Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride

by Michelle Reid

  ‘Rumours?’ he repeated.

  ‘Mmm.’ She nodded. ‘Apparently it is being said that you and I met for the first time only a few days before you brought me here as your bride…’

  ‘And you said—what?’

  He hadn’t moved a single muscle since this had started, and Caroline now had her back towards him, so she couldn’t see his face. The worst thing about Luiz, she told herself grimly, was his annoying ability to speak without giving a single hint as to what he was thinking.

  ‘I told him the information was inaccurate,’ she said. ‘That we had known each other for seven years. Then I lied a bit,’ she added with a shrug, ‘and told him we had been lovers for seven years…’

  Only it hadn’t felt much like a lie when she had said it, she recalled. In fact it was probably closer to the truth than anyone would believe—in her case at least.

  ‘To which he said what?’

  ‘You’re very good at this,’ she remarked, turning her head to level him with a dry look.

  Two sleek black brows rose in enquiry. Her stomach muscles leapt. He’s such a sexy devil, she thought helplessly.

  ‘The Spanish Inquisition,’ she explained. ‘In fact you remind me of a dripping tap. You just steadily and relentlessly drop your questions until you get to know what it is you’re after.’

  ‘To which he said—what?’ he repeated, and there wasn’t a single alteration in those black holes for eyes.

  She looked away again, and a heavy sigh whispered from her because the truth was out of bounds. And there was another problem she had been worrying over since the priest’s visit.

  ‘I think he was trying to warn us that someone is making trouble for you,’ she said. ‘Someone is feeding rumours about the valley that you and I are a sham—which is, I presume, their way of making sure we will never gain the people’s respect. The other rumour is that you have more or less bought me from my father. Now, who but you and I know anything about that?’

  ‘You think I have been telling tales?’

  It was such a ridiculous suggestion that she laughed. ‘You mean it is possible to get blood from a stone?’ she mocked—then released another sigh. ‘What’s worrying me, Luiz,’ she explained, ‘is that someone has to have been spying on us. And it sends creepy feelings down my spine just to think of it.’ She even shuddered.

  A hand came to her naked back and soothed the shudders. ‘The spy in this case we already know, querida,’ he informed her quietly. ‘And because we also know he has some right to be bitter enough about the situation to spread rumours which may place us in a poor light, we will allow him a small—indiscretion. It is, after all, all he believes he has left to survive on right now…’

  He was talking about Felipe. The name didn’t need saying. ‘Okay,’ she agreed, and curled herself back around him, needing to say more but afraid to say more in case too much came pouring out.

  ‘Okay?’ he repeated quizzically. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She snuggled herself into his warm, muscled strength. ‘This is too nice to spoil by talking about nasty things. And anyway, I’ve got far more pressing concerns on my mind right now.’

  His eyes began to gleam, the humour she could see running through them heating her blood.

  ‘Shopping!’ she announced in mock censure. ‘I’m talking about my need to go shopping for some fresh clothes, since you abducted me with only enough clothes to last me three days! And I want to buy a really expensive bridal dress with all the trimmings,’ she tagged on, right out of the blue. ‘Because if I have to marry you then I insist that you let me do it in style!’

  In the startled silence that followed his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was reading a return to the old bitterness in what she’d said.

  It wasn’t there. And a moment later she was being loved again—which she much preferred to talking.

  They stayed in that hot, dark, old-fashioned hotel room all night, and made love and ate paella cooked specially by the hotel proprietor’s very eager wife, and slept in each other’s arms and awoke there. It was the first time Caroline had woken up to find him still there beside her. It made an oddly painful impression on her to realise that.

  The next day Luiz had them flown to Cordoba, where Caroline played the future bride to a wealthy man to the hilt and shopped until she dropped. She was bright, she was flirtatious, and she was enchanting to be with. And if Luiz looked at her strangely now and then, as if he was trying to work out what was making her behave this way, Caroline just smiled at him, or kissed him, or demanded more money from him, diverting the risk of any questions.

  Because how did you explain to someone like him that while reading his father’s diaries she had come face to face with the real Luiz Vazquez? She understood him now, and hurt for him, and loved him more deeply than she dared let herself dwell upon.

  Even if Luiz could never come to love her in the same way that she loved him, then she could live with that—just. Because the other thing she had learned while reading those diaries was that love was not automatically given back by right.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THEY arrived back at the valley to find yet another wave of changes had been wrought while they had been away. The garden had been decorated with fairylights, the castle itself cleaned and polished to within an inch of its life, and the construction of a long banqueting table was in the process of being completed in the main hall as they walked in the door.

  ‘You are pulling out all the stops, I see.’ Felipe’s lazy drawl emerged before he did, from a dark corner of the hall.

  He had a habit of doing that, Caroline thought as she took a small step closer to Luiz. His hand closed round her hand.

  ‘If one has to marry then let no detail be overlooked,’ he mocked. ‘No festive trick be ignored.’

  His derision was acute. Caroline wanted to hit him for being so mean-mouthed. But Luiz took the criticism in his stride. ‘It must be the hotelier in me.’ He smiled. ‘If there is one thing I have learned to do well, then it is to put on a good party.’

  ‘With the relatives obediently gathered around you to help you celebrate.’ Felipe nodded. ‘It is quite extraordinary what healthy quarterly allowances can make people do that they normally would not deign to tolerate.’

  ‘Is that why you decided to hang around, Felipe?’ Luiz countered curiously. ‘Because you see the need to secure your quarterly allowance?’

  ‘I have money of my own,’ he declared, but Luiz had hit a raw nerve. ‘My father did not leave me quite destitute.’

  ‘No, he left you a finca in the Sierra Nevada and the means to make a success of it, if you could be bothered to try.’

  ‘While you get all of—this…’ Felipe’s smile was rancid. ‘Tell me…’ Suddenly he turned his attention on Caroline. She stiffened instantly, sensing it was her turn to receive the whip of his nasty tongue. ‘How did the poker game between your father and Luiz end? There are a lot of people who must be dying to know…’

  He must have been there, in the casino, when Luiz had issued the challenge to her father, Caroline realised as she felt her cheeks grow pale. Her hand twitched in Luiz’s, in a silent plea for him to answer that question.

  He tightened his grip a little, but surprised her by saying absolutely nothing. Instead he lifted his free hand and gave a sharp click of his fingers. Without warning, Vito Martinez materialised in front of them. Big and broad and built to smash rocks against, he stood waiting for Luiz to speak.

  ‘Escort Caroline to her room, Vito,’ he instructed, without removing his gaze from Felipe. ‘And remain there until I come…’

  Caroline’s skin was prickling, and the shivery sense that he was issuing some kind of dire warning to Felipe with his security guard’s daunting presence was enough to keep her silent when Luiz let go of her hand and instructed quietly, ‘Go with Vito. Felipe and I have a few—things we need to discuss in private…’

  She went, but she felt sick. She didn’t look bac
k, but she could almost feel the two men sizing each other up as if for battle. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she whispered to Vito.

  ‘They will talk,’ he answered simply. ‘As Luiz said.’

  ‘I don’t like him,’ she confessed, finding herself moving that little bit closer to this big tower of a man Luiz had made her escort.

  ‘Few people do,’ Vito replied. That was all, but it seemed to say more than enough. Both Luiz and Vito had Felipe’s measure. And that meant that if Felipe had been checking up on them then Luiz had certainly been checking up on him—using this man she was walking beside to do the checking, she suspected.

  Vito didn’t leave her even when she slipped away to use her bathroom; he was still standing by the door when she got back.

  ‘You’ve known Luiz a long time, haven’t you?’ she questioned curiously.

  ‘Since we were both nine years old,’ Vito replied.

  Which placed them, by her reckoning, in an orphanage together. ‘So you are friends,’ she concluded, smiling wryly to herself because she was remembering her own thoughts from the other day, when she’d been sitting in the back of Luiz’s car while Vito drove her.

  ‘He saved my life once,’ Vito answered, but didn’t elaborate, even though Caroline stared at him in disbelief because she couldn’t imagine anyone having to save this man’s life for him. He was just too big, too everything surely, to be put into that kind of danger.

  The purchases she’d made while they’d been away began to arrive then, diverting her attention. And a few more minutes after that Luiz arrived. With a quiet word in Vito’s ear he dismissed the other man, who left with a grim nod of his head that made Caroline shiver.

  ‘Why the need of a bodyguard?’ she demanded, the moment they were alone again. ‘Am I in some kind of danger I should know about?’

  ‘No,’ Luiz denied. ‘Not while I’m still breathing at any rate.’

  ‘So you’re the one who’s in danger,’ she therefore concluded.

  ‘Nobody is in danger!’ he denied.

  ‘Then why the bodyguard?’ she repeated stubbornly.

  ‘Escort,’ he corrected. ‘He was sent to escort you up here simply to make a point, okay? ‘

  No, it wasn’t okay. And her face told Luiz that. ‘All right,’ he sighed out heavily. ‘Felipe would like to stop the wedding from taking place,’ he said. ‘That much is patently obvious. But how far he would go to stop it I am not entirely sure. So I am protecting my weak spots.’

  ‘And I am a weak spot.’

  Suddenly his laziest grin appeared. ‘Oh, a very weak spot,’ he murmured seductively, and began to pace suggestively towards her.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ she protested, putting out a hand to ward him off. ‘Not here in this house! Not until we are married!’ she added, chin up, amethyst eyes challenging. ‘I will have your respect el conde!’ she insisted when he took another step towards her.

  He stopped. She had to fight to keep her disappointment from showing. Luiz grinned again, because he saw it anyway. ‘If I touched you now, you would go up in smoke,’ he challenged softly.

  ‘If you touched me now, I probably would,’ she ruefully agreed.

  ‘Then I won’t,’ he assured her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and didn’t even try to hide her disappointment this time.

  ‘Protocol,’ he explained. ‘Thanks for reminding me that in this house I must respect all bridal traditions.’

  If Caroline was aware that she had changed a lot in the last twenty-four hours, then she was also aware that Luiz had changed too. Gone was a lot of the stiff tension he had brought with them into the valley, and what she saw now was a wonderfully charming, lazily relaxed and very sensually motivated man—in private anyway.

  It was that recognition that sent her walking into his arms. ‘Just one chaste kiss, then,’ she offered invitingly, and snaked even closer to him when his arms slid caressingly about her.

  ‘Chaste?’ he mocked.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said. But there was nothing chaste in the way they stood there amongst a sea of unopened packages for long, very unsatisfying minutes.

  ‘I have to go,’ Luiz groaned out reluctantly.

  Go? ‘Go where?’ she demanded.

  ‘Work,’ he said, glancing at his watch. And suddenly he was the frustratingly brisk and businesslike Luiz. ‘I have things to do before our wedding. And I need to get out of the valley before it grows too dark to fly…’

  ‘But we’ve only just arrived!’

  ‘Don’t blame me!’ he countered at her look of dismay. ‘You’re the one who has put my schedule back twenty-four hours! A deliciously welcome twenty-four hours, I will admit,’ he added ruefully. ‘But now I have to play catch-up. So you won’t see me again until we meet at the church.’

  ‘Luiz!’ she cried out as he walked off to the door. ‘W-what about your weak spot?’ she reminded him anxiously.

  ‘Vito is staying.’ It seemed to say it all. ‘Anything you want or are worried about, you go to him.’

  ‘Because he owes you his life and therefore will do anything for you?’

  That stopped him. He turned to stare at her in surprise. ‘You managed to get him to tell you that?’ He sounded truly shocked. ‘Well, that’s a first,’ he drawled.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘Haul him out of the razor fight that put all those marks on his face?’

  ‘No,’ he denied, and suddenly he wasn’t smiling. ‘I hauled him out of prison and gave him a life. And that wasn’t kind, Caroline,’ he told her grimly.

  He was right; it wasn’t. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled contritely.

  He nodded. ‘See you Wednesday.’

  He was going to go, and she didn’t want him to go with bad words between them. ‘I like him, actually,’ she confessed. ‘Mainly because he’s so loyal to you, I think. You didn’t know Felipe was even staying at your hotel, did you?’ she then asked, on a complete change of subject.

  ‘He booked in under a different name,’ Luiz explained.

  ‘And proceeded to shadow both me and my father,’ she mused frowningly. ‘He knew who I was—knew who my father was. Which tells you you have a mole in your midst somewhere, Luiz.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m aware of that—and dealing with it.’

  ‘Does all of this make my father another weak spot?’ she asked.

  For some reason the question had him turning to study her curiously. ‘Yes,’ he replied quietly.

  She released a sigh and began to look fretful again. ‘Are you protecting him too?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ he assured her, in a strange tone that matched the strange expression he was wearing on his face. ‘He will be here, safe and sound, to give your hand to me on our wedding day. Have no fear about that, querida.’

  Then he was gone, leaving Caroline to stand there staring at the last spot he had been standing on, wondering why she was feeling so very chilled again when surely what he had just said should have been reassuring?

  A tap at the door broke her free from whatever it was that was holding her, and she opened it to find Abril, the little maid standing there. ‘Don Luiz send me to help you unpack your purchases,’ she explained.

  Caroline was glad of the diversion. It seemed nothing here in this valley could stay happy for long. Together she and Abril unpacked box after box bearing the names of designers Caroline would never have normally been able to afford to buy.

  When it came to the dress she had chosen to marry Luiz in, the two of them unpacked it together, with a kind of hushed air of expectancy that increased to a breathless delight when the dress was finally hanging on its satin-covered hanger from the tall wardrobe door.

  ‘This is beautiful, señorita,’ Abril sighed out wistfully.

  Yes, it was, Caroline agreed, smiling softly to herself when she remembered the way she had sent Luiz off to get himself some coffee somewhere while she’d chosen the dress on her own. He’d been all lazy mockery as he strode away. But she su
spected that secretly he’d rather liked the idea of her choosing a dress aimed exclusively to please him.

  ‘You have a sweetheart of your own?’ Caroline asked curiously.

  The young maid blushed. ‘No,’ she denied. ‘But when I do, I would wish to marry him in something as lovely as this…’

  She was lightly fingering the delicate lace when the idea came to Caroline. She hadn’t given a thought to it before, but it suddenly struck her now, when it was almost too late to do anything about it, that she was going to have no friends of her own here to help her dress, or share her excitement, or even one to stand as her witness.

  Luiz Vazquez, the fine-detail man, seemed to have overlooked that small but important point.

  ‘Abril…’ she murmured slowly, forming the request even as she spoke it out loud. ‘Would you do something very—special for me?’

  ‘Of course, señorita,’ the maid instantly replied.

  ‘If I can get a dress here in time—a pretty dress for you to wear—would you be my bridesmaid?’

  For a terrible moment she thought she’d actually horrified the poor girl, she was so still and silent. Then, ‘Oh, señorita,’ she breathed. ‘Do you really mean it?’

  The doe eyes were suddenly shining with pleasure. ‘Yes, I mean it.’ Caroline found herself smiling too. ‘You must have noticed that I am here on my own,’ she pointed out sagely. ‘My family and friends are all in England, and though my father is coming I will have no one else. It would be nice, don’t you think, to have someone from the valley to stand beside me?’

  ‘It would be an honour,’ the young girl answered gravely. ‘But, I will have to ask permission of Doña Consuela before I may say absolutely that I will do this,’ she added anxiously.

  ‘Of course,’ Caroline said instantly, not bothering to point out that it was really Luiz’s permission the maid should be seeking. And since she knew what his answer would be without having to ask him, Caroline didn’t think that was a problem.