‘I’m sorry your grandmother is ill, but that still doesn’t explain the ring—’ she waved her hand in an expansive gesture ‘—or any of this.’
‘It is her wish that I marry and provide an heir.’
Nell, her eyes wide—she was clearly dealing with someone who was delusional and possibly dangerous—started to shake her head and back away.
‘I care about Lucy, but if you think I’m going to…m-m…’ She shook her head again. ‘Some sacrifices I’m not willing to make. Let her leave the place to this other Luiz Felipe—he seems more than willing to marry.’ And for all she knew provide heirs! ‘God, I really need to find Lucy.’
For a split second he looked perplexed by her response. ‘Sacrifice? You think…?’ He threw back his dark head and laughed, a deep attractive sound. ‘I am not asking you to marry me, and Felipe would not make a suitable custodian for the estancia.’
Nell pursed her lips, perversely irritated that he appeared to find the idea so hilarious. ‘So you don’t want a wife.’
His expression sobered and she glimpsed something that wasn’t cold calculation flicker at the back of his eyes. It was stark, shocking pain.
‘I had a wife. I require no one to fill her place in my life or heart.’
Did that mean the ex-wife had walked…? The image of him as broken-hearted, discarded husband was one Nell’s imagination just wouldn’t expand to accommodate. Actually she felt a lot more comfortable believing he didn’t have a heart at all, let alone a bruised one, so she changed the subject.
‘So you think you’d be a…suitable custodian? Is that shorthand for you fancy yourself as king of the castle?’ He certainly had the regal manner. ‘So you don’t mind if your cousin gets the girl but not the money.’
‘There is no money.’
Nell rolled her eyes. ‘Sure there isn’t.’ She folded her arms across her chest and challenged, ‘So, if you don’t have an avaricious bone in your body—’ gorgeous body ‘—why this silliness?’ she finished, thinking she might well ask herself the same question. Stop drooling, Nell!
‘My grandmother raised me, she has taught me everything I know, I owe her everything and I wish her to die a happy woman.’
‘But…’
His eyes flashed as he frowned in exasperation and mimed a zipping motion across his mouth. ‘Will you be silent and let me finish?’
Nell’s chin went up as she viewed him, eyes narrowed in dislike. ‘If you get to the point.’
‘My grandmother is a redoubtable woman. She has carried the burden of running the estancia alone for many years. She was a young woman when her husband died. She does not want that for me. She wants me to be happy and she believes that for that I need a…’ he paused, his lips twisting into a cynical smile before he completed ‘…soul mate, a wife.’
‘Me? No way!’
‘My thought exactly.’
‘And I’m not lying for you.’
‘I’m not asking you to. I’m hoping that the ring will do the trick.’
‘But what if she doesn’t…?’ Nell gave an awkward grimace.
‘Die,’ he inserted, turning his head so that Nell could not see the muscle he could feel clenching in his cheek. ‘It is possible,’ he conceded. ‘She is tough and she has been ill before. If that happens…’ nothing in Luiz’s demeanour suggested how desperately he clung to that hope as he calmly outlined his hastily formed fall-back strategy ‘…I will simply explain that you have been forced to return to England. Long-distance love affairs are notoriously difficult and ours will die a natural death, possibly due, I think, to your infidelity.’
Nell stared. She almost believed it herself! ‘You seem to have thought of everything.’
He took her comment as a compliment and bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘I have that reputation.’ And whether it was deserved or not it made him feared by his competitors.
That was not entirely a bad thing in the cutthroat world he operated in. A man used every advantage he had, and one advantage Luiz no longer had was the element of surprise that had enabled him as an unknown twenty-year-old to make his first million before the competition had become aware of his existence.
Now they knew he was there, but he enjoyed a challenge.
‘Maybe you’ve actually convinced yourself that you’re doing this to make her happy because you’re ashamed to admit how far you’d go to make sure you inherit this place?’
Luiz Santoro looked almost as shocked as Nell felt to hear her private speculation voiced out loud.
She took an involuntary step back as eyes that housed sheer molten rage connected with her own. Before she had a chance to be defensive or even sensibly scared it was gone, leaving her wondering if it had ever been there at all.
Luiz, on the point of ramming his financial success down her superior, self-righteous little throat, stopped himself. Why justify his actions to this girl, when he never justified himself to anyone?
Her opinion of him was of no consequence but defending himself would force him to question this.
‘You need not trouble yourself with my motivation or my self-delusion, just look sweet and in love,’ he mocked, placing a finger under her chin.
Nell, her pulse racing and no longer just from fear, held herself rigid while he studied her upturned features. ‘You don’t look in love.’ He sounded irritated by the discovery.
She pushed his hand away and directed her darting glance at some point behind him. Don’t panic, Nell—you can leave at any time you like. He can’t stop you.
All you have to do is walk away.
‘That’s because I’m not.’ She ran her tongue nervously across her dry lips and said, ‘This is all too weird. I need time. I’ve changed my mind. I think—’
‘Not an option.’
Without any warning at all he bent his head and pressed his mouth to hers.
The hot, hungry kiss did not start slow and build; it was hard, demanding, and began at a mind-blowing level of intimacy that nothing could have prepared her for. As his mouth moved with innate sensuality across her own the heat flared inside her and her senses were flooded with the texture and taste of him.
At the first erotic stabbing incursion of his tongue her insides dissolved and something inside her snapped. Suddenly she was kissing him back, her fingers spread out across his hard chest as she groaned into his mouth and pressed her body into his, responding to a frantic need to be closer.
When Luiz lifted his head he looked as dazed as she felt, but maybe she had imagined it because a second later he was removing her hands from his chest and pushing her through the door ahead of him.
‘And don’t think,’ he said in her ear.
Nell, her mind still numb with shock, thought, Walk away! But her will seemed to have deserted her, her body was nailed to the spot with shock.
Struggling to prove she still had a mind of her own…God, I kissed him back…she flashed him a killer look. ‘If you do that again I will make you regret it!’ she snapped.
Luiz, who was already regretting the impulsive action, did not respond. He looked at her lush lips and thought about the way she had tasted. Then he pushed the thought away. For a man who prided himself on his iron control it should have been a simple matter.
It wasn’t.
A man could not excel at everything and it was clear that he was not good at spontaneity…especially spontaneity that involved this woman.
Resentment and humiliation swirled through Nell’s veins. Calculatingly, he’d done that to shut her up and get her through the door and the worst part was it had worked!
And while she was reduced to a shell-shocked wreck by a simple kiss—just a kiss, what was wrong with her?—he was acting, it seemed to a mortified Nell, as if nothing had happened! I kissed him back!
Nell stumbled a little and his hand shot out to steady her and stayed at her elbow. She did not mistake the gesture for concern. He’s probably getting ready to rugby tackle me to the ground if I try and
run, she thought.
A rugby tackle would have been infinitely preferable to a kiss…although rolling on the ground with him did present some worrying opportunities for making a fool of herself.
The room they entered was in shadow. Nell could make out the general outline of furniture and a frail figure propped up in a big carved bed. She spoke in Spanish but Luiz replied in English.
‘Surprise? I doubt it. Don’t tell me the jungle drums have not already told you I had arrived.’
Nell tried to slow her laboured breathing as she watched Luiz walk towards the bed and bend over it.
Seeing the walking frame beside the bed brought back a rush of memories and to her horror Nell felt her eyelids prickle with tears. Eight weeks and I cry now. Please, no, not now. Inch by inch she fought her way back to control, dabbing angrily at the moisture at the corners of her eyes.
‘I’ve brought you a visitor and she doesn’t speak Spanish.’
The contrast between his callous attitude to her moments earlier and the tenderness in his manner as he kissed the sunken cheek of the tiny figure lying in the bed increased the emotional ache in her throat. She remained stubbornly reluctant to endow him with finer feelings or motives, but if he didn’t love this old lady he was a very good actor.
‘This is Nell.’
How could anyone put so much expression into one word—one name?
It was astonishing, and her reaction to the warm husky intonation in his deep voice suggesting unspoken intimacies was no less shocking.
Luiz reached a hand towards her and she responded without thinking to the compelling message in his eyes and stepped forward, taking his hand. An embarrassing rush of heat passed through Nell’s body as he tugged her towards him and slipped his arm around her waist before pulling her into his body.
She suddenly felt a spasm of sympathy for Lucy. If his cousin had half this man’s seductive powers, then it was hardly surprising that her inexperienced niece had fallen so hard.
‘Turn that light on, Luiz.’
Nell blinked as the light from an angle lamp fell across her face.
‘Good bones…’ came the verdict. The sharp eyes slid thoughtfully back to her grandson’s face, before she returned her attention to Nell. ‘Not your usual type, Luiz.’
Tell me something I don’t know, thought Nell as to her relief Luiz aimed the light away from her eyes. Then prompted by the expression in his eyes, she held out her hand. Like some sort of puppet, observed the disgusted voice in her head.
‘Well, now I won’t have to change my will, Luiz,’ Doña Elena joked.
It took a couple of seconds for Nell to register the comment, and when she did she was gripped by a wave of disillusionment. She had wanted to know and now there was no doubt. It was quite irrational to feel so let down. People did unpleasant, low, nasty things when large sums of money were involved, so why should he be any different?
‘Were you going to leave it to Felipe?’
The standing joke between them raised a weak smile from the old lady and a horrified look from Nell. Elena Santoro, who was perfectly aware that her younger grandson had no fondness for the estancia that was, to quote him, ‘an anachronism in the modern world’, teased back.
‘Possibly.’ Felipe had even less enthusiasm for the responsibilities that came with it and he remained mystified by their grandmother’s stubborn determination to hang onto what he referred to as a damned money pit. He had been almost comically relieved when she had explained to him that it was her intention his cousin would inherit, but he would have her house in Seville and the art collection it contained.
Turning her head towards Nell, she asked, ‘You have met Felipe?’
Nell shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ She could almost feel sorry for him.
‘He is a good boy, artistic, but I expect he will grow out of that. You notice I do not speak of my sons. If I left the estancia to them, Nell, they would split it up and sell it off to speculators before I was cold in my grave.’ She broke off as her slight frame was racked by hacking coughs. ‘I’m fine, don’t fuss, Luiz,’ she gasped breathlessly as she patted away his solicitous hand. ‘So when, Nell, are you going to marry my grandson?’
Luiz spoke for her. ‘We have not set a date yet.’
Despite her physical frailty there was nothing weak about the glare that was directed at Luiz. ‘Does the girl not have a voice, Luiz? Let her speak,’ she quavered imperiously.
Nell lifted her chin. If Luiz was scared about what she might say, he ought to be. ‘I can speak.’ She flashed Luiz a look of distaste and thought, Let him sweat.
‘Tell me about yourself.’
It was a request, not an order, but Nell was starting to realise this was not a lady who did requests.
‘What would you like to know? I’m twenty-five, a library assistant.’
‘How did Luiz come to meet an English library assistant?’
‘Perhaps it was fated.’
Luiz gave an enigmatic smile and smoothed Nell’s hair back from her brow as though, she thought as she fought the impulse to pull away, he had performed the tender act a hundred times before. You had to admire the man’s acting ability, if not his morals.
The old lady returned her attention to Nell and almost caught her rolling her eyes. ‘You have family?’
‘I have a sister and a brother, both older and both married with children.’
‘You live alone?’
‘I live with my dad,’ she said without thinking. Then she remembered and muttered, ‘So stupid, I keep forgetting. I lived with Dad.’
‘Your father died?’
Luiz, noticing for the first time the violet smudges beneath her big eyes, felt an unidentifiable emotion break loose inside him as she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and scrubbed them like a child before responding to his grandmother’s question.
‘Eight weeks ago.’ Beside her she was conscious of Luiz stiffening.
‘Eight weeks,’ she repeated in a softer, almost surprised voice. Weeks that had been filled with practicalities; there had been no time for grieving.
Lots of practicalities, she mused, thinking of the pile of packing cases she had left when she had jumped on the first flight available. The removals people would be arriving in the morning and there would be no one to let them in.
And Clare, who was arriving to collect the more valuable pieces of furniture that she had claimed for her own home, was going to be annoyed. Nell was conscious that the idea of her sister’s anger and the removal people standing on the doorstep ought to bother her more, but it didn’t.
‘The house was only on the market a week when it sold.’ You are telling them this why, Nell? ‘It would have been too big for me anyway.’
Clare and Paul had both said it was fine by them if she stayed on for a while, but she knew they had both been pleased when she had put the property straight on the market. They would both find the money from the sale useful. And as they had said, she could find a nice little place of her own.
‘Your father, he had been ill for a long time, Nell?’ There was a gentler note than she had yet heard in the old lady’s voice.
Nell nodded tiredly and registered Luiz say something that sounded angry in Spanish. His grandmother responded, saying, ‘Can’t you see she needs to talk? The little one has been bottling up her emotions.’
‘He had a stroke. It left him partially paralyzed down his left side…’ Nell sketched an explanatory sweeping motion down her side. ‘He had some mobility problems so I didn’t go to university.’
If she had taken her university place and not stayed on the option would have been a nursing home or sheltered accommodation and Nell knew how much her dad loved his home. And with a few modifications to the house he had become reasonably independent, to the point that before his death he had been pushing for Nell to go to college as a mature student.
‘But he was doing really well. That’s why it was such a shock when he…’ Her voice trailed
away as she swallowed past the lump in her throat. ‘It was pneumonia.’
Nell heard her voice crack and thought, Please, no, not now, not here. Her grief lay lodged like an icy block in her chest. When it melted she knew there would be a lot of moisture and a lot of pain—but not now.
Luiz, watching as she forced her stiff features into a composed smile, felt her grief as a physical pain in his chest.
‘I told him that it was my choice to stay at home. I wanted to be there with him. There was no need for him to feel guilty about university, but…’
Nell didn’t connect herself with the strangled whimper. The second sob she felt as it worked its way up from deep down inside her and escaped and then she couldn’t stop them.
As the tears began to flow she turned her head and found Luiz’s chest. A hand came up to hold her there and another wrapped around her ribs, hauling her up against him.
‘This was not a good idea,’ Luiz, his face set like stone, said to his grandmother as he cradled her shaking body. The sound of her sobs tore him up inside; he had never felt so impotent in his life, or more responsible.
He should, he told himself, have recognised her vulnerability, but he hadn’t and this was the result.
He rested his chin on the top of Nell’s head and rocked her in his arms. ‘It will be all right,’ he soothed.
‘The girl has a sense of duty. I like that.’
‘I think she’s had enough,’ he said abruptly, before he swept her casually into his arms and walked out of the room with her.
CHAPTER FIVE
NELL’S sobs went straight to an unprotected portion of Luiz’s heart. Each sob seemed to be dragged from deep inside her. It was painful to listen to, to feel as they racked her body.
While she wept Sabina floated silently into the room, took in the scene at a glance and, after nodding at him, left. When she returned a short time later she was carrying a tray laden with sandwiches and cake, a coffee pot and two cups.
Luiz, nodding as she left, would not have minded the addition of something more stimulating. It was not a need he felt when facing the collapse of a multimillion-dollar deal, but right now… He glanced down and winced. It seemed to him the tears would never stop. But gradually, over the next few minutes, to his relief they lessened until she gave a final deep, shuddering sigh and lifted her head from his shoulder, her damp cheek brushing his as she did so.
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