Her Return To King's Bed Part 6

"Are we interrupting?"

He knew that voice. Scowling, Rico turned to the man standing beside his table. He slanted a hard look at his cousin Sean, then smiled at the lovely, very pregnant woman by his side.

"Would it matter if I said yes?" Rico asked his cousin.

"No," Sean said.

"Yes." Melinda spoke up at the same time. She gave her husband's arm a light swat, then shrugged and looked at Teresa. "We are interrupting, but honestly, I just had to get out of the house."

Sean wore slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. Melinda's long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail gathered at the base of her neck. Her blue eyes looked tired and she was dressed in a long skirt and a clingy top that emphasized her pregnancy.

"You mentioned you were going to dinner," Sean put in, already helping Melinda slide across the leather seat. "And we thought that sounded like a great idea."

He settled at the end of the booth, directly opposite Rico, and gave him a grin. Rico blew out a sigh, but short of tossing his cousin out, there was no way to get rid of him. Besides, Melinda was much too nice to be treated badly because of her idiot husband.

"Hey, champagne!" Sean spotted the bottle nestled in a silver ice bucket and signaled to a waiter for another gla.s.s. Remembering his wife, he also ordered a bottle of sparkling water.

While they waited, Rico looked at Teresa. "This is my cousin Sean King and his beautiful wife, Melinda Stanford King."

"Stanford?" Teresa asked. "Any relation to Walter Stanford? The man who owns this island?"

"He's my grandfather."

Rico watched Teresa curiously as the two women fell into an easy conversation. She had known about Walter Stanford. So she'd done some research on Tesoro before arriving on the island. To help her family? Or to find out more about Rico and where he was living now?

She laughed at something Melinda said and the delicious sound settled over him like a warm blanket. Seeing her now, he wasn't looking at his betrayer, but simply a woman so lovely it took his breath away. And he realized that the tightness in his chest was easing.

Maybe it was a good thing Sean had horned in on dinner. Having the other couple here was definitely easing the tension at the table. Though it would no doubt return when the evening was over and they were back at Rico's house.

"So," Sean asked with a smile as the waiter arrived and poured Melinda a gla.s.s of the sparkling water. "What's new?"

Rico glared at him. Sean's sense of humor could be irritating at the best of times. Tonight was not the best of times.

"I should ask that of you," Rico said. "When we spoke earlier, you were watching a game. What made you decide to come here instead?"

"This promised more action than what was happening in that game. Dead boring." He took a sip of champagne, then leaned his head toward his wife. "Besides, Mel's getting a little twitchy. Waiting for the baby to make a move can make you restless. Thought she'd have a good time getting out of the house."

"Please," Melinda said with a laugh. "It wasn't just me trying to get out for the evening. You were going stir-crazy."

"Maybe a little," Sean allowed and draped one arm around her shoulders.

Shaking her head at her husband, Melinda turned to Teresa. "Sean tells me you've been living in Europe the last few years. What do you do for a living?"

Rico slanted a look at her and waited for her answer. He, too, was interested in how she'd spent her time the last five years. When he'd known her, she'd been one of the chefs at his Cancn hotel. Had she kept her love for cooking, or had that been part of the ruse she'd used to get close to him? How could she be so familiar to him and yet feel like such a stranger?

Teresa glanced at him briefly, as if she'd guessed what he was thinking. Then she turned her full attention to Melinda. "I'm a chef. I've been working at different restaurants in Europe for the last few years."

Melinda frowned a bit. "No home base?"

"No," Teresa said with another glance at Rico. "I move around a lot."

To avoid being found, no doubt, he thought, even though he wondered why. It wasn't as if she had known he was looking for her. So why hadn't she gone back to her family? The ones who had been important enough to her to betray her husband?

"That sounds great," Melinda said. "I love living on the island. Couldn't imagine being anywhere else." She reached out and caught Sean's hand in hers. "I do love to travel, though, so I envy you that. But I really can't empathize with the chef thing. I'm a terrible cook."

"True," Sean put in. "She made tacos last week and even the dog wouldn't eat them. And he'll eat anything."

"Thank you," Melinda said wryly.

Her husband gave her a hard, fast kiss. "Didn't marry you for your cooking abilities," he said with a grin. "We can hire cooks."

"Thank goodness. Or we'd starve," Melinda put in. "Though right now, I'm looking too well fed to be starving."

"You look gorgeous," Teresa said.

"That's what I've been telling her." Rico smiled gently at his cousin's wife. "A pregnant woman is nothing but beautiful."

"And big," Melinda put in. "Don't forget big."

"When're you due?" Teresa asked.

"Officially? A week." The woman winced and shifted position uncomfortably. "But it feels like any minute to me."

Sean shivered dramatically. "Don't say that. At least wait until we get home again."

Melinda patted his hand. "Sean's practiced making the hospital drive from our house five times."

"Smart," Teresa said.

Rico snorted.

Sean sneered at him.

"The hospital is only ten minutes away," Melinda said with an indulgent smile for her husband.

"There could be traffic," he said, defending himself.

"On Tesoro?" Rico laughed and shook his head at his cousin. "The landma.s.s is so small, if you were on the other side of the island it would still only take you twenty minutes to reach the hospital."

"Fine, fine." Sean poured his wife another gla.s.s of sparkling water, then topped off his own champagne. "Just wait until your wife is pregnant. Then we'll see how funny you think this is."

Silence dropped over the table with a thud of awkwardness. Teresa winced. Melinda slapped her husband's arm again. Rico frowned and Sean took a deep drink of his champagne. "Going to be a long night."

Five.

Going to be a long night.

Sean King's words echoed over and over again in Teresa's mind as she waited in Rico's bedroom hours later. He'd already promised that they would sleep in the same bed. But there was no way she could relax until he was here.

She figured she now knew how a sacrificial virgin must have felt just before being tied to an altar stone. Of course, she was no virgin-that ship had sailed long ago. But the nerves were there. The anxiety about what she should do. He'd said nothing would happen between them unless she initiated it. So. Should she?

In spite of the anxiousness holding her in its grip, Teresa was...aroused. And she'd thought that over the years she had managed to bury what she'd felt for Rico. She had never met another man who could stir up her insides with a single look. She had thought that Rico was her one chance at happiness and when she'd left him, she had accepted that she would never have him again.

Now she was here, and Teresa was forced to admit, at least to herself, that the thought of going to bed with Rico again had her body burning in antic.i.p.ation.

It had been so long since he'd touched her. So long since she'd felt the intimate slide of his body into hers. The mental images crashing through her mind made her legs tremble so badly that she was forced to drop into the closest chair. Teresa took a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping for calm. Calm, though, was impossible to find.

She looked around his bedroom, noting that the s.p.a.ce was done in shades of soothing white, from cream to ivory and every shade in between. There were splashes of color in the paintings on the walls and the jewel-toned pillows stacked on the bed wide enough to qualify as a soccer field. The bamboo floor gleamed like old honey in the soft lighting. The chair she sat in was one of two drawn up before a now cold fireplace of river stone. A table between the chairs held a carafe of lemon water, left there by one of Rico's efficient yet nearly invisible staff.

She poured herself a gla.s.s of water and drank half of it down, hoping to ease her dry throat. But there was no help there, either. She wasn't thirsty, she was needy.

Oh, she hated to even let that thought race through her mind. Hated knowing that her body and heart were still vulnerable to Rico even after five years.

When she'd first met him, he had been open, warm. He'd drawn her in so easily, sweeping her into an affair and a romance and into marriage before she'd even had time to notice how quickly things were moving between them. Even if she had noticed, she wouldn't have cared. It had all felt so right. As if they'd somehow been fated to find each other. She had loved completely, for the first time in her life, and she had hoped it was forever.

Now his warmth was gone, covered by a veneer of ice that put a hard glint in his pale blue eyes, and Teresa knew that she was to blame for the change in him. She set her water gla.s.s aside and scrubbed her hands up and down her arms, as if she could chase away the chills dancing along her skin. Despite the s.e.xual heat simmering inside her, the cold sensation of impending disaster just wouldn't dissipate.

"Where is he?" she muttered aloud, more to hear a sound in the stillness than for anything else. "What's he waiting for?"

Why wasn't he storming into the bedroom and finding a way to make her beg for him?

Another rush of heat swamped her and she pushed up from the chair. Her knees were weak, but her will was strong. Whatever game Rico was playing, she wasn't going to cooperate. She refused to sit still and worry herself into what her mother used to call a state. Rico expected her to just sit here in this lush cell and await his arrival. No doubt he knew exactly what she was going through and was enjoying it.

"But what choice do you have?" she murmured. "Where could you go, even if you were willing to run away again? You're on an island, for heaven's sake."

Even if she could, she wouldn't have run. Not again. Everyone made mistakes, she a.s.sured herself, but only really foolish people made the same ones over and over again.

Muttering, grumbling and trying to get a grip on her own skittering hormones, Teresa stepped out of the bedroom onto the flagstone terrace.

Instantly, the flower-scented breeze wrapped itself around her as it rattled the leaves on the surrounding trees, sounding like hushed whispers in the dark. At the edge of Rico's property, the ocean sighed into sh.o.r.e, moonlight shimmering on the surface of the water. It was perfect. Dreamlike. She only wished she wasn't too tense to enjoy it.

"Planning to run again?" Rico asked from behind her.

As she whirled around to face him, he continued, "There's nowhere to go this time, Teresa. You can't get off the island until I let you go."

He was backlit by the room behind him and in his black clothes, with his black hair and his face in darkness...he looked like a shadow of doom. He wasn't, though. Because ghosts or shades or whatever you wanted to call them didn't give off heat as Rico did. Even from across the patio, she was dazzled by it.

"I wasn't running," she managed to say. "I was waiting."

"For?" He stepped out of the bedroom and walked across the patio toward her. Moonlight shone in his eyes, but his luscious mouth was a grim line and his body language was anything but relaxed.

"I was waiting for you, Rico, and you know it," she said. "I've been here. Alone. For two hours. Is making me wait part of the thrill for you?"

"Thrill?" He moved in so close, she instinctively took a step back. But the metal railing around the patio stopped her retreat and dug into the small of her back. "You think I'm enjoying this?"

"I think you're loving it," she told him as nerves gave way to the Italian temper her parents had gifted her with. "You had to wait five years, but you're finally getting back at me."

"Did you expect anything less?"

Had she? On those rare occasions when she'd allowed herself to imagine meeting Rico again, she'd never wondered what he'd say to her. What she could possibly say to him. Her imaginings had been more rich fantasies of desire and the pa.s.sion that still haunted her. In her dreams, she and Rico hadn't wasted a lot of time talking. But she was rapidly discovering that reality was much harder to live with than fantasies.

Teresa stared up into his eyes and knew she was in no position to be angry at him. Though temper still simmered inside her, it was slowly draining away. After all, this was her fault. She was the one who'd lied to him so long ago and those lies had eventually brought them here. To this moment.

"No," she said. "I suppose not."

"Why did you come to Tesoro, Teresa?"

She pushed her hair back from her face with one hand, then let it fall to her side again. "When I realized my father and Paulo had come here, I tried to get them away before you found them. That's all."

"I don't think so." He moved in closer and she leaned back because she couldn't move with the railing pressing against her spine. He slapped both hands down on the iron on either side of her, effectively caging her between his arms, and then bent his head until his eyes were boring into hers. She looked into those so familiar and yet so different eyes and saw nothing soft or tender or loving. All that shone back at her was temper and ice.

"I think you came because you wanted me to catch you at last. Because you couldn't stay away."

"You're wrong." She shook her head, determined to deny his words. If he was right, then she was a monumental fool.

"Am I?" His voice dropped to a husky whisper that hinted at intimacy. "You could have phoned your father. Warned your brother to leave. Instead, you came here, to my place."

All right, yes. She could have phoned. Could have tried to talk to her family long-distance from the safety of her apartment in Naples. Oh, she'd told herself that they wouldn't listen to her if she called. That she would have to convince them in person. But what if Rico was right? What if her hunger to be near him again had sent her right into his revenge plan?

Oh, G.o.d, she hoped not. Because that would mean her feelings for him were still too rich, too deep for her own good.

"Think about it, Teresa," Rico urged, his mouth just a breath away from hers. "You came to me. And now that I have you..."

Her insides swirled and heat rushed through her in a blink. Her throat went dry and her breath locked in her chest. Funny, but his idea of revenge-keeping her in his bed for a month until she surrendered to the want clamoring inside her-was just what she'd been dreaming about ever since she'd left him. The punishment for her would be when the month was over and he gave her the divorce she had thought she'd gotten years ago.

He brushed his lips across hers. Once. Twice. Just the barest touch of his mouth to hers and fireworks exploded inside her. She shivered and watched as he pulled away, then straightened, taking a step back from her.

"Now that I have you," he repeated, "we do this my way."

"What is your way, Rico?"

"That you'll find out soon enough." He turned toward the bedroom. "Come. It's late and I'm tired."

Tired?

She was still struggling for breath as she watched him go. Her knees were rubbery and her head was spinning. Her heart was racing and at the core of her, she felt hot and achy. A barely there kiss had reduced her to this-and hadn't seemed to affect Rico at all.

She was tangled up in knots and he was tired.

Teresa pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly as she followed Rico. Whatever he had planned for her, it looked as though it wasn't going to happen tonight. So it seemed she was just going to have to learn to live with the jittering nerve endings and the screaming hormones. Because she wasn't about to let him know just how much his kiss had awakened in her.

He already had the power here. No point in crowning him a true King.