The Latin Affair

by Sophie Weston

  ‘And then even the new kitchen didn’t work,’ Nicky said. She felt an unwelcome compunction. She did not like it. She did not want to start feeling sympathetic towards Esteban Tremain.

  ‘And the potential housekeeper walked out. With a few choice words about false pretences.’

  Nicky began to see why he had lost his temper with Springdown.

  ‘Have you found a replacement?’

  ‘I haven’t even looked yet.’ Esteban sounded weary suddenly. ‘I thought it was sorted. Now I’ll have to see my stepfather before I go to New Zealand.’

  ‘You’re going away?’

  Esteban looked up and all weariness fell away.

  ‘Just for a job. I’ll be back in two weeks.’

  He gave her the sudden, wicked smile she was beginning to recognise. It made her stomach turn over. She was beginning to recognise that too.

  ‘Why, Nicky! You sound almost as if you’d miss me,’ he said softly.

  Nicky stiffened. He laughed.

  Careful, she thought.

  ‘You’re so easy to tease,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Very rewarding.’

  At least he wasn’t asking questions she didn’t want to answer, Nicky told herself. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? But his easy superiority set her teeth on edge.

  He stood up and stretched.

  ‘Since the water and the heating are on and supper is in the oven, I think I’m going to indulge myself. Pretend I’m Mr Average come home from a hard day at the office.’

  Nicky tensed. She knew he was teasing again but she could not help herself.

  She said acidly, ‘Don’t get carried away.’

  Esteban grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I only meant I’ll unpack my briefcase. Make a few phone calls. Take a shower.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Come down and finish the rest of the champagne with you.’

  Nicky stayed cool. ‘I look forward to it,’ she said untruthfully. She did not like the sound of it at all. She just hoped she could handle it.

  ‘So do I.’ He gave her a long, speculative look. ‘We have so much to talk about’.

  She liked the sound of that even less.

  ‘H-have we?’

  ‘Two life histories. To say nothing of kitchen appliances,’ he said blandly.

  And, with an enigmatic smile, he strolled out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DINNER turned out to be less than the ordeal of intimacy which Nicky feared. Esteban was preoccupied. Oh, he was polite, even complimentary about the food, but she had the feeling that he was far away, turning over a problem in his mind that he was not willing to share with anyone.

  So it must have been sheer perversity that prompted her to say, ‘Problems?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing new.’

  The meal was over. Esteban was sitting at the kitchen table, idly shaving slivers off the Cheddar cheese she had brought, frowning. At her question, he’d looked up abruptly as if he had forgotten anyone else was there.

  His eyes met hers. Nicky almost jumped at the impact. It shocked her. She could keep telling herself the attraction was all in the past but the moment she looked into those dark, dark eyes it was there.

  Esteban was beginning to sense it too, she could tell. Now his eyes narrowed on her hair as if the golden strands could tell him something. Nicky put up a defensive hand and found she had lost the clip which kept it in a neat queue at the back of her neck. Hurriedly she bundled it into a knot and rummaged in her pocket for an elastic band.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ Esteban seemed as if he could not keep his eyes off her hair. He leaned forward and prised it gently out of its loose knot. ‘Leave it free.’

  She caught it and held it into the back of her neck.

  ‘I prefer—’ Her voice scraped. She cleared her throat and started again. ‘I prefer to keep it tied back. It’s more professional.’

  ‘But work is finished for the day.’

  But keeping a professional distance wasn’t, Nicky thought grimly. Though she was not going to say that to Esteban Tremain. Going by his behaviour this evening, he would only take it as a challenge.

  ‘There’s still the washing-up. And that machine wasn’t working either’ She stood up and started to gather plates. ‘Unless you did check the fuses?’

  He made an impatient gesture. ‘I’m willing to buy one duff fuse. Not—’ he looked round the kitchen, counting ‘—a dozen or more.’

  ‘I thought the same myself,’ Nicky admitted. ‘Still, there’s an outside chance, I suppose. Maybe the installers had a bad batch of fuses. I ought to check before I call in the mechanics.’

  Esteban shrugged, supremely uninterested.

  ‘If you want. But I warn you, I’m going to light the fire in the study. When it’s lit I want you to stop working and come and have coffee with me.’

  Nicky did not like the sound of that. She did not want to spend the rest of the evening in front of a blazing fire with Esteban Tremain. There was something horribly intimate about open fires.

  So she made a noncommittal noise and finished clearing the table.

  ‘As long as that’s understood,’ he said. It was soft but quite, quite determined.

  Nicky gave a little inward shiver and did not look at him.

  ‘Understood.’

  He went.

  Nicky switched off the current to the kitchen power points. Then she collected her all-purpose screwdriver from her bag and dived under the countertop to remove the plug from the electric socket.

  Five minutes later she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounded by three dismembered plugs. She looked at them in disbelief. The screwdriver fell from her hand with a clatter. She did not notice.

  ‘This is crazy,’ she said aloud.

  Esteban came back into the kitchen, dusting off his hands.

  ‘A fine healthy blaze—’ he began.

  And stopped at the sight of Nicky sitting on the floor. One look at her frozen face and he crossed to her in quick concern.

  ‘What is it?’

  Mutely she held out a plug to him. He took a cursory glance and shrugged, puzzled.

  ‘So?’

  Nicky realised that she was very scared. It was such a malicious thing for someone to do. Unbalanced.

  She swallowed. ‘The fuse wasn’t faulty. The wire had been mutilated. And there wasn’t a fuse in the plug at all. Or this.’ She picked up the flex to the kettle with its stripped plug. ‘Or this.’ A state-of-the-art steam iron. ‘I’ll bet all these machines are the same. That’s why the gas on the stove worked but the electric controls didn’t.’

  He turned the plug over in his hand. ‘Odd.’ He picked up the mangled flex and frowned. ‘I think Springdown needs to take a serious look at its quality control. Still, easy enough to put right now you’ve found the hitch.’

  Nicky felt very cold.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It’s not a hitch. It’s deliberate.’

  ‘What?’ He stared at her.

  She shook her head, still not quite believing it herself. Not wanting to believe it.

  ‘I didn’t check the fuses because, like you, I thought they couldn’t all have gone. And anyway Springdown give the installers worksheets. The last thing they do is fuse the plug, connect the machine and check the wiring is OK. It’s a whole section on the form.’ She waved a hand at her file, now on the cherry-wood dresser. ‘Every single one of the forms has been filled out showing the electric plug in working order.’

  He was unimpressed. ‘Workmen have been known to falsify worksheets. And if it’s the last job they’d have been in a hurry.’

  ‘Different workmen,’ said Nicky. ‘Different days. Different suppliers.’ She gestured round the kitchen. ‘There isn’t a fuse in any machine I’ve looked at Someone must have taken them out’

  Esteban stared. ‘Taken them out? That’s stupid.’

  Nicky shivered. ‘It’s such an easy way to disable a machine. When I was working
in advertising, we used to do it all the time when we had children on photo shoots.’

  Esteban said categorically, ‘No one would have done such a stupid thing deliberately.’

  She touched the damaged flex. ‘That sort of damage can’t happen by chance. It has to be vandalism.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’

  Nicky looked at the half plug in her hand. ‘That’s what makes it so nasty. Pointless and mean.’

  Esteban took the plug out of her hand and put it on the countertop.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Her voice rose. ‘Someone set out to disable your kitchen.’

  His reaction was not what she expected. He did not rage or scoff. Instead he hunkered down in front of her and turned her chin gently towards him.

  ‘It has really upset you,’ he said on a note of discovery.

  Nicky shook her head. But there was not much point in denying it when the truth was written all over her face.

  Esteban stroked her cheek with an oddly comforting finger.

  ‘This is no big deal, Nicky. Probably just a mistake by some half-trained assistant who isn’t very bright.’

  ‘You don’t have to be bright to know that a plug needs a fuse,’ she flashed.

  He tucked a swathe of golden hair behind her ear absently.

  ‘Even if you’re right and it was deliberate, so what? It’s scarcely life-threatening. Just a prank.’

  It did not feel like a prank to Nicky. ‘It’s so—spiteful. And underhand.’

  Esteban was unmoved by the thought. He swung down on to the floor beside her and put an arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Sure. But it’s only a temporary inconvenience. I contacted Springdown. Springdown got you down here. You’ll put fuses in the plugs. End of problem.’

  ‘Except that whoever did this is still out there.’

  His arm fell from her shoulders. His voice cooled noticeably. ‘There’s no need for melodrama.’

  Nicky turned her head. His eyes were very close. They were expressionless. Don’t ask any more, they said.

  She said involuntarily, ‘Have you got any enemies?’

  He looked at her with an unnerving lack of expression for a minute. Then he smiled, a crooked slant of the sensual mouth that got nowhere near his eyes.

  ‘Sure. Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Enemies who would want to hurt you?’

  ‘I’ve got a better class of enemies than people who would waste their time messing about with dishwashers.’

  Nicky remembered rather suddenly that he was superior, dictatorial and altogether hateful. She pushed away from him and stood up.

  ‘I think I’ve just been put in my place,’ she remarked.

  She turned away.

  Esteban came lightly to his feet.

  ‘Nicky?’

  He turned her back to face him. His touch was quite gentle but somehow it brooked no resistance. Something inside Nicky went very still. He searched her face.

  ‘What is it about you?’ he said, almost to himself.

  Her mind whirled. But she stood unmoving under his hands. Like a trapped animal whose only chance of escape is playing dead, she thought.

  Esteban shook his head as if to clear it.

  ‘Put it this way.’ He sounded strained. ‘Most of the people who wish me ill are international criminals I have failed to keep out of jail. Bomb under the car, maybe. Fuse out of the dishwasher—no way.’

  His hands were warm. Even under the old sweater she could feel the heat of his fingers against her shoulders. She felt as if she was drowning in warm, silky water. Nicky struggled to concentrate.

  ‘Bomb under the car?’

  Was it his pulse or hers she could hear? It slammed through her, slow and sweet and almost deafening.

  Esteban’s eyes were uncomfortably acute.

  ‘Joke.’

  Nicky swallowed and the thunder of the pulse subsided. She removed herself carefully from his grip.

  ‘A very bad one.’ It was clipped because her every instinct was to gasp for air and she did not want him to see it.

  He shrugged. ‘Just putting the thing in context No one’s going to sabotage a kitchen, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘It depends what you think is important,’ Nicky pointed out. Her breathing, thank God, was coming back under control. ‘Annoyed any good cooks lately?’

  ‘No, of course not. I—’ He broke off abruptly.

  Nicky took the other half of the plug away from him and turned away. It was better when she was not looking at him. Then the terrible vulnerabilities of her teenage self retreated into the past where they belonged.

  The modern, professional Nicky said briskly, ‘I’ve only got a couple of fuses in my bag. I’ll wire up the dishwasher tonight so we can use it. I’ll get some more fuses and do the rest in the morning. Then you’ll have a fully functioning kitchen and I can go back to London and get on with my life.’

  He was frowning. ‘What?’

  She repeated it, patiently. Esteban did not seem very interested.

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ he said absently. ‘Look—why don’t you make us some coffee? I’ve got a couple of calls to make.’

  He walked out without another word.

  Nicky breathed more easily. But she found that her hands were shaking as she made the coffee. Was that her fear of possible saboteurs? Or of Esteban? Or—it was not a welcome thought—of herself?

  It took her time to find the library. In the end it was only the sound of his voice which led her to it, down a flagged passage where the tapestries wafted in the old house’s draughts. She was shivering by the time she pushed open the door. Not entirely from the cold.

  As he had promised, the fire was blazing. A huge log lay across a vast fire basket, glowing red-hot, while flames danced up through logs and fir cones around it. It drew Nicky like a magnet.

  The heavy velvet curtains were still open. In the blackness beyond the long windows, Nicky thought she could make out the shifting shadow of the sea. That was where Esteban was standing, one foot on a window seat, his back to the room. He was talking rapidly into a telephone. He did not hear her come in.

  ‘—completely stupid,’ he was saying icily.

  Nicky stopped dead. She had heard that tone before. When he’d taken her to pieces in the showroom. On a beach when he’d said, ‘That was what you really wanted, wasn’t it?’ She shivered. She felt sorry for whoever was on the receiving end this time.

  Esteban did not notice her. She had the impression he was very angry.

  ‘I did not ask you to do me any favours,’ he said in a level voice. ‘It was a job, pure and simple. If you didn’t want it, all you had to do was say so. Not play childish tricks.’

  The other person clearly burst into speech. Esteban waited.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said finally.

  He cut the connection and slammed his mobile phone shut

  ‘You’re a real charmer on the phone, aren’t you?’ Nicky remarked drily.

  He swung round, startled.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘I gather you’ve thought of someone who might have sabotaged your kitchen after all.’

  She looked round for somewhere to put down the mugs of coffee that was not an antique. There was nowhere. She compromised by putting them on the edge of the hearth.

  She held out her hands to the blaze.

  He came over to the pool of light and warmth in front of the fire.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about. Just someone being silly.’

  Was he trying to reassure her? It hadn’t sounded silly. She shivered.

  ‘Was it a disgruntled cook?’

  He kicked a log into blazing life.

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Still not a very high-class enemy?’

  He looked at her broodingly for a moment.

  ‘Let’s say I haven’t been very clever about my dealings with that particular person’.

  ‘Really?’ There was an edge to Nicky’s v
oice. ‘Not very clever? Or not very kind?’

  Esteban winced. He sank down on to an ancient sofa at right angles to the fire.

  ‘Probably both,’ he admitted after a pause. He leaned forward, changing the subject decisively. ‘You found the coffee, then?’

  Nicky took the hint and passed the mug up to him.

  ‘I brought it with me. Like everything else. Including the kettle.’

  ‘How efficient,’ He took the mug. ‘Thank you. Is that normal or just because you were coming out to the wilds of rural Cornwall?’

  ‘Standard procedure,’ Nicky assured him.

  It was a relief to talk about something that did not stir up her unmanageable memory. For the first time she could hear herself sounding almost friendly.

  ‘You daren’t use anything in a client’s kitchen. It might be the very special vintage mustard they searched half of France for. Then you can go and put a couple of tablespoons of it in the stew. End of good relationship.’

  He pushed away the tiredness to allow himself to be entertained. ‘It sounds terrifying. Do you enjoy it?’

  Nicky sipped her own coffee. ‘It’s only a small part of my job. Not the best bit, I admit’

  He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Don’t like cooking?’

  ‘Cooking’s fine. I don’t like—’ Too late, she stopped.

  Esteban laughed softly. ‘Don’t like dealing with clients, eh?’

  ‘It is not,’ Nicky admitted, ‘my strongest point.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I—er—don’t seem to have the rapport,’ Nicky said carefully.

  ‘You surprise me. They can’t all be as unreasonable as I am,’ he murmured provocatively.

  Nicky was not rising to that one. ‘Most of our clients are women who are going to spend more time in their kitchens than I have ever done in my life. Martin understands them. His wife is a chef. Their family life is centred on the kitchen. So he can imagine what the client needs. I can’t, really.’