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spent the evening talking about their wedding and he had spent the night dreaming about her deliciously tempting body next to his, making electrical, uncontrolled, unstoppable love, and he consoled himself with the fact that he would have a whole year of this undeniably stimulating pleasure before he finally got her out of his system.
    Which he had no doubt he would. He fancied her like hell, but marriage—long term? It would never work. From what little he had gleaned from her sister she had moved to America to have a good time. She’d felt no commitment to family. Which in his eyes meant that she wouldn’t make a good wife or mother. Which was just as well because he wasn’t ready to settle down yet.
    A lover, yes, an instantly excitable lover, but no more. And he had twelve months of spectacular lovemaking to look forward to. Elena in his bed every night, himself inside her. She had the potential to be like no other lover he’d ever had. Everything in him cried out for fulfilment.
    And one way or another he intended on taking it.
    Elena was not happy when the next day Vidal insisted that they go shopping for their wedding rings. Dinner had been an uncomfortable affair. She ought never to have allowed Vidal’s kiss to affect her, she shouldn’t even have let him kiss her, and she still couldn’t understand why she had reacted as she did. And she was evenmore alarmed when he took her to Seville’s most exclusive jeweller and they were ushered into a private back room.
    The owner, a friend of Vidal’s, brought out exquisite diamond after exquisite diamond, each one more beautiful than the last. But Elena didn’t want to choose. It didn’t feel right. Why should he spend so much money when their marriage was a sham?
    But as usual Vidal got his own way. He personally placed each ring on her finger, doing so with such tenderness that Elena wanted to scream. Was he aware of the torture he was putting her through? Did he know that his touch, the same as his kisses, sent a dangerous, convoluted agony through her? He was deliberately behaving like the most attentive lover of all time.
    In the end she walked out of the shop wearing the biggest solitaire diamond she had ever seen. Their wedding rings, also chosen, were being kept in the shop’s vault until their wedding day.
    ‘It was wrong of you to inflict this ring on me,’ she scolded in the car on their way home, twisting it round and round on her finger. It felt heavy and alien and she was so afraid that she might lose it.
    ‘You don’t like it? We can always—’
    ‘It’s not a case of liking it,’ she protested angrily. ‘It makes far too much of a statement.’
    ‘You think I’m not proud to be marrying you?’
    ‘Of course you’re not,’ she snapped. ‘Pride doesn’t enter into it. Let’s face it, neither of us want this wedding. We’re saving the bank, that’s all.’
    ‘And you think your parents’ bank isn’t worth a diamond ring?’
    ‘It’s not just any diamond,’ she retorted. ‘It was the most expensive in the shop. It doesn’t impress me, though I suppose you think it will impress other people. Tell them how much you love me. If only they knew.’ She was glad of the glass window between them and his driver because she would have hated him to hear this conversation.
    ‘You’re not playing the game, Elena.’ Vidal’s voice was quiet but deadly.
    ‘That’s because I’m not into playing games,’ she declared with a flash of her beautiful eyes.
    ‘Mmm,’ he growled. ‘Perhaps you’ve never played the right sort. Perhaps you have a lot to learn.’
    He looked as though he wanted to kiss her!
    She certainly had a lot to learn about defending herself where Vidal was concerned. He was dangerous. He infiltrated her senses, he turned everything on inside her, he made her wish that she were anywhere but in his presence because there was no chance of ignoring him.
    ‘I think we should hire a wedding planner to organise the