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CHAPTER ONE
A DEEPLY unsettlingexciteton feel decidedly queasy
Long fingers fu for a tissue tolike a foundry worker She tried to convince herself it was down to the heat of the Spanish evening sun and told herself to snap out of it She’d end up looking a real soggy ether And that mustn’t happen
She had to look good, cool and calm, if only to counteract Ben’s reaction So she’d pulled out all the stops, and dug out herThe crea the last eight weeks, while silvery eye-shadow emphasised the size and shape of her inky-blue eyes, and scarlet lipstick gave her the illusion of courage
She’d slopped around in shorts and cool cotton tops all through this holiday but this evening she earing a dress in silvery-green silk, sleek and hopefully sophisticated She couldn’t be seen in the newest, s
Toland By too’s intentions were She quivered, assailed by a fresh onslaught of nervous tension
Diego Oh, how she loved him—she couldn’t describe how much! In the last seven weeks he had becoht, of every breath she drew And he loved her; she knew he did The knowledge was pure ht he would ested he meet with her and her holiday companions in the disco bar of the exclusive hotel? He kne close Ben and Sophie were to her, twin offspring of her father’s business partner The three of them had always been o when they had taken her under their loving, protective wings
Lisa crossed her fingers, praying that the coo so’s Spanish pride would never let hiive It would be unbearable if the three people she loved best in the world were at daggers drawn
Straightening her shoulders, feeling the long silky fall of her silver-blonde hair brush against the bare skin of her back, she risked a sideways glance Ben, strolling at her side, was seeant sea front He wasn’t looking at her but she knew his bluntly good looking features would be clenched with displeasure if he did turn in her direction
At twenty years of age he was only two years her senior yet he sohed, re comments when, in order to explain why she’d spent little time with him and Sophie, she’d had to confess that she’d met someone
Flushed with the wonder of finding the love of her life here in Spain when she hadn’t really wanted to be here at all, when she had intended spending her gap year back-packing around Europe, she had given his na unnecessarily, ‘He’s Spanish’ Holding the fact that he was theever to walk the planet very close to herheart
Ben had shot her the underbrow look that told her she was in for a lecture ‘How old is this guy? And I presuether, he’s out of work?’
‘Then you presuo works s in one of the hotel restaurants down in Marbella—that’s why he’s free to spend his days with me! And, if you’re really interested, he’s twenty-two’
Only four years her senior and so darkly handsome, so lithe and physically perfect that her heart ached just to look at him
‘So you’ve been picked up by a Spanish waiter,’ Ben delivered drily ‘What a cliché!’
Unforgivably, Lisa giggled because, technically, Ben was spot on She’d thought back to that day over three weeks ago She’d spent the first week here dutifully tagging along with her friends Descending from the hills where their rented ex-farmhouse holiday ho what Ben and Sophie enjoyed Playing golf, -shopping, sipping coffee outside one of the trendy cafés, exploring what they could of the exclusive and highly fashionable nearby Puerto Banus area
That particular day she’d cried off, the glitz beginning to pall, preferring to spend so hilly back country on foot, co acid-yellow T-shirt and sensible trainers The buzzing of athat came too late They had met on a bend in the steep, narrow track Lisa had fallen backwards on to a carpet of wild herbs and the handso, slithering sideways halt