by Penny Jordan
A twenty-five-year-old virgin! What an anachronism! She didn’t doubt that Jaime would be very sexually experienced.
There she went again! What concern was that of hers? He was her stepbrother; that was all. She frowned suddenly as she sat on the edge of the bath, towelling her hair.
She judged that Jaime would be somewhere in his early thirties. Surely he should be married? In Latin countries both men and women did marry early. And the majority of the men still expected their brides to be chaste, especially in this part of the world where their Moorish blood was still part of their ancestry.
Her hairdryer was still in her case and, wrapping a spare towel around herself sarong-wise, Shelley walked into her bedroom. The towel wasn’t very wide, and the sight of herself with her hair tangling wildly down to her shoulders and the long length of her legs exposed by the too-brief towel made her raise her eyebrows slightly in faint distaste. She didn’t like presenting any image to the world other than a neatly composed, businesslike one. The reflection she saw now was not a familiar one. At home, after having a bath, she normally wore a full length terry-towelling bathrobe which effectively covered her from throat to toes, and she didn’t like the wild disarray of her hair either. Again, at home, she normally called in at her hairdressers every other day to get it washed and blown. Her style was a simple one but she believed in keeping it professionally looked after.
She had had the foresight to bring with her an adaptor plug for her hairdryer, and later she blamed the noise the dryer was making for masking the sound of anyone knocking on her door.
When she first caught sight of the door opening out of the corner of her eye, she thought it was simply Luisa coming to collect her supper tray, and so did not stop what she was doing.
When she realised it was Jaime and not Luisa who had come in, he was already inside the room with the door firmly closed behind him, and it was too late for her to ask him not to come in.
‘Mama was concerned about you, so I offered to check that you were all right.’
Because she felt it was faintly demeaning to be kneeling on the floor in front of the mirror while he towered over her, she put down her hairdryer and stood up, forgetting for the moment the brevity of the towel.
The heat of the dryer had flushed her skin a soft pink, and her hair, although nearly dry and smooth, still tended to curl waywardly on to her face. The towel, which had been securely anchored when she kneeled down, had loosened slightly, revealing far more of the upper curves of her breasts than was decent, Shelley realised as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
Other than removing the towel completely and resecuring it there was little she could do. The way Jaime looked at her made her stiffen defensively, her eyes flashing messages of resentment.
‘You will find in this country that it is not permissible for young unmarried women to flaunt themselves so provocatively in front of a man.’
His mouth had compressed into a stern line, and he was looking at her for all the world as though she were some child he had caught out in a misdemeanour. Anger flared through her.
‘For your information, I do not consider that I was either flaunting myself or provocative. You seem to forget you came in here uninvited.’
‘I knocked.’
‘I didn’t hear you, and if I had you may be sure I would have asked you not to come in.’ She saw the look in his eyes and said furiously, ‘Strange though it may sound, I am not in the habit of parading around skimpily dressed in front of strangers.’
‘But when you are alone you obviously prefer to be free of the encumbrance of clothes.’ He shrugged, and added before she could voice her outrage. ‘Why not? I admit I prefer it myself. But such an easy acceptance of one’s own nudity speaks of an experience that we do not expect or appreciate in our young unmarried women in this part of the world.’
Their earlier harmony was completely forgotten as Shelley turned on him. ‘For your information—not that it’s in the least any of your concern—I am not in the habit of wandering around in the nude; far from it. It is simply that I neglected to bring my bathrobe with me. What I certainly did not expect was for my privacy to be invaded, and now if you would kindly leave…’
Her flash of temper seemed to amuse rather than annoy him, and instead of leaving as she had suggested, he propped himself up against her bedroom wall, and slid his hands into the pockets of his extremely well-cut cream trousers.
‘There is no need for all this heat and vehemence, little sister, but you are wrong, you know. You are my concern—very much so. In Portugal we take our family responsibilities very seriously, and as I am your stepbrother it will be my duty and responsibility to guard and protect you, just as I do Carlota. You may not know it, but most of us in this part of the world have Moorish blood in our veins, and that is a legacy that makes us very careful of our women. For instance, were I to walk into your room and find you like this with some other man, as your brother I should quite naturally be expected to demand that he make reparation for your loss of honour by offering you marriage.’
Shelley sat down on the bed and stared at him.
‘But that’s ridiculous…it’s mediaeval!’
‘Maybe. In our cities, like Lisbon for instance, I am sure they would agree with you, but this is a very remote country area, and perhaps a little old-fashioned.’
‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life,’ Shelley responded, goaded by his mocking expression into uttering the words.
‘Ridiculous or not, it is the truth, and it is just one of the things I have to talk to you about. You will find that in this part of the world our young men are far more…responsive…shall we say, than the average Englishman. A Portuguese male would not, I promise you, be slow to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by such an inviting mode of dress.’
The cool warning in his voice, coupled with the way he looked at her, made Shelley lash out rashly. ‘Then it is as well for me that you have a good measure of English blood, and are therefore beyond temptation, isn’t it?’
She shouldn’t have been hurt by the way his mouth compressed or by the cold ice in his eyes, but she was.
‘If you are referring to what I said to you last night, then please forget it. I should not have spoken as I did.’
‘And you didn’t want me at all really, did you? You just wanted to frighten me.’
An expression she couldn’t define crossed his face. ‘Frighten you?’ He frowned and then checked slightly, before saying smoothly. ‘You are quite right, querida, but I promise you here and now that as your stepbrother, I will give you no reason at all to fear me. Now I must go before my mother comes to see what is delaying me. Half English though she is, she would not approve of me remaining in your room, while you are so…tantalisingly dressed. Or rather undressed.’
The way he looked at her made the blood run hot in her veins; her desire was an unfamiliar sensation inside her. Far more familiar was the sudden surge of caution that warned her that she was in danger of revealing far too much to him—too much not just of her body, but also of her soul.
‘Now you look at me with all the apprehension I might expect from one of our own timid, convent-raised virgins. You are not in England now and, tempted though I might be, I promise you that I shall remember that even though the tie between us is not one of blood, it does exist. As I said before, even in these modern times, in this part of the world it would still compromise a young woman’s virtue for her to be found alone in her room like this with a man to whom she was not married.’
Her expression betrayed her incredulity, but he did not laugh as she had expected him to do.
‘I assure you that it is true. It is also true that it was one of your father’s dearest wishes that you and I should meet and become…friends.’
‘Friends?’
There was something in his eyes that made her blood race.
‘Here in the Algarve we seal our friendships like this.’
/> He leaned forward, his mouth just touching hers. A thousand disturbing sensations rioted through her. She lifted her hands to push him away and instead, astonishingly, found her lips parting beneath the insistent heat of his mouth. The sensations he aroused within her were all the more shocking for being so unexpected. Sexual desire was something that had hitherto barely impinged upon her life, and yet here she was trembling with the awful weakness of desire, aching with a need which was both unknown and somehow frighteningly familiar, as though some part of her had always known what lay in wait for her.
Briefly she was aware of Jaime’s knowledge of her desire; a heated mutter of something unintelligible against her mouth; the sensation first of his hands moving and then of a cool frisson of air against her skin.
She realised that she was naked in the same moment that his hands slid over her body, shaping it with an unmistakable sensuality. Despite the fact that it was an intimacy she had never known before, she was aware of her body’s response.
His mouth moved demandingly on hers, his hands cupping and caressing the contours of her breasts.
‘Shelley.’
She opened her eyes and found that he was looking into them. He was breathing quickly as though he had just been running, the sexual glitter darkening his eyes edged with caution and regret.
‘No…I must not,’ he murmured regretfully, picking up the discarded towel and wrapping it carefully round her. For a second his glance shifted to her mouth, and his hands tensed on her body. Scarcely daring to breath, Shelley waited. With a faint sigh he moved away from her.
‘Sleep well, querida,’ he murmured softly. ‘And don’t forget, you and I have a date tomorrow morning for breakfast.’
She waited until she was sure the door had closed behind him before moving. In ten short minutes her whole world had been turned upside down. Where was the calm control she had prided herself on now? With one kiss, Jaime had shattered the defences she had built around herself; with one touch he had shown her that while she might be immune to other men, where he was concerned… With a small shudder she tugged on her nightdress and finished drying her hair. Tomorrow would be time enough to worry about the implications of her feelings. To wonder why he had kissed her. Tonight she needed to sleep, to recover from the emotional rigours of the day.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHELLEY woke up early, confused and still held in the grip of her dreams. Fear lingered like an aftertaste of some too rich and tainted food, and it took her several minutes to track the emotion to its source. Overnight her whole world had been turned upside down, and she had been exposed to an emotional vulnerability within her make-up she had never guessed existed. It was impossible that a man like Jaime could want or desire her, and yet when he had looked at her… Why was she so frightened? Surely not just because he seemed to desire her?
No, it was her own feelings that made her afraid, her own inner knowledge of just how vulnerable she was to him. All her life she had guarded herself against the pain of emotional ties, always fearing rejection and pain. Her grandmother had instilled in her very young a lack of self-worth that still haunted her, no matter how hard she tried to rationalise her reactions. The only way she could cope with her fears had been to tell herself that she was immune to falling in love, to giving herself emotionally to another human being, and now, almost in the space of a single heartbeat, she had discovered that she was wrong.
To say she had fallen in love with Jaime was to reduce herself and her feelings to some sort of adolescent fantasy; to dismiss them as mere sexual need was impossible. So what did she feel? Need? Pain? That, and so much more.
And Jaime had known it; he had witnessed her shocked recognition of her feelings towards him. She shuddered painfully. How could she have betrayed herself to him so recklessly?
She got up and dressed and then wandered on to her balcony, her heart muscles clamping up as she looked down and saw Jaime striding across the courtyard. He looked up and saw her, and ridiculously, she knew that her skin was flushing.
‘Come down and have breakfast with me.’
Shelley wanted to refuse, but to do so would be to betray herself even further.
‘If you don’t I’ll have to come up and fetch you.’
He smiled as though he was merely teasing her, and yet she sensed the purpose behind his mild threat and retreated from the balcony, a fresh wave of heat suffusing her body as his soft laughter followed her.
She knew now that the agonised resentment she had felt at Jaime’s cruel misjudgment of her had sprung not from anger but from pain. She had wanted him to like her…to approve of her… And yet somehow she couldn’t entirely believe his volte-face, couldn’t accept that a man like Jaime could genuinely find her attractive…and certainly not to the impassioned extent his actions suggested.
There was nothing she wanted to do more than to push all her doubts out of sight and forget them, but caution urged her to think carefully, reminding her of the lessons life had so painfully taught her.
Even so, she went downstairs and out into the courtyard, sniffing the fragrant air appreciatively.
‘At last!’
Jaime embraced her naturally, laughing when she tensed and looked over her shoulder. She tried to cover her nervousness by asking huskily, ‘That scent…?’
‘It rained last night, the perfume comes from the pine forests beyond the vines. It is a pleasant scent, but it cannot rival the perfume of your skin.’
He bent his head, his mouth caressing the curve of her throat with leisurely skill. Her whole body shook in an explosion of sensation, and she could see the amusement and something else—something far more primitive—in his eyes as he raised his head.
‘I could almost believe that no one has done that to you before.’ The words were light, but the question behind them was not. She opened her mouth, impelled to make some light, protective reply, but at the last minute her defences failed her, and all she could do was shake her head. Her own naïveté appalled her. She was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake!
‘Now you have retreated back into your protective shell. I promise you there is no need. I don’t want to hurt you, Shelley.’
That wasn’t the point. The fact was that he could, and she could do nothing about it.
‘After breakfast I have to inspect the vines. Come with me… And then this afternoon I shall take you to see the villa.’
‘But your mother…’
‘Yes, of course. Very well then, tomorrow you shall come with me and I shall show you the workings of the vineyard. You do, after all, have a financial interest in the quinta now.’
‘One that I don’t want. You know that. And the villa…’
‘You wish to give the villa back to the estate, I know, but I cannot permit you to do that, and neither would my mother. She and I are joint owners of the quinta, since your father left his share in it to her. To let you give the villa back to the estate would be tantamount to robbing you of it. Let me buy it from you, querida. I will have it valued and then…’
‘No,’ Shelley answered him decisively, glad to be back on firmer and more familiar ground. ‘No, I don’t want to take any money for it.’
‘Why? Because of what I said to you before I knew the truth?’
That was part of it, but there was more to it than that. ‘It belongs to your family,’ she answered obliquely, ‘and I don’t belong here.’
‘What makes you say that? Why shouldn’t you belong here? It was your father’s home, and now it is yours.’
The words touched a wellspring of emotion inside her, trapping her.
‘Ah, here is Luisa with our breakfast.’
The maid was a welcome interruption, giving her the time to get herself under control. It was obvious that Luisa was curious about Shelley’s reappearance.
‘Luisa must be wondering what on earth is going on,’ she commented wryly when the girl was gone.
‘I should imagine she is sufficiently familiar with male and female
sexuality to hazard a pretty accurate guess.’
Jaime’s dry response surprised her. She had been referring to her disappearance, followed so quickly by her return, but it was obvious that Jaime had misunderstood her.
‘Does it worry you so much then that she might have guessed that we are attracted to one another?’ he teased when she continued to frown.
Hearing it put into words was vaguely shocking.
‘We hardly know one another,’ she protested, protecting herself instinctively.
Jaime threw back his head and laughed.
‘How very British!’ His smile deepened, his expression underscored by the faint roughness in his voice as he told her rawly, ‘Maybe we don’t—yet—but we will.’
After that it was as much as she could do to go through the motions of eating and drinking.
After he had finished his second cup of coffee Jaime glanced at his watch and announced. ‘It is time for me to take you to my mother.’ He glanced at her and, correctly reading her mind, said softly, ‘There is no need for you to be afraid. Just remember how much she loved your father, and please do not blame her for my failings. She did caution me not to pre-judge you, but I wouldn’t listen to her. You see, I loved your father as well, and to some extent I resented that fact that you were his child and I was not; not all my love nor my mother’s could ease his pain at losing you. Are you ready?’
He stood up and Shelley nodded mutely, following him back into the house and along an unfamiliar corridor. There was a flight of stairs at the end of it.
‘These lead to the apartments my mother shared with your father. At first Carlota and I thought it only added to her melancholy for her to stay in them, but now it seems that she derives some solace and comfort from their familiarity.’