That sexy accent growled through his voice and she stared at him with cold blue eyes. If he thought that lightly veiled insult would upset her he was making a huge mistake. She had no intention of making a bargain, certainly not the one he had conceitedly implied. There were some limits to what she would do to save her father’s hide!
‘However—’ he dipped his head and the harsh
sunlight gleamed on the dark luxuriance of his hair ‘—as I am not without honour, and you are a guest in my country, I will not abandon you in your obvious distress. Come.’ He smiled grimly at her stupefaction, taking her baggage from her suddenly nerveless hands. ‘I will take you to a hotel where you may refresh yourself, señorita. Where you may also hire a taxi to take you back to the airport. Try to find a driver who is a little less impulsive than the one you had before,’ he added drily, opening the passenger door, stiffly formal now.
Formality suited her just fine. Much better than threats and insults, glimpses of a hot, wild temper, the way he had dominated her with his male body as if to impress upon her his vast superiority. Besides, she’d just had a wonderful idea. His reference to the driver who had brought her out had seeded it in her mind.
So she was feeling in control of the situation again as he manoeuvred the Ferrari out of the tiny colourful square, able to give grudging admiration as he negotiated the narrow streets in the shadow of the church of San Pedro, down to the lower reaches of the ancient town that straddled a towering rocky spur, finally parking in front of an imposing hotel, the potent scarlet car a shriek of affluence and power amid the humble waiting taxis.
She exited before he had time to come round to help her, pleased to note that her legs had stopped shaking, and her features were commendably serene as the Spaniard took her belongings in one hand and her elbow in the other and marched her up the broad, sweeping marble steps and into the foyer.
Her idea might not work, of course, for all kinds of reasons. But she would give it her best shot. And hopefully he would soon learn that he was not the only one who made things happen, took the prevailing circumstances and forced them to his will!
Inside, the foyer was all hushed, cool opulence, slow-moving brass-bladed fans overhead, marble slabs underfoot, intricate plasterwork and rich carved wood. And glass telephone booths, Sarah noted, filing the information tidily away, her stomach tightening with the excitement of knowing that her plan might possibly work.
‘You are hungry?’ her escort asked, apparently without a great deal of interest.
She shook her head without thinking. She was too wound up inside to think of eating now. But then she realised that if she had said she was ravenous it would have delayed his departure for a little longer, so she tacked on quickly, before he could walk away and leave her, ‘I’d love a long cold drink, though, if you’re having something,’ and added, ‘Might I freshen up first? Could you tell me where to go?’
‘But of course.’ He seemed bored now, and she tagged along as he approached the reception desk, but her spirits soared to fresh heights as he addressed the male clerk in English.
‘The señorita wishes to use the rest-room. I shall be waiting in the terrace restaurant; will you bring her to me?’
Sarah barely registered the man’s reply. It was all going better than she would ever have dared to hope. Veiling her aquamarine eyes in case they betrayed her mounting inner excitement, she extracted her shoulder-bag from the baggage he was still holding, said, ‘See you in around ten minutes,’ and headed smartly for the rest-room, ignoring his drawled ‘Take your time’, not caring an atom if he was regretting his decision to do her the courtesy of allowing her to refresh herself before he abandoned her to go off in murderous pursuit of her father.
He was going to regret his ‘honourable’ impulse far more before the day was out. She was about to make very sure of that.
CHAPTER THREE
THIS time round Sarah didn’t in the least object to being jolted about in the back of a taxi. And she kept her eyes wide open. If they hadn’t been screwed tightly shut for most of that earlier, stomachtwisting journey into Arcos then sooner or later she would have noticed the prowling Ferrari behind them. And been warned.
But, never one to take lingering backward looks at past mistakes, Sarah now kept her sparkling eyes firmly glued to the road ahead, on the unsuspecting speck of scarlet in the distance.
Little more than an hour ago, the gut-wrenching fear that Francisco Casals would roar off into the wild blue yonder, reclaim his erring sister then beat her father senseless, without her being around to stop it or temper the Spanish brute’s ferocity, had seemed a frightening certainty. He had made her feel utterly impotent for the first time in years, and she hadn’t liked the sensation one little bit.
But a few careless words of his had given her the idea of following him, as he had so obviously followed her all the way from London. And the rest had been amazingly, brilliantly easy. Even now, with her plan working out perfectly, she could hardly believe her good fortune, the way everything had neatly fallen into place without a single hitch.
A few seconds in the rest-room, just long enough to give him time to take himself off to the terrace restaurant, had been followed by a thoroughly satisfying whirlwind of activity.
The availability of public telephones had been a foregone conclusion and she’d been able to get through to her London office with hardly any delay, her tone brisk and concise as she’d told Jenny, ‘Look, something’s cropped up and I’m going to have to be away longer than I bargained for. Hold the fort for me, would you? I’ll get back just as soon as I can.’
‘Not to worry, boss. Take all the time you need.’ Jenny sounded emphatic. ‘It’s ages since you had a break—just make sure you have a great time, and relax for just once in your life.’
Ordeal by a vengeful, tricky Spaniard was hardly her idea of a holiday, Sarah thought wryly as she replaced the receiver. But two could be tricky—as the lordly Francisco Garcia Casals would soon discover—and as for relaxing, well, there would be no time for that until she’d outwitted that black Andalusian devil…
Her shoulders straight, she marched purposefully over to Reception and asked the man she now knew spoke English—which had been another stroke of sheer good luck, hadn’t it just?—‘Could you help me, please?’
‘Sure.’ He almost sprang to attention. ‘Señor Casals is waiting on the terrace. If you’ll follow me…’
His dark eyes showed no surprise at her obviously unrefreshed appearance but his brows did rise a fraction when she corrected him swiftly, ‘In a moment. First, though, I need to arrange for a taxi—I speak no Spanish, I’m afraid.’
She ignored his openly surprised, momentary stare and followed coolly as he led the way outside to where three or four drivers were waiting for a fare, boredom or a kind of resignation written all over them. He probably couldn’t understand why any woman would be thinking of transport when that suavely gorgeous hunk of Spanish manhood was waiting—especially a woman who must look as if she’d spent the last few hours fully dressed in a Turkish bath.
She didn’t care what chauvinistic thoughts were rattling around inside his brain but embarrassment reared its debilitating head when he turned to her, bland-eyed now, asking, ‘Tell me where you want to go, señorita, and I will translate.’
For one weak moment, Sarah was tempted to ask for the airport, to fly back to England and hide from the mess Piers had unwittingly got her into. But, she reminded herself, she had never run from anything yet, and wasn’t going to start acting like a moral coward now. And she could weather a little embarrassment, couldn’t she?
So she held her head high, looking down the length of her neat nose, toughing it out.
‘I want a driver who is prepared to wait until Señor Casals and I leave. The señor will be driving the red car. I will want my driver to follow, at a discreet distance, naturally, to—’ Her voice faltered, echoing the way she was cringing inside, but she overcame the slight proble
m and went on firmly, ‘To wherever he goes. I am prepared to pay well over the odds.’
She refused to look away, even when he smirked with unconcealed amusement, just tilted her chin that little bit higher. She knew just what he was thinking. The handsome señor, who drove the kind of car only the seriously wealthy could afford to run, had grown bored with his English bit on the side—who could blame him?—and had dumped her. But the unglamorous, sadly plain creature wasn’t prepared to be dumped, was determined to follow wherever he went, make a nuisance of herself. The conclusion was so obvious that she couldn’t blame him for reaching it.
With a fatalistic shrug that implied that all men, even the mightiest, had to pay for their pleasures in the end, the receptionist spoke rapidly to one of the drivers and, the deal apparently clinched, turned back to Sarah, his smile very broad now.
‘You wish now to join Señor Casals?’
‘Of course.’ It was difficult to maintain her dignity in the face of his amusement, but she managed it as he escorted her to the terrace restaurant. The incident would have enlivened his otherwise dreary working day. And if the sly, sideways glance he gave Francisco Casals as he rose to his feet when Sarah was led to his table was anything to go by they would both be the subject of endless jokes and speculation among the rest of the staff here.
Oddly enough it gave her a weird sense of fellowfeeling with Francisco as he dismissed the receptionist with a curt word of thanks. As if, in some strange way, they were bound together.
Which was complete and utter nonsense, she dismissed as she took her seat at the white-covered table, refusing anything from the lavish bowl of luscious-looking fruits, just accepting the glass of orange juice he poured from a jug that nestled in a bowl of crushed ice.
He was her father’s enemy and that made him hers—because, whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation, violence was demeaning, it solved nothing, and she intended to be around to see that it didn’t happen.
Ignoring the magnificent view of rumpled, sunbaked mountains spread out in front of the terrace restaurant, she gave him her full attention. There was a gleam in his eyes she didn’t like—it gave her the mental shudders—so she ignored that too, offering him one last chance to redeem himself.
‘You say my father’s neighbour told you where he is, and that a girl answering Encarnación’s description was with him when he left Arcos. And that you intend right now to go and find them.’
She took a sip of her juice to moisten her suddenly parched throat, horribly aware of the way his black eyes never once left her consciously prim features, and then a huge gulp of the cold, delicious liquid because that sip hadn’t eased the annoying constriction in her throat. Then from somewhere she found the most businesslike tone she possessed and suggested sensibly, ‘Tell me where they are and let me sort it out. I promise to separate them and personally deliver your sister to you. I sympathise with your concern, believe me, but violence won’t solve anything.’
She couldn’t put it plainer than that. It gave him the opportunity to rethink, to do the civilised thing and allow the whole unfortunate affair to be settled without aggression.
‘No,’ he responded unfeelingly, with not even a flicker of one dark eyelash to change his expression. He went on, his tone unaltered, ‘Tell me, señorita, are you always so prim and pedantic, so completely lacking in passion? Your father is an undisputed amoral hedonist and he has seduced an innocent young girl away from her home, yet all you can do is say that you “sympathise with my concern”—’ his mouth tightened dangerously, the fingers of one hand now tapping restlessly on the spotless linen that covered the table ‘—and mouth meaningless, bloodless platitudes about the ineffectuality of violence. Do you really think I’m the type of man who would be willing to sit tamely in the background and allow a woman to deal with my family problems? Do you think I have no pride?’
Something deep inside her shuddered. This man would never do anything tamely; a basic, atavistic intuition told her that much. No appeal to more civilised instincts, however sensibly couched, could reach him because, for him, civilisation was only a thin surface veneer. But only the restless fingers, the smouldering fires in the dark depths of his translucent black eyes told of the volcanic rage inside him as he continued in the same chillingly measured tone, ‘If ever a man deserved a thrashing, it is your father. And I fully intend to teach him a lesson he will never forget. Without any interference from you. Now, señorita, if you have finished, I will find you a taxi to take you back to the airport.’
He got elegantly to his feet, his arrogant, remote features telling her more clearly than any words that she was dismissed, and, her eyes cloudy, she scrabbled around for her belongings, determinedly bottling up the unwelcome emotion that made her want to hurl her overnight bag at his head, wipe that superior, condescending expression from his face.
She straightened, quickly and nicely back in control again, firmly squashing that brief moment of insanity, her possessions held neatly in her hands. He had talked of passion and violence as if they were qualities to be admired. He disgusted her.
She had seen enough of both destructive emotions during her time with her father, witnessed the cheerful and, from her own viewpoint, utterly demeaning stoicism of her mother, and had made a solemn vow never to allow emotion of any kind to rule her life, mess it up and lead her into a state where she had no control over anything.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she told him coolly, her bluey-green eyes perfectly clear and steady now. ‘The hotel receptionist has already dealt with it.’ And she watched his tiny, elegant shrug, the small quirk of his beautiful, passionate mouth and put the sharp punch of sensation beneath her breastbone down to the sheer excitement of knowing she had outwitted him.
And now the sensation of churning, bubbling excitement was still with her, hardly containable. She had experienced nothing quite like it in the whole of her adult life. Ever since that proud chunk of Spanish manhood had assumed control—or so he, in his haughty arrogance, had believed—every single thing had gone her way. Which meant that the angels were on her side!
The red vehicle ahead disappeared from sight round a bend on the twisty mountain road and she was unconcerned enough to spare a glance at the awe-inspiring scenery. Dry rocky ranges dropped precipitously to deep river valleys mantled by the green of olive groves and forest trees and somewhere here, in this remote and ferocious landscape, her irresponsible father was hiding away with his latest conquest.
But even her deep distaste for yet again having to sort out the problems Piers had created for himself was almost forgotten in the intense satisfaction to be had from beating the Spaniard at his own game.
She had been eighteen years old when she had finally decided that enough was enough, that it was high time she abandoned her father to his own wild devices and got on with her own life. She had stuck rigidly to that earlier decision and going against it didn’t seem to matter now, not when they rounded the bend and saw the Ferrari disappearing in a puff of arrogant dust around the next.
Whatever his faults, Señor Casals was certainly a careful driver. His sober speed couldn’t have been more granny-like if he’d set out to break a record. Which begged the question of why he’d equipped himself with such a potent piece of machinery in the first place. The scarlet Ferrari was obviously a status symbol only, a look-at-me macho statement which he obviously had the financial wherewithal to purchase but hadn’t the bottle to use to its powerful potential.
Smiling at her own inverted snobbery, she called a halt to her mental carping and gave hearty thanks instead for the way things were. If he’d put his foot down her driver wouldn’t have had a hope in hell. The taxi would never have kept pace and she would never have been given the opportunity to walk in and temper the proceedings when the violent Spaniard met up with her culpable yet unsuspecting, unprepared parent.
But the impressive view that was now unfolding took her breath away, deflecting her thoughts. Great stone wal
ling, fragmented in parts, marched down the precipitous mountainside, partly enclosing what she could see of a tiny village in the deep and distant, verdant valley below. And high above, straddling a rocky spur, dominating the craggy landscape from its austere, arid heights, the imposing walls, crenellations, turrets and towers of a massive castle soared to the raw blue sky.
As a statement of power and authority it would take some beating, she thought, then opened her eyes very wide as the scarlet Ferrari, with a definite flirt of its rear end, turned beneath an impressive archway that could lead nowhere else but to the castle itself.
Surely Piers and Encarnación weren’t hiding up here? And apparently her driver had his own misgivings because he stood on the brakes, turning to her, gesturing expansively towards the archway.
‘Qué quieres, señorita?’
She stared at him, wrinkling her brow. He was, she assumed, waiting for further instructions. Then she shook her head decisively. Discreetly following the vengefully violent Spaniard was one thing, sweeping up to the main entrance in a taxi was another. She couldn’t afford to advertise her presence until she’d managed to slip inside. She didn’t want every door bolted and barred in her face, to have to pace around outside, waiting while Señor Casals gave Piers the punishment he deserved.
‘I’ll walk the rest of the way,’ she said firmly, then met his blank eyes. He didn’t understand a word. Quickly she extracted her purse from her shoulder-bag and the driver smiled. That much he did understand and she paid him off, using most of her remaining pesetas, gathering her belongings and pacing forthrightly towards the arch and beneath it, not wanting to show the obviously curious taxi driver even the smallest hint of the panic that was beginning to beat its frenzied wings against the inside of her head.
Nothing to panic about, she assured herself, refusing to feel intimidated as the great stone arch swallowed her up. She’d been ultra-successful so far; now all she had to do was find a way inside the thick, looming walls and break up whatever mayhem might be going on inside. Put an end to it with the cool voice of reason. At the very least, Casals would surely temper his violence considerably when she appeared on the scene as a witness.
Hostage of Passion Page 3
