Master of El Corazon

by Sandra Marton

  ‘You are more beautiful than any dream,’ he murmured. His hand slipped across her cotton T-shirt, tracing the outline of her breast, feathering lightly against her thrusting nipple, and she caught his wrist, cupped his hand to her flesh and held it there.

  ‘Undress me,’ she whispered.

  His eyes turned to green flame. He took her hands, kissed her wrists, her palms, then drew her up and stripped off her shirt and bra, and her breasts fell free.

  ‘So perfect, querida’ he said, his voice a broken whisper. He cupped her breasts in his hands, lowered his face to them, moving his cheek over first one sensitive peak and then the other. The faint shadow of his beard lay just beneath his skin; the abrasive feel of it against her nipples was exquisite. Arden moaned softly. ‘Shall I kiss your breasts, querida?’ he said, and slowly, slowly, he lowered his head until she felt the warmth of his breath against her skin. The first touch of his tongue made her cry out, and when his mouth closed around the aroused centre she felt her soul burst free.

  ‘Conor,’ she said, the word a little sob. Her hands trembled as she slid them under his shirt. She heard the sharp hiss of his breath as she touched his hot skin, and then he drew back and yanked the shirt over his head and tossed it aside.

  ‘Now, touch me,’ he said fiercely, and she did, her fingers tracing the dark hair that whorled over his muscled chest, her mouth tasting his nipples as he had tasted hers. He whispered something, first in Spanish, then in English, something that turned her cheeks to flame.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Oh, yes.’

  Quickly, he stripped off the rest of her clothing, and then he lay her back against the grass and looked at her.

  ‘I’ve waited so long to see you, Arden.’ His voice was husky and thick. He reached out and ran his hand lightly along her body, from her throat to her breasts, across her belly and down to the soft, feminine delta between her thighs. His fingers dipped into the warm, moist darkness and the breath hissed from his lips. ‘I want you,’ he whispered, ‘I want you so much—’

  ‘Then take me,’ she said. She saw the change her soft plea brought to his face, saw the sudden tightening of his mouth, the darkening of his eyes, and her body tightened in anticipation. ‘Conor,’ she whispered, and she held out her arms to him.

  He rose and stripped off his clothing. Arden’s breathing quickened when she saw how perfect he was, how magnificently and proudly male.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ she said, and then her voice broke. ‘Please,’ she sighed, ‘Conor, please...’

  He knelt above her, bent, kissed her mouth until it was as soft and swollen as a rose bud beneath his.

  ‘Arden,’ he said, ‘mi amor.’

  She clasped his face and drew him to her. His mouth covered hers again; he kissed her, nibbled at her bottom lip, then stroked it with his tongue, and then, whispering her name, he thrust deep into her.

  Arden cried out, not with pain but with the joy of fulfilment. Conor hesitated, his maleness still sheathed inside her, and looked down into her eyes.

  ‘You are mine now, querida,’ he said fiercely, and just before he began to move within her, before that moment when she shattered and became a million spinning suns, Arden knew, with wrenching certainty, that he was more right than he could possibly know, for the simple truth was that she loved Conor Martinez with all her heart and soul.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ARDEN took a brightly coloured ceramic mug from the dining-room sideboard, filled it with coffee, and added a dollop of cream. She strolled through the French doors to the glass-topped table that stood on the terrace and sat.

  What a beautiful morning! she thought, with a smile of pleasure. Her smile deepened. That was nothing unusual, of course. Mornings in this part of Costa Rica, especially at this time of the year, were invariably lovely, but lately there was a special buttery cast to the sunlight, a soft perfume to the breeze. Was it because the seasons were changing? The dry months of summer were ending, and the rainy days of winter were fast approaching. She would have to ask Conor if that was the reason for the difference, have to ask him, too, if the shifting seasons were responsible for the sudden, unbelievable variety of butterflies she saw everywhere she looked, their wings iridescent and glinting with all the wondrous colour of the rainbow.

  Two warm, strong hands dropped to her shoulders and clasped them tightly.

  ‘Good morning,’ a deep voice whispered. ‘Did you sleep well, querida?’

  Arden looked up. Conor was standing just behind her, smiling. With a swift, almost fierce joy she realised that it wasn’t the weather that was changing, it was she. With each passing day, she fell more deeply in love with this man who had once been her hated enemy. That was the reason the sun seemed brighter, the creatures more exotic, because she had been caught up in a love so intense it made everything else all the more wonderful, but there was no way to tell him all that, not without giving him even more of her heart than he’d already taken, for Conor had not yet said he loved her.

  The bittersweet realisation made her answering smile tremble on her lips as she put her hands over his.

  ‘You know I did,’ she whispered.

  His smile tilted. He bent, kissed her mouth, then came around the table and sat in the chair opposite her.

  ‘It was hard to leave you this morning., querida,’ he said softly. He took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed the palm. ‘I wanted to stay with you, make love to you one last time before the day began.’

  Arden flushed. ‘But you did, don’t you remember? You kissed me awake, and then—’

  He smiled when she hesitated. ‘Yes, sweetheart, I do remember. But there was still another hour until dawn.’

  ‘Conor, I know you think I’m silly, asking you to leave my room before anyone’s awake, but—but you know how I feel. I’d be embarrassed if the servants thought—if they knew—’

  He leaned forward and silenced her halting eatplanation with a kiss. ‘It’s not silly,’ he said, his eyes on hers. ‘It’s old-fashioned and charming.’

  And unexpected, she thought. She knew how surprised he’d been when she’d told him they couldn’t share a bed. It was the day they’d become lovers, almost two weeks before. They’d stayed in the little clearing in the cloud forest for hours, lying in each other’s arms, touching and kissing and talking about a million different things, and then Conor had made love to her again, so long and so passionately that it had seemed an eternity until she’d come tumbling back to earth again. Finally, as the sun painted the forest with vermilion, they climbed into the Bronco and headed back to the ranch.

  Once inside the house, Conor had gathered her tightly into his arms and kissed her.

  ‘I’m going to tell Inez to move your things into my room,’ he said softly.

  ‘No,’ Arden said quickly, ‘no, don’t do that.’

  Conor’s eyes narrowed fractionally. ‘Very well, querida. If you prefer to give her the instruction yourself —’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ She pressed her hands lightly against his chest. ‘I—I can’t share a room with you.’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course you can.’

  ‘I’m telling you, I can’t. If I did—if I did, everyone would know that—that...’ She stumbled to an embarrassed silence.

  ‘That we’re lovers,’ he said, his eyes on hers.

  Arden nodded. ‘Yes. Servants-servants talk, Conor, they talk about what people do, and—and they make judgements. The people they work for don’t realise it, they—they seem to think servants are part of the furniture, but—’

  ‘Is that how you think I treat Inez and the rest? As if they belonged to me?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘oh, no, I wasn’t accusing you of...’ She drew a deep breath and rested her forehead against his chin. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how I feel. Please don’t try and change my mind.’

  He gathered her even closer in his arms. ‘All right, then, querida. We’ll do it your way.’ He lowe
red his head and brushed his lips gently over hers. ‘I’ll come to you in the darkness of the night and leave you before the sun rises.’ A slow, sexy smile curved across his mouth. ‘You won’t object to that, will you?’

  Arden hadn’t trusted herself to answer. Instead, she’d touched her hand to his cheek and Conor had kissed her again, this time with slow, sweet care.

  ‘Wanting you is like wanting a dozen different women,’ he’d said while he held her. ‘You’re never quite what I expect you to be-and yet you’re always what I want.’

  Now, watching as he sipped his morning coffee, she thought of those whispered words and wondered, as she had many times during the past days, what he’d meant by them. She would want him forever, she knew that without question, but what did ‘forever’ mean to a man like Conor Martinez? Surely there had been women, perhaps lots of women, before her. No man who looked the way he did, who pleased a woman the way he could, would have lived the existence of a saint.

  An even darker thought had come to her late last night, as she lay drowsing in Conor’s arms. Listening to his slow, steady breathing, she’d suddenly wondered if his wanting her had anything to do with his wanting El Corazon.

  But that was foolish. There’d been a fever of need between the two of them from the start, even though they’d both done their best to suppress it.

  Besides, according to the lawyer she’d contacted, nothing either of them did now would—or could—change the will. Even if she’d wanted to renounce Felix’s bequest, she couldn’t. The finca was legally hers, at least, until the lawyers or the court decided otherwise.

  She didn’t want El Corazon, she thought suddenly. In her heart, she’d known that from the start. Hadn’t she almost said that to Conor when she’d first learned of Felix’s incredible bequest? But anger had kept her silent.

  What Felix had done was wrong. And cruel. He’d given her the ranch not out of kindness but out of his desire to hurt Conor. She, too, was hurting him, denying him El Corazon when, in truth, it should be his. He was tied to the land by blood, by sweat, by love...

  ‘Hey.’ Conor was leaning towards her across the table, his brow creased. He gave her a little smile, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. ‘Ate you OK?’

  She stared at him. Why had it taken her so long to see the truth? But then, the truth had been a long time coming to both of them about a lot of things. She had lumped Conor in with the rich boys and men she’d grown up despising, men who’d seen women like her as servants or playthings. Conor had been blind, too. He’d let circumstance and a handful of lies convince him she was a woman who preyed upon men.

  Neither of them had mentioned the will since they’d become lovers. She knew Conor must feel as she did, afraid to allow the impossibility of the situation to intrude upon the fragile world they’d created. But she could change all that. She had only to turn to Conor, to tell him it was he who deserved El Corazon, that she would make things right.

  She smiled, laced her fingers through his, drew a deep breath. She felt light, carefree, as if some awful burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

  ‘Conor,’ she said, ‘we have to talk.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Felix was right,’ he said. ‘You talk more than any woman I’ve ever known.’

  ‘It’s Felix I want to talk about, Conor. About—’ She took a breath. ‘About his will.’

  His smile vanished instantly. ‘No:

  ‘Yes.’ Her hand tightened on his. ‘We must. we—’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss, Arden.’ His voice was taut, almost cool, in a way it had not been in days.

  ‘But there is. We can’t keep pretending that—that El Corazon’s not—not—’ Not mine, she’d almost said, but the look in Conor’s eyes made her swallow the word. ‘That it’s not lying between us,’ she said unhappily.

  Conor pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘We’ll deal with what’s between us when the time comes,’ he said in the same tone. Arden could almost see him pulling himself together. Finally, he held his hand out to her. ‘Now, have you forgotten, querida? We’ve a fiesta to attend.’

  At this moment, that was the last thing she felt like doing. But Conor was standing over her, a strained smile on his lips, and for the first time she thought that it would be better to spend the day with lots of people than to spend it alone together. With a smile as artificial as his, Arden stood up and took his outstretched hand.

  ‘It sounds like fun,’ she said brightly, and she breathed a silent prayer that she’d be right.

  The fiesta was being held in a town not more than half an hour’s drive up the dirt road Arden had foolishly imagined ended past El Corazon’s iron gates. Now, she knew that the road stretched on through the rainforest almost to the Pacific coast. There were villages on the road, Conor said as they rattled along, ones very much like the one they were going to.

  ‘They’re all small,’ he said. ‘Blink your eyes and you’d miss half of them.’

  Ampara was one of the larger villages. Four straight streets, lined with red-roofed, white stucco houses, intersected in a square where an old mission church stood surrounded by palm trees. The town was alive with a happy, colourful fiesta crowd.

  Except for an occasional comment about the road, Conor had said nothing during the drive, and when he pulled the Bronco under a tree at the end of town and shut off the ignition Arden was desperate to clear the air. When he came around to her side of the car and held out his arms to help her down, she hesitated.

  ‘Conor,’ she said as she put her hands on his shoulders, ‘about the finca—I didn’t mean to make you angry, I just—’

  ‘I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Felix was right,’ he said sharply. ‘No tica would behave as you do.’

  A little warning bell sounded inside her head. “That’s the second time this morning you’ve said that.’

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘That Felix was right about me.’ Her eyes were steady on his. ‘It doesn’t sound much like a compliment.’

  Conor stared up at her as she stood above him on the running board of the Bronco, his face expressionless, and then he blew out his breath. ‘I’m sorry, querida. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’

  ‘You haven’t. It’s just-I don’t understand you, Conor. Why is it all right for you to bring up his name but not me? I know how you feel about Felix, about the will, I understand that it angers you to think about it, but—’

  ‘Ah, that’s wonderful,’ Conor snapped. ‘A little armchair analysis from the gringa. But you’re wasting your time. You don’t understand any of this, not in the slightest!’

  Arden’s face went tight-lipped with anger. ‘You’re right,’ she hissed, slamming his shoulders with the heels of her hands. ‘I don’t understand you, not one bit, but then, how could I? You’re a—a pig-headed fool, you’re the worst combination of Irish stubbornness and Latin machismo that I ever—’ Conor began to laugh. ‘Stop that,’ she demanded. ‘Dammit, Conor, how dare you laugh at me?’

  He swung her from the car, caught her face between his hands, and kissed her to silence. The anger drained out of her and a sweet languor filled her senses instead, so that when he finally lifted his mouth from hers, she felt boneless in his arms.

  ‘I apologise again, querida,’ he said softly. ‘You’re right, we do have to discuss our problem.’ The muscle tightened in his cheek. ‘Especially since Linda’s coming back tomorrow.’

  Arden’s stomach clenched. In the happiness of the past days, she’d almost forgotten Linda. The girl had disliked her when she’d only been an employee at EI Corazon. Heaven only knew how she’d react to her now that she was Felix’s heir—and Conor’s lover.

  ‘Arden?’ Their eyes met, and he smiled. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, about Felix and the codicil and the ranch, and I’ve come up with a solution.’

  ‘I have, too,’ she said quickly. ‘And—’


  Conor brushed his mouth over hers. ‘I don’t want to talk about it here, sweetheart.’

  A sigh escaped her lungs. ‘All right,’ she whispered. ‘But as soon as we get back to the ranch—’

  He kissed her again, even more sweetly, so that her heart was racing when they drew apart.

  ‘I want so badly to be alone with you,’ he said huskily. ‘But first, I must pay my respects to the alcalde.’ Conor looped his arm around Arden’s shoulders and they began walking slowly towards the centre of town. ‘The mayor is an old friend, and the party is for his daughter’s tenth birthday.’

  Arden began to smile. ‘You mean, the whole town’s turned out for a birthday party for a little girl?’

  ‘Any excuse is a good one in my country. My people love to eat, to dance, to fight the bulls—’

  ‘Here? Today?’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘I don’t want to see that, Conor. I know it’s very Spanish, I know that lots of people think it’s noble and beautiful and poetic, but—’ He began to laugh, and she glared at him. ‘If you tell me one more time that I’m behaving like a gringa,’ she said, ‘I’ll—’

  ‘I’m laughing at your description of a Costa Rican bullfight,’ he said, hugging her closer to him. ‘Noble? Beautiful? Poetic? No. I don’t think so, querida.’

  ‘Whatever you call it, I’ll hate it!’

  ‘What’s that North American expression? Something about putting your money where your mouth is?’

  “There’s no point in betting that I’ll change my mind,’ Arden said positively. ‘I promise you, I won’t.’

  ‘In that case, what have you to lose? Let me take you to the fight. You can watch for five minutes and then we’ll decide who wins the wager.’

  ‘I’ll watch for one minute. That’s all it will take you to lose.’