The Spaniard's Seduction

by Anne Mather

  Cassandra felt impotent. ‘I don’t know who she was, do I?’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t share your secrets with me.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed harshly. ‘But you are prepared to speculate, are you not?’

  ‘Enrique—’

  ‘I will tell you, she is not my—what would you say? My girlfriend, sí? Her name is Sanchia, Cassandra. Sanchia de Romero. She is the woman my brother was going to marry before he became—before he met you!’

  Cassandra swallowed. ‘I—I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  Why indeed?

  Cassandra gazed up into his dark face with troubled eyes, the idea that Antonio’s ex-fiancée was still a regular visitor in this house filling her with dismay. ‘I—didn’t know,’ she excused herself lamely, wishing she hadn’t spoken so impulsively, and Enrique’s mouth compressed into a thin line.

  ‘There is a lot you do not know, Cassandra,’ he told her grimly, but he was looking at her differently now, his expression taut with suppressed emotion. ‘Do you think you are the only one of us who has any feelings at all?’

  Cassandra couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t drag her eyes away from his. A moment before she had been afraid of his anger; now she was afraid of herself. His hand about her arm wasn’t hurting her any more. It abraded her flesh with an entirely sensual movement, his fingers at her nape flexing against her skin.

  His thumb found the tender hollow below her ear and a pulse leapt nervously beneath his touch. Her shallow breathing couldn’t prevent her breasts from brushing constantly against his chest, her nipples hardening to pebbles beneath the cloth of her sleeveless shirt. His thigh had parted her legs in an effort to keep his balance, and every nerve in her body felt as if it was on red alert. She could feel herself succumbing to his sexuality, her body weakening instinctively in response to his.

  ‘This is not wise,’ he said roughly, his eyes moving almost compulsively to her mouth, and she realised he was as aware of what was happening as she was.

  ‘Then let me go,’ she pleaded unsteadily, though she made no attempt to move away. And Enrique sensed that she was susceptible to this sudden intimacy between them. It was evident in the dark fire that blazed suddenly in his eyes.

  ‘I will,’ he said savagely, but his actions belied his words. His head dipped until his lips were only a few inches away from hers, his breath warm and sensual. ‘I must,’ he added barely audibly before he bent even lower and touched her mouth with his.

  The fire that erupted between them was as uncontrollable as it was instantaneous. As it had been once before, Cassandra recalled in her last lucid moments before the hungry ardour of his kiss drove all other thoughts out of her head. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she gave in to the needs she’d been fighting ever since she’d encountered Enrique again on the forecourt of the pensión. Needs that involved clutching his warm neck with her fingers, burrowing closer to him, easing her aching nipples against the muscled hardness of his chest.

  ‘Dios mio,’ he muttered against her lips. ‘Te deseo.’ And although Cassandra’s grasp of his language was limited at best, she was fairly sure he was saying he wanted her.

  Which was madness. Yet, when his tongue probed her lips before plunging deeply into her mouth, she met it with her own, allowing them to mate in a sensuous dance of desire. She was drunk with passion, seduced with longing, lost in the dizzying whirl of the senses.

  Enrique’s hand cupped the back of her head, angling her mouth to make it easier for him to kiss her. Easier for him to go on delivering those long, drugging kisses that had ignited the flame inside her. He was oblivious of his surroundings, holding her against him with an urgency that suffered no rejection, pressing his hips against hers so that she quickly learned how aroused he was.

  She knew her shirt had come free of her trousers when Enrique’s hand gripped the bare skin of her midriff. Sliding up beneath the hem of the shirt, his thumb massaged the soft skin beneath her breast. She wound her arms about his neck in mindless surrender. She wished he would touch her breasts; she wanted him to hold them; and for the first time in her life she understood the advantages of not wearing a bra.

  She didn’t know which of them heard the sound of footsteps first. She thought perhaps that she did. Certainly, she was instantly aware of the sudden chill in the air that had previously been swelteringly hot. But it was Enrique who lifted his head; Enrique whose whole body stiffened in sudden recognition, Enrique who drew a hoarse breath and somehow managed to regain the initiative by putting her behind him.

  ‘Mamá!’

  Cassandra understood that word without any difficulty at all. His mother! Her knees felt as if they were about to buckle beneath her. That his mother should find them in such a compromising situation was bad enough. What she would think of her for allowing it to happen didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘Enrique.’ The voice that answered him was at best shocked, at worst blatantly hostile. ‘Que pasa? Estas loco?’

  Cassandra stiffened. So, his mother thought he was mad, did she? Well, that was scarcely surprising in the circumstances. She must have been mad, too, to let him touch her.

  ‘Speak English, Mamá.’ Enrique’s response was amazingly cool considering that only moments before he had been making violent love to her. All the same, Cassandra wondered how he was going to explain his actions. In fact, he didn’t. ‘I did not expect you to arrive so early.’

  ‘Obviously not.’ Señora de Montoya’s rejoinder was like chipped ice. ‘You had far more—pressing matters to attend to, I see.’

  ‘Do not be sarcastic, Mamá. It does not suit you.’ Enrique glanced behind him. ‘Allow me to introduce you to your daughter-in-law.’

  ‘I think not.’

  The contempt in the woman’s voice was galling, but Cassandra could hardly blame her. It had been what she was thinking herself, after all. She pulled down her tee shirt and ran smoothing hands over the strands of silky hair escaping from her ponytail. Her swollen mouth would be impossible to disguise, she thought, so perhaps it was just as well.

  ‘You will have to meet her sooner or later,’ Enrique was saying calmly, but his mother seemed indifferent to the fact that there was a third person present.

  ‘You expect me to speak to her after this—this fiasco?’ she exclaimed incredulously. ‘Dios, Enrique, I cannot believe you are acting this way. After all these years, I am expected to forget what happened to Antonio?’ She gave a gasp. ‘Never!’

  ‘You are overreacting, Mamá.’ Enrique was polite, but inflexible. ‘As you say, it is ten years since Antonio’s death. Life goes on.’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ His mother was obviously taken aback at this apparent defence of his brother’s widow. ‘Am I to understand that you are attracted to her? That you are infatuated with her as Antonio was before you? Dios, Enrique, I thought you had more sense.’

  Now Cassandra had heard enough. She refused to hide behind Enrique as if she was afraid of meeting Antonio’s mother. She surely deserved the chance to defend herself. Stepping round her unwanted protector, she confronted the irate little woman across the courtyard.

  ‘Believe me, Señora de Montoya,’ she said, annoyed to hear the tremor in her voice, ‘I did not choose to be here.’ She cast Enrique an accusing look before continuing, ‘And nor did I instigate what happened just now. Your son—accosted me as I was looking for David. If you want to blame anyone, blame him.’

  Elena de Montoya absorbed this outburst in silence, studying the other woman with critical eyes so that Cassandra was instantly aware of her own shortcomings. In a short-sleeved silk dress in a becoming shade of blue, Elena made up for in presence what she lacked in stature. She was no more than five feet one or two inches tall, but her coronet of sleek black hair and high heels gave her added height. In addition, a double string of what Cassandra guessed were real pearls encircled her throat, and her watch and rings sparkled with jewels. Her appearance wou
ld not have disgraced a royal investiture, thought Cassandra wryly, guessing the older woman had dressed this way deliberately. Girded for battle, she reflected, feeling inadequate in her cut-off trousers and cotton top. If only she’d known that Enrique’s mother was coming today.

  But Elena apparently had no intention of indulging in any verbal sparring with her. ‘David?’ she said instead, turning back to her son. ‘That is the boy’s name, is it not? Antonio’s son? Where is he?’

  ‘He is watching Juan examine the calves,’ replied Enrique at once, without looking at Cassandra, and she realised with a sense of outrage that his mother was not going to demand any further explanation from him. Whatever she said, whatever she did, Cassandra was the one Elena blamed; Cassandra, who would feel the chill of her displeasure. Cassandra could only hope that David would forgive her if ever the truth of this encounter was exposed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘IS THAT agreeable to you, Enrique?’

  Miguel de Guzman pointedly cleared his throat after asking the question and Enrique, who had been staring unseeingly through the long windows of the boardroom, turned uncomprehending eyes on the three other men who were gathered at one end of the long polished table.

  ‘I—beg your pardon?’

  ‘I asked if you were willing to allow Viejo to experiment with the vines he brought back from Italy,’ explained Miguel patiently. ‘Naturally, his experiments would not interfere with current production but, as we all know, without experimentation many of our finer blends would not have been discovered.’

  ‘That is true,’ echoed one of his fellow directors, and Enrique inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  The famous story of how a wine-maker in the mid-nineteenth century accidentally shipped a barrel of the crystal-clear wine his uncle favoured to England, instead of the dark sweet wine that had been ordered, was the stuff of legend. The wine, subsequently called Tio Pepe, in honour of Manuel Gonzales’s uncle, was now one of the top-selling wines in the world, and vintners were constantly experimenting with unique combinations of soil and grape and climate, as well as ageing methods, in the hope of discovering some new favourite.

  ‘I am sure you are right,’ Enrique said now, but he had little interest in their concerns today. He had a headache; had had a headache for the past three days, actually. And although he knew he owed it to his father to give his full attention to the business, it was difficult to concentrate when he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since David’s letter had arrived.

  It had been a stressful week, and ever since his mother’s arrival at Tuarega things had gone from bad to worse. The whole household had been left in no doubt as to her feelings and although she had returned to Seville now, Enrique knew it was a temporary reprieve at best.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Miguel de Guzman was looking at him with some concern and Enrique guessed a little of the strain he was feeling must be showing in his face. But, dammit, he had reason to be stressed. His mother had found him kissing the woman he’d sworn he despised more than anyone else on earth.

  Yet, when he’d been kissing her, he hadn’t despised her. When he’d held her in his arms, when he’d pressed her slim lissom body against his, he’d wanted nothing so much as to—admit it!—bury himself in her soft flesh. He’d wanted, he couldn’t deny it, to make love with her, and if his mother hadn’t come upon them as she had…

  He raked his scalp with agitated fingers. That was what had made his contact with his mother so awkward. Elena de Montoya had been angry at first. He’d known that. But she’d soon recovered and she’d done her best since then to make it easy for him to put the blame elsewhere. She’d wanted him to blame Cassandra. She’d wanted him to say that the woman he had to remember was Antonio’s widow had invited his attentions, had encouraged him to take advantage of her so that she could use it against them later.

  But he hadn’t been able to do it. Which was why he and his mother had failed to have any meaningful conversation while she was here. Cassandra had been foremost in both their minds; Cassandra had stood between them.

  Not so with David, however. Although the boy had been somewhat in awe of his Spanish grandmother, he had shown a touching desire to get to know her. Enrique knew that the boy’s behaviour left a lot to be desired as far as his mother was concerned: he was far too outspoken for one thing and he didn’t behave towards his elders with the respect that Enrique and his brother had had drilled into them from an early age. But although Señora de Montoya had had mixed feelings about the whole situation, she had had to accept that David was her grandson and that her son had had no choice but to tell her about it.

  In the end, Enrique had taken the letter to Seville and shown it to his mother. It had seemed the simplest, and possibly the kindest, way to break the news to her. And, although she’d initially expressed doubts about David’s parentage, those doubts had ceased, as Enrique’s had, as soon as she’d laid eyes on the boy. It was up to her now when, and how, she would tell Enrique’s father. Until then, Enrique could only wait and hope that learning he had a grandson would prove a stimulant to Julio’s recovery.

  Which didn’t make his situation any easier, he acknowledged, pulling the file under discussion towards him. It was hard enough to concentrate on everyday things like sleeping and eating at regular times without having to take on the responsibility of making decisions that might affect the future of the estate. All he could think about was that Cassandra was back in his life; Cassandra was at the palacio. And that, however eagerly she’d appeared to respond to his lovemaking, her feelings towards him were as hostile as ever.

  ‘I—would prefer we put off taking a vote on this until my father is capable of participating in the discussions,’ he said now, aware that he was disappointing them but unable to do anything about it. How could he pass judgement on something so important when he wasn’t willing to look beyond the next few days?

  The men took his decision resignedly. They weren’t prepared to argue with Julio de Montoya’s chosen successor, and, with a few polite expressions of goodwill for his father’s recovery, they left the boardroom.

  Enrique rose at their departure and went to stand at the window. Gazing out at the sweep of the Bay of Cadiz, visible from the elevated heights of the de Montoya building, he massaged the back of his neck with a weary hand. He had handled that well, he thought ironically. Julio would be furious if he knew how ineffectual his contribution had been. His father was depending on him to keep De Montoya y Hijo on course in his absence, but Enrique wondered if he wouldn’t have been wiser to appoint Miguel de Guzman as his deputy instead of himself.

  He scowled, balling a fist and pressing it against the carved wooden shutters that were folded back against the wall beside the windows. What was wrong with him, for God’s sake? Why couldn’t he stop thinking about Cassandra and concentrate on the fact that in less than a week his father would be home from the hospital? His mother had said that Julio’s doctor was delighted with his progress and that, although he was sixty, Julio apparently had the constitution of a much younger man. It was his father’s health that was important, he told himself now, not his own maudlin desire for a woman who had been out of reach as long as he’d known her…

  * * *

  Enrique had been introduced to the woman his brother intended to marry just two weeks before the wedding was due to take place.

  He had flown to England on his father’s orders to do whatever was necessary to stop the marriage. But, although Julio had told him to warn Antonio that he’d cut him off without a peseta if he went ahead with his plans, Enrique had known that that was a sure-fire way of achieving the exact opposite of what he wanted. Like himself, Antonio had been stubborn, and just quixotic enough to announce that his father could do his worst. And mean it.

  In consequence, Enrique had devised a different strategy. He’d had no choice but to admit that his father had sent him, but he’d pretended he was on their side, that he was in favour of t
he marriage.

  It had been pathetically easy to delude Antonio, he remembered, with a pang. His brother had been so open-hearted, so innocent. So sure that what he was doing was right that he hadn’t suspected that Enrique might have a different agenda from his own.

  In the beginning, Cassandra had been suspicious of him. Perhaps she’d realised even then that he was not to be trusted, though she’d managed to hide her feelings from Antonio.

  And, after a few days, even she’d seemed inclined to accept him at face value. After all, he’d been the only member of her future husband’s family apparently willing to come to the wedding, and she must have been able to see how delighted Antonio was that he was there.

  Antonio had spent much of his time at the university, Enrique remembered. He had been working for his finals. With a degree in art history, he would have had no difficulty in getting a job with or without his father’s approval, but it had meant that Enrique and Cassandra had spent a lot of time alone together. Her job at the local library had been much more flexible, and Antonio had insisted that she should get to know his brother.

  Looking back now, Enrique knew a reluctance to reexamine his feelings at that time. When had he determined that the only way to stop the marriage had been to seduce her himself? When had he finally decided that his brother was making a mistake and it was up to him to prove it?

  God, how arrogant he had been! Of course, he’d been convinced that she was only marrying Antonio because of what she expected to get out of it. Antonio’s declaration that it had been love at first sight had sounded far too convenient, and he’d been sure that if Cassandra thought he was attracted to her, too, she’d instantly see the advantages of marrying the elder son. He was his father’s heir, after all. Not Antonio.