His mother pressed her lips together and nodded while the words he’d just uttered played a taunting echo inside his head.
Anton took in air, and by the time he had released it again and turned his attention to Kinsella he had himself back in control.
‘Right, let’s make this more formal, Miss Lane
,’ he enunciated with ice-tipped authority. ‘We will take our business upstairs to the conference room, I think.’
Then he turned to stride across the restaurant, ignoring all the curious looks he was receiving and pausing by the maître d’ to sign a hastily produced bill for their ruined dinner. As he moved on towards the lifts he took out his cellphone to call his two executives to the conference room. He wanted witnesses to what was coming next.
‘Anton, please listen to me.’ Kinsella’s hand arrived on the sleeve of his jacket, the soft, slightly pleading tone in her voice making his skin start to creep. ‘You don’t understand. Your mother made it impossible for me to—’
‘You would be wise to keep your mouth shut until we gain privacy,’ he bit right across her, thinking Cristina was right; she did flutter around him like a fluffy moth. He swatted her hand away, then walked into the lift.
Cristina was sitting in a chair, staring at the unopened envelope she clutched in her fingers. It was addressed to Cristina Ordoniz, which was enough to turn her stomach, but what was really choking her of any ability to open the letter was the logo neatly printed on the corner of the envelope.
Javier Estes and Associates, it said. Advocates of Law.
Vaasco’s lawyers. How many of these awful white envelopes had she received in the months after Vaasco’s death? Each one of them had carried only bad news. Each one had turned her into this trembling, shaking person she was now.
But the letters had stopped a long time ago—long before her father had died. Why start again now? And why receive it hand-delivered right in the middle of a busy restaurant?
The only way to find out was to open it, she told herself, then swallowed and made her fingers break the seal and draw out the single sheet of paper that was inside.
Shock hit then—the kind of totally bewildering stunning shock that twisted her brain into complete knots. The letter was not to do with her late husband’s estate at all. Senhor Estes had more than one client—of course he did, she told herself. But—Enrique Ramirez?
Her stomach rolled and kept on rolling as she read in growing disbelief what it was she had been handed.
A bequest, it said, and named a figure that scrambled her brain all the more. Enrique Ramirez had bequeathed her just enough money to save Santa Rosa.
Just enough to pay off her debts.
Dared she believe it? The letter had been delivered in a very unconventional manner. Maybe it was a joke—a very sick joke. Maybe she would be wise checking out the source before she—
The door suddenly opened and she looked up just to stare as Luis’s mother walked in.
‘Are you all right?’ Scott-Lee questioned warily.
‘No.’ It was no use pretending she was when she wasn’t.
‘You feel ill? The letter—distressed you?’
The letter, Cristina thought, is a dream come true.
Except for one unattainable dream. ‘I think I need to go to my room,’ she whispered.
‘Of course,’ Luis’s mother said, walking towards her. ‘I will take you there—’ Then she stopped, hesitation in every line of her slender, elegant frame. ‘You know about Vaasco and me, don’t you?’ she thrust out suddenly.
Cristina nodded. ‘You were betrothed to him, but you had an affair with another man. This man.’
Cristina held out the letter. Pale as herself now, hands as unsteady as her own hands, Luis’s mother took the letter, lowered her eyes and began to read.
‘Ramirez again,’ she breathed after a long silence, then on a heavy sigh she folded into the chair next to Cristina’s.
Cristina did not know what to say to her. When you possessed the knowledge that a woman of Luis’s mother’s stature had had some wild affair beneath the very roof of her then betrothed, words just refused to come.
‘You knew Enrique well for him to leave you this money?’
The money. Cristina sucked in a deep breath as her stomach rolled again. She knew why it kept doing that. She understood exactly why she was feeling sickly instead of jumping for joy.
‘I met him only once,’ she replied. ‘He—he saved my life when I was very little…Why did Luis mention his name to me?’
‘Anton,’ his mamma corrected absently.
For some crazy reason, in this mixed-up situation, Cristina heard herself laugh. ‘I know his name, senhora,’ she said dryly. ‘I have known his name for a long time—for six years, in fact, since we first met and fell in love and then—’ Lost each other, she tagged on silently
‘You mean—you are the one?’ Maria Scott-Lee was staring at her oddly.
‘The one?’ Cristina frowned.
So did Luis’s mother. ‘Nothing.’ She looked away. ‘Forget I mentioned it.’
Silence tumbled. And, in the way that everything had been happening in its own peculiar way tonight, the silence was not tense or tight or hostile, as it should have been. It was just—silent.
‘You love my son?’ Scott-Lee asked suddenly.
I refuse to answer that, Cristina thought. ‘I will not be marrying him, if that is where this is leading.’
‘But why not? What is wrong with Anton that you turn him down not once but twice?’
‘Who said that I turned him down twice?’ Cristina asked sharply.
‘No one. My mistake.’ His mother was frowning again. ‘Why are you saying you will not marry him?’
For a million unutterable reasons, she thought hollowly—but named only one. ‘Well, he’s a womaniser, if you must know.’
‘Of course he enjoys the company of women,’ his mamma defended loyally. ‘He is young and handsome and possesses a perfectly healthy sexual appetite. However, when Anton marries he will have the good manners to stay faithful to his wife!’
The good manners? Cristina released another of those laughs. It would take more than good manners to make Luis keep the zip on his pants shut!
‘He spent the night before last in the arms of another woman.’
‘I do not believe you.’
‘His secretary informs me that she and Luis have been lovers for months.’
‘Miss Lane
?’ For some reason Luis’s mother sounded thoroughly shaken. ‘I sincerely hope that you are wrong about that,’ she murmured unsteadily.
‘Well, I’m not.’
The threat of tears came then. Cristina got up, the fool inside her giving way to a heartbreaking bout of common sense.
‘Give this to Luis and show him the letter,’ she said huskily, removing the ring and dropping it gently on his mamma’s lap. ‘He will understand.’
Then she turned to leave.
‘He will not let you go,’ Scott-Lee fed after her.
‘That is no longer his choice to make!’ Cristina choked.
‘Anton does not have a choice!’ Maria stood up—letter and ring clasped in one hand, the other closing on Cristina’s arm. ‘He has to marry you, Cristina, or he will not inherit from his father.’
His father? Cristina twisted round. ‘What are you talking about? His father has been dead for six years!’
‘I don’t mean—’ Scott-Lee stopped herself, then uttered a soft, unladylike curse. ‘He will not forgive me for this,’ she whispered. ‘He is not going to forgive me for my interference anyway, but…’ She looked at Cristina. ‘Please sit down again,’ she invited unevenly. ‘I need to explain some things to you…’
Anton’s face-off with Kinsella was not a pleasant one. Having been cornered by her own machinations, his loyal secretary gave it to him hook, line and spitting venom. Then, with his two young executives standing by as witnesses, he went on to formally dismiss her fro
m his employment on the grounds of gross misconduct.
‘Do you think you can do this to me when I’ve devoted the last six years of my life to you?’ she attacked. ‘From the day that you stepped into your dead father’s shoes I have been working hard to turn myself into everything you could possibly want!’
‘But I don’t want what you are,’ Anton denounced brutally.
‘No.’ Kinsella quivered in disgust. ‘You prefer a black-haired witch who was more than willing to fall into bed with you the first chance she was handed!’
How Anton kept his hands from closing around her throat he had no idea. ‘You see, Miss Lane
,’ he responded icily, ‘the difference between you wanting to fall into my bed and my wanting any other woman there is that they are desirable and you are not.’
‘And she is so good at playing the whore, isn’t she?’ Kinsella spat back. ‘But then she is a woman who is willing to do anything to get what she wants, even marry a fat and withered old man! I wonder if she crawled all over him like I watched her crawling all over you!’
White now, knocked back on his heels by that last venomous spit, Anton glanced at the connecting door, securely shut at the moment whereas yesterday it had been left swinging wide open. An icy sensation crept down his spine as his mind replayed a sequence of events that should have been private to him and Cristina.
But Kinsella had walked into this conference room and coolly followed the trail of discarded clothing to the bedroom. His skin began to crawl as he imagined her standing in the bedroom doorway watching them and listening, like some sick bloody voyeur, before quietly walking out again to go and snoop in his private files before calling up his mother.
He felt sick. She was sick. He turned his back on her. ‘Get her out of here,’ he rasped at the two other men.
Striding into his suite five minutes later, he found his mother sitting tensely on the edge of a chair. She jumped up. ‘Anton—’
‘Where is Cristina?’ he demanded.
‘I—we need to talk first,’ his mother said, her eyes pleading with him in a way that locked up every single bone he possessed.
‘Where is she?’ he bit out, and spun towards the bedrooms. He wanted to know what was in that damn letter. He wanted to know what it was that had made her run like that!
‘She’s gone!’ His mother’s shaking voice froze him. ‘Sh-she has gone home to Santa Rosa, querido. She—’
All his life he had loved this woman, without exception, but when he turned on her now Anton understood why his mother took a jerky step back.
‘If you’ve talked her into leaving me I will never forgive you,’ he grated.
‘She left of her own volition, I promise you,’ Maria vowed painfully. ‘I might be a foolish woman, Anton, but I—’ She stopped to swallow thickly. ‘She said for me to tell you that she will be in touch with you to explain when she feels that she can.’
‘Feels that she can what?’ he bit back as an old bitterness began to well up inside him.
Then it sank in. Cristina had gone. The tension holding him released its grip and he turned from his mother as a violent shudder racked his frame.
Gone—again. Left him—again.
‘She claims that Miss Lane
is your lover,’ Maria explained unsteadily. ‘Anton, has learning about your real father meant a thing to you? Enrique flipped from woman to woman! He enjoyed them—yes! But he died an unhappy and lonely man!’
‘I don’t want to hear about him,’ he gritted.
‘Yet it is because of him that you are here!’
‘What a joke.’ He laughed, swinging back round again. ‘You know, querida, I never so much as clapped eyes on Enrique Ramirez but I think he knew me better than you do or even than I know myself!’ He took in a deep breath. It hurt to do it. ‘I am here for Cristina. I’m in love with Cristina. I have always—damn always been in love with Cristina!’
A hand shot up to cover his mouth.
It was an act so unfamiliar to both of them, ‘Oh, Meu Dues,’ his mother choked, and sank down into the chair.
Anton dragged the hand away again. ‘I’m going after her—’
‘No, Anton, please wait!’ She shot up again. ‘There are some things I need to explain to you before you do that…’
CHAPTER NINE
CRISTINA was busy by the main barn when a sound made her look up to watch a helicopter fly overhead. It circled the homestead a couple of times before deciding to drop down into an empty paddock out of her field of sight.
It had to be Luis. She did not do much as even consider the possibility that it could be anyone else. He would be arriving for their last big confrontation, though she had not expected him to get here quite so soon.
A frisson slid through her. She had to give her determination a hard tug not to react to the sting of electric excitement and, tightening the softness of her mouth, she returned to what she had been doing. But she felt his approach like long icy fingers curling themselves around her until she could not take in a single breath.
Anton came to a halt several feet away, watching in silence as she hefted bales of hay from the barn to the truck while Pablo, her helper, eyed them both warily from beneath the brim of his hat. She was wearing work-faded jeans and a check shirt. Heavy work gloves protected her hands. Her hair was lost beneath a red spotted headscarf and her face was bare of everything but its smooth golden skin. She looked too delicate to touch, yet she hefted those bales of hay like a man.
Clenching his body across the rush of anger that hit it, he stepped closer, flicked the helper a look that sent him scuttling away, then turned his attention to Cristina.
‘Look at me,’ he commanded.
Her response was to bend, with the intention of hefting up yet another bale, and in biting frustration Anton stepped forward and placed his foot down on it. He watched her go still, watched her eyelashes flicker when she took in his black leather hand-stitched shoes and the cut of his black silk trousers. The tension between them heightened the higher those eyes drifted, taking in the black silk dinner jacket hanging open to reveal the fine white dress-shirt he still wore beneath.
If looks could paint a picture then the expression on her face was a masterpiece of a woman totally riveted by what she was seeing.
‘Impressed?’ he said, bringing her eyes up that bit further, to the open collar of his shirt, where the rich golden skin at his throat was glossed with the sheen of sweat. His bowtie still hung there, like a trailing piece of black ribbon.
‘It took hours of negotiation to get the helicopter charter company to let me fly myself,’ he supplied, with hard, harsh, husky bite. ‘Before that I had to get to Sao Paulo—and I was right on your stubborn tail until then, meu querida,’ he informed her. ‘Count yourself lucky that I was delayed, or you might have found yourself prostrate by now on this bale with my fingers wrapped around your slender throat. Instead I find I don’t have the energy. I’m hot, I’m tired, and I’m in dire need of a shower and a shave—’
Her eyes flicked to the stubble covering the cleft in his chin. Her lips parted, that vulnerable upper lip just begging—begging for it.
His own lips flexed.
‘I need a drink so badly my throat thinks it’s been cut, and some food inside me would be pleasant, since you effectively ruined dinner last night…’
Then, just to make sure that his next point went home, he bent low enough to bring his eyes into full contact with her darker than black eyes, vulnerable, wishful—sad.
His teeth came together. ‘In other words, sweetheart, what you see here is a man at the end of his rope. So be warned that ignoring me right now is a very—very dangerous thing to do.’
She blinked, she swallowed, and her lips quivered as she took in a small breath. He nodded, held her eyes for a moment longer, and thought about kissing her utterly, totally—punishingly breathless, but then straightened up and took his foot off the bale.
It was then that she saw his ov
ernight bag, dumped on the ground. He watched her look at it, then pull in a breath. ‘Luis—’
‘Anton,’ he corrected, turning his back on her to take an interest in his surroundings. ‘I don’t feel much like Luis right now.’
He could almost hear her lips snapping shut before they opened again.
‘I will not marry you.’
‘Fine.’ He shrugged. ‘Now, show me round this heavy investment I’ve bought into.’
‘Will you listen to me?’
He swung back, everything about him hard like iron. ‘Only when you have something to say that I want to hear.’
‘I don’t need your money any more! Did your mother not tell you?’
‘About my father’s bequest to you?’
‘Father—?’ She stared at him.
Anton returned the look with an inscrutability that said he was not going to play that game. ‘You know that Enrique Ramirez was my father because my mother told you. Now that we have that attempt at yet more deception out of the way, will you show me around—please?’
Please. Cristina looked at this tall, dark, arrogant man, with his beautiful accent and his beautiful manners and the hard crystal eyes that warned her to beware. She felt that oh, so helpless, I do so love you, Luis lump form in her throat, and—
‘I can pay my debts.’ She stuck to her guns, chin up, eyes defiant.
‘You can try,’ he invited with a thin smile. ‘But the moment you so much as attempt to pay me off, I will sell all your debts on to the Alagoas Consortium so fast your head will spin. They will not be so easy to please as I am.’
He would do it too. Cristina could see the cold intent cast like armour on his face.
‘You are not easy to please.’ She sighed wearily, then turned away from him to remove her gloves so she could toss them down onto the bale of hay.
Without looking at him again she walked over to the hand pump beside the barn and set cool water flowing to wash her hands, then pulled the scarf off her head and wet it to use to cool her sweat-sheened face and throat.
If Luis thought he’d had a bad day then he should have lived hers, she thought tiredly. Three ranch hands had walked off the job the moment she’d left for Rio, leaving Pablo alone to do the jobs of four—five, if she counted herself. They had not been paid in months, so how could she complain about them walking away? And when she’d entered the house she’d found Orraca, the housekeeper, on her hands and knees mopping up the kitchen which had flooded due to a burst pipe. Orraca was too old to be on her hands and knees, so Cristina had taken over the mopping while Pablo fixed the leaky pipe. Then she and Pablo had come out here, to start catching up on the jobs that had not been done. Now it was two o’clock in the afternoon, the sun was at its hottest, and all she wanted to do was to take that shower Luis had mentioned, crawl into her bed and sleep…for a hundred years if she could.
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