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Past the point of caring, she was going to destroy him with the molten heat building inside her. In her black, string bikini and sarong, she felt a power flush through her limbs she’d never felt before. She felt vital and strong, and more alive than she’d felt in months. And it was all Diego’s fault, from the telltale tremor in her hands to the nagging pulse of desire deep in her body’s core. It was his fault for walking into a room – for the way he turned eyes like wet obsidian on her – for the way the corner of his mouth pulled up in that wry, half-smile when he was pretending not to notice the way the air prickled with electricity anytime they were in arm’s reach of each other.

And now that they were alone in the flat her father’s company-owned, she was going to devastate him with all the burning delicacies her body had to offer.

The tingling had started four days before when he picked her up at the airport. He wasn’t what she expected the manager of her father’s office in Malaga to be. Nor could she imagine what he must have expected as he waited for the boss’s daughter to walk through customs, but there had been an unmistakable gleam of surprise in his eyes.

She was there for a sorely needed holiday. After the breakup with Michael, her father had practically forced her to go. He’d bought her ticket, reserved the company flat, and arranged for Diego to pick her up and show her around. She was an assignment from the boss, but she couldn’t be so out of practice as to mistake the look in his eye. Yet he’d been so agonisingly careful around her as if she were off-limits.

Yet the more time they spent together – sitting in cafes and restaurants – Diego taking her on walks through centuries’ old plazas – the more she was determined to obliterate his caution. There was something at stake. Something between them thick enough to slice, and it was bigger than either of their circumstances.

The moment he’d walked into the café forty minutes earlier in his beach shorts and that tortuously tight shirt, she knew it was now or never. They were supposed to go on a walk to the beach, but without exchanging a word over the direction they were headed, they headed straight back to the flat.

The moment the door closed behind them, the air-conditioned coolness of the room only heightened the sensation of heat rising from Lena’s skin. In the moment she had her back turned to him, listening to the sounds of him shutting them inside, she searched her spinning mind for the right words. She knew he saw the truth of the smouldering chemistry between them. It was too strong. But words failed her as if they’d been scattered to the four corners of the world by the brewing storm of her hammering pulse.