Maid for Montero - By Kim Lawrence Page 0,23

sensation that slid down her spine made her shiver. The man had a sexual charisma that really was off the scale!

‘I’m not used to the heels.’ She pulled and his hand fell away from her elbow. ‘I’m afraid my car’s not very…’ Her voice faded as she picked her way with more care now across the cobbles.

Isandro had been pierced by an arrow of sheer lust the moment he had seen her walking towards him. Walking behind her gave him the opportunity to admire her delicious bottom and the long elegant line of her seemingly endless legs, revealed rather than hidden by the long skirt that clung and flowed as she walked.

‘The seat belt’s a bit…’ She took the football he held and with a grimace slung it into the back seat on top of the motley collection of toys and turned the ignition. ‘It takes a few times before it…Sometimes…’

‘Will you stop apologising?’ He nodded towards the back seat. ‘Your nephew plays football?’ He spoke not out of any genuine interest but a desire to stop himself asking her if she had a boyfriend. It wouldn’t make a difference—she worked for him and some rules he did not break. Still, there was no rule against looking.

‘Harry?’ Zoe laughed and shook her head. ‘No, Harry hates sport. The ball is Georgie’s. Harry is…quieter.’ A man like Isandro Montero would never understand a sensitive boy like Harry. Her brow furrowed. Harry was a worry; he was such an easy child that he tended to be overlooked.

She glanced towards her passenger, and her lips twitched at the thought of anyone overlooking the scorchingly handsome Spaniard. It should have been laughable to see him squashed into her Beetle, but Zoe was unable to raise even a smile. The fact they were virtually rubbing shoulders made her feel a lot less comfortable than he appeared to be.

Being in this sort of enclosed space with him made Zoe want to crawl out of her own skin.

‘It’s not far.’ Thank God for small mercies.

‘I will sit back and admire the scenery,’ he said, studying her profile. He had thought she would scrub up well and he had been proved right—she was stunning.

A few minutes later she crunched the gears and winced as she drew up outside the local convenience store.

‘Your friends live here?’

‘No, they live the other side of the village. I need to stop to get a bottle of wine.’

‘I thought you didn’t drink.’

‘I don’t, but other people do,’ she said shortly without looking at him.

‘You should have said. There’s plenty of wine in the cellar.’ Good wine was always a sound inflation-proof investment.

A small choking sound left her lips as she thought of the vintage stuff stacked in the hall’s cellar being served from borrowed glasses and drunk by people who in her hostess’s case preferred her wine mixed with lemonade.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get this.’

Inside the store she snatched two of the second-cheapest bottles off the shelves and took them to the checkout.

‘Nice stuff this, so they say,’ the man at the till approved, putting the bottles into a bag for her while she dug into her purse. It became embarrassingly clear pretty quickly that she was short of cash to pay and her plastic was at home in the drawer, which had seemed the safest way to avoid temptation while she adjusted to her new straitened circumstances.

‘Sorry, it’ll have to be the Spanish one—do you mind if I change them? Fifty pence short, I’m afraid.’ She nodded towards the stacked coins.

‘No problem, it’s very nice too, love.’

Her hand had closed around the bottles on the counter when a big hand covered it. ‘Let me get those.’

Looking from the warm hand covering her own to the face of the tall, sleek, exclusive-looking man who had moved to stand beside her, Zoe shook her head, struggling to recover her composure and painfully aware of the tingling pain in her peaked and aching nipples. She was shamed and embarrassed by her weakness.

‘No, really, I’m fine. I’m going to have the Spanish one…wine, that is…’ she corrected and promptly felt like a total idiot.

‘I hate to be disloyal, but take it from a Spaniard—that is not wine,’ he told her with a shudder.

‘It’s not a wine snob sort of party.’

He was prepared to swallow the insult, but not the wine on the shelf. ‘No, I insist, the least I can do since you are being my taxi,’ he said, taking his wallet from his pocket