Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 21

HIS sudden tension suggested that she had just managed to shock him. Caroline didn’t care. She wanted out of this room and she wanted her father kept out of it too.

Hard hands suddenly grasped her shoulders, the slender bones almost snapped under the tension she was placing them under. ‘Caroline—’

‘No!’ she interrupted with a choke that was almost a sob. Her mouth was quivering, she couldn’t seem to stop it, and her throat was hot and tight. ‘Negotiations are over, you told me,’ she reminded him. ‘You wanted my answer. Well, you’ve got it. So now get me out of here!’

His chest heaved on the sigh that shot from him; his fingers increased their grip. ‘You fool!’ he muttered, then, on a complete change of manner, said sardonically to their audience. ‘My apologies, but I seem to have inadvertently embarrassed my companion. Please, go on enjoying yourselves while I take her away and attempt to make my peace before I bring her back again.’

The answering rumble of surprise and consternation flicked at her like the stinging tip of a whip. Luiz was smiling back at them through violently gritted teeth. His hands left her shoulders, an arm returning to clamp around them instead. Then he walked her stiff and quivering frame back through the doors, letting them shut behind them.

He was furious with her for causing that scene. Caroline knew that, but had gone way beyond the point where she could do anything about it. The knowledge of what she had just agreed to was clinging like a tight steel band around her aching chest and stopping her from uttering a single word in her own defence.

With a grimness that made her feel like a child being marched off by a stern parent, Luiz took her across the foyer and along the opposite hallway. At the other end was a door that opened into a large bedroom furnished with the same stylish elegance as the other room, only this room had a king-size bed occupying prominent position instead of a card table.

The door closed them in. Caroline stood just in front of it with her head held high and waited to find out what was to come at her next.

Would he order her to take all her clothes off and climb into the bed? Or was he going to offload whatever it was he was keeping severely damped down inside him before he ordered her out of her clothes?

She couldn’t see his face because he had his back to her, but she could certainly see his tension. And on one level she was rather satisfied to see that she seemed to have managed to rock the unrockable poise of Luiz Vazquez.

He moved at last, breaking the throbbing silence with a short heavy explosion of air before dipping his hand into one of the pockets of his cream tux. It came out again with her evening bag, which he tossed onto a nearby chair. She’d forgotten he even had it. Next came her black silk bra—which she had forgotten about also. But she was now painfully reminded of their passionate interlude in the pool room as she watched that item land on top of the bag.

He removed his jacket next. It landed on the bed. Broad shoulders, tanned neck, bright white dress shirt made of a fine enough linen for her to see the darkness of his skin showing through. Her heart began to stutter. Her throat went dry. The steel band around her chest tightened its grip a little more. He swung around to look at her appraisingly, making her sharply catch her breath.

She couldn’t speak. She was too stressed out to speak. But even if she’d been able to she knew that she wouldn’t. She had played her last card. Whatever was left was for Luiz to play.

‘You have fifteen minutes to do whatever it takes to make you face my guests without the expression of horror.’

The command utterly threw her. She had expected anger, she had expected seduction, she had even expected a heavy mix of both! But she hadn’t expected to feel the slap of his icy contempt.

But her chin tilted even higher, amethyst eyes glinting with a defiance that hid whatever she was feeling inside. ‘But I don’t want to face your guests in any way,’ she stiffly informed him.

‘Nevertheless,’ he drawled, ‘it is what you are going to do.’

‘They have nothing to do with what we are here for!’ she protested, breaking free from her steel casing when all Luiz did was swing away again, to stride across the room towards a long line of floor-to-ceiling cupboards.

‘And it wasn’t your friends that filled me with horror,’ she added as she followed angrily in his footsteps. ‘It was that card table standing there ready and waiting, like a stage prop, for you to play out some hideous act of destruction on my father!’

‘You are still assuming that I am going to win, then,’ he remarked, opening one of the cupboard doors.

Her footsteps stopped. ‘Whether you will or not no longer comes into it!’ Despite the anger, her anxiety was beginning to show in the faint tremor of her voice. ‘We made a deal where if I sleep with you, you don’t play him! You proposed it, Luiz!’ she reminded him. ‘And I just agreed!’

In the process of withdrawing a fresh dinner jacket from inside the cupboard, Luiz glanced at her anxious, defiant face, flicked a similar glance at the waiting bed, then smiled the kind of smile that could freeze a fast-flowing river. ‘I just upped the ante,’ he told her softly. Then calmly shrugged himself into his jacket while Caroline just stood there dumbfounded.

‘I d-don’t understand…’ she stammered. ‘W-what do you m-mean?’

Smoothly, he repeated it for her. ‘I just upped the ante.’ With a deft tug he pulled bright white cuffs with black and gold cufflinks into view. He worded it differently. ‘The deal has just changed.’

‘But—you can’t do that!’ she protested.

He looked at her. ‘How,’ he oh, so tauntingly enquired, ‘are you going to stop me?’

‘But—I’ve already agreed to your sordid little deal,’ she cried out in complete bewilderment. ‘What else can you possibly want from me, Luiz?’

‘That’s it.’ He nodded, as if she’d said something memorably fortuitous. ‘Sordid,’ he explained. ‘I’ve decided that I don’t want sordid.’ He moved briskly to check out his bow tie in the sleek gold-framed mirror hanging on the wall above a rosewood tallboy. ‘In fact sordid doesn’t suit my plans at all, which is why I’ve decided to up the ante.’

‘To what, for goodness’ sake?’ she asked in pure frustration.

His fingers stilled against the bow tie. Via the mirror he looked at her. Via the mirror his cold, dark inscrutable eyes captured hers. And Caroline found herself holding onto her breath in a way that starved her brain of oxygen during a pause that seemed to go on for ever—before he answered her with the silk-voiced simplistic use of a single word that completely blew her mind.

‘Marriage,’ he said.

Seconds, minutes—Caroline didn’t know how long it was that she just stood there staring at him, as if he was on one planet while she was on another.

Then she gave a shaky laugh. ‘You’re joking,’ she decided.

But his deadly smooth, deadly calm, deadly serious expression told her that this was no joke. He meant it. Marriage. Luiz wanted marriage. To her.

Without a single word, she turned and walked back to the bedroom door. This had gone far enough, she was telling herself grimly. And it had gone on long enough. Now she was—

‘We have been here before, Caroline, but I am quite happy to act out the scene again if you need me to do it…’ Luiz’s voice slid snake-like after her. ‘So, walk out of that door and I will play your father tonight at poker…’

Her fingers curled around the brass doorhandle, actually gripped and began to turn it before she lost the will. Slowly she turned, weakly she leaned against the door now behind her, defeatedly she stared across the room to where Luiz was now propped up against the rosewood tallboy, with his ankles crossed casually and his hands resting comfortably in his trouser pockets.

Tall, dark, undoubtedly the most attractive man she had ever met in her entire life, he exuded self-assurance from every supremely relaxed pore.

The self-assured kind of man who wanted his pound of flesh, for some utterly obscure reason. ‘I suppose you have a good reason for making this proposition?’ she prompted shakily.

His lashes flickered, hiding dark brown eyes as they slid over her. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

Caroline’s mouth tightened. ‘Am I to know what that reason is?’ she asked.

‘Not until you agree to do it,’ he replied. ‘And maybe not even then, depending on how you agree to it.’

‘Then how would you like me to agree to it?’ she enquired ever so, ever so sweetly, beginning to pulse with anger at the way he was making her pull answers out of him.

A smile touched his mouth, a very wry smile that acknowledged her sarcasm. ‘Well, a simple yes would do for starters,’ he drawled. ‘But to hear you say yes because you simply can’t imagine the rest of your life without me in it would be absolutely perfect.’

Since the chances of that happening were less than nil, she didn’t even bother to remark on the suggestion. ‘And what are the chances of the ante going up again before you’re finished with me?’ she asked instead.

‘Finished with you?’ Curiously he picked up on the word, then gave a shake of his head. ‘In this case, my ever being finished with you doesn’t apply,’ he told her. ‘I may sound like a fully emancipated all-American guy,’ he said, thickening his accent to suit the remark, ‘but remember that I am Spanish. And, being Spanish, I marry once and for life. So take that on board while you make your decision,’ he advised her. ‘I want your life Caroline,’ he spelled out. ‘And, because I have raised the stakes,’ he added, ‘I will not only not play your father tonight, but I will also agree to pay off all his outstanding debts, get your home out of hock and ensure that it remains that way for the rest of your life. At the same time I will take over your watchdog role with your father.’ He seemed to decide that covered it nicely. ‘Does that sweeten the deal a little for you?’

Sweeten it? It made it positively compelling, she thought with heaviness that took her that little bit closer to defeat—though if she had any choices at all she wished someone would point them out to her. ‘If this is for life, then why me?’ She frowned, wishing she understood what was really going on. And she knew there just had to be something going on that Luiz wasn’t talking about.

‘Why not you?’ Luiz countered with a shrug. ‘You are beautiful, you are well bred, and you would enhance the arm of any man,’

‘A trophy, in other words,’ she likened bitterly.

‘If you like.’ He wasn’t going to argue with that belittling description. ‘But honesty forces me to add that I still fancy the hell out of you or you wouldn’t be standing here at all, believe me.’

His dry smile made her flinch. But she received the message well enough. Be glad I do still fancy you, Caroline, or you would now be standing in deep trouble somewhere else entirely.

‘Yes. I will marry you,’ she said, that briefly and that simply.

To give him credit, Luiz didn’t try to draw out his victory. ‘Good,’ was all he said, then, straightening his lean frame away from the tallboy, turned to slide open the top drawer.

Standing there, watching him, Caroline thought she saw the merest glimpse of a tremor in his hand as he took it out of his pocket to open the drawer. But by the time he turned, with a clean handkerchief in a hand that revealed only super-sure steadiness, she decided that she must have been mistaken.

‘You now have ten minutes to make yourself feel better about meeting our guests,’ he said, with a subtle alteration in the possessive that didn’t pass Caroline by. ‘Bathroom through that door.’ He indicated. ‘Clothes in the cupboards. I have a few phone calls to make.’

With that he began walking towards her, looking the cool, calm, inscrutable Luiz Vazquez who utterly scorned the idea that anything so weak as a tremor could dare to touch him.

She was blocking the door he obviously wished to go through to make his precious calls, but for the life of her Caroline couldn’t give another single inch to him by stepping meekly to one side.

He reached her, stopped. Her heart began to thump. Taller than her, wider than her, darker than her in every way there was, he intimidated her on levels she had not known existed before she knew him.

His eyebrows arched. ‘Is there something we missed?’ he prompted, softly mocking her stubborn refusal to budge.

She had to swallow through a terrible tension before saying what was on her mind, but she was determined to say it anyway. ‘Didn’t you hurt me enough seven years ago without continuing this vendetta you seem to have going for my family?’

His hand came up, touched her pale cheek, and the skin beneath began to burn as if branded. ‘Seven years ago you would not have needed to ask that question,’ he murmured.

‘Seven years ago I thought you loved me,’ she replied huskily. ‘But it wasn’t love, was it, Luiz? I was merely there, and easy, which provided you with a bit of light amusement in between all the really serious stuff.’

He smiled an odd smile. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘It’s what I know,’ she insisted—even now, seven years on, still able to feel the bitterness of learning that eating away at her.

His dark head came down, making her stiffen and tingle when he brought his lips into contact with her ear. ‘Then how can you bear to have me touch you?’ he whispered in soft, moist, sensual derision—and dropped his fingers from her cheek to place them over her breast where the thin fabric of her dress did nothing to disguise her instant response to him.

With a jerk she stepped sideways and right out of his reach, hating herself and despising him so much that she could barely cope with what was now tumbling about inside her.

Luiz said nothing, but then he really didn’t need to—which was the real humiliation as he simply opened the door she was no longer guarding and stepped through it.

Left alone, it was all she could do just to sink weakly into the nearest chair. Instantly she felt something beneath her, and reached down and plucked out both her bag and her bra. The flimsy piece of black silk dangled like a taunt from her trembling fingers, reminding her why it wasn’t on her body.

It was still slightly damp. On another thought she got up and walked over to the bed, where Luiz had dropped his discarded jacket. The moment she picked it up the clean scent of him began to completely surround her. Her eyes were still glazed but her other senses were working just fine, she noted grimly. For touching this jacket was like touching Luiz. Smelling him, feeling him, wanting him—wanting him…

The jacket, like her bra, was damp, which was obviously why Luiz had changed it for another one. Damp around the pocket, where he’d stuffed her bra, damp around the shoulders from when he’d placed it around hers.

A sigh whispered from her that was so bleak and hopeless she was glad there was no one around to hear it. Seven weeks loving him, she thought sadly. Seven years hating him. And probably only seven seconds back in his presence and she had been fighting a losing battle against the way he could make her feel.

It was awful, like coming face to face with her own darkest secret. For hate was merely the other side of love. Weren’t the romantics always saying that?

Which left her with what to comfort herself? she wondered as she dropped all three items on the bed and turned her back on them. She didn’t know—didn’t think she wanted to know.

The clothes he had told her she would find in the cupboards happened to be her own clothes, which brought home even harder the amount of calculation he had put into all of this. He had been very sure of himself, very positive that she would end up here with him, one way or another.

In fact everything she had brought to Marbella with her was now residing in this room. Except for her father, she added—then instantly began to worry about him, maybe wandering about this villa like a loose cannon searching for some explosive excitement.

The prospect had her hurrying to change. She spent less than five minutes in the well-equipped bathroom, showering away the effects of her swim and then hurriedly blowdrying her hair before she applied a quick, light covering of make-up and went to decide what she was going to wear.

Luiz arrived back as she was slipping her feet into high patent leather shoes. Her chin-length bob was soft and shiny, her make-up underplayed, and her dress was made of dark purple silk creˆpe, with a neckline that scooped down to caress the soft swell of her breasts and skimmed rather than clung to the rest of her curves.

Dramatically simplistic it its design, still the dress did things for her that made his eyes glint beneath the heavy shading of those long lashes he so liked to hide behind.

‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you could do it in the time allocated.’

Caroline just sent him a coldly dismissive look. ‘Is my father awake yet?’

‘It’s almost midnight, Caroline,’ Luiz drawled back lazily. ‘The time people usually go to bed, not think about getting up.’

‘People don’t usually throw parties this late, either,’ she pointed out.

He smiled at the curt censure. ‘I’m an owl.’ ‘So is he,’ she countered. ‘Where is he?’

‘In the kitchen playing blackjack with the chef,’ he replied laconically—then, at her look of slack-jawed horror, he grew angry. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ he bit out. ‘It was a joke!’

Some joke, she thought painfully.

Luiz strode forward; a hard hand grabbed one of hers. ‘He’s comfortably ensconced in the main salon enjoying the company of my guests!’ he told her impatiently. ‘Will you lighten up?’

Lighten up? she repeated furiously. She was tired, she was stressed, she had just gone through some of the worst few hours in her entire life—and he was now demanding that she lighten up?

‘If I had a punch worth throwing I would probably hit you,’ she whispered.

With a heavy sigh, Luiz pulled her towards him, and it showed how bad she was feeling that she let him hold her against his chest. ‘He’s fine,’ he assured her huskily. ‘And he will stay fine now that I’m looking after him—I thought you understood that.’

‘He’s an addict, Luiz,’ she stated with heart slaying honesty. ‘They don’t get cured overnight.’

‘I know,’ he said quietly.

‘Does he know?’ she then asked sharply. ‘About this deal you and I have just made?’

‘He knows you are here with me, but that’s about all.’

Which made just one more problem she still had yet to confront, she thought heavily, and moved right out of Luiz’s arms. His eyes narrowed on her weary profile, but he didn’t try to detain her.

Instead he moved back to the door, then stood waiting for her to join him. Caroline did so without uttering another word. As they walked side by side back towards the main salon she thought she could actually feel the vibration of her own body it was so beset by nerve-tingling tension.

‘Do I get to know who any of these people are before I have to meet them?’ she asked without much hope of an answer, since he was very economical with those.

‘Nervous?’ Luiz questioned as they crossed the foyer.

‘Yes,’ she confessed.

‘Then don’t be.’ He sounded eminently confident of that. ‘You are about to meet my family,’ he told her. ‘Not a firing squad.’

His family? ‘But you told me once that you don’t have any family!’ She stared at him in disbelief.

He just smiled another odd smile. ‘I don’t,’ he said, but the sudden cold glitter that struck his eyes sent a chill chasing down her spine.

‘Enigmatic as ever, I note,’ she drawled.

He responded with a different smile. ‘My secret weapon,’ he admitted.

But not his only one, she thought as she felt his hand make contact with the small of her back as the other hand reached out for the door. His touch stung through her like an electric power source, making her spine arch fiercely.

Her reaction made him pause, his features hardening. ‘Just remember who you are and what you are to me when we walk in there,’ he warned very grimly. ‘It is very important to me that you give a good impression of a blissful bride, not a resentful one.’

Refusing to look at him, Caroline said nothing. But her chin dutifully lifted and her expression became smooth as he pushed open the door to the main salon.

The first thing her eyes went to was the green baize table, which she was relieved to see had been deftly covered with a white linen tablecloth on which several bottles of champagne now lay, chilling on a bed of ice. And the croupier, who had been stacking coloured chips earlier, now stood polishing fluted champagne glasses with the innocence of a waiter.

The next thing she allowed her eyes to take in was the room full of people. What she had seen only as a couple of dozen blurred faces the first time around, now became two dozen separate individuals who were, almost without exception, Spanish.

‘Highborn’ and ‘haughty’ were the mocking words that came to mind to describe the way they were looking back at her. Which then made her think that if these people were related to Luiz, then he had to come from some very rare stock. Some young, some old, some distinctly curious, some noticeably cautious, she noted. But what struck her the fiercest were the waves of antipathy she could feel bouncing off them, even though she could sense they were trying hard to hide it.

They don’t like Luiz, she realised on a blinding flash of insight. They might be here in his home, enjoying his champagne and his hospitality, but they resent it for some baffling reason.

Which served to further confuse a situation that was already muddled enough.

Then, at last, she noticed her father, standing slightly apart from the others and seemingly not at all pleased, by the look on his face. He was frowning into the whisky glass he held in his hand instead of bothering to glance their way, as everyone else had done the moment the doors had opened.

She knew what he was thinking. He was thinking—When the hell, with all these people around, am I going to get my game of poker? Because that was the way his mind worked when he was in the grip of his personal madness.

Well, he is about to receive a rather nasty surprise! she predicted with no sympathy for him whatsoever. He had let her down tonight, let her down so badly that it was going to be hard for her to forgive him this time.

This time—she repeated. How many ‘this times’ had there been over the last ten years?

And how many more were there going to be? Plenty, she predicted, despite Luiz’s grand promise.

‘Really, Luiz.’ A rather large-boned lady, wearing a very regal magenta silk gown, decided to break the silence with haughty censure. ‘I am too old to be indulging in late-night parties. Do you see the time? Do you realise how unforgivably rude you have been, summoning us all here then leaving us to kick our heels while we await your pleasure?’

‘My apologies, Aunt Beatriz,’ Luiz murmured, seeming not to notice the contempt in the older woman’s tone. ‘But I was so sure you wouldn’t want to miss this particular party once you knew the reason for it.’

‘Reason—what reason?’ Still cross, but curious, the aunt fixed him with a stern glare.

‘A celebration,’ Luiz replied—deliberately, Caroline was sure, titillating everyone’s senses with carefully chosen words. ‘Of my incredible good fortune…’

The moment he said it Caroline’s chest felt tight again, responding to what she knew was about to come. Luiz’s hand slid from her back to her waistline, but whether it was offering warning or support she wasn’t certain. And her father’s head came up, eyes that were more grey than amethyst fixing sharply on his daughter.

‘In the full tradition of the Vazquez family,’ Luiz was saying smoothly beside her, ‘I have brought you all here to introduce you to Miss Caroline Newbury. The lady who has just promised to be my bride—and my future Condesa…’

After that kind of announcement it was difficult to say who was more utterly dumbfounded. His family or Caroline herself. Caroline was certainly swinging dizzily off balance yet again—because to be Luiz’s future Condesa meant that Luiz had to be the Conde!

Her heart gave a thudding kick, sending shock waves rampaging throughout her whole system. As she watched, having no ability left to do much else, she saw two dozen faces drop. It was terrible. The whole situation was utterly terrible. Not so much for her but for Luiz. Did none of these people have a single nice thing to say to him? Could they not at least pretend delight at his news? They didn’t know that Luiz wasn’t head over heels in love with his newly betrothed!

And further back, standing apart from the others, was her father, his expression completely frozen. He had caught on quickly, Caroline realised. He might be self-obsessed most of the time, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that if Luiz was announcing his intention to marry his daughter, then she had sold herself to him for the price of her father’s debts.

‘No.’ She saw his mouth form the denial, and tears began to clog her throat.

Then one voice—just one voice in a wilderness of silence—sighed and said, ‘Congratulations.’ A woman about her father’s age stepped forward. ‘And to think we all thought when you had us gather here tonight that you were about to surrender your title and go back to America!’

Hoped, Caroline grimly corrected as she felt the atmosphere in the room change from hidden hostility to forced elation in one violent swing. After that they were buried beneath a sea of congratulations, and she found herself struggling to keep up with the names and the embraces being thrust her way. Champagne corks began to pop. The waiter-cum-croupier began handing out glasses for everyone to share a toast.

While still standing apart from it all was her father, Caroline noticed anxiously. He was staring at her as if a veil had been ripped from his eyes and he was seeing clearly for the first time in years. It frightened her, that look, as did the way his face seemed to be getting greyer with each passing second that went by.

‘Luiz—my father,’ she murmured, an inner sense warning her that something dire was about to happen. But even as she caught Luiz’s attention, she saw, to her horror, her father’s fingers let go of the whisky glass so it dropped with a thud to the carpet. ‘No, Daddy. No!’ she cried out as his face began to distort and his hand went up to clutch at his chest just before he began to crumple.