Читать книгу The Spanish Groom - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 7

‘DIO MIO…’ César raised a winging ebony brow to challenge Dixie’s stricken expression. ‘Didn’t you read that printout I gave you either? The interior designer, Leticia Zane, has instigated proceedings. Did you expect her to be sympathetic towards a client who took advantage of her services without the slightest hope of being able to pay for them?’

Numbly, Dixie shook her pounding head, her stomach curdling. ‘But I haven’t got any more money to give Miss Zane…I’ve already offered instalments.’

César Valverde shifted a broad shoulder in an unfeeling shrug. ‘The lady may well have decided to make a public spectacle of you to deter other clients who are reluctant to settle up. You’re a good choice—’

‘A good choice?’ Dixie parroted, scarcely believing her ears.

‘You don’t have socially prominent friends likely to take offence on your behalf and damage her business prospects.’

‘But…but a court prosecution.’ Dixie squeezed out those words, breathless with horror, utterly appalled by what he was spelling out to her. Her own naivety hit her hard. She stared down at the printout, belatedly reading the small type beneath the debt to Leticia Zane’s firm. ‘Prosecution pending’, it said. Her blood ran cold with fear and incredulity. The interior designer knew very well that all the work on her sister’s apartment had been done at Petra’s behest. Dixie had merely been the mouthpiece who’d passed on the instructions.

‘Delusions of grandeur have a price, like everything else,’ César Valverde sighed.

‘I can’t think straight,’ Dixie mumbled sickly.

‘Sharpen up. I haven’t got all day to wait for an answer that is already staring you in the face,’ César breathed with callous cool.

Dixie gave him a speaking glance from tear-filled eyes and fumbled with the crushed tissue still clutched between her shaking fingers. ‘I just couldn’t deceive Jasper like that, Mr Valverde. I couldn’t live with lying to him. It would be absolutely wrong!’

‘You’re being selfish and shortsighted,’ César drawled crushingly, dealing her a look of hostile reproach. ‘Getting engaged to you is the one thing that I can do to make Jasper happy. What right have you to say that it would be wrong or immoral?’

‘Lies are always wrong!’ Dixie sobbed helplessly, and turned away from him in embarrassment.

‘Jasper won’t ever know it was a lie. He’ll be delighted. I plan to leave you with him in Spain for a few weeks…assuming he’s well enough for me to leave, even temporarily,’ César adjusted flatly.

‘I couldn’t…I just couldn’t!’ Dixie gasped strickenly, already plotting a weaving path towards the door, barely able to see through her falling tears but determined not to be swayed by his specious arguments. ‘And it’s wicked of you to call me selfish. How can you do that?’

‘For Jasper’s sake…easily. I’ll call on you tonight to get your final answer. I think you’ll have seen sense by then.’

Dixie hauled open the door with a trembling hand and shot him an angry, accusing glance. ‘Go to hell!’ she launched thickly as she walked out.

Only as she shut the door behind her did she notice the little gathering of staff standing with dropped jaws further down the corridor.

‘Are you OK, Dixie?’ Bruce Gregory enquired kindly.

One of the directors put his arm round her in a very paternal way to walk her away. ‘We’ll get you sorted out with a job some place else.’

‘Not in a bank,’ someone whispered ruefully.

‘Ever thought of cooking for a living?’ another voice asked brightly. ‘You’re a great cook.’

‘A restaurant kitchen could be very stressful, though.’

‘And I drop things,’ Dixie muttered, a sense of being a total failure creeping over her.

‘Imagine you telling César to go to hell!’ the director remarked bracingly.

‘But he’ll never let Human Resources give her a decent reference now,’ Bruce groaned as the older man slotted her into a seat in the office she shared with a couple of the secretaries. Just about everybody on the whole floor seemed to crowd around her then.

‘He tried to blackmail me,’ Dixie mumbled sickly.

‘Say that again…’ someone breathed.

Dixie reddened, and then turned very pale with fright at what she had almost revealed in her distress and buttoned her mouth. ‘Don’t mind me…I don’t know what I’m s-saying,’ she stammered fearfully.

And she registered then that her brain was in a state of complete flux. What César Valverde had suggested already seemed completely unreal, a figment of her own fevered imagination. A fake engagement to please Jasper? A fantasy slim Dixie Mark Two, united even in pretence with César’s icy sophistication? Did blue moons come up in pairs?

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do for a laugh around here now,’ someone lamented.

‘You’ll have to get your goldfish out of the fountain…wasn’t the ideal environment for them anyway. César raised Cain when he saw you out there feeding them,’ Bruce reminded her ruefully.

‘There’s only one now, and I don’t even have an aquarium!’ Dixie sobbed, because it felt like absolutely the last straw. To take her goldfish out of the fountain below César Valverde’s office and never, ever come back into the building? Suddenly she felt completely bereft and cut adrift.

Across the room, her desk was being cleared for her. One carrier bag grew into three as books, knitting, fish food and sundry items were removed from the crammed drawers. Tissues were supplied and a glass of water was pressed on her.

‘We’re all going to really miss you, Dixie…so we had a lot of fun.’ She was mortified when a large fat envelope was thrust by Bruce into her shoulder bag. She realised then that everyone had known even before she did that she was getting fired, and had been waiting to comfort her.

‘I’ll give you a lift home with your bags,’ Bruce volunteered.

The chipped china jardinière was filched from beneath the dying cactus on her desk, and the goldfish she had found abandoned at the bus stop in a plastic bag removed with some difficulty from the fountain and temporarily rehoused.

‘I just can’t get over how kind everyone’s been,’ Dixie confided as she climbed into Bruce’s car in the basement car park.

She clutched the planter with careful hands, gazing down at the single handsome goldfish she had secretly christened, César. He had eaten his original companion, and even the one she’d actually bought for him, fearing that he would be lonely. César the fish was up near the surface, patrolling with fast flicks of his tail. Dixie gave him a loving and abstracted smile.

‘César can be a real bastard. But the guy’s a complete genius. You can’t expect him to be human too. Try not to think about it. Go round and do Scott’s washing…or whatever,’ Bruce advised, striving to be upbeat. ‘That always seems to give you a lift.’

Yes, it did, she acknowledged ruefully, only this evening she would be waiting tables. But doing anything for Scott gave her the feeling that she had some small personal stake in his busy life. And in the right mood, if Scott didn’t have a hot date or wasn’t eating out, he might suggest that she cooked some supper and stayed to eat with him. She lived for those infrequent invitations.

‘You were in with César a very long time,’ Bruce commented abruptly.

‘We talked a little about Jasper.’

‘Dixie…why did you say César tried to blackmail you?’

‘I must’ve been trying to make a silly joke…’

Bruce sent her scared face a covert appraisal. ‘He never did approve of your friendship with the old man. Can’t think why.’

As soon as Bruce had carried her bags upstairs for her, he left to speed back to the office, long hours being a feature of his highly paid employment. Dixie unlocked the door of her flat. She transferred César the fish into a large glass mixing bowl and fed him, setting him next to the window in the hope that a view of the pigeons on the roof opposite would keep him entertained.

Locking up again, she went down the street to call in on a neighbour she often babysat for at weekends. In return the older woman kept her Jack Russell dog, Spike, during the day.

She took Spike for a quick walk in the park, and then nervously carried him back up to her flat for the night. She wasn’t allowed to keep pets, but she had never had any bother sneaking Spike in after it got dark. Now that the light nights had arrived, she was really scared that she would be seen.

How on earth had her life got into such a terrible, frightening mess? she asked herself in a daze as she watched Spike wolf down his dinner. The future had looked so promising when she had first come up to London to share Petra’s spacious apartment, certainly a lot brighter than it had seemed for many years beforehand…

Dixie’s mother had died when she was five and her father had remarried the following year. It was hard to recall even now that Petra wasn’t really her true sister but actually her stepsister—the daughter of her father’s second wife, Muriel. Already a teenager, Petra had had little interest in a child seven years younger, but Dixie had always longed for a big sister and had adored blonde and beautiful Petra. At seventeen, Petra had left home on her first modelling assignment.

A year later, Dixie’s father had died of a heart attack, and the year after that Muriel had shown the first symptoms of what was to prove to be a long, debilitating terminal illness. Dixie had never managed to pass any exams because she had been forced to miss so much school. Whenever Muriel’s health had been particularly bad, Dixie had had to stay at home to see to her needs. She had left school at sixteen.

Over the following four years, Petra had sent money home regularly but the demands of a career which took her all over the world had made it impossible for her to visit much. A year ago, Muriel Robinson had passed away, and Dixie had more or less invited herself up to London to stay with Petra. Used to living alone, Petra had understandably not been too keen on the arrangement at first, but had soon appreciated that Dixie could look after her apartment when she herself was abroad.

For her own convenience, Petra had opened a household account in both their names, and paid in sufficient money to cover her bills, so that Dixie could easily pay them for her. And when, soon afterwards, Dixie had started work at Valverde Mercantile, she had had her entire salary paid into the same account.

Dixie had frequently ordered expensive food and alcohol for Petra’s lavish parties. In the same way she had dealt with Leticia Zane, after the interior designer’s initial meeting with Petra, ensuring that all the costly redecoration was done in exactly the way her sister wished.

And then, about three months ago, Petra had suddenly announced that she was leaving the UK. Giving up the lease on her apartment, she had packed her bags and flown to Los Angeles. Dixie had moved into the flat. But within weeks the demands for payment had begun rolling in from her sister’s creditors. Dixie had discovered that the joint account was not only empty of her own savings but also overdrawn. Only after the deputy bank manager had patiently explained it to her had Dixie understood that she herself could be held liable for Petra’s unpaid bills.

She had immediately phoned her sister. After admitting that she was broke, but promising to help as soon as she could, Petra had rather drily reminded Dixie of all the money she had generously sent over the years that Dixie had been nursing her mother, Muriel. And Dixie had felt really guilty, because tough as those years had been they would have been intolerable without Petra’s financial assistance.

But the next time Dixie had phoned that same number she had been told that Petra had moved on without leaving a forwarding address. That had been two months ago, and since then she hadn’t heard a word from her sister.

The awful fear that Petra had not the slightest intention of getting in touch again, or of trying to satisfy her creditors, was now beginning to haunt Dixie. She felt so disloyal, thinking about Petra that way. Yet in her heart of hearts she was facing up to the harsh fact that her glamorous stepsister invariably put her own needs first.

And Dixie was terrified of being taken to court and appalled by the reality that she had no way of settling those dreadful bills. That was so unfair to the creditors concerned, and César Valverde had offered to pay them…

‘CAN I JUST RUN OVER this again?’ Dixie asked the table of customers anxiously. ‘That’s one cheeseburger with pickles, one without dressing, a double—’

‘How many times do we have to go over this?’ one of the teenagers groaned. ‘A double hamburger with pickles, a single cheeseburger without…’

Pink with embarrassment, Dixie hurried to amend her notebook as the girl ran through the entire order again. Beneath the jaundiced eye of the manager, Dixie thrust the order over the counter.

‘Get those tables cleared,’ he urged impatiently.

Scurrying over to her section of the busy café, Dixie began to load up a tray. She was so tired that she could feel her knees wobbling whenever she stood still. Wiping her damp brow with the back of her hand, she lifted the heavily laden tray. As she straightened, she could not help but focus on the tall, dark male blocking her view of the rest of the cafe. Dixie froze in shock and dismay.

César Valverde stood six feet away, emanating the kind of lacerating cool which intimidated. Brilliant dark eyes entrapped her evasive ones. As he lifted one ebony brow at her frazzled appearance and coffee-stained overall, Dixie simply wanted to curl up and die. Oh, dear heaven, how had he found out where she worked? And what did he want now, for heaven’s sake?

But then had she really believed that César Valverde would take no for an answer? He wasn’t accustomed to negative responses. His naturally aggressive temperament geared him to persist and demand in the face of refusal, she reminded herself. A workaholic, he thrived under pressure and lived for challenge. When César Valverde set himself a goal, he went all out to get it. She should feel sorry for him, she told herself. He really didn’t know any other way to behave.

An exasperated male voice demanded, ‘Where’s our food?’

‘It’s coming…it’s coming!’ Dixie promised frantically, rudely dredged from her reverie. She fled without looking where she was going, as to look would have brought César Valverde back into focus again.

A shopping bag protruding from beneath a table was her undoing. Catching her foot, Dixie tipped forward, and the tray shot clean out of her perspiring hold. Eyes wide with horror, she watched pieces of food, coffee dregs, crumpled napkins, plates and cups go flying up in the air and fall in all directions. The noise of smashing china was equalled if not surpassed by the shaken exclamations of customers lurching from their seats in an effort to escape the aerial bombardment.

A deathly silence fell in the aftermath. Feverishly muttering incoherent apologies, Dixie bent down to scoop up the tray. The manager removed it from her trembling hands and hissed in her ear, ‘You had your final warning yesterday. You’re fired!’

Only yesterday, three entire meals complete with accompanying drinks had landed on the floor, because in an effort to speed up Dixie had overloaded a tray and then stumbled. Tears of mortification and defeat stinging her eyes, Dixie scuttled into the back of the café. Ripping off the overall, she reached for her cardigan and bag.

When she emerged again, the manager stuffed a couple of notes into her hand. ‘You’re just not cut out for waitressing,’ he said ruefully.

A long, low and expensive sports car hugged the pavement outside the café. The driver’s window whirred down. César surveyed Dixie with an enquiring brow.

‘It’s your fault I dropped that tray…you spooked me!’ Dixie condemned unevenly.

‘If you hadn’t been so busy trying to ignore me it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘You are so smug and patronising. I hate you!’ Dixie gasped truthfully, studying his staggeringly handsome dark features with unconcealed loathing. ‘You always think you’re right about everything!’

‘I usually am,’ César pointed out, without skipping a beat.

‘Not about deceiving Jasper…so go away and leave me alone!’

Walking on past, Dixie struggled to swallow the aching thickness of tears in her throat. The car purred in her wake but Dixie was oblivious. In the space of one ghastly day a security that had at best been tenuous had come crashing down round her ears. Jasper was dying, she thought wretchedly, and she was going to end up being prosecuted like a criminal.

‘Get in the car, Dixie!’

Having totally forgotten about César Valverde while she pondered her woes, Dixie nearly died of fright. She glanced round and saw the flash car only feet away. Sticking her nose in the air, she prepared to cross the road to the bus stop.

‘Get…in…the car,’ César framed as he climbed out, six foot three inches of towering bully.

‘I don’t have to do what you tell me any more!’ Dixie flung chokily.

A policeman crossed the road. ‘Is there some problem here?’

‘Yes, this man won’t leave me alone!’ Dixie complained.

‘I saw you curb-crawling,’ the policeman informed César thinly. ‘Are you aware that curb-crawling is an offence?’

‘This woman works for me, Officer,’ César drawled icily.

‘Not any more, I don’t!’ Dixie protested. ‘Why won’t you just leave me alone?’

‘I don’t like the sound of this, sir.’ The policeman appraised the opulent car and then the cut of César’s fabulous dark grey suit with deeply suspicious eyes.

‘Look, that’s my bus coming!’ Dixie suddenly gasped.

‘Settle the misunderstanding, Dixie,’ César commanded in a tone of icy warning.

‘What misunderstanding?’ she enquired in honest bewilderment.

‘This gentleman was curb-crawling and employing threatening behaviour. I think we should all go back to the station and sort this out,’ the policeman informed her as he radioed in the registration of César’s car.

César looked at Dixie. Eyes like black ice daggers dug into her. It was like being hauled off her feet and dropped from a height. She blinked, and then warm colour flooded her drawn cheeks. ‘Oh…you actually think…my goodness, are you kidding?’ she pressed in a strangled voice. ‘He would never bother me like that…I mean, he would never even look at me like that!’

‘Then what was this gentleman doing?’ the policeman asked wearily.

‘He was offering me a lift home…and we had a slight difference of opinion,’ Dixie mumbled, not looking at either man in her mortification. This policeman had genuinely suspected that César Valverde had been curb-crawling with an intent to…?

‘And now she’s going to get in my car and be sensible,’ César completed stonily.

Dixie slunk round the sports car and climbed in. ‘It’s not my fault that policeman thought you might’ve been making improper suggestions,’ she muttered in hot-faced embarrassment.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. That wasn’t what he was thinking. He thought I might be your pimp,’ César gritted not very levelly, half under his breath, his accented drawl alive with speaking undertones of raw incredulity.

Dixie nestled into the gloriously comfortable bucket seat and decided that silence was the better part of valour. Flash car, flash suit. In this particular area César probably had looked suspicious.

‘How dare you embarrass me like that?’

‘I’m sorry, but you were annoying me,’ she mumbled wearily.

‘I…was annoying…you?’

He seemed to find that very difficult to understand. But then an enormous amount of boot-licking went on in César Valverde’s vicinity, Dixie reflected, struggling to smother a yawn.

People shouldn’t worship idols, but they did. Expose the average human being to César’s intellectual brilliance, immense wealth and enormous power and influence, and they generally behaved in all sorts of undignified ways. They toadied, they talked a load of rubbish in an effort to impress, and went to ridiculous lengths to please and be remembered by him.

As for the women—that constant procession of gorgeous females who paraded through his life, Dixie reflected sleepily. Well, he had the concentration span of a toddler, always on the look-out for a new and better toy. And he invariably had a replacement lined up before he ditched her predecessor. But he was never available during working hours, and those women who tried to breach that boundary lasted the least time. Possessive behaviour was a surefire way to make César stray.

César shook her awake outside the building where she lived. ‘As a rule, women do not fall asleep in my company.’

‘I don’t fancy you,’ Dixie mumbled, barely half awake, and then aghast at the sound of what she had just said.

‘Then you won’t develop any ambitious ideas while we’re in Spain, will you?’

‘I’m not going to Spain.’

‘Then you can send Jasper cute “glad you’re not here” postcards from prison.’

Dixie sat up, full wakefulness now established, and turned aghast eyes on him.

César gave her a faint smile. ‘It’s your first offence, but who knows? Women often get weightier sentences than men when they transgress.’

Her tummy tying itself into petrified knots, Dixie whispered shakily. ‘Maybe we should talk this over.’

‘I think we ought to,’ César agreed smoothly. ‘A female who said she was your landlady was furious when I knocked on the door of your flat earlier and a dog started barking. She came upstairs to investigate.’

Dixie sat bolt upright, horror now etched on her face. ‘Oh, no, she heard Spike and now she knows he’s there!’

César released an extravagant sigh. ‘And pets aren’t allowed. I gather it’s going to be a question of moving out or getting rid of the dog.’

Dixie shook her head in anguished disbelief. This was truly the very worst day of her entire life. ‘Why did you have to knock on the door? You must’ve frightened Spike! He’s usually as quiet as a mouse.’

‘I think Spain’s beckoning,’ César remarked lazily. ‘You have one very angry landlady waiting to pounce.’

‘Oh, no…’ Dixie groaned.

‘Life could be so different,’ César drawled smoothly. ‘All those debts settled…no nasty hanging judge to face in court…relaxing trip to Spain…Jasper happy as a clam and the comforting knowledge that you are responsible for giving him the best news he’s ever heard. Wrong? I don’t think so. I don’t think anything that could give Jasper pleasure at this trying stage of his life could possibly be wrong.’

Hanging on every specious word, Dixie watched him with a kind of eerie fascination. He was so damnably clever, so shockingly good at timing his verbal assaults. Here she was, her whole life in ruins and on the very brink of being thrown out on the street because she couldn’t possibly give up Spike, and a living, breathing version of the devil was holding out temptation without shame.

‘I couldn’t…’

‘You could,’ César contradicted softly. ‘You could do it for Jasper.’

Dixie’s soft full mouth wobbled as she thought of Jasper dying and never, ever seeing him again. Her eyes began to prickle and she sniffed.

‘You can pack right now. It’s that simple,’ César stressed in the same low-pitched deep, dark tone.

He sounded mesmeric. Dixie couldn’t peel her wet eyes from him either. In the dusk light, his bronzed features were half in shadow, dark eyes glimmering silver beneath the sort of long, incredibly luxuriant black lashes that would drive any sane woman blessed with less to despair.

‘My dog, Spike…’ she muttered uncertainly, so very, very tired it was becoming an effort even to string words together, her mind a confused sea of incomplete thoughts and fears.

‘Spike can come too. One of my staff will pick up the rest of your possessions tomorrow. You won’t have anything to do,’ César asserted gently.

At that moment, the concept of not having anything to do impressed Dixie like the offer of manna from heaven. ‘I…I—’

César slid out of the driver’s seat, strolled round the front and opened the door beside her. ‘Come on,’ he urged.

And Dixie found herself doing as she was told, all the fight drained out of her. ‘A harmless fiction’, César had called it. A pretend engagement to make Jasper’s last days happy. And it would make Jasper happy. She knew how much Jasper longed to see César on the road to creating the family circle that Jasper had never managed to create for himself. Maybe lying wasn’t always wrong…

Her landlady emerged from her small flat on the ground floor. As she broke into angry, accusing speech, César settled a wad of banknotes into her hand. ‘Miss Robinson will be moving out. I hope this takes care of her notice.’

A PHONE WAS RINGING somewhere horribly close to Dixie’s ears. Struggling to cling to sleep, she sighed with relief when the shrill buzz stopped, but her eyes slowly opened on the dawning realisation that she didn’t have a phone in her flat.

Her brain in a fog, Dixie surveyed her unfamiliar surroundings. For a moment she couldn’t even remember where she was. Then her attention fell on the suitcase lying open with miscellaneous garments tumbling untidily out of it. And whoosh, everything came back in a rush; she was in César Valverde’s London home.

The phone by the bed started ringing again. This time Dixie reached for the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she said nervously.

‘Rise and shine, Dixie.’ César Valverde’s rich, dark drawl jerked her bolt upright in the bed. ‘It’s half-six and I want you in the gym by eight, dressed appropriately and fully awake.’

‘The gym?’ Dixie was aghast at the news that she was expected to be up before seven in the morning, particularly on a Saturday. Even Spike was still asleep in his basket. He was as fond of sleeping in as his owner.

‘I’ve engaged a fitness instructor to put you through your paces,’ César completed drily, and rang off.

A fitness instructor? Dixie stared into space with wide eyes, picturing some giant, suntanned musclebound male standing over her like a bullying sergeant-major, bawling instructions liberally splattered with abuse. She shrank. Maybe the instructor would be nice and break her in gently. She tried to imagine César hiring someone nice. Hope dwindled fast. The fitness instructor would be tough and pitiless. César was, after all, the male who had called her a lazy lump.

Scrambling out of bed, Dixie roused Spike and left the bedroom. A short corridor beyond led out to a small enclosed courtyard.

On her arrival the night before, Dixie had been handed over to César’s butler, Fisher, like an unwelcome parcel. The comfortable en suite bedroom she had been assigned on the ground floor was former staff accommodation. Dixie had understood the distinction being made. She was not going to be treated like an honoured guest in César Valverde’s palatial Georgian mansion.

Having attended to Spike’s needs, she went for a shower. Appropriate clothing? Dixie had never been in a gym in her life. A baggy pair of sweat-pants and an oversized T-shirt were all she had to wear. The unflattering combination made her look as wide as she was tall. A slim Dixie Mark Two? But what if the exercise routine worked? a more seductive voice asked, and she dawdled by the mirror then, imagining Scott suddenly recognising her as a member of the female sex…

Her stomach growling with hunger, she was about to go off in search of the kitchen when a quiet knock sounded on the door.

Fisher appeared with a tray bearing a tall glass filled with some strange greyish green liquid. ‘Miss Stevens faxed your diet plan to Cook yesterday,’ the butler explained. ‘I believe this is the lady’s own personal recipe for an early-morning energy boost.’

‘Oh…’ In bewilderment, Dixie accepted the glass. Diet plan? She didn’t like the sound of that. She was willing to exercise, but diet? And who on earth was Fisher talking about?

‘Miss Stevens?’ Dixie queried with a frown.

‘Gilda Stevens, the fitness instructor,’ Fisher supplied expressionlessly. ‘Her instructions regarding your menus were most precise.’

At that point, Dixie’s tummy gave an embarrassing gurgle. So her fitness instructor was a woman. Taking a sip of the noxious brew, Dixie tried not to grimace. A cruel woman. The drink tasted like dishwater with bits of floating weed, but, remembering her manners, Dixie drank it down and waited eagerly to be told when she might receive her first meal of the day.

‘Mr Valverde will be in the gym in five minutes,’ the butler informed her as he retrieved the glass and returned to the door.

‘What about breakfast? Do I eat later…or something?’

‘That was breakfast, Miss Robinson.’ At her aghast look of disbelief, the older man averted his eyes.

‘A drink…a drink is all I’m allowed on this plan?’ Dixie breathed shakily.

In silence, the older man nodded.

Fisher gave her directions to the gym. On her way there she caught tantalising glimpses of magnificent paintings, marble floors and wonderful rugs. She was not surprised to walk into a superb purpose-built gymnasium worthy of the most élite health club.

At the far end of the spacious room, César was lounging elegantly back against a piece of machinery that looked like an instrument for torture. He was talking to a brunette wearing less clothing than Dixie wore in bed. Presumably Gilda Stevens. A tiny white crop top adorned the lady’s dainty bosom. Skintight white shorts hugged her impossibly slender hips. Every inch of visible skin was tanned and satin smooth.

Oh, no, why does she have to be so gorgeous? Dixie thought, cringing from such a cruel comparison, such an impossible peak of feminine perfection.

Tall and supremely authoritative in a dark designer suit, sunglasses dangling from one brown hand, César spoke without turning his dark, arrogant head. ‘Don’t skulk, Dixie. Come and join us. Gilda’s done us a very special favor in agreeing to devote her personal attention to you at such short notice.’

The very thin brunette studied Dixie critically as she walked towards her.

Dixie flushed, her soft mouth tightening with embarrassment. César swivelled round, as light as a dancer on his feet in spite of his size. His winged brows pleated as he took in her appearance with frowning dark deep-set eyes. ‘Haven’t you got anything more suitable to wear?’

‘Dixie would probably feel too self-conscious in more revealing garments. I’ve seen this so many times before,’ Gilda Stevens informed them both. ‘Fortunately, diet and exercise can work real miracles—’

‘Look…’ Dixie began. ‘I’m not an inanimate object you can discuss—’

‘I’ll send out for some gear for you,’ César cut in, lean bronzed features already distant as he strode towards the door.

Gilda gave Dixie a cool, assessing appraisal from glassy blue eyes, and a panicky sensation twisted Dixie’s empty tummy. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she raced in César Valverde’s wake. Suddenly he felt like her only friend.

‘César!’ she gasped strickenly.

At the door he wheeled round, brilliant eyes glittering with impatience.

‘César…she’s not a normal woman,’ Dixie whispered almost pleadingly. ‘When she stands sideways on she’s only about six inches wide! I didn’t know anybody could be that thin and still live…and of course I look enormous to her, but I can’t help the shape I was born with!’

After a stunned pause, César threw back his arrogant head and burst out laughing.

‘It’s not funny,’ Dixie hissed in severe mortification. ‘When you talked about hard work and effort, you didn’t mention depriving me of food and putting a stick-insect in charge of me. Did you see how she looked at me? Like I was the size of an elephant and she wanted to skin me?’

César pivoted round to the wood-panelled wall and braced one lean hand against it as he struggled to contain his mirth. Turning his head back to her, silvered dark eyes still vibrant with reluctant amusement, he murmured drily, ‘It’s the deal, Dixie. Gilda has an international reputation in the fitness field.’

‘I’m hungry,’ Dixie mumbled tightly, but, disorientatingly, she found that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. With laughter dying out of his lean, strong face and his cool, dark brooding air of detachment banished, she glimpsed a different César Valverde. A devastatingly masculine male with megawatt charisma, she recognised in some shock. Colouring with discomfiture, she dragged her eyes from him and stared at the wall instead.

‘Tough…no pain, no gain,’ César rhymed without pity.

‘Have you ever been on a diet, César?’ Out of the corner of her eye she could see his classic profile, and she found her head easing round towards him again without her own volition.

‘I’m too disciplined to over-indulge.’

Dredging her attention from a profile worthy of a Greek sculptor, Dixie decided it would be safer to study the natural wood floor.

‘Don’t do that…it always winds me up!’ César imparted with startling abruptness. ‘Look at me when I’m speaking to you!’

Blinking in hot-faced bewilderment that he had actually noticed she almost never looked directly at him, Dixie glanced up.

César’s aggressive jawline eased only slightly. ‘That’s only one of your most annoying habits.’

As he turned away, Dixie cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘What did you tell Miss Stevens to explain why you are hiring her for my benefit?’

Complete surprise flared in his stunning eyes. ‘I don’t explain my actions to anyone. Why should I?’

Why should I? The baseline on the way César Valverde lived his entire life, Dixie registered. He was so self-contained, so unapologetic about guarding his privacy. Naturally he wouldn’t have the slightest inhibition about snubbing people who exercised their curiosity.

‘Dixie…we’d better get started,’ Gilda Stevens called. ‘We’ll begin with a weigh-in.’

Dixie hadn’t been on the scales since she was sixteen, and inside herself she simply cowered.

‘I’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW,’ Gilda told Dixie.

Face-down on a mat, perspiring freely, Dixie tried to nod, but even that took muscle power and she decided not to bother. After all, at some stage she would have to get up, walk…well, maybe crawl, she decided. She was beyond caring about putting a proud face on her exhaustion.

‘You’re out of condition,’ her torturer sighed as she took her leave. ‘But now I’ve shown you the ropes you’ll be able to follow through on your own every day.’

Every day. Dixie suppressed a groan but she forced a grateful smile. Gilda might be tough, pitiless and completely lacking in the humour department, but she had worked out alongside her and had been tireless in her efforts to ensure that Dixie did every single exercise correctly. Horribly, hatefully tireless.

Left alone, Dixie slowly slid into a comfortable doze. The sound of footsteps made her stir. Tipping back her head, she focused sleepily on Fisher’s polished shoes.

‘Where would you like to eat lunch?’ the butler asked.

‘Here will do.’

A tray was set on the floor. A plate piled high with salad greens and raw slivers of vegetable awaited her.

‘I never liked salad,’ Dixie confided guiltily.

‘It’s a detoxifying diet, I believe,’ Fisher commented. ‘You do get a whole grapefruit mid-afternoon.’

Dixie’s tastebuds shuddered, but she was so hungry she munched at a piece of celery. ‘I like starchy food. I like meat, pasta with lashings of cheese…chocolate fudge cake,’ she enumerated longingly, mouth watering as she fantasised.

Another pair of shoes appeared in her field of vision. Italian leather casuals with handstitched seams. She froze.

‘But you’re not allowed to cheat,’ César Valverde drawled.

‘I thought you were at the bank,’ Dixie said accusingly.

‘I intend to keep an eye on this project. Just as well,’ César condemned. ‘Gilda’s gone, and here you are lazing about like you’re on holiday!’

‘I’m so weak I can’t move!’ Dixie gasped in disbelief.

César crouched down to her level with athletic ease. Hard dark eyes assailed her dismayed orbs in a head-on collision. ‘I checked your staff medical. You’re healthy. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t follow a structured fitness regime. Why didn’t you change into one of the exercise outfits I had sent over?’

They had all looked so incredibly small, and Dixie hadn’t fancied struggling to squeeze herself into figure-hugging garments with Gilda around.

‘You’re over-tired because you let yourself get far too hot.’

‘I need to eat to have energy,’ Dixie muttered self-pityingly.

César dealt her a chilling glance of reproof. ‘Your attitude to this is all wrong. In fact your attitude to life in general is your biggest flaw. You’re so convinced you’re going to fail you won’t even bother trying!’

‘I’ll follow the schedule…OK?’

‘That’s not good enough. I want one hundred and five per cent commitment from you.’ As César studied her with fulminating intensity, his jawline squared. ‘Keep in mind what this is costing me. The sum total of your debts was considerable. And if you haven’t learnt it yet, learn it now. There is no such thing as a free lunch.’

Having paled during that crushing speech, Dixie could no longer meet his ruthlessly intent gaze. ‘I…I—’

‘I paid for the right to expect you to stick to your side of this deal. Start slacking and you’ll have me standing over you with a stopwatch! And if you think Gilda’s bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet!’ César swore in unapologetic threat.

THAT EVENING, SCOTT’S welcoming, ‘Am I glad to see you!’ was balm to Dixie’s low self-esteem when she arrived on his doorstep.

Shyly pushing her heavy fringe off her brow, Dixie smiled up at him. Tall, slim and fair-haired, Scott responded with a friendly punch that hurt her shoulder, and showed her straight into his kitchen.

‘I had some friends staying for a couple of days. What a mess they left this place in!’ he complained.

‘I’ll soon have it sorted out,’ Dixie told him eagerly.

On his way back out again, Scott glanced at her and then frowned slightly. Pausing in the doorway, he stared at her. ‘Have you done something to your hair or changed your make-up or something?’

Dixie tensed. ‘No…I don’t wear make-up.’

‘It must be the colour in your cheeks. You look almost pretty.’ Scott shook his handsome head over this apparently amazing development, frowned as if he was rather surprised to have noticed the fact, and departed, leaving her to the mounds of dishes stacked on every available surface.

Almost pretty. In real shock at the very first compliment Scott had ever deigned to pay her, Dixie hovered in the centre of his filthy kitchen with a dreamy look on her face. Colour in her cheeks? It was the effect of the exercise, it had to be! Maybe the detoxifying diet was starting to work already! Scott had finally noticed that she was female…

Suddenly feeling like a woman on a mission that might just miraculously transform her life, Dixie swore to herself that she would be up early the next day and into the gym to work out. Humming happily, she washed dishes, scrubbed the floor and cleaned the cooker.

‘I don’t know how you do it!’ Scott exclaimed appreciatively as he paused by the kitchen door in the act of donning his jacket. ‘What would I do without you, Dixie?’

Like a starved plant suddenly plunged into water and sunlight, Dixie blossomed and beamed at him.

‘I’m off now, but there’s no need for you to hurry home,’ Scott assured her. ‘And if you could find the time to run the vacuum cleaner round the sitting room, I’d be really grateful.’

‘No problem,’ Dixie hurried to tell him. ‘Is the washing machine fixed yet?’

‘No, the mechanic’s coming on Wednesday.’ Scott grimaced. ‘He says I must have one of those rogue machines.’

Dixie followed him to his front door with the aspect of someone walking on hallowed ground. ‘Hot date?’ she asked with laden casualness.

‘Yeah. A real stunner too,’ Scott chuckled. ‘See you, Dixie!’

‘See you,’ she whispered, closing the door in his wake.

It was after ten when Dixie and Spike got back to César Valverde’s imposing home. She had to use the front door and press the bell to gain entry. She just hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave Scott’s apartment sooner, not until she had polished every piece of furniture and vacuumed every inch of carpet. As Fisher said goodnight to her, Dixie gave him a vague smile and drifted away.

She was ludicrously unprepared for César Valverde to stride out of one of the reception rooms off the lofty ceilinged hall and demand harshly, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I…I b-beg your pardon?’ Dixie stammered.

‘I expected a report on your progress at six and you’d already gone out,’ César imparted grimly.

‘Oh…I was with Scott.’ Dixie studied him vaguely, as if she couldn’t quite manage to get him into focus. In fact, she was striving to superimpose Scott’s beloved features onto César, to make him more bearable, but for some strange reason the attempt wasn’t working. And instead she somehow found herself making all sorts of foolish comparisons between the two men…

César was much taller, more powerfully built, his skin a vibrant gold where Scott’s was fair. César’s luxuriant black hair was perfectly cut to his well-shaped head, not endearingly floppy like Scott’s…oh, heavens, what was she doing, and why was she studying César Valverde like this, noticing every tiny thing about him where once she had been afraid to look at him?

An odd shivery sensation Dixie had never experienced before ran through her when she collided with those striking dark eyes of his…so piercing, so brilliant, so alive. A definable five o’clock shadow roughened his jawline, accentuating the wide, sensual shape of his mouth, the perfect whiteness of his teeth. And he still looked so incredibly, impossibly immaculate, she reflected in growing wonderment. How did he do it? Here she was, with wind-tousled damp hair, a stain of cleansing fluid on her T-shirt and shoes spattered from puddles.

‘How do you do it…how do you look so perfect all the time?’ Dixie heard herself ask wistfully, desperate for the magic secret, the miracle formula which might transform her appearance as well.

‘Are we on the same planet?’ César enquired with satiric bite.

‘I don’t think so.’ Dixie reddened with sudden discomfiture.

‘Who’s Scott? A boyfriend?’ César demanded with a chilling edge to his dark, deep-accented voice.

‘Oh, I don’t have a boyfriend… Scott’s just…Scott…well, Scott…’ Suddenly Dixie was having some difficulty in quantifying her relationship with Scott, because tonight she had rediscovered hope, and to write Scott off as merely a friend now felt like acknowledging defeat again.

‘Scott?’ César queried with an impatient flare of one ebony brow.

‘Scott Lewis…’ Her blue eyes became even more abstracted. ‘I love him, but he hasn’t really noticed me that way yet, but I think he might be on the brink—’

César clenched his even white teeth. ‘I’m getting closer to the brink too—’

Dixie heaved a sigh, shoulders down-curving. ‘So I suppose I still have to say that Scott’s just a friend.’

‘Dixie…I asked a straight question. I didn’t request an outpouring of girlish confidence,’ César informed her with withering cool. ‘I hope you’re more circumspect with him than you are with me. I don’t expect to find out that you’ve confided in him about our private arrangement.’

‘Scott and I don’t have those kind of conversations.’ Inexplicably the happy shine on Dixie’s evening was now beginning to drain away, leaving her feeling rather down in the dumps. ‘Nothing deep—’

‘He’s got his head screwed on, then, hasn’t he?’ César sent her a winging glance of burning exasperation. ‘You’re not grounded enough for a deep conversation. Inside that flighty, vacant head of yours, you’re up in the bloody clouds with the angels most of the time!’

But then there was no room for magic or love in César Valverde’s world. He was so grounded in reality he didn’t know what it was to dream. Well, he was missing out on an awful lot, Dixie decided, determined not to be affected by his censure.

Without warning the door of the room César had emerged from opened again. A gorgeous blonde in an elegant strappy black dress peered out and frowned at Dixie. ‘Staff problems, César?’

Taken aback by the appearance of the other woman, Dixie stiffened with discomfiture.

César dredged his frustrated attention from Dixie and turned with a slashing smile. ‘Nothing that need concern you, Lisette.’

Lisette. Frisky name for a frisky lady, Dixie thought nastily, and then was genuinely shocked by her own bitchiness. Lisette was probably a very nice woman, and was undoubtedly far too good for César Valverde. He was a real rat, the kind of guy who didn’t phone, always put work first, cancelled dates last-minute and strayed without conscience the instant he got bored. Poor Lisette. She was more to be pitied.

Dixie went to her room and settled Spike into his basket. She fed César the goldfish, still feeling guilty about him being alone in his bowl. But he obviously preferred being alone. He was an aggressive fish. But possibly the two companions he had eaten had been the wrong sex, she reflected with a considering frown. Maybe he would be transformed by the arrival of a female fish… Could she risk adding to the body count?

As Dixie pulled on her shortie pyjamas, she struggled against the conviction that if she didn’t eat some proper food soon her stomach would meet her backbone. After all, now she had a goal, a real goal. Scott was worth that one hundred and five per cent commitment César had demanded from her. She would throw herself heart and soul into Gilda’s fitness schedule.

But hunger kept Dixie tossing and turning, unable to sleep. At one in the morning she rolled out of bed in sudden decision. An apple, a slice of toast, a cup of tea with the merest drop of milk…surely such a meagre snack wouldn’t show on the scales?