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The pilot came rushing after her, but if he’d been intending to stop her he was too late, because by the time he arrived, Alice had already climbed into the helicopter and had belted herself in.
Sebastián halted by the open helicopter door and stared at her. ‘What the hell are you doing, Alice?’ he demanded.
‘Coming with you,’ she said, daring him to protest. ‘If you won’t stay and have this conversation with me here, I’ll come with you and have it there.’
‘You will do no such thing,’ he growled, anger disturbing the ice in his voice, his accent more pronounced. ‘Get out of the helicopter right now.’
‘No.’ Alice lifted her chin. ‘If you want me out, you’ll have to pull me out yourself.’
Fury burned in his eyes, his body full of a coiled tension that was almost palpable, and for a minute she wondered if she’d made a mistake and if he would actually pull her out himself. Then the pilot said something to him, and he cursed again, low and vicious. Then he said, ‘Fine. Vámonos.’ And got into the helicopter and pulled the door shut.
It was only then that Alice realised that she had in fact made a mistake. A terrible one. Because as soon as the door closed, she was locked into the helicopter with him and it was a small space. He was right next to her, the warmth of one powerful thigh almost touching hers, and she was surrounded by his delicious scent; masculine spice, sunlight, and hay.
Her mouth dried and her stomach dipped as he held out a headset without glancing at her.
Okay, so this was actually going to happen, was it? He’d called her bluff and now they were actually going to...
‘I... I need to get a bag,’ she said, trying not to sound so hesitating.
Only then did he glance at her. ‘Too late. We need to leave now because we’re going to lose our weather window.’
‘But I—’
‘You wanted to come, so you’re coming.’ One black brow rose. ‘Or have you changed your mind?’
He wanted her to change her mind; she could see it in his eyes. He wanted her to give in and get out of the helicopter. And maybe she should. Maybe she could wait to have this conversation when he returned.
But he was right. It was too late. She couldn’t back down now and she wasn’t going to.
Alice held his gaze and grabbed the headset from him. ‘No, of course not. So where are we going?’
‘Madrid.’
Shutting himself into a confined space for the couple of hours it would take them to fly to Madrid, and then to spend the duration of his business trip with his sister-in-law, was likely to be a mistake, and Sebastián was well aware.
But she’d left him with no choice.
He was hardly going to manhandle her out of the helicopter and even though he would dearly have loved to leave her sitting in it for the next couple of hours, the pilot had been very clear about the window they had for departure. There was a storm coming in over the mountains and they had to go now.
She hadn’t been expecting him to call her bluff, that was certain, not given the way her dark eyes had widened as he’d climbed in beside her and shut the door. But she’d covered her shock very well, her chin determined, her expression set, her lush mouth in a hard line.
Maybe it was for the best in the end. They couldn’t keep having the same conversation and he was tired of her pushing him on it. He could involve the police to get her removed from the house if she continued to be difficult, but he didn’t want to do that. Lucia would be appalled, and Alice was his sister-in-law after all.
She wasn’t going to be put off, which meant he was going to have to sit down with her and come to some arrangement about Diego. Some kind of civilised arrangement.
The only problem was that he didn’t feel particularly civilised, not with her sitting next to him, wearing only a pair of denim shorts and a loose black T-shirt that was so thin he could see the lace of her bra. Her legs were long and tanned and smooth, and they were sitting close enough that her bare skin nearly brushed the wool of his suit trousers.
He could barely think, and he was furious with himself.
He’d thought he’d made himself clear when he’d walked away from the dinner table the night before. Yet he should have known that she wouldn’t meekly do what he said, that she wouldn’t stay the requisite three days and then leave. And he thought he’d been smart in taking this business trip over the time she would be staying so he didn’t have to have more contact with her. Except it hadn’t turned out that way and he still couldn’t understand how it had got away from him.
He only knew that he hadn’t taken into account her sheer stubbornness and now he was dealing with the consequences. Which were Alice, sitting next to him in a helicopter for two hours, one bare thigh pressed against his, and him as breathless as a teenage boy with his first crush.
The pilot had got in and was spinning up the rotors, and the moment where he could have got rid of her was gone. So, he put on his headset and tried to ignore her as they lifted off smoothly, climbing into the sky, heading for the mountains.
‘So,’ Alice’s voice came crisply through the headset, ‘Diego needs a mother, Sebastián. You do know that, don’t you?’
He’d been going to work on the trip to Madrid, but with her sitting next to him there was no hope of that. ‘We can talk about this when we get to Madrid,’ he said curtly.
