by Lynne Graham
It was an Irish wolfhound. Unfolded from the car, it had to measure a good three feet in height and Emily was just one inch over five feet tall herself. But although Emily had not been allowed to have a pet as a child, she adored dogs of all shapes and sizes.
'Be kind. Jazz is getting old,' Duarte's rich, dark, accented drawl interposed with cool authority.
Emily angled a shy upward glance at him, overwhelmed by his proximity, his sheer height and breadth and potent masculinity. She had to tip her head right back to see his lean, dark, devastating face. She collided with sizzling dark golden eyes and for her it was like being knocked off her feet by a powerful electrical charge. She trembled, felt the feverish heat of an embarrassing blush redden her fair skin, the stormy thump of her heartbeat and the most challenging shortness of breath. But Duarte simply walked away from her again, apparently experiencing no physical jolt of awareness, feeling nothing whatsoever, indeed not really even having seen her for she had only been another junior employee amongst many: faceless, beneath his personal notice.
And, no doubt, had not fate intervened, her acquaintance with Duarte Avila de Monteiro would never have advanced beyond that point. However, in those days, Duarte had left Jazz behind at the manor when he was out of the country. The dog should have stayed indoors but the housekeeper had disliked animals and as soon as Duarte departed, she would have the wolfhound locked in the barn. Exercising Jazz fell to Emily for nobody else wanted the responsibility.
'The boss is fond of that stupid dog. If it gets lost or harmed in some way, well it'll cost you your job,' the stable manager warned Emily impatiently. "That's why we just leave it locked up. I know it seems a little heartless but the animal's well fed and it has plenty of space in there.'
But Emily was too tender-hearted to bear the sound of Jazz's pathetic cries for company. She spent all her free time playing with him in a paddock and she gave him the affection he soaked up like a giant hungry sponge. So, the evening that the barn went up in fire, when everyone else stood by watching the growing conflagration in horror, Emily did not even stop to think of her own safety but charged to the rescue of an animal she had grown to love.
Although she contrived to calm Jazz's panic and persuade him out of the barn, she passed out soon afterwards from smoke inhalation. Surfacing from the worst effects, she then found herself in a private room in the local hospital with Duarte stationed by her bedside.
The instant she opened her eyes, Duarte sprang up and approached the bed, his appearance startling her out of what remained of her scrambled wits. 'Risking your own life to save my dog was incredibly foolish and incredibly brave,' he murmured with a reflective smile that in spite of its haunting brevity had more charm than she had believed any smile might possess.
'I just didn't think,' she mumbled, transfixed by the drop-dead gorgeous effect of him smiling.
'You are a heroine. I contacted your family.' His strong jawline squared. 'I understand that they are very busy people and, of course, I told them that you were already recovering. I am not sure whether or not they will find it possible to visit.'
Paling at that sympathetic rendering of her family's evident lack of concern at the news that she had been hospitalised, Emily veiled her pained gaze. 'Thanks...'
'It is I who am in debt to you. One of the grooms had the courage to confess that, but for you, Jazz would have spent every hour of my absence imprisoned in that barn,' Duarte admitted grimly. 'You are the only one in a staff of almost twenty who had the kindness to take care of his needs.'
Embarrassed by that unsought accolade, Emily muttered, 'I just like animals and Jazz may be a bit daft but he's very loving.'
The forbidding look on his lean dark features dissipated and he vented a rueful laugh. 'Jazz has a brain the size of a pea. He was my sister's dog. After her death, he should have been rehomed but I did not have the heart to part with him.' His face shadowed again. 'Perhaps that was a selfish decision for I am often away on business—'
'No. He just adores you. I couldn't get him to settle at night until I got the housekeeper to give me an old sweater of yours to put in his bed,' Emily volunteered in a rush.
There was an awkward little silence. Faint colour now scored his superb cheekbones. He studied her through black lashes lush as silk fans, palpably questioning why he had unbent to such an extent with her. A minute later, he had been the powerful banker again, politely taking his departure, having done his duty in visiting her. A magnificent bouquet of flowers and a basket of fruit had been delivered soon after his departure. She had not expected to see him again except at a distance when he was at the manor.
But the next day when she was released from hospital, Duarte picked her up and insisted on driving her home to convalesce with her family. She spent the whole journey falling deeper and deeper in love with a guy so out of her reach he might as well have come from another galaxy. There was only a little conversation during that drive for Duarte was often on the phone.
Her family took one astonished but thrilled look at Duarte and his chauffeur-driven limousine and invited him to stay to dinner. Billionaire single bankers were hugely welcome in a house containing two young, beautiful single blondes. Indeed, her sisters Hermione and Corinne had competed for Duarte's attention with outrageous flattery and provocative innuendoes. Sunk in the background as usual by their flirtatious charm, Emily had felt painfully like the ugly duckling amongst the swans. Emily was sprung back to the present by the necessity of boarding the jet. Soon after take-off, she realised that Jamie was overtired and cross. The steward showed her into a rear compartment where a special travel cot already waited in readiness for its small occupant. It took Emily a good twenty minutes to settle Jamie and then, with pronounced reluctance, she returned to the luxurious main cabin again.
Duarte rose from his seat and straightened to his full commanding height. 'Is Jamie asleep?'
Emily nodded jerkily, her tension rising by the second.
'Verbal responses would be welcome,' Duarte added drily.
Encountering brilliant dark golden eyes, she reddened hotly. 'Yes, he's asleep but maybe I should sit with him for a while in case he wakes up again.'
'Trying to impress me with maternal overkill? Tell me, who looked after Jamie while you were giving riding lessons?'
'Nobody—'
'Nobody?' Duarte queried with hard emphasis.
Emily frowned in surprise. 'It really wasn't a problem. I was only instructing a couple of hours a day and I would park Jamie's buggy outside the paddock. He was never more than a few feet from me and he usually had the company of parents watching their child's lesson.'
As 'Duarte listened, his lean powerful face tautened, his wide sensual mouth compressing. 'Usually? A working stables is no place to leave a baby unattended. You know as well as I do that riders can't always control their mounts and that your attention must've been on your pupil—'
Under that attack, Emily had stiffened and lost much of her natural colour. 'Jamie was always safe. I did the very best that I could—'
'But your best wasn't halfway good enough,' Duarte cut in with biting derision. 'You left my son at the mercy of passing strangers instead of ensuring that he received proper care—'
'I wanted to spend every minute with him that I could and you're making this sound much worse than it was,' Emily protested defensively. 'Everywhere I worked, Jamie got loads and loads of attention. Most people like babies, especially happy ones—'
"That's not the point,' Duarte said coldly.
Emily worried at her lower lip and then said heavily, 'Even if I had wanted to, I couldn't have afforded to pay someone to look after him—'
'And whose fault was that?'
As her tension climbed, Emily trembled and her tummy churned. Thinking straight had become a challenge; she had never been much good at confrontations. However, on this occasion she found herself struggling to speak up in her own defence. 'Whose fault was it that I left Portugal in the first place?'
Far from looking impressed or indeed startled by that comeback, Duarte inclined his arrogant dark head to one side and levelled his incisive gaze on her in the most formidable way. 'Presumably you are about to give me the answer to that strange question?' he prompted.
'I only left Portugal because I thought that you were planning to try and take my child off me the minute he was born!' Emily countered in an accusing rush.
Duarte angled an imperious brow. 'What kind of a nonsensical excuse is that? Before this morning, I never made a threat in that line. To be frank, my patience with you came to an end today. But who or what gave you the idea that I might have been considering such a dramatic move last year?'
Emily flinched and dropped her head, shaken at how close she had come in her .turmoil to revealing Bliss's role in events eight months earlier. Had she done that, she could never have forgiven herself. Bliss had been the truest of supportive friends during Emily's troubled marriage, cheering Emily up when her spirits were low while offering helpful advice and encouragement. Although Emily had not contacted the other woman since leaving Portugal, she assumed that her friend still worked as Duarte's executive assistant. Bliss had eavesdropped on that confidential dialogue between Duarte and his lawyer and had forewarned Emily. Were Duarte ever to discover that a member of his own staff had been that disloyal, Bliss's high-flying career would be destroyed.
'I just got the idea...at the time, the way you were treating me—well, er...it seemed to make sense to me and I was afraid that you were planning to separate me from my child—'
'So you chose to separate our son from me instead. Is that how this sorry story goes?' Duarte dealt her a look of shimmering challenge that made her breath trip in her already tight throat. 'This convenient angle that continually seeks to turn you into a poor little victim? Well, I have news for you—I'm not impressed, querida.'
'I'm not trying to impress—'
'No?' Without warning, Duarte sent her a sudden slanting golden glance as hard and deadly as an arrow thudding into a live target.
Feeling the sudden smouldering surge in the atmosphere but unable to comprehend what had caused it, Emily untwisted her laced hands and made a jerky move with one of them as if she was appealing for his attention. 'I know I've made mistakes—'
'Mistakes?'
'—but now I'm just being open and honest—'
'Open...and honest,' Duarte repeated with a brand of electrifying soft sibilance that danced down her rigid spine like a fullscale storm warning. 'Que absurdo! An honest whore you were not!'
Emily's lips parted company and she fell back a faltering step in dismay at the proclamation and that particular word being aimed at her. Even in the aftermath of finding her in another man's arms, Duarte had not employed such an emotive term. 'B-but—'
'But what? You were carrying my baby when you slept with another man. How many women have affairs while they're pregnant with their husband's child?' Duarte demanded in a derisive tone of disgust that nailed her to the spot. 'But no such fine sensibilities restrained you. You even dared to introduce me to your lover. You also brought him into my home. Only a whore would behave like that.'
Forced to recognise the extent of the sins being laid at her door, Emily gasped strickenly, 'Duarte, it wasn't like that and Toby was never my—'
'Do you really think I'll listen to your pathetic excuses? You are nothing to me.' Duarte made that wounding statement with a savage cool that bled all remaining colour from her shaken face.
You are nothing to me. That he should feel that way was hardly news but spoken out loud that acknowledgement cut Emily in two.
'But you belong to me. Minha esposa...you are my wife,' Duarte completed with sardonic bite.
Under the onslaught of that ultimate putdown, Emily felt something curiously akin to a re-energising flame dart through her slim tense body and she flung her head back. 'No...I don't belong to you like your cars and your houses and your wretched art collection,' she heard herself asserting. 'I may be your wife but I'm not an object without any thoughts or feelings or rights—'
Although she had no recollection of him moving, Duarte was now a step closer, threateningly close. Even as she was still fighting to understand quite where her own unusually spirited defence had come from, she was awesomely conscious of the expanse of all that lean, taut masculinity poised within inches of her own much smaller frame.
In the electrifying silence that had fallen, shimmering golden eyes sought and held her scrutiny, all the powerful force of will he possessed bearing down on her. 'You have no rights in this marriage.'
'I don't believe you mean that...you couldn't,' Emily reasoned, tearing her gaze hurriedly from his as her heart rate speeded up. 'You're just very angry with me—'
'I am not angry with you,' Duarte growled like a leopard about to spring on an unwary prey. 'But I cannot and will not trust you with the kind of freedom I gave you before.'
'That...was freedom?' A startled laugh empty of humour was wrenched from Emily's working throat; for she had found her duties as a Monteiro wife as rigid a constraint to her days as a prison cell. Every daylight hour had been rigorously organised for her with a weighty yoke of responsibilities that took no account of her own personal wishes.
Hard dark colour scored the hard set of Duarte's proud cheekbones. 'So you find my former generosity a source of amusement?'
'Oh, you mean your money...' Emily very nearly let loose a second nervous laugh as comprehension finally sank in and her soft mouth tensed. 'Well, it wasn't much consolation when you were never around and I never did take to shopping, although I did try hard to like it. You see, I wasn't the sort of woman you should have married and I still can't really understand why you did...'
Duarte stared down at her with eyes as dark and fathomless and deep as the midnight witching hour. As he ensnared her fraught gaze afresh, she forgot what she was saying at the same time as she forgot to draw another breath. The atmosphere surged around her like a slow smouldering fire closing in, using up all the oxygen. But still she stood there, plunged without warning into a welter of physical sensations she had never been able to fight. As a wave of excitement as terrifying as it was thrilling washed over her, her heart thumped like a frantic bird trapped inside her, every tiny muscle tensing in reaction to the rush of liquid heat burning between her slim thighs.
'Can't you?' he murmured huskily.
The very sound of that silken dark drawl sent a responsive shiver down her spine. She snatched in a stark audible breath to flood her depleted lungs. She was tormentingly aware of the stirring heaviness of her small breasts and the painful sensitivity of her swollen nipples pushing against the bra she wore beneath her top.
'Aside from my wealth, I had nothing to offer you but you appeared to want very little.' Duarte studied her with spectacular dark golden eyes that had the most scorching effect on her already heated flesh. 'Apart from me...and you wanted me like you wanted air to breathe. At the time it seemed a fair exchange.'
Her mind a mess of jumbled and inane thoughts, Emily quivered as she literally struggled to concentrate on what he had just said. Understanding came in a trickle and then a gush and almost washed her away in a floodtide of pain and humiliation. Like an accident victim, she reeled back a step from their proximity, aquamarine eyes shattered, shame over her own weakness where he was concerned following fast.
You wanted me like you wanted air to breathe...
It was the most hurtful but demeaning truth she had ever had to swallow. Momentarily it threw her back into the past and a time when she would have done anything, accepted anything on any terms just to be with him. And all this time he had known that, a little voice of horror wailed inside her head. She was appalled and then shaken by her own refusal to accept that he had recognised from the very outset just how deep his hold over her was. All the shameless heat he had awakened without even trying drained away, only to be replaced by a fiery surge of hot colour that dwindled equally fast.
'Yo
u shouldn't have asked,' Duarte murmured, smooth as glass.
'Once...you wouldn't have answered,' Emily parted numb lips to respond and her own voice emerged all bumpy and broken.
"That was then. This is now and much has changed.' Duarte surveyed her with hard dark eyes of satisfaction. 'But, sadly for you, not, I think, your hunger for me.'
'Well, that's where you're dead wrong...' A sudden revivifying burst of bitter anger powered through Emily's quivering length. 'As you said, that was then and this is now and I got over my stupid crush when you got me pregnant and then decided to forget I even existed!'
'Did you really get over it?' Duarte reached for her with such a complete lack of warning and such shattering cool that she stared up at him in a wide-eyed daze, a frown just beginning to form between her brows. Before she even had the chance to blink, his hard sensual mouth came down on hers with all the explosive force and expertise of a heat-seeking missile.
Since that onslaught was the very last reaction she'd expected, she had no time to even try to muster her defences. She was blasted from angry shame straight into stunned and helpless response, a muffled gasp torn from her throat as he crushed her into the steely contours of his hard powerful physique. She couldn't breathe, didn't want to, couldn't think, didn't want to. Her whole body seemed to surge up and into his, instantly fired by the burning heat of desire he could unleash. He pried her lips apart, let his tongue delve in carnal and provocative exploration of the tender interior of her mouth and she shuddered and moaned as the up swell of electrifying sensation became more than she could bear.
'Duarte...' she gasped feverishly. 'Duarte—'
'Jamie's crying. You should go to him.'
Like a woman lost in a dream she let him set her back from him. Her brain felt befogged and her body was still gripped in the talon claws of an excitement she had never expected to feel again.
'Jamie...' Duarte said again.
And, in the same instant, her wits returned and she emerged from the grasp of the sensual world which had betrayed her with a sudden nasty jolt. Blinking rapidly; she pressed a trembling hand to the tiny pulse flickering like mad above her collarbone and she stared up at Duarte in resounding shock. His lean, dark, devastating face was cool as ice, his brilliant dark golden eyes challenging.