Then she heard his almost silent sigh, felt him move away, and opened her drugged eyes, her lids feeling incredibly heavy, to watch him retrieve her hat from where it had fallen in the short, springy grass.
‘There,’ he said, fitting it on her bright head. ‘You will walk with me while I think. Come!’
Just like that, she thought, watching him pluck the haversack from the ground and swing the strap over his shoulder. All that Spanish arrogance was well and truly back in place.
Despite everything, all her attempted commonsense strictures, it made her smile. Made her happy, almost carefree, as she hurried to catch up with his long, loping stride. If walking and thinking was all he now had in mind, she could cope with that. She would enjoy the sense of freedom, of seemingly limitless space. Enjoy it to the full, treasure it, because this was going to be all she would allow herself to have. It was something she could cope with without damaging herself irrevocably.
Somehow or other she was going to have to armour herself against him, control and tame the wild needs which he alone could awaken.
Talking herself into a sensible frame of mind, she was hardly aware of his continuing silence as they trekked along the rocky heights. His profile was harshly austere in the unforgiving rays of the sun and his thoughts had taken him away. He had probably forgotten she was with him.
But that didn’t matter. She would never feel alone while he was near. Briskly she slapped that counterproductive thought down and made herself take a guess at the distance they’d covered.
Miles.
And they would have to retrace their steps, and she would probably die of heat exhaustion and dehydration along the way. If she asked whether there was any coffee left in that flask, would he even bother to answer?
Working up a strong feeling of resentment was certainly helping to block out all those other deadend thoughts but when he plunged on to a path that led down a deep ravine and turned, holding both hands out to help her, she put her hands trustingly into his and knew that nothing on earth could armour her against what he made her feel. Her folly made her want to cry.
He swung her effortlessly down the steepest part of the track and she heaved a great sigh. She was no quitter; she was just going to have to try harder to block him out. She could do it, given time. Then he caught her to him, steering her out of the way of a group of prickly pears, pushing a strand of damp hair back from her hot forehead, telling her, ‘Not long now and then you can catch your breath. It is not my intention to exhaust you.’
She pulled away, trying to look as if she couldn’t give a damn what his intentions were. But her mind was jumping about in a frenzy. Was he merely being polite? Feeling guilty because she was unused to this kind of terrain and he’d forgotten she was with him? Or was he speaking the truth because he wouldn’t want an exhausted woman in his bed tonight?
Her common sense wasn’t up to dealing with that so she asked in a rush, ‘Not long to what?’
In answer, he pulled her round, pointing further down the mountainside where herds of goats were grazing on the scrub, and further still to where a small hut-like stone building lay in the shade of stunted olive trees. A curl of thin blue smoke rose from the single squat chimney and even as she focused she saw the bent figure of an old man emerge from the shade.
‘El pastor,’ he said softly, the austerity she’d noted earlier leaching from his features. ‘He will welcome us to his home and there you will rest your aching feet for a few moments and drink the finest spring water you have ever tasted.’
‘He lives there?’ Sarah could hardly believe it. There was nothing for miles but the ferocious mountain landscape. ‘Doesn’t he get lonely? Surely he goes back to the village during the winter?’
‘No. He prefers solitude.’ Francisco loped down the steep, narrow track, taking one of her hands firmly in his. ‘He doesn’t like people, generally speaking. He never married and when his mother died, twenty years ago, he moved up here. He tends the goats for the villagers and in return they make payment in vegetables, cheese, the occasional fowl. I usually check up on him once a month at least, more often in the winter.’
By now they were slithering across a barrier of scree and Francisco was laughing, his teeth gleaming whitely, as he caught her up in his arms and carried her over the final unstable yards, then deposited her on firm ground. The old man watched, not smiling until they were near enough for him to reach out and take Francisco’s hand. And although the smile looked rarely used there was deep respect in it, and gratitude too, when a packet of tobacco was produced from the haversack, then the rest of the ham, a great lump of cheese wrapped in cool leaves and enough fruit to keep the old man going for a week.
The remains of their picnic, she recognised. They had eaten very little; they had been diverted… Frowning, she pushed that memory away and, annoyingly, her stomach chose that moment to rumble. She didn’t begrudge the reclusive goatherd so much as a single grape. Relying, as he seemed to have chosen to do, on the handouts from others, he must sometimes go hungry, she thought compassionately. But she did wonder how she was going to trudge all those miles back on an empty stomach.
Good for the figure, she told herself bracingly as the two men conversed in rapid Spanish, the old man’s voice sounding rusty. And then Francisco placed a hand in the small of her back, guiding her to a wooden bench leaning against the stone hut in the shade of the trees, and the goatherd disappeared inside to emerge moments later with two glasses of the coolest, best-tasting water she had ever been offered. It slid down her parched throat like a dream and she was still sipping when a sleek black dog came out of the little house to be fed with chunks of cheese and slices of ham from their picnic.
‘So he does have a friend; I’m glad of that,’ Sarah murmured while this was going on, and Francisco shrugged eloquently.
‘He has many friends, even if he doesn’t know it. People from the village, workers on my estates—very few days pass without someone making the journey to see that all is well with him.’ He turned to the shepherd, spoke in Spanish, then told Sarah, ‘We will go now. We will not outstay our welcome. He has too much courtesy to ask anyone to leave, but he is happier alone.’
He tugged her to her feet, with a few more parting words, then led her into a yard of sorts where an almost brand-new four-wheel-drive vehicle glittered in the sunlight. He opened the passenger door and Sarah questioned, ‘What are you doing? Is this his?’
‘I made it available to him twelve months ago. So far he has used it only once. His dog cut a paw and it wouldn’t heal. He drove it to the vet for treatment.’ While she was digesting that he walked round to the driver’s seat, telling her, ‘I asked if I could borrow it. You have walked far enough. It will be returned to him in the morning.’ He flashed her that sudden, irresistible smile. ‘We must simply hope that his dog won’t injure itself in the meantime.’
She gave him a wavery smile back then stared blindly out of the windscreen. There was a lump in her throat, like a rock. For all his thoughtfulness in borrowing the vehicle she would rather have walked back with him, over the mountain, empty stomach, tired feet and all. She didn’t want their outing to end. Once back at the castle she would have to start remembering that she was his captive, start verbally fighting him again.
The rough track led downwards, dust and stones flying beneath the wheels, and eventually ended in a crossroads of sorts.
‘Left takes us further into the estates, straight on leads down to the village, right goes back to my home.’ He turned briefly, one dark brow questioning. ‘You would like to see the village?’ And, without waiting for her answer, he drove straight on.
A sudden spurt of excitement brought a huge smile to her face. She erased it swiftly. OK, OK, so she was glad the outing was to be extended, that she was to be given a little more time with the man she had idiotically fallen in love with, just an hour or so more before they must return to being captive and captor. But that didn’t mean she could let herself feel
quite so gloriously happy.
He was an unsettling man and he had unsettled her, she informed herself, her eyes on the passing scenery which was becoming less harsh with every metre of the steep, tortuously twisting road. And that was not to be marvelled at, given what she’d been through since leaving London. Little wonder she was unsettled enough to imagine that she’d fallen in love with him. Wasn’t it common knowledge that prisoners formed a special kind of bond with their captors? And if the man who’d done the capturing was as drop-dead handsome, as powerful, as sexually exciting and downright intriguing as Francisco, then she could be excused for the ephemeral insanity of imagining love had anything to do with anything.
As soon as she was on the plane back to London he would become no more than the irritating memory of an arrogant, wrong-minded brute who had stolen time out of her busy, rewarding and successful life.
Having reached that deeply gratifying conclusion, she was able to relax in her seat and enjoy his commentary on what they were seeing as every twist and turn in the narrow road took them further down into the fertile river valley.
The rich acres of cereals, the peach orchards, the olive and citrus groves made fecund patterns across the land, and the lush greenery of oaks and elms made a band of speckled shade along the edges of the river. In the shade of the riverbank he parked the Jeep, and she looked at the cool sparkling water and admitted, ‘It’s all so lovely.’
‘More lovely than the mountains and my home?’ He turned, his hands on the wheel, his look intent, and she shook her head, smiling.
‘No. Just different.’
‘You like my homeland? What you have seen of it? If circumstances were different, would you be happy here?’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ she evaded, wondering why he was asking, refusing to allow herself inwardly to admit that she would be happy anywhere if she could be with him. Thankfully, he seemed content with her answer, swinging out of the Jeep and helping her down, taking her hand and leading her back on to the road. In moments they were entering the village, a maze of narrow streets, the clean façades of the houses decorated with window-boxes brimming over with geraniums, the tiny gardens awash with roses, honeysuckle and lilies, the walls dripping with purple and scarlet bougainvillaea.
Entering the small cobbled square, she tried to reclaim her hand but succeeded only in making him tighten his grip so tried instead to ignore the warmth of his touch, the sweet sensations that rippled through her body, weakening her until all she wanted to do was cling to him, hold him, never let him go.
Not easy, and not helped by the fact that people went out of their way to greet him. Old men engrossed in animated conversation on the benches facing the central stone fountain ambled over to pass a word or two; young mothers with pushchairs and elderly black-clad matrons who popped out of doorways all addressed him as patrón. Wide smiles of pleasure cracked their faces, smiles for her too, and little sidelong glances, weighing up the suitability of el patrón’s new lady.
Sarah didn’t blame them for being curious but she could have done without it. She wasn’t his lady, despite the way he had now draped a possessive arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, their bodies touching, presenting them as an item. It was a lie, a sham, yet she had almost been his, up there, high in the mountains. She blushed uncontrollably as her body shuddered with yearning for what had almost been and now must never be, and Francisco gave her a quick look of concern and announced, ‘We will eat. Forgive me, you must be hungry. We barely made a dent in the lavish picnic Rosalia provided.’
He dropped a swift kiss on her hectic cheek, said something in Spanish to the growing group of interested villagers, something which raised a gale of laughter, and compounded the felony by telling her, ‘We had other things on our minds, didn’t we, querida?’
Sarah stiffened indignantly. Snake! He didn’t have to go out of his way to remind her of what had happened, her out-of-control response to him, the calculated way he had called a halt, did he? And what had he said to all those people that was so darned funny? One thing was certain: he might be the big man around here, rotten rich and lord of all he surveyed, but he was no gentleman!
Anger fuelled by acute embarrassment helped her to shrug his arm from her shoulders as she straightened her spine, telling him frostily, ‘I’m capable of waiting until I get back to prison. I won’t starve,’ and felt better after that, more in control, because it was a timely reminder of how she’d come to be here in the first place, knocking her feeble pretence hat this was somehow a day out of time firmly on the head.
He dipped his dark head close to her ear and murmured, ‘Sheathe those claws, little cat. You no longer need them,’ then took her hand again, led her to a table outside a café and sat her down in the shade of an orange tree. He gave his order and then proceeded to explain how he’d put the fortune he’d made on the world’s money markets to good use, providing better amenities for the villagers, making them proud again of the productive estates, and how he’d watched their contentment grow with the betterment of their living conditions.
‘You may think it feudal, but it works for everyone,’ he told her as he refilled their glasses from the bottle of rich local wine. ‘Everything had been neglected—the water supply was erratic, the houses crumbling, little work was done on the estates because what was the use when the produce wasn’t harvested at the right time, sold at the right time and at the right price through lack of my ancestor’s interest? We are a very isolated community; we have to pull together, all of us, work hard together to survive, to become a viable entity, to prevent the village falling into decay, the land losing its fertility, the lifeblood—the peoplemoving away to find a decent standard of living somewhere else.’ He visibly reined in his enthusiasm, giving her an underbrow look. ‘But I am boring you?’
‘Far from it,’ she denied quickly. But in a way she wished he had been. It would have been easier. But he’d held her interest completely and she knew now why everyone who’d gone out of his or her way to greet him had looked at him with respect and affection.
And far from boasting about what he had achieved she had read the pride in his voice, pride for the workers who had helped him realise his dream, seen the passionate love of his land in his eyes. And she knew she was coming dangerously close to admitting that what she felt for him was neither lust nor the fantasy of imagined love; it was real and abiding and, because of that, grotesquely painful.
‘I am glad,’ he said simply, standing up as he put down the pesetas to cover the bill. He held out a hand to her, but she wisely ignored it, giving him a tight-lipped nod of agreement as he suggested, ‘Shall we go?’
The afternoon was well advanced and there were few people around to waylay them as they walked back through the shimmering heat to where the Jeep was parked. Francisco said little and she said nothing, too busy with her thoughts. And they weren’t comfortable companions. Every time she started to congratulate herself for having reached the sensible conclusion that the circumstances, the situation, were responsible for the juvenile way she’d imagined herself in love with him, he upped and did or said something that made her believe that what she felt for him was no fantasy at all.
She was right in the middle of drumming into her head the sheer, self-destructive folly of allowing herself any emotions at all where he was concerned, reminding herself what a lawless brute he was, when he said gently, ‘We’ll relax, sit in the shade for a while. We can tackle the drive back later, when it’s cooler. You must be sleepy.’
She was, she recognised. Suddenly very sleepy. All that fresh air, the exercise, was finally getting to her. Plus the wine she’d had with lunch—and what a lunch! Pollo a la andaluza, Francisco had told her as she’d eaten heartily of the delicious chicken with sherry, saffron, almonds and garlic presented in a thick earthenware bowl, with a crisp salad on the side and a dish of roast sweet peppers to dip into. She had been groaningly hungry and couldn’t remember ever having eaten so much at one sitting bef
ore.
And the shade of the riverbank did look inviting and the idea of bouncing around in the Jeep with such a full tummy didn’t really appeal, and if he didn’t get too close then she didn’t see why they shouldn’t cool down in the shade, enjoy the slight breeze that came off the river.
If the time hadn’t been right up on the mountains, where there hadn’t been another living soul for miles, then he would hardly deem the riverbank a suitable setting for seduction when workers moving to or from the fields might pass by at any time, she rationalised. And took the risk.
‘Just for a few minutes,’ she agreed, her mouth consciously prim as she wandered nearer to the water’s edge and sank down gratefully on the soft green grass. Then she went rigidly still as she heard the unmistakable sound of rustling clothing and turned her head, suspicion sharpening her brilliant eyes.
He had removed his shirt. Her mouth went dry as her eyes were held by his hard, virile body, the smooth olive skin that glistened over wide shoulders and the taut muscles of his flat stomach. She tried to look away but her eyes wouldn’t let her; she tried to stand, to walk back to the Jeep and sit in it until he agreed to drive her back but her legs wouldn’t move.
He was coming towards her, the discarded shirt in his hands, and there was unrestrained virile splendour in the way he moved, sweet dark honey in his smile, and she laved her dry lips with her tongue, silently cursing the way her suddenly trembling body had divorced itself from her brain.
He said, with a tiny hint of mockery, ‘Relax. It is siesta time. Use my shirt as a pillow; the rug in the back of the Jeep probably smells of dog.’ Then he wandered away, arrogant confidence in every line of his body, and she folded the garment he’d tossed to her, her fingers shaking.
He had the ability to make such a fool of her, she thought miserably, watching as he sat down on the grass half a dozen yards away, his elbows on his knees, his hands cupping his chin, apparently lost in contemplation of the gently swirling water.
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