Scowling, she breathed out slowly.
It was yet another reason for her to loathe Luis Osorio, for she wouldn’t even be up here if it wasn’t for him. But after a restless night spent dissecting his remarks she had woken feeling just as tense and furious as when she’d gone to bed.
Back in London she would have distracted herself by going out and merging with the noise and the crowds, blending with friends and strangers at pubs and parties across the city, blanking out her brain with noise and laughter.
Only how could she do that stuck on a private island? There were no people or parties.
But there was no way she could just sit alone with her thoughts in that huge, beautiful bedroom, so she’d opted for her other go-to solution: exercise. After grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, she’d headed towards the hill, expecting a walk and a view.
But of course nothing connected with Luis was what it seemed.
Her jaw tightened as his cool, hostile soundbites replayed inside her head.
Out of all the men in that club, she’d had to go and sleep with him.
The sun was high in the sky now, but despite its heat a familiar damp clamminess was creeping over her skin. She felt numb. It would be easy to say it was just bad luck. That she was the victim of some massive cosmic conspiracy. That she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But what would be the point?
She knew what had really happened. When he’d collided with her in the club it hadn’t rendered her helpless or incapable of thought. The truth was that even before she’d felt the lean, hard muscles of his chest, or the power in his arms as he’d stopped her falling, she had wanted him.
Having sex with him had been her choice.
And his choice too.
She could feel the blood trembling beneath her skin.
Only he’d already distanced himself from that part of the equation. Distanced himself from her too. Just as her father had done.
Her father—
She felt a sting of pain in her chest. Why did everything always begin and end with her father? A man who thought so little of her that he had found it easy—effortless, really—to walk away. Nor had he felt any need to keep in touch. No letter telling her that he cared, no phone call to explain or justify his actions. Not so much as a backward glance. But then why would he look back? she thought dully. He already had a whole other life mapped out—another future—and it was easier to delete her and her mother, to rewrite history. Just as Luis had.
She shivered.
And that wasn’t all they had in common.
Just like with her father, she had now given him the power to jeopardise her future.
Thinking back to what it had been like after her father had left, she took a breath, trying to steady the panic lurching in her stomach.
His desertion had, of course, devastated her thirteen-year-old self, but it had impacted on the future Cristina too. Angry and hurt, and with the cause of her anger and pain absent, she had turned on those who remained.
She had messed up her education, lost her friends, and lashed out at the one person who had consistently and unfailingly loved her—her mother.
It had taken years to get her life back on track, and this photo shoot was her chance finally to be a part of something. Only now, just like always, she had managed to mess it up.
Her body stilled. It was awkward enough that she’d had sex with Luis—she couldn’t even imagine what Grace would say if she found out—but there was also the matter of Luis wanting her gone.
Her insides tightened. Surely that wouldn’t be up to him?
She bit her lip. Except that, like any normal parents, Agusto and Sofia were clearly devoted to their son. If he came up with a convincing enough excuse to end her contract it was inconceivable that they would take her side against him.
She felt her heart thud against her ribs. So the real question, then, was how far would he go to make good on his threat?
*
‘That’s great, Señor Osorio. If you could maybe lean in a little towards your wife. That’s wonderful. Perhaps just a little bit closer. Wonderful.’
Cristina swallowed. At some point in the future she would look back to this day and see it as some sort of baptism of fire. A rite of passage that she might refer to in her memoirs. Right now, though, she just wanted it to be over.
She had probably taken hundreds, if not thousands of photographs over the last two years, but today nothing was working.
In theory it didn’t matter. Today’s shots were supposed to be ‘fun’. Really they were just about making Agusto and Sofia feel comfortable around her, but instead they were making her question her ability to do the job.
She shivered on the inside. Maybe Grace’s faith in her had been a little premature. Or, worse, could Luis’s scathing remark about her experience actually be true?
Hating the way he had already managed to undermine her, she tried unsuccessfully to block his words from her head.
Only it was hard to do when the man himself was lounging negligently on a sofa to her left.
The sun was already high in a sky the colour of forget-me-nots, and both she and the Osorios were dressed for the heat—short sleeves, cool, pale fabrics. Luis, though, cut a sombre figure. Wearing a beautifully cut dark grey suit that made his eyes look almost black, a pale blue shirt and dark blue knitted tie, he looked as though he was about to preside over a full board meeting rather than sitting in on an informal photo shoot.
She felt a flicker of irritation.
His choice of clothing was obviously a deliberate attempt to sabotage the relaxed atmosphere she had been trying to create. And it didn’t help either that he seemed determined to prove she was a scurrilous, manipulative hustler. Not only did he seem to be constantly there, policing her every move, he treated any attempt she made to engage him or his parents in conversation as some kind of an inquisition.
Aside from that he ignored her completely, immersing himself in his work so that she couldn’t actually imagine him without his laptop.
Glancing furtively over to where he sat—one hand hovering over the keyboard, the other tracking a line of numbers on a paper printout—not for the first time she wondered how Luis 2.0 could be the same man who had stripped her naked and taken possession of her feverish body.
A memory of the earlier version of the man sitting opposite her dropped into her head—his mouth rough and urgent against hers, his eyes darkening as he lowered her onto the bed—and suddenly her mind went blank.
All she could think was how perfect it had felt…how perfect it had been.
When he’d banged into her in the club she had been blown away, knocked off her feet—not just literally but metaphorically. The attraction between them had been instant, inescapable.
She gritted her teeth. And now he was inescapable again, unfortunately…
Feeling completely exposed, she glanced back down at the camera, steadying herself. Then, staring at the photos, she felt her pulse start to accelerate. The composition and light were fine, but—
They said the camera never lied, and if that was true in this case her job had just got about a million times harder.
Agusto looked tense. Everything from the set of his shoulders to the tightness around his mouth suggested that he was not enjoying the photo shoot at all. But it was his wife’s expression that made a knot form in Cristina’s stomach.
Sofia was looking not at the camera but through it, her eyes focused on some distant point, as though she was searching for something that wasn’t visible. She looked sad—hollowed out, almost.
Keeping her head bent over the camera, Cristina forced herself to click through the images on the screen, all the while making encouraging noises.
It wasn’t just the sadness in the older woman’s eyes that had caught her off guard, it was her own unintended intrusion into it.
Head spinning, she took a breath. She felt grubby, tainted. Just as she had when
she’d caught that actress, with her philandering husband of three weeks, in a restaurant. Even now she could remember the thrill of it. She had thought being a paparazza was like being some kind of avenger. A truth-chasing, justice-seeker on a bike, with a camera as her weapon of choice.
But watching that actress, who’d been younger than she herself was now, go into meltdown had made her feel physically sick. It could have made her a lot of money. It wasn’t every day that an Alister stripped down to her underwear in public. But instead it had been the reason she had quit chasing celebrities.
‘Is there a problem?’
At the sound of the cool, clipped voice, she felt her fingers curl instinctively around the camera. Given his low opinion of her, Luis Osorio was the last person she wanted to talk to when she was feeling like a paparazza with his mother. But then he was pretty much the last person she wanted to talk to, or see, in any situation.
Although judging by the way her skin now felt as if it was on fire, it appeared that her body might have missed that particular memo.
Gritting her teeth, she trained an expression of what she hoped looked like serenity onto her face, and looked up at him.
At first, when she’d found him talking with his parents in the ornate sitting room the Osorios had chosen as a backdrop for the photos, she had assumed he would leave once she began to work. However, it had become clear almost immediately that he was keeping his promise to her. That not only was he going to watch her every move, but he was going to do so with an expression of utter contempt on his handsome face.
‘Not at all,’ she lied. ‘It’s all just part of the process.’
‘Really? So all this playing with the light settings and changing lenses actually leads somewhere? That’s good to know,’ he said softly. ‘To us amateurs it just looks like you don’t know what you’re doing.’
He held her gaze, and she felt her stomach tighten like a fist.
‘By “amateurs” he means his mother and I,’ Agusto said drily. ‘Luis has a great interest in photography. He has a quite a collection now.’
It was true. She had seen them around the fortress. His photographs ranged from Bauhaus Expressionism to nineteen-thirties social documentary, and were of a calibre normally not seen outside of galleries and museums.
Cristina kept her expression neutral. ‘I know. I’ve noticed them.’ She had admired them too, although no amount of waterboarding would have persuaded her to say so.
Turning, Sofia smiled fondly at her son. ‘And he’s met quite a number of the photographers personally—haven’t you, mi cariño?’
Watching her son’s face stiffen at the endearment, Cristina stifled a smile. But her amusement faded rapidly as Luis said slowly, ‘I’m sure Ms Shephard doesn’t want to hear about that now, Mamá. She is an artist at work, and we wouldn’t want to interrupt her muse.’
For a moment she couldn’t reply—she was too busy loathing the way he could say one thing and mean something entirely different. She knew definitively that he hadn’t even looked at her work, and that he thought her ‘muse’ was Lady Luck.
Meeting his gaze, she felt her heart skip a beat as his dark grey eyes swept over her face.
‘I’m happy for any interruption that includes an espresso, Señor Osorio,’ she said sweetly.
Agusto laughed. ‘I agree.’ His earlier tension seemed to have shifted. ‘Luis? Why don’t you go and ask Pilar if she will bring us some coffee?’
‘Isn’t it a little early, Papá? It’s barely ten o’clock.’
His father ignored him. ‘And some of those rosquillas that she makes so well.’
Cristina held her breath as Luis stood up, his eyes steady on her face. If looks could kill, she might not be dead but she would be seriously maimed.
‘I’ll be right back,’ he said stiffly.
Watching him stalk out of the room, Cristina released her breath. It was a relief to be free of his baleful presence—even it was only going to be a short respite. But she had no time to enjoy her small victory, as from inside her pocket she felt her phone vibrate. Normally she would never have answered it—particularly not with Luis looking for any opportunity to hint at her unprofessionalism—but it was the third time it had rung that morning, so it was probably someone from the office checking up on her.
‘Excuse me, Señora Osorio. Would you mind if I took this call? It’s the magazine.’
‘Of course, my dear.’ Sofia smiled. ‘Agusto and I are just going to stretch our legs.’
Turning, Cristina walked quickly out of the room and swiped across the screen. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello? Is that Cristina? Cristina Shephard?’
The voice at the other end of the phone was a little breathless, as though the owner was nervous, or wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing.
It didn’t sound like anyone from the magazine, but then who else knew how to get hold of her? She had only just switched phones, and so far had only given her new number to the magazine, the Osorios and her mum.
Had something happened to her mother?
It seemed unlikely, but she couldn’t stop the fear, sharp and irrational, spiking inside her.
‘Hello, yes—who is this?’ She flinched at the sound of her own voice. It sounded strange, taut and too high.
‘You don’t know me—well, you do, sort of…’
The woman hesitated. She sounded young—probably around her age—and in fact her voice sounded familiar. Cristina wondered why that should make her hand suddenly grow clammy against the phone—
‘Only we’ve never met. I know you know about me, though, because you came to the hotel that time…’ She hesitated again, and then gave a small, nervous laugh. ‘I’m Laura.’
Laura.
It wasn’t just the name that made her heart vibrate painfully inside her chest. Laura was a reminder of everything she’d lost and everything she’d failed to be.
Ice was slipping over her skin. It was lucky there was a wall behind her, she thought dazedly as she took a step back, pressing her spine against the cool plaster. Her legs felt like blades of grass and her mouth was dry.
The hotel.
Out of a lifetime of mistakes, that had probably been one of the worst.
And she wasn’t about to repeat it now.
‘I don’t want to speak to you—I don’t—I can’t—’
‘Please don’t ha—’
She disconnected the call, her pulse racing. With trembling fingers she switched the phone to silent and stuffed it into her pocket.
Laura—
‘Ms Shephard? Is there a problem? Not bad news, I hope?’
Cristina flinched. Hell—where had he come from?
For so many years she had imagined speaking to Laura. But not like this. And not now. Not with Luis Osorio staring at her, his dark gaze picking at the loose threads of her composure. He had already written her off, and she wasn’t about to give him even more reason to despise and distrust her.
Forcing herself to meet his gaze, she shook her head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you. It was just my editor,’ she lied. ‘I had a few ideas that I wanted to run past her.’
‘Really? That’s strange. I just got off the phone with her myself.’
Cristina swallowed. Of all the lies she could have picked, why had it been that one? And why did he have to be the one to catch her out in the lie?
The air between them was suddenly vibrating with tension.
‘Actually, we got cut off,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll call her back later.’
Luis stared at her in silence. She had just lied to his face, and now she was doing it again. If she’d been cut off she would have looked irritated, or annoyed. But when he’d caught sight of her, slumped against the wall, the expression on her face had been not frustration but fear.
His pulse twitched. In fact she had looked distraught. So distraught that for a moment he had forgotten that she was the enemy. Forgotten that she couldn’t be trusted. All he had wanted to do w
as reach out and—His brain paused. And what?
Hold her? Pull her close? Say something to wipe that look off her beautiful face?
He had been on the verge of doing it, but then she’d looked up at him and lied.
Just like that.
His anger simmered dangerously. How many times was she going to have to prove him right before he actually accepted the facts? That she had used him and that she was dangerous.
In two long strides he was in front of her, his arms on either side of her body, boxing her in against the wall.
‘Don’t take me for a fool, Ms Shephard. You might think that running with a pack of slobbering hyenas has made you tough. But you need to be very careful.’
His eyes locked with hers.
‘I’m watching you. And the next time you lie to me will be the last.’
With the barest turn of his head, he pushed away from the wall and spun round.
‘Pilar—let me take that tray.’
*
After lunch, Luis took a phone call of his own, and after he’d stepped out of the room Cristina felt her heartbeat return to normal again. It had been stupid to lie to him like that, for all she’d succeeded in doing was confirming his bad opinion of her.
But why did she care what Luis Osorio thought of her anyway? After this photo shoot she would never see him again. But for some reason she did care. Maybe it was because, just like her father, he found her wanting, and she so badly wanted to prove him wrong. Or maybe, after Laura’s phone call, her defences had been down.
Either way, this was not the time to crumple.
She looked up and felt her heart contract. Agusto looked tired, but Sofia seemed drained.
‘Señora Osorio, I was wondering…would it be possible to have a little look around the fortress? Just to get a feel of the place. I know how important it’s been to your family.’
‘Of course.’ Sofia glanced at her husband. ‘That would be fine—wouldn’t it, Agusto?’
He nodded. ‘Does that mean you don’t want to take any more photographs today? Only…’ his face softened as he looked at his wife ‘…I think Sofia and I could both do with a break.’
Surrender to the Ruthless Billionaire Page 6
