Melina laughed unpleasantly. ‘You already have all the problems you can handle. I shall enjoy watching you struggle to fill my shoes!’
Polly watched the blonde stalk across the hall and up the imposing staircase. She released her breath very slowly but she still felt utterly stunned. Melina D’Agnolo had been a severe shock. Raul’s mistress—proud and unashamed of her position in his life and in no hurry to vacate his bed.
And one look at Melina had been sufficient to tell Polly that her misapprehension about the pretty stewardess on board the jet had been laughable. Melina was much more convincing in the role of mistress. Melina with her exquisite face, fabulous figure and tremendous elegance and poise. Mature, classy and sophisticated. Raul’s kind of woman. And what even the greatest optimist would acknowledge as seriously challenging competition...
No, Polly scolded herself fiercely. She wasn’t going to allow herself to start thinking that way. Raul had said that she was the only woman in his life now, and he had given her no cause to doubt his sincerity. OK, she had just suffered through a horribly embarrassing encounter and been forced to endure the other woman’s spiteful attacks, but Melina would pack and depart and she would never have to see her again. She would put Melina right back out of her mind. Raul’s past was none of her business, she reminded herself staunchly.
Upstairs, Polly wandered across a huge landing and picked a passageway. Finally, after a couple of wrong choices, she peered into a nursery as exquisitely furnished as a room in a glossy magazine. A crowd of smiling, whispering female staff surrounded the imposing antique four-poster cot. Freshly clothed and clearly content, Luis nestled within the cot’s hand-embroidered bedding like a little king, giving an audience and basking in all the attention.
‘It has been so long since there was a child here,’ the housekeeper confided.
‘Was this Raul’s cot?’ Polly asked, smiling.
The older woman looked away uncomfortably. ‘No, señora... but it was his father’s.’
Briefly wondering what she had said to disconcert the woman, Polly was led down a corridor lined with fabulous oil paintings and into a magnificent big bedroom. Realising that it had stopped raining, Polly opened the French windows and stepped out onto the sun-drenched balcony to gaze out appreciatively on the beautifully landscaped gardens. Lush lawns and colourful vegetation were shaded by clumps of graceful mature trees. In the distance an architectural extravaganza of a small building complete with turrets caught her attention.
‘What’s that used for?’ she asked her companion.
The older woman stiffened. ‘It is not used for anything, señora.’
‘What a waste...it’s so pretty.’
‘It is full of ghosts, not a good place.’ The housekeeper retreated back indoors, seemingly unaware that she had said anything that might cause Polly to stare after her in wide-eyed surprise and curiosity. ‘I will fix you some breakfast, señora. You must be hungry.’
That evening, Polly rested back in the huge sunken bath in the en suite bathroom and felt like a queen lying in solitary state. She poked a set of pink toes up through the bubbles covering the surface of the water and sighed.
Melina D’Agnolo had vanished like the bad fairy. Only when she had disappeared had it occurred to Polly to wonder how she had gone, and to where. By car, by plane? The Zaforteza ranch was set in miles and miles of cattle country.
In the afternoon Polly had walked out to the furthest edge of the gardens and seen the plains stretching as far as the eye could reach in every direction, their monotony broken up by occasional clumps of trees, stretches of flood water that glinted in the hot sun and ground that seemed to sweep up and merge with the endless blue sky.
She closed her eyes and let herself think about Raul. Would he phone? Once she had told him not to bother and he hadn’t given her a chance to say no a second time. But how the heck could she possibly measure up to a woman as gorgeous as Melina? The fear crept in and she tried to squash the thought and the feeling simultaneously.
‘Lesson two on being a proper wife...’ a silken drawl imparted lazily from the door. ‘If you have to be in the bath when I come home, make it one I can share. Omit the heavily scented bubbles.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
POLLY’S mouth fell open at the same instant as her eyes shot wide Raul stood in the doorway, a sizzling smile of amusement slashing his mouth as he absorbed her astonishment.
‘But you look kind of cute...’ Raul conceded, brilliant dark eyes roaming with unconcealed interest over the rosetipped breasts pertly breaking through the bubbles for his scrutiny.
Wrenching free of her paralysed stillness, Polly sat up in a frantic rush and hugged her knees to her chest. Raul gave an extravagant wince. ‘Sometimes you act like a ten-yearold, gatita.’
‘Couldn’t you have knocked on the door?’ Polly demanded defensively.
‘The door wasn’t even closed,’ he reminded her drily, and he leant back against the door, slowly pushing it shut, as if he was making some kind of statement.
Sooner than ask him what he was doing, and already having discarded as too dangerously provocative the idea of asking him to step outside while she vacated the bath and covered herself, Polly studied him anxiously from below her dark lashes.
A tide of terrifying longing swept over her in a stormy wave. Her own heartbeat thundered inside her ears, and all the time her eyes were roaming all over him in hungry, helpless little darts. He was so incredibly tall in his light grey suit, his white shirt throwing his bronzed skin into exotic prominence, his luxuriant black hair gleaming under the recessed lights above, eyes glinting wicked gold in that lean, dark, devastating face.
‘You missed me,’ Raul purred, like a jungle cat basking in sunlight, his husky accent thickening and sending a trail of reaction down her taut spinal cord.
‘For heaven’s sake, how could I have missed you? I last saw you in the early hours of this morning!’ Polly snapped, but it was a challenge to snap when it was so outrageously difficult to even breathe normally in his radius.
‘You don’t just need lessons on how to be a proper wife...you need a bloody intensive training course!’ Raul shot back at her with shocking abruptness. ‘What does it take to get a pleasant response from you? Thumbscrews?’
Jolted by that sudden blaze of temper, Polly gazed up at him strickenly. She felt the most awful stinging surge of tears threatening at the back of her eyes. Hurriedly she bent her head. Maybe meeting your gorgeous mistress spoilt my day, she almost slung accusingly, but caution restrained her.