Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride

by Michelle Reid

  Instead he moved back to the door, then stood waiting for her to join him. Caroline did so without uttering another word. As they walked side by side back towards the main salon she thought she could actually feel the vibration of her own body it was so beset by nerve-tingling tension.

  ‘Do I get to know who any of these people are before I have to meet them?’ she asked without much hope of an answer, since he was very economical with those.

  ‘Nervous?’ Luiz questioned as they crossed the foyer.

  ‘Yes,’ she confessed.

  ‘Then don’t be.’ He sounded eminently confident of that. ‘You are about to meet my family,’ he told her. ‘Not a firing squad.’

  His family? ‘But you told me once that you don’t have any family!’ She stared at him in disbelief.

  He just smiled another odd smile. ‘I don’t,’ he said, but the sudden cold glitter that struck his eyes sent a chill chasing down her spine.

  ‘Enigmatic as ever, I note,’ she drawled.

  He responded with a different smile. ‘My secret weapon,’ he admitted.

  But not his only one, she thought as she felt his hand make contact with the small of her back as the other hand reached out for the door. His touch stung through her like an electric power source, making her spine arch fiercely.

  Her reaction made him pause, his features hardening. ‘Just remember who you are and what you are to me when we walk in there,’ he warned very grimly. ‘It is very important to me that you give a good impression of a blissful bride, not a resentful one.’

  Refusing to look at him, Caroline said nothing. But her chin dutifully lifted and her expression became smooth as he pushed open the door to the main salon.

  The first thing her eyes went to was the green baize table, which she was relieved to see had been deftly covered with a white linen tablecloth on which several bottles of champagne now lay, chilling on a bed of ice. And the croupier, who had been stacking coloured chips earlier, now stood polishing fluted champagne glasses with the innocence of a waiter.

  The next thing she allowed her eyes to take in was the room full of people. What she had seen only as a couple of dozen blurred faces the first time around, now became two dozen separate individuals who were, almost without exception, Spanish.

  ‘Highborn’ and ‘haughty’ were the mocking words that came to mind to describe the way they were looking back at her. Which then made her think that if these people were related to Luiz, then he had to come from some very rare stock. Some young, some old, some distinctly curious, some noticeably cautious, she noted. But what struck her the fiercest were the waves of antipathy she could feel bouncing off them, even though she could sense they were trying hard to hide it.

  They don’t like Luiz, she realised on a blinding flash of insight. They might be here in his home, enjoying his champagne and his hospitality, but they resent it for some baffling reason.

  Which served to further confuse a situation that was already muddled enough.

  Then, at last, she noticed her father, standing slightly apart from the others and seemingly not at all pleased, by the look on his face. He was frowning into the whisky glass he held in his hand instead of bothering to glance their way, as everyone else had done the moment the doors had opened.

  She knew what he was thinking. He was thinking—When the hell, with all these people around, am I going to get my game of poker? Because that was the way his mind worked when he was in the grip of his personal madness.

  Well, he is about to receive a rather nasty surprise! she predicted with no sympathy for him whatsoever. He had let her down tonight, let her down so badly that it was going to be hard for her to forgive him this time.

  This time—she repeated. How many ‘this times’ had there been over the last ten years?

  And how many more were there going to be? Plenty, she predicted, despite Luiz’s grand promise.

  ‘Really, Luiz.’ A rather large-boned lady, wearing a very regal magenta silk gown, decided to break the silence with haughty censure. ‘I am too old to be indulging in late-night parties. Do you see the time? Do you realise how unforgivably rude you have been, summoning us all here then leaving us to kick our heels while we await your pleasure?’

  ‘My apologies, Aunt Beatriz,’ Luiz murmured, seeming not to notice the contempt in the older woman’s tone. ‘But I was so sure you wouldn’t want to miss this particular party once you knew the reason for it.’

  ‘Reason—what reason?’ Still cross, but curious, the aunt fixed him with a stern glare.

  ‘A celebration,’ Luiz replied—deliberately, Caroline was sure, titillating everyone’s senses with carefully chosen words. ‘Of my incredible good fortune…’

  The moment he said it Caroline’s chest felt tight again, responding to what she knew was about to come. Luiz’s hand slid from her back to her waistline, but whether it was offering warning or support she wasn’t certain. And her father’s head came up, eyes that were more grey than amethyst fixing sharply on his daughter.

  ‘In the full tradition of the Vazquez family,’ Luiz was saying smoothly beside her, ‘I have brought you all here to introduce you to Miss Caroline Newbury. The lady who has just promised to be my bride—and my future Condesa…’

  After that kind of announcement it was difficult to say who was more utterly dumbfounded. His family or Caroline herself. Caroline was certainly swinging dizzily off balance yet again—because to be Luiz’s future Condesa meant that Luiz had to be the Conde!

  Her heart gave a thudding kick, sending shock waves rampaging throughout her whole system. As she watched, having no ability left to do much else, she saw two dozen faces drop. It was terrible. The whole situation was utterly terrible. Not so much for her but for Luiz. Did none of these people have a single nice thing to say to him? Could they not at least pretend delight at his news? They didn’t know that Luiz wasn’t head over heels in love with his newly betrothed!

  And further back, standing apart from the others, was her father, his expression completely frozen. He had caught on quickly, Caroline realised. He might be self-obsessed most of the time, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that if Luiz was announcing his intention to marry his daughter, then she had sold herself to him for the price of her father’s debts.

  ‘No.’ She saw his mouth form the denial, and tears began to clog her throat.

  Then one voice—just one voice in a wilderness of silence—sighed and said, ‘Congratulations.’ A woman about her father’s age stepped forward. ‘And to think we all thought when you had us gather here tonight that you were about to surrender your title and go back to America!’

  Hoped, Caroline grimly corrected as she felt the atmosphere in the room change from hidden hostility to forced elation in one violent swing. After that they were buried beneath a sea of congratulations, and she found herself struggling to keep up with the names and the embraces being thrust her way. Champagne corks began to pop. The waiter-cum-croupier began handing out glasses for everyone to share a toast.

  While still standing apart from it all was her father, Caroline noticed anxiously. He was staring at her as if a veil had been ripped from his eyes and he was seeing clearly for the first time in years. It frightened her, that look, as did the way his face seemed to be getting greyer with each passing second that went by.

  ‘Luiz—my father,’ she murmured, an inner sense warning her that something dire was about to happen. But even as she caught Luiz’s attention, she saw, to her horror, her father’s fingers let go of the whisky glass so it dropped with a thud to the carpet. ‘No, Daddy. No!’ she cried out as his face began to distort and his hand went up to clutch at his chest just before he began to crumple.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE rest became a blur, a cold, dark, muddy blur, where Luiz leapt from her side to catch hold of her father just before he hit the ground. The croupier-cum-waiter leapt also, and between the two of them they managed to get his limp body onto one of the sofas, while Caroline just sto
od there, lost in the fog of one terrifying shock too many.

  I did this, she was thinking over and over. I’ve just killed my own father. She couldn’t move a single muscle, while someone else—a perfect stranger to her, though she must have met him just now amongst the confusing melee—strode briskly over to the sofa and knelt down to examine her father.

  The way Luiz immediately deferred to him was telling her something she was incapable of understanding just then. But she watched as if from behind a pane of glass as the man’s long fingers checked the pulse in her father’s neck before he began quickly untying his bow tie then releasing the top few buttons to his dress shirt.

  ‘Vito—my bag, from my car, if you please,’ he commanded.

  The man who’d jumped to her father’s aid along with Luiz now quickly left the room, and an arm came carefully around Caroline’s trembling shoulders.

  It was the lady in magenta. ‘Be calm,’ she murmured gruffly. ‘My husband is a doctor. He will know what to do.’

  ‘H-he suffers f-from angina.’ The information literally shivered from Caroline’s paralysed throat. ‘He sh-should have pills to take in h-his pocket. Daddy!’ she cried out, as at last she broke free of her paralysis and went to go to him.

  But Luiz’s aunt held her back. ‘Let Fidel do his job, child,’ she advised. Then, with a calmness that belied everything happening around her, she relayed the information Caroline had just given her to her husband, the doctor.

  Luiz’s head shot round, his dark eyes lashing over Caroline as if she had just revealed some devilish secret aimed specifically to wound him. She didn’t understand. Not the accusing look, or the blistering anger that came along with it. And he was as white as a sheet—as white as her father was frighteningly grey!

  The slide of pills found, the doctor quickly read the prescription printed across them. By then his bag had arrived at his side and he was demanding Luiz’s attention, instructing him to take off her father’s jacket and roll up his shirtsleeve so he could place a blood pressure pad around his arm. While Luiz was doing that, the doctor was listening to her father’s heart.

  It was all very efficient, very routine to him, probably. But to Caroline it was the worst—very worst thing she had ever experienced in her entire life. She’d done this, she was thinking guiltily. She had done this to him by not insisting on breaking Luiz’s deal to him in private and in her own less brutal way.

  But she hadn’t cared. Not until she had seen his face just now. She had been angry with him, and bitter, and had actually wanted to shock him into seeing what he had finally brought her to!

  But what she had brought him to by far outweighed what he’d done to her.

  ‘He is beginning to come round,’ Luiz’s aunt murmured.

  The doctor was talking quietly to him and Luiz was still squatting beside them, his dark face honed into the hardest mask Caroline had ever seen it wear. And everyone else stood about, looking and feeling helpless, while right there in the middle of a beautiful cream carpet her father’s glass still lay on its side in a pool of golden liquid.

  She saw one of her father’s hands move, going up to cover his eyes. He looked old and frail and pathetically vulnerable lying there, and as her heart cracked wide open she shook herself free from the comforting arm and went to him.

  ‘Daddy…’ she sobbed. She felt Luiz glance at her, then grimly straighten up to make room for her to take his place beside his uncle. Her hand went out, the fingers ice-cold and trembling as they closed around her father’s then gently pulled his hand away from his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered thickly.

  ‘It was a shock, that’s all,’ he answered weakly. ‘Didn’t expect it. Forgot to take my pill today. My fault. I’ll be all right again in a few minutes.’

  The doctor was waiting with blood-pressure pad at the ready once the pill had been given a chance to take effect. Caroline flicked him an anxiously questioning look and he answered it with a small nod. Relief flooded the tears into her eyes.

  Her father saw them and his grey face looked weary. ‘Don’t weep for me, Caroline,’ he sighed. ‘I have enough to contend with right now, without adding your tears.’

  ‘But it’s all my fault,’ she choked. ‘I should have warned you about Luiz and me. It was—’

  ‘Supposed to be a pleasant surprise for all of you,’ Luiz grimly put in, still aware of their audience, and protecting his damned deal from the risk of exposure even in the face of all of this, Caroline realised bitterly.

  Her father seemed to understand and accept that. His tired eyes lifted to Luiz. ‘We need to talk,’ he murmured grimly.

  ‘Not tonight, though,’ the doctor decreed. ‘For tonight you will be staying as my personal guest in my private hospital.’

  And even as he spoke the sound of a siren whined its way into the room, curdling Caroline’s blood and making her cling tightly to her father’s hand. But what really worried her was that her father didn’t attempt to put in a protest.

  His eyes fluttered open. ‘Don’t look so stricken.’ He smiled at her wearily. ‘I plan to be a thorn in your side for a long time yet.’

  ‘Promise?’ she insisted with the kind of painful seriousness that had those who witnessed it lowering their eyes.

  ‘I promise,’ he ruefully complied. Then to Luiz, who was standing behind Caroline, ‘Not quite the response you were looking for, I think,’ he drawled.

  ‘No,’ Luiz quietly agreed.

  ‘Does she know yet?’

  ‘Know what?’ Caroline put in sharply.

  But on a wince her father closed his eyes again, and all conversation came to a standstill as the doctor began pumping up the blood pressure pad wrapped around his arm.

  Two medics entered the room then, and Luiz was gently drawing Caroline to her feet, to make way for them so they could do what they had to do unencumbered. But the moment the medics began to move her father onto their mobile stretcher she was back at his side. The rest of the people in the room had slithered off into the ether. She neither saw them nor wanted to see them.

  The drive to the hospital was undertaken with the minimum of fuss. Caroline travelled with her father in the ambulance while Luiz followed behind in his car. After that everything became a worried blur again as they waited while her father was put through several examinations before Luiz’s uncle Fidel eventually came to pass on the reassuring news that it had not been a heart attack as such. ‘But his blood pressure has remained a little high,’ he added. ‘So I am going to keep him in here overnight, just to keep an eye on him.’

  With a sinking sense of profound relief, Caroline leaned weakly against the wall behind her. But when Luiz attempted to touch her she shrugged him off abruptly. ‘I’m all right,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t damn well look it,’ he argued gruffly.

  Ignoring him, she looked at his uncle. ‘Can I see him now?’ she asked.

  ‘For a few moments only,’ she was told. ‘He is sedated, so he will not know you are here.’

  They did stay for only a few moments, for as the doctor had said he was asleep, but his colour was much better. Caroline stood by his bed gently stroking his hand for a few minutes while Luiz looked on in silence from his position at the bottom of the bed. Then, with the helplessness that came from knowing that she could do nothing more by remaining there, she allowed Luiz to take her away.

  They didn’t speak as they walked through the hospital, but then they had barely exchanged a single word since the whole horror had begun in Luiz’s drawing room. They reached the exit doors to find Luiz’s uncle was waiting for them.

  He glanced gravely from one face to the other—seeing too much maybe; Caroline wasn’t sure. ‘He is going to be fine,’ he assured her gently. ‘It really was only a small scare.’

  ‘Yes, I know…’ Nodding, Caroline fought yet another battle with tears, then impulsively stepped up to embrace Luiz’s uncle. ‘Thank you for being there,’ she whispered simply.

  �
�It was my pleasure,’ he replied, but his attention was fixed on her own drained pallor. ‘Take her home,’ he said to Luiz. ‘Make her go to bed, and don’t allow her to come back here until lunchtime at the earliest.’

  They left almost immediately after that. The black BMW was waiting in the car park. Luiz had driven himself to the hospital, Caroline discovered when, after seeing her into the front passenger seat, he climbed in behind the wheel.

  His expression was closed, and he still didn’t speak as he set the car in motion. Outside it was dark and very quiet now, the hour one of those ungodly ones where even the owls Luiz likened himself to had retired.

  ‘I want to go back to the hotel,’ she said—and received no answer. Turning her head to look at him, she saw only that closed cast of a profile. ‘Luiz…’ she prompted.

  He changed gear and turned the steering wheel to take them off the main road which would have taken them back into Puerto Banus. He had the long, brown, skilful fingers of an accomplished magician, she found herself thinking stupidly. And she knew she was only letting her mind notice his hands because she didn’t want to get into another heated row with him.

  Yet she couldn’t let the subject go. ‘I don’t want to face all those people again,’ she told him.

  He decided to answer that one. ‘They’ve gone home.’ His voice was quiet, flat, utterly devoid of any inflexion when he added, ‘The party, I think you would agree, is well and truly over.’

  ‘Did it ever get started?’ she shot at him tartly. If ‘party’ was the right word to cover whatever it was Luiz had been hoping to set up tonight. In truth, the man’s motives baffled her. His family baffled her. One moment they’d appeared hostile and resentful, the next too ecstatic to be real.

  ‘They don’t like you,’ she said continuing her thought pattern out loud.

  ‘They haven’t had time yet to make up their mind,’ he answered levelly.

  Caroline frowned. ‘What does that mean?’