by Kim Lawrence
‘“I arrived here last week. Valencia is beautiful and very hot. I have met the most marvellous man, Luiz Felipe Santoro. He is working at an incredible hotel here called the Hotel San Sebastian. We’re very in love—he’s my soul mate,”’ Nell recited, staring daggers at the Spaniard who had so far not even had the decency to look embarrassed.
‘“I can hardly believe it myself but we’ve decided to get married as soon as possible.”’ At this point Nell’s voice broke and she added bitterly, ‘I suppose you know she’s only on a gap year and has been travelling around Europe for the last six months. She’s got a brilliant future, a scholarship to university…’
He arched a brow and sounded politely interested. ‘No, I didn’t know.’
A growling noise escaped Nell’s throat before she squeezed her eyes shut and finished in a halting monotone. ‘“You’ll love him as much as I do, or almost as much ha ha! I know you’ll know the best way to break it to Mum and Dad. Love and kisses, Lucy.”’
She stuck out her chin, glared up at him and wished she didn’t have such a height disadvantage. ‘Well, what do you have to say now? Are you still denying it? Are you suggesting Lucy made it all up?’
‘I’m impressed.’
Nell’s self-righteous anger tilted over into confusion. He wasn’t acting like a guilty man, but maybe he was one of those sociopaths you read about—the ones who had no moral compass, no values?
‘Impressed by what?’
‘You had a name of a hotel and my name and you found me. That is impressive.’
Nell gave a triumphant little cry of, ‘So you admit it is you, then.’ Before adding with feeling, ‘It wasn’t easy finding you.’
That was just about the understatement of the century. Her night flight had arrived at the airport very early for her to find that her luggage, such as it was, had ended up somewhere else. The people at the snooty hotel where she had stuck out like a sore thumb beside the affluent and well-dressed guests had been very uncooperative, if not damned rude, when she had mentioned Luiz Felipe Santoro. They clearly intended taking his home address to their graves.
If it hadn’t been for the sweet fatherly doorman who had chased after her and suggested she might find the man she was looking for at the Castillo d’Oro her search might have stopped right there.
The only hire car she had been able to afford had no air conditioning and to top it all she’d got lost three times on the way to the castillo. The distance on the map was deceptive. Although quite close to the Mediterranean, the historic estancia set high on a lush plateau in the Sierra Nevada was not easy to reach.
It had been the day from hell and only a determination to save her niece from making a terrible mistake had kept Nell going.
And all the time at the back of her mind there had been the question, what if all this was pointless? What if Lucy had already married her Spaniard?
‘Tell me,’ she pleaded, catching hold of his jacket sleeve. ‘Are you married?’
Something dark, bleak and very forbidding flickered into his eyes. For a moment Nell thought he was not going to reply.
‘I was, but not now.’
Oh, my God. Lucy had not only got involved with an older man, she had got involved with an older man who already had a failed marriage behind him, and if his manner when he spoke of it was anything to go by the break up had not been amicable. But then he did not strike Nell as the sort of man who would shrug off a divorce and say, ‘Let’s stay good friends.’
‘You’re a resourceful woman.’
‘I’m a woman who is fast running out of patience.’ Nell, pleased at the crisp delivery, tilted her chin to a ‘don’t mess with me’ angle. ‘I want to see Lucy and I want to see her now. I don’t know what your job is here, but I can’t imagine your employers will be too impressed if I tell them what you’ve been up to!’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Yes!’ And not doing a very good job of it. It was difficult to imagine a man looking less threatened than Lucy’s lover… She grimaced—Lucy’s lover. That sounded so wrong on so many levels!
On the silly and shallow level it hardly seemed fair her teenage niece was now officially more sexually experienced than she was.
‘I do not work here.’
Nell, who suddenly realised she still had hold of his arm, regarded him with suspicion. ‘You’re a guest at this hotel?’ She gave a tiny gasp of relief when her fingers finally responded to the message from her brain and let go. The impression of hard, lean strength lingered even when she rubbed her hand against the canvas bag slung around her neck.
‘Not a guest, and not a hotel—this is the home of my grandmother, Doña Elena Santoro.’
The colour faded from her cheeks as Nell turned her head and stared at the vast Castillo d’Oro, a fortified stone edifice—a real castle complete with turrets.
‘You live here?’ That explained the superior attitude and the faint air of disdain, the man obviously considered anyone who didn’t own a castle beneath him. Well, she for one was not impressed by inherited wealth.
She shook her head, not waiting for his confirmation, and said firmly, ‘That doesn’t change anything.’
‘I’m not the man you’re looking for. I’ve never met your niece.’
Frustrated and tired, tears springing to her eyes, Nell, who rarely cried, blinked angrily.
‘I don’t believe you!’ She struggled not to, because if he was telling the truth she was no nearer finding Lucy than she had been this morning.
‘But I do know the man you’re looking for.’
Nell looked at him with a mixture of hope and suspicion.
‘Come indoors and I’ll explain.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m not budging from this spot!’ Nell said, folding her arms across her chest.
‘Have it your way, but I wouldn’t like to have your epidermis tomorrow.’ He glanced up at the relentlessly blue sky, then back at her face. ‘You have the sort of fair skin that burns.’ A slightly distracted expression drifted across his face as he stared at the pale curve of her throat.
‘And freckles,’ Nell murmured with a sigh.
The comment seemed to wake him from his reverie. Possibly he was feeling the heat too, Nell thought, noticing the bands of high colour that attracted her eye to the slashing contours of his marvellous high cheekbones.
CHAPTER THREE
THE dull pain drumming in her temples intensified as Nell watched him stroll back to the castillo not pausing even once to look back. He was so damned sure that she’d follow him the way women had no doubt been following him all his adult life—not that she would be following him in the same sense.
She would have loved to have the luxury of calling his bluff, but that gesture would have been pretty self-defeating. If he was speaking the truth and he knew who Lucy was with she had no choice but to follow him. And his point about the heat was valid; the protective factor of the moisturiser she had used that morning had to have worn off hours ago.
The cool inside the stone-walled castle was sheer bliss after the oppressive heat of the Valencian sun. She hurried, her feet echoing on the stone floors, to catch up with him.
‘So who is the man?’ Nell asked, trotting to pass him.
She turned and came to an abrupt halt. He had to follow suit or fall over her. He didn’t do that, but he did get awfully close—close enough for her to receive a pretty hefty jolt as she got too close to the raw sexual aura he projected.
It passed through her body like an electrical current and was the weirdest and most disturbing thing that had ever happened to her. She pressed a hand to her heaving chest and hoped that he attributed her breathless condition to a lack of fitness combined with the altitude.
He glanced down, his dark eyes skimming her face. ‘My cousin.’
Nell opened her mouth to demand more information when he placed a hand on the wall above her head. Nell closed her eyes and edged closer to panic as he leaned into her, his
big body curling over her. She held her breath, then released it a moment later as she found herself pushed through a door behind her and into a big, light, airy room.
‘Sit down. I’ll order some refreshments.’
Nell ignored the offer—a pretty pointless defiance considering her knees were literally shaking. ‘Your cousin?’ Was he just trying to wriggle out of it? Send her off on a false trail?
‘It fits. He had a holiday job at the hotel you spoke of. I arranged it for him myself.’
She still wasn’t convinced. ‘What about the name?’
‘We were both christened Luiz Felipe. This is not the first time confusion has arisen, but it is the most…amusing.’
‘You’re both called Luiz Felipe.’
‘I know—an appalling lack of imagination. We were both named after our grandfather, but in the family we call him Felipe usually.’
‘So how old is this cousin of yours?’ Nell’s feelings were mixed. While she was obviously relieved that Lucy hadn’t got mixed up with this man—hopefully his cousin was not the similar type of predatory male—it did mean that she still had no idea where Lucy was.
‘I’m not sure.’ He arched a brow. ‘Eighteen, nineteen?’
Nell stared. ‘You’re asking me? Just how many cousins do you have?’
Luiz leaned his elbow on the mantel of the carved stone fireplace and moved a heavy candlestick with his forefinger. His air of preoccupation incensed Nell.
‘I’m sorry if I’m boring you.’
The acid observation swung Luiz’s attention back to the figure standing there with her hands planted on her slim hips. ‘Sorry.’ He produced a grin that had no hint of apology in it and answered her question. ‘Just the one.’
‘And you don’t know how old he is?’
‘We are not what you would call close.’
‘But he’s your cousin.’ She searched his dark face for any sign he was being facetious and found none. ‘Your family.’
‘Families are all different and I think you will find that my attitude to family is one that more people could readily identify with than your own.’
Nell looked at him, appalled. ‘Don’t you care if your cousin ruins his life?’
‘A person learns by their mistakes. Perhaps your niece will learn from hers?’
The odd inflection in his deep voice that made Nell wonder what his mistakes had been was absent as he added flippantly, ‘And who am I to stand in the way of true love?’
Nell, her eyes narrowed, did not bother to disguise her utter disgust as she glared at him. ‘Ha. The truth is you don’t give a damn about anyone else. You’re utterly and totally selfish—you’ve no intention of lifting a finger to stop your cousin making the biggest mistake of his life because you’re utterly self-centred.’
She was midway through accusing him of possessing no family feeling when Ramon’s joke came back to Luiz. The future Mrs Santoro! His lips curled into a wry smile that faded as he recognised the element of truth in Ramon’s joke—a bride would be his grandmother’s most precious birthday present.
Luiz was inclined initially to reject the crazy, though intriguing, idea forming in his head, because it was so obviously, well…crazy. He could not pinpoint the exact moment that it stopped being crazy but actually almost logical, but suddenly he found himself asking—Why not?
He would never be able to give his grandmother the wife and heir she longed for him to provide, so wasn’t this an alternative where nobody got hurt? Why shouldn’t he be studying the flushed and angry face of the future Mrs Santoro? It could work.
Why wait for her birthday?
There were always two ways of looking at a situation. Some people would think his idea a moment of inspiration while others would think it a moment of madness.
Luiz didn’t care about the label, he just cared about the result.
‘I have a proposition to put to you.’
Nell regarded him with an expression of baffled frustration. He had not even attempted to defend himself. She wasn’t even sure if he had heard a word she had said.
‘I know where they are.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Lucy and your cousin?’
He nodded.
‘So where…?’
He pushed aside the poignant image of the cottage by the sea where he and Rosa had lived and held up a hand to stop her. Fulfilling his side of the bargain he was proposing would mean him going there for the first time in many years. The first time since Rosa died.
‘First you need to do something for me.’
He saw the alarm flare in her eyes and sketched a cynical grin. ‘Relax, not that something. You’re really not my type.’
As if to challenge his careless contention the image that formed in his head of one perfect breast fitting perfectly into his hand momentarily vaporised every other thought.
‘Imagine my devastation,’ she snarled, irrationally deflated. ‘Forget the dramatic pause and get to the point—what do I have to do?’
‘Come and meet my grandmother.’
Nell’s face fell. ‘That’s it?’ Obviously there was a catch.
‘And go along with whatever I say.’
‘But I don’t understand why—?’
He cut across her with an autocratic shake of his dark head. There was no time for a question and answer session. If he paused long enough to think about this he strongly suspected that he’d bail.
‘I do not require you to understand. As I said, I simply require you to go along with anything I say—no matter what it is.’
‘But why?’
‘Do you want to find the lovers?’
Nell’s expression reflected her dilemma. ‘Oh, all right, then.’ What choice did she have? ‘And afterwards you’ll tell me where they are.’
‘Querida,’ he promised with a grin, ‘I’ll take you to them. Shake on it.’
Nell dragged her eyes away from the magnetic pull of his deep-set dark eyes and regarded the hand he held towards her for a long moment before finally extending her own.
As his cool fingers closed around hers Nell tried to ignore the warning voice in her head that told her she was making a big mistake.
It was a lot more difficult to ignore the prickle under her skin that had nothing to do with sunburn and a lot to do with their brief physical contact.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE castle was a maze. Nell followed Luiz for what felt like miles along stone-floored corridors before he finally halted.
‘This is my grandmother’s room.’ Luiz reached for the door and stopped. ‘Wait here. I will be back presently.’
Left with little choice but to obey his terse instruction, Nell began to study the large tapestry of brilliant colours on the wall opposite.
The battle scene it portrayed was nothing compared to the one being waged in her head. Just what are you doing, Nell? This is crazy, totally crazy. You don’t know this man—you don’t even know what you’ve agreed to and who’s to say he will keep his word?
Before she could totally lose her nerve Luiz Santoro returned. Without a word he took her left hand and slid a ring onto her finger.
‘What are you doing? What…w-what is that?’ she stammered, staring at her finger. The gold band felt heavy, a rose-coloured diamond surrounded by what she assumed were rubies in an antique setting.
She was no expert but it didn’t look like the sort of thing you found in a Christmas cracker.
He lifted his brows. ‘A ring.’
‘I can see that,’ she retorted crankily. ‘What is it doing on my finger?’
‘Window dressing.’
‘For what?’
‘That is not relevant.’
Nell shook her head and dug in her heels literally. ‘I’m not taking another step until you explain this thing.’ She waved the offending jewellery him.
Luiz studied her mutinous face for a moment, then gave a philosophical shake of his head. ‘My grandmother—’
‘The one who owns thi
s house?’
His dark brows twitched into a straight line of disapproval at the interruption. ‘The one who own this house and the estancia it stands upon. She is ill…maybe…’
He paused, unwilling to voice the possibility, as if saying the thing made it more likely to happen. He was impatient with the lack of logic in his thought processes, but then when you cared for a person it was hard to always be logical.
He glanced down at the young woman who was staring up at him, suspicion and wariness reflected in her clear eyes, and thought, Logic does not feature in that glossy head at any level…just neat emotion.
It made her a frustrating person to negotiate with.
‘Maybe?’ Nell prompted.
‘Maybe even dying.’
Nell’s face dropped. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was hard to tell from his stony expression if her sympathy was either required or desired.
Not that the lack of emotion in his features meant he didn’t have any, she reminded herself. Give the man the benefit of the doubt—she had not cried at her father’s funeral or, for that matter, since. Pushing aside the thought, Nell focused on his dark face—too much focus because she immediately started to feel dizzy.
‘We all die, and my grandmother is eighty-five.’
Nell found the clinical pronouncement chilling, but not as chilling as the total lack of feeling in his voice or manner. She suspected he didn’t deserve the benefit of any doubt—the man was just plain cold.
‘I’m sorry your grandmother is ill, but that still doesn’t explain the ring—’ she waved her hand in an expansive gesture ‘—or any of this.’
‘It is her wish that I marry and provide an heir.’
Nell, her eyes wide—she was clearly dealing with someone who was delusional and possibly dangerous—started to shake her head and back away.
‘I care about Lucy, but if you think I’m going to…m-m…’ She shook her head again. ‘Some sacrifices I’m not willing to make. Let her leave the place to this other Luiz Felipe—he seems more than willing to marry.’ And for all she knew provide heirs! ‘God, I really need to find Lucy.’