Gabriel was guiding her towards a pair of doors beyond which the charity gala they were about to attend should be in full flow. Two smiling lackeys jumped to open the doors for them. The smooth background sound of a bossa nova song drifted out towards them as the foyer gave way to a vast reception room set against a backcloth of wall-to-wall glass, offering breathtaking views towards a night-lit Sugarloaf.
People glittered and sparkled beneath overhead lighting, the warm tones of their conversations floating towards her on richly perfumed waves. Cristina’s stomach lurched, then rolled, and for a moment her courage completely failed her, pulling her to a trembling halt.
From the other side of the room Anton watched as she entered on the arm of just about the most attractive man here. She was still unutterably beautiful, he noted, allowing himself a small grimace at his unanswered hound dog prayer. The hair was too neat for his liking, and the dress might be glamorous, and sexy enough to knock most men’s eyes out, but he’d never liked to see her wearing black. She suited bright colours, colours that flagged her hot-blooded temperament. But the face, the wide-spaced almond-shaped eyes, the mouth…
Ah, the mouth, he observed darkly. It was still as lush and red and kissable as he remembered it. A mouth that instinctively knew how to—
Her escort murmured something to her. As she looked up to smile at him sudden tension was bathing Anton’s body in a fine layer of sensual heat. It was the smile of a born seductress. A smile she had once used to keep exclusively for him. It was the deceit in that smile that had ruined all other smiles every woman had offered him since.
Did she sleep with Gabriel Valentim? Had the handsome lawyer got to share a steamy hot interlude in a bath with the widow of Vaasco Ordoniz before they’d set out here?
‘Anton, your glass is empty…’
Looking down, he saw it was, frowning slightly because he didn’t remember drinking the champagne. He must have been sipping it while observing Cristina with her latest lover. Now he became aware of the tension in the fingers that held the glass and the angry fizz of champagne in his mouth.
‘Here, let me replace it…’
Reaching out, Kinsella took the empty glass from him. As she did so her body brushed against his. She was wearing no bra beneath the slip dress she was wearing. He’d felt the button-tight brush of her nipple against the back of his hand.
Yet another sexual message from his secretary? Irritation hit, then was instantly lost when he caught sight of Cristina’s escort lowering his handsome head to brush a kiss to her cheek.
‘Stop worrying,’ Gabriel softly chided her, feeling the tension in the stiff set of her spine beneath the resting palm of his hand. ‘No one is going to eat you.’
No? Cristina would question that. Six years ago she had scandalised these people by marrying a man old enough to be her father. She had become a gold-digging freak worthy of derision and scorn from that moment on. Discovering that Vaasco Ordoniz had left her virtually penniless would not have altered their opinion of his widow.
A waiter appeared, carrying a silver tray of drinks.
‘Here.’ Hooking up two fluted glasses frothing with champagne Gabriel slotted one into her hand. ‘Remember why you are here,’ he said firmly. ‘Get some of this fortifying champagne inside you and stop looking so tragic.’
‘I am not in any way tragic,’ Cristina denied, trying hard to ignore the hectic thrum of her pulse. ‘I just dislike the prospect of having to be pleasant to people I no longer like.’
‘Does that include me?’
Glancing up into the lean golden face of the man she had known since childhood, Cristina saw the wry glint of amusement in his soft amber eyes and couldn’t help but smile.
‘Thank you for doing this for me,’ she said softly. ‘I know that your father had to push you into it.’
‘I don’t need pushing to be with a beautiful woman, querida.’ Reaching out, he covered her fingers and lifted the glass to her lips, then held it there until she took the first sip. ‘And you should know better than to think that I am one of those who believed the gold-digging rumours about you.’
Her smile faded. ‘Would it make a difference if I told you that those rumours were true?’
‘To my escorting you?’ Gabriel’s mouth assumed a small grimace. ‘Look at these people, Cristina,’ he prompted. ‘Do you think none of them have skeletons to hide? I am a lawyer, like my father. Such a profession allows access to privileged information that would make the hair on the head of the good father in the confessional box stand on end. Take my advice and look upon them all as crooks and you will begin to feel much better about yourself.’
Her eyes widened in fascination. ‘Are they all crooks?’
‘No.’ Gabriel laughed. ‘But it helps a great deal to see them like that.’
Someone came up to greet Gabriel then, a perfect stranger to Cristina, so she was able to relax a little as Gabriel made the introductions and even managed to smile as she sipped at her glass of champagne and listened to the two men converse. A few minutes later the stranger had moved off again, and they began to circulate.
Gabriel’s hand was always light on her waistline. He was well known and well liked, his good looks and his naturally friendly manner drew people to him, and she wanted to kiss him for the way he was carefully manoeuvring them around the room so that she was not forced to come face to face with any of the old crowd—though she had glimpsed many of them here.
It was then that it happened. Just as she was beginning to relax in the company she picked up the sound of a dark-timbred very English voice, speaking in such beautifully fluent Portuguese that she had twisted around without giving herself a chance to think.
By then it was too late. Her swift movement had caught his attention. The next instant she found herself welded to the spot as a pair of darkly hooded glinting green eyes fixed on her shocked face.
Luis, she thought. Meu Dues, it was Luis…
He was standing less than ten feet away, a tall, lean, solid, dark force backed by the night view of Rio. Her legs turned to water, her head swirling so dizzily that for a horrible moment she was afraid that she was actually going to faint. No one else was in the room suddenly. No voices sounded. No slow and sensual bossa nova beat. All she could hear was the blood pumping heavily through her body as those hooded eyes looked at her and took everything, stripping away six long miserable years to leave her standing there feeling so exposed and vulnerable that she just could not bring herself to look away.
And he wasn’t going to do it, she realised as she watched those eyes begin a slow, slow glide over her face. Her shock-blackened eyes. Her shock-whitened cheeks. He let his gaze linger on every telling detail until finally fixing it on her helplessly parted lips.
Those lips quivered as if he’d touched them. A knowing smile stretched the contours of his. It was electric, dynamic, so overwhelmingly sexual and intensely familiar she was nailed by it, drenched in sensation that slithered and danced across her skin. They had been lovers for twelve months more than six years ago, yet for these few breathtaking seconds those years just did not exist.
She trembled—all over. He watched that happen too, and swung his gaze up to clash with hers again. Mockery lanced through those glinting green eyes and he lifted his glass, tilting it towards her in a salute that was so dryly cynical it sucked her back through those six years with a painful, dizzying whoosh.
He hated her. It was there for her to see it. And she could not even blame him for feeling that way. She had encouraged him to hate—worked at it like an actress putting on an Oscar-winning performance. She’d mocked him and cursed him and died a little more inside with each slaying remark she had thrown at his face.
Tears began to gather, hot, like acid burning in her chest and her throat. She loved him, would always love him for as long as she had left to draw breath, but she’d wished—oh, how she had wished—never to set eyes on him again.
Someone shifted beside him, forcin
g her gaze to flicker 840 sideways in time to watch a woman step in close to murmur something to him. She was beautiful, a reed-slender blonde wearing aquamarine silk. Whatever it was that she said to Luis, it lost Cristina her contact with his eyes as he turned to the woman with a lazy, sensual smile on his lips.
And Cristina knew that smile, recognised it with every sensory nerve she possessed. They were lovers. Jealousy roared up like a snarling, spitting wild animal inside her, and on a choked little whimper she spun away.
Trembling like mad, she moved in so close to Gabriel that she earned herself a curious glance as his arm accommodated her, though his attention did not falter from the discussion he was involved in.
‘The problem has been global,’ he was saying smoothly. ‘But the industry is showing signs of recovery, and we have a plan in place to get in first where this growth is happening. People will pay a high price for a flawless pedigree. Santa Rosa can give them that—hmm, Cristina?’ He prompted some input from her.
Gabriel was into his sales pitch, and she had to fight a gigantic battle with herself to find sensible words to speak.
‘S-Santa Rosa stock is conceived born and raised on the land on which it roams free,’ she heard herself say, as if from down a long dark tunnel. ‘We are proud that we still farm by traditional methods where quality always takes precedence over quantity.’
‘But quantity is what makes the big profit, senhorita,’ Gabriel’s companion wryly pointed out.
‘Sim.’ She nodded, battling to keep herself together. ‘We know this, which is why we want to diversify a little…turn Santa Rosa into a showcase where people can come and stay for a while, experience what it is like to live in a genuine Portuguese mansion house, and spend time with the gauchos learning of the life and true traditions of a working ranch. But such plans require investment—’
‘At great risk to the investor, I would say,’ a smooth-as-silk voice put in.
Both Gabriel and his companion turned to face the newcomer. Cristina didn’t—not again, she told herself as her pounding heart increased its crazy beat.
‘Most worthy investments require a certain amount of risk, senhor,’ Gabriel countered easily.
‘The knack for the successful investor is to pick out those investments that have at least a starting chance to earn him some profit.’
‘With commitment to hard work and true dedication we can certainly promise our investors their profit,’ Gabriel declared without hesitation, at the same time making out that he had a big stake in the project himself, when in truth he was simply playing the machismo rule to the hilt for her sake. ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he then offered affably, releasing Cristina to hold out his hand. ‘I am Gabriel Valentim, and this is—’
‘I know who this is…’ Anton smoothly put in, and the instant that Gabriel’s hand left the base of her spine his replaced it, fingertips moving in an all too familiar stroke that sent shock waves stinging up her spine.
His warm breath brushed her nape as he moved in closer. ‘Cristina, meu querida,’ he greeted with husky intimacy. ‘Surely you must remember me?’
It took every ounce of will power she could muster to turn and face him. Her insides were dipping and diving even before she lifted her chin and looked directly into his face.
‘Luis,’ she responded, with very shaky coolness.
‘But you’re mistaken,’ a cool English voice intruded. ‘This is Anton—Anton Scott-Lee.’
Anton Luis Ferreira Scott-Lee, to give him his full title, Cristina corrected silently. Anton to most people, but always Luis to her. A man with two faces—his English face and his Brazilian face.
And she was seeing his Brazilian face right now, as he smiled one of his slow, sensual smiles at her and reached out to take a light grasp on her hand. ‘Don’t look so shattered,’ he softly admonished. ‘I will answer to Luis if it still pleases you to use it…’
The air in her lungs ceased to be of any use to her. This close up he was everything she remembered about him—everything. Her lips parted, trembling again as she tried desperately to find something light to say.
‘This is some kind of joke, yes?’ Gabriel asked curiously, as a set of slender white fingers claimed Cristina’s attention by coiling possessively around Luis’ sleeve.
The fingers belonged to his beautiful blonde companion. Cristina glanced into a pair of gentian-blue eyes and blinked at the amount of ice she met with. Was this the kind of woman Luis preferred these days?
‘No joke,’ the man himself was denying, bringing Cristina’s eyes slewing back to his face. ‘Cristina and I are very old friends—hmm, amante?’
Lover.
Her senses went haywire. She had to fight to pull in some air, unaware of the silence slowly thickening around them, unaware of everything but those eyes and that smile and that word, playing like a silken caress across her skin.
A thumb-pad stroked against the skin of her palm and she looked down at it, staring blankly at the way his long fingers coiled so easily around the fragility of hers.
‘Cristina?’ Gabriel prompted an answer from her, because she was taking too long to speak.
She looked up at him next, not seeing him—not seeing anything. Not even the flash of venom that hit Luis’s companion’s eyes. Her heart had stopped beating. The thick curdling slurry of so many old feelings was churning inside her, leeching the last of the colour from her skin. She couldn’t think. Even as she tried very hard to find the right response that would defuse the tense moment a thick whooshing sound in her head stopped her from being able to think.
His thumb stroked her palm again and she looked back at her hand, still caught in his. She felt a strange lethargy creep over her, and on a shivered gasp tugged her hand free.
‘I—please excuse me,’ she heard herself mumble in stifled constriction. ‘I n-need to—use the bathroom…’
And on that crass, stupid and utterly unsophisticated exit line she turned and fled, leaving a stunning silence in her place.
On legs that felt dangerously like cotton wool she made it into the foyer. A passing waiter had only to take one look at her face to quickly direct her to the nearest private bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she leant back against it. She was shaking all over, locked in the kind of hard shock that turned flesh to ice. Lurching unsteadily across the room, she sank down onto the toilet seat.
Luis was here in Rio. ‘Meu dues,’ she whispered.
Why was he here? Why now, after all of these years? Why should he want to acknowledge her at all?
It came then, that final damning scene they’d had six years ago, swimming up through her mind to send her hands up to cover her face. She saw Luis standing there, stunned and bewildered, staring at her as if she had grown a forked tail and hooves.
‘What’s wrong with you? You love me. Why are you doing this? We lived here together for a year before I had to go back to England to attend my father’s funeral. That year must have meant something to you—told you that I was serious about us!’
‘Things change—’ He’d been too angry to notice her deathly pallor, or the agony etched into her face.
‘In three months? No, they don’t,’ he’d denied harshly. ‘You made me promise to come back for you and here I am as promised, with a rock-solid marriage proposal and plane tickets to a whole new life! For goodness’ sake, Cristina—’ his voice had roughened ‘—I love you. I want you to be my wife, I want to have children with you and grow old with you, watch those children grow into adults and have their own children!’
Cut to death inside by his vision of the future, she’d tossed her head at him. Sitting here in this room lined in glaring white marble, Cristina winced as she remembered the way she’d tossed her head at him that day. ‘I will never marry you, Luis. I will never have your children. There, I have said it. Will you accept it now?’
Oh, yes, he’d accepted it. Cristina had seen it happen as she’d watched the bitter look that overtook his face. ‘Because y
ou don’t want to spoil that perfect body of yours?’
‘That is exactly it,’ she’d agreed. ‘I am selfish and heartless and incurably vain. I am also a Marques, with three centuries of pure Portuguese blood running in my veins. Diluting my blood with your half-English blood would be a sin and a sacrilege that would turn my ancestors in their—’
The brief knock on the door was the only warning she received before it was swinging open. Cristina lifted her face out of her hands, and froze yet again.
CHAPTER THREE
LUIS was not so afflicted. He shut the door and shot home the bolt she had stupidly forgotten when she’d come in here. Then he turned, leant his wide shoulders back against the door, pushed long-fingered hands into the pockets of his well-cut trousers, fixed his steady gaze on her agonised face and simply waited for her to make the next move.
Dressed in a dark lounge suit and white shirt he looked big and hard and absolutely in control. The room was too small, too brightly lit, and he was too close for comfort, the electric charge vibrating from every pore of him so violently sexual it grabbed her attention and refused to let go.
Mouth running dry, she took in every hard, honed inch of him like someone seeing the chance of life restoring water after a six year drought. Nothing about him had changed—nothing. His hair was still short black and silky, his skin still golden and smooth. Eyes the colour of a sensual green ocean glowed at her from between half lowered eyelashes, and the unsmiling shape of his mouth did nothing to spoil the passionate promise it made.
‘When you fled in here like a frightened rabbit I knew you would forget to lock the door, because you always did forget to lock doors, so I thought—why not join her and relive some of the good old times?’ he drawled.
Her insides quivering madly, Cristina lurched unsteadily to her feet, fingers searching for and clutching tensely at the sink behind her for support. ‘W-what do you want?’ she demanded shakily. 37
‘Now, there’s a good question.’ The twist of his mouth was dryly sardonic as he sent his mocking gaze around the room. ‘We could fill the room with hot steam, if you like, strip off our clothes and get down to some really physical reacquainting?’ he suggested. ‘I can see by the way you look at me that you’re up for it, querida, and I’m certainly up for it. So what the hell?’ He gave a shrug of his wide shoulders. ‘We could do it against the bath, in the bath, in the shower, or right where you were sitting just now. Or you could coax me down flat on the cold marble floor like an offering and crawl all over me. You used to like crawling all over me, Cristina, do you remember? You used to love to make me beg, then laugh in my face as you took me inside you. Got you, Luis, you used to purr in that greedily possessive, husky, triumphant voice of yours. Mine, you used to say.’
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