by Sara Wood
None of her boyfriends had stood the Grandpa test. They had all run a mile at his first bark and hadn’t even made it to his bite. But they’d been pretty lacklustre, if she was honest.
Her face grew wistful. When would a gorgeous, independent cuss of a man ever look twice at a mouse like her? Of course, she could probably lure a guy who fell for her brassy, extrovert image, but where would that get her? She was really quiet and shy. Would she want to live a lie for the rest of her life?
She checked her useless thoughts. This was ridiculous! It was silly to even contemplate the idea of marriage. It would never happen.
Sadly she closed the book, the corners of her bright mouth drooping. She wanted to be someone’s wife. Wanted babies, loads and loads of them. Like her friends, who seemed to be forever swelling or giving birth or pushing buggies and wailing about sleepless nights. But she couldn’t have children and that was that. She knew the score.
Her hand came to rest on her abdomen. Her mouth tightened in suppressed anguish as she remembered vividly the agony of the infection which had ruined her chances of motherhood some ten years earlier, when she was just twenty.
Despite her efforts, she couldn’t stop herself reliving those mind-numbing moments when the doctor had sat on the end of her bed and sympathetically said…
‘Feel all right?’ asked the Hunk abruptly.
She jerked and hastily drew her hand away, startled that he’d noticed her mournful expression. She’d thought he’d been intent on glaring the road into abject submission.
‘OK,’ she mumbled unconvincingly, unable to lift the dullness of her voice.
Unexpected tears welled up in her eyes. Over the years she’d had to accept the fact that she’d never have a child, but somehow coming to Portugal had unsettled her emotions.
Her teeth clamped together as she tried to crush her useless, destructive thoughts. But she would have given anything to have a baby. Anything.
Without comment, he swerved to the inside lane and took an exit which led them to a small, bustling village. Struggling fiercely with her stupidly wayward emotions, Maddy didn’t recognise it at all but was too choked up to ask what he was doing.
And yet there was something calming about the twisty cobbled roads lined with crumbling white houses. The village clearly was a poor one, but roses trailed around the wonky wooden doors and geraniums tumbled down from pots on rickety balconies.
Everything came flooding back to her. This was the old Portugal, the one she’d known as a child, and far more recognisable than the smart motorway and huge villa developments they’d passed so far.
Trundling beneath the lines of washing which hung across the street, the truck finally stopped in a small square surrounded by orange trees. A wonderful silence descended, broken only by the sound of birdsong. It was heavenly.
The truck driver turned to her and scowled. ‘Out!’
Grimly he walked around and jerked at her door, the metal screeching in protest as his brute strength levered the door completely open.
She stared at his unfriendly face in dismay as it became apparent that he wasn’t intending to have a potentially weepy woman in the cab and had decided to abandon her, then and there.
He pinned her with his cold and uncompromising stare. And then anger gave her the courage to fling herself in the direction of the driver’s seat. For a moment she found herself intimately linked with the gear stick and then she was tumbling into place and switching on the ignition.
Which was just as quickly switched off by a large, warm hand which clamped down on hers and deftly twisted her fingers in an anticlockwise direction till the engine died.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he enquired, his deep, throaty voice somewhere in the region of her right ear.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she husked, suddenly swamped, it seemed, by the smell of smoke and warm, body-tingling man.
‘Do you know how to drive a truck?’ he growled.
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Then why try?’ he asked, not unreasonably.
Her stormy eyes flashed angrily to his. His face was close, invading her personal space. Trying not to be intimidated, she said, ‘It was me or you and I chose me!’
His forehead furrowed. ‘What?’
‘You were going to dump me by the road!’ she cried hotly.
He looked exasperated. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I was going to take you into that bar for a coffee or a brandy.’
Startled, she jerked her head around to peer at the building behind him. There was, indeed, a bar.
‘Why?’ she asked, utterly confused.
Only inches away, the dark eyes bored into hers without compassion or sympathy. She felt suddenly weak, blasted by his intense masculinity.
‘You’re tired. Or upset. It doesn’t matter which,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘It was all I could think of.’
‘Oh!’ She moved back to escape his compelling power. Her brain began to work and as it did her anger subsided. He was being kind in his curt, funny way! She smiled gratefully. ‘Sorry. My mistake. That’s very thoughtful. Thanks. I would like a coffee.’
He narrowed his eyes and considered her with care. The scrutiny caused a frisson to ripple through her, taking her unawares. But then few gorgeous men ever paid her any attention normally, she reasoned. And decided that it was all very unsettling.
‘Would you really have driven away and left me here?’ he murmured, obviously intrigued.
‘Yes, of course!’ she declared, still a little amazed at her own nerve. ‘How else would I get to the Quinta?’
He let out a bark of surprised laughter and then hastily stifled it as if it was something forbidden. Then he swung himself out again, onto the step.
‘I think,’ he said in steel-trap tones, ‘I need a brandy.’
For a moment she lowered her eyes in feminine acquiescence of male rights, before she remembered who she was and blurted out her initial thought.
‘Good grief! Your driving’s energetic enough without it being fuelled by alcohol!’ she reproved daringly.
He stepped down. ‘I’m taking a lunch break,’ he drawled. ‘I intend to soak up the brandy with a large plate of fresh, chargrilled sardines on pão integral.’
‘Local bread,’ she remembered wistfully, her mouth watering as she recalled the enormous, tasty sardines on chunks of rough wholemeal. ‘That sounds wonderful. I’ll join you.’
Grabbing her shoes in one hand, she began to clamber out, and found herself stuck on the lower step above a large puddle, just where she’d land if she jumped down. She noticed then that the leather of the truck driver’s working boots were stained with water where he’d already walked through the puddle.
So she waved her bare feet at him and smiled expectantly. He did nothing. Just stood back and watched her, hatchet-faced and ungallant. Sir Walter Raleigh he was not.
Just as she was resigning herself to an impromptu paddle in what might be sewage for all she knew, a group of males appeared as if from nowhere. They were unshaven and grinning, all ages from teens to nineties, and clearly encouraging her to leap into their arms.
She dithered, feeling both flustered and touched by their concern. ‘Oh, you’re very kind. I don’t—’
Two firm hands came to settle around her waist. Before she could protest, she was being lifted into the air as the truck driver swung her up and over the puddle then deposited her safely on a strip of grass.
‘Thanks!’ she husked, stooping to slip her shoes on and going pink from the interest caused when she bent down.
Oddly, she felt dizzy and disorientated, and she didn’t know if it was from the driver’s intense masculinity or because she hadn’t eaten for hours. Probably both. And the swooping sensation had been due to being lifted and deposited rather quickly. A kind of inner-ear problem.
‘Come on,’ he muttered.
Meekly she followed his broad back. Patently unwilling to miss the entertainment on offer, the village men swept
into the bar behind them. They sat close by, raising their glasses to her and looking openly admiring.
There was an audible, communal sigh when she unthinkingly crossed one leg over the other, forgetting she was wearing something tight, short and revealing, instead of her usual grey and shapeless skirt.
‘I’m going to the washroom. I’ll put in our order on the way,’ the truck driver said curtly.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, suddenly nervous. ‘Don’t leave me! I feel like an exhibit.’
He grunted. ‘You ask to be ogled, wearing those clothes,’ he told her heartlessly. ‘And I’m not eating till I’ve washed.’
He had some standards, then. She watched him stride to the counter, and felt sympathy for the starry-eyed waitress who could hardly keep her eyes off the ultimate alpha male who was growling out his order as if it were a request for a suicide pill instead of sardines.
Rehearsing her role as a shameless hussy, Maddy studied him boldly. The muscles in his back rippled wonderfully when he moved. His rear was small and tight and he walked as if he was used to the freedom of the open air.
A wicked thought came into her head. Suppose, when she was talking to Sofia, she let slip that she was wildly attracted to the company’s truck driver?
With a giggle of horror at her audacity, she mulled this over while the man in question freshened up. A few minutes later the door to the men’s room opened and she hastily pretended to be studying her book again.
The hairs on the back of her neck tingled. She heard the firm stride of those heavy boots, the scrape of the chair opposite her as it was pulled to the table and then the faint smell of soap wafted to her nostrils.
She kept on reading, absently threading her hands through her hair until she was aware of a lot of deep breathing from the men around her.
‘You trying to be provocative?’ muttered the driver crossly.
She let her arms drop and bit back an indignant no. It would be safer to stay in character. Her behaviour might be reported back to the family. She racked her brains for what a siren might say.
‘No, I’m not trying. Comes naturally,’ she cooed.
He looked down his nose at her in disgust.
‘Unlike your hair colour.’
She smiled and batted her eyelashes in response.
‘Do you think it suits me?’ she asked coyly.
And, to her astonishment, she found herself holding her breath, hoping he did.
‘You’d look better blonde,’ was his laconic verdict.
Her natural colour! She decided to be blunt in return. He’d clearly scrubbed his hands and had tried to brush the dust out of his hair but he still looked grubby.
‘Why don’t you bother to keep yourself clean?’ she ventured curiously.
His frown deepened, the hard line of his mouth unutterably grim.
‘Don’t have time. Stopped work, drove to Faro, rushed to the builders’ yard, then the airport.’
‘You could have set the alarm earlier,’ she said, realising to her horror that she was unconsciously echoing her grandfather.
Before she could apologise profusely, she saw that the dark eyes suddenly looked tired and that there was a deeper tightening of the muscles around his mouth.
‘Four o’clock’s early enough for me,’ he growled.
‘Four…!’ She planted her hands on her hips indignantly, faintly conscious of a swell in the murmuring of the village men around them as she did so. But she was annoyed with the autocratic Fitzgeralds for taking advantage of their employee. ‘That’s outrageous!’ she declared hotly, totally forgetting who she was supposed to be. ‘I’ll speak to Dexter and tell him to stop exploiting you—’
‘You’ll be wasting your time. I have to get through the work somehow,’ he said tersely.
Her tender heart was touched. She imagined that he had a family to support. A dark-haired wife—very pretty but careworn—and four children, she imagined. Perhaps a widowed mother.
‘I must do something!’ she declared anxiously.
He frowned excessively. ‘Maddy—’
‘Sardinhas, aguardiente.’
The barman put two huge plates in front of them and a tot of rough brandy which she knew was strong enough to strip paint.
She felt disappointed. It had seemed for a moment that the truck driver was going to confide in her. Instead, he belligerently tucked into the sardines, not even looking up when the barman brought her coffee and a bottle of water.
It didn’t matter, she thought sympathetically, watching the driver decapitate the first sardine with the skill of an executioner. She’d take up his cause, even if he didn’t have a wife and kids.
Her expression grew sad again and she attacked the fish, doggedly determined to blank out the thought that she would never have a family of her own.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked irritably.
Furious with her uncharacteristic self-pity, she kept her head down and scowled. What was the matter with her? Being in Portugal had really unleashed her emotions! ‘Nothing,’ she muttered, munching suddenly dry bread.
A large, work-roughened finger and thumb gently tipped up her chin but still she wouldn’t look at him.
‘Your lashes are damp,’ was his damning verdict.
‘Must be the humidity.’
She heard him chuckle and flicked her misty eyes up in surprise. Her stomach turned over and she forgot her sorrow. He looked absolutely drop-dead gorgeous when he laughed, his white teeth good enough for a toothpaste ad.
‘The air is dry,’ he reminded her.
‘All right. I was thinking of something sad,’ she amended sheepishly. And, to divert his intense and unnerving interest, she said, ‘My parents died here.’
His hand released her chin, the shadows beneath his strong cheekbones deeper now.
‘Is that why you left for England?’ he asked tightly.
‘My grandpa fled from Portugal with me in tow,’ she admitted.
There was a long silence. ‘Tough,’ he said eventually.
Maddy shrugged. ‘We managed, between us.’
‘Different climate, culture—and you grieving—’ he began.
‘When you have things to do, day by day, hour by hour,’ she broke in hastily, not wanting to remember her immense loneliness and sense of loss, ‘it helps you to get through difficulties.’
There was an expression resembling grudging admiration in his eyes. ‘And yet the memories have upset you.’
‘Only for a moment. I’m fine now,’ she said firmly. ‘I—I hadn’t realised that coming here would bring it all back so forcefully.’
‘Life’s hell enough as it is without actively encouraging sad thoughts,’ he muttered.
Maddy felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy on his behalf.
‘Tell me what’s so awful about your life and I’ll see what I can do,’ she said earnestly, leaning forward in her eagerness to help.
When he frowned and narrowed his eyes speculatively at her, she realised she’d made a big mistake. The new, revised Maddy wouldn’t show her emotions. She wouldn’t have a tender heart, either.
Worryingly, her carefully constructed façade was crumbling away and she was revealing the caring person beneath. She was jeopardising her chance of success before she even met Dexter.
Some extrovert behaviour was needed rather urgently. And just as she was beginning to panic beneath the driver’s puzzled gaze, someone rescued her by striking up a tune on a tinny piano.
Delighted, she breathed a sigh of relief. Yes. That would do. Not the cancan perhaps, but something like it. She bestowed a creamy smile on the driver and sought to allay his suspicions that she might be a tart with a heart.
‘You look surprised. But I enjoy the power I get from twisting men round my little finger,’ she murmured, inventing rapidly. ‘So you tell me what you want and I’ll work on Dexter till you get it. Think about it. In the meantime, ’scuse me. Girl’s gotta dance.’
And she leapt t
o her feet, calling for a salsa, indicating with her body what she wanted. The pianist came close to the right rhythm, near enough for her to display a talent that even she didn’t know she had. But she’d watched enough TV to know how it was done and thought she managed very well.
So did the villagers. Soon she was being whirled around from man to man and was thoroughly enjoying herself. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of the truck driver, who wasn’t amused at all.
Suddenly he rose, knocked back the last of his brandy and inhaled sharply as the raw alcohol hit his throat and shot through his system like a rocket. But he was perfectly sober, she could see that, his eyes hard and clear, his body rock-solid in its aggressive stance.
He jerked his head. It was the age-old chauvinist’s interpretation of Shall we go? and just one step up from a caveman grabbing his woman’s hair and dragging her off. In true macho style and without caring whether she followed or not, he made his ill-tempered exit.
Breathless and bright-eyed from dancing, she ran out after him.
‘Wait!’ she gasped, afraid he’d leave her behind. When he turned, his angry expression almost crushed her, till she remembered who she was and stood up to him. ‘I was having fun!’ she complained.
‘Do it in your own time,’ he growled, and climbed into the cab.
She had no option but to follow.
‘Spoilsport,’ she grumbled, playing her role to the full.
He looked furious.
‘There are more important things in life than having fun,’ he snapped in disgust.
Once she would have agreed. Now she knew that fun was part of life. Without a sprinkling of laughter and enjoyment, the world could be a dark and dreary place.
In the short time she’d been prancing about in her eye-catching get-up, she’d seen loads of people smiling—sometimes at her, sometimes with her. It didn’t matter. Only that for a while she’d been surrounded by happy faces instead of gloomy ones.
But it wasn’t any use telling the morose driver that. He was having troubles that he didn’t want to share. She brightened. She’d make enquiries. Find out what his problem was, and see if she could help.
There was silence between them from that moment on and for a while she dozed. When she woke, she saw from the signs that they’d passed the town of Luz and were turning onto a minor road which she didn’t recognise.
