The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress (4 page)

She pulled her eyes away and turned around, dumping the papers onto her
tiny kitchen table, ignoring the reports that slid back down onto the floor.  “You didn’t have to pick me up,” she said as she sifted through the papers.  “I could have met you somewhere.”

Gaston walked into the apartment and looked around.  It was just as messy as it had been last week but
it seemed worse with more lights on.

He couldn’t stand the chaos,
possibly because it was yet another indicator that she was hurting about something.  Was it another man?  Had she just broken up with someone and this is the result?  He remembered her being meticulous and organized, so he lifted his eyes to watch her instead.  When he took in her dress, he felt as if someone had punched him in the gut.  The dress wrapped around her slender frame, making her breasts look even larger, fuller.  On any other woman, that dress would look ridiculous but on Elana, she looked….ethereal.  And sensuous. 

Damn!  His hands wanted to cup those breasts, to find out if her nipples were as sensitive as they used to be.  She’d gone up in flames when he’d touched her all those years ago.  She’d been a little kitten, always purring whenever he came close, her smile lighting up his day. 

There was sadness in her eyes now and he wondered who had put that there.  She was cautious, wary.  And she refused to look at him.  She was doing something with the papers on her table, sorting them somehow.  But really, all he wanted right now was for her to look up at him so he could see her eyes. 

She’d worn makeup tonight.  And her hair was a soft halo, falling in a silken wave down over her shoulders.  She really was an astonishingly lovely woman
.  It was also surprising that she lived in such a rundown apartment building.  Her father had money, not as much as he used to thanks to Gaston’s attempts to pressure the man into giving him back the damn book.  But her father wasn’t poor.  Surely he could spare some of his precious money to take better care of his daughter.  She might be an unfaithful, lying, deceitful woman, but she didn’t deserve to live like this. 

His whole body tensed when she bent lower.  He could see her breasts more cl
early and she was wearing a sexy, black lace bra.  Was she doing this on purpose?  Was she trying to torment him?  He swung his eyes away, only to have them come right back to those full, ripe breasts.  Had the other men in her life taken advantage of those lovely swells?  Had they known the same kind of fulfillment with just the soft escape of her breath when he touched her? 

“Are you almost ready to go?” he growled out, then felt like an ass because her eyes looked up at him with a hurt
, wounded expression.  He wanted to see her eyes, but not like that.  He wanted them to be full of life and happiness.  Or even better….No!  Pulling his mind away from that thought, he focused on the present. 

Elana had no idea what she’d done, but he was suddenly furious with her.  His eyes were blazing fire and his body looked like he wanted to hit something.  “Um…yes.”  She quickly gathered up her materials and grabbed her purse.  “I’m ready.”  She would sort these in the car on the way to the restaurant, not wanting to keep him waiting and make him angrier. 

Gaston wished he could take back the words, then wished he didn’t care if she was hurt or not.  She was too damn beautiful and he forgot how expressive her brown eyes could be.  She’d never been able to hide anything from him, her emotions always right there in her eyes no matter how sad or happy she was. 

He took her coat off of the hanger and followed her out the door, holding the coat for her to slip her arms into.  If his hands accidentally brushed the soft, sensitive skin at the nape of her neck, he told himself that he couldn’t help that.  He was just making sure that her coat was on before he pulled away.  Her hair was soft, he thought.  He liked the way it ran over his fingers when he pulled his hands away from her shoulders. 

“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.  She flipped her hair out, making sure that all of it was outside of her coat.  Gaston had seen women do that countless times but somehow, when Elana did it, there was something much more sensuous about the action.  Something that made him want to lift his hand and let his fingers tangle in her hair.  He wanted to brush his fingers across the back of her neck, to feel her soft sighs as he explored her body. 

He cleared his throat and opened her apartment door.  “Let’s go,” he said gruffly. 

There was that anger again and Elana cringed, looking up at him as if she might be able to discern the cause in his dark, black eyes.  There was a vein throbbing on his jaw and he looked like he was gritting his teeth.  He must have had a bad day at work, she thought.  Which was strange, because in the past, Gaston had always been in complete control of his work.  She used to tease him about how wide his control was, how far reaching his power.  He’d never allow anything happen that he hadn’t already anticipated.  Business was like a giant game of chess for him and he was always the master, always the one with the check mate carefully planned out even before some of the players knew they were participants in the game.  Nothing was a surprise to this man.  Or at least it hadn’t been before. 

She sighed heavily as she walked down the quiet, dark hallway.  Everything was so different now.  Before, he would have walked into her place and kissed her until she couldn’t think any longer.  If they’d actually made it out into the hallway, he would have stopped her in this kind of darkness and kissed her again, driving her crazy with his hands and his mouth, even his legs at times.  The man was sensuality personified.  He could make her heart stop with just a look or a touch. 

Now, it was just tense and awkward.  Why had he looked her up again?  Why had he come to her apartment earlier this week?  He must be up to something, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure it out. 

The restaurant he drove them to was in the center of the city and one of the best.  She knew that would be the case because Gaston
always had the best of everything.  He would never settle for second best.  Not in his business life nor in his personal life.  They were immediately led to a table near the windows overlooking the city.  She thanked the waiter while Gaston ordered a bottle of wine so she didn’t have a chance to tell him that she didn’t want any wine.  She didn’t like drinking during business meetings.  Besides, she hadn’t had alcohol in a long time.  The last time she’d had wine was when she’d had dinner with her father last month and she’d only had a few sips. 

When they were alone again, she looked across the table anxiously, wondering what he was thinking.  Why was he so silent?  It was as if he were waiting for something, waiting for her to speak.  And then she remembered the presentation and gasped, reaching down to her purse.  “Sorry,” she said with a slight
, awkward smile.

She pulled out the papers, but then had to wait until the wine steward poured the wine.  It was an irritating delay and she wanted to hurry through her presentation.  The sooner she finished, the sooner she could end this dinner and
get away from this enigmatic man.  She hated sitting across from Gaston, trying to second guess his moods that seemed to be swinging from one extreme to another. 

“Well,
the experiments are for…” she started to say, then stuttered, not sure where to go.  If he’d approached her about offering her a grant, he probably knew all about her experiments and her goal. 

“Why did you stop?” he asked softly, his eyes watching her carefully. 

Elana cringed with the look he was giving her and her embarrassment over the gaffe.  “Well, because…I don’t want to waste your time on things you already know.”

He leaned forward and took a sip of his wine. “Continue.  I’ll let you know if I need you to stop for any reason.”

She could feel the heat stealing up her neck and was glad that the lights were low and the only light between them was the candlelight in the middle of the linen covered table.  She didn’t want him to know how much his words, his voice affected her. 

The waiter arrived to take their order and Elana looked up at the man, trying to hide her irritation at the interrup
tion.  She wasn’t really hungry and just wanted to get this over with.  “I’ll just have a salad,” she said, not even bothering to look at the menu to figure out which salad she wanted.  She was sure that there were probably several salads, all with creative designs and interesting ingredients.  But she didn’t care, just wanting to ensure that she received the grant money.  In order to do that, she needed to convince this inscrutable man that her work was worthwhile. 

Gaston’s eyes glared at her, but she didn’t even notice since she was looking down at her charts and graphs once again, waiting impatiently for the waiter to go away. 

“She’ll have the Pollo al Forno with the oysters and pearl soup.  She’ll be having dessert as well, so when we’re finished with the meal, be sure and bring over something with chocolate.  I’ll have the sea bass with the tiramisu for dessert.”  With those instructions, Gaston handed the menus back to the waiter who bowed away from their table quickly. 

Elana almost rolled her eyes but she knew she was in a precarious position.  She didn’t want to argue with a man who was
potentially going to fund her project, but she also didn’t want to eat something that he’d ordered for her.  Especially the dessert.  How could he remember about her chocolate obsession?  She hadn’t had chocolate in….wow, she couldn’t remember how long. 

She bit her lower lip, remembering how Gaston would bring her small boxes of ornately decorated chocolates from around the world. 
Wherever he traveled, he’d find some extraordinary box of chocolates and present them as soon as he came back. 

At the time, she hadn’t been so in love with the chocolates but more in love with him for the gesture.  It was his way of letting her know that he was thinking of her, that he might be half a world away, but she was on his mind. 

Shoving that memory away and deciding to ignore his mandate about her food choices, she cleared her throat again and started over, telling him about the bacteria that she’d found and how it was hurting the crop production, the economic impact to the farmers in the various regions in which this particular bacteria would grow, how she planned to stop it, the experiments she was using to ensure that her results wouldn’t cause other environmental issues and the long term monetary and environmental benefits of what she was trying to prove. 

Despite his dislike of her personally,
Gaston really couldn’t fault her professionalism.  When she finally finished her presentation, he was enormously impressed.  She was thorough, she’d thought of various angles that could be problematic and provided solutions to those issues and she was experienced, knowing how to proceed without creating additional environmental problems.  Overall, he was amazed. 

They discussed the outcomes she’d reached to date while they ate their salads and when their main meal came, Elana was excitedly explaining various benefits, offshoots of her work.  This research could benefit other plants and possibly even humans, although she didn’t have enough knowledge about human physiology to
tackle experiments in that area. 

After the waiter set her entrée in front of her, s
he ate everything on her plate, too hungry and excited to realize that she had eaten so much.  When she looked down at her plate and noticed that all of her food was gone, she was surprised.  And embarrassed.  That had been an enormous amount of food, she thought.  It didn’t matter that Gaston had also finished his meal.  The man was huge with muscles all over his body that needed the additional fuel. 

There was an awkward silence when the waiter took their plates away.  She’d expended all her energy on the business side of dinner.  Now what were they going to discuss? 

“I think I need to go to the ladies room,” she said after a pregnant pause.  She stood up and almost fell over, forgetting that she was in heels and not her normal running shoes.  But she didn’t fall.  In fact, she was caught in very strong arms, her body pressing against Gaston’s hard frame and her breath caught in her throat.  Slowly, she looked up into his eyes, the sexual tension undeniable between them. 

“Sorry,” she said softly.

“No problem,” he replied, his hands slipping down her arms before he finally released her. 

Elana stepped back carefully.  Her body was tingling everywhere it had touched his and she was furious with herself for letting that happen.  She walked to the bathroom, berating herself for being so stupid, so inept.  Imagine, falling because she couldn’t walk in her shoes!  How pathetic. 

Gaston watched Elana walk away, his body hard and aching now that he’d felt her once again.  Perhaps he was going about this whole thing the wrong way.  Instead of avoiding all physical touches because of something that was ultimately her fault, maybe he should take advantage of the situation.  They were obviously still sexually attracted to each other.  The look in her eyes a moment before told him that his need wasn’t one sided.  Perhaps he could make this whole thing go much more quickly if they just went to bed with each other, satisfied their lust.  By the time he got her to the altar, he would have her out of his system.  Maybe that was one of the reasons he’d felt so betrayed the last time.  He’d known she’d been a virgin, too young to take the next step so he’d respected her, hadn’t wanted to initiate her until she knew all that was involved.  It had infuriated him that she’d betrayed him with another man after all of his restraint but she was older now.  He didn’t need to hide his reaction to her like he had in the past.