Hostage of Passion

‘Like it?’ Blue eyes crinkled. ‘I’m proud of it! I keep all my Press cuttings—the more way-out the better. They’ll be something to amuse me when I’m ninety, creeping around on my Zimmer-frame!’ He tossed off the remainder of his brandy, then told her firmly, ‘If you ever thought I horsed around while your mother was alive, forget it. I can’t say I haven’t looked, but so far I’ve never found another to come near my Patience. I know you don’t approve of me, but—’

He broke off, relief on his face, as Rosalia walked in, speaking to him in Spanish, and he translated, ‘My room’s ready, it seems. I’ll turn in.’ He touched the top of her head briefly. ‘I’d like to make an early start in the morning—can’t have those tearaways missing too many sessions. I can take you to the airport—unless you’d like to spend a day or so with me at the farm?’ he suggested warily, as if it was too much to expect.

She said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ because she didn’t know yet whether Francisco wanted her to stay.

She took herself off to his suite, her stomach feeling as if it was home to a colony of grasshoppers, and waited for him. She spent ages in the bath, and because she couldn’t bear to wear the torn, dull nightie she took a silky robe of Francisco’s and wore that instead, cinching her waist with the tie-belt she found in one of the pockets. Then she perched at the head of the bed, waiting, still waiting, tortured by the spicy, tangy male scent of him that came with the soft fabric.

She wished she didn’t love him so much that her heart was hurting, her body aching just to be near him, her soul calling out to his. Why didn’t he hear it?

At three o’clock she knew the waiting was over. He couldn’t have been talking to Encarnación all this time. He was not going to come to her, tell her how his interview with his sister had gone, what had been settled between them, ask her to tell him what she’d decided about staying on with him. She had already told him she’d made up her mind, didn’t need to sleep on it. And that, she decided with a misery that overwhelmed her, could mean only one thing.

He had no further interest in her.

Curling herself into a dejected ball, she tried to sleep, but knew she couldn’t, and didn’t, and got up with the dawn. She dressed in the grey trousers and shirt Rosalia had laundered, dragged her blazer from the wardrobe, stuffed the torn nightdress and spare underwear in her flight bag and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

She would wait in the inner courtyard until Piers was ready to leave. It couldn’t be soon enough. And it was all for the best, she assured herself dully. Why get herself more emotionally involved than she already was? It wasn’t worth it, not for a few days and nights of bliss with the man she had been crazy enough to fall in love with.

With his sister safely returned to the fold, everything sorted, the last thing he would want would be to have her around, reminding him of yesterday, of things he would now wish unsaid, undone.

And with his kid sister under the same roof he wouldn’t want to set a bad example, indulge in a short-lived affair with a woman he would send packing without a moment’s regret the moment she began to bore him.

So she would leave with her dignity intact, and no one would ever know that her poor heart was breaking up. As she emerged into the fresh morning light she waited, staring at her feet because she refused to look around her. This was the place of her dreams; everything she held most precious to her was bound up here. She didn’t want to add to her burden of memories.

‘So. You are leaving.’

She froze, her body rigid, then killed the tiny unbidden hope stone-dead because his voice had held nothing but a cool lack of interest, either way. Forcing herself to turn and face him, she was shocked by what she saw, but wouldn’t let herself feel any concern. Any display of emotion, from hereon in, could be her downfall.

He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. Hadn’t he been to bed at all? He didn’t look as if he had. His face looked grey with fatigue, and he needed a shave, and the soft dark hair was rumpled. But his eyes were like stone, the glance he swept over the trousers and shirt he had so deplored faintly contemptuous.

She dropped her eyes, unable to bear his coldness, his cruelty. If he had given her just a hint of a smile, a look that said he still found her desirable, she would have come right out with it and asked if he still wanted her here. But there’d been nothing, and that had to be for the best, in the long run. Then she closed her eyes, pain washing over her, as Piers popped out from nowhere.

The fantasy, for that was all it had ever been, was over.

‘Ready, Sal?’ Piers sounded full of himself and Sarah managed a wan smile.

‘When you are.’

‘Then we’re off. The minibus is parked out the front. Not luxury travel but useful for ferrying a bunch of students about.’ He marched over to Sarah and took her arm. ‘We won’t hang around for breakfast,’ he decided, as if he’d been asked. He gave the bleak-eyed Spaniard a cocky stare. ‘What do you think, Sal? Shall we sue the crazy man?’

He seemed to think it was funny and she wanted to scream at him, tell him this wasn’t a joke, that she was being torn apart, tell him to get lost, to give her two minutes of privacy to say goodbye to the arrogant black-hearted devil who’d stolen her heart.

But she didn’t; of course she didn’t. Her eyes f

ixed on her father, she said brittly, ‘I couldn’t be bothered. He did provide me with a free holiday of sorts, excellent food and even better wine. He even threw in some vaguely amusing entertainment—when he was in the mood. Let’s go, shall we?’

‘He’s here again!’ Jenny practically sang over the internal phone. ‘I thought you told me it was just a casual holiday thing. He didn’t look casual to me! All dark and brooding and definitely edible! Anyway, I told him to go on through.’

The line went dead, the door opposite her desk bounced open and he was standing there, six feet plus of dark Spanish arrogance, and she knew that the scant two weeks she’d had, including the few days she’d spent at the summer school with Piers and the students, hadn’t been nearly enough time to prepare herself for actually having to see him again.

He was wearing a soft-as-butter cream-coloured leather jacket over black shirt and trousers and he shattered every last one of her senses. She supposed, light-headedly, that the English spring would feel positively frigid after the Andalusian heat.

She didn’t know what he was doing here. Had he come to torment her? Was he that cruel?

‘Say something!’ he ordered, his hands planted on his lean hips, his eyes alarming. ‘Or have you forgotten your tongue, along with the things I taught you? How to be a real woman, for instance.’ He covered the space between the door and her desk in a blink of her startled eyes, snatched at her hands and dragged her to her feet. ‘All that beautiful hair scraped back as if you were ashamed of it. A suit that makes you look like a prison warder! I came only just in time. Another day and you would have been set in concrete, a frigid, uptight single lady to the end of your dreary days!’

He had only come to insult her and she couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want to remember how he’d made her feel—gloriously, wickedly feminine for the very first time. So she wouldn’t remember. She shook his hands away, took two paces back, avoiding his impatient eyes, and said coldly, ‘What do you want?’

‘A wife.’