She turned her head to look at him then. ‘You are so powerful these days?’
He didn’t even bother to look at her. ‘Yes,’ he said.
He made her shiver. He made her truly fear the man he had become.
‘Leave Gabriel alone,’ she whispered.
‘If you possessed a modicum of sense, querida, you would be worrying about your own situation more than your friend.’
He turned his head to look at her for the first time since they’d left Gabriel’s apartment then, and Cristina’s heart gave a wary little squeeze in her breast when she looked at him. Everything about him was hard, coldly angry, intimidating.
‘I don’t know where you get the arrogance to think you can play games with me a second time,’ he delivered coldly.
‘I was not playing a game,’ Cristina replied. ‘I just needed—’
‘The sex,’ he cut in. ‘So you thought, Why not get it from Luis since he’s so damn good at it?’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘We did not have sex, we made love,’ she corrected.
The expression of derision in his eyes as they glinted at her made her want to crawl away inside her own skin and hide. She knew on one level that she deserved his anger. She knew that in the way she had sneaked out of his suite while he slept she had taken the coward’s way out. But—
‘You were bullying me, Luis!’ she hit back accusingly. ‘You backed me into a corner and gave me no room to think! I left because I needed some time to consider what you were proposing!’
‘I’m sorry to tell you this, querida, but you don’t have the luxury of time or choice.’
Something landed on her lap. Cristina stared down at it for several long seconds before reluctantly picking it up. By the time she’d finished scanning the sheets of legal jargon tears were clogging up her throat.
‘When did you acquire these?’ she asked in a stifled whisper.
‘Before I stepped foot in Brazil,’ he replied. ‘As you can see, I own you, Cristina. Not various banks and loan companies. I own the power to decide what happens to your precious Santa Rosa. And if I decide to foreclose on your debts and sell out to the Alagoas Consortium, I can promise you that it will happen—the very next time you attempt to walk out on me.’
It was such a brutal, totally unequivocal statement of intent that she shuddered. Luis owned her. He all but owned Santa Rosa by taking on the never ending length of her debts—the bottom line total of which, when laid out in black and white, actually made her feel ill.
They arrived at his hotel. Anton got out of the car and came around to her door, then took hold of her hand and pulled her out.
She came without protest, and it was crazy but that annoyed the hell out of him. He didn’t want her beaten and subdued. He wanted her out here fighting—because when she was fighting he could fight back.
And he wanted to fight with her. He wanted to build it and build it until it progressed to a different kind of fight. She was in his blood again, like a fever. The sexual fever that was Cristina Marques.
His hand trailed her into the hotel foyer. The concierge saw them enter and attempted to catch Anton’s eye but he pretended not to notice. He did not want to talk to anyone, be pleasant or polite. He made directly for the bank of lifts, cursed silently when they were forced to share it with a pair of young lovers who couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They laughed and teased and touched and kissed all the way up to the floor below his own. Standing rigid beside him, Cristina stared unblinkingly at the lift console. He stared grimly at the floor.
The moment they reached the privacy of his hotel suite Cristina twisted her hand free and walked away from him. Anton made for the bedroom to deposit her suitcase. When he came back she was standing in the middle of the room, staring at an empty wall.
His chest made that tightening clutch at him. Grimly ignoring it, he crossed to the drinks cabinet.
‘Why?’ she fed unsteadily after him.
He did not attempt to misunderstand the question. ‘Call it payback for six years ago,’ he answered. ‘You owe me for six years. For my inability to believe what any other woman says to me—for not daring to believe what my own senses are telling me about them.’
‘I never meant to do that to you.’
He swung round. ‘Then what did you intend?’
Exactly what she had achieved, Cristina thought bleakly, which had been to make him hate her enough to leave her and never come back.
Only he had come back, and now here he stood—hard, coldly angry, still hating her for which she had done to him. Though now the hate had sexual desire to feed his determination to carry this through to its bitter end.
‘So all of this is for revenge,’ she murmured emptily.
Glass in hand, Anton offered a shrug. ‘And to solve the immediate problem I have that demands I get married and produce a child.’
Those words cut so deep that Cristina actually quivered, dark pain clouding her eyes. ‘Then you have chosen the wrong woman for this—quest you are bent on,’ she told him, and had to pull in a breath to steady herself before she could go on. ‘B-because I cannot give you that child, Luis. I am not able to—’
It was like watching ice explode. The way his face altered as he slammed down the glass and then made a grab for her set her whimpering in surprised shock.
‘Don’t ever utter that lie to me again—understand me?’ he rasped down at her.
Cristina lifted her pale face. ‘It was not a lie—’
‘You lie every time you open that lush red kissable mouth!’ he bit out. ‘You lied six years ago when you told me you loved me, then enjoyed watching me squirm as you put that particular lie to death!’
‘No!’ she cried brokenly. ‘It wasn’t like that! It—’
‘It was exactly like that!’
Meu Dues, Cristina closed her eyes—because he was right, it had been just like that. ‘If you will just listen to me for a moment, I can explain—’
‘You know what?’ He unclipped his fingers from her shoulders. ‘I don’t want you to explain. Your reasons no longer interest me. You owe me. I’m collecting—on my terms.’
He turned back to his drink.
‘Terms I cannot deliver.’
He twisted round again. ‘My terms,’ he repeated hardly. ‘As in you as my wife, my willing sex slave and the mother of my child.’ He spelled it out yet again. ‘In return you get your precious Santa Rosa, gift-wrapped, with all debts cleared. Fair exchange, in my view.’
‘Or a choice that is no choice,’ she murmured indistinctly.
‘Which means…?’
Which means…She was feeling so very cold now that she had to wrap her arms around herself. ‘I will marry you,’ she said.
There was a single second of total silence. A long, sharp needlepoint second when he stared at her as though he could not believe she had surrendered at last.
Then, ‘Say it again,’ he instructed. ‘And this time say it much clearer, so there can be no more misunderstanding. Because this is it, Cristina. Your last chance. I am not playing any more games here. So say it loud and clear so I know that you mean it.’
‘You will regret it,’ she whispered.
‘Say it,’ he repeated.
‘All right!’ she flashed at him, and in true Cristina style she rose to her surrender with the proud lift of her chin. Silky black hair went spiralling back from her narrow shoulders, her eyes flashing his coldly ruthless and unremitting face a look of burning contempt.
‘I will hate you, Luis, for treating me like this and making me behave like a whore,’ she told him. ‘I hate you already, for your threats and your blackmail and your thirst for revenge that makes you want to treat me this way. But I will marry you,’ she repeated clearly, as instructed. ‘I will sell myself to you like a whore in the marketplace in exchange for Santa Rosa—and when you discover how empty your revenge cup will be I will stand like this in front of you and laugh in your face!’
Luis mov
ed without warning. She was trembling and panting so badly by the time she had finished that she just didn’t see him coming, and before she knew it she was somehow plastered to his front.
Her stomach flipped. ‘No,’ she protested.
‘Say that again in thirty seconds,’ he challenged, and delivered his mouth to hers with a lip-crushing deep-tongued kiss.
Cristina did not need those thirty seconds. She did not need even ten to reduce to such a melting, boneless mass of quivering compliance that she couldn’t think of anything else. She was useless, lost, his eager plaything. Her mouth clung to his mouth; her fingers clung to his head.
Then it stopped. Why it stopped she had no comprehension. It took more seconds than it had taken her to sink into it to float back out of it again.
‘Great way to hate, querida,’ his husky voice taunted. ‘It excites the hell out of me, anyway…’
It was like being smashed when he’d already broken her. On a pained little whimper she pulled herself free and ran for the bedroom.
Anton winced as the door landed in its housing. He spun around and snatched up his drink, downed it, then went to pour another one—only to stop himself when he realised what he was doing, and stare grimly into the bottom of his empty glass instead.
He’d got what he wanted from her, so why wasn’t he feeling better about it? Why was he standing here feeling as if he’d just lost something vital instead?
Her face. It had been the look on her face when she’d finally accepted there was no other way out for her. She called it hate; he called it—pain.
Why pain? He slammed the empty glass down, because he suddenly remembered that he had seen that look once before—six years ago, when she’d sliced him to pieces with her rejection. Had the scorn she’d used to do it been masking pain then, only he had been too blind to see it?
Oh, stop looking for excuses for her, he told himself angrily. He did not understand her. Thinking about it, he never had understood what really made Cristina tick.
What was it about her that she could make out that she despised him with all she had in her, yet fall apart in his arms without much of a sign that she had any control over what she did?
The buzz words were Santa Rosa, he reminded himself. Not him. Not the sex. Santa Rosa.
The bedroom door suddenly flew open. Cristina was standing there like a wild thing. He felt his body respond with enough heat to set him on fire.
‘You can tell that manic secretary that your affair with her is over!’ she tossed at him.
‘You are in no position to bargain,’ he threw back. ‘Just think of Santa Rosa and I’m sure you will get over her presence in my life.’
The door slammed shut again. On a tight curse Anton turned and poured himself that second drink. Then he laughed—he laughed!
God, there was no other person alive on this earth who could arouse him to just about every emotion going.
He put down the glass because he discovered that he suddenly did not need the whisky. Still trying to control the smile, he headed for the conference room instead, where a full day’s business awaited his attention. Where the hell he had got the idea that he could come to Brazil and play the hotshot banker and deal with Cristina he would never know.
While Anton was trying his best to lose himself in business matters, in a very sedate, very upmarket office in another part of Rio, an old man with white hair and immaculate grooming sat carefully filing his nails while he listened to the report being relayed to him by an unassuming young man with the unassuming name of José Paranhos.
Until now Senhor Javier Estes had been quietly satisfied with the information being relayed to him. All, it seemed, was going to plan. Senhor Scott-Lee had taken up the challenge, and the object of that challenge was making it difficult enough to keep him dancing on his toes. He’d even smiled when he heard that Cristina had spent the night with Scott-Lee in his suite.
It was the next part that lost Senhor Estes his smile and sharpened his attention. ‘Say that again?’ He prompted confirmation. ‘This woman accosted Senhorita Marques as she was exiting the elevator?’
José nodded. ‘Senhorita Lane
was very angry and very unpleasant,’ the younger man expressed. ‘She claimed that she and Senhor Scott-Lee are lovers and that they had slept together only the night before. Naturally, Senhorita Marques was upset.’ He went on to relay what else the secretary had thrown at Cristina.
Frowning now, Senhor Estes dropped the nail file to pick up his pen and scrawl a few terse notes on the file open in front of him. The indication that those few notes represented a black mark against Anton showed in the way with which the words were underscored.
‘Obrigado, José. You will maintain your observation and keep me informed.’
With a nod, José left the office, and Senhor Estes withdrew a sealed envelope from the file. The envelope was addressed to Cristina Ordoniz.
Cats set among pigeons, Javier mused, invariably caused mayhem…
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUIS was sitting at the conference table, attempting to concentrate on the information being fed to him. His two executives kept looking at him oddly when they constantly had to repeat themselves. He didn’t blame them for the odd looks. He felt odd, enlivened and distracted, too damn sexually aware that Cristina was on the other side of that door over there.
The telephone by his elbow began to ring. Remembering that Kinsella was not in the outer office to intercept all calls because he’d sent her to the bank to pick up some documents, he reached out and picked up the phone.
‘Scott-Lee,’ he announced himself briskly.
‘At last!’ Maximilian rasped down the line at him. ‘Where the hell have you been, Anton? I’ve been trying to contact you all damn day!’
Tensing up at the urgency in his uncle’s voice, Luis flicked a quick frowning dismissal at the two other men. ‘Why? What’s wrong, Max? Has something happened to my mother?’
‘You could say that,’ the older man answered dryly. ‘She’s on her way to Rio,’ he warned his nephew. ‘Should be setting down at the airport as we speak.’
‘Coming here? What for?’
‘To put a stop to this crazy marriage you are planning, of course. What else?’
His marriage? ‘How the hell did she find out about it so quickly?’ he demanded incredulously.
‘Far be it from me to want to put a spoke in Maria’s plans, Anton—I adore that woman like she was my own sister, and I have no wish to see you throw yourself away on some gold-digging widow—but—’
Anton stiffened like a board. ‘Watch your mouth, Max,’ he warned thinly.
‘You mean this woman is not the widow of Vaasco Ordoniz?’
Anton did not answer that. Something else far more disturbing had grabbed his attention. ‘You know Vaasco Ordoniz,’ he declared in a driven undertone. It had been right there in Max’s tone.
‘I’m not getting into that one,’ Max refused. ‘That’s up to your mother.’
His mother knew Cristina’s late husband?
‘But I will tell you this,’ Max continued. ‘There is something going on within the ranks of your team that quite frankly stinks. And, love Maria though I do, I refuse to stand back and watch while you are stitched up by some jumped up little secretary who is paid to keep her mouth shut about your movements, not ring up your mother with all the gory details. I mean, how can a man have a private life if some—?’
‘What are you talking about, Max?’ Anton thrust furiously into this bewildering tirade.
There was a moment’s silence while his uncle absorbed that fury. Then he said, very seriously. ‘Kinsella Lane
rang your mother yesterday to inform her of your intention to marry the Ordoniz widow. Your mother reacted like a demented chicken and caught the next flight she could get on to Rio.’
Anton swore soundly.
‘Maria has taken a suite on the floor below yours, Anton. And the very helpful Miss Lane
arranged it.’
Kinsella had done all this behind his back? Anton was stunned and shattered.
‘I’ve been ringing you on and off all day, trying to warn you about this—did the secretary tell you? I bet she didn’t. I can read the tone of a machinating woman from thousands of miles away, and that one is dangerous. Do yourself a big favour and get rid of her. She’s a risk to your security.’
Anton eventually put down the phone on a string of tight curses. His mind was whirling at the flood of information his uncle had just fed into it. Kinsella had been passing on personal information about him to his own mother of all people? How had she got that information? Nobody attached to his entourage knew anything about his plans to marry Cristina! How had she heard, seen, picked up anything? Unless—
He remembered the file from his investigator, which he’d placed in the safe yesterday. Kinsella had been irritating the hell out of him since they’d arrived here in Rio, and Cristina had accused him of keeping Kinsella around as a lover within minutes of clapping eyes on her. He’d flicked the remarks away as unimportant when any man with sense knew he should never dismiss the uncanny power of the female instinct when it sensed a rival in its presence.
Had his not very private secretary been snooping where she should not look? Found out all she needed to know about Cristina and then calmly called up his mother to relay the information to her?
His mother.
His mind flipped to the next pending crisis. Reaching out, he snatched up the phone to ring down to Reception and find out the expected time of arrival of Maria Scott-Lee. The inner curses became progressively more colourful as that conversation was concluded.
Then he pulled himself together and stood for a few minutes, grimly sorting his priorities into some kind of order. By the time he’d done that he’d turned into the ice man.
As Cristina was the first to see.
He entered the bedroom like a bullet, strode up to where she was standing, staring out of the window, caught hold of her hand before she barely had a chance to turn round, and just hauled her out of the suite.
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