She found that dear Carmela had already provided an array of delicious tapas, which Andrés was happily munching his way through. Small dishes of chanquetes, whitebait, squid in ink and morsels of tripe cooked in a thick creamy sauce lay half empty on the crowded little table; there were also Carmela’s very special riñones al Jerez, kidneys in sherry, slices of cold tortilla and numerous other delicacies. Luz was always amazed at how quickly Carmela was able to conjure up any number of appetizers. That evening she had surpassed herself and Luz was in two minds whether to cancel the dishes she had just ordered for dinner, but her guest seemed so content that she decided to leave well alone.
Once again he rose quickly from his seat as she came on to the terrace. The way he looked at her, she just knew he was imagining her without any clothes on. Her face flamed. Silently she cursed herself for being such an open book.
He smiled his slow smile. ‘Ah Luz, how beautiful you look.’ His eyes were still travelling over her in a manner that made her heartbeat spike. ‘Come over here and share this extraordinary selection of tapas the lovely Carmela has provided before I polish them all off,’ he invited cheerfully, pulling a chair out for her next to him.
‘Carmela is never so happy as when she can display her culinary skills,’ Luz told him, settling down and taking the glass of wine he was offering her.
‘I make it a rule never to drink alone,’ he said as he filled his glass, which until then, she noticed, had been standing empty.
She helped herself to a cheese croquette and, doing her best to ignore the overpowering presence of the man sitting beside her, slid a little deeper into the soft cushions of her chair, trying to unwind a little.
‘Any particular reason?’ she enquired coolly.
He shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s a kind of protection. In our circle there’s a lot of alcohol abuse – and even recreational drugs – taken as a means of relaxation. Indulging in them on one’s own is treading a very dangerous path,’ he said with a veiled smile.
She swung around sharply and looked up at him with a directness that seemed to stun him. Her dark-blue eyes lightened to a steel-grey.
‘Do you mean to say you indulge …’
His burst of laughter interrupted her. ‘No, no,’ he said, raising an elegant tanned hand. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never touched any sort of drug. Cigarettes or the occasional cigar are my only weakness. I have been known to polish off a bottle of red wine or two every so often in an evening, but always in company, never alone.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Honestly,’ he went on, raising an eyebrow, ‘do I look like someone addicted to anything but my work?’ He eyed her, amusement twitching at his lips.
Definitely addicted to the fairer sex, though … she mused. Intense, loveable and dangerous were the best words to describe him. Mothers, she was sure, were panic-stricken whenever he was caught lurking around their daughters. The temptation to tell him so was strong, but she thought better of it and decided to leave well alone. After all, it was only fair that he should be given the benefit of the doubt, the doubt in this case being rather strong.
It was a peaceful evening with no wind. The air was filled with the tang of the sea. The only sounds disturbing the serenity were the cooing of pigeons and the roar of white-capped waves breaking like distant thunder against the rocks at the base of the cliffs. A series of split-levels, all bowered with sweetly scented flowers, created an ambiance of privacy. The terrace, cascading with plumbago, petunias and geraniums, faced the limitless expanse of mottled blue ocean. It was shaded by the heavy, shining, palmate leaves of fig trees and led down to a refreshing, floodlit, saltwater pool. In the distance Puerto de Santa María hovered like a mirage above the Atlantic, a turquoise band, with a fringe of pine-edged shores that deepened into dark sapphire sea.
When Luz wanted, she could be a charming hostess and tonight that was what she wanted to be. So, they reacquainted over a dinner of gazpacho and an eye-catching fideuà, seafood paella cooked with vermicelli instead of rice. When the dessert was produced, Andrés went into raptures over the homemade bunuelos de viento, light-as-air fritters, filled with Carmela’s pastry cream and Agustina’s thick bitter marmalade made of oranges, lemons and grapefruit from El Pavón’s citrus grove.
‘Carmela has excelled. This food is truly superb,’ enthused Andrés as he tucked into the rich dessert.
‘Yes, she really has done us proud. Dearest Carmela, she’s an absolute godsend,’ said Luz fondly. She chuckled. ‘I’m surprised you could get through it all after the tapas she produced. You must have been hungry.’
‘I’m always hungry, Luz.’ His eyes gleamed wickedly, causing her to take a sip of wine to moisten her dry throat. Andrés was watching her intently. ‘I can see that you have a special relationship with Carmela and she’s clearly devoted to you. Not everyone has such a warm and open heart that they inspire that kind of loyalty.’
Luz felt herself blush at the compliment. ‘Well, given that Carmela has won your approval and worked such wonders with the meal, we could open one of my father’s special bottles of wine, if you’d like?’
‘No, please, keep your father’s wines for another occasion, Luz. This Rioja is perfect and I wouldn’t want you to deplete his undoubtedly excellent reserves on my account.’ He smiled warmly at her and traced the length of the glass stem idly with his finger. As Luz watched him, muscles clenched deep in her stomach as if that same finger had reached out and was running down the base of her spine. She tried to banish such wayward thoughts.
Andrés tilted his head to one side, surveying her. ‘Does your father share your love of art, Luz?’
‘Papá?’ Luz forced her attention back. ‘His interest lies more with horses. Mamá was the one who took me to galleries when I was a child and we used to spend hours there. You, of course, must have grown up surrounded by it.’
They had spoken more about painting and sculpture at the beginning of the meal. Andrés, she realized, was highly knowledgeable. His perception and comprehension of art was deeper than hers and encompassed a wider range.
‘Yes, I spent a lot of time with Eduardo when I was a child so he began training my eye and moulding my taste from when I was quite young.’ Luz remembered from their conversation at Puesta de Sol that he’d had a happy if somewhat lonely childhood, without siblings, and so she knew a little of what that must have been like for him.
‘Did you have many friends growing up?’ she asked.
‘Only a handful, but I picked them carefully. I enjoyed their company but I liked being on my own, too. My mother and father were older than most parents when I was born. My mother was just over forty and my father more than a decade older than her. Although they lavished gifts on me they were less generous with their affections or their time.’ His gaze roamed thoughtfully over her face. ‘I should have introduced you to them at the Yacht Club last night but never seemed to find the right moment.’
Luz remembered the emotionally charged tension between them throughout the previous evening. ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ she said, a faint blush smudging her cheeks.
A smiled hovered on his lips before he swallowed a mouthful of wine and continued. ‘Nowadays, my father is around more and they try to be supportive – at least, he does. My mother is often in her own world. As a child, because I saw relatively little of them, I went to see Eduardo most days and did as I pleased.’ He paused and then grinned. ‘I think, perhaps as a result, I was a rather unruly child, brimming over with energy, always off on some daredevil adventure or another.’
Luz laughed; she was seeing a side to Andrés that intrigued her still more. ‘Andrés de Calderón, the daredevil, now, why does that not surprise me?’
He grinned. ‘Once I went off for two days when I was thirteen with three other boys. The others got their parents’ consent, but mine didn’t even notice I was gone.’ An eyebrow arched. ‘Don’t look quite so shocked, Luz, I didn’t care at all. I enjoyed it immensely. The freedom was exhilarating.’
‘We camped out in the ruined fort on the Isla del Trocadero. It was meant to be haunted by the ghosts of dead soldiers who were slaughtered there during the Battle of Trocadero in the early nineteenth century.’
He gave a dismissive gesture. ‘I forget how the argument came about but an older boy – one I didn’t much care for – dared me to stay there overnight. He said I didn’t have the nerve and would never do it. So, with two friends of mine as witnesses, I did.’ His eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘They had to be somewhat persuaded, but the power of illicit cigarettes is an impressive thing at that age. It took us a day to get to the island and back, and we slept rough in those ruins. When we returned to Cádiz, I no longer felt like a boy.’
Suddenly, Luz began to see that the suave businessman was not so far removed from his gypsy doppelgänger after all. ‘Did you see anything? Ghosts, I mean …?’
He shrugged. ‘There were some pretty strange noises in the night but I’m not sure any of them were supernatural.’ He polished off the last spoonful of his dessert. ‘For an eleven-year-old, it was a wonderful experience. As was the satisfaction of proving the boy wrong.’
‘He believed you? You could have pretended to have done it and he would never have known.’
‘True, we could have.’ Andrés glanced at her with an enigmatic smile. ‘But one look at me and he knew I had gone there.’
Somehow, Luz did not find that hard to believe. ‘I’ve often wondered what you must have been like when you were young.’
‘You have, have you?’ There was amusement in his voice as his eyes sparkled at her.
She smiled back shyly. ‘I imagine that you must have got into trouble at school with behaviour like that.’
‘“Reckless and headstrong,” that was how my teachers described me. I’m afraid my temperament hardly fitted with the severe discipline of school. I was always getting into trouble. After a while, at Eduardo’s suggestion, my parents resorted to private tutoring, a solution that suited me to perfection. Mornings were reserved for lessons and in the afternoons I could play a variety of sports. With a way to channel my energy, I began to focus on my lessons and found that I actually enjoyed the challenge of exams and passed them easily enough.’
Luz raised her eyebrows. ‘So the “reckless and headstrong” boy became a successful international businessman.’
His mouth curved in a wry smile. ‘After a Master’s in Marketing and Business and entering the family firm a few years later – yes. I just needed the right environment. That’s true of us all, don’t you think?’ He looked at her, his head tilted to one side.
Luz nodded pensively. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
After dessert, they finally pushed away their empty plates and moved on to other topics. There was a new rapport between them, an ease that had not existed before, as if in mutual understanding they had decided to turn over a new leaf. Luz noticed how expressive Andrés was with his hands when he became excited by an idea and even when they disagreed, they did so with easy tolerance of the other. So engrossed were they, they missed the sunset.
They spoke about school and university in England. Andrés was interested in the boarding school system but vehemently against it. He would never send a child of his away; they needed to grow up with the tenderness of a mother, the firm hand of a father, the love of both parents and the security of a united home. Only then, he insisted, would they grow up to know themselves and be confident and stable. He spoke with an intensity that had struck her, the passion in his voice tinged with an undercurrent of bitterness bordering on anger, which puzzled her.
‘Eduardo never married, I wonder if he ever regretted that?’ pondered Luz, sipping the coffee Carmela had left them and helping herself to one of the housekeeper’s petits fours. Luz had insisted Carmela should not wait up for her, sending her off immediately after she had cleared away dinner.
‘He hinted at it a few times when I was older,’ said Andrés. ‘He was too dedicated to his career for marriage but he was well known for his romantic adventures. Eduardo’s father disapproved of his son’s love life and wanted him to be more conventional but Eduardo was looking for something, I suppose, something he never found … not completely.’
For the first time Andrés seemed lost and, for Luz, the world shifted on its axis at that moment and refocused in a different place. This was an Andrés she had never seen before.
‘What was he looking for?’
‘Passion, excitement – but above all love, I think.’ At this, he fixed his midnight gaze so intently on her that Luz’s mouth went dry. He was not playing with her at all now; there was no innuendo, no attempt to unnerve her; his eyes simply held a mournful candour that went straight to her heart and made her feel dizzy.
Hours had flown by. It was past midnight now. Andrés had lit a cigarette and was smoking silently, lending her his profile as he gazed into the darkness over the ocean. With the coming of night, the sky that had been a vivid blue all day under a scorching sun had changed to a sapphire heavy-velvet texture. As though shaken by an invisible hand, stardust was spilled about this dense canopy like specks of gold of all sizes and the moon looked over the young couple, glamorous and enchanting, touching them with her glow and turning light to silver, shadows to velour. And though Luz’s mental state was soothed by the gentle rustle of leaves and by the monotonous swish of the sea, her emotions were stirred because of the man sitting beside her. In candlelight she could not distinguish the colour of his eyes and she had to constantly remind herself that the devastating, handsome man she was entertaining was Andrés and not Leandro.
‘That was quite a show you gave us last night,’ he said suddenly, out of the blue, watching her through his thick eyelashes. He had become more absorbed in the last hour and she sensed a subtle change in his mood that she couldn’t put a finger on. ‘Where did you learn to dance like that?’
Why did she get the distinct impression his tone was now slightly reproachful? She shrugged. ‘Oh, I was just following my partner. He’s a brilliant dancer and it was really little to do with me,’ she said lightly.
One dark eyebrow rose quizzically. He cleared his voice. ‘Your partner, he’s the suitor your parents have chosen for you?’ There was a faint question at the end of his statement.
‘I’m quite capable of choosing a suitor for myself,’ she said, somewhat needled.
‘He must be a very broadminded suitor to allow you to entertain a gentleman on your own in the middle of the night,’ he observed placidly as he lit another cigarette. She saw the narrowing of his eyes in the oscillating light of the flame.
He leaned back in his chair, his gaze fastened intently on the spiralling grey smoke rising above him. All of a sudden he had become prickly.
She laughed, aware that he had misunderstood her. Momentarily she toyed with the idea of continuing this deception as a game. ‘I don’t see why men should be allowed to court a number of women at the same time and women shouldn’t,’ she offered, still not denying Romero was any more to her than an acquaintance she had only just met.
‘Is that what they taught you at boarding school?’ His voice sounded almost as dark as the eyes that were surveying her over the candle.
Oh, no, she thought. The conversation was sliding down a dangerous avenue. Still, she was amused and a little lightheaded, and she wondered how far she could take this topic without marring the wonderful atmosphere that had marked the evening.
She shrugged again and assumed a noncommittal air. ‘Boarding school has nothing to do with it. The rest of the continent has a much more relaxed attitude to relationships between men and women. Where sex is concerned, Spain seems still frozen in the Middle Ages.’
His face tightened into an impassive mask and his voice schooled itself to an even tone. ‘Does that mean that you find it normal that a woman should indulge in casual sex?’ He sounded cool, detached.
‘At the end of the
day it should be the woman’s choice. I don’t see why you, as a man, should have the sole prerogative to multiple relationships. A woman’s body has just as much sexual need as a man’s,’ she asserted. Something of which I am well aware, she thought ruefully. Her own body had kept reminding her of it ever since she first laid eyes on Andrés and his irresistible twin brother.
‘I don’t see any logical reason why a woman shouldn’t have the same right as a man to satisfy herself,’ she continued.
With almost savage mockery, his charcoal eyes flew up at hers. ‘So, I must take it that you were merely relieving a sexual need last night when you were reacting so vibrantly in my arms on the dancefloor? Is Romero de Cabrera not a talented lover?’ He scoffed. ‘Or maybe you require variety?’ he ended bluntly with a twisted smile, a curious edge to his jet-black eyes.
‘Variety can be stimulating, don’t you think?’ she parried, trying to keep a straight face. An Englishman would not have reared up so passionately and it secretly pleased her to see Andrés so fired by his Spanish temperament. She could not resist goading him a little further. ‘After all, you are well placed to understand that motto,’ she persisted, twisting the knife with some latent satisfaction. ‘I am told that like your uncle, you’re not loath to distribute the attentions of your handsome body around Andalucía,’ she ended triumphantly.
His eyes blazed. ‘I doubt your father, the respectable Count de Rueda, would be happy to learn his daughter has such lecherous views and desires.’
Now that hurt. The contempt in his voice made her cringe inwardly. He was hitting below the belt, though, fair enough, it was her fault for indulging in this dangerous game. She should have guessed that Andrés would be a formidable opponent and not one to be toyed with lightly. In the past, she reminded herself, he had proved himself more than once.
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