Chapter Five
He meant it. The crazy man actually meant it. Carolina remembered the lists he’d made her create, that somewhere she’d mentioned wanting to sleep in a real castle, something else about wanting a spa weekend. At the time, she’d thought the whole thing was a joke. Nothing anyone would take seriously.
Yet the green mud completely slathering her body was unquestionably real.
And so was the castle.
“You’re not too cold, mam’selle? Too warm?”
“I’m perfect,” Carolina assured the tall Amazon with the serene blue eyes and hands of steel.
“Are you thirsty? Would you care for a drink?”
The last time she’d admitted to thirst, Greta had given her some god-awful herbal concoction that made her eyes sting and her tongue pucker. It wasn’t safe around here to admit wanting or needing anything.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“All right. Now, you close your eyes. I’ll be back in thirty minutes, after the clay has set.”
The mud-clay had already started setting. She was increasingly feeling like a naked mummy. A naked green mummy. The castle was located in the Alps-whether Swiss or French or Italian, she had no idea. But it was perched on a cliff top, accessible only via helicopter, and the once-classic structure had been turned into an elegantly exotic spa. The place had a great room draped with impossibly tall silk tapestries. The fireplaces in half the rooms were bigger than she was. The floors were all stone or marble, but heated beneath the floor, so it was warm walking around, even in bare feet. Fountains decorated almost all the rooms, as did candles. The view outside was of treacherously tall mountains, draped with a white ermine cape of snow. Inside was luxury, pampering, softness, gentle music.
“You’re surviving in there, Cee?”
She heard him. Maguire’s sexy tenor was unmistakable. He was in the next room-sort of an anteroom he’d turned into a makeshift office. It had a laptop, printer, fax, all the usual office suspects, although she hadn’t once heard a telephone ring. She concluded Maguire had forbidden telephones anywhere near her.
He’d disappeared from physical sight, once the Amazonian Greta had shown up to slather her in mud and seaweed. He was just within calling distance, and asked how she was doing on a regular basis.
He hadn’t looked. Not the whole time she’d been stripped down, gooped up, smoothed, encased in oils and warm towels and then this clay-mud thing. It was more than a little weird, being naked with strangers. But enticingly weird, knowing Maguire was in the next room, always close enough to call for him.
It was impossible not to be aware that she was naked. That he knew it.
Of course, she was coated in green slime, so heaven knew why sex was on her mind. Probably he’d run for the hills if he saw her.
“Doing good. You getting business done in there?”
“Yeah. Funny world today. It doesn’t really matter where you are, it’s not that hard to communicate with anyone at any time from any place.”
“Maguire.”
“Yeah?”
“You set this up because it was on my list.”
“Well, yeah. It was an easy twofer. You wanted to sleep in a castle. And do the spa thing.”
“I want my list back.”
“Nope.”
“I thought it was a game. Just something silly. I don’t want or expect anything else from that list.”
“Uh-huh. Damn, I seem to have a fax coming in, and need to do some business here for a while…”
Right. She believed the moon was made of cheese, too. Maguire somehow never answered questions he didn’t want to answer. And even though she’d spent long days with him now, she still didn’t know where he lived, or what he did with his time.
If he had a woman in his life.
Or what he’d thought of those kisses they’d shared a few days ago. She really wanted to know if they’d haunted him the way they were haunting her.
Temporarily, there was no possible way to address the idea. Greta showed up again, did more terrifying things. It took ages to rinse off all the mud, and then she was coated with warm spicy oils and rubbed down. After that, her feet and hands were encased in warm packs, and her hair coated with something that looked like mayonnaise and smelled like vanilla.
By the time she was starting to feel like a recipe, Greta let her shower the whole thing off. Her hair was dried, her toes and nails pampered. She was snuggled into a black, whisper-satin gown like the kind movie stars wore in the forties, warned that she’d need a good long nap after all the treatments, and put in a wrought-iron elevator.
Their suite was on the third floor. Carolina had no idea how many others were enjoying the spa, but so far she’d only seen staff-and Maguire. The suite took her breath the first time she saw it.
His-and-her bedrooms both had their own bathrooms. The central living area between held a fireplace, a medieval round table and a wall tapestry that concealed a minifridge with snacks and drinks. Her bed was on a pedestal, with velvet drapes and hand-embroidered pillows. Greta had told her the truth. She barely made it inside before folding up on the bed and sleeping hard and deep.
When she wakened, though, the sensation of luxurious pampering and contentment was gone. Her head was thudding, her heart pounding. The long, whisper-satin gown still felt embarrassingly sexy against her skin, the heap of Swiss feather bed no less fabulous, but she headed into the main room, knelt down on the stone hearth.
This whole week had been disturbing and tantalizing and scary and wonderful, and above all, distracting.
But she had a life in shambles back home. It hadn’t disappeared. Maybe she’d desperately needed a break. Maybe she could be excused for hiding out for a few days. But she’d done that now, and the crushing weight of decisions and problems was still waiting for her.
She had to push the stop button. She couldn’t keep falling for a man who wasn’t for her, living a fantasy life that wasn’t hers…behaving like a woman she couldn’t be.
Maguire disconnected from all electronics, locked down his business and headed upstairs. The staff claimed Carolina would likely take a solid two-hour nap, but he hadn’t checked on her in a while now. He didn’t want to make further plans for the day until he evaluated what she felt up to.
As the elevator let him out on the third floor, he considered that he wouldn’t mind a serious nap himself. His neck creaked, and a sharp headache threatened around his eyes. He was used to lack of sleep, but he’d been pouring on work hours on top of time changes and travel.
Adding Carolina to his life had created all kinds of complications. Some, he’d expected. Some were mightily confounding him.
The door to their suite was an oval-shaped piece of carved wood-very cool and castle-like-but it was darned hard to unlock the door without making a sound. Still, he tried, let himself in, and then immediately stopped dead.
“Hey,” he said, but he thought, Hell. Hell times ten.
Carolina wasn’t sleeping the way she was supposed to be, but sitting on the hearth rug, her head on her knees, kind of rocking back and forth. Her toes peeked out of a gown that couldn’t be legal in public. God knew every inch of her was covered-except for pale pink toenails. But the slinky-slidey material revealed every hint of curve. Her nipples. Her adorableness.
And he’d have been happy to concentrate on that, but it was downright impossible to miss her disconsolate posture. She had that look in her eyes again. The lost-waif look. The why-would-you-kick-my-puppy look.
“Hey,” he said again, trying for his most blustery voice. Wary of making anything worse, he moved closer, crouched down next to her. “This isn’t how the story’s supposed to go. You were supposed to love all this. Sleeping in the cool old castle. All the history crud. The spa thing.”
“I did. I do. But, Maguire, I just can’t keep playing. I have to go home!”
Here he’d expected Armageddon from those anxiety-drenched eyes. Instead, this was nothing more than a little
