Retaining His Bride (A Completed Novella)

CHAPTER 8

They looked up at the mistletoe at the same time. They smiled at the same time. They leaned across the table at the same time and when his lips found hers their first kiss in fifteen years was perfectly wonderful.

Clio closed her eyes in utter bliss. "Oh, Rico, I've missed this," she murmured against his mouth, warm and firm and tender against hers. When she pulled away—conscious they were in a restaurant—she met his eyes and knew they both wanted to carry on kissing somewhere more private

"What about your flight to Madrid?"

"Forget the flight," he said hoarsely. "I can't leave you. Not now. I want to stay in London tonight—if you want me."

"I want you," she breathed. She didn't care if this one magic day in London might be all there would ever be for them.

By the time they got to her walk-up apartment in a Victorian mansion block off the Kings Road, Clio was flushed and panting with need for the man she had never stopped wanting. She was trembling so much with excitement and desire she couldn't put her key in the front door. "Let me do that," Enrique said, impatiently taking it, then fumbling it himself.

They ended up laughing and turning the key together. Once inside, Enrique pinned her hands up over her head against the wall with one hand as he kissed her while sliding her jacket off her shoulders with the other. She shuddered with pleasure at the feel of his hands on her body and kissed him back with the pent-up passion that had been building since they'd danced together at the wedding.

Then he swooped her effortlessly up into his arms and carried her down the hallway to her bedroom.

*

Enrique woke up in Clio's bed with her nestled next to him, her sweetly scented hair warm against his cheek. The pale light of early morning filtered through the blinds in shafts across the elegantly decorated room. How very different it was from the small, rustic studio back in Madrid, with canvases he'd painted of her stacked against the walls. Yet making love with her had been every bit as perfect as it had back then. They had not forgotten how to please each other.

He kissed the top of her head and she murmured low in her throat something that expressed satisfaction and happiness. The sound speared straight through his heart. He loved her. He had never stopped loving her. But he had to go back to his life in Spain.

He dropped another kiss on her bare shoulder and slid away from her off the bed. She burrowed into the pillow. There was still his grandmother's bequest to deliver, forgotten somehow in the frantic activity of the wedding.

He found it in his briefcase still in the tissue paper Sofia had wrapped it in. He padded back to the bedroom to find Clio stretching her arms above her head without any inhibitions. "Good morning," she said. Her hair was tangled, her cheeks flushed, her make-up smudged beneath her eyes. She had never looked lovelier, and a sudden urge to paint her tore through him.

He held out the parcel to her. "The reason I came to London."

*

Clio caught her breath and her heart missed a beat at the sight of the magnificent man in her bedroom. Rico. The only man she'd ever loved. Perhaps the only man she ever could love. Maybe he had ruined her for all other men.

She took the parcel from his hands as he joined her back on the bed. She pulled away the tissue to reveal a finely tooled leather jewellery box. "Jewellery?"

"Open it and see," he said.

She did so and gasped at the exquisite enamelled art nouveaunecklace and earrings that lay on the age-speckled cream velvet. The delicate pastel depictions of a girl with butterfly wings were picked out in gold and tiny diamonds.