During the past two weeks that they had been at Quinta na Floresta they had talked more than they had ever done ten years ago. It was different now, she mused. They were older, and she knew it was important to Cruz that they were financially equal, although she had never cared that when she had first met him in Brazil he had been a poor miner.
‘The beach, I think,’ she decided. ‘And maybe we could visit that little market where they sell the hand-painted pottery.’
He looked amused. ‘At this rate we’re going to have trouble taking your collection of crockery on the plane when we fly back to England.’
‘I suppose we will have to go back soon.’ Some of the pleasure went out of the day. ‘Diego will be impatient for you to carry on searching Eversleigh Hall for the map, and I have work commitments.’ The thought of leaving Portugal seemed unbearable, especially as the future was uncertain. They talked about every subject under the sun, the glaring exception being their relationship. ‘The last two weeks have been fun.’
‘For me too,’ he assured her. An indefinable expression darkened his eyes. ‘We can spend a few more days here in our private world,’ he said softly. ‘After we’ve visited the market, we’ll have lunch at our favourite seafood restaurant before coming back here for a siesta.’
Sabrina threw him an impish smile. ‘I thought a siesta is meant to be when you take a nap during the hottest part of the day.’
Cruz’s sexy grin sent a tingle down to her toes. ‘Well, you will be lying down, querida, but I can’t promise that you will be sleeping.’
They spent the morning at a secluded beach that was only accessible by climbing down a steep, rocky path, which might have explained why they had the place to themselves.
‘This is heavenly,’ Sabrina murmured as she lay on a beach mat, enjoying the deliciously lazy feeling of the sun warming her skin. She opened her eyes as a shadow loomed over her, and gave Cruz an unguarded smile that stole his breath.
Growing up in the favela, he had never believed in a heaven, although he’d been well aware that there was a hell. But today was a perfect day, in a perfect place, and most perfect of all was Sabrina. He bent his head and kissed her, and her ardent response stirred his hunger. ‘I need to go for a swim,’ he said as he reluctantly lifted his mouth from hers.
‘Are you too hot?’ she asked innocently. Her gaze dropped to the bulge in his swim-shorts. ‘Oh, I see that you’re very hot.’
‘Tease all you like, querida,’ he growled. His eyes gleamed wickedly. ‘But expect to be punished later.’
After lunch they strolled through the market and Sabrina stopped at a stall that sold exceptionally good watercolour paintings. ‘The picture of the horse looks like Monty.’ She gave a wistful sigh as she studied the painting of a chestnut-coloured horse with a dark brown mane.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured when Cruz paid for the picture and gave it to her. She glanced around at the other market stalls. ‘Is there anything here that you want?’
He ran his eyes over her skimpy denim shorts and long, tanned legs and he felt his body stir. ‘There is only one thing I want, gatinha. It’s time we went home for that siesta.’
Cruz had parked his car in a side street behind the market. As he and Sabrina walked towards the silver Lamborghini, a football flew through the air and thudded onto the car’s gleaming bonnet. A group of young boys tore up the street to reclaim the ball, but they stopped dead when they saw Cruz inspecting his beloved sports car for a scratch.
‘Sinto muito!’ One of the boys stepped forwards. He was skinny, with a mass of black hair and big dark eyes. His gaze darted to Sabrina’s blonde hair and back to Cruz, and he must have assumed that they were tourists. ‘Sorry!’ he repeated in English. He stared at the Lamborghini and gave an irrepressible grin. ‘Nice car, meester!’
Sabrina expected Cruz to react angrily. His car was his pride and joy, but he laughed and kicked the football towards the boy. ‘Are you any good at football? I bet I can score a goal before you can.’
The gang of boys chased after Cruz down the street while Sabrina leaned against a tree and watched the impromptu football match. He would have been a great father if their child had lived, she mused. Her heart ached as she imagined Cruz playing football with their son, who would have been a similar age to the boys.
He returned to the car ten minutes later, followed by the gang of boys, who looked suitably impressed when he started the powerful engine.
‘I was a football-mad kid like those boys,’ he told Sabrina as he drove back to the villa. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. ‘Sometimes I wonder what our son would have been like. If he’d have liked to play football, and shared my love of sports cars.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘Maybe he would have been fascinated by history.’
She heard the sadness in his voice and her own sadness was mixed with a sense of guilt that had always haunted her, the belief that the miscarriage had been her fault.
By the time they arrived at Quinta na Floresta Sabrina’s head throbbed with tension. Cruz looked at her closely, wondering why she suddenly seemed so remote after they had spent an enjoyable day together. Since they had come to Portugal he had discovered that the real Sabrina was very different from his previous opinion of her. Although she had grown up in a luxurious stately home, she had simple tastes, rather than wanting a champagne lifestyle as he had supposed. He had known she was intelligent, and she had revealed a dry sense of humour that he appreciated. She was the only woman who he had found that he genuinely enjoyed spending time with out of the bedroom.
He wished he could persuade her to tell him what was troubling her. ‘Do you want to swim in the pool?’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to lie down for a while. I’ve got a pounding headache,’ she admitted.
‘You’ve probably had too much sun. Go to bed,’ he said gently.
‘I’m sure I’ll feel fine after a nap.’ Sabrina hurried up to their bedroom, needing to be alone with her thoughts. In her mind she heard the regret in Cruz’s voice when he had spoken of their lost son and she felt as if a knot inside her were pulling so tight that it might snap.
She must have fallen straight to sleep because when she opened her eyes the room was rose-tinted with rays of sunset filtering through the slats. The clock showed that it was eight p.m. and she wondered if Cruz was waiting for her to go down to dinner. The idea of food made her stomach churn, but she told herself she would feel better after she’d splashed cold water on her face and caught her hair up into a loose knot.
The house was silent as she walked downstairs. Her feet instinctively took her outside to the courtyard where the soft splash of the fountain stirred the still air. The sun was a scarlet ball sinking in the sky and golden light lingered on the inscribed words around the fountain’s base. Luiz, Luiz...the name formed a never-ending circle with no beginning and no end, just as there would be no end to her love for her little boy.
Her baby would always live in her heart.
The knot inside Sabrina broke and released a torrent of pain that she had held inside her for what seemed like a lifetime. She cried for the child she had lost and her excited hopes of motherhood that had been cruelly destroyed. Most of all she cried for all the empty years of loneliness without Cruz that she had endured and all the years ahead that stretched endlessly before her.
The pain kept coming in great waves that engulfed her and she sank down onto the wall of the fountain and buried her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with sobs.
Cruz found her there. He had been drawn to the courtyard when he’d heard a curious noise as a wounded animal might make; a sound of pain so raw that the sound of it had felt as if an arrow had pierced his heart.
Santa mãe! For a few seconds he could not comprehend what his eyes were seeing. Sabrina was sitting by the fountain, hunched over so that her head was almost resting on her knees, and the terrible, heart-rending cries were coming from her.
‘Sabrina, are you ill
? Tell me, are you in pain?’ He put his hands on her shoulders and gently urged her to lift her head. The sight of her tear-streaked face shocked him. He had never seen her cry before and he recalled her telling him that her father had disapproved of displays of emotion.
She lifted her hands to her face to try and hide the evidence of her raw emotions, but Cruz wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly while her body shook with the storm of weeping.
‘What is wrong, querida?’ His voice roughened as he wondered if she was seriously ill.
Sabrina took a shuddering breath. ‘You thought I didn’t care about the miscarriage because I didn’t show any emotion. But I did care, I wanted our baby. When I lost him, I felt numb inside but I couldn’t cry because...’ Her voice trembled and she could not go on.
‘Because you had learned as a child not to show your emotions,’ Cruz finished for her. ‘You always had to be strong for your brother and you felt you must never let anyone see you crying.’
‘I rushed back to Eversleigh so that I could cry in private. I didn’t stop to consider that you must be grieving for our child.’ She wiped away her tears but they were immediately replaced by more. ‘I know that you blamed me for the miscarriage.’
‘Of course I didn’t blame you,’ he said gently. ‘My mother’s tragic losses had shown me that pregnancies don’t always go to term.’
‘I shouldn’t have ridden my horse.’
He captured her chin and tilted her face up so that he could look into her eyes. ‘My PA ran a half-marathon when she was four months pregnant and went on to have a healthy baby who arrived a week late. A reasonable amount of physical exercise is said to be good for expectant mothers. You were not responsible for losing our baby.’
Sabrina felt some of her tension lessen as she absorbed Cruz’s words and realised that he truly did not think that she had jeopardised her pregnancy.
‘You believed I rushed back to Eversleigh because I had decided that you were not good enough for me, but it wasn’t true. I never cared that you didn’t have much money,’ she told him fiercely. ‘When we met you were kind and interesting and you made me laugh a lot, and those are the important things. I admired you for being hard-working and risking your safety in the mine to earn money to support us. I left because I thought you blamed me for losing our child, and I couldn’t bear it because I...’ Her voice faltered as she realised that she was giving away too much of herself.
‘Because you what, querida? Why did you leave?’
If they were going to stand any chance of having a relationship in the future they had to resolve the misunderstandings from the past. She took a swift breath. ‘I was in love with you,’ she said quietly.
Cruz’s sculpted features showed no reaction, and after a moment Sabrina continued. ‘You didn’t understand why I refused to marry you. But I had seen my parents’ marriage disintegrate into bitterness and resentment and I was afraid of that happening to us. I didn’t want you to feel trapped in marriage because I had conceived your baby. After the miscarriage I thought you no longer wanted me, but leaving you was the hardest thing I have ever done and it broke my heart to say goodbye.’
She sighed. ‘I wish we could turn the clock back. I wish we had been more open with each other ten years ago, but now it’s too late.’
Cruz felt a pain in his chest as though his heart were being crushed by an iron fist. Now it’s too late! He swallowed convulsively. Deus, it was the most heartbreaking statement he had ever heard because he knew it was true. Sabrina had said that she had loved him ten years ago. He noted she had used the past tense. But what else could he expect? He could not hope that Sabrina still loved him. Not after the appalling way he had treated her.
He stared at her tear-stained face and the pain inside him intensified as he acknowledged how he had misjudged her in the past, and since they had met again. When she had left Brazil he had thought she had rejected him because of the difference in their social status. But he now believed she genuinely had not cared that he’d earned low wages working in the diamond mine. She had admired him and she had loved him, but he had allowed his damnable pride to come between them.
The bitter irony was that he realised he had deserved her when he’d been poor. But now that he was wealthy, and financially they were equal, he absolutely did not deserve her. Sabrina’s beauty was more than skin deep. She was a beautiful person, compassionate, caring and loyal to her family. It was for her brother’s sake more than any other reason that she had desperately wanted to save Eversleigh Hall.
And what had he done? Cruz asked himself with savage self-contempt. He had offered her the money she needed to maintain the stately home, but in return he had demanded that she must become his mistress in a despicable deal that shamed him utterly and made a mockery of the fact that Sabrina had once admired him. There was nothing admirable about the way he had treated her and he knew that even if he spent the rest of his life apologising to her he could never deserve her now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SABRINA FELT DRAINED after her emotional breakdown. She got unsteadily to her feet and would have stumbled but Cruz caught her and lifted her into his arms, carrying her into the house and up the stairs to their bedroom as if she weighed nothing. Neither of them spoke but she sensed that he had been shocked by her revelation that she had loved him ten years ago.
When he had demanded that she became his mistress he had made it clear that he only wanted her for sex, she remembered. But while they had been in Portugal they had, at his suggestion, spent time getting to know each other and she had felt hopeful that their affair might develop into a meaningful relationship. His unfathomable expression gave her the sinking feeling that she had blown it.
He set her down on the end of the bed and headed into the en-suite bathroom, and moments later Sabrina heard the bath filling. She was so tired she could have fallen asleep in her clothes, but she allowed Cruz to undress her and help her into a foaming bath that smelled divinely of jasmine-scented bubbles. He took care of her as if she were a child, sponging her body and washing and rinsing her hair with such gentleness that more tears filled her eyes.
When the water started to cool he wrapped her in a fluffy towel and dried her. He slipped a silky nightgown over her head before he led her out onto the balcony where one of the household staff was finishing placing dishes of food on the table.
‘You need to eat,’ Cruz insisted when they were alone again. Sabrina doubted she could swallow food, but he had gone to such effort, and to please him she forced herself to eat some of the herb omelette he served her. To her surprise she felt better after she’d eaten a few mouthfuls. The experience of being cared for was new to her and she was reluctant to say anything that might shatter the fragile bond she felt with him.
After they had finished the meal he led her back into the bedroom and pulled back the covers for her to slide into bed. The sheets felt deliciously cool against her skin, and as she watched him strip off his jeans, tee shirt and boxer shorts she felt a familiar throb of desire low in her pelvis.
Cruz lay down beside her and drew her into his arms, but to her disappointment he turned her onto her side. ‘You need to sleep,’ he told her in a curiously taut voice. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’
For a reason she could not define the promise filled her with unease and she stayed awake long after she heard his breathing settle into a steady rhythm.
She was unaware that Cruz’s will power was tested to its limits as he remained awake and forced himself to resist the temptation to make love to Sabrina. He bitterly regretted that he had coerced her into being his mistress, and the price of his shameful behaviour was the knowledge that she would never be his.
Sabrina was woken by a persistent noise that as the fog of sleep cleared from her brain she recognised was her phone. The clock revealed that it was nearly ten a.m. and she discovered that she was alone in the bed. Tristan’s name flashed on the phone’s screen and she quickly answered the call.<
br />
‘Tris—is everything okay?’
‘Good news. Dad’s come home,’ Tristan announced. ‘He turned up at the British Embassy in Guinea a week ago without money or belongings and told them he had been seriously ill after contracting a tropical disease. He had been staying in a remote village and as a result of a high fever he had lost his memory for months. He arrived at Eversleigh yesterday and he’s impatient to see you. Apparently he has an idea for making money for the estate and he wants to put you in charge.’
It was typical of her father to make plans that involved her without pausing to consider that she had her own life, Sabrina thought ruefully. But she was relieved that he was safe and well. She was used to the earl’s eccentricities and although he had not been the best father when she had been growing up, she was fond of him.
Cruz was outside on the balcony. He appeared to be deep in his thoughts and although he smiled when he saw her, Sabrina noted that his smile did not reach his eyes. She relayed Tristan’s message. ‘I’d like to go home to see Dad,’ she said. ‘We were due to go back to Eversleigh in a few days anyway.’
Cruz did not immediately reply and his shuttered expression gave no clue to his thoughts. Sabrina felt a strange sense of unease as she had done the previous night when he had said that they would talk in the morning. Something about him had changed. Was it coincidence that he seemed tense this morning after she had confessed that she had loved him in Brazil? His words confirmed her fears.
‘It will be better if you go back to Eversleigh and see your father on your own.’
‘I thought you would want to ask him about the map.’
‘I no longer care about finding the map.’
She stared at him. ‘But the map was the reason you moved into Eversleigh Hall.’
‘That’s what I told myself,’ he said in an odd voice that sounded as if he was mocking himself. ‘I have decided to give my share of the Montes Claros mine to Diego. He will have geological surveys carried out to find out if there are old, deeper mineshafts, and if he finds more diamonds I wish him well. But the mine holds too many bad memories and I want to sever my connections to the past.’
Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) Page 14
