Her missing year had been a wonderful year, filled with love and passion and laughter, an introduction to the kind of world she had never believed really existed outside the pages of romantic books. His apartment on the Copacabana had been a haven in which they’d lost themselves.
‘…then his papa died in a car accident and he had to go back to England,’ she concluded.
‘End of story?’
End of them, Cristina thought bleakly. ‘Sim,’ she said.
‘You simply waved this passionate lover farewell, then went back to Santa Rosa?’
That came three months later, Cristina remembered bleakly. ‘We did not part—pleasantly,’ was all she said out loud.
‘He wanted you to go with him?’
No answer to that one.
‘But you preferred to marry Vaasco Ordoniz instead?’
No answer to that one either. But he felt her fine shudder of revulsion when he mentioned her dead husband’s name.
‘And now your passionate ex-lover is back?’
‘Sim.’ She did answer that one. No use denying it. Luis was back. Bigger than she remembered him to be, leaner and harder, and colder than she remembered him to be, and so much more potently desirable than she remembered him to be—and the memories had been potent enough.
‘He has offered to bail me out,’ she admitted.
‘And the price?’
Cristina moved restively. Sex was the price. Retribution was the price. Last time he had offered her marriage. This time she would be offered—something else. She could deal with something else. In fact, she was truly shocked and terrified by how much she wanted to have something else with Luis again.
‘I will find that out tomorrow, when I meet with him.’
‘You have already arranged this?’
‘Sim.’
Gabriel sat up. ‘And when were you going to get around to telling me of this meeting?’ he demanded.
‘I’m only just getting used to the idea for myself!’
He made a sound of impatience. ‘You had better give me the time, so I can free myself up. I have a very busy schedule tomorrow, and if Senhor Scott-Lee is moving this quickly then we will—’
‘No, Gabriel,’ Cristina cut in softly, placing a hand on his arm. ‘I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to my aid tonight, but from now on I will deal with this by myself.’
‘Don’t be foolish, Cristina.’ He frowned down at her. ‘The man is a shark beneath that smooth cloak of English sophistication. And he’s hungry. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at you. He wants to eat you, querida. If he is about to offer you a rescue package then he means to play with you a little first.’
And he is powerful enough to play with you too, if I let him, she thought sadly. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I know him. I can deal with him better if I do it by myself.’
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS all right to be brave, and determined to go it alone like this, but from the moment Cristina stepped into the hotel lift that would take her up to the top floor suite she knew that she wasn’t feeling brave at all.
Gabriel was right. She had to be a complete fool to come here alone. She was just asking for trouble—begging for it.
The lift came to a stop. Her insides began to tingle, but what worried her most was that the tingle was not entirely to do with fear. As she stood facing the doors, waiting for them to open, those tingles went chasing down her arms and her legs in tight anticipation of—what?
Seeing Luis waiting for her dressed in one of those white bathrobes he’d always used to favour? Luis with his long tanned legs peppered with crisp black hair on show, and the triangle of hair that used to curl temptingly around the lapels of the robe?
An otherwise naked Luis. A man making a statement—a You are here to please me or else kind of statement.
Would he be that obvious, that crass, that—?
The doors began to move. Suddenly she lost the ability to breathe. Then her chin was lifting in the automatic response of a woman who’d learnt to meet trouble with defiance. If Luis was thinking he could march her into the nearest bed then he was going to have a—
A woman stood there. The same blonde woman Luis had been with the night before.
‘ Ordoniz?’ she enquired in coldly cultured English, giving no hint whatsoever that she had so much as set eyes on Cristina before in her life. ‘I am Kinsella Lane
, Scott-Lee’s personal secretary. If you will follow me, please, I will take you to him…’
No Luis to greet her personally—dressed or undressed. No threatening intimacy of a hotel suite with a bed very much on show. Just a private foyer, with several closed doors leading from it, and a woman who called herself Luis’s personal secretary—but only a fool would believe that. Why else would she be here, in Luis’s private suite? Did she share the accommodation with him? Did they share his bed as well as his suite?
Anger rose, fizzing on the edge of jealousy as she followed in Kinsella Lane
’s blue-suited wake. She knocked briefly on a door, then swung it inwards and was gliding forward on her long model’s legs.
‘ Ordoniz to see you, Anton,’ she announced in a low, intimate voice.
Several things struck Cristina hard at the same moment, the name Anton being the hardest strike, tugging her to a stop as the man himself came into view. He was leaning against the edge of a long conference table that spanned almost the full width of a room made up almost entirely of pale wood.
Two other men were with him. Cristina didn’t see them. She only saw Luis, but not Luis, wearing a steel-grey business suit with a waistcoat that hugged his front like a piece of finely tooled armour worn over a bright white shirt and silver tie. His neat black hair, his golden features, even the long-fingered hands he used to add expression to whatever he was saying placed an aura around him that trapped the breath in her chest. And he was speaking in English, laying out instructions in clean, crisp, deep-bodied tones laced with authority that held his audience captive and mute.
This man was not the magical warm dark Luis she’d used to know. He was Anton, the ruthless banker, a gladiator of business, wearing the suit of armour of a man used to and comfortable with power in a way he had not been six years ago.
He turned his head to look at her then, and with the light coming in from a window behind him his eyes appeared even darker than hers. Two disturbingly black spaces set between slumbrous eyelashes that began lowering as he made a slow study of her from the neatly contained hair and conservative black suit to the unremarkable style of her low-heeled shoes.
She looked as if she’d come here to attend a funeral, Anton was thinking, and felt a wave of anger shoot through him, followed by a twinge of something else that he did not want to analyse.
He’d spent long enough analysing the grim state of Cristina’s finances to know she owned hundreds of square miles of top-quality grazing land, thousands of heads of pedigree beef. She owned a whole mountain and a lush, fertile valley between it and a strip of rainforest that stood between the developers and a prime stretch of Atlantic coastline. But she’d had to borrow the money to make the flight to Rio.
It was no wonder she’d come here wearing unflattering black. The last time she’d worn that terrible suit had probably been to her wastrel of a father’s funeral, and before that the funeral of her lousy gambler of a husband. Today had to feel like yet another funeral to her.
The death of the Marques pride.
That twinge tightened its grip on him. Pity? his mind suggested anyway. But what was there to pity about Cristina? She’d turned her back on him to marry for money. For the thoroughbred continuance of the Marques bloodline. You didn’t pity that, you derided it.
And where was the brood of pure-blood child stock?
Nowhere. Vaasco Ordoniz had died childless, and if anyone knew why then it had to be himself. So, no, he did not pity Cristina, he informed that uncomfortable twinge across his chest.
B
ut he did still desire her—more so when she dared to lift that chin to him, as if to say To hell with what you think of me. I am what I am and you will not change that.
Well, that remained to be seen.
Kinsella demanded his attention then, by touching his arm and saying something softly to him. Forced to drag his eye away from Cristina, Anton found that his secretary was standing a bit too close. He said something curt—he didn’t know what. Then he took a moment to dismiss all three employees while his attention fixed itself back on Cristina’s defiant stance.
What he did not notice until the three shifted into motion was that the electric current running through the room was so strong it had removed the ability to breathe. His two young executives were curious. They’d never seen him this distracted by anything—especially by a woman they believed he was about to indulge in a perfectly ordinary business meeting with. Kinsella, on the other hand, had picked up on the sex sparking through the tension, and he noticed the hostile flash her blue eyes gave Cristina. That look alone told him that she was piqued.
If she did not watch out, his super-efficient secretary was going to have to take a move sideways, out of his orbit, he decided.
Then forgot all about Kinsella as the door closed behind her.
They were alone.
Silence fell.
Was her heart beating as rapidly as his? Was she standing so still because, like him, she was afraid that if she moved all this sexual static would ignite and explode in a glorious barrage of untamed want?
And those eyes…
Those wide-set, almond-shaped, luster-dark eyes were looking at him as if they would dearly love to put a curse on him but were too busy trying not to eat him alive.
The look hit him where he’d expected, hard between his legs, pouring those warm pleasurable hormones into his bloodstream as his sex began to swell. She’d done this to him the first time he’d ever set eyes on her, turning him back into a sex-charged schoolboy unable to control the urge. That she could still do it to him now, dressed as she was and looking at him as she was, should be surprising him. But, having spent the night before in a state of high arousal on her account, he’d had to come to terms with the unarguable fact that this woman did it for him all the time, like no other woman—still.
Then she did surprise him, breaking the tension gripping both of them by dragging her eyes away and moving across the room to stand staring out of one of the side windows at the view. It wasn’t the same spectacular view he got from the windows in the private part of his suite, but then this was a conference room, and conference rooms were designed for business not to give people a riveting vista of Rio. Nor were rooms like this designed for seduction. But in his private suite—
He grimaced, deciding not to let his mind go there—yet.
‘You could at least say Hello, Luis,’ he prompted dryly.
‘You are not Luis, you are Anton,’ she coolly replied.
Another grimace worked its way across his mouth, because he knew exactly who he felt like.
Hell, he knew that.
‘I suppose this means that you expect me to call you Senhora Ordoniz?’ he countered.
She turned to look at him. ‘I am a Marques,’ she announced, in that proud way she had of saying that name. ‘I always have been and I always will be a Marques. I never used the Ordoniz name, so I would therefore appreciate it if you would stop using it and inform that—Kinsella Lane
person of this, so she will not make the same mistake again.’
Kinsella? A black satin eyebrow arched in curiosity. ‘Jealous of her already?’
The taunt earned him a flash from her eyes. But she remembered as well as he did what a naturally jealous and possessive little witch she’d used to be.
‘She is your paramour—don’t bother to deny it.’ She dismissed the way he opened his mouth to do just that. ‘I saw it in her face when she looked at you. I heard it in that silly husky voice she used to speak to you when all I received from her was a chill.’
‘Paramour?’ Anton repeated. ‘What an old-fashioned word to use.’
‘Mistress, then.’ It made no difference to Cristina.
‘A mistress is reliant solely on the generosity of her benefactor for her pampered existence. Kinsella holds down a good job and relies on no man for anything—unlike some.’
He meant herself. Cristina stiffened. ‘I was never your mistress.’
‘I housed you, clothed you, fed you and bedded you—good definition of a mistress.’ He shrugged.
She ignored that. ‘Paramour suits her better—the way she flutters around you like some silly fluffy moth.’
‘But she is so beautiful, and so very willing, meu querida.’ He smiled tauntingly. ‘She also comes with no strings attached. How is a man supposed to resist?’
‘Then enjoy her.’ Cristina turned her face back to the window.
‘The position is yours if you want it.’
‘I don’t want it.’ She added a toss of her head.
‘Then that,’ he said, ‘concludes our business.’
Unimpressed by the shocked face she swung round to show him, Anton levered his long frame upright from the desk, his mood swapping from teasing to deadly serious with a speed that took her by surprise.
‘You know why you are here, Cristina,’ he said grimly. ‘If you are being foolish enough to let yourself think that you’re in a position to bargain with me, try thinking it through again.’
‘I will not share your bed with another woman!’ she tossed at him tautly.
‘You will do as you are damn well told!’ he lanced back.
And it was there, just like that—his contempt for her, the cold anger that froze her where she stood.
Cristina pulled in a deep breath. ‘I don’t understand how you can want me when you feel such hate for me,’ she said as she breathed out again.
‘Strange, that.’ He grimaced. ‘I’ve been puzzled by the same thing myself. I hate you, but you can still turn me on faster than any other woman of my acquaintance—and that, querida, is your only bargaining chip,’ he warned. ‘So be sensible and use it to your advantage instead of questioning it. Now, come and sit down.’
He swung out one of the black leather club chairs that lined the length of the table, then calmly reached out to hook up a phone.
‘Coffee, please, Kinsella,’ he instructed. ‘Brazilian, and make it strong…’
Cristina hadn’t moved a muscle by the time he turned back to her. His eyes turned a darker shade of green. Tension leapt as he began striding towards her like a lean, sleek hunting cat. One glance at the set of his face and alarm bells were ringing, sending a shot of adrenalin shooting down her spine. She knew that smouldering expression—recognised it from the evening before. Sparks began flying. Sexual sparks. That dreaded familiar heat began to pool between her thighs. On a short breath of air she took a wary step backwards, met wall and window, and put out her hands.
‘Anton—’
‘Luis,’ he corrected, bypassing her hands to coil long fingers around her elbows and used them to tug her against his chest. There was a moment’s stifled stillness between them as his eyes held her eyes and then he lowered his head and claimed her mouth.
It wasn’t a pleasant kiss, or even that deep a kiss, but still by the time he lifted his head again there wasn’t much of her that wasn’t quivering.
‘Okay, we have a choice at this juncture,’ he said coolly. ‘We can attempt to behave like civilised people, and sit down over there to discuss our business. Or we can go in the other direction, through that door you can see over there…’ he indicated ‘…which leads to the very private part of this apartment, find the nearest bed and conclude this side of our business first. Now, which is it to be? Your decision.’
Her decision? Cristina thought dizzily. She let the tip of her tongue trace the pulsing contours of her lips and stared fixedly at the knot of his tie while she tried to find the strength to speak.
His hands still had possession of her elbows; her hands lay splayed across his chest. She could feel the muscular tightness of his body beneath the fitted waistcoat, feel his heart pumping to an accelerated beat that was telling her which option he would prefer.
And she was tempted. It appalled her to realise just how much she was tempted to throw business to one side and just take the rest.
‘Tough choice?’ he prompted when she took too long to answer. ‘Need a little help?’
Before she realised what he meant he’d lowered his head again, touching his lips to the corner of hers. A sigh feathered her throat as instinct sent her head turning in a hunting move to capture that mouth, but it had already moved on, brushing her flushed cheek to send a fine quiver of pleasure running through her when he found her earlobe and gently closed his teeth on the tender soft flesh. Her breath feathered again and she moved that bit closer, fingers shifting in a tense little movement upwards, to the wide spread of his shoulders, then compulsively into the silk dark hair at his nape.
The soft sound of his laughter barely registered as derision until he released her lobe and murmured, ‘Business should always come before pleasure, querida, as any street hooker should know.’
It took a full second for it to sink in that he was likening her to a street hooker. Cristina tugged herself free. Humiliation surged up from the quivering mess her senses were in and, without saying a word, she stepped around him, walked on cotton wool legs to the chair he’d pulled out for her and sat down on it.
Behind her, she felt his cruel amusement reaching out to her. In front of her lay nothing but more glass, set too high in the wall for her to see anything but uninterrupted blue sky. Her eyes burned, her heart hurt, inside she could feel herself coming to pieces—sitting tensely on the part of her anatomy that was twisting and twirling with the heated excitement one kiss had fed into it while the rest of her crawled with self-loathing.
Because he was only telling it as it was. She was little more than a street hooker, here to sell the only commodity she had that he was interested in.
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