“Rafe.”

Carin cleared her throat. Fear danced along her spine, but that was silly.What was there to be afraid of?

“You seem surprised to see me, Carin.”

“Yes. I—I am. What—what are you doing here?”

“Why, querida, I am here to see you, of course.” He glanced at the sleeping infant in his arms. “And to see your daughter.”

Carin’s gaze flew to the baby, then to him. “What are you doing with my baby?”

“Don’t you mean, what am I doing with our baby? That seems to be the consensus, querida, that this child is mine.”

SANDRA MARTON is an author who used to tell stories to her dolls when she was a little girl. Today, readers around the world fall in love with her sexy, dynamic heroes and outspoken, independent heroines. Her books have topped bestseller lists and won many awards. Sandra loves dressing up for a night out with her husband as much as she loves putting on her hiking boots for a walk in a south-western desert or a north-eastern forest.You can write to her (SASE) at P.O. Box 295, Storrs, Connecticut, USA. The Alvares Bride is the sixth book in her well-loved miniseries THE BARONS.

The Alvares Bride
Sandra Marton

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

New York City

Saturday, May 4

CARIN BREWSTER clutched her sister’s hand and wondered how the human race had managed to survive if every woman who’d ever borne a child had to go through agony like this.

She groaned as another contraction racked her body.

“That’s it,” Amanda Brewster al Rashid said. “Push, Carin. Push!”

“I—am—pushing,” Carin panted.

“Mom’s on the way. She should be here soon.”

“Great.” Carin bit down on her lip. “She can tell me she knows the right way to—ohhh, God!”

“Oh, sweetie.” Amanda leaned closer. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me who—”

“No!”

“I don’t understand you, Carin! He’s the father of your child.”

“Don’t—need—him.”

“But he has the right to know what’s happening!”

“He—hass—no—rights.”

Carin grimaced with pain. What rights did a man have, when he was almost a stranger? None. None at all. Some of the decisions she’d made over the past months had been difficult. Whether to keep her baby. Whether to turn to her family for help. But deciding not to tell Rafe Alvares that he’d made her pregnant had been easy. He didn’t give a damn about her; why would he want to know? Why would a man who’d spent an hour in her bed and never tried to contact her again, want to know he was going to be a father?

The contraction subsided. Carin fell back against the pillows.

“He’s not important. The baby’s mine. I’m all that she’ll need. Just…” She groaned, arched from the bed. “…just me.”

“That’s crazy.” Amanda wiped her sister’s forehead with a cool washcloth. “Please, Sis, tell me his name. Let me call him. Is it Frank?”

“No!” Carin grasped Amanda’s hand more tightly. “It’s not Frank. And I’m not going to tell you anything else. Mandy, you said you wouldn’t do this. You promised. You said—”

“Madame al Rashid? Excuse me, please, but I need to speak with your sister.”

Carin turned her head. Sweat had run into her eyes and her vision was blurry but she could see Amanda step back to make room for Dr. Ronald.

He sat down next to her and took her hand.

“How’re you doing, Carin?”

“I’m…” She hesitated. “I’m fine.”

The doctor smiled. “You’re one tough cookie, that’s for sure. But we think you’ve been at this long enough.”

Somehow, she managed a weak grin. “Try telling that to this baby.”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. We’ve decided to take you down the hall and get this kid into the world. How’s that sound?”

“Will it hurt my—”

Another contraction gripped her body. Carin groaned and the doctor squeezed her hand. “No. On the contrary. It’ll conserve energy for the two of you. It’s the best thing to do, I promise.”

The doctor rose to his feet and moved aside as two white-coated attendants came towards the bed.

“Don’t you worry, missus,” one of them said. “You’ll be holding that baby of yours before you know it.”

I’m not a missus, Carin thought, but everything was happening quickly now. Gentle hands lifted her; Amanda hurried alongside as she was rolled down the long corridor, her eyes fixed on the endless lights that shone from the ceiling. A pair of doors swooshed open just ahead, and her sister bent down and kissed her damp forehead.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey,” Carin said softly.

“I love you, Sis.”

“Me, too,” Carin said, and then she was through the door and in a room with white tile walls, staring up at a light as bright as the sun.

“Just relax, Ms. Brewster,” a voice told her, and there was a sudden burning sensation in her arm, where an IV needle already snaked under her skin.

“Here we go,” her doctor said, and Carin spun away.

Minutes passed, or maybe an hour; she couldn’t tell. She was drifting on a sea of soft clouds as she waited for the sound of her baby’s cry, but the doctor saying something in a sharp tone and then other voices joined in, calling out numbers, demanding five units of blood, stat.

Carin forced her eyes open. The light was blinding now. A nurse bent over her and she tried to speak because suddenly she wanted someone to know what had happened, that her child had a father, that she could not forget him or the hour she had spent in his arms…

And then everything faded to black, she was tumbling down a deep, deep tunnel, and suddenly, it was a hot August night instead of a warm Spring morning. She was at Espada, not in a hospital, and her life was about to change, forever…

He was tall and good-looking, and he’d been watching her ever since she’d entered the room.

His name, Carin figured, had to be Raphael Alvares.

“The Latin Lover,” she’d dubbed him, when Amanda had done everything but handstands to convince her she just had to meet the man.

“He’s a friend of Nick’s, and he’s here to buy horses from Jonas,” Amanda had confided as she sat in the guest room, watching Carin brush out her long, dark hair. “And, of course, Mother invited him to stay for the weekend.” She grinned. “Matchmaker, matchmaker,” she began singing, and Carin covered her ears.

“Stop!” She sighed with resignation. Well, it wasn’t a surprise. She should have known her mother wouldn’t give up the idea of marrying off her remaining two daughters. Samantha was safely out of range, flitting around Europe somewhere, which left Marta free to concentrate all her efforts on Carin, even though she’d vowed never to get involved with a man again. Marta had no way of knowing that but even if she had, it wouldn’t have stopped her.

“He’s gorgeous,” Amanda gushed, “and rich, and incredibly yummy. Well, not quite as yummy as my Nicholas, of course, but he’s really something special.”

“How nice for him,” Carin said politely.

“His name is Raphael Alvares. Isn’t that sexy?”

“Actually,” Carin said, even more politely, “I think it’s Spanish.”

Amanda had giggled. “Brazilian,” she’d replied, in an exaggerated accent, “wheech, my ’usband says, means zat he is zee Senhor Alvares, and not zee señor.”

She’d laughed, and Carin had grinned, and that had been that.

Carin had half expected her sister to drag her off to meet the man right there and then, but Amanda had apparently decided on a more subtle approach.

Instead of pointing Carin at Raphael Alvares, she’d pointed him at Carin.

At least, she must have, because the man who had to be the senhor from Brazil kept staring at her. Once in a while he smiled, as he was doing now. She smiled back, because it was the polite thing to do, but he wasn’t her type. No man was her type, anymore. To put it more accurately, she wasn’t the type for any man. Not now, maybe not for the rest of her life.

She lifted her wine goblet to her lips and took a drink so that she wouldn’t have to go on smiling when smiling was the last thing she felt like doing, and turned her back on the senhor.

The wine went down smoothly, maybe because it was her second, or was it her third, glass. She didn’t drink red wine, as a rule, not even one like this which had, undoubtedly, come from the Espada wine cellar and probably cost almost as much as she’d paid in rent on her first apartment in New York six years ago, but the first waiter she’d seen had been carrying a tray filled with glasses of red wine.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she’d quipped, and snatched one from him.

It was for false courage, she knew, but then, this was a weekend that called for it. Screamed for it, she thought, and drank more of the wine.

Her mother thought she was here because of the anniversary party for Tyler and Caitlin. At least, she was pretending she thought that was the reason, which was sweet of her.

“I can’t come, Mother,” Carin had said, when Marta phoned.

She’d been genuinely regretful, too. The gathering of the clan, all the Barons and Kincaids and al Rashids, was always a noisy, impossible, exciting event, and then there were all those adorable babies her stepbrothers’ wives and her very own sister were popping out, as if “fecundity” were their middle names.

“I wish I could,” she’d added, “but I’ll be at a wedding that weekend.”

That, of course, had all changed.

Latin Lover was staring again. She could almost feel his eyes on the exposed nape of her neck.

“Wear your hair up,” Amanda had urged, and she’d done it, except now her neck felt naked, which was dumb, but there was something about the way Raphael Alvares kept looking at her that made her feel uncomfortable. She thought about turning around and staring back but that might give him the wrong idea, which would be stupid. And she’d had quite enough of being stupid for a while.

Instead, she took another sip of the wine. It didn’t taste as bad as it had, at first. Well, who knew? Maybe red wine had to grow on a person, the way extended families did.

The idea was so silly it made her giggle. A woman standing nearby looked around.

“Nothing,” Carin said, when the woman smiled and raised her eyebrows questioningly. “I just thought of something, and…”

The woman nodded and turned away. Carin buried her face in her glass again and drank more deeply.

Yes, even if she wasn’t mingling, as Amanda had urged her to do, maybe it was a good idea that she’d come tonight, even if the reason sounded too ridiculous for words.

The man she’d been seeing for almost six months had been seeing one of her best friends at the same time he’d been dating her. It was such a clichéd, sad little tale that it would have been quite unremarkable—except for a minor deviation.

He wasn’t just dating Iris, he’d become engaged to her. The wedding date was set, the arrangements all made…and Carin was to be one of the bridesmaids.

“I can’t believe I’ve never met that fiancé of yours,” she’d said to Iris once, with a little laugh, and Iris, as ignorant of the truth as Carin, had explained that he traveled a lot.

Carin finished her wine just as she spotted another waiter with a tray of drinks.

“Waiter,” she said briskly.

There were no glasses of wine on the tray, only cocktail glasses filled with a colorless liquid and onions or olives impaled on tiny plastic swords.

“Cute,” she said, and smiled as she swapped her empty glass for a full one that held an onion and then, because the drink looked small, she shifted her evening bag under her arm and took a second glass that contained an olive.

The waiter lifted an eyebrow.

“Thank you,” Carin said, as if she drank two-fisted every day of her life. She took a sip of the glass that held the onion. “Wow,” she whispered, and took a second sip.

It was true. Frank had, in fact, traveled a lot. What neither she nor Iris knew was that the traveling he did was mostly between their two apartments. Thinking back, remembering how naive—no, how stupid—she’d been she almost laughed.

A month ago, it had all come apart. Frank must have realized he couldn’t keep up the act much longer, not with things like the rehearsal dinner and his marriage vows staring him in the face. So he’d phoned one evening, sounding nervous, and said he had to see her right away; he had to tell her something important.

Carin had hurried down to the corner wine shop, bought a bottle of champagne and popped it into the fridge. He was going to propose, she’d thought giddily…

Instead, he’d told her that he’d trapped himself in a nightmare. He had, he said, become engaged to another woman. And while she was staring at him in horror, trying to digest that news, he’d told her who the woman was.

“You’re joking,” Carin had said, when she could finally choke out a coherent sentence.

Frank had shrugged, grinned sheepishly—grinned, of all things—and that was when she’d lost it, when she’d gone from gasping to shrieking and screaming. She’d thrown things at him—a vase, the waiting wine bucket—and he’d run for the door.

Carin took a deep breath, raised her glass to her lips and drank down half of the martini.

She’d survived, even managed to put it all in perspective. Frank was no great loss; a man like that, one who couldn’t remain faithful, was not a man she’d want for a husband. All she had to do was get through the wedding that loomed ahead—the wedding between the woman who’d been her friend and the man who’d been her lover—and she’d be fine. She wouldn’t attend the wedding, of course, but that didn’t mean she’d mope.

No, she’d told herself firmly, no moping. No sitting around feeling sorry for herself. She’d order in pizza, drink the bottle of champagne she’d put in the fridge that horrid evening. To hell with Frank. Iris could have him.

Everything was fine, or almost fine, until an invitation to the wedding arrived along with a note from Iris asking, very politely, if she’d mind passing along her bridesmaid’s gown to the girl who’d be taking her place.

Carin had ripped the note and the invitation into tiny pieces, stuffed them back into their envelope and mailed it to the happy couple. Then, because it was time to admit she’d never get through the wedding weekend alone without either crying or screaming or maybe even going to the wedding and standing up to make a public announcement when the minister got to the part where he’d ask if anyone present knew a reason the marriage shouldn’t take place, she’d phoned Marta and said, as gaily as she could, that there’d been a change in plans and she’d be flying in for the party, after all.

“With Frank?” her mother had asked and when Carin said no, no, he wouldn’t be coming, Marta had said “oh” in a tone that spoke volumes. If she knew more now, if Amanda had told her anything, she hadn’t let on, except to hug Carin tightly when she arrived and whisper, “I never liked him, anyway.”

Carin sighed.

Nobody had liked Frank, it was turning out. Not her secretary, who’d wanted to kill him almost as much as Carin. Not Amanda, not Nicholas, not anybody with half a brain—except her. She’d been so dumb…

“Canapés, miss?”

Carin looked up, smiled at the white-gloved waiter, put the empty martini glass on a table and plucked a tiny puff pastry from the tray.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Lobster, I believe, miss.”

Lobster, indeed, and decadently delicious, Carin thought as she popped the little hors d’oeuvre into her mouth and crunched down. All that it needed was another swallow of whatever was in the glass with the onion to make it perfect…except, the glass was empty.

How had that happened? Well, it was a problem easily solved. She put the empty glass beside the other and set off through the crowded room in search of a drink.

“Mizz?”

The voice was masculine, heavily accented, and right behind her. She took a deep breath, pasted a smile to her lips and turned around. As she’d expected, it was the Brazilian Bombshell.

Up close, he wasn’t quite so good-looking. His jaw was a little weak, his nose a little long. Actually, he looked a lot like Frank.

“Mizz,” he said again, and took her hand. He bent over it, brought it to his lips, planted a damp kiss on her skin. Carin snatched her hand back and fought against the almost overwhelming desire to wipe it on her gown.

“Hello,” she said as pleasantly as she could.

“Hello,” he said, and smiled so broadly she could see a filling in his molar. “I ask who is the beautiful lady with the black hair and the green eyes and I am tell she is Carin Brewster, yes?”

“Yes,” Carin said. Was this what a Portuguese accent sounded like? “I mean, thank you for the compliment, senhor.”

“Senhor,” he repeated, and laughed. “Is amusing you should call me that, Carin Brewster.”

“Well, I know my pronunciation isn’t very good, but—”

She babbled her way through a conversation that made little sense. The Latin Lover spoke poor English and she spoke no Portuguese. Besides, she really didn’t want to talk with him. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially not a man who reminded her, even slightly, of Frank.

Frank, that no-good rat. That scum-sucking bottom crawler. That liar—but then, all men were liars. She’d learned that, early. Her father had lied to her mother. To her, too, each time she’d climbed into his lap and begged him not to go away again.

“This is the last time, angel,” he’d say, but that was never the truth.

What was wrong with the Brewster women? Hadn’t they learned anything? Their father had lied. From the stories she’d heard, Jonas Baron had turned lying into an art form. Yes, there might be exceptions. She was hopeful about her stepbrothers, and about Amanda’s new husband but still, as a rule—

“…a funny joke, yes?”

Carin nodded her head and laughed mechanically. Whatever joke the senhor had told, it couldn’t be half as funny as the one she’d thought of.

Question: How do you know a man is lying? Answer: His lips are moving.

Frank had fed her lies, said he loved her, and now he was in New York, standing at an altar and saying “I do” to another woman.

Enough, Carin thought, and in the middle of the senhor’s next joke, she took his hand, pumped it up and down and said it had been a pleasure, an absolute pleasure. Then she let go of his hand, tried not to let the wounded look in his puppy-dog eyes get to her, and made her way out of the living room, through the massive hall and into the library where a string quartet sawed away in direct opposition to the country fiddler holding court in the dining room.

A white-jacketed waiter was threading his way through the crowd, a tray of glasses balanced on his gloved hand.

“Hey,” she said to the waiter’s back.

It was an inelegant way to draw his attention; she knew her mother would have lifted her eyebrows and told her so, but it worked. The waiter turned towards her and Carin plucked a glass from the tray. This glass was short and squat, filled halfway with an amber liquid and chunks of fruit. She lifted it to her nose, took a sniff, then a sip. “Yuck,” she said, but she swallowed another mouthful, anyway.

Amanda came floating by in her husband’s arms. “Careful,” she sang softly, “or you’ll get blot-to.”

“Thank you for the sisterly advice,” Carin said as her sister sailed off.

Amanda was right. She would get blotto, if she weren’t careful. The only one of the three Brewster sisters who could hold liquor was Sam, and Sam wasn’t here. She was in Ireland, or France, or England. Wherever, whatever, Sam was probably having fun.

Well, she’d be careful. She didn’t want to get drunk. This was, after all, a social event. Not for her, maybe, but for everybody else. For Caitlin, certainly, and for her husband, Tyler Kincaid. She didn’t want to spoil their party. Her sister’s party. Well, not exactly her sister. Catie was her stepsister…Wasn’t she?

Carin drained the last of the amber stuff from the glass and plunked the empty on a table.

The falimial—familial—structure of the Barons, the Brewsters, the Kincaids and now the al Rashids, was complicated. She hiccuped, grinned, and made her way through the library on feet that felt encased in foam rubber.

“Better watch yourself, kid,” she whispered.

If she couldn’t think “familial,” much less say it, it might just be time to slow down the drinking…but not yet.

The hell with it. She was thirsty, and she was an adult. She could drink as much as she wanted.

She hiccuped. Loudly. She giggled, clapped a hand to her mouth and said, “’Scuse me,” to nobody in particular.

Somebody laughed. Not at her, surely. People laughed at parties, that was all. Most people came to parties to laugh. To have a good time. Not everyone came to try and forget what a complete ass they’d been made to look, and to feel.

What she needed right now was some fresh air. A cool breeze on her flushed cheeks. Carin made for the doors that led outside.

The thing of it was, Frank had claimed he didn’t want to get married. Not ever. She’d told him that was fine and it had been, at first, because what was marriage except two people making vows they never intended to keep? Not the man, anyway.

She slid the doors open, stepped out onto the middle level of Espada’s waterfall deck, and drew the soft night air deep into her lungs.

As for sex—how could marriage improve something that wasn’t so terrific to start with? Sex was sex, that was all, not the light-up-the-sky stuff people made it out to be.

Still, after a few months she’d started to think it might not be so bad, getting married. Companionship, at the end of the long day spent in her Wall Street office. Someone with whom to share the Sunday paper.

As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one who’d changed her mind. Frank had, too. Actually, it was pretty funny. He’d decided he wanted to get married, all right. Just not to her.

Carin swallowed hard.

She had to stop thinking about that. About him. About whatever it was she lacked that he’d found in Iris.

What she needed was something to eat. She hadn’t touched food in hours, except for that lobster thingy. And there was a marvelous buffet laid out in the house. Clams, oysters, lobster salad; prime ribs, poached salmon and quail.

What was on the menu at Frank’s wedding? She made a face. Snake’s belly, most likely, to suit the groom.

What was that? A prickle, on the back of her neck again. Uh-oh. He’d followed her, the Brazilian Bozo. She didn’t have to look; who else would it be? She wouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of turning around. Let Senhor Wonderful try his charms on some female who was interested in playing those games.

Frank had been above game-playing. That was what she’d thought, anyway. It was what she’d initially liked about him.

They’d met at a fund-raiser, and what a revelation he’d been! At least half a dozen men had come on to her that night, all of them using the oldest pickup lines in the world, everything from “Excuse me, but haven’t we met before?” to “I just had to tell you, you’re the most beautiful woman in the room.”

Frank had walked straight up to her, offered his hand and his business card and said he’d heard about her from one of his clients.

“He described you as one of the best investment advisors in New York.”

Carin had smiled. “Not one,” she’d said. “I am the best.”

That had been the beginning of their relationship. They saw each other often but she had her life and he had his. That was how they’d both wanted it. Separate existences, no dependency—they’d discussed things honestly and pragmatically. No keys exchanged, no toothbrushes left in either apartment, his or hers.

Had he left a toothbrush in Iris’s bathroom?

“Hell,” Carin said, and planted her fists on the teak railing.

She was thirsty again. Surely, there was a bar out here. Hadn’t Jonas said something about a barbecue on the deck? Was that hickory smoke she smelled, wafting up from the first level? If there was a barbecue, there’d surely be a bar.

Carin headed for the steps. They were wide and straight; she’d never had trouble with them before but tonight, for some reason, she had to hang on to the railing to keep from tripping over her own feet.

“A glass of sauvignon blanc, please,” she told the bartender when she found him.

Actually, her tongue tripped the way her feet had. What she said sounded more like “A grass of so-vee-on brahnk, pease,” and she almost giggled but the bartender gave her a funny look so she looked straight back at him, her brows lifted, her gaze steady. “Well?” she said, and waited.

At last, he poured the wine and gave the glass to her but her hand was, for some reason, unsteady. The pale gold liquid slopped over the side. She frowned, licked the wine from her hand, drained what remained and held out her glass.

“Again,” she said.

The bartender shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“Red, then, if you’re out of the white.” She smiled, to make it clear she really wasn’t particular. He didn’t smile back.

“I really am sorry, ma’am, but I believe you’ve had enough.”

Carin’s eyes narrowed. She leaned forward; the simple action made her woozy but why wouldn’t it? This was summer in Texas, even if this was hill country, and the night was warm.

“What do you mean, you think I’ve had enough? This is a bar, isn’t it? You’re a bartender. You’re here to pour drinks for people, not to be the sobrie—sobree—not be the ‘too much to drink’ police.”

“I’ll be happy to get you some coffee.”

He spoke softly but everyone around them had fallen silent and his words seemed to echo on the night air. Carin flushed.

“Are you saying you think I’m drunk?”

“No, ma’am. But—”

“Then, pour me a drink.”

“Ma’am.” The bartender leaned towards her. “How about that coffee?”

“Do you know who I am?” Carin heard herself say. She winced mentally, but her mouth seemed to have taken on a life of its own. “Do you know—”

“He knows. And if you do not shut that lovely mouth, so will everyone else.”

The voice came from just over her shoulder. It was masculine, low-pitched, and lightly accented. The Latin Lover, Carin thought, and turned around.

“I suppose you think this is your big chance,” she said, or started to say, but she didn’t finish the sentence.

In spite of the accent, this wasn’t the man. This was someone she hadn’t seen before. Tipsy or not—and hell, yes, okay, she was, maybe, a little bit potted—she’d have remembered him.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, bigger by far than the guy Amanda had tried to set her up with. His hair was the color of midnight, his eyes the color of storm clouds, and his face was saved from being pretty by a square jaw and a mouth that looked as if it could be as sensual as it could be cruel.

Carin caught her breath. Sober, she’d never have admitted the truth, not even to herself. Tipsy, she could.

He was the stuff of dreams, even, once in a very rare while, the stuff of hers. He was gorgeous, the epitome of masculinity…

And what she did, or said, was none of his business.

“Excuse me?” she said, drawing herself up. Big mistake. Standing straight and taking a deep breath made her head feel as if it didn’t actually belong to the rest of her.

“I said—”

“I heard what you said.” She poked a finger into the center of his ruffled shirt, against the hard chest beneath the soft linen. “Well, let me tell you something, mister. I don’t need your vice. Voice. Advice. And I don’t need you to censure—center—censor me, either.”

He gave her the kind of look that would have made her cringe, if she hadn’t been long beyond the cringing stage.

“You are drunk, senhora.”

“I’m not a senhora. I’m not married. No way, no how, no time.”

“All women, single or married, are referred to as senhora in my country.” His hand closed on her elbow. She glared up at him, tried to tug free, but his grasp on her tightened. “And we do not savor the sight of them drunk, making spectacles of themselves.”

His voice was low; she knew it was deliberate, so that none of the curious spectators watching the little tableau could hear what he was saying, and she told herself to take a cue from him, keep things quiet, walk away from the bar, but, dammit, she was not going to take orders from anyone tonight, especially not from a man.

“I’m not interested in your country, or what you do and don’t like your women to do. Let go of me.”

“Senhora, listen to me—”

“Let—go,” she repeated, and, when he didn’t, she narrowed her eyes, lifted her foot and stepped down, hard, on his instep.

It had to hurt. She was wearing black silk pumps with spiked, three-inch heels. In the self-defense course she’d once taken, the instructor had taught his students to put all their weight and energy into that foot stomp.

The stranger didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, he reached out, swung Carin into his arms and, amidst laughter and even a smattering of applause, strode across the deck and down the steps, away from the brightly lit house into the darkness of the garden.

“You—you bastard!” Carin shrieked, beating her fists against his shoulders. “Just who in hell do you think you are?”

“I am Raphael Eduardo Alvares,” he said coldly. “And you, Senhora Brewster, are the epitome of a spoiled—”

“Rafe?” Carin’s eyes snapped open. She stared, blindly, at the light. “Rafe, where are you?”

“We’re losing her,” a voice said urgently, and then there was only silence.

CHAPTER TWO

Rio de Ouro, Brazil

Saturday, May 4

RAPHAEL EDUARDO ALVARES shot upright in bed, his heart pounding, his naked body soaked with sweat. He had been dreaming, but of what?

The answer came quickly.

He had been dreaming of the woman again, and the one time he’d been with her.

Rafe threw back the blanket and sat up.

Why? She and the night were nothing but a memory, a memory almost nine months old. Still, the dream had been so real, and not the same as it always was. In this dream, she’d been hurt. In an accident, perhaps. And she was calling out to him…

Not that it mattered. The woman meant nothing to him. Besides, he didn’t believe in dreams. What a man could see and touch, that was what mattered. Dreams were foolishness, and only led to pain.

Rafe rose to his feet, stretched and walked to the window. Dawn was just touching the sky; the endless savannah stretched under its pale pink glow all the way to the low, dark hills in the distance.

It was good he had awakened early. He was flying to Sao Paulo this morning for a business meeting, and then for lunch with Claudia. He’d told his pilot to have the plane ready by eight. Now he’d have a couple of hours to do some work first.

By the time Rafe showered, shaved and dressed, the dream was forgotten. He went downstairs, greeted his housekeeper, took the cup of sweet, black coffee she handed him and went down the hall, to his office.

Twenty minutes later, he shut down his computer and gave up. He couldn’t concentrate. He was thinking about the dream again. And about the woman. Would he never be able to get her out of his head?

Rafe reached for the phone.

Might as well move up his departure…but once he had his pilot on the line, he canceled the flight entirely. After that, he telephoned São Paulo, left messages of regret on the answering machine of the man he’d intended to meet and then on Claudia’s. She never stirred until late morning; he still remembered that. There was no reason to think she’d changed, even in the five years since he’d ended their engagement.

His behavior was out of character, he knew. Not putting aside lunch with Claudia. She’d pout, but it was not a problem. Canceling his meeting—that was different. He had not built his empire of horses, cattle and banks by doing things precipitously, but what was the logic of trying to concentrate on business when his thoughts were not in Brazil but tangled in a dream that made no sense?

Even if Carin were in trouble, he was the last man in the world she would want beside her.

Rafe changed into a black T-shirt, faded jeans and the scuffed riding boots he’d owned since he’d come to Rio de Ouro more than a decade before. Perhaps a long ride would clear his head. Down at the stables, he waved off his men, led his horse from its stall and saddled it. He mounted the stallion and touched its flanks lightly with his heels.

He’d put the Brewster woman out of his thoughts months ago, and with good reason. She’d made it clear that what had happened meant nothing. An hour was all she’d wanted of him…one hour, when he’d stood in for another man.

Not that he’d wanted more of her. He’d only sought her out in the first place because courtesy demanded it. He’d been a guest at a party he’d had no real wish to attend, and one of his hostess’s daughters—the wife of a friend, in fact, the very friend who’d introduced him to Jonas Baron, and to the Baron stables—had said that she hoped he’d meet her sister.

The rest of the Barons had hinted at the same thing.

“Gonna be lots a’ good-lookin’ women at the party,” Jonas had told him, and grinned. “Sounds like a pretty fine weekend to me, Alvares. Spend the day vettin’ that stallion you’re interested in, spend the evenin’ checkin’ out some of Texas’s finest fillies.”

Marta Baron had smiled as Jonas handed her a sherry. “My husband is right, you know. There’ll be some charming young women at the party. I’m sure they’ll all want to meet you.”

“How nice,” Rafe had replied, lying politely. Why did women of a certain age seem to view all unmarried males as a challenge? “But I hadn’t planned on staying for the party—”

“Oh, please do!” Amanda al Rashid took her husband’s arm. “Really, Rafe, it’ll be fun. My sister, Carin, will be flying in from New York. Did I mention that?”

Warning bells rang in Rafe’s head. He knew that smile, knew that all-too-casual tone of voice.

“No,” he’d said, even more politely, “you didn’t.”

“Ah. Well, she is. And I just know you’ll hit it off.”

“I’m sure we will,” Rafe had replied.

That had been lie number two. He had no such expectation but then, he’d been down this road before. Many times, in fact. Mothers, aunts, the wives of his business acquaintances…there were moments he could almost believe that every woman on the planet had a daughter, sister or niece she was certain he’d like.

It went, as the North Americans said, with the territory. He was thirty-four, he was single; he had money and property and, according to the things women said to him in bed, he supposed he had what were known as good looks. The only thing he didn’t have was a wife—but why would he want one?

Still, he hadn’t wished to insult his host, his hostess, his friend and his friend’s wife, all at the same time. So he’d stayed for the party and gone looking for the woman. A polite hello, followed by an equally polite apology for retiring early, had seemed simple enough.

Except, it hadn’t worked out that way.

Rafe reined in the horse and stared blindly into the distance. Instead of finding the woman, he’d found a spitting, hissing, wildcat.

And he’d taken her to bed.

He’d had many women in his life. More than his share, some would say, but never one like her.

The way she had gone into his arms, as if he were the only man she’d ever wanted. The wildness in her kisses. The way her body had hummed with delight under his hands and mouth. Deus, she’d set him on fire. Her climax had made him feel as omnipotent as a god; his, seconds later, had shaken him to the depths of his soul. But when he’d tried to draw her close, she’d pushed free of his embrace, asked him to leave in a way that made it clear he’d served his purposes and was being dismissed.

She had gone into the bathroom. He’d heard the click of the lock and for one insane moment, he’d thought of kicking down the door, carrying her back to bed and showing her that she could not use a man and then discard him as if he were trash…

Rafe’s mouth thinned.

The boy he’d once been might have done such a thing. The man he’d become would not. Instead, he’d dressed in the dark, gone to his room in the silent, sleeping house…

The horse snorted and danced beneath him. Rafe patted the proudly arched neck. Carin Brewster was not simply a distant memory, she was an unpleasant one.

Then, why couldn’t he get her out of his head?

His vision blurred as he remembered that night, how someone had laughed and pointed to Carin, when he’d asked where she was; how he’d stood on the deck of a Texas mansion, watching her make a fool of herself while people smirked, and wondered if he ought to be a gentleman and do something about it or just let the scene play out…

Hell. He wasn’t a gentleman. He never would be.

But Jonas Baron was his host and Nick al Rashid was his friend, which made Nick’s wife his friend, too, and the woman making a fool of herself was Amanda al Rashid’s sister…

Without any more thought than that, Rafe strode towards Carin, scooped her into his arms and carried her down the steps and towards the garden. People saw it happen; they laughed and cheered but nobody tried to stop him—nobody except the wildcat in his arms, who was kicking and cursing and beating at his shoulders with her fists.

That Nick’s wife and her mother would even imagine he’d be interested in the kicking, cursing woman he was carrying deep into the garden, seemed impossible.

Carin Brewster was the very antithesis of the sort of woman he’d someday search out and marry because, yes, he supposed he would marry, eventually. A man needed heirs so that all he’d sweated and struggled to build would not be lost, but the woman he’d choose to be his wife would be compliant and faithful. She would want to devote herself to him and to the children she would bear him.

That was the whole reason for marriage, wasn’t it?

“Are you crazy?” Carin shrieked, as he carried her further from the house. “Put me down!”

No wonder the woman’s family was having such difficulty marrying her off. She was beautiful, yes. She was also sharp-tongued, evil-tempered and self-centered. Rafe could hardly wait to get rid of her.

“You idiot!” She pounded her fists against his chest. “You—you moron! Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Yes,” Rafe said coldly, “I know precisely who you are.”

“You can’t just grab a woman and carry her off like this!”

“Ah,” he said calmly, jerking his head back just in time to avoid a wildly thrown punch, “if only you’d mentioned that sooner, senhora. I wouldn’t have done it.”

“You—you—you…”

She called him a name that implied he was related to the scatological habits of canines. He laughed. That only made her more furious. She flailed out with her fists again; this time, her knuckles dusted his jaw.

Deus.

There was a saying in this country about being careful not to catch a tiger by the tail without having a plan for letting it go.

What was he going to do with Carin Brewster?

“You just wait! Oh, you just wait until I get back to the house. I’ll have you thrown off this property so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

“I am—how do you say? I am shaking in my boots.”

“Quaking. And you’d damn well better be.” Carin pounded his chest again. “For the last time, put me down!”

“If I do, will you go to your room, ask the housekeeper to bring you a pot of black coffee and drink every drop?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you are drunk.”

“I am no such thing.”

“You are drunk,” Rafe said firmly, “and you were making a spectacle of yourself.”

“If you were correct…if you were correct, it would be my business, not yours. You had no right to interfere.”

“I interfered on behalf of your family, and on behalf of the poor young man you were threatening.”

“That’s pathetic. Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“Actually, I did it for your sister, who thinks a great deal of you.”

“You don’t know a thing about what my sister thinks.”

“On the contrary, senhora. I know that she has false illusions about you, or she would not have assumed I might find you appealing.”

“Yeah, well, she has the same illusions about you, you—you South American Neanderthal. And if you’re really thinking about my family, start concentrating on how they’ll react when I tell them what you did.”

“Nicholas and Jonas would surely agree a gag might be an excellent idea.” Rafe shifted her weight in his arms. She was slender and fine-boned but she wriggled and twisted like a snake. Holding on to her and ducking those flying fists wasn’t easy. He thought of tossing her over his shoulder, thought of all the alcohol he’d seen her consume, and decided against it. “As for your stepbrothers…” He looked down at her, his expression severe. “I have met them. And from what I know of Tyler, Gage, Travis and Slade, they would…”

Rafe came to a halt. There was a clearing just ahead. Teak benches ringed a subtly lighted reflecting pool into which a stone nymph emptied an endless stream of water from a copper ewer.

“They would what?” the warm, sweet-smelling, bad-tempered burden in his arms demanded.

“They would applaud me for what I am about to do.”

With that, he marched up to the pool and dumped her straight into it.

She landed on her bottom, legs splayed, up to her hips in water. Showered and sober, he thought with satisfaction, because the nymph was no longer emptying the ewer into the pool, she was emptying it over Carin Brewster’s head.

A hush fell over everything. Even the cascading water seemed to grow silent. Carin’s mouth opened; her lips formed a stunned, “Oh…”

And then she let out a blood-curdling shriek.

What a pity, to ruin such a lovely dress, Rafe thought dispassionately. What there was of it. Black silk, cut low enough to show the ripe curves of her breasts, high enough to show the long length of her legs. Wet, the silk clung lovingly to her body; he saw her nipples peak from the sudden chill of the water.

Beautiful, indeed, but that was all. She was nothing a man in his right mind would want…

Not for a lifetime, no. But she might prove interesting, for a night.

With heart-stopping swiftness, Rafe felt his body respond. It would be a challenge, getting past that hot temper, searching out ways to turn the fury in those dark eyes to passion. He could do it, though. He could tame her in bed, as he had tamed her here.

He imagined stripping off that black dress and the hint of black lace he could see beneath it, letting those long legs close around him as he cupped that lovely face in his hands and tasted that full, soft-looking mouth…

Deus. Was he crazy? Carin Brewster was beautiful but the Baron mansion was, as Jonas had promised, filled with beautiful women who were sweet-tempered, soft-spoken and sober, though he suspected Carin was sober enough, now. The combination of anger, adrenaline and cold water would have ended her alcoholic haze.

Yes, he thought, as he looked down at her, it had. Her shrieks had turned into moans; she was holding her hands to her temples as she tried to struggle to her feet.

Despite himself, he felt a stab of pity. He hesitated, then moved closer, bent down and held out his hand.

“Here,” he said, “take my hand.”

The woman looked at it as if it were a snake with its fangs bared. He supposed he could hardly blame her.

“Do you hear me, senhora? Take my hand and I’ll help you up.”

“I’d sooner stay here all night.”

“Are you determined to go on behaving like a spoiled brat? Let me help you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of helping myself.”

She tried to prove it by scrambling to her feet but she slipped on the wet marble, made a wild grab at the air, and Rafe ended up with her in his arms again.

“Do not do that,” she said furiously. “Just put me—”

“—down,” he said. “Yes, most assuredly, that is what I intend to do.” He set her on her feet, peeled off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. She tried to shrug it off but he lifted her hair free of the collar—the water had ruined the curls that had been swept up high on her head. He drew the lapels together and held the jacket closed.

“I don’t need your jacket. I don’t need anything from you.”

“You are cold.”

“I am wet,” Carin snapped, “and if you try very, very hard, you might just be able to figure out the reason.”

“You were drunk.”

“And?”

“And, now you are not.”

“Wonderful. Is that some special Brazilian method used to deal with hangovers? Didn’t you ever hear of black coffee?”

“I suggested coffee, but you declined it.”

“And so you d-d-decided to take th-things into your own hands.”

He frowned. “Your teeth are chattering.”

“So wou-would yours, if s-someone dropped you in a f-fountain.”

“Come.” He reached for her; she drew back.

“I’m n-not going anyplace w-with you.”

She lifted her chin and glared at him. Rafe thought about arguing, thought better of it, sighed and hoisted her into his arms again.

“Hey!” Her voice rose as he started back through the gardens. “Do you have a d-death w-wish? I told you, my family w-will…”

“They will visit you in the hospital,” he said grimly, “if you don’t behave yourself and get out of those wet clothes and into a hot shower.”

“That I’m soaked to the skin isn’t your pr-problem, dammit, it’s your f-fault!”

“You’re also sober, or haven’t you considered that?”

“I can’t be sober. I mean, assuming I were drunk, which I wasn’t, how could I be sober five minutes later?”

“Cold water. There are times, if one is fortunate, it has that effect.”

“How would you know?”

“A man knows these things.” Especially if he’d ever had one drink too many, trying to prove himself in a backwater bar on the Amazon, Rafe thought, and shuddered. “Put your arms around my neck, please, Senhora Brewster.”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

Rafe sighed, debated the wisdom of tossing her over his shoulder and, once again, decided against it.

“Is there an entrance to the house that will permit us to avoid the other guests? Unless, of course, you prefer a dramatic entrance. It might be quite effective, considering the exit you made.”

“That’s your story, senhor, but you were the one who made the scene.”

“The bartender might not agree.”

“What bar…” she began to say, and then he heard her catch her breath. He knew it was all coming back to her and that once it had, she would be crushed. “Oh. That bartender.” She cleared her throat. “I—I remember now.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. At least, I remember some of…Tell me the truth. Did I—was I—” She cleared her throat again. “I made an ass of myself, didn’t I?”

Rafe hesitated. She had, but what was the point in telling her that? “You were—how do you say it—you were a bit high-spirited.”

“In other words,” she said in a small voice, “the answer is ‘yes.’”

“People forget,” he said briskly.

“They’re not likely to forget a woman who has to be carried off like a—a bad joke.”

Rafe decided to take pity on her. “What they will remember,” he said, “is that a man was so taken with your beauty that he could not bear sharing you with others.”

“That’s very generous. If I didn’t know the truth, I might almost believe you.”

“It is the story I will tell tomorrow, if I am asked.”

“That’s more than generous, senhor, it’s gallant. And yes, there’s a back door. It’s just past those shrubs.”

The door opened at a touch. It led into an enormous pantry, which was empty.

“You can put me down,” Carin said.

Rafe thought about it. He could. But, he reminded himself, it was his fault she was wet and cold. How could he abandon her now?

“I will see you to your room, senhora. Just tell me where it is.”

She told him, and he made his way quickly to the service stairs and to the second floor.

“That door,” she said, “the one on the left.”

Carin reached out and opened the door; Rafe elbowed it closed behind them. Her bedroom smelled faintly of her perfume.

“You can put me down now.”

He nodded. “Of course,” he replied…but he didn’t. He didn’t. He stood in the darkness, holding her in his arms, wondering how she could smell like jasmine and roses after being dropped in a pool of water and wondering, too, why his arms were tightening around her even as he told himself to put her on her feet.

“Senhor.” She drew a breath, then let it out. It stroked his skin like silk. “I—I think I owe you an apology.”

“I accept.” He smiled. “But only if you call me Rafe.”

Carin laughed. “You were supposed to say that an apology wasn’t necessary.”

“But it is. You called me many names tonight and, truly, I only deserved some of them.”

She laughed again, leaned back in the curve of his arm and looked into his face.

“All right. I’m sorry. Honestly, I am.”

Deus, she was lovely. And charming, now that she was sober. But she needed to undress, and to get warm and dry. He could help her with all of that, he thought, and felt his body quicken again.

Carefully, he set her on her feet. “You must get out of your wet clothing, Carin, and take a hot shower.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “Rafe? I—I wouldn’t want you to think…I mean, really, it was good of you to come to my rescue, but—” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I just want you to know that I don’t usually drink like that.”

He nodded. He’d already come to that conclusion. “I am certain that is the case.”

“In fact, I’ve never done anything like it before. It’s just that—that…” She fell silent. She owed this stranger no explanation yet, somehow, she wanted to offer one, but what could she say that wouldn’t make her look even more pathetic? “Never mind.” She smiled, held out her hand. “Thank you for everything.”

He nodded, took her hand in his. She’d been on the verge of telling him what had happened that had made her want to forget. That was, after all, why people drank. To forget. To heal pain and yes, despite her smile, he could see pain in her eyes. Who had hurt her? A man? If that were true, he deserved to be beaten. This woman was too fragile, too beautiful…

Rafe drew away his hand and stepped back.

“I am glad I was there to be of service,” he said politely. “And now, you must get warm. Shall I ask one of the servants to bring you some hot soup?”

“No. No, I’ll be fine.” She slipped his jacket off her shoulders. “Do you want to take your jacket, or shall I wait and have it pressed…”

Her words dwindled to silence. He knew the reason; his gaze had dropped to her breasts and her nipples had beaded instantly, to thrust against the damp silk.

“Carin.” Her eyes met his. There was something else there now, not pain, not despair. Indeed, what he saw made his blood throb. He reached out; she stepped back but he clasped her wrists and stopped her. “Why did you do it?” His tone was rough, almost urgent. “Why did you do that to yourself tonight?”

“This was—it was a difficult weekend for me.” She licked her lips. “That’s really why I came to the party. I wasn’t going to, but my sister thought it would be a good idea. Obviously, she was wrong.”

Rafe smiled. “An interesting woman, your sister.”

“What do you mean?”

“She urged me to meet you. She said you were beautiful, and charming, and that I would find you fascinating.”

Carin blushed. “She didn’t!”

“No.” He grinned. “Not exactly, but she certainly made it clear that she thought you and I would be a good match.”

“Oh, isn’t that awful?” Carin rolled her eyes. “Actually, she talked you up, too. She said you were this incredibly handsome, incredibly charming, incredibly everything man. I just had to meet you, she said, because you were—”

“Incredible,” Rafe said, and they both laughed.

“Uh-huh. And I figured, if Mandy thought you such a paragon—”

“—you wanted no part of me.” He was still holding her wrists. Now, he lifted them and brushed his lips across the backs of her hands. “Nor I, of you. It was, how do you say, too much of a buildup.”

“I’m sure she never mentioned I’d be doing my best to get pie-eyed.”

“Pie…? Ah.” He grinned. “No. No, she did not.” Slowly, his smile faded. “Are you going to tell me what this thing was, that happened to you? That made you want to drink yourself into oblivion tonight?”

He watched the swift play of emotions in her face, knew she was considering a dozen different easy answers, and saw the instant when she decided to tell him the truth.

“A man who once meant something to me is…” She hesitated. “He’s getting married tonight.”

“Ah.” Another strand of dark hair slipped across her cheek. Rafe stroked it away from her face again but this time, he let his hand linger against her skin. She was so soft to the touch. So beautiful. What sort of man would want another woman, when he could have her?

“I am sorry you were hurt, querida.”

“Don’t be. Besides, that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have behaved like a fool.”

His hands cupped her face. He tilted it up to his, his thumbs stroking across her cheekbones.

“It is this man you mourn who is the fool, not you.”

“Thank you. It’s kind of you to try and make me feel better, but really—”

“Do you think I would tell you such a thing if I didn’t believe it?” He clasped her shoulders and drew her towards him. “What man would want another woman, if he could have you?”

He bent his head and kissed her, gently at first, the merest brush of his mouth on hers. He told himself he meant this kiss as reassurance but she looked up at him, her lips parted, the pulse pounding, hard, in the hollow of her throat, and he knew he’d been lying to himself.

He’d kissed her because he wanted her taste on his tongue.

“Carin.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again, more deliberately, and just when he thought he’d misread what he’d seen in her eyes, she moaned and brought her body against his, opened her mouth and kissed him back.

He could feel his heart thundering. He wanted her, wanted her as he could not recall ever wanting a woman before. Some still-logical part of his brain warned him that wanting her so desperately made no sense, that taking her when she was longing for another man could only be an error, but now she was digging her hands into his hair, bringing his head down to hers, seeking his tongue with her own.

Rafe stopped thinking.

He groaned and gathered her close, ran his hand down her back, lifted her into him, tilting her so that she could feel his hardness straining against her. When she moaned and moved against him, he drew back, even though it took every bit of self-control he possessed.

“Look at me, Carin,” he said roughly. “Look at me, and see that I am not the man who lost you.”

“I know that.” She put her hands flat against his chest. “But you are the man I want.”

Rafe swept her into his arms, carried her to the bed. She was like flame, burning with need. She was silk under his hands, under his mouth…

“Senhor Raphael!”

The cry brought him back to reality. He blinked, tore his thoughts from that night and saw his houseman galloping towards him on the back of a lathered mare. His gut clenched. Joao feared horses; the men teased him mercilessly. He never rode, they said, unless disaster was imminent.

Rafe tugged on the reins, rode to meet him. “What is it?”

“A telephone call, senhor, from a woman who gives her name as Amanda Brewster al Rashid. She says it is urgent, that it concerns her sister…”

“Carin,” Rafe whispered.

He spurred his horse, bent low over the outstretched neck, and raced for the house.

CHAPTER THREE

RAFE. Rafe, where are you?

Carin cried out in silence, her voice echoing only inside her head.

This is a dream, she kept telling herself, only a dream. Open your eyes and wake up.

She couldn’t. Her lids felt as if they’d been weighted with lead, her lashes glued to her cheeks. The more she tried, the tighter the dream held her. Still, she fought to leave it. The rational part of her mind warned her that if she were to succumb to the dark, the path she took would lead to nothingness.

Eventually, the darkness began loosening its hold. She floated in a kind of foggy twilight. Voices penetrated the silence, urging her to open her eyes and leave the dream behind.

Wake up, Carin.

Come on, Ms. Brewster. Open your eyes.

Carin, sweetie, please, please, look at me.

She recognized the voices. Her doctor. Her sister. She heard her mother and her stepfather, too, but what were they all doing here? What? she asked herself desperately, and felt herself floating away…but the voices wouldn’t let it happen.

“Carin,” her doctor said, “come on, Carin. It’s time to wake up.”

“Oh, darling,” Marta said, “look at us, please. Can you do that, Carin?”

“Carrie,” Amanda said firmly, “stop this nonsense and open your eyes right now.”

She almost smiled, then. Nobody had called her “Carrie” in years and years.

And then a hand took hers. Warm, strong fingers pressed into her own, entwined with hers.

“Carin,” a voice whispered, close to her ear. “Do you hear me? You must open your eyes now and look at me.”

Rafe? Was he here, holding her hand, sitting beside her and offering her comfort as he had done once before? Of course not. She had been dreaming of him again, just as she had during the past months, and wasn’t that dumb because he’d made it clear he never wanted to see her again.

Not that she wanted to see him. What they’d done—what she’d done—was wrong. Ugly. Shameful. Never mind the excitement of it, the heat of his hands, the ecstasy of feeling him deep inside her…

“Rafe,” Carin whispered, “Rafe?” and she came awake in a dizzying rush to find herself, alone, in a world of cold reality and confused memories.

That night. Oh, God, that terrible night. Making love with Rafe—except, it hadn’t been love. It had been sex, sex with a stranger. He’d give her what she’d wanted, passion that had driven everything else from her mind, but when it was over she’d been filled with such self-loathing that she’d struggled free of his arms, gone into the bathroom, locked the door and leaned back against it, trembling, afraid he’d come after her…

Praying that he would.

She needn’t have worried.

No one had knocked at the bathroom door. No one rattled the knob. No one said, “Carin, come back to my arms.” When she’d finally come out of the bathroom, Rafe was gone. He wasn’t downstairs, either. There’d been no message. No note. No phone call waiting on her answering machine in New York or in all the months that came after.

One hour. One unbelievable, wondrous, terrible hour, was all it had been…

Except, that wasn’t true. Carin’s heartbeat lurched. Raphael Alvares had given her more than that night.

He’d given her a child.

The long hours of labor. Amanda, holding her hand. The doctor’s decision to hasten her baby’s entry into the world…

“My baby,” she said, the words a tremulous, desperate whisper.

She touched her hand to her belly. It was flat. Her baby had been born—her daughter, she’d known that in advance—but where was she? Something had gone wrong, at the end. She remembered, now. Her doctor, telling her to hang on. The slap-slap of a nurse’s shoes as she hurried from the room. The plastic packet of blood hanging above her, dripping into her vein…

Carin shot up against the pillows. Her head spun, her stomach seesawed in protest.

“Where’s my baby?”

“Carin?”

She turned her head, saw bright light streaming into the room as the door opened. Shapes—people—were silhouetted against it.

“Carin,” her mother said, “oh, sweetie!”

And then Marta’s arms were around her. Carin wept and clung to her as the others crowded around. Jonas was there, and Amanda, even her stepbrother, Slade, and his wife, Lara…

But not Rafe. Of course not. He’d only been a dream.

Hands patted her shoulders, touched her hair. Her mother’s light scent enveloped her; she felt her sister’s tears as their cheeks brushed.

“That’s my girl,” Marta said, and made a sound that straddled the line between laughter and tears. “Oh, darling, it’s so good to see you awake. How do you feel? Are you in pain? Lara, please, would you go get the nurse?”

“Of course,” Lara Baron said, and blew a kiss before hurrying off.

“Tell me about my baby,” Carin begged. “Mandy? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine.” Amanda sat down on the edge of the bed and clasped her hand. “And she’s beautiful.”

Carin fell back against the pillows. Tears rose in her eyes and she laughed and rubbed them away with her knuckles.

“I want to know everything. Is she big? What color is her hair? What does she weigh?”

“She’s seven pounds, five ounces and twenty-one inches long, and she has a head full of midnight-black curls. Oh, Sis, she’s perfect.”

Carin squeezed her sister’s hand. “I want to see her.”

“And you will, darling.” Marta embraced Carin again. “In just a little while, I promise. Let’s have the doctor take a look at you first, hmm?”

“I don’t need the doctor.”

“You’re probably right, but it won’t hurt to let him see you, will it?” Marta pulled a lace-trimmed hankie from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. “He said—he said he was sure the crisis was over and you’d be fine, but we were all—we were…”

Her voice broke. Jonas put his hand on his wife’s shoulder, patted it clumsily and smiled at Carin.

“You sure did give us a bad time for a while there, missy.”

“Did I?” She shook her head. “I don’t—I don’t remember very much.”

“No. I don’t suppose you would. Never mind. All that matters is that everything’s fine, now.”

“Where is my baby? Is she in the nursery?”

“Uh-huh.” Amanda grinned. “And she’s making all the other little girls look homely by comparison.”

“Amanda’s right.” Marta smiled as she stroked Carin’s hair back from her temples. “She looks just like you, darling. Well, except for her mouth. I suppose she has her father’s…” Everyone looked at Marta, who colored. “I mean, she’s gorgeous.”

Carin sighed. “I’ll bet she is.” She looked past her mother, at Slade, and smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, Lara and I had nothin’ better to do…” He grinned. “Boston’s only a hop, skip, and jump away, honey. We figured we’d come down and wait for you to open your eyes.”

“That was sweet of you.”

“Heck, the Barons are nothin’ if not sweet.” He walked to the other side of the bed and took her hand. “Travis, Tyler and Gage all send their love.”

“Give mine to them, please, when you talk to them.”

“And,” Amanda said, “my Nicholas will be by, in a little while.” Tears rose in her eyes and she brushed them away. “You gave us a real scare, Sis.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to,” Carin said, and smiled. She let her head fall back against the pillows and her smile faded. “I’m sorry I put you through all of this.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Marta said. “I just wish you’d come to stay with us at Espada, months ago…” She cleared her throat. “Well, that’s all water under the bridge. The important thing is that you’ve come through this, and that you have a healthy baby.”

Carin nodded. “I just wish…” She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. “I wish it could have been different. That—that I hadn’t disappointed all of you.”

“Nonsense, darling. Who could be disappointed at having a new little person in our family?”

“I told her the same thing, Mother.” Amanda looked up as Lara came into the room. “Doctor’s coming,” she mouthed, and Amanda nodded. “I said we’d all be in this with her, that she didn’t have to face it by herself.”

“Damn right,” Slade growled. “Whatever happened to the idea of Responsibility, with a capital R?” Lara shot him a warning look and he frowned. “Well, hell, it’s the truth, Sugar, isn’t it? If Carin had told us, right off, one of us Barons—hell, all of us—would have gone down there to Brazil and—”

“Brazil?” Carin struggled up against the pillows. “What do you mean, you’d have gone to Brazil?” Her eyes flashed to her sister. “I never told you about—about anything.”

Amanda cleared her throat. “Uh, no. No, you didn’t. Not—not at first.”

“Not at first? Not ever. You asked and asked and asked, but I never said—”

“Actually, you did.” Amanda hesitated. “Look, why don’t we discuss this another time? When you’re feeling stronger.”

“I feel strong enough now. What do you mean, ‘actually’ I did?”

“You were groggy, Sis. And you—you called for him. For Raphael Alvares.”

Carin turned pale. “And you told everyone else? Oh, Mandy, why? Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. Well, only Nick, but—”

“Then, how does Slade know?”

“He just—he just knows,” Amanda said, and shot Slade a look.

“He knows, because you told him. And what for? I certainly don’t want any of you hustling off to Brazil to tell Rafe that he—he fathered my child.”

“Well,” Jonas said, “fact is, nobody has to do that, ’cause—”

“The fact is that no one will,” Marta said. Jonas snorted, and she cleared her throat. “Go to Brazil, I mean.”

“I hope not. Raphael Alvares is the last man I want to see.”

“Sweetie,” Marta said gently, “you don’t mean that.”

“I mean every word.”

“Maybe now’s not the best time to make decisions,” Jonas said. “You might want to think about things. And your baby’s got a stake in this, missy.” He ran a finger around the inside of his shirt collar. “Maybe I learned it a little late but a kid’s got the right to grow up knowin’ who his…who her father is.”

“Look,” Carin said wearily, “I know you all mean well, that you want to protect me and my daughter, but you have to understand, I did the right thing. Things were different for you and Tyler, Jonas—”

“Things are always different,” Slade said gruffly. “But a man’s entitled to know he’s a father, and to tell you how he feels about it. A woman denies him that right, he might do anything to claim his—”

“Slade, for heaven’s sakes!” Marta glared at her stepson. “Must we discuss this now?”

“You’re right.” He took a deep breath. “Carin, honey, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I know you’re worried about me but trust me, this is—it’s different than it was for you, Jonas, or for you, Slade…”

“Yeah, sure.” Slade hesitated, then bent down and pressed his lips to Carin’s forehead. “Just keep something in mind,” he said softly. “Men aren’t always the enemy, kid.”

“I know.” She smiled, took his hand and brought it to her cheek. “I can think of a few who might even qualify as good guys.”

But not Raphael Alvares. She couldn’t imagine anyone thinking of him as a good guy. Still, he was the kind of man Slade had described, one who’d do whatever it took to get what he wanted. As little as she knew about Rafe, she was certain he’d move heaven and earth to claim a thing, if he wanted it badly enough.

He hadn’t wanted her.

She made a soft sound of distress. Marta grabbed her hand.

“Carin? Darling, what is it?”

“Nothing. Really, I’m fine.” She smiled and pressed her mother’s hand in reassurance. “I’m—I’m a little achy, that’s all.”

“Well, of course you are. Achy, and all worn out, and here we are, giving you lectures when we should be letting you rest.” Marta kissed her, then turned towards the others. “I have an idea,” she said briskly. “Slade, you go find us some coffee. Jonas, you wait in the lounge. Lara, you and I will go hunt down that doctor…”

Carin grabbed for Amanda’s hand as the Barons filed from the room. “Mandy?”

Amanda leaned towards her. “Mmm?”

“I want you to promise me you won’t do anything.”

“Anything about what?”

“You know what. I don’t want you getting the same silly idea everybody else seems to have about getting in touch with—with Rafe.”

Amanda colored. “Well—well, actually, Sis, when you kept calling his name, I thought—I mean, you seemed to want…”

“Not him,” Carin said fiercely. “Never him!”

“Well—well don’t worry about any of that now, okay? Just concentrate on getting better.” Amanda’s voice softened. “And think about that little girl of yours, about how you’ll want to do all the right things for her.”

“Oh, I will.” Carin sighed. “I can’t wait to see her.”

“Look, why don’t I see if I can get the nurse to bring the baby to you right now?”

“Would you?”

“Sure.” Amanda put her arms around Carin and hugged her. “Meanwhile, just shut your eyes and rest, okay, Sis?”

“Okay,” Carin said, and yawned.

The door swung softly closed. Carin yawned again, closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift. Her baby. Her very own little girl. She could hardly wait to see her. Would she look like her father?

Rafe was so handsome. Those deep, dark eyes. That dark, silky hair. The firm mouth, that had felt so wonderful against hers…

He’d been such an incredible lover.

Strong. Powerful. His body hard and hot as he’d moved above her. His hands, all-knowing and clever, touching her in ways Frank had never touched her, until she’d cried out, arched against him, and then he’d slipped his hands beneath her, lifted her to him, entered her slowly, slowly, buried himself inside her.

She’d come even as he entered her, come again and again, and that had never happened to her before. She’d never flown so fast, so high, never wanted the night to last forever, the arms that held her to hold her forever…

Her eyes flew open. What was she thinking?

She’d just given birth. Sex was the last thing she ought to have on her mind and besides, why did she keep romanticizing what had happened? Rafe hadn’t even tried to pretend that taking her to bed had meant something; he’d walked away from her as if she were the cheap slut she’d made herself out to be.

Her throat constricted.

What did any of that matter now? She was tired, that was all. Overwrought, by what she’d just gone through. Rafe didn’t mean a thing to her; he never had. What she’d wanted from him was what he’d given her, oblivion in his arms, and if memories of that night still haunted her, it only proved how truly pathetic she was.

“Carin?”

Carin opened her eyes. The room was empty, except for her doctor, who stood beside the bed.

“Doctor.” She sat up, her eyes bright with anticipation. “I want to see my daughter.”

“Yes,” he said, and grinned, “so they tell me. Just give me five minutes to check you over, and I’ll tell them to bring her to you.”

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