.

‘Welcome to Castillo Perez,’ he said, watching her.

‘It’s not just that this is a real castle,’ she whispered. ‘I mean...the towers, the walls...it looks like a fortress.’

‘Cosy it is not,’ he inserted drily. ‘It will not surprise you to learn that at one point in its history it served as a prison.’

She spun around in her seat. ‘How old is it?’

‘The templars built the original in the thirteenth century, on Moorish foundations. My family acquired it after the roof was destroyed by fire in the fifteenth century. Back then there were fifteen towers, but we have lost one since then.’

‘Careless,’ she said breathlessly as a sinister-looking metal gate opened across the porticoed entrance to allow their car to sail inside.

‘This is yours? A bit big for one person, isn’t it?’ she suggested, hiding her sudden spike of nerves in flippancy.

‘I haven’t spent more than a week a year here since I inherited—I sometimes forget it’s mine. Actually, several members of the family live here periodically, and they forget too.’

‘And now you’re here to remind them?’ she speculated, finding the play of expressions across his face more fascinating than the courtyard they had arrived in.

‘You could say that.’

Something in his voice made her add. ‘Your mother does know we... I am coming?’

‘Oh, she knows. We had a cosy little chat about it last night.’ His lips twisted in an ironic smile as he replayed the conversation in his head.

Clemmie frowned as he exited the limo with his usual ineffable grace. Smiling at the uniformed figure who held her door open, she got out and walked around the car to join him. He was adjusting his tie and staring up at the building. Clemmie followed suit and tilted her head back.

‘I don’t believe this place...’

It was impossible not to be intimidated by the sheer size of the building that towered above their heads. She looked around, half expecting someone to greet them.

He correctly interpreted her action. ‘There won’t be a welcoming committee.’

‘But they are expecting us?’

‘You keep asking me that?’

‘And you,’ she retorted, ‘keep looking shifty.’

He looked cool and remote. Almost like a stranger, standing there, literally lord of all he surveyed, dressed in an immaculate suit and handmade leather shoes. Perhaps the difference was in the setting and not in him.

He laughed at her accusation, but she noticed he didn’t quite meet her eyes.

With his mother’s parting threat last night in his mind, Joaquin felt a faint scratch of guilt—which he dismissed as irrational. He hadn’t told Clemmie the details of his conversation with his mother because he didn’t want to believe she would follow through with her threat.

He knew she would.

His mother was a spiteful woman, who hit out when thwarted and frequently acted against her own best interests when she felt ignored or insulted.

Telling Clemmie about it would achieve nothing, and for him to successfully negate that threat and protect Clemmie she needed to be here.

He just hoped that the fact he had invited some guests that would require his mother to be on her best behaviour would save Clemmie from the worst of his mother’s spite.

‘This place looks deserted,’ she said.

The men carrying their luggage had already vanished, and they stood alone amidst the carefully tended gardens of a courtyard garden, complete with fountains and statuary and hedges trimmed with surgical precision into the shape of leaping dolphins.

‘Would that it were... I realise it can be intimidating,’ he conceded.

‘I’m not intimidated.’

‘Fair enough.’

Clemmie smiled, grateful that he hadn’t called her out on the obvious lie. The place was as scary as hell—on so many levels.

‘I’ll give you a guided tour later. It’s basically a museum stroke art gallery—at least that’s the way I think of it.’

‘Not home?’

She was not surprised when he shook his head.

‘Is it open to the public?’

‘It is my intention that it will be. I expect the news to go down like a lead balloon. Sharing is not in the Perez family’s vocabulary.’

‘You really have come here looking for a fight,’ she observed.

Was she to be stuck in the middle?

Her accusation drew from him the glimmer of a grim smile. ‘My private apartments are in the bell tower,’ he said, and tipped his head to a building on the far side of the courtyard they stood in. ‘It is as far away as possible from the areas occupied by other family members. I took it over after my grandfather died. Not the furniture, though—his tastes were rather...erm... Gothic. Come on.’

Inside the building, she immediately understood his ‘museum’ description. The stone walls of the corridor he led her down were covered in what had to be priceless tapestries, and the vivid tiles underfoot were obviously ancient. Chandeliers hung from the dark wooden rafters overhead and the entire place had an almost ecclesiastical hush. There was no sound but the noise of their footsteps.

There was nothing Gothic about the suite of rooms that they ended up in. She got the impression of light and space. The furniture was antique, but not in a way that made you afraid to touch it, and books were haphazardly arranged in several bookcases. The walk-in closets in the main bedroom were vast and mirror-lined, and looking at the massive bed, with its Moorish carved headboard, made her imagination spike, causing her body to flush with desire as she imagined ending up there.

‘I could live in that bathroom,’ she called out, emerging from the first of two bathrooms, which boasted a massive copper bath set on a raised plinth. There was nothing ancient about the plumbing.

Joaquin, who had stayed in the salon while she explored, had poured himself a drink.

He offered her one, but she refused.

‘Are you hungry? Dinner won’t be before eight.’

She shook her head. She had eaten on the plane, choosing her food from a menu that had been prepared by a Michelin starred chef.

He put down his glass and walked across the room, coming up behind her to slide his hands to her hips and pull her hard against him.

She sighed, her eyes closing as he lifted her hair to kiss his way up her neck before he turned her to face him.

‘You look good in this,’ he said, tugging her cotton shirt out of her jeans and sliding his hands up her warm back. ‘You look better without it, though.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she agreed, her voice a low, throaty purr as she felt his hand work its way around to her breast. Anticipation hardened her nipples.

‘Talking of clothes...’ he said.

She squirmed. He still hadn’t got as far as her breast. ‘We weren’t.’

‘I’ve bought you a dress for tonight.’

She was already backing away, tugging her shirt down.

‘I already have a dress.’

He sighed. ‘I knew you’d be like this!’ he said, sounding frustrated.

She loosed an incredulous gasp. ‘So you thought you’d soften me up? You thought that if you got me into bed I’d be fine with anything you say or do.’

‘Well, you’ve been fine so far,’ he tossed back audaciously.

‘I am not having you buying me a dress. I am not one of your... I refuse to be a thing ...a clothes horse for you.’

Her occupation of his bed might have a short life span, but she had promised herself at the start that it would be on her terms. That she would be herself. That she would look back and not be sorry or ashamed.

That she would be sad was a given...

‘I have a perfectly good dress; you saw me pack it.’

‘Please stop acting like an oppressed teenager!’ The frustrated words were out there before his brain actually kicked in.

She looked at him the way he imagined a volcano might look before it exploded, annihilating everything within a five-mile radius.

‘It is a perfectly good dress, and you’d look incredible in a sack.’ Her eyes were still narrowed, but she looked less ballistic. ‘But tonight is... A few people besides my family might be there.’

‘“A few people”?’

‘A few politicians...a couple of church representatives—and we have a local celebrity.’ He named a Hollywood legend and her eyes widened. ‘Think of the dress as armour. When you look good, you feel more confident.’

‘I am not scared of your family—and isn’t dressing me up to look like I belong kind of negating the point you’re trying to make?’

‘Point?’ His brow creased.

‘The reason why I’m here. This is you sticking a finger up to your family, to show they can’t dictate your life choices or who your sleep with.’

The fierce pride that shone in her eyes as she challenged him made something shift inside him. Automatically he tried to pull his emotions back, lock them away—only to discover he couldn’t.

Soon this would be over .

The thought came from nowhere and echoed in his head as a sense of alien loneliness crept over him as he thought of a future without Clemmie in it.

‘I know that you are tough and brave and beautiful...’ he said, and then he stopped speaking.

‘What is it?’ she snapped out belligerently, one hand still fending him off, the other tucking her shirt into the waistband of her jeans.

He looked at her and saw her slipping inexorably away from him. He knew that he would do anything to stop that happening.

‘You are a total idiot, Joaquin,’ she said. She sniffed loudly and glared at him, her green eyes flashing. ‘You know that?’

He nodded, still only half in the moment. His brain was playing catch-up with the emotions that had somehow slid through the wall he had built around them. ‘Yes, I do,’ he agreed, thinking he was not just an idiot, he was also a blind, arrogant fool.

Some idiots are born and others are self-made, he decided, and the taste of self-contempt was bitter on his tongue as he realised that he had found the thing he had been too cowardly to even acknowledge he craved and had almost thrown it away.

He had never thought to avoid love—why protect yourself from something that didn’t exist, someone who didn’t exist?

The level of his arrogance now seemed shocking.

‘I’ve got a big family, Clemmie.’

‘This I know,’ she cut back, puzzled by the emotions she could feel rolling off him.

‘But I’ve always been alone.’

She knew what he meant without him explaining. Their eyes connected and clung and the moment stretched, emotion buzzing in the air between them.

Was the longing she felt inside her or in his eyes?

Then the vibration of the phone in his pocket broke the spell.

Joaquin forced his taut facial features into something approximating a smile and ignored the buzzing.

‘Wear what you like—and, yes, I know you will anyway. But it is a very nice dress...’

She stood there, her arms folded across her chest, wondering what had just happened.

‘Just look at it,’ he said.

She gave a tight nod as his phone started buzzing again.

‘All right, I will look at it,’ she said, showing that she could be a grown-up too.

It occurred to her to ask how he’d conjured up a dress, presumably in the right size, but thinking about the trip here, and her brief taste of the world he inhabited, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

He snapped his fingers and things happened. Or more likely he just typed some terse instruction into his phone that ended Make it happen. And it did!

Joaquin acknowledged her concession with a nod minus any air of triumph and walked away to refresh his glass. ‘I don’t want to argue.’

He sounded... Not tired... He sounded... She couldn’t quite put a name to it.

‘No...?’ she said.

‘No, I want to make love to you.’

His stare she could put a name to.

Smouldering.

‘That works for me,’ she whispered, walking into his arms.

As much as part of her wanted to reject the dress she found wrapped in layers of tissue, with a discreet hand-sewn label inside, she knew it was beautiful.

Everything about it was beautiful.

The buttery silk texture, the colour—which was one shade deeper than her eyes—and the elegant simplicity of it. It was sleeveless, high at the neck, and dipping low at the back to reveal her shoulder blades.

It was simply a beautiful thing, and when she tried it on and saw that it clung in the all the right places, the bias-cut skirt swishing beautifully when she walked... Well, the choice was made.

But if he said a single word, or even gave her an I told you so look, she would wear jeans!

He hadn’t mentioned the new shoes, which were soft silver leather, with a heel higher than she would normally have chosen. But the slim jewelled diagonal strap made them surprisingly comfortable to wear.

She sat down at the dressing table to add a second layer of gloss to her lips. She had kept her make-up to a minimum—just a touch of blusher to her cheeks and a swipe of mascara. She put the finishing touches to her hair, which she had chosen to pin up loosely. It was less about allowing tendrils to fall casually round her face and more a matter of going with the flow.

She had just finished when she heard a door in the suite open and close. Fastening a pearl stud in her ear, she walked towards the door and paused to view the back of her dress in the mirror.

She raised her voice to say, ‘I still couldn’t contact Mum. I’m starting to get worried.’

‘She sent a message through my office,’ he called back. ‘Rose just gave it to me. Your mum is in a black spot. The phone signal is intermittent and there’s no Wi-Fi connection to speak of.’

Clemmie, who had been checking her phone at regular intervals since she’d arrived, gave a sigh of relief.

‘I hope you didn’t mind me giving Mum your contact details for emergencies,’ she yelled, then stopped as she found herself looking at his reflection in the mirror...tall and supremely elegant in his formal black tie.

Her senses leapt, making her aware of every nerve-ending in her body, and her pulses were madly racing as she spun around to face him, the silk of her dress swishing against the bare skin of her legs.

‘I’ve sent back a message via Rose to tell her that you are here and safe...and looking very beautiful.’

She felt a flush of pleasure at the compliment that was reflected in the look in his dark eyes. ‘Not the beautiful bit?’

‘No...’ He delivered the throaty admission with a smile that seemed strained.

‘Did...did Mum say anything else?’

Like, Don’t fall in love with men who don’t love you back?

She pushed the thought away. He lusted after her, and while that lasted she intended to enjoy it and pretend that delicious, mind-blowing sex was enough.