Anne Mather - The Spaniard's Seduction

by The Spaniard's Seduction (lit)

  He was the very last person she had expected to see. Consuela, perhaps? David? But not Enrique. And yet, why not? It was appropriate, she thought bitterly. He was used to doing his father's bidding.

  All the same, she couldn't meet his searching gaze for long. His absence had done nothing to damp the leaping fires inside her, and all she could remember was how weak and helpless he'd made her feel.

  For his part, Enrique's face was expressionless, and she had no way of knowing what he was thinking. In a more formal shirt than she was used to seeing—ice-blue silk teamed with an Italian-styled suit in navy blue—he looked darkly hand­some, disturbingly elegant. Her nemesis, she reflected a little shakily. Her fate and her temptation, and ultimately her de­struction.

  'If you're looking for David, he's not here,' she said, when the silence between them was beginning to strip her nerves. And Enrique shrugged.

  'I can see that,' he replied, with no apparent inflection in his voice. 'What are you doing?'

  'Nothing much.' Cassandra had been sitting on the padded stool beside the vanity, but now she got to her feet. There was no need for him to know she'd started packing. 'What do you want?'

  Enrique rocked back on his heels. 'What do I want?' he queried, an edge of sarcasm colouring his tone. 'Dios, where do I begin?'

  Cassandra held up her head, not answering him. 'I under­stand you went to Seville to bring your father home,' she said instead, managing somehow to keep her voice cool and con­trolled. 'How is he? I expect he'll be tired after the journey.'

  Enrique swore then. It wasn't in English, but Cassandra had no difficulty in identifying his intent. So much for hoping they could deal amicably with one another, she thought tensely. Like her, Enrique had not forgotten any part of what she'd said.

  'Let us not pretend that you care how my father is feeling,' he said at last. 'And I understand perfectly what you are doing; what you are hoping to achieve. But it is not going to work. Cassandra. You and I are going to talk about what happened before I went away. You cannot tear my world apart and then behave as if nothing had changed. Even you are not that thoughtless.'

  'Don't you mean stupid?' demanded Cassandra, stung by his accusation. 'And if you are going to talk about worlds being torn apart—'

  'I know, I know.' Enrique dragged his hands out of his pockets to rake long lingers through his hair. 'I have had time to think while I have been away and I realise it must have been—difficult—for you, too.'

  'Oh, thanks.'

  'Do not be sarcastic, Cassandra. It does not suit you.' He drew a steadying breath. 'In any case, now is not the time to get into this. It will take considerably longer than we have at present to deal with all the repercussions of this situation.'

  Cassandra quivered. 'You're going away again?' she en­quired tautly, and he uttered another muffled oath.

  'No,' he said, leaving the door to cross the room towards her. He halted only when she put out her hand to prevent him from getting too close to her. 'Dios mio, Cassandra, you must know how I feel. When you told me David was my son, I was shocked, yes. But it does not alter the way I feel about you.'

  Cassandra moistened dry lips. 'Am I supposed to understand what that means?'

  'You should,' he said roughly, taking the hand she had put out to stop him and raising it to his lips. 'I thought I made the way I felt about you very clear the other evening,'

  'That was—that was before—'

  'Before you told me that David was my son?' he enquired softly, his tongue devastatingly sensual against her palm. 'Ah, si. And you do not think that that would reinforce those feel­ings?'

  'I—don't know.' Cassandra didn't know what to believe any more.

  'Then I will have to—'

  But before he could finish what he'd been about to say, a throat was cleared behind them. 'Señor!' It was Consuela. 'Lo siento, Señor Enrique,' she murmured with obvious reluc­tance. 'Pero, señor, su padre-—puede—'

  'Mierda!'

  There was no mistaking Enrique's irritation now. With his jaw compressed in evident frustration, he dropped Cassandra's hand and turned to confront the red-faced maidservant, giving in to a stream of angry Spanish that was hardly warranted. And, although Cassandra could understand a little of his provocation, she couldn't help feeling sorry for Consuela, too. The Spanish woman wasn't to blame for the interruption. Someone else had sent her here.

  Su padre. Your father. Cassandra translated the words without difficulty and her stomach tensed. Who else?

  Enrique had apparently come to the same conclusion. He was being unreasonable, and, taking a deep breath, he shook his head. Recovering his temper, he offered the woman a swift apology, and this sudden reversal of blame brought a relieved smile to her lips. His words were eagerly accepted and Consuela hurried away, her rope-soled mules squeaking on the marble floor.

  Listening, Cassandra was amazed they hadn't heard her coming. But perhaps that wasn't so surprising. For a few mo­ments Enrique had had all her attention, and she was horrified to find that she was still so easily seduced.

  Now, however, she had had time to gather her senses, and when he turned back to her, she was ready for him. 'I think you'd better go,' she said, trying not to show how upset he'd made her. 'I understood a little of what Consuela was saying. Your father is asking for you, isn't he'.' You'd better not keep him waiting.'

  'As a matter of fact, it is you he is asking for, Cassandra,' Enrique declared, and there was an element of resignation in his voice now. 'He sent me here to bring you to him. He is eager to meet his daughter-in-law at last.'

  Cassandra took an involuntary step away from him. 'He wants to meet me!' she echoed disbelievingly. 'Are you sure?'

  'Por supuesto.' Enrique gave a shrug. 'You are David's mother. It is more than time for him to acknowledge your connection to this family.'

  Cassandra moved her head from side to side. 'You did this,' she said accusingly. 'You persuaded him to meet me.' She twisted her hands together. 'Did you ever consider my feel­ings? What if I don't want to meet him?'

  Enrique stared at her. 'You would defy him? Knowing that his health is far from good?'

  'That's blackmail!'

  'No.' Enrique was patient. 'It is—how do you say it?— Common sense, no? I thought you would be glad to hear that my father has accepted the situation. It was not easy for me, breaking such news to him.’

  Cassandra's breathing felt as if it had been suspended. ‘You've told him David is your son?'

  'Yes.' Enrique made a dismissive movement with his shoul­ders. 'But David himself does not know yet. I thought you would prefer it if I did not tell him.'

  'You got that right.' Cassandra felt as if her life was moving out of control, 'I—then it's David he wants to see,' she added. 'Why don't you admit it? Julio de Montoya does not want to meet me.'

  'He does,' insisted Enrique inflexibly. He paused and then added reluctantly, 'He has already met David. The boy was eager to meet his grandfather,' he continued, before she could make any objection. 'He saw the car arrive and he came to meet us.'

  He would, thought Cassandra tightly. So that was where David had been all afternoon. It hurt a little that her son hadn't bothered to ask her permission. But, since coming to Tuarega, David had become a stranger to her in some ways.

  'So where is he now?' she asked, and Enrique expelled a weary sigh.

  'He is with my father,' he said flatly. And then, 'Why do I get the feeling that you are going to blame me for what David has done?'

  'Who else can I blame?' she demanded, not altogether fairly. 'If you'd never come to find us, we wouldn't be having this conversation now.'

  Enrique stiffened, his eyes dark and guarded. 'Are you say­ing you would have preferred it if we'd never met again?'

  'Yes! No! Oh, I don't know.' Cassandra cupped her hot cheeks in confusion. 'You'd better leave me.' And as he arched an enquiring brow, she indicated her tee shirt and shorts. 'I can't meet your father dressed like this.'


  'Cassandra—'

  His anguished use of her name was almost her undoing. It would have been so easy to give in to his persuasive tongue and let him bear the burden of what came after. But she had the awful feeling that Enrique still had his own agenda. She feared that without the knowledge that David was his son, and not Antonio's, he would never have attempted to rekindle emotions that had surely been deeply buried in the past.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  'So WHEN is David coming home?'

  Henry Skyler, Cassandra's employer at the bookstore, was nothing if not direct and she gave him a determined smile. 'At the end of the summer holidays,' she replied brightly, as if there wasn't a shred of doubt in her mind. 'Do you want me to get rid of this dump bin? We don't have enough copies to fill it any more.’

  'Oh, yes.' Henry nodded. 'That thriller did sell rather well, didn't it'.' People stem to have an insatiable appetite for that kind of book.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Good for busi­ness, of course.'

  Cassandra nodded and started taking the few copies of the book that were left from the stand, waiting for Henry to return to his office at the back of the shop. But he remained where he was.

  'You must miss him,' he said, returning to his earlier topic, and Cassandra's teeth ground together in frustration. 'I don't think I could have abandoned my son with strangers for— what?—three months?'

  'Ten weeks, actually,' Cassandra corrected him shortly, but it was a moot point. Counting the two weeks they had been on holiday, David would have been away nearly three months by the time he came home. If he came home, she amended tensely. There were no guarantees in the arrangement. So far, she had had one phone call from David, and that was a couple of weeks ago now. Since then, she had heard nothing.

  'All the same—'

  'Henry, they're not strangers! They're his family!' she pro­tested, desperately wanting to avoid a discussion about the situation. 'Where do you want me to put these books? Shall I stack them with the new fiction or put them back on the shelf?'

  'With the new fiction, I think,' said Henry absently, obvi­ously more interested in David's whereabouts than in that of his stock. ‘And you say you don't mind? Aren't you afraid David won't want to come home?’

  Cassandra heaved a sigh. 'Look, David wanted to stay,' she said tightly. 'His grandfather had just come home from hos­pital and they needed time to get to know one another. The hardest part was getting his school to agree to giving him the last few weeks of term off.'

  Liar!

  Cassandra was amazed she could make such a statement without her tongue falling out. God! Contacting the educa­tional authorities and arranging for David to miss school for several weeks had been the least of her worries. Returning home to Luton airport without him: that had been the hard part.

  'Well, if you say so,' said Henry now, realising he wasn't going to persuade her to part with any juicy gossip about her in-laws. He grimaced. 'He's a lucky boy. I wish I could dis­cover I had a wealthy Spanish grandfather.'

  Cassandra forced another smile and to her relief Henry left her to get on with her work. But she doubted if it would be the last she'd hear of it. He was intensely inquisitive, and learning that they'd accidentally encountered her late hus­band's family while they were in Spain had certainly aroused his interest. And his suspicions, she conceded ruefully. Even to her ears, it had sounded an unlikely scenario.

  But she had no intention of telling him about David's hand in it. As far as Henry was concerned, her son had been as surprised to meet his mother's in-laws as she had, and she intended it to stay that way.

  A customer came in as she was stacking the books, and she was glad of the diversion to take her thoughts from her son. She tried not to think about what he was doing or who he was with too often. Or acknowledge the uneasy belief that she might have made a terrible mistake in allowing David to stay with his father.

  Yet, after the customer had departed, she wondered for the umpteenth time what she could have done differently. If she'd insisted on David coming home with her, he'd have been mis­erable. Besides, it would only have been a matter of time be­fore either Enrique or his father got the European courts in­volved and obtained a court order allowing the boy to spend lime with his Spanish family. And what kind of a future would that have portended for any of them?

  No, she had had no choice but to agree to Julio de Montoya's request. Anything else would have created even more bitterness between them, and for her son's sake she had had to swallow her pride. But, oh, it had been a painful de­cision, and even now she wondered how Julio had persuaded her to do it.

  When she'd arrived at her father-in-law's suite of rooms that afternoon nearly three weeks ago, she didn't know what she'd expected of him. Anger, of course; hostility, definitely. How­ever delighted he might have been to learn he had a grandson, she'd been certain that Enrique had exaggerated his father's desire to meet her. To berate her, perhaps. To deliver the kind of tirade Enrique had bestowed on the unfortunate Consuela; she'd been prepared for that. What she hadn't been prepared for was Julio's cordiality; his reasonableness; his apparent willingness to accept that she'd had good reasons for keeping David's existence to herself.

  Of course, when she'd first been shown into Julio's room, she'd known none of that. In his impressive sitting room, with its deep ochre-tinted walls and heavy furniture, she'd been confronted by all the members of his immediate family, and it had been incredibly daunting.

  David had been there, of course, but she hadn't felt she could look to her son for any support. Of all of them, he had had the most to lose, financially at least, and where the de Montoyas were concerned, as she knew to her cost, financial considerations were paramount.

  Elena de Montoya had been standing beside her husband's wheelchair. Slim and autocratic, her expression had, as always, been impossible to read, though Cassandra had sensed that she didn't altogether approve of her husband dealing with some­thing so potentially explosive on his first day home.

  Enrique had been there, too, she remembered. He had been lounging against the wrought iron grille that framed the win­dows, his dark eyes narrowed and intent. The rich red curtains had accentuated his sombre countenance, and she had made a determined effort not to look his way.

  Julio, himself, had proved to be a mere shadow of the man Cassandra remembered. At Antonio's funeral service, he had appeared so strong, so powerful: a dominant figure whom she had marvelled that Antonio had dared to oppose. But now he was older, frailer, showing the effects of the heart surgery Enrique had told her about. And infinitely less intimidating.

  'Cassandra.' Julio had said her name slowly and succinctly, his accent, like his son's, giving her name a foreign sibilance. 'Thank you for coming.'

  Cassandra could have said that she hadn't had much choice, but she didn't. Instead, she moved her shoulders in a dismis­sive gesture, saying politely, 'I hope you're feeling better, señor.'

  'I have been better,' he agreed, using her term. 'But the news my son has given me has gone a long way towards advancing my recovery.’ He held up a veined hand, summon­ing David to approach him. 'This boy is my passport to health, Cassandra. My hope for the future.' He took David's hand between both of his. 'Si, hijo? You agree, do you not?'

  David's smile came and went, the look he cast towards his mother mirroring his uncertainty. Cassandra realised that he was still unsure of her reaction, and she was so eager to re­assure her son that she inadvertently gave him the go-ahead to say whatever he liked.

  'I'm sure he does,' she blurted swiftly, surprising all of them, and David wasted no lime in assuring his grandfather that he loved being here at Tuarega.

  There was more of the same, with Elena joining in to tell her husband that David was already beginning to speak a little Spanish, which was news to Cassandra. Still, it pleased the old man, and if it wasn't for Enrique, a disturbing presence beside the windows, she might believe that some kind of com­promise was possible.

  But then, once a
gain, Julie did the unexpected. With infinite courtesy, but with an unmistakable edge of steel in his voice, he asked his wife, his son, and his grandson to leave them. He wanted to speak to his daughter-in-law alone, he said, by way of an explanation. There were misunderstandings between them, long-standing grievances that needed to be cleared up before they could embark on a lasting relationship. He said he hoped they would all understand and give him and Cassandra some breathing space.

  Elena protested, saying that he wasn't well enough to con-duct any kind of healing process now, but he was adamant, and it was left to Enrique to voice the loudest objections.

  'I think I should stay,' he said, which was the first remark he'd made since Cassandra came into the room. And, although his father blustered, Cassandra knew that Julio would be no match for his son.

  'I'd prefer it if you left,' she declared then, aware that she might be being a little foolhardy, but persisting with it anyway. She had no desire for Enrique to fight her battles for her. 'I'd like to hear what your father has to say.'

  Enrique looked as if he would like to argue with her. The glitter in his eyes was intimidating and promised a certain retribution. But he accepted their decision. With studied delib­eration, he left the room with his mother and his son, his only protest the grazing brush of his thumb against Cassandra's bare arm as he passed.

  Cassandra shivered now, remembering his touch with every fibre of her being. She hadn't known then that that was the last time Enrique would want to touch her; hadn't compre­hended that he'd known exactly what his father was going to say to her.

  Julio had been tired. She'd known that. Despite his assertion to the contrary, the day had exhausted him, and Cassandra had wondered since if his choice of time had been deliberate; if he'd known exactly how she would feel, confronted by a man in his condition.

  Whatever, at that moment she'd been preparing herself for the kind of reception she'd expected when she'd first entered his rooms, and she'd been taken aback when he'd invited her to sit in the chair nearest to him and asked if she'd like some refreshment.