More Than Neighbors (18 page)

Leopold looked at the painting and then back at her with a broad smile. “Yes, I bought it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cat nuzzled his chest affectionately.

“I was embarrassed that you’d guess I couldn’t live without having something of you near me, though I initially told myself I’d only bought it as an art lover. The fact that I couldn’t sleep without staring at it for a while, or that it was the first thing I looked at when I woke up in the morning, didn’t seem to matter. But now . . .” Suddenly, his face grew serious. He sat up on the mattress, took her in his arms, and made her sit up, too, until her eyes were at the same height as his. With his gray eyes heavy with emotion, he added, “I want to see the real Catalina every morning for the rest of my life. Tell me you’ll marry me, Catalina. I won’t let you leave my side again.”

Cat gazed at him, making no attempt to hide her feelings, and answered, “Leo, I love you.” He squeezed her tight and kissed her until, through the mist of his passion, he noticed that Catalina’s hands were on his chest, trying to push him away.

“What is it?” he asked with concern.

“I’ll marry you, Leo, but on one condition.”

Seeing the golden specks flashing in her mischievous brown eyes, he frowned. “Hmm, I don’t like the sound of this.”

“I want you to admit that you believe in curses now.”

For a moment, Leopold didn’t know what she was referring to, but he soon remembered Catalina’s words of warning the first time he’d kissed her. His expression utterly serious, he placed a hand on his heart and admitted, “Catalina Stapleton, I confess that I was a terrible skeptic. When you warned me that anyone who kisses you falls hopelessly in love with you, you were right. You’re a sorceress.”

“See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” She gave him an impish smile.

“So you’ll marry me? Catalina, answer me, will you? I can’t stand this uncertainty,” he implored her, giving her a gentle nudge.

She lifted her nose snootily and adopted a serious tone. “My dear, uptight neighbor, of course I’ll marry you; I can’t wait to beat you again at chess.”

“You wicked woman!” He pounced on her and pressed her against him with all his strength.

“Ouch! You’re squashing me!” Cat protested, though her arms were wrapped around his neck, squeezing him as though she would never let go.

“Catalina?” The rough edge to Leopold’s voice, so close to her ear, set off an electric current that ran up and down her spine, making each vertebra shudder one at a time.

“Yes, Leo?”

“I don’t know how you do it, Catalina, but whenever I’m near you I feel like a wild animal. My whole being needs to make love to you again,” he whispered, as he sank his head into the hollow of her throat and nibbled the soft skin of her neck.

Cat arched toward him, and her swollen breasts and belly pressed against his muscular torso. Leopold’s excitement instantly reignited. “An animal . . . hmm, I like it . . .” A burning, sensual tone in Catalina’s voice, which he’d never heard before, made any last hint of Leopold’s self-control disappear, and all he could think of was melting into her again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2015 Inés Valero

Isabel Keats is just an ordinary woman who one day felt like writing. A mother of a large family (dog included), she is lucky to have something more valuable than gold: free time, even if not as much as she’d like. She loves romance and happy endings, so in short, she writes romance because at this point in her life it’s what she most wants to read.

Isabel Keats—winner of the HQÑ Digital Prize with
Empezar de nuevo
(
Starting Again
), shortlisted for the first Harlequín Short Story Prize with her novel
El protector
(
The Protector
) and for the third Vergara-RNR Romantic Novel Contest with
Abraza mi oscuridad
(
Embrace My Darkness
)—is the pseudonym concealing a graduate in advertising from Madrid, a wife, and a mother of three girls. To date she has published almost a dozen works, including novels and short stories.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Photo © 2013 Thomas Frogbrooke

Simon Bruni is a literary, academic, and general translator from Spanish. In a career that has seen him translate everything from video games to sixteenth-century Spanish Inquisition manuscripts, he has found the pull toward literary translation irresistible. He is a two-time winner of a John Dryden Translation Prize, in 2011 for Francisco Pérez Gandul’s cult prison thriller,
Cell 211
, and in 2015 for Paul Pen’s harrowing short story, “The Porcelain Boy.” He has translated several novels for AmazonCrossing.