‘What do you think you are doing?’ she demanded as he tugged her inside the lift.
Swinging her into the far corner, he pinned her there with a hand pressed against the wall at either side of her startled face.
‘Why did you marry him?’ he delivered.
Cristina blinked, taken aback by the question. Then her eyes hooded over. ‘I have told you before. I will not discuss that with you.’
‘Why not?’
Folding her arms across her front, she stared down at her shoes and pinned her lips shut.
‘He was wealthy when you met him,’ Anton persisted. ‘He only started gambling the money away after you came into his life. Could the gambling have had something to do with the fact that you conveniently failed to give him a son?’
Cristina went as white as a sheet, but still refused to react in any other way.
He moved in closer. ‘Was the need to keep your gorgeous figure perfect worth what it cost you in the end, Cristina? When you finished up a poor widow who had to go back begging to her miserable father? Did he hold it against you that you had not produced a male grandson for him to leave Santa Rosa to? Or was that always your goal?’ he pushed on relentlessly. ‘Was the only way you could own your beloved Santa Rosa by making sure you would never produce a son?
‘Well, I’ve got news for you,’ he continued, when she still said nothing. ‘You will have my child whether or not you want it. Son or daughter. I have no preference. And Santa Rosa will be placed in trust for that child to inherit, because it will give me such pleasure to watch you lose the one thing that you covet the most!’
He kissed her then, using his hand in her hair to tug up her face and laying the kiss on her like a brand of hate. Tears were sparkling in her eyes by the time he straightened, her burning mouth working on the desire to just break down and weep. Luis looked at her as if he would love to strangle her right here in the lift—but the doors opened and he was grabbing her hand instead.
The lobby was busy. People everywhere—standing, sitting, moving about, checking out or checking in. Cristina blinked the hurt tears from her eyes and looked up at the hard-as-nails profile of this man she knew she would never forgive for saying what he just had.
And she would never forgive herself for giving him reason to say it.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked unsteadily.
‘Shopping,’ he answered.
Shopping…For a few short seconds the meaning of the word just refused to register in her bemused head. Then it did register. Luis had just destroyed her and now he was walking her into the swish shopping mall attached to the hotel as if it was perfectly acceptable to knock her down then take her on a shopping trip.
Cristina bit her teeth together and said nothing.
Anton was wishing he could take back what he’d said in the lift.
But he was angry—still angry—about many things. Not least the amount of interference and manipulation that was taking place in his life. Ramirez, his mother, Kinsella—he could go right back to the day of his birth!
And that crack by his uncle Max about his mother knowing Vaasco Ordoniz was niggling the hell out of him. It was just one more thing other people had knowledge about and he did not. If he had any sense he would just drop this whole crusade, go back to England and—
It was then that it happened. As if Ramirez himself was listening in on his angry thoughts, Anton came smack up against a heart-leaping thump that stopped him dead in his tracks.
He was standing in front of a jeweller’s window. Tall, dark hair, Latin profile, and a way of resting his hands in his pockets that was so familiar it completely locked Anton up where he stood.
Was it? Could it be? What if it was? The desire to go over there and ask the man outright if he’d heard of Enrique Ramirez vibrated like an engine in his blood.
‘Luis…?’ Cristina prompted warily.
He barely heard her. He could barely hear his own thoughts above the humming going on in his head. The man turned, as if drawn by the mental energy he was generating. The moment Anton looked into his face he knew he was looking at a perfect stranger. No green eyes, no cleft chin—no hint anywhere on that solid-shaped face that he could reflect back to himself. The rushing sinking feeling shot through him.
‘Luis, you’re hurting my hand…’
He looked down at the woman beside him. Saw the expression in her face and relaxed his grip. His half-brothers—his half-brothers, he repeated, and felt his mind swoop into full focus on his main goal in all of this.
Whatever it took, he told himself fiercely. Money, blackmail, seduction—threats. This woman, who was looking up at him through rich, dark, warily questioning eyes, was going to be his wife as soon as he could make it happen. She was going to grow ripe with his child. And to achieve those two aims he was prepared brush aside anything and anyone that attempted to run interference.
In fact he was more than ready to run some interference of his own.
And it began right here, in the first shop he pulled her into.
An hour later and they were standing in the spare bedroom surrounded by designer bags containing the designer clothes that he had chosen because she would not.
‘Put on the red dress,’ he instructed. ‘You have—’ he glanced at his watch ‘—about an hour and a half.’
With that dictatorial announcement he strode out of the bedroom and closed the door, leaving Cristina to sink down onto the end of the bed, where she sat staring at the array of bags spread around her. Even with the confused mixture of anger, hate and total bewilderment she was feeling, there was a tiny dark corner of her that wanted to dive with a shriek of delight into the lot.
There were bags containing sensuous floaty skirts and filmy tops by Nina Ricci, evening dresses from Valentino, day suits from Armani and Chanel. She could see the Gucci logo, Prada, Jimmy Choo…In a short, breathtaking hour Luis had trailed her through a wonderland of purchases without once letting go of her hand. He’d perused, selected and thrown casually at hovering assistants. If Cristina had not responded when he’d asked for her opinion, he’d used their clasped hands to lift up her chin, then kissed her full on the mouth.
He’d charmed, he’d smiled, he’d tossed off light, teasing comments. The assistants had been starry-eyed with heroworship by the time he paid his account—while she must have looked like a spoiled and petulant over-indulged lover by the frozen look on her face.
But those starry-eyed assistants did not know what was going on behind the charm he ladled out for their benefit. They could not know that those smiling green eyes were laced with anger, or that the kisses he laid on her lips were hard and cold with contempt.
Luis, she had realised very quickly, was functioning to his own agenda. Be nice to the future wife in public, but treat her like dirt beneath your feet when not.
His real agenda had been fed to his mother via the telephone, while Cristina sat miserably on the end of the bed. Yes, he was surprised to hear she’d arrived in Rio. The concierge had told him, of course—who else? No, he did not have time to share a pot of tea with her, but dinner would be nice. Eight o’clock in the Mezzanine restaurant? He was sorry he would not be able to collect her from her suite, but he had some business to attend to first, so would it be all right if they met in the lounge bar?
Kinsella arrived back from the bank looking her usual smooth, immaculate self in a cream roll-neck sweater that skimmed her figure and a pencil-slim skirt to match. Anton watched through hooded eyes as she moved around the conference room, clearing away the day’s business. Cool and calm, super-efficient—not a single hair or carefully curled eyelash out of place. There was no way from looking at her that anyone would know the danger that lurked beneath that efficient façade.
‘Join me for dinner tonight,’ he invited, in a low, soft, husky tone of voice, and saw her catch her breath before she turned to offer him a carefully composed smile.
‘I…’ She went for female hesitation.
‘My mother has just arrived from England,’ he added. ‘I thought we could turn her first dinner here into a special night.’
‘And Ordoniz?’
He did not correct the name. ‘Let’s leave her out of this for now, shall we?’ he suggested, with just enough intimacy to make Kinsella blush.
He could turn them on without batting an eyelash. Anton had always known he could do it, but would never have believed himself capable of using the gift so cynically.
‘Dinner would be lovely…thank you,’ she accepted.
She thought she’d got her man in her pocket at last.
She thought she had an ally in his mother.
She thought she was about to break into the inner circle of his close family, consolidate the two and end up with happy-ever-after. Having had his eyes opened wide by Max, Anton was seeing everything with such crystal clarity it actually shook him cold.
The dress was most definitely red, Cristina dryly confirmed as she followed its smooth and sensuous lines, cut to mould every curve she possessed and show off her long slender legs. The fact that she had not tried on a single one of Luis’s purchases in the shop said a lot about his unfailing eye for size and style. The dress had long sleeves that began at her wrists and hugged like a second skin all the way up to the under-curve of her arms, leaving her smooth shoulders bare. And the bodice shot straight across her chest, just low enough to show a shadowy cleavage and the gentle slopes of her breasts.
Sexy, she thought as she viewed herself in the long mirror. Definitely very thought-provoking, without revealing too much naked flesh. Her mother’s fake diamonds sparkled at her ears and her throat, and she’d put her hair up because she knew that Luis would not like to see it like that. But then she’d gone for compromise by teasing a few glossy twists free to fall around her neck and her face. Her makeup was heavy—the dress seemed to demand it—dark and sultry shaded eyelids, a double lick of black mascara on her curling eyelashes and of course a matching red lipstick that enhanced the passionate shape of her mouth.
And because it was a long time—more than six years—since she’d worn anything so openly gorgeous and sexy, she could not resist striking a flirty come-and-get-me pose and adding a lush-lipped pout.
‘Now, that is the woman called Cristina Marques,’ a deep voice murmured in appreciation.
On a soft gasp Cristina spun around so quickly that she almost fell off her new backless high stiletto shoes, a hectic blush mounting her cheeks at being caught girlishly playing up to the mirror.
Luis was leaning in the bedroom doorway looking everything he was in a black dinner suit and bright white dress shirt. All long lean lines of laid-back sartorial elegance, with that ever-present tummy-tingling underlying vibration of latent, purring, sexual male.
‘I was beginning to think she had been banished for ever,’ he went on in the same low lazy attitude. ‘But here she is, beautiful and exotic in her new fine feathers, vivacious and sexy and loving it.’
The last two razor-tipped words pinned his mood. He was still angry. Cristina’s chin came up, challenging, defiant. If her hair had been loose it would have been flying back from her shoulders.
‘Even viuva de Ordoniz can enjoy dressing up on occasion,’ she retaliated.
The relaxed lines of his face hardened. ‘You claim never to have used that name. Don’t use it now.’
Straightening away from the door, he moved across the room with the grace of a prowling panther. Arriving a short foot away from her, he came to a stop, overwhelming her with his height and his masculine presence, fluttering her heart muscles and turning her knees weak when she did not want to feel like that.
Reaching up to flick a fingertip at the diamond droplet dangling from her ear, he then hooked the same finger beneath the matching necklace she wore at her throat.
‘Diamonds?’ he murmured.
Opening her mouth to tell him they were paste, her pride stopped her—what bit she had left after the way he had been scraping her clean of such a vice.
‘They were my mother’s,’ was all she said.
‘Ah,’ was all he said, and he gently withdrew the finger, leaving her to wonder if he would have ripped them from her if she’d told him that Vaasco had given them to her.
‘I don’t want to fight with you, Luis,’ she heard herself say in a husky whisper, and wished she knew why she did.
‘Who’s fighting?’ he said, dipping his hand into his jacket pocket.
Cristina shivered out a sigh. ‘What happened between us six years ago was—’
‘Six years ago,’ he inserted. ‘Forget it, Cristina. It is what’s going to happen in the future that counts now.’
But for her the past and the future were as indelibly linked as night following day. ‘You cannot—’
‘I can do anything I like while I’m in the driver’s seat.’
‘Will you let me speak one full sentence before you interrupt?’ she flashed.
‘Not right now.’ His hand came out of his pocket. ‘Give me your left hand…’
She sucked in a tense breath. ‘What for?’
‘Just give…’
He took possession of the hand without bothering to wait for her to yield it. Cool fingers with a thumb pressing lightly against her palm dragged her eyes downward. It did not occur to her that he meant anything ground-shaking by the gesture. Even when he stroked a light touch across the base of her ring finger she still did not catch on.
‘No mark,’ he observed.
‘No.’ The mark that Vaasco’s wedding ring had placed there had long gone.
‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘I like that…’
It was then that she saw it, catching a fleeting glimpse just before the ring slid smoothly into place. Bright flickering diamonds clustered around a burning dark ruby set on a band of gold. Her heart ceased to beat, her throat closing over the thick lump that formed in her throat.
‘Do you like it?’
Of course she liked it—she loved it! ‘But—Luis…’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘We have to talk about—’
‘Try to think of it as my stamp of pending ownership,’ he described. ‘Soon a wedding ring will have joined it.’
‘Soon?’ She looked up questioningly.
‘Yes, soon,’ he repeated. ‘As soon as can be arranged.’ Then he bent and lightly kissed the anxious shape of her mouth. ‘And you will use my name, querida,’ he vowed as he raised his head again. ‘Cristina Scott-Lee has such a staunch Englishness about it, don’t you think?’
The barbs were really flying. Head lowering again, so that he could not see her face, Cristina said nothing. What was the use when it was clear he was going to lash out at her whatever she did try to say?
Anton waited, still holding her hand, wishing he had not said that in the cold, nasty way that he had. It was not going to help his cause if he made her hate him enough to walk away—again.
But that wasn’t the point, and he knew it wasn’t what was really eating away at him. When he’d walked in here and seen her posing in front of the mirror, just as the younger Cristina would have done, his heart had clattered straight through his body to land with a thump at his feet.
Why? Because it had suddenly hit him that he was still in love with her—with that beautiful, vivacious creature flirting with the mirror anyway. He wanted her back, but he couldn’t have it like that, and wishing for the impossible was not going to change a single thing. Cristina was still the woman who’d scorned him for an older man six years ago, and he was still the man who wanted revenge.
He dropped her hand.
She lifted her head to look at him. ‘Luis—’
No.
He turned away from whatever that look in her eyes was trying to convey to him. ‘If you’re ready, let’s go.’
Cristina stood staring after him. One small peek out of her hiding place and he’d jumped on her, crushed her in his cold iron fist, then stuck a ring on her finger that staked ownership.
&n
bsp; In the foyer he stabbed the lift call button. There was a full-length mirror attached to one of the foyer walls and Cristina found her attention caught by it. What she saw was the profile of a tall, dark, excruciatingly handsome and sophisticated man with the inherent cool and classy bearing of an Englishman mixed with the exotic gold tones of a warm-blooded and tempestuous Brazilian.
‘I wish you had never come back.’ It was out before she could stop it.
He glanced down, saw her eyes were fixed on the wall and turned his head. It was like clashing head-on with an electrified fence. The green eyes darkened slowly, pouring a heat into her body that dried up the inner surface of her mouth.
What Luis was seeing was beyond Cristina’s comprehension, but he came to stand right behind her, hands coming up to clasp her slender upper arms right at the rim of the red sleeves, where they met with the narrow curve of her shoulders. Then he shifted their position until they were facing the mirror full on.
They fitted. They always had fitted together, she thought painfully as she looked at the way the top of her head reached the bow tie at his throat. In every way she was fine-boned delicacy to his muscular dominance. The slenderness of her legs, the fragile curve of her figure in the clinging red dress, even the silken cups of her shoulders, hovering there just above his hands, said vulnerable woman in the possession of a tall, dark, dominant male.
He moved—it was hardly anything, but she suddenly felt the jut of erection against her and fell foul of a soft stifled gasp. Her lips parted, red, lush, inviting. Her eyes turned decidedly black. He sent his fingers gliding down the smooth red sleeves to her wrists, then gently pleated them with her own fingers. Cristina watched, held breathless by shimmering sexual tension as he moved their hands to the narrow slopes of her hips then began a slow, slow exploration of her whole body coming to a stop only when both sets of hands were covering her breasts. Eyes fixed in fascination, she felt her nipples tighten against her own palms. It was such a thrilling experience being made to feel the sensual stirring of her own body, that she stood totally breathless, unable to push out a single protest. He moved in that bit closer, and his desire for her was without restraint. Awareness spread like a fine veil across every sense she possessed.
The Brazilian’s Blackmailed Bride - The Ramirez Brides 02 Page 10