Читать книгу The Ultimate Persuasion: A Tempestuous Temptation / The Notorious Gabriel Diaz / The Truth Behind his Touch - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 9

SHE made it to the bathroom in the nick of time and was horribly, shamefully, humiliatingly, wretchedly sick. She hadn’t bothered to shut the door and she was too weak to protest when she heard Luiz enter the bathroom behind her.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered, hearing the flush of the toilet and finding a toothbrush pressed into her hand. While she was busy being sick, he had obviously rummaged through her case and located just the thing she needed.

She shakily cleaned her teeth but lacked the energy to tell him to leave.

Nor could she look at him. She flopped down onto the bed and closed her eyes as he drew the curtains shut, turned off the overhead light and began easing her boots off.

Luiz had never done anything like this before. In fact, he had never been in the presence of a woman quite so violently sick after a bout of excessive drinking and, if someone had told him that one day he would be taking care of such a woman, he would have laughed out loud. Women who were out of control disgusted him. An out-of-control Chloe, shouting hysterically down the phone, sobbing and shrieking and cursing him, had left him cold. He looked at Aggie, who now had her arm covering her face, and wondered why he wasn’t disgusted.

He had wet a face cloth; he mopped her forehead and heard her sigh.

‘So I guess I should be thanking you,’ she said, without moving the hand that lay across her face.

‘You could try that,’ Luiz agreed.

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I watched you from the dining room. I wasn’t going to let you stay out there for longer than five minutes.’

‘Because, of course, you know best.’

‘Staggering in the dark in driving snow when you’ve had too much to drink isn’t a good idea in anyone’s eyes,’ Luiz said drily.

‘And I don’t suppose you’ll believe me when I tell you that this is the first time I’ve ever…ever…done this?’

‘I believe you.’

Aggie lowered her protective arm and looked at him. Her eyes felt sore, along with everything else, and she was relieved that the room was only lit by the small lamp on the bedside table.

‘You do?’

‘It’s my fault. I should have said no to that second bottle of wine. In fact, I was barely aware of it being brought.’ He shrugged. ‘These things happen.’

‘But I don’t suppose they ever happen to you,’ Aggie said with a weak smile. ‘I bet you don’t drink too much and stagger all over the place and then end up having to be helped up to bed like a baby.’

Luiz laughed. ‘No, can’t say I remember the last time that happened.’

‘And I bet you’ve never been in the company of a woman who’s done that.’

No one would dare behave like that in my presence, was what he could have said, except he was disturbed to find that that would have made him sound like a monster.

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘And now I’m going to go and get you some painkillers. You’re going to need them.’

Aggie yawned and looked at him drowsily. She had a sudden, sharp memory of how it had felt being carried by him. He had lifted her up as though she weighed nothing and his chest against her slight frame had been as hard as steel. He had smelled clean, masculine and woody.

‘Yes. Thank you,’ she said faintly. ‘And once again, I’m so sorry.’

‘Stop apologising.’ Luiz’s tone was abrupt. Was he really so controlling that women edited their personalities just to be with him; sipped their wine but left most of it and said no to dessert because they were afraid that he might pass judgement on them as being greedy or uncontrolled? He had broken off with Chloe and had offered her no explanation other than that she would be ‘better off without him’. Strictly speaking, true. But he knew that, in the face of her hysterics, he had been impatient, short-tempered and dismissive. He had always taken it as a given that women would go out of their way to please them, just as he had always taken it as a given that he led a life of moving on; that, however hard they tried, one day it would just be time for him to end it.

Aggie bristled at his obvious displeasure at her repeated apology. God, what must he think of her? The starting point of his opinions had been low enough, but they would be a hundred times lower now—except when the starting point was gold-digger, then how much lower could they get?

She was suddenly too tired to give it any more thought. She half-sat up when he approached with a glass of water. She obediently swallowed two tablets and was reassured that she would be right as rain in the morning. More or less.

‘Thanks,’ Aggie said glumly. ‘And please wake me up first thing.’

‘Of course.’ Luiz frowned, impatient at the sudden burst of unwelcome introspection which had left him questioning himself.

Aggie fell asleep with that frown imprinted on her brain. It was confusing that someone she didn’t care about should have any effect on her whatsoever, but he did.

She vaguely thought that things would be back to normal in the morning. She would dislike him. He would stop being three-dimensional and she would cease to be curious about him.

When she groggily came to, her head was thumping, her mouth tasted of cotton wool and Luiz was slumped in a chair he had pulled and positioned next to her bed. He was fully clothed.

For a few seconds, Aggie didn’t take it in, then she struggled up and nudged him.

‘What are you doing here?’

Belatedly she realised that, although the duvet was tucked around her, she was trouserless and jumperless; searing embarrassment flooded through her.

‘I couldn’t leave you in the state you were in.’ Luiz pressed his eyes with his fingers and then raked both hands through his tousled hair before looking at her.

‘I wasn’t in a state. I…yes…I was…sick but then I fell asleep.’

‘You were sick again,’ Luiz informed her. ‘And that’s not taking into account raging thirst and demands for more tablets.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Sadly, God wasn’t available, so it was up to me to find my way down to the kitchen for orange juice because you claimed that any more water would make you feel even more sick. I also had to deal with a half-asleep temper tantrum when I refused to double the dose of painkillers…’

Aggie looked at him in horror.

‘Then you said that you were hot.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You threw off the quilt and started undressing.’

Aggie groaned and covered her face with her hands.

‘But, gentleman that I am, I made sure you didn’t completely strip naked. I undressed you down to the basics and you fell back asleep.’

Luiz watched her small fingers curl around the quilt cover. He imagined she would be going through mental hell but she was too proud to let it show. Had he ever met anyone like her in his life before? He’d almost forgotten the reason she was with him. She seemed to have a talent for running circles round his formidable single-mindedness and it wasn’t just now that they had been thrown together. No, it had happened before. Some passing remark he might have made to which she had taken instant offence, dug her heels in and proceeded to argue with him until he’d forgotten the presence of other people.

‘Well…thank you for that. I…I’d like to get changed now.’ She addressed the wall and the dressing table in front of her, and heard him slap his thighs with his hands and stand up. ‘Did you manage to get any sleep at all?’

‘None to speak of,’ Luiz admitted.

‘You must be exhausted.’

‘I don’t need much sleep.’

‘Well, perhaps you should go and grab a few hours before we start on the last leg of this journey.’ It would be nice if the ground could do her a favour and open up and swallow her whole.

‘No point.’

Aggie looked at him in consternation. ‘What do you mean that there’s no point? It would be downright foolhardy for you to drive without sleep, and I can’t share any of the driving with you.’

‘We’ve covered that. There’s no point because it’s gone two-thirty in the afternoon, it’s already dark and the snow’s heavier.’ Luiz strode towards the window and pulled back the curtains to reveal never-ending skies the colour of lead, barely visible behind dense, relentlessly falling snow. ‘It would be madness to try and get anywhere further in weather like this. I’ve already booked the rooms for at least another night. Might be more.’

‘You can’t!’ Aggie sat up, dismayed. ‘I thought I’d be back at work on Monday! I can’t just disappear. This is the busiest time of the school year!’

‘Too bad,’ Luiz told her flatly. ‘You’re stuck. There’s no way I intend to turn around and try and get back to London. And, while you’re busy worrying about missing a few classes and the Nativity play, spare a thought for me. I didn’t think that I’d be covering half the country in driving snow in an attempt to rescue my niece before she does something stupid.’

‘Meaning that your job’s more important than mine?’ Aggie was more comfortable with this: an argument. Much more comfortable than she was with feverishly thinking about him undressing her, taking care of her, putting her to bed and playing the good guy. ‘Typical! Why is it that rich people always think that what they do is more important than what everyone else does?’ She glared at him as he stood by the door, impassively watching her.

For one blinding moment, it occurred to her that she was in danger of seeing beyond the obvious differences between them to the man underneath. If she could list all the things she disliked about him on paper, it would be easy to keep her distance and to fill the spaces between them with hostility and resentment. But to do that would be to fall into the trap of being as black-and-white in her opinions as she had accused him of being.

She paled and her heartbeat picked up in nervous confusion. Had he been working his charm on her from the very beginning? When he had drawn grudging laughs from her and held her reluctantly spellbound with stories of his experiences in foreign countries; when he had engaged her interest in politics and world affairs, while Maria and Mark had been loved up and whispering to each other, distracted by some shared joke they couldn’t possibly resist. Had she already begun to see beyond the cardboard cut-out she wanted him to be?

And, stuck together in a car with him, here in this bed and breakfast. Would an arrogant, pompous, single-minded creep really have helped her the way he had the night before, not laughing once at her inappropriate behaviour? Keeping watch over her even though it meant that he hadn’t got a wink of sleep? She had to drag out the recollection that he had offered her money in return for his niece; that he was going to offer her brother money to clear off; that liking or not liking someone was not something that mattered to him because he was like a juggernaut when it came to getting exactly what he wanted. He had loads of charm when it suited him, but underneath the charm he was ruthless, heartless and emotionless.

She felt a lot calmer once that message had got to her wayward, rebellious brain and imprinted itself there.

‘Well?’ she persisted scornfully, and Luiz raised his eyebrows wryly.

‘I take it you’re angling for a fight. Is this because you feel embarrassed about what happened last night? If it is, then there’s really no need. Like I said…these things happen.’

‘And, like you also said, you’ve never had this experience in your life before!’ Aggie thought that it would help things considerably if he didn’t look so damn gorgeous standing there, even though he hadn’t slept and should look a wreck. ‘You’ve never fallen down drunk, and I’ll bet that none of your girlfriends have either.’

‘You’re right. I haven’t and they haven’t.’

‘Is that because none of your girlfriends have ever had too much to drink?’

‘Maybe they have.’ Luiz shrugged. ‘But never in my presence. And, by the way, I don’t think that my job is any better or worse than yours. I have a very big deal on the cards which is due to close at the beginning of next week. A takeover. People’s jobs are relying on the closure of this deal, hence the reason why it’s as inconvenient for me to be delayed with this as it is for you.’

‘Oh,’ Aggie said, flustered.

‘So, if you need to get in touch with your school and ask them for a day or so off, then I’m sure it won’t be the end of the world. Now, I’m going to have a shower and head downstairs. Mrs Bixby might be able to rustle you up something to eat.’

He closed the door quietly behind him. At the mention of food, Aggie’s stomach had started to rumble, but she made sure not to rush her bath, to take her time washing her hair and using the drier which she found in a drawer in the bedroom. She needed to get her thoughts together. There was no doubt that the fast-falling snow would keep them in this town for another night. It wasn’t going to be a case of a few hours on the road and then, whatever the outcome, goodbye to Luiz Montes for ever.

She was going to have his company for longer than she had envisaged and she needed to take care not to fall into the trap of being seduced by his charm. It amazed her that common sense and logic didn’t seem to be enough to keep her mind on the straight and narrow.

Rooting through her depleted collection of clothes, she pulled out yet more jeans and a jumper under which she stuck on various layers, a vest, a long-sleeved thermal top, another vest over that…

Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she wondered whether it was possible to look frumpier. Her newly washed hair was uncontrollable, curling in an unruly tumble over her shoulders and down her back. She was bare of make-up because there seemed no point in applying any, and anyway she had only brought her mascara and some lip gloss with her. Her clothes were a dowdy mixture of blues and greys. Her only shoes were the boots she had been wearing because she hadn’t foreseen anything more extended than one night somewhere and a meal grabbed on the hop, but now she wished that she had packed a little bit more than a skeleton, functional wardrobe.

Luiz was on the phone when she joined him in the sitting room but he snapped shut the mobile and looked at her as she walked towards him.

With all those thick, drab clothes, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that she was shapeless. She wasn’t. He had known that from the times he had seen her out, usually wearing dresses in which she looked ill at ease and uncomfortable. But even those dresses had been designed to cover up. Only last night had he realised just how shapely she was, despite the slightness of her frame.

Startled, he felt the stirrings of an arousal at the memory and he abruptly turned away to beckon Mrs Bixby across for a pot of tea.

‘Not for me.’ Aggie declined the cup put in front of her. ‘I’ve decided that I’m going to go into town, get some fresh air.’

‘Fresh air. You seem to be cursed with a desire for fresh air. Isn’t that what got you outside last night?’

But she couldn’t get annoyed with him because his voice was lazy and teasing. ‘This time I’m not falling over myself. Like I told you, I enjoy snow. I wish it snowed more often in London.’

‘The city would grind to a standstill. If you’re heading out, then I think I’ll accompany you.’

Aggie tried to stifle the flutter of panic his suggestion generated. She needed to clear her mind. However much she lectured herself on all the reasons she had for hating him, there was a pernicious thread of stubbornness that just wanted to go its own merry way, reminding her of his sexiness, his intelligence, that unexpected display of consideration the night before. How was she to deal with that stubbornness if he didn’t give her a little bit of peace and privacy?

‘I actually intended on going on my own,’ she said in a polite let-down. ‘For a start, it would give you time to work. You always work. I remember you saying that to us once when your mobile phone rang for the third time over dinner and you took the call. Besides, if you have an important deal to close, then maybe you could get a head start on it.’

‘It’s Saturday. Besides, it would do me good to stretch my legs. Believe it or not, chairs don’t make the most comfortable places to sleep.’

‘You’re not going to let me forget that in a hurry, are you?’

‘Would you if you were in my shoes?’

Aggie had the grace to blush.

‘No,’ Luiz murmured. ‘Thought not. Well, at least you’re honest enough not to deny it.’ He stood up, towering over her while Aggie stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat and frantically tried to think of ways of dodging him.

And yet, disturbingly, wasn’t she just a little pleased that he would be with her? For good or bad, and she couldn’t decide which, her senses were heightened whenever he was around. Her heart beat faster, her skin tingled more, her pulse raced faster and every nerve ending in her seemed to vibrate.

Was that nature’s way of keeping her on her toes in the face of the enemy?

‘You’ll need to have something to eat,’ was the first thing he said when they were outside, where the brutal cold was like a stinging slap on the face. The snow falling and collecting on the already thick banks on the pavements turned the winter-wonderland scene into a nightmare of having to walk at a snail’s pace.

Her coat was not made for this depth of cold and she could feel herself shivering, while in his padded Barbour, fashioned for arctic conditions, he was doubtless as snug as a bug in a rug.

‘Stop telling me what to do.’

‘And stop being so damned mulish.’ Luiz looked down at her. She had rammed her woolly hat low down over her ears and she was cold. He could tell from the way she had hunched up and the way her hands were balled into fists in the pockets of the coat. ‘You’re cold.’

‘It’s a cold day. I like it. It felt stuffy inside.’

‘I mean, your coat is inadequate. You need something warmer.’

‘You’re doing it again.’ Aggie looked up at him and her breath caught in her throat as their eyes tangled and he didn’t look away. ‘Behaving,’ she said a little breathlessly, ‘as though you have all the answers to everything.’ She was dismayed to find that, although she was saying the right thing, it was as if she was simply going through the motions while her body was responding in a different manner. ‘I’ve been meaning to buy another coat, but there’s hardly ever any need for it in London.’

‘You can buy one here.’

‘It’s a bad time of the year for me,’ Aggie muttered. ‘Christmas always is.’ She eyed the small town approaching with some relief. ‘We exchange presents at school…then there’s the tree and the food…it all adds up. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

Aggie hesitated. She wasn’t used to confiding. She just wasn’t built that way and she especially couldn’t see the point in confiding in someone like Luiz Montes, a man who had placed her in an impossible situation, who was merciless in pursuit, who probably didn’t have a sympathetic bone in his body.

Except, a little voice said in her head, he took care of you last night, didn’t he? Without a hint of impatience or rancour.

‘When you grow up in a children’s home,’ she heard herself say, ‘even in a great children’s home like the one I grew up in, you don’t really have any money. Ever. And you don’t get brand-new things given to you. Well, not often. On birthdays and at Christmas, Betsy and Gordon did their best to make sure that we all had something new, but most of the time you just make do. Most of my clothes had been worn by someone else before. The toys were all shared. You get into the habit of being very careful with the small amounts of money you get given or earn by doing chores. I still have that habit. We both do. You’ll think it silly, but I’ve had this coat since I was seventeen. It only occurs to me now and again that I should replace it.’

Luiz thought of the women he had wined and dined over the years. He had never hesitated in spending money on them. None of those relationships might have lasted, but all the women had certainly profited financially from them: jewellery, fur coats, in one instance a car. The memory of it repulsed him.

‘That must have been very limiting, being a teenager and not being able to keep up with the latest fashion.’

‘You get used to it.’ Aggie shrugged. ‘Life could have been a lot worse. Look, there’s a café. You’re right. I should have something to eat. I’m ravenous.’ It also felt a little weird to be having this conversation with him.

‘You’re changing the subject,’ he drawled as they began mingling with the shoppers who were out in numbers, undeterred by the snow. ‘Is that something else you picked up growing up in a children’s home?’

‘I don’t want to be cross-examined by you.’ They were inside the café which was small and warm and busy, but there were spare seats and they grabbed two towards the back. When Aggie removed her gloves, her fingers were pink with cold and she had to keep the coat on for a little longer, just until she warmed up, while two waitresses gravitated, goggle-eyed, to Luiz and towards their table to take their order.

‘I could eat everything on the menu.’ Aggie sighed, settling for a chicken baguette and a very large coffee. ‘That’s what having too much to drink does for a girl. I can’t apologise enough.’

‘And I can’t tell you how tedious it is hearing you continually apologise,’ Luiz replied irritably. He glanced around him and sprawled back in the chair. ‘I thought women enjoyed nothing more than talking about themselves.’

Aggie shot him a jaundiced look and sat back while her baguette, stuffed to bursting, was placed in front of her. Luiz was having nothing; it should have been a little embarrassing, diving into a foot-long baguette while he watched her eat, but she didn’t care. Her stomach was rumbling with hunger. And stranded in awful conditions away from her home turf was having a lowering effect on her defences.

‘I’ll bet that really gets on your nerves,’ Aggie said between mouthfuls, and Luiz had the grace to flush.

‘I tend to go out with women whose conversations fall a little short of riveting.’

‘Then why do you go out with them? Oh yes, I forgot. Because of the way they look.’ She licked some tarragon mayonnaise from her finger and dipped her eyes, missing the way he watched, with apparent fascination, that small, unconsciously sensual gesture. Also missing the way he sat forward and shifted awkwardly in the chair. ‘Why do you bother to go out with women if they’re boring? Don’t you want to settle down and get married? Would you marry someone who bored you?’

Luiz frowned. ‘I’m a busy man. I don’t have the time to complicate my life with a relationship.’

‘Relationships don’t have to complicate lives. Actually, I thought they were supposed to make life easier and more enjoyable. This baguette is delicious; thank you for getting it for me. I suppose we should discuss my contribution to this…this…’

‘Why? You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.’

He drummed his fingers on the table and continued to look at her. Her hair kept falling across her face as she leant forward to eat the baguette and, as fast as it fell, she tucked it behind her ear. There were crumbs by her mouth and she licked them off as delicately as a cat.

‘True.’ Aggie sat back, pleasantly full having demolished the baguette, and she sipped some of her coffee, holding the mug between both her hands. ‘So.’ She tossed him a challenging look. ‘I guess your parents must want you to get married. At least, that’s…’

‘At least that’s what?’

‘None of my business.’

‘Just say what you were going to say, Aggie. I’ve seen you half-undressed and ordering me to fetch you orange juice. It’s fair to say that we’ve gone past the usual pleasantries.’

‘Maria may have mentioned that everyone’s waiting for you to tie the knot.’ Aggie stuck her chin up defiantly because if he could pry into her life, whatever his reasons, then why shouldn’t she pry into his?

‘That’s absurd!’

‘We don’t have to talk about this.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about!’ But wasn’t that why he found living in London preferable to returning to Brazil—because his mother had a talent for cornering him and pestering him about his private life? He loved his mother very much, but after three futile attempts to match-make him with the daughters of family friends he had had to draw her to one side and tell her that she was wasting her time.

‘My parents have their grandchildren, thanks to three of my sisters, and that’s just as well, as I have no intention of tying any knots any time soon.’ He waited for her response and frowned when none was forthcoming. ‘In our family,’ he said abruptly, ‘the onus of running the business, expanding it, taking it out of Brazil and into the rest of the world, fell on my shoulders. That’s just the way it is. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for pandering to a woman’s needs. Aside from the physical.’ He elaborated with a sudden, wolfish smile.

Aggie didn’t smile back. It didn’t sound like that great a trade-off to her. Yes, lots of power, status, influence and money, but if you didn’t have time to enjoy any of that with someone you cared about then what was the point?

She suddenly saw a man whose life had been prescribed from birth. He had inherited an empire and he had never had any choice but to submit to his responsibility. Which, she conceded, wasn’t to say that he didn’t enjoy what he did. But she imagined that being stuck up there at the very top, where everyone else’s hopes and dreams rested on your shoulders, might become a lonely and isolated place.

‘Spare me the look of sympathy.’ Luiz scowled and looked around for a waitress to bring the bill.

‘So what happens when you marry?’ she asked in genuine bewilderment, even though she was sensing that the conversation was not one he had any particular desire to continue. In fact, judging from the dark expression on his face, she suspected that he might be annoyed with himself for having said more than he wanted to.

‘I have no idea what you mean by that.’

‘Will you give over the running of your…er…company to someone else?’

‘Why would I do that? It’s a family business. No one outside the family will ever have direct control.’

‘You’re not going to have much time to be a husband, in that case. I mean, if you carry on working all the hours God made.’

‘You talk too much.’ The bill had arrived. He paid it, leaving a massive tip, and didn’t take his eyes from Aggie’s face.

She, in turn, could feel her temples begin to throb and her head begin to swim. His eyes drifted down to her full mouth, taking in the perfect, delicate arrangement of her features. Yes, he had looked at her before, had sized her up the first time they had met. But had he looked at her in the past like this? There was a powerful, sexual element to his lazy perusal of her face. Or was she imagining it? Was it just his way of avoiding the conversation?

Her breasts were tingling and her thoughts were in turmoil. Aside from the obvious reasons, this man was not her type at all. She might appreciate his spectacular good looks in a detached way but on every other level she had never had time for men who belonged to the striped-suit brigade, whose raison d’être was to live and die for the sake of work. She liked them carefree and unconventional and creative, so why had her body reacted like that just then—with the unwelcome frisson of a teenager getting randy on her first date with the guy of her dreams? God, even worse, was it the first time she had reacted like that? Or had she contrived to ignore all those tell-tale signs of a woman looking at a man and imagining?

‘Yes. You’re right. I do.’ Her breathing was shallow, her pupils dilated.

On a subliminal level, Luiz registered these reactions. He was intensely physical, and if he didn’t engage in soul searching relationships with women he made up for that in his capacity to read them and just know when they were affected by him.

Usually, it was a simple game with a foregone conclusion, and the women who ended up in his bed were women who understood the rules of the game. He played fair, as far as he was concerned. He never promised anything, but he was a lavish and generous lover.

So what, he wondered, was this all about? What the hell was going on?

She was standing up, brushing some crumbs off her jumper and slinging back on the worn, too-thin coat, pulling the woolly hat low down on her head, wriggling her fingers into her gloves. She wasn’t looking at him. In fact, she was doing a good job of making sure that she didn’t look at him.

Like a predator suddenly on the alert, Luiz could feel something inside him shift gear. He fell in beside her once they were outside and Aggie, nervous for no apparent reason, did what she always did when she was nervous. She began talking, barely pausing to draw breath. She admired the Christmas lights a little too enthusiastically and paused to stand in front of the first shop they came to, apparently lost in wonder at the splendid display of household items and hardware appliances. Her heart was thumping so hard that she was finding it difficult to hold on to her thoughts.

How had they ended up having such an intensely personal conversation? When had she stopped keeping him at a distance? Why had it become so easy to forget all the things she should be hating about him? Was that the power of lust? Did it turn your world on its head and make you lose track of everything that was sensible?

Just admitting to being attracted to him made her feel giddy, and when he told her that they should be getting back because she looked a little white she quickly agreed.

Suddenly this trip seemed a lot more dangerous than it had done before. It was no longer a case of trying to avoid constant sniping. It was a case of trying to maintain it.