Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 62

COME on, come on! With a frustration born out of fear, Isabella jammed her thumb on the doorbell one last time and let it ring and ring, long enough to wake the dead—and certainly long enough to rouse the occupant of the elegant London townhouse. Just in case he hadn’t heard her the first time round.

But there was nothing other than the sound of the bell echoing and her hand fell to her side as she forced herself to accept the unthinkable. That he wasn’t there. That she would have to make a return journey—if she could summon up the courage to come here for a second time.

And then the door was flung open with a force of a powerhouse—and one very angry man stood looking down at her, his crisp dark head still damp and shining from the shower. Tiny droplets of water sparkled among the brown-black waves of his hair. Lit from behind, it almost looked as though he were wearing a halo—though the expression on his face was about as unangelic as you could get.

His black eyes glittered with irritation at this unwelcome intrusion and Isabella felt her heart begin to race. Because even in her current nerve-jangled state of crisis his physical impact was like a shock to the senses.

He was wearing nothing but a deep blue towel which was slung low around narrow olive hips and came to midway down a pair of impressively muscled thighs. Half of his chin was covered with shaving foam and in his hand he held an old-fashioned cut-throat razor which glinted silver beneath the gleam of the chandelier overhead.

Isabella swallowed. She had seen his magnificent body in swimming trunks many, many times—but never quite so intimately naked.

‘Yes?’ he snapped, in an accent which did not match the Brazilian ancestry of his looks and a tone which suggested that he was not the kind of man to tolerate interruption. ‘Where’s the fire?’

‘Hello, Paulo,’ she said quietly.

For the split second before his brain started making sense of the information it was receiving, Paulo stared impatiently at the woman who was standing on his doorstep looking up at him with such wary expectation in her eyes.

He ignored the sensual, subliminal messages which her sultry beauty was hot-wiring to his body, because his overriding impression was how ridiculously exotic she looked.

She wore a brand-new raincoat which came right down to a pair of slender ankles, so that only her face was on show. A face covered with droplets of rain from the summer shower, her dark hair plastered to her head. Huge, golden-brown eyes—like lumps of old and expensive amber—were fringed with the longest, blackest lashes he had ever seen. Her lips were lush, and unpainted. And trembling, he thought with a sudden frown. Trembling…

She looked like a lost and beautiful waif, and a warning bell clanged deep within the recesses of his mind. He knew her, and yet somehow he also knew that she shouldn’t be here.

Wrong place. Definitely.

‘Hello,’ he murmured, while his mind raced ahead to slot her into her rightful place.

‘Why, Paulo,’ she said softly, thinking for one unimaginable moment that he actually didn’t recognise her. ‘I wrote and told you that I was coming—didn’t you get my letter?’

The moment she spoke a complete sentence, the facts fell into place. Her accent matched her dark, Latin looks—although her English was as fluent as his. The almond-shaped eyes set in a skin which was the seamless colour of cappuccino. The quiet gleam of black hair which lay plastered against her skull by the rain.

The last time he had seen her, she had been standing illuminated by the brilliant sunshine of a South American day. Her silk shirt had been stretched with outrageous provocation over her ripe, young breasts and there had been the dark stain of sweat beneath her arms. He had wanted her in that moment. And maybe before that, too.

Resolutely he pushed that particular thought away, even as his eyes began to soften with affection. No wonder he hadn’t recognised her, against the grey and teaming backdrop of an English summer day, looking cold and hunched. And dejected.

‘Isabella! Meu Deus! I can’t believe it!’ he exclaimed, and he leaned forward to kiss her on each cheek. The normal and formal Latin American greeting, but rather bizarre and unsettling—considering that he was wearing next to nothing. He noticed that although she offered him each cool cheek, she shrank away from any contact with his bare skin. And he offered up a silent prayer of thanks.

‘Come in,’ he urged. ‘Are you on your own?’

‘M-my own?’

He frowned. ‘Is your father here with you?’

Isabella swallowed. ‘No. No, he’s not.’

He opened the door wider and she stepped inside.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ he demanded. ‘This is so—’

‘Unexpected?’ she put in quickly. ‘Yes, I know it is.’ She nodded her head in rapid agreement—but then she was prepared to agree to almost anything if he would only help her. She didn’t know how—she just knew that Paulo Dantas was the kind of man who could cope with anything that life threw at him. ‘But you got my letter, didn’t you?’ she asked.

He nodded thoughtfully. It had been an oddly disjointed letter mentioning that she might be coming to England sometime soon. But he had thought of soon in terms of years. He certainly wasn’t expecting her now, not yet—when she was still at university. ‘Yeah, I got your letter. But that was a couple of months back.’

She had written it the day she had found out for sure. The day she realised the trouble she was in. ‘I shouldn’t have just burst in on you like this. I tried ringing, but the line was engaged and so I knew you were here and I…I…’

Her voice faded away, unsure where to go from here. In her mind she had practised what she was going to say over and over again, but the disturbing sight of a near-naked Paulo had startled her, and the carefully rehearsed words were stubbornly refusing to come. Not, she thought grimly, that it was the kind of thing you could just blurt out on somebody’s doorstep.

‘I thought it might be nice to surprise you,’ she finished lamely.

‘Well, you’ve certainly done that.’

But Isabella saw his sudden swift, assessing frown. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve come at an awkward time—’

‘Well, I can’t deny that I was busy—’ he murmured, as the hand which wasn’t holding the razor strayed down to touch the towel at his hips, as if checking that the knot remained secure. ‘But I can dress and shave in a couple of minutes.’

‘Or I could come back later?’

‘What, send you away when you’ve travelled thousands of miles?’ He shook his crisp, dark head. ‘No, no! I’m intrigued to discover what brings Isabella Fernandes to England in such dramatic style.’

Isabella paled, as she tried to imagine what his reaction would be when she told him her momentous piece of news. But there was one more obstacle to overcome before she dared accept his offer of hospitality. What she had to tell him was for his ears alone. ‘Is Eduardo here?’

And some sort of transformation occurred. A face which was fundamentally hard and uncompromising underwent a dramatic softening, and a smile of pure pleasure lifted the corners of his mouth—making him look even more outrageously handsome than he had done before.

‘Eduardo? Unfortunately, no.’ The mouth curved into heart-stopping grin. ‘Ten-year-old boys prefer to play football with their friends rather than keep their father company—and my son is no exception. He won’t be back until later. A—’ Inexplicably, he hesitated. ‘A friend of mine is bringing him home.’

‘Oh.’ The word came out with just the right amount of disappointment, but Isabella wondered if the relief showed on her face. She also wondered who the friend was, as she quickly wiped a raindrop off her cheek.

Paulo watched the jerky little movement of her hand. She seemed nervous, he thought. Excessively nervous. Not a quality he had ever associated with Isabella. She could outshoot most men—and ride a horse with more grace than he had ever seen in another human being. He had watched her grow from child to woman—in the condensed, snap-shot way you did when you only saw someone once a year.

‘You’ll see him later. Come on—take off that wet raincoat. You’re shivering.’

She was shivering for a variety of reasons—and coldness was the least of them.

‘Th-thank you.’ She stood blinking beneath the glow of the artificial light which danced overhead, frozen by the strangeness of this new environment. And the fact that Paolo was standing next to her, still wearing next to nothing, a faint drift of lemon about him—as indolently at ease with his semi-naked state as if he had been wearing a three-piece suit.

With numb fingers, she began fumbling with the buttons of her coat and Paulo felt the strongest urge to unbutton it for her, as you would a child—except that the first lush glimpse of her T-shirted breasts reinforced the fact that she was anything but a child. And that if he didn’t put some decent clothes on in a minute…

‘I can’t believe you didn’t buy an umbrella, Bella?’ he teased, in an attempt to divert his uncomfortable thoughts. ‘Did nobody tell you that in England it rains and rains? And then it rains some more—even in summer!’

‘I thought I’d buy one when I got here, and then I…well, I forgot,’ she finished lamely, although an umbrella had been the very last thing on her mind. She had spent weeks and weeks just wearing her father down. Telling him that it was her life and her decision. And that lots of people of her age dropped out of university. She had told him that it wasn’t the end of the world, but the look on his face had told her otherwise. Isabella shivered. And he didn’t the know the half of it.

He felt the slight tremor in her body as he tugged the cuff of her jacket over her wrist and hung the garment on a peg above a radiator. ‘There. You’re dry underneath. Come into the sitting room.’

Reaction set in. He was letting her stay. Her teeth started to chatter but she clamped them shut. ‘Thank you.’

‘Need a towel for your hair?’ he asked, shooting her a quick glance. ‘Or maybe borrow a sweater?’

‘No. Honestly. I’ll be fine.’ But she didn’t feel fine. Her limbs felt stiff and icy as he led her along a wide, deep hallway and into a large, high-ceilinged room, its cool, classic lines made warmly informal by the pulsating colours he had chosen.

Isabella looked around her. It was a very Latino colour scheme.

The walls were painted a rich, burnt orange colour and deepest red and covered with vibrant pictures—there was one she instantly recognised as the work of an up-and-coming Brazilian painter. Two giant sofas were strewn with scatter cushions and a low table contained magazines and papers and a book about football. Dotted around the place were photographs of a young boy in various stages of growing up—Paulo’s son—and a black and white studio portrait of a cool, beautiful blonde, her pale shining hair held close to a little baby. And that, Isabella knew, was Elizabeth—Paulo’s wife.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he instructed, ‘while I get dressed and then I’ll make you some coffee—how does that sound?’

‘Coffee would be lovely,’ she replied automatically.

Paulo went back upstairs and into the bathroom to finish shaving and frowned at himself in the mirror. Something was different about her. Something. And not just that she’d put on a little weight. Something had changed. Something indefinable…And it was something more than the dramatic sexual flowering he had noticed a few short months ago. He moved the blade swiftly over the curved line of his jaw.

He had known her for ever. Their fathers had been friends—and the friendship had survived separation when Paulo’s father had eventually settled in England, the home of his new wife. Paulo had been born in Brazil, but had been brought to live in London at the age of six and his father had insisted he make an annual pilgrimage back to his homeland. It was a pilgrimage Paulo had carried on after the deaths of his parents and the birth of his own son.

Every year, just before Carnival erupted in a blaze of colour, he and Eduardo would travel to the Fernandes ranch for a couple of weeks and Paulo had seen Isabella grow up before his eyes.

He had watched with interest as the little girl had blossomed to embrace the whole spectrum of teenage behaviour. She had been stubborn and sassy and sulky, like all teenage girls. By seventeen she had begun to develop a soft, voluptuous beauty all of her own, but at seventeen she had still seemed so young. Certainly to him. Even at eighteen and nineteen she had seemed a different generation to a man who was, after all, a decade older, already widowed and with a young son of his own.

But something had happened to Isabella in her twentieth year. In the blinking of an eye, her sexuality had exploded into vibrant, throbbing life and Paulo had been touched by it; his senses had been scorched by it.

He had lifted her down from her horse and there had been a split-second of suspended movement as he held her in his arms. He had felt the indentation of her waist and the dampness of her shirt as it clung to her sweat-sheened skin. Their laughter had stilled and he had seen the suddening darkening of her pupils as she had looked into his eyes with a hunger which had matched his own.

Desire. Potent as any drug.

And his conscience had made him want no part of it.

He removed the towel from his hips, staring down at himself with flushed disbelief as he observed the first stirring of arousal. He scowled. Because that was the whole damned trouble with sexual attraction—once you’d felt it, you could never go back to how it was before. His easy, innocent relationship with Isabella had been annihilated in that one brief flash of desire. That was what was different.

His mouth twisted as he crumpled up the towel and hurled it with vicious accuracy into the linen basket, then gingerly stepped into a pair of silken boxer shorts.

Isabella wandered distractedly around the sitting room, going over in her head what she was going to say to him, forcing herself to be strong because only her strength would sustain her through this. ‘Paulo, I’m…’

No, she couldn’t come straight out with it. She would have to lead in with a casual yet suitably serious statement. No matter that deep down she felt like howling her heart out with shock and disbelief…because indulging her feelings at the moment would benefit no one. ‘Paulo, I need your help…’

She heard the jangle of cups and looked up, relieved to find that he had covered up with a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. On his chin sat a tiny, glistening bead of scarlet and it drew her attention like a magnet.

He saw the amber brilliance of her eyes as she stared at him and felt the dull pounding of his heart in response. ‘What is it?’ he asked huskily.

‘You’ve cut yourself,’ she whispered, and the bright sight of his blood seemed like a portent of what was to come.

Paulo frowned, lifting a fingertip to his chin. ‘Where?’

‘To the right. Yes. There.’

The finger brushed against the newly shaven surface and drew it away; he looked at it with a frown. Had his hand been shaking? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cut his face. ‘Right,’ he said, absently licking the finger with a gesture which was unintentionally erotic. ‘Coffee.’

She tried for the light touch but it wasn’t easy when all the time she felt the weight of the great burden she carried. ‘I haven’t had a decent cup since I left home.’

‘I can imagine.’ He smiled.

She watched as he slid onto the sofa, moving with the inborn grace of an alley cat. Back home they always called him gato, and it was easy to understand why. The word in Portuguese meant ‘cat’ but it also meant a sexy and beautiful man—and no one in the world could deny that Paulo Dantas was just that.

Tall, dark and statuesque, he was a matchless mix of English mother and Brazilian father. His was a spectacular face, with an arrogant sweep of cheekbones which could have been sculpted from some gold-tinted stone and hooded eyes more black than brown. The luscious mouth hinted at a deeply sensual nature, its starkly defined curves making it look as if it had been created to inflict both pleasure and pain in equal measures.

She took the coffee that he offered her with a hand which was threatening to tremble. ‘Thank you.’

This was crazy, thought Paulo, as he observed her unfamiliar, frozen smile and her self-conscious movements. It was like being in a room with a stranger. What the hell had happened to her? ‘How is your father?’ he enquired politely.

‘He—he’s very well, thank you.’ She tried to lift the coffee cup to her lips but now her fingers were shaking so much that she was obliged to put it down with a clatter. ‘He says to say hello to you.’

‘Say hello back,’ he said evenly, but it was difficult to concentrate when that shaky movement made the lush curves of her body move so uninhibitedly beneath the T-shirt.

Isabella wondered if she was going mad with imagining, or had his gaze just flickered over her breasts? She wondered how much he had seen—and Paulo was an astute man, no one could deny that. Had he begun to guess at her secret already? Unobstrusively she glanced down at herself.

No, she was safe. The hot-pink T-shirt was relatively loose and the matching jeans were far from skin-tight. Nothing clung to the contours of her body. And besides, there was no visible bump yet. Nothing to show that there was a baby on the way, bar the aching new fullness of her breasts and the sudden nausea which could strike her at any time. And frequently did.

She tried a smile, but felt it wobble on her lips. ‘I expect you’re wondering why I’m here.’

At last! ‘Well, the thought had crossed my mind,’ he said, managing to turn curiosity into a teasing little comment. ‘People don’t just turn up from Brazil unannounced—not as a rule. Not without phoning first. And it’s a pretty long way from Vitoria da Conquista.’

Isabella turned her head to glance out of the uncur-tained window into the rain-lashed sky. It certainly was. Back home the temperature would be as warm as kisses, the land caressed by a soft and sultry breeze.

‘And shouldn’t you be at college? It’s still term-time, isn’t it?’

She started to tell the story, though not the whole story. Not yet. ‘Actually, I’ve dropped out of college.’

His body shifted imperceptibly from relaxed to watchful. ‘Why?’ he drawled coldly. ‘Is that what every fashionable student is doing this year?’

She didn’t like the way his mouth had flattened, nor the chilly displeasure in his eyes. ‘No, not exactly.’

‘Then why?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you know how important qualifications are in an insecure world? What are you planning to do that’s so important that it can’t wait until the end of your course?’

She opened her mouth to tell him about her dreams of travelling, of seeing a world outside the one she had grown up in—and then she remembered, and hastily shut it again. Because that would never happen now. She had forfeited her right to do any of that. ‘I had to…get away.’

Paulo frowned. Her anxiety was almost palpable, and he leaned forward to study her, finding his nostrils suddenly filled with the warm, musky note of her perfume. He moved out of its seductive and dangerous range. ‘What’s the matter with you, Bella?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s happened?’

Now was the time to tell him everything. But one look at the disquiet on his face, and the words stuck in her throat. ‘Nothing has happened,’ she floundered. ‘Other than the fact I’ve left.’

‘So you said.’ He felt another flicker of irritation and made sure that it showed. ‘But you still haven’t come up with a good reason why—’ A pause, while the black eyes bored into her. ‘Mainly, I suspect, because you don’t have one.’ Normally, he wouldn’t have been so rude to her—but then this was not a normal situation. ‘So, Isabella,’ he said silkily. ‘I’m still waiting for some kind of explanation.’

Tell him. But, faced with the iron disapproval in the black eyes, she found that her nerve had crumbled again. ‘I was bored.’

‘You were bored.’ He tapped the arm of his hair with a furious finger.

‘OK, stressed then.’

‘Stressed?’ He looked at her with disbelief. ‘What the hell has a beautiful young woman of twenty got to be stressed about? Is it a man?’

‘No. There is no man.’ And that was the truth.

‘For God’s sake, Bella—it isn’t like you to be so fickle! I can’t believe that an intelligent girl—woman—’ he corrected immediately and a pulse began a slow, rhythmical dance at his temple, ‘like you should throw everything away because you’re “bored’! So what? Stick it out for a few months more—because believe me, querida,’ he added grimly, ‘There’s nothing quite so “boring” as a dead-end job—which is all you’ll get if you drop out of college!’

And suddenly she knew that she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Not in ten minutes’ time—maybe not ever. How could she risk the contempt which would follow as surely as night followed day? Not from Paulo, whom she’d adored as long as she could remember.

‘I wasn’t looking for your approval,’ she said woodenly.

‘You don’t seem to be looking further than the end of your nose!’ he snapped. ‘And just how are you planning to support yourself? Expecting Daddy to chip in, I suppose?’

She glared at him. ‘Of course not! I’ll take whatever I can get—I’m young and fit. I can cook. I’m good with children. Fluent in English and Portuguese.’

‘A very commendable CV,’ he remarked drily.

‘So you’d recommend me for a job, would you, Paulo?’

‘No, I damned well wouldn’t!’ His voice deepened into a husky caress. ‘But I would do everything in my power to make you change your mind.’ There was a pause, and then he spoke to her with the ease and affection which had always existed between them, until temptation had reared its ugly head.

‘Go home, Bella. Complete your studies. Come back in a couple of years.’ His eyes glittered as he imagined what two years would do to her. ‘And then I’ll find a job for you—on that I give you my word.’

She glanced down at her hands, unable to meet his eyes as his voice gentled. In a couple of years her world would have altered out of all recognition, in a way that she still found utterly unimaginable. ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ she lied.

‘So you’ll go back to college?’

‘I’ll…think about it.’ She made a pantomime of looking at her watch, affecting a look of surprise. ‘Oh, look—it’s time I was going.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he protested. ‘You’ve only just arrived. Stay and see Eddie—he’ll be back soon.’

‘No, I don’t think I will.’ She rose to her feet, anxious now to get away. Before he guessed. ‘Maybe another day.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Just down the road,’ she said evasively.

‘Where?’

‘At the Merton.’

‘At the Merton,’ he repeated thoughtfully.

He walked her to the front door just as they heard the sound of a key being slotted into the lock, and for some reason Paulo felt extraordinarily guilty as the door opened and there stood Judy—so cool and so blonde, wearing something soft and clinging in pale-blue cashmere, and a faint look of irritation on her face. Next to her stood his son, and the moment the boy saw Isabella his dark eyes lit up like lanterns.

‘Bella!’ he exclaimed, and immediately started speaking in Portuguese as he hurled himself into her arms. ‘What are you doing here? Papa didn’t tell me you were coming!’

‘That’s because Papa didn’t know himself,’ said Paulo, in the same language. ‘Bella just turned up unannounced while you were out!’

‘Are you coming to stay with us?’ demanded Eddie. ‘Please, Bella! Please!’

‘Eduardo, I can’t,’ answered Bella, her smile one of genuine regret. She had bonded with Eduardo from the word go—maybe because they had both had motherless childhoods. She had helped him with his riding and with his Portuguese and seen him grow from toddlerhood to a healthy young boy. And before very long, he would be towering above her as much as his father did. ‘I’m going to be travelling around. I want to see as much of the country as I can.’

‘Is this a private conversation,’ asked the woman in blue, ‘or can anyone join in?’

Paulo gave an apologetic smile and immediately switched to English. ‘Judy! Forgive me! This is Isabella Fernandes. She’s visiting England from Brazil. Isabella, this is Judy Jacob. She’s—’

‘I’m his girlfriend,’ put in Judy helpfully.

Isabella prayed that her smile wouldn’t crumple. ‘Hello. It’s nice to meet you.’

Paulo shot Judy a look which demanded co-operation. ‘Isabella is a very old friend of the family—’

‘Not that old,’ corrected Judy softly, as she chose to ignore his silent request. ‘In fact, she looks incredibly young to me.’

‘Our fathers were at school together,’ explained Paulo smoothly. ‘And I’ve known Isabella all my life.’

‘How very sweet.’ Judy flashed a brief smile at Isabella and then leaned forward to plant a light kiss on Paulo’s lips. ‘Well, I hate to break the party up, sweetheart, but the show starts at—’

‘And I really must go,’ said Isabella hastily, because the sight of that proprietorial kiss was making her feel ill. ‘Goodbye, Paulo. Goodbye, Judy—nice to have met you.’ Her voice barely faltered over the insincere words. ‘Goodbye, Eduardo.’ She ruffled the boy’s dark head and smiled down at him.

‘But when will we see you?’ Eduardo demanded.

‘Oh, I’ll be in touch,’ she lied, but as she looked into the black glitter of Paulo’s eyes she suspected that he knew as well as she did that she would not come back again. Because there was no place for her in his life here. No convenient slot she could fill—pregnant or otherwise. And if there had been the tiniest, most pathetic hope that she meant something more to him than just friendship…Well, that hope had been extinguished by a girlfriend who was the image of his late wife. A girlfriend who called him ‘sweetheart’ and who owned a key to his flat.

But then, what had she honestly expected? That she could turn up unannounced and tell him she’d run away from home—pregnant and alone—and that he would give that slow, lazy smile and solve all her problems for her?

She didn’t stop for the traditional kissing of the cheeks—she didn’t want to annoy Judy more than she already seemed to have done. Instead, she wrapped her coat tightly around her as she stepped out into the early evening and wondered just where she went from here.