The Acostas Box Set. Susan Stephens

her at the sink. Now, if she could just control that heat and direct it into building a friendship with Ruiz everything might work out fine.

      ‘Why don’t you tell me something about the gap between school with my sister and now?’ Ruiz suggested casually, taking her off guard as they loaded the dishwasher together. ‘You can leave out anything you don’t want to talk about.’

      ‘That would mean leaving out most of it,’ she said, trying to make a joke of things she really didn’t want to remember. ‘And I’d much rather talk about you.’

      ‘I’m sure you would,’ Ruiz agreed dryly, easing onto one hip.

      ‘A playboy makes a much more interesting topic of conversation than the life of a would-be journalist,’ Holly pointed out.

      ‘A playboy?’ Ruiz queried. ‘Is that how you see me?’

      ‘That’s how the world sees you.’

      ‘Really?’ His lips pressed down. ‘It seems a rather old-fashioned term for a man who works hard for a living.’

      ‘A man who lives like this,’ Holly interrupted him, glancing round the designer kitchen. ‘Most people would find it fascinating.’

      ‘That’s only because they don’t know the truth about the boring slog associated with getting to this point,’ Ruiz assured her with amusement.

      ‘And if they did?’ she said carefully.

      ‘What are you getting at, Holly?’

      ‘Can I be honest with you?’

      ‘I hope you’re always honest.’

      She braced herself. ‘The column I’m working on is failing. If it has any chance of surviving it needs something different, something unique, to draw people in.’

      He looked at her for a moment, and then he said, ‘Oh, no.’

      ‘Please let me finish,’ she begged him. ‘I’m proposing to write a fictional piece to head up the column and build reader numbers. I’ve always kept a personal diary,’ Holly explained, ‘and this would be a public extension of that—half serious, mostly poking fun at me, ordinary Holly Valiant, living with a glamorous playboy.’

      ‘No,’ Ruiz said flatly.

      ‘It was just an idea—’

      ‘You’re not ordinary and I’m not glamorous.’

      But Ruiz seemed glamorous to her with his wild, thick black hair and swarthy complexion. He was darkly dangerous and dangerously sexy. And readers would love him. He was standing very close—close enough to touch—close enough for her senses to pick up on his mood. It wasn’t anger she sensed, but something a lot more worrying.

      ‘And I’m certainly not a playboy,’ he added, moving away.

      ‘But who’s to know that?’ she pressed.

      ‘I can see I’ll have to watch what I say to you in future, Holly Valiant.’

      So it wasn’t a complete no, Holly thought, feeling excitement build inside her. ‘I would never write anything derogatory about you.’

      ‘I should think not …’ And why was he even giving her this much of an opening? It might amuse him to read it, Ruiz reasoned. ‘So is all this talk about a new column just a ruse to get out of telling me about your past?’

      ‘If I tell you about my past you’ll be asleep in five minutes,’ Holly assured him. ‘Why don’t you start the ball rolling?’ she suggested. ‘Just make sure you leave out anything you don’t want to see in print,’ she added, tongue in cheek.

      He stared at her for a moment, and then he laughed. ‘Touché, Ms Valiant.’

      ‘En garde, Señor Acosta.’

      She made him laugh. She made him relax. She made him realise he could enjoy being with a woman without taking her to bed. Who knew? Ruiz mused wryly.

      An hour into their chat and they were still going strong. It turned out she did have a talent for teasing out interesting facts, after all. Ruiz had relaxed enough to laugh when she told him about some of her more colourful teenage years. ‘There was the home perm, the fake tan incident, and the gothic fright phase that almost got me thrown out of school. I tried to dye my red hair black, and it turned out green.’

      When Ruiz pulled a face his sexy mouth pressed down in the most attractive way. ‘So what did you get up to?’ she pressed.

      ‘Do you mean, what can I tell you about?’ Ruiz shook his head as he accepted the challenge. ‘I ran away to the pampas when I was about fifteen. When you live on an estancia the size of a small country there is only the pampas to run away to.’

      ‘Lucky you.’

      ‘I didn’t think so, aged fifteen.’

      It was just another form of isolation, Holly mused, thinking back to her own uncertain teenage years.

      ‘I lived like a wild boy off the land.’

      And she could picture him with limbs as brown as the parched earth he rode across, and his frame as lean as the predators that circled his campfire each night. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’

      ‘I was too young to know fear. I was fit and strong, and thought myself invincible.’

      She couldn’t breathe for a moment, and then the dark eyes that had been dancing with laughter one moment stilled as Ruiz levelled a brooding stare on her face. Lifting one lock of her hair, he curled it around his finger. ‘I can’t believe you tried to dye your beautiful hair, or that you risked turning it into a frizz with a perm.’

      ‘Risked?’ Holly queried, pulling back, wishing she were ready for this and accepting she might never be. ‘My hair not only frizzed, it fell out. I thought it would never grow back.’

      ‘You thought no man would ever look at you again?’ he suggested.

      ‘It isn’t easy being a teenager—for anyone. So, what were you like?’ she pressed. ‘I mean when you grew out of the running-away-to-the-pampas stage?

      ‘In my early twenties I was insufferably arrogant.’

      ‘No?’ Holly mocked. ‘I find that impossible to believe.’

      He laughed. ‘Believe,’ he assured her. ‘I was quite ridiculous. And rude.’

      ‘But you’re so polite now.’

      ‘Why, thank you. I guess my manners managed somehow to survive those years. I have my older brother Nacho to thank for them. He was always very strict with us.’

      ‘Tell me about him,’ Holly pressed. ‘Tell me about the band of brothers and your sister Lucia.’

      ‘You probably know Lucia better than I do.’ But he told her how they all felt they owed everything they were and everything they had to Nacho, who had stayed to raise his siblings when their parents had died in a flood.

      How could she not warm to this man? Holly wondered as Ruiz’s massive shoulders eased in a regretful shrug while he tried and failed to recover memories of his parents from his early childhood. The more she learned about him, the harder it was going to be to live with him and keep things light—let alone write about him with any form of impartiality. Tugging her feet free from Bouncer’s furry weight, she left the table for the relative security of the sink. ‘I’ll finish clearing up,’ she offered. ‘You can go and—’

      ‘I can go and … what?’ Ruiz murmured.

      He was standing right behind her, Holly realised, quivering as she felt the caress of Ruiz’s breath on her neck. She started to launch into some excuse to move away, but Ruiz was way ahead of her. ‘Goodnight, Holly,’ he said. ‘And thanks for supper. It was great.’