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‘Would you tell me something?’ she asked to break the silence.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Why didn’t you try and put an end to their relationship from the start? I mean, why did you bother taking us out for all those meals?’
‘Not my place to interfere. Not at that point, at any rate. I’d been asked to keep an eye on things, to meet your brother and, as it turns out, you too, because the two of you seem to be joined at the hip.’ He didn’t add that, having not had very much to do with his niece in the past, he had found that he rather enjoyed their company. He had liked listening to Mark and Maria entertain him with their chat about movies and music. And even more he had liked the way Aggie had argued with him, had liked the way it had challenged him into making an effort to get her to laugh. It had all made a change from the extravagant social events to which he was invited, usually in a bid by a company to impress him.
‘We’re not joined at the hip! We’re close because …’ Because of their background of foster care, but that was definitely something they had kept to themselves.
‘Because you lost your parents?’
‘That’s right.’ She had told him in passing, almost the first time she had met him, that their parents were dead and had swiftly changed the subject. Just another muddled half-truth that would further make him suspicious of their motives.
‘Apart from which, I thought that my sister had been overreacting to the whole thing. Maria is an only child without a father. Luisa is prone to pointless worrying.’
‘I can’t imagine you taking orders from your sister.’
‘You haven’t met Luisa or any of my five sisters. If you had, you wouldn’t make that observation.’ He laughed and Aggie felt the breath catch in her throat because, for once, his laughter stemmed from genuine amusement.
‘What are they like?’
‘All older than me and all bossy.’ He grinned sideways at her. ‘It’s easier to surrender than to cross them. In a family of six women, my father and I know better than to try and argue. It would be easier staging a land war in Asia.’
That glimpse of his humanity unsettled Aggie. But she had had glimpses of it before, she recalled uneasily. Times when he had managed to make her forget how dislikeable he was, when he had recounted something with such dry wit that she had caught herself trying hard to stifle a laugh. He might be hateful, judgemental and unfair, he might represent a lot of things she disliked, but there was no denying that he was one of the most intelligent men she had ever met—and, when it suited him, one of the most entertaining. She had contrived to forget all of that but, stuck here with him, it was coming back to her fast and she had to fumble her way out of her momentary distraction.
‘I couldn’t help overhearing those messages earlier on at the house,’ she said politely.
‘Messages? What are you talking about?’
‘Lots of business calls. I guess you’re having to sacrifice working time for this … unless you don’t work on a weekend.’
‘If you’re thinking of using a few messages you overheard as a way of trying to talk me out of this trip, then you can forget it.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of doing that. I was just being polite.’
‘In that case, you can rest assured that there’s nothing that can’t wait until Monday when I’m back in London. I have my mobile and if anything urgent comes up, then I can deal with it on the move. Nice try, though.’
‘What about that other message? I gather you’ll be missing a date with someone tomorrow night?’
Luiz stiffened. ‘Again, nothing that can’t be handled.’
‘Because I would feel very guilty otherwise.’
‘Don’t concern yourself with my private life, Aggie.’
‘Why not?’ Aggie risked. ‘You’re concerning yourself with mine.’
‘Slightly different scenario, wouldn’t you agree? To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t been caught trying to con anyone recently. My private life isn’t the one under the spotlight.’
‘You’re impossible! You’re so … blinkered! Did you know that Maria was the one who pursued Mark?’
‘Do me a favour.’
‘She was,’ Aggie persisted. ‘Mark was playing at one of the pubs and she and her friends went to hear them. She went to meet him after the gig and she gave him her mobile number, told him to get in touch.’
‘I’m finding that hard to believe, but let’s suppose you’re telling the truth. I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Whether she chased your brother or your brother chased her, the end result is the same. An heiress is an extremely lucrative proposition for someone in his position.’ He switched on the radio and turned it to the traffic news.
London was crawling. The weather forecasters had been making a big deal of snow to come. There was nothing at the moment but people were still rushing to get back home and the roads were gridlocked.
Aggie wearily closed her eyes and leaned back. She was hungry and exhausted and trying to get through to Luiz was like beating her head against a brick wall.
She came to suddenly to the sound of Luiz’s low, urgent voice and she blinked herself out of sleep. She had no idea how long she had been dozing, or even how she could manage to doze at all when her thoughts were all over the place.
He was on his phone, and from the sounds of it not enjoying the conversation he was having.
In fact, sitting up and stifling a yawn, it dawned on her that the voice on the other end of the mobile was the same smoky voice that had left a message on his answer machine earlier on, and the reason Aggie knew that was because the smoky voice had become high-pitched and shrill. Not only could she hear every word the other woman was saying, she guessed that if she rolled down her window the people in the car behind them would be able to as well.
‘This is not the right time for this conversation …’ Luiz was saying in a harried, urgent voice.
‘Don’t you dare hang up on me! I’ll just keep calling! I deserve better than this!’
‘Which is why you should be thanking me for putting an end to our relationship, Chloe. You do deserve a hell of a lot better than me.’
Aggie rolled her eyes. Wasn’t that the oldest trick in the book? The one men used when they wanted to exit a relationship with their consciences intact? Take the blame for everything, manage to convince their hapless girlfriend that breaking up is all for her own good and then walk away feeling as though they’ve done their good deed for the day.
She listened while Luiz, obviously resigning himself to a conversation he hadn’t initiated and didn’t want, explained in various ways why they weren’t working as a couple.
She had never seen him other than calm, self-assured, in complete control of himself and everything around him. People jumped to attention when he spoke and he had always had that air of command that was afforded to people of influence and power.
He was not that man when he finally ended the call to the sound of virulent abuse on the other end of the line.
‘Well?’ he demanded grittily. ‘I am sure you have an opinion on the conversation you unfortunately had to overhear.’
When she had asked him about his private life, this was not what she had been expecting. He had quizzed her about hers, about her brother’s; a little retaliation had seemed only fair. But that conversation had been intensely personal.
‘You’ve broken up with someone and I’m sorry about that,’ Aggie said quietly. ‘I know that it’s wretched when a relationship comes to an end, especially if you’ve invested in it, and of course I don’t want to talk about that. It’s your business.’
‘I like that.’
‘What?’
‘Your kind words of sympathy. Believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing that could have snapped me out of my mood as efficiently as that.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Aggie asked, confused. She looked at him to see him smiling with amusement and when he flicked her a sideways glance his smile broadened.
‘I’m not dying of a broken heart,’ he assured her. ‘In fact, if you’d been listening, I’m the one who instigated the break-up.’
‘Yes,’ Aggie agreed smartly. ‘Which doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt.’
‘Are you speaking from experience?’
‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact!’
‘I’m inclined to believe you,’ Luiz drawled. ‘So why did you dump him? Wasn’t he man enough to deal with your wilful, argumentative nature?’
‘I’m neither of those things!’ Aggie reddened and glared at his averted profile.
‘On that point, we’re going to have to differ.’
‘I’m only argumentative with you, Luiz Montes! And perhaps that’s because you’ve accused me of being a liar and an opportunist, plotting with my brother to take advantage of your niece!’
‘Give it a rest. You have done nothing but argue with me since the second you met me. You’ve made telling comments about every restaurant, about the value of money, about people who think they can rule the world from a chequebook … You’ve covered all the ground when it comes to letting me know that you disapprove of wealth. Course, how was I to know that those were just cleverly positioned comments to downplay what you were all about? But let’s leave that aside for the moment. Why did you dump the poor guy?’
‘If you must know,’ Aggie said, partly because constant arguing was tiring and partly because she wanted to let him know that Stu had not found her in the least bit argumentative, ‘he became too jealous and too possessive, and I don’t like those traits.’
‘Amazing. I think we’ve discovered common ground.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Chloe went from obliging to demanding in record time.’ They had finally cleared London and Luiz realised that unless they continued driving through the night they would have to take a break at some point along the route. It was also beginning to snow. For the moment, though, that was something he would keep to himself.
‘Never a good trait as far as I am concerned.’ He glanced at Aggie and was struck again by the extreme ultra-femininity of her looks. He imagined that guys could get sucked in by those looks only to discover a wildcat behind the angelic front. Whatever scam she and her brother had concocted between them, she had definitely been the brains behind it. Hell, he could almost appreciate the sharp, outspoken intelligence there. Under the low-level sniping, she was a woman a guy could have a conversation with and that, Luiz conceded, was something. He didn’t have much use for conversation with women, not when there were always so many more entertaining ways of spending time with them.
Generally speaking, the women he had gone out with had never sparked curiosity. Why would they? They had always been a known quantity, wealthy socialites with impeccable pedigrees. He was thirty-three years old and could honestly say that he had never deviated from the expected.
With work always centre-stage, it had been very easy to slide in and out of relationships with women who were socially acceptable. In a world where greed and avarice lurked around every corner, it made sense to eliminate the opportunist by making sure never to date anyone who could fall into that category. He had never questioned it. If none of the women in his past had ever succeeded in capturing his attention for longer than ten seconds, then he wasn’t bothered. His sisters, bar two, had all done their duty and reproduced, leaving him free to live his life the way he saw fit.
‘So … what do you mean? That the minute a woman wants something committed you back away? Was that what your ex-girlfriend was guilty of?’
‘I make it my duty never to make promises I can’t keep,’ Luiz informed her coolly. ‘I’m always straight with women. I’m not in it for the long run. Chloe, unfortunately, began thinking that the rules of the game could be changed somewhere along the line. I should have seen the signs, of course,’ he continued half to himself. ‘The minute a woman starts making noises about wanting to spend a night in and play happy families is the minute the warning bells should start going off.’
‘And they didn’t?’ Aggie was thinking that wanting to spend the odd night in didn’t sound like an impossible dream or an undercover marriage proposal.
‘She was very beautiful,’ Luiz conceded with a laugh.
‘Was that why you went out with her? Because of the way she looked?’
‘I’m a great believer in the power of sexual attraction.’
‘That’s very shallow.’
Luiz laughed again and slanted an amused look at her. ‘You’re not into sex?’
Aggie reddened and her heart started pounding like a drum beat inside her. ‘That’s none of your business!’
‘Some women aren’t.’ Luiz pushed the boundaries. Unlike the other times he had seen her, he now had her all to himself, undiluted by the presence of Mark and his niece. Naturally he would use the time to find out everything he could about her and her brother, all the better to prepare him for when they finally made it to the Lake District. But for now it was no hardship trying to prise underneath her prickly exterior to find out what made her tick. They were cooped up together in a car. What else was there to do? ‘Are you one of those women?’ he asked silkily.
‘I happen to think that sex isn’t the most important thing in a relationship!’
‘That’s probably because you haven’t experienced good sex.’
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life!’ But her face was hot and flushed and she was finding it difficult to breathe properly.
‘I hope I’m not embarrassing you …’
‘I’m not embarrassed. I just think that this is an inappropriate conversation.’
‘Because … ?’
‘Because I don’t want to be here. Because you’re dragging me off on a trek to find my brother so that you can accuse him of being an opportunist and fling money at him so that he goes away. Because you think that we can be bought off.’
‘That aside …’ He switched on his wipers as the first flurries of snow began to cloud the glass. ‘We’re here and we can’t maintain hostilities indefinitely. And I hate to break this to you, but it looks as though our trip might end up taking a little longer than originally anticipated.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look ahead of you. The traffic is crawling and the snow’s started to fall. I can keep driving for another hour or so but then we’re probably going to have to pull in somewhere for the night. In fact, keep your eyes open. I’m going to divert to the nearest town and we’re going to find somewhere overnight.’
CHAPTER THREE
IN THE end, she had to look up somewhere on his phone because they appeared to have entered hotel-free territory.
‘It’s just one reason why I try to never leave London,’ Luiz muttered in frustration. ‘Wide, empty open spaces with nothing inside them. Not even a halfway decent hotel, from the looks of it.’
‘That’s what most people love about getting out of London.’
‘Repeat—different strokes for different folks. What have you found?’ They had left the grinding traffic behind them. Now he had to contend with dangerously icy roads and thickly falling snow that limited his vision. He glanced across but couldn’t see her face because of the fall of soft, finely spun golden hair across it.
‘You’re going to be disappointed because there are no fancy hotels, although there is a B and B about five miles away and it’s rated very highly. It’s a bit of a detour but it’s the only thing I’ve been able to locate.’
‘Address.’ He punched it into his guidance system and relaxed at the thought that he would be able to take a break. ‘Read me what it says about this place.’
‘I don’t suppose anyone’s ever told you this but you talk to people as though they’re your servants. You just expect people to do what you want them to do without question.’
‘I would be inclined to agree with that,’ Luiz drawled. ‘But for the fact that you don’t slot into that category, so there goes your argument. I ask you to simply tell me about this bed and breakfast, which you’ll do but not until you let me know that you resent the request, and you resent the request for no other reason that I happen to be the one making it. The down side of accusing someone of being black-and-white is that you should be very sure that you don’t fall into the same category yourself.’
Aggie flushed and scowled. ‘Five bedrooms, two en suite, a sitting room. And the price includes a full English breakfast. There’s also a charming garden area but I don’t suppose that’s relevant considering the weather. And I’m the least prejudiced person I know. I’m extremely open minded!’
‘Five bedrooms. Two en suite. Is there nothing a little less basic in the vicinity?’
‘We’re in the country now,’ Aggie informed him tersely, half-annoyed because he hadn’t taken her up on what she had said. ‘There are no five-star hotels, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You know,’ Luiz murmured softly, straining to see his way forward when the wipers could barely handle the fall of snow on the windscreen, ‘I can understand your hostility towards me, but what I find a little more difficult to understand is your hostility towards all displays of wealth. The first time I met you, you made it clear that expensive restaurants were a waste of money when all over the world people were going without food … But hell, I don’t want to get into this. It’s hard enough trying to concentrate on not going off the road without launching into yet another pointless exchange of words. You’re going to have to look out for a sign.’
Of course, he had no interest in her personally, not beyond wanting to protect his family and their wealth from her, so she should be able to disregard everything he said. But he had still managed to make her feel like a hypocrite and Aggie shifted uncomfortably.
‘I’m sorry I can’t offer to share the driving,’ she muttered, to smooth over her sudden confusion at the way he had managed to turn her notions about herself on their head. ‘But I don’t have my driving licence.’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to drive even if you did,’ Luiz informed her.
‘Because women need protecting?’ But she was half-smiling when she said that.
‘Because I would have a nervous breakdown.’
Aggie stifled a giggle. He had a talent for making her want to laugh when she knew she should be on the defensive. ‘That’s very chauvinistic.’
‘I think you’ve got the measure of me. I don’t make a good back-seat driver.’
‘That’s probably because you feel that you always have to be in control,’ Aggie pointed out. ‘And I suppose you really are always in control, aren’t you?’
‘I like to be.’ Luiz had slowed the car right down. Even though it was a powerful four-wheel drive, he knew that the road was treacherous and ungritted. ‘Are you going to waste a few minutes trying to analyse me now?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it!’ But she was feverishly analysing him in her head, eaten up with curiosity as to what made this complex man tick. She didn’t care, of course. It was a game generated by the fact that they were in close proximity, but she caught herself wondering whether his need for absolute control wasn’t an inherited obligation. He was an only son of a Latin American magnate. Had he been trained to see himself as ruler of all he surveyed? It occurred to her that this wasn’t the first time she had found herself wondering about him, and that was an uneasy thought.
‘Anyway, we’re here.’ They were now in a village and she could see that it barely encompassed a handful of shops, in between and around which radiated small houses, the sort of houses found in books depicting the perfect English country village. The bed and breakfast was a tiny semi-detached house, very easily bypassed were it not for the sign swinging outside, barely visible under the snow.
It was very late and the roads were completely deserted. Even the bed and breakfast was plunged in darkness, except for two outside lights which just about managed to illuminate the front of the house and a metre or two of garden in front.
With barely contained resignation, Luiz pulled up outside and killed the engine.
‘It looks wonderful,’ Aggie breathed, taken with the creamy yellow stone and the perfectly proportioned leaded windows. She could picture the riot of colour in summer with all manner of flowers ablaze in the front garden and the soporific sound of the bees buzzing between them.
‘Sorry?’ Luiz wondered whether they were looking at the same house.
‘ ’Course, I would rather not be here with you,’ Aggie emphasised. ‘But it’s beautiful. Especially with the snow on the ground and on the roof. Gosh, it’s really deep as well! That’s the one thing I really miss about living in the south. Snow.’
On that tantalising statement, she flung open the car door and stepped outside, holding her arms out wide and her head tilted up so that the snow could fall directly onto her face.
In the act of reaching behind him to extract their cases, Luiz paused to stare at her. She had pulled some fingerless gloves out of her coat pocket and stuck them on and standing like that, arms outstretched, she looked young, vulnerable and achingly innocent, a child reacting to the thrill of being out in the snow.
Beside the point what she looks like, he told himself, breaking the momentary spell to get their bags. She was pretty. He knew that. He had known that from the very first second he had set eyes on her. The world was full of pretty women, especially his world, which was not only full of pretty women but pretty women willing to throw themselves at him.
Aggie began walking towards the house, her feet sinking into the snow, and only turned to look around when he had slammed shut the car door and was standing in front of it, a bag in either hand—his mega-expensive bag, her forlorn and cheaply made one which had been her companion from the age of fourteen when she had spent her first night at a friend’s house.
He looked just so incongruous. She couldn’t see his expression because it was dark but she imagined that he would be bewildered, removed from his precious creature comforts and thrown into a world far removed from the expensive one he occupied. A bed and breakfast with just five bedrooms, only two of which were en suite! What a horror story for him! Not to mention the fact that he would have to force himself to carry on being polite to the sister of an unscrupulous opportunist who was plotting to milk his niece for her millions. He was lead actor in the middle of his very worst nightmare and as he stood there, watching her, she reached down to scoop up a handful of snow, cold and crisp and begging to be moulded into a ball.
All her anger and frustration towards him and towards herself for reacting to him when she should be able to be cool and dismissive went into that throw, and she held her breath as the snowball arched upwards and travelled with deadly accuracy towards him, hitting him right in the middle of that broad, muscled, arrogant chest.
She didn’t know who was more surprised. Her, for having thrown it in the first place, or him for being hit for the first time in his life by a snowball. Before he could react, she turned her back and began plodding to the front door.
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