A Spanish Vengeance

He seemed to consider her request for a long moment, then grinned. ‘Perhaps I do better! Rosa is making coffee for you. She will bring it to small salon and I will make the phone calls. It is better to know for sure he is home—he might have gone anywhere in the world—his business affairs take him to many places.’

Sickening thought!

Impulsively, Lisa reached out to touch his arm as he began to leave her, her eyes unknowingly full of stark inky appeal, the hand that clutched his arm shaking just a little. ‘I’d love coffee. It’s been a long drive. But may I have it in the kitchen with Rosa?’ She didn’t want to be alone to agonise over the very real possibility that Diego was even now on his way to the other side of the world.

‘Certainly.’ His dark eyes were kind. ‘Come with me. You drink coffee and I use the telephone.’

The main kitchen was cavernous with a vaulted stone and timber ceiling and a huge open fireplace. Nevertheless the atmosphere was surprisingly homelike, with hams, strings of onions and dried herbs hanging from the massive beams, the aroma of coffee drifting like a blessing.

Manuel said something to his wife in rapid Spanish as she turned from the huge gleaming range, a cafetière in one hand.

‘Ciertamente!’ Rosa smiled in response to whatever her husband had said, setting the coffee on an immense wooden table near a bowl of yellow roses, plucked, Lisa guessed, from the many blooms that perfumed the courtyard. ‘All of us will drink! You will please to sit, señorita?’

Taking the chair indicated, Lisa sat and closed her tired eyes for a moment, the quiet, comforting atmosphere helping her to wind down just a little. Rosa fetched three bowl-shaped coffee mugs and a plate of sticky almond pastries and Manuel consulted a list pinned up by the wall-mounted phone and began at last to dial.

Drinking the welcome coffee and queasily refusing the pastries, Lisa wished she could understand Manuel’s side of the conversations that ensued as he dialled at least three separate numbers. Diego was obviously proving harder to track down than she had hoped.

A point punched home when he walked back to take his mug of coffee from the table, shrugging his shoulders fatalistically.

‘I called the señor’s office first. He has not been there. His sister hasn’t seen him since she left here with her husband and his housekeeper gave us the only clue we have.’ He spread his free hand as if to indicate the clue was sadly worthless. ‘The señor phoned to his home at mid-morning to say to cancel the dinner he had arranged to give his parents next week. Is all. He didn’t say where he was going, only that he had no idea when he would return.’

It was another perfect morning but Lisa couldn’t begin to appreciate it. Something inside her had died. Diego could be anywhere in the world. True, she’d asked Manuel to ask Diego to get in touch with her when he saw him next. But she wasn’t holding out much hope that he would bother to respond. He was getting on with his busy, successful life. He didn’t need her in it.

Yesterday, the afternoon had been drawing to a close, the shadows lengthening on the mountains, when she’d thanked Rosa and Manuel for their help, hardly able to hide her misery, and made to leave.

But Manuel had firmly argued against her driving back to Seville, pointing out that she had already had a long journey from England, that it would soon be dark, and Rosa could quickly make the bed up in the room she’d had before. It would be no trouble, he’d insisted.

So she’d stayed the night, giving in because she had no energy left to fight for her own way—her need to get away from this beautiful place where she had been, so very briefly, happy and hopeful. Staying overnight had been sensible, she supposed, but she wished she hadn’t slept late after the initial long restless hours.

Hurriedly, she stripped her bed and repacked the few overnight things she’d needed and carried the case down to the hired car.

She’d already said her goodbyes and thanks to Rosa and Manuel and while she’d been eating the very late breakfast the pretty housekeeper had insisted on making for her, Manuel had offered to try again to track Diego down for her.

He could telephone the señor’s parents; why hadn’t he thought of that before? There was a slim hope. The señor didn’t answer to them for what he was doing but they might know where he was. Though he doubted it. Hadn’t the señor’s housekeeper had to give them his message? Which meant he hadn’t spoken to them himself, didn’t it? Nevertheless, for the señorita’s sake, he would try.

But the phone was dead. A problem with the line; it often happened, the Spaniard said with a shrug of resignation. So even the final slim hope of making contact with him was gone. There was nothing to keep her here.

Starting the engine, she said her silent farewells. There would be no closure and she’d just have to live with that. Get on with her life, just as he was doing.

Diego forced himself to slow down as the road twisted sharply, the wheels spinning on the loose surface. He wasn’t suicidal; he was merely in a desperate hurry!

He vented a vehement string of oaths, his hard profile clenched. Everything was conspiring against him. He remembered what he’d told Lisa five years ago. He’d said his love had no ending and had meant it. Still did.

But finding her and proving it, demanding that she give him a chance to make her understand that she could find happiness as his wife—not Clayton’s—was turning out to be a problem of nightmare proportions.

It had been mid-afternoon yesterday when he’d arrived at her flat. No answer. A phone call to her father had given him the information that she was staying with the Claytons in Holland Park, just until Ben was out of danger. The older man had sounded defensive, almost as if he were reluctant to let him know where his daughter was or what she was doing.

The taxi that had taken him to the Holland Park address had been frustratingly slow through the heavy traffic. Sophie, his rival’s twin, had answered his summons, peering behind him. ‘Where’s Lise?’

‘That’s what I’d like to know.’ Still sitting at Clayton’s bedside, mopping his brow, feeding him grapes and kissing him better? The thought made him furious.

‘She isn’t with you, then?’

‘Obviously not.’ He had a hard time of it, hanging on to the very last thread of his rapidly dwindling patience. ‘Why would she be?’

‘Because she flew out to Spain this morning to see you. She said you had unfinished business. Look, she didn’t put me in the picture, but she did say she didn’t know when she’d be back. Ben’s making good progress so I suppose she feels she doesn’t need to be here now.’ She widened the door aperture. ‘Won’t you come in?’

What the hell for? had been his initial, ill-mannered answer, happily unvoiced. He made himself smile. ‘No. No, thank you.’ And then, as if on an afterthought, ‘Is Lisa’s engagement to Ben still on?’