A Spanish Vengeance

Had she already given the poor guy his marching orders? Was he even now nursing a broken heart? He remembered, all too clearly, exactly how he’d felt that night five years ago. That night and countless sleep-deprived others. The pang of sympathy shook him. Then, determinedly, he dismissed it.

Lisa Pennington was a hussy. In the long run he’d be doing Clayton a huge favour.

He lifted his hand and pressed the doorbell.

CHAPTER FOUR

HER usually welcome morning tea tasted vile. Lisa put the cup down on the cramped breakfast bar; she couldn’t stomach another drop.

She hadn’t slept, hadn’t expected to. And how early was ‘early’? she asked herself agitatedly.

At least Sophie wouldn’t be around when Diego arrived for his answer. It had been well after three when she’d heard the other girl’s exaggeratedly careful progress to her bedroom, so she’d probably sleep in until eleven or even later. It was Sunday, after all, the day they usually spent relaxing, tackling the most pressing chores, catching up on the gossip.

She moved to the sitting room, restless. There would be nothing usual about today.

Crunch time.

Her heart lurched.

Would she? Wouldn’t she?

Tugging her aubergine-coloured sweatshirt down over her jeans-clad hips she gravitated to the mirror that hung over the blocked-off fireplace. What she saw did nothing for her self-assurance. She looked like a twelve-year old, she decided, sighing with disgust.

The baggy top swamped her delicate curves. She looked flat as a board. Her hair scraped back off her face, held into her nape with a limp ribbon, looked dull and lifeless. As did the dark-ringed eyes that stared mournfully back at her.

Quelling the sudden impulse to go and do something about the way she looked, she turned and paced back to the kitchen. She had no wish to impress him. In fact, if she looked like a rag doll who’d been left out in the rain he might decide he wanted nothing to do with her and take back that shameful proposition, take the decision she’d been wrestling with all through the wretched night right out of her hands.

Perhaps if she ate somethin

g the horrible shaky feeling inside her would go away. But one look at her cooling cup of tea made her feel queasy and she scotched the idea of trying to eat anything, jumping like a scalded cat when the doorbell rang.

He was here!

And she still hadn’t decided what answer to give him. Ben had made her take a long hard look at her motivations for even considering, for a single second, Diego’s blackmailing proposition. The conclusions she’d drawn had told her uncomfortable things about herself. She knew what she wanted but couldn’t convince herself that it would be right for her or for Diego.

A shriller, more persistent ring of the doorbell had her scurrying out of the kitchen on legs that felt as insubstantial as cotton wool. The noise would wake Sophie and that would be disastrous. She was going to have to pick her words carefully when she told her best mate that her engagement to her beloved twin was off. And explain why. Ben wouldn’t put himself through the humiliation of marrying a woman who, so he’d decided, was still in love with another man.

Her hands were shaking as she opened the door and met Diego’s impatient dark eyes. Her breath locked in her lungs and a sharp, catching sensation invaded her stomach. No man had the right to be so out and out gorgeous, so—so shatteringly male. Once she had rejoiced in his masculine perfection—now the slightly older, tougher version scared her witless!

Wordlessly she stood aside to allow him to enter, noting the elegantly styled coat he wore with the careless arrogance of a man born to such luxuries.

Once, in those long-ago days of heady loving, she had believed him penniless, scraping a meagre living while she had come from a well-heeled family. His imagined near poverty hadn’t bothered her a jot; now his obvious wealth gave her the shivers. Her once adored Diego was a stranger.

Watching him slide his eyes dismissively over the mediocre contents of the sitting room, she searched for something, anything, of the charismatic young Spaniard who had claimed her loving heart for his own during that long, glorious summer five years ago. And found none. Nothing in his narrowed-eyed inventory of her appearance, not a flicker on that lean, hard face to remind her of the way he had once loved her.

Had seemed to love her, she reinforced tiredly. Nothing about the younger Diego Raffacani had been as it seemed. In that bleak moment she reached her final decision.

‘Well?’

The harsh monosyllable made her stomach turn right over. Long fingers drew back his cuff as he consulted his watch in a gesture she was sure was meant to intimidate her into blurting an immediate answer. The watch he wore wasn’t the one she had given him. That had been slim and gold; the one he wore now was dark and chunky. So why did that hurt so much?

Grabbing on to the last ragged remnants of her composure, she said thinly, ‘It looks cold out. I’ll make coffee.’ Letting him know this was her home and she wasn’t about to be intimidated into anything. But really, she silently admitted with painful honesty as she walked back into the tiny kitchen, it was to put off the time when she would sell the magazine down the river, lose her colleagues their jobs. It was on her conscience but, as Ben had said, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

The underlying reason for her delaying tactics, of course, was more visceral. Once she’d told him where to put his ‘proposition’ she would never see him again. It shouldn’t hurt, shouldn’t make her feel empty and only half alive. But it did.

As the door closed behind her Diego made a determined effort to get his head straight. Seeing her this morning, pale and waif-like, bereft of the classy dress she’d been wearing the night before, her milky skin innocent of make-up, he’d experienced a near savage need to take her out of her dreary surroundings, take her to the sun, pamper her, care for her, see those huge drowning inky-blue eyes come alive, laughing and vital. Smiling for him as once they had used to, making him feel like the luckiest man in the world.

How crazy could a man get?