His Inherited Bride. JACQUELINE BAIRD
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back against the lift wall.
‘I have to admit, Jules, I only visited Carlos a few times in the last eight years, mostly at the instigation of Ester, of course,’ he said smoothly. ‘She and my father still live in Italy and as Ester is not fit enough to undertake a long-haul flight, the unfortunate result of her imprisonment here decades ago, she also missed the funeral, but it never stopped her thinking about her only sibling.’
His mention of the funeral was deliberate, but Jules ignored his comment.
‘And do you still live in Italy?’ she asked. With a bit of space between them she managed to speak reasonably steadily and, glancing up, her green eyes met amused black, and his firmly chiselled lips parted over gleaming white teeth in a mocking smile, letting her know he had noted her evasion, but he answered her question.
‘I visit the family home in Rome frequently, though I do have a place of my own at the coast. But my business takes me all over the world, so I have an apartment in New York, another here in Santiago, and yet another in Japan.’ His smile lightened. ‘Oh, and a beach house on the Gold Coast in Australia. I believe in controlling all my considerable assets personally,’ he said and her gaze slid involuntarily down over his impressive body. ‘I am very particular as to who I allow to check my assets.’
She would have had to be as thick as a brick not to get his very obvious double entendre, but even so Jules felt the tell-tale flush of colour burn up her cheeks, and was mortified when she realised where she had been looking. Plus the quite unexpected heat curling in her belly did not help. She had never felt that kind of sexual curiosity about any man… Her head jerked up. Get back to the reason you are here, girl, she admonished herself.
‘Well, lucky you,’ Jules blurted. ‘It must be nice for you and your wife.’ She reminded herself he must be married by now. Maria would never have let him get away, but she could not bring herself to say the other woman’s name. ‘But some of us are not so fortunate, and that is really why I am here.’ At that moment the elevator doors slid open.
Rand grasped her arm again and she shot a startled glance up at him and saw the flash of rage in the depths of his eyes and tensed. ‘I am not married, and you are fortunate to be alive,’ he declared forcefully, then as if sensing her unease he added. ‘We both are, so we should celebrate the fact,’ and with an elegant shrug of his broad shoulders concluded, ‘You are a long time dead, I believe is the English expression.’
She must have imagined the anger in his eyes, because he was smiling down at her, encouraging her to share his humour. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, still reeling from the shock of discovering he had never married Maria after all. They had been engaged for at least four years that Jules knew of.
‘Come.’ His hand dropped from her arm and settled in the small of her back and urged her outside to where a chauffeur-driven car waited.
In no time at all she was sitting in the back seat of a limousine with Rand at her side, and the driver was weaving the car through the midday traffic, and out into the countryside.
‘Where are we going to eat?’ Jules asked, the prolonged silence playing havoc with nerves strung so tightly that the tension was a frantic beat through her body. ‘We seem to have left the city,’ she mumbled, swallowing hard as the car took a bend and his hard-muscled thigh brushed against hers, with a resulting electric effect on her fragile control. She could not believe what was happening to her.
Normally she was the most staid of women; in fact she was still a virgin. Somehow after the fiasco of her engagement to Enrique she had gone off the idea of sex and love altogether. Yet, glancing at Rand’s hard, chiselled profile, she found herself wondering what his lips would feel like on hers and tore her gaze away. But there was worse as she found herself watching his large elegant hand resting lightly on a strong thigh, and for a moment wished it were resting on hers. Where were all these crazy feelings coming from, for heaven’s sake? Surely it wasn’t just because she now knew he was single… She hadn’t even liked him as a teenager.
‘My surprise,’ Rand declared, slanting her a slow, intimate smile. Her heart missed a beat and for a moment she simply stared at him. ‘But I am sure you will like the place,’ his deep voice drawled, soothing and seductive. ‘And don’t worry, we can talk seriously later.’
‘Yes, b…’ A long finger closed over her lips.
‘Relax, and prepare yourself for a gourmet delight,’ he told her. ‘As long as you like fish,’ he ended with a spark of rueful amusement in his tone.
‘Yes.’ She was fast becoming a yes-woman, Jules thought dryly. Most unlike her. But he really was a very compelling man. Strikingly attractive, add power and that aura of untouchability that only the seriously wealthy exuded, combined with one hundred per cent virile masculinity, and he was a walking aphrodisiac to any female from eight to eighty. Not a type that had ever impressed her in the past. Unfortunately for the first time in years Jules was forced to face the fact she was no exception, she conceded ruefully.
She had always thought of him as a dark, serious kind of man and yet he had a smile that she suspected could beguile any woman’s heart, even hers. She gave a small involuntary shake of her head. How had she never noticed before? she wondered in amazement. Maybe because in the past he had rarely smiled at her, but that wasn’t strictly true. He had on one occasion.
A memory of sitting on the paddock fence watching Enrique perform on his horse suddenly surfaced. Rand had strolled up beside her, and put a friendly arm around her waist. ‘Mind you don’t fall, kid,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t want you injured before Ester has a chance to know you or she will have my guts for garters—an English expression…no?’
She laughed at his funny accent, and then he asked her if she would mind if Ester wrote to her, explaining he had told his stepmother he had met her, and Ester had never known her brother had married or had a daughter until now.
Jules glibly answered, ‘Yes, fine, but I should warn you I’m not much of a letter-writer.’ She turned her head to look at him; his face was only inches from her own. ‘But I’ll add her to my Christmas card list.’ He ruffled her hair and said thanks and she recalled for a moment being dazzled by his smile, but putting it down to the bright sunshine…
The restaurant was everything Rand had said and more. A timber building set on stilts and with a long deck stretching out over the Pacific Ocean. They opted to eat outside and Jules took her seat and looked around her in awe. On the edge of a headland the sweeping view of a huge sandy beach and the sea gave the impression of being surrounded by water. ‘This place is incredible.’ She turned shining eyes up to Rand.
‘Good, I am glad you approve. Now let me get you a drink. Champagne by way of a celebration, perhaps—it has been a long time.’ One dark brow arched sardonically. ‘Some might say too long’. He still found it incredible she had not turned up for her own father’s funeral, and he wondered what excuse she would come up with. But he was not about to ask her. Not yet…
He had thought with each month that had passed after he had informed her of the codicil to her father’s will, as she had refused point-blank to have anything to do with it, that maybe the woman had a grain of integrity after all. At least she was consistent in ignoring her father in life and death. But when Jules had contacted his office just a few weeks before the deadline on claiming any inheritance ran out, he had realised cynically her initial refusal had obviously been a ploy not to sound too eager, and make him think better of her.
Well, it hadn’t worked; it simply confirmed what a hard, selfish woman she was. Carlos had maybe not been a good husband or father, but whether he had deserved a wife who had run out on him within a year of their marriage, taking his daughter with her and then divorcing him, was debatable.
To give Carlos his due, he had tried to make it up with his daughter years later by welcoming the teenage Jules into his home. When she had pleaded she was old enough to get engaged to Enrique, at the tender age of seventeen, Carlos had not objected, but had given her a big engagement party. The next year he had arranged a huge wedding at considerable expense, only to have his daughter