Mistress Of La Rioja
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Liam stared at her. ‘Fight for him?’ he echoed. ‘You surely don’t mean you’re going to apply for custody, Sophie? You wouldn’t stand a hope in hell. Not if he’s as rich and as powerful as you say he is. And he is the father.’
Tiredly, Sophie rubbed at her temples. ‘I don’t know what I mean—other than knowing I have to get out there. To let Teo know that he has relatives, and that we care.’
‘And once the funeral is over? Will you come straight back?’
She met his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I can’t commit to a time scale. But I’ll still be able to do some work— I can always use my laptop, and you’ll be able to manage here without me for a bit, won’t you?’
‘Of course we can manage,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll just miss you, that’s all.’
‘Thanks,’ she whispered, and, gulping back more tears, she began to pack her briefcase.
She and Liam went way back.
They had met at university and discovered a shared sense of humour coupled with an ambition to make lots of money while having fun. Which had been how the Hollingsworth-Mills advertising agency had come about. Now they were tipped for the top. A combination of enthusiasm and employing bright young staff with similar high-reaching goals meant that Sophie and Liam were poised on the brink of unforeseen success.
But what did any of that matter at a time like this?
Feeling too shaky to drive safely, she took the train to Norfolk, her heart weeping for her grandmother as she walked up the path of her Norfolk country cottage, where she and Miranda had spent part of their school holidays, every summer without fail. They had walked for miles on the vast, empty beaches which were close by, and climbed trees and fed the fat ducks on the pond with pieces of bread.
And Sophie had watched as Miranda’s beauty had become something more than breathtaking. Had seen for herself the bewitching power which that beauty gave her over men…
She rang the old-fashioned jingly-jangly doorbell, praying for the right words to tell her grandmother what had happened, and knowing that there were none which would not hurt.
But Felicity Mills was almost eighty, and there was little of life she hadn’t seen. She took one look at Sophie’s face. ‘It’s bad news,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes. It’s Miranda—’
‘She’s dead,’ said her grandmother woodenly. ‘Isn’t she?’
‘How? How could you possibly have known that?’ Sophie whispered, much later, when tears had been shed and they had sought some kind of comfort in old photographs of Miranda as a baby, then a sunny toddler and every other stage through to stunning bride. But Sophie hadn’t wanted to linger on that photo—not when the dark face of Luis mocked her and stung her guilty conscience. ‘How?’ she asked again.
‘I can’t explain it,’ sighed her grandmother. ‘I just looked into your face and I knew. And, in a way, there was a dreadful inevitability about it. Miranda always flew too close to the sun. One day she was bound to get burned.’
‘But how can you be so accepting?’
‘How can I not? I have lived through war, my darling. You have to accept what you cannot change.’
She squeezed the old woman’s hand. ‘Is there—is there anything I can do for you, Granny?’
There was a long silence and Mrs Mills stared at her. ‘There is one thing—but it may not be possible. I’m too old and too frail to fly to Spain for the funeral—but I should like to see Teodoro again before I die.’
Sophie swallowed down the lump in her throat. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask—even of Luis— not under these circumstances. ‘Then I’ll br-bring him to you,’ she promised shakily. ‘I promise.’
‘But Luis might not allow it.’
Sophie’s eyes glimmered with unshed tears. ‘He must, Granny—he must!’
‘It is a big favour to ask him. Tread carefully, Sophie—you know how fiercely possessive he is about his son and you know the kind of man you’re dealing with,’ her grandmother added drily. ‘You know his reputation. Few would dare to cross him.’
‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that,’ said Sophie, then stared up at her grandmother, her eyes confused.
‘Don’t you hate him, Granny? For making Miranda so unhappy?’
‘Happiness is not the gift of one person to another,’ answered her grandmother slowly. ‘It takes two people to be happy. And hate is such a waste of emotion—and a total waste of time. What good would be served if I hated the father of my great-grandson?’
But if Sophie took hate out of the equation, then what did that leave her with? An overpowering attraction which she prayed had weakened with the passing of time.
All she wanted was to have grown immune to his powerful presence and his dark, unforgettable face. After all, she hadn’t seen him since just after Teodoro’s baptism, a year ago, when they had brought the baby over to England.
Sophie had deliberately kept her distance from Luis, although she’d been able to feel those steely dark eyes watching her as she moved around the room. She’d wondered if he had broken his wedding vows yet, and when she’d had a moment had asked her cousin if anything was wrong, but Miranda had just shrugged her bare brown shoulders.
‘Oh, Luis should have married a docile little Spanish girl who didn’t want to set foot outside the door,’ she had said bitterly. ‘It seems that he can’t cope with a wife who doesn’t whoop for joy because she happens to live in the back of beyond.’
And Sophie had directed a look of icy-blue fire across the room at Luis, meeting nothing but cold mockery in return.
Sophie’s plane touched down in Pamplona in the still blazing heat of an early Spanish evening and she hurried through Customs, her eyes scanning the arrivals bay, expecting to see a driver holding a card aloft with her name on it, but it took all of two seconds to see the tall and distinctive figure waiting there.
And one second to note the hard and glittering black eyes, the unsmiling mouth and the shuttered features. He was taller than every other man there, and his face still drew the eyes of women like a magnet. No, he hadn’t changed, and Sophie’s heart gave a violent and unwelcome lurch.
He stood in the crowd and yet he stood alone.
It seemed that Don Luis de la Camara had come to collect her in person.
CHAPTER TWO
LUIS watched as Sophie walked through the arrivals lounge, unsmilingly observing the heads which turned to follow her as she walked, though she herself seemed completely oblivious of it. But of course she had the fair skin and hair which made the hearts of most male Spaniards melt, though none of the deliberately provocative style of her cousin.
He felt his pulse quicken and his blood thicken as she made her way towards him, her light cotton dress defining her slender legs and such delicate ankles that he was surprised they could support her weight at all. He remembered the very first time he had seen her, when she had captured his imagination with her natural beauty and grace, and such completely unselfconscious sexuality.
He had met her and wanted her in an instant and had despised the hot, sharp hunger she had inspired in him, a hunger which would never—could never— be satisfied.
And then she was standing in front of him, all honey-coloured hair and pale, translucent skin. As slender and as supple as a willow—with a look of almost grim determination glittering from the china-blue eyes.
Luis sensed danger in that determination, but he did not acknowledge it. Keeping his face a mask of formal courtesy, he inclined his head in greeting. To any other woman he might have given the traditional kiss on either cheek, but not this one. He had wanted to kiss her the first time he had seen her, but by then it was too late.
And now it was later still.
‘Sophie.’ A small, formal bow of his dark head. ‘I trust that you have had a pleasant flight?’
He was so tall that she had to look up at him, and Sophie’s heart sank as she realised that all that raw and vibrant masculinity was as intact and as potent as it had ever been. But the way he was speaking, he might as well have been enquiring about the weather. He certainly didn’t sound like a bereft and newly-widowed man, and for the first time she wondered if tragedy had not, in fact, proved a convenient ending to an unhappy marriage.
She kept her face neutral—though God only knew how. ‘It was smooth enough, thank-you.’ Though in truth the hours had passed in a blur as she had tried to equip herself with the emotional strength to stay polite and impassive towards him.
She wondered what his emotional state was. Untouched, she would guess. There was no tell-tale red-rimming of the eyes, no hint that tears had been shed for the mother of his child—but then, whoever could imagine a man like Luis shedding tears?
Today, he looked remote and untouchable. His face was as cold and as hard as if it had been hewn from some pure, honey-coloured marble—but only a blind fool would have denied that he was an outrageously attractive man.
He stood at well over six feet and his shoulders were broad and strong. Lightweight summer trousers did little to conceal the powerful shaft of his thighs, and beneath the short-sleeved cotton shirt his arms looked as though they were capable of splitting open the trunk of a tree without effort.
But it was the face which was truly remarkable— it effortlessly bore the stamp of generations of Spanish aristocracy. Proud, almost cruel—with only the lush lines of his mouth breaking up the unremitting hardness of his features. A mouth so lush that it exuded the unmistakable sensuality which surrounded him like an invisible cloak.
No wonder her cousin had fallen for his devastating brand of charisma, Sophie thought, and a sudden sense of sadness left her feeling almost winded.
He saw the hint of tears which misted the Mediterranean-blue of her eyes. All the fire and determination had been wiped out, her sadness betrayed by the slight, vulnerable tremble of her lips, and he reached out to take her hand. It felt so tiny and cool when enclosed in his.
‘You have my condolences, little one,’ he said gravely.
She lifted her chin, swallowing the tears away, and removed her hand from his warm grasp, despairing of the not-so-subtle chemistry between them which made her want to leave it exactly where it was. ‘Thank you,’ she returned softly, letting her gaze fall to the ground, just in case those perceptive black eyes had the power to read exactly what was going on in her mind.
He looked at her downcast head and the stiff, defensive set of her shoulders. She was grieving for her cousin, he reminded himself—although the defiant, almost angry spark in her eyes on greeting him had little to do with grief, surely?
‘Come, Sophie,’ he said. ‘The car awaits us and we have some drive ahead of us. Here, let me carry your suitcase for you.’
It sounded more like a command than an offer to help, and, although Sophie could have and would have carried it perfectly well on her own, she knew that it was pointless trying to refuse a man like Luis.
He would insist. Instinct told her that just as accurately as anything her cousin had ever divulged. He came from a long line of imperious men, men who saw clearly delineated lines between the roles of the sexes.
Spain might now be as modern as the rest of Europe, but men like Luis did not change with the times. They still saw themselves as conquerors—superior and supreme—and master of all they surveyed.
She could see women looking at him as they passed. Coy little side-glances and sometimes an eager and undisguised kind of hunger. She couldn’t see into his eyes from here, and wondered if he was giving them hungry little glances back.
Probably. Hadn’t he done just that with her, before he had discovered her identity?
And of course now, without a wife, he could behave exactly as he pleased—he could exert that powerful sexuality and get any woman he wanted into his bed.
The airport buildings were refreshingly air-conditioned, but once outside the force of the heat hit her like a velvet fist, even though the intensity of the midday sun had long since passed.
He saw her flinch beneath the impact of the raw heat, and he knew that he must not forget to warn her about the dangers of the sun. ‘Why don’t you take your jacket off?’ he suggested suavely.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said tightly.
His mouth hardened. ‘As you wish.’
Thankfully, the car was as cool and air-conditioned as the airport terminal, and she waited until he had driven out of the car park and was setting off towards the open road before turning to him.
‘Where’s Teodoro?’
‘At home.’
‘Oh.’
He heard the disappointment in her voice. ‘You imagined that I would have brought him out on a hot summer’s night to await a plane which could have been delayed?’
‘So who’s looking after him?’
Did her question hint at reprimand? he wondered incredulously. Did she imagine that he had left the child alone? ‘He is in the charge of his ninera…’He saw her frown with confusion and realised that she, like her cousin, spoke almost no Spanish at all. ‘His mother’s help,’ he translated immediately.
‘Not any more,’ said Sophie quietly.
‘No,’ he agreed heavily. There was a short, painful pause and he shot her a side-glance. ‘How did your grandmother take it?’
Sophie bit her lip. Would it sound unfeeling and uncaring if she told him that, although the news had saddened her grandmother, it had come as no great surprise. What had she said? Miranda had flown far too close to the sun… But if she told Luis that then surely it would do a disservice to her cousin’s memory.
‘What happened, Luis? How did Miranda die?’
He pulled in a breath, choosing his words carefully, remembering that he must respect both her position and her grief.
How much of the truth did she want? he wondered. Or need?
‘No one knows exactly what happened,’ he said.
She knew evasion when she heard it. And faint distaste, too. She wondered what had caused it.
‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’
He didn’t answer, just kept his dark eyes straight on the road ahead, so that all she could see was his hard, shadowed profile, and Sophie said the first thing which came into her head. ‘Had the driver been drinking?’
There was a short, bald silence. But what would be the point in keeping it from her? It would soon be a matter of public record.
‘Sì. El habia estrado bebiendo.’ He was thinking in his native language and the words just slipped out of their own accord.
She spoke hardly any Spanish, but Sophie could tell what his answer was from the flat, heavy tone of his voice. She closed her eyes in despair. ‘Oh, God! Drinking very much? Do you know?’
‘The tests have not yet been completed.’
A sense of outrage and of anger burned deep within her—and for the first time it was directed at Miranda instead of the man beside her. Her cousin had been a mother, for heaven’s sake, with all the responsibility which went with that. She’d had a young child to look after—so how could she have been so stupid to have gone off in a car where the driver had been drinking?
Unless she hadn’t known.
But Miranda hadn’t been stupid. She’d been head-strong and impetuous sometimes, but she definitely hadn’t been stupid.
Unless this man beside her, who drove the car so expertly through the darkened Spanish countryside— unless he had made her life such a misery that she hadn’t cared about common sense and personal safety.
She shook her head. There was absolutely no justification for Miranda going off with a drink-driver. Whatever the state of her marriage, she had always been free to walk away from it.
She shot a side-glance at the darkly angled profile. Or had she? What if Miranda had tried to walk away, taking Teodoro with her? Couldn’t and wouldn’t Luis have used his power and his influence to try to stop her?
She turned her head and pressed her cheek against the coolness of the window and looked out, only half taking in the wild beauty of the silhouetted landscape beyond.
The air was violet-dark and huge stars spotted the sky with splodges of silver. They looked so much bigger and brighter than the stars back in England, and her home seemed suddenly a long way away. And then she remembered. She had responsibilities, too.
Through sheer effort of will she reached down in her briefcase to retrieve her mobile phone.
‘Will this work out here?’ she questioned.
His eyes narrowed as they briefly glanced over at the little technological toy. ‘That depends on what type it is.’ He shrugged. ‘But I have another you can use, if yours can’t get a signal.’
‘You have a mobile phone? Here? In the car?’
His mouth twisted into a grim smile. ‘Did you imagine that I communicate by bush telegraph? You will find every modern comfort, even here in La Rioja, Sophie.’
And yet his words seemed to mock the reality of his presence. ‘Modern comfort,’ he had said, when with his dark and brooding looks he seemed to represent the very opposite of all that was modern.
He watched as she punched out a string of numbers. ‘Is your call so very important that it cannot wait until we reach the hacienda?’ he questioned softly.
‘I have to let someone know that I arrived safely.’
‘A man, I suppose?’
‘Actually, yes. It is a man.’ Not that it was any of his business, but let him draw his own conclusions, which he very probably would. And obviously if it was a man then she must be sleeping with him!
The connection was made. ‘Liam? Hi, it’s me!’
Beside her, Luis stared into the abyss of the road ahead, wondering if she shared the same sexual freedom as her cousin. His gaze wandered unseen to her legs, and he was unprepared for the sudden buck of jealousy at the thought of those slender, pale limbs wrapped around the body of another.
He reminded himself that he knew women like these—with their blonde hair and their big blue eyes and their gym-toned bodies. The bodies of women but with the minds of men. They acted as men had been acting for years…they saw something they wanted and they went all out to get it.
And she had wanted him once, before she had discovered that he was to marry her cousin, just as he had wanted her—a wanting like no other. A thunderbolt which had struck him and left him aching and dazed in its wake. And it had taken her as well, he had seen that for himself, as unmistakable as the long shadows cast by the sun.
He listened in unashamedly to her conversation as the car ate up the lonely miles.
‘No, I’m in the car now. With Luis.’ A pause. ‘Not really, no.’ Another pause and then she glanced at her watch. ‘It’s just gone nine. No, that’s OK. Yeah, I know, but I can’t really talk now. Yes. OK. Thanks, Liam. I hope so, too. OK, I’ll do that. I’ll call you on Saturday.’
She cut the connection and put the phone back in the glove box.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.
There was a soft, dangerous pause as he saw her cross one slim, pale leg over the other. ‘Does he hunger for you already, Sophie?’ he asked silkily, and the blood began to pound in his head.
She couldn’t believe her ears. It was such an outrageous thing to say that for a moment Sophie was left speechless.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He gave a half-smile in the darkness. So beautiful and so unintentionally sensual, and yet she could turn her voice to frost when it suited her.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Liam is my business partner.’
‘Ah.’
Something dark and sensual conveyed danger in that simple word, and Sophie felt her heart race with something more than fear. ‘Is—is there going to be anyone else staying at the hacienda?’
He heard the tremor in her voice and it amused him, even while it frustrated and tempted him. Was it him she wasn’t sure she trusted? Or herself? Did she want him still?
‘You mean apart from Teodoro?’ he questioned casually.
‘You know I do.’
‘One of the women from the village comes in to help with meals. And Pirro, who is my cook and gardener, lives in the hacienda with Salvadora, his wife. She is Teodoro’s ninera—as she was mine before, when I was a child.’
‘Since…when?’ asked Sophie, thinking that Salvadora must be getting on a bit if she used to look after Luis. ‘Since before Miranda died?’
‘Oh, long before that,’ he murmured evasively. ‘My son is devoted to her. You will see that for yourself.’
A wave of indignation washed over her, and something far more primitive followed on its heels. Had Miranda effectively been elbowed out of the way? she wondered. The Englishwoman pushed aside for the mummy-substitute—a fellow Spaniard who could teach Teodoro the language and traditions of his father?
Well, not for much longer, vowed Sophie. Somehow she would teach him something of his mother’s heritage. She scrabbled around again in her handbag, this time for a hairbrush.
His mouth curved. ‘There is no one here to impress with your beauty, mia querida,’ he drawled. Apart from him. Because when she lifted her head like that he could see the long, pure line of her neck and the perfect curve of her breasts.
‘That was not my intention.’ She carefully brushed out the fine, honey-coloured hair, which felt all sticky through the many hours of travelling. ‘I merely wanted to make myself presentable on my arrival.’ She could see distant lights. ‘Are we almost there?’
‘Yes, we are just about to pass through the vineyards.’
She looked out of the window again. The famous La Camara vineyards. The largest and most impressive in the region, with grapes yielding a rich harvest which was turned into exquisite wines exported the world over.
She had once drunk La Camara Rioja herself, at a very smart dinner party in London where the host had brought the fine wine out with a reverent air and everyone had sipped it with avid and awed appreciation.
All except for Sophie. She had managed no more than a couple of mouthfuls, feeling that the stuff might choke her as she remembered the proud, arrogant face and the mocking black eyes.
‘You aren’t drinking, Sophie?’ the host had commented.
It would have been a real party-stopper if she had explained that she was related by marriage to the owner of the vineyard, a man who made her blood sing and her temper flare in equal measure whenever she thought about him.
And she didn’t want to think about him.
Muffling a little gulp, she sat back in the seat and closed her eyes.
Luis glanced over at her, frowning a little as he saw the tension which tightened her shoulders, wondering if she was about to cry, and instinctively his voice gentled. ‘Did you eat on the plane?’
‘No. It was horrible little bits of unrecognisable food in plastic trays. And I wasn’t hungry.’
‘We will have dinner when we arrive.’
‘Surely it’s too late for dinner?’
‘But we eat very late in Spain, Sophie, did you not know that? Did you not know that the Spanish are more awake than anyone in Europe—and not only because they regard going to bed before three a.m. as a kind of personal dishonour?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve only ever been to Spain once, and that was for the weekend when Teodoro was baptised.’
‘Then you have missed very much.’ His voice had deepened now, was made almost kind with something which sounded like compassion. ‘I wish this time it could be under happier circumstances, querida. It is a pity that you will see little of my country before you return home.’
There was an expectant silence and Sophie ignored it.
But Luis did not. ‘By the way, you didn’t tell me how long you were going to be staying?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘And?’
She was glad of the darkness because the way he framed that single syllable was nothing short of intimidating.
‘I’m not sure.’ Until she had reached a position of trust which ensured that she would be able to fly Teo back to England for a short holiday to see his great-grandmother. But now was definitely not the time to tell him that.