The Latin Affair. Sophie Weston
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‘Love?’ Francesca sounded as blank as if he had broken into a foreign language. ‘Grow up, darling.’
‘You think love’s an irrelevance?’
“Oh, come on. We’re talking real life here.’
Esteban gave an unexpected laugh. ‘We are indeed. And we seem to have different views on it.’
‘Are you saying you’re looking for love?’ Francesca sounded disbelieving. ‘You?’
‘I don’t think you need to look for it,’ Esteban said coolly. ‘In my experience it tends to sock you in the eye.’
Francesca snorted. ‘Your experience? So now you’re the last of the great romantics?’
Esteban gave that his measured consideration. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I wouldn’t call myself a romantic.’
‘Thank God for that, at least,’ Francesca muttered.
‘On the other hand, I’m not fool enough to marry anyone I’m not in love with.’
Francesca pulled herself together. She moved close to him, though she did not quite dare to touch him again. She gave him a winning smile.
‘But if both parties agree—’
He bent towards her so fast she took a step backwards in simple shock. At once she could have kicked herself. He had not come so close to her voluntarily for over a year.
But it was too late. Esteban had seen her alarm. He gave her a mocking smile.
‘Agree to change my nature? How?’
Francesca recovered fast. ‘But you’ve just said you aren’t romantic,’ she reminded him.
‘No, but I am passionate and possessive and I have a nasty temper,’ Esteban told her evenly. ‘Believe me, you wouldn’t like being married to me.’
‘No woman would,’ snapped Francesca, unexpectedly shaken.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m glad we agree on the matter.’ He sounded amused.
The telephone rang. He reached behind him, not looking, and swept it up to his ear. ‘Hi, Annie. Now? Yes, of course.’ He put the phone down. ‘Sorry, Francesca. Busy morning. Goodbye.’
Francesca was looking poleaxed. His court opponents would have recognised the feeling. Esteban gave her an enigmatic smile and held the door open for her. She did not move.
‘You’re not going to treat me like this. I’m no little boat chick,’ she jeered.
Esteban went very still. Francesca knew she had made a bad mistake. That was one of the few confidences she had not spilled out to the handsome young journalist in the quayside café last year.
She nervously touched her hair but said defiantly, ‘It just slipped out. You told me about it yourself, after all. I couldn’t help it. You upset me so much I forgot I wasn’t supposed to mention it.’ A thought occurred to her. She lowered her lashes. ‘If you go on being nasty to me, it might happen again—and who knows who could be listening?’
Esteban’s watchfulness dissolved into unholy appreciation.
‘Threats?’ he said, his eyebrows flying up. ‘Very attractive. Just the stuff to get me to marry you. You’re really one on your own, Francesca.’
There was nothing she could say. Once again Esteban Tremain had taken her well thought out strategy and turned it on its head. Francesca was determined but she was not an idiot. She recognised defeat, at least for the moment.
“I’ll go.’ She gathered up her handbag and elegant serape but was not leaving without the last word. ‘Call me when you’ve got your head together. You need me.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Esteban said quietly.
‘Oh, but you do.’ She had gone back to her caressing manner. She gave him a sweet smile. ‘You just don’t know how much yet. But you will.’
She left.
Immediately Esteban banished her from his mind. He flung himself back into his chair and reached for the Hallam file again. He picked up the telephone, his voice coming alive with the anticipation of battle.
‘Annie, get me that kitchen place again, will you? And this time I want to talk to de Vries in person.’
But when Anne put the call through it was the lieutenant again.
‘Hello?’ She did her best to sound composed but Esteban was used to reading the smallest nuance in his opponents’ voices and he recognised nerves. It was a lovely voice, Esteban noted, warm with an underlying hint of laughter. Currently, of course, the laughter was almost extinguished. Good, he thought.
‘What is your name?’ he demanded softly.
He did not have to say anything else. The tone alone intimidated opponents. Esteban knew it and used it effectively in court. If it could silence Francesca Moran, a judge’s daughter, it would make this obstructive girl crumble.
But, to his astonishment, it did not. There was a little pause, in which he could almost hear her pull herself together.
Then, ‘Piper,’ she said coolly. ‘Nicola Piper.’ She spelled it for him.
It disconcerted him. Esteban was not used to hostile witnesses spelling out their names and then asking kindly if he had got it all down. Where had she got that kind of confidence? Did he know her? Surely he would not have forgotten that golden sunshine voice?
‘Have we met?’ he asked slowly.
Nicky had remembered his visit as soon as Caroline had mentioned Hallam Hall. She had just come in from dealing with another client. And she had noticed him all right: a tall, dark man in the doorway of Martin’s office, watching her with lazy appreciation.
‘You could say that. In passing,’ she said frostily.
That startled him too. And intrigued him. ‘Where did we pass?’
‘At the office. We weren’t introduced.’
There was a thoughtful pause.
‘You’re the blonde,’ Esteban said on a long note of discovery.
He remembered now. She had shot in from somewhere, silk skirts flying, laughing. Her briefcase had bulged with papers and she’d been clutching it under one arm with decreasing effectiveness. He would have gone to rescue it, but Martin had detained him with some remark and one of her colleagues had got there first.
This picture was still vivid, though. Summer evening sun had lit her hair to gold. It had clearly started the day confined in a neat bow at her nape but by now it was springing free into wild curls about her shoulders. And her figure—Esteban found his mouth curving in appreciation at the memory. She had a figure to rival one of Patrick’s Renaissance goddesses at Hallam, lounging in naked voluptuousness among their sunlit olive groves. Add to that perfect legs, creamy skin—and, when she’d caught his eyes on her—a glare like a stiletto.
‘I remember,’ he said.
Alone in her office, Nicky winced. It was not the first time a man had called her a ‘blonde’ in that tone of voice. Or looked at her in blatant appreciation, as she now remembered all too clearly. It still stabbed where she was most vulnerable. Particularly this morning.
She hid her hurt under icy distance. ‘The name,’ she said with emphasis, ‘is Piper.’
‘Is it, indeed?’
Nicky could hear his amusement. She set her teeth and tried to remember that he was a customer.
He went on, ‘Well, Piper, you can tell Martin de Vries that I paid for a working kitchen and that’s what I expect to get’
Nicky