The South American's Wife. Kay Thorpe
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was nothing in the handbag to provide an answer to that question. She opened the suitcase, disconcerted by the jumble of clothing inside. Packed hastily and with little regard to content from the look of it, which suggested a decision made bare minutes before departure rather than a planned exit. Stuck in the middle of it all was a framed photograph that brought a lump to her throat. It had been taken on a camping holiday bare months before her parents had been killed. They were laughing together, holding up the tiny fish her mother had just caught in the river flowing behind them. A handsome pair, with everything to live for.
Julie would have sent it through along with the other things she’d asked for, Karen concluded, blinking the tears from her eyes. It would have been the last thing she’d have left behind, for certain.
She sorted out a pair of lace panties and matching bra, topping them with a white skirt and sleeveless cotton top she’d never to her knowledge seen before. There were only two pairs of shoes. She chose the pale beige sandals that were the only ones with a highish heel. At five feet six she was far from short, but she needed the boost to face a man over six feet in height with any degree of confidence at all.
The handbag yielded a pouch containing a pale pink lipstick, smoky eye-shadow and a mascara wand. No surprises there: she’d never used a lot of make-up. She donned the touch of lipstick she’d spoken of, and ran a comb through her dried hair. The bruising looked worse than it had the night before, as did the grazes on her cheek and jaw, but she had more to think about than her appearance.
Her last clear memories were of attending a leaving party for a workmate, followed by dinner out with a group from the office. Julie had been out herself when she had got back to the flat. She’d made a hot drink and gone straight to bed.
That had been the twelfth of September. The day before yesterday, so far as her mind was concerned. Luiz had said they’d been married three months, but that didn’t tell her the date now.
He supplied an answer to that question on his return.
‘It’s the twenty-seventh of January,’ he said. ‘More than halfway through our summer. The temperatures on the plateau are milder than here on the coast. While the days are hot at this time of the year, the humidity is low, the nights refreshingly cool.’
‘It sounds good.’ Karen was doing her utmost to stay on top of her emotions.
Luiz came to close and lock the suitcase she’d left open on the bed, hoisting it effortlessly up. ‘I have a taxi waiting to take us to the hotel.’
‘Hotel?’ she queried.
‘I think it better that the two of us spend some time together before returning to Guavada,’ he said. ‘We have a great deal to discuss.’
Karen forced herself into movement, reluctant to abandon the only bit of security she knew right now. Luiz went ahead to open the door for her, falling into step at her side to traverse a short, beautifully tiled corridor to a bank of lifts.
The one that arrived silently and smoothly in answer to his summons was empty. They descended without speaking, to emerge in a luxuriously appointed lobby. The receptionist on duty at a central desk bade them a smiling farewell, expressing what Karen took to be good wishes for the future. A forlorn hope indeed while the past months remained a blank.
Although it was still only a little after nine-thirty, the temperature outside was already soaring. Karen was glad to dive into the air-conditioned taxi-cab. With the suitcase stowed, Luiz slid in beside her. His thigh lay next to hers, the firm muscularity clearly de-fined beneath the fine cotton of his jeans when he moved.
Stripped, he would be magnificent, came the unbidden thought, bringing a sudden contraction deep down in the pit of her stomach. She would have seen him like that for certain—as he had no doubt seen her. She wondered how she, so unpractised in full-blown lovemaking, had managed to satisfy a man who would certainly have been no virgin.
They drove down through a city humming with workaday energies to a luxury hotel overlooking a superb crescent of white beach that was already heavily populated. Sugar Loaf reared now to the left, outlined against a sky beginning to cloud over a little.
‘Is it going to rain, do you think?’ Karen asked, turning from the balconied window—more for something to say than through any real interest in the weather. ‘Summer is the rainy season out here, isn’t it?’
Watching her from across the superbly furnished and decorated room, Luiz inclined his head. ‘It is, yes.’ His regard was penetrating. ‘You recall that much then?’
‘Not the way you mean,’ she said. ‘I must have read it somewhere.’
‘Then the view out there means nothing to you?’
Karen’s brows drew together. ‘I’ve seen it in pictures.’
‘But no more than that?’
‘No.’ Heart thudding against her ribcage, she added, ‘What else might it mean?’
‘It’s the view you had from your room in this same hotel three months ago,’ he said. ‘Not the same room, I admit, but a replica of it. I hoped it might strike some spark of recollection.’
‘It hasn’t.’ Her tone was flat. ‘I must have won quite a lot to afford to stay in a place like this.’
‘Several thousand pounds, I believe. A one-time opportunity to see how the other half lived, was how you excused the extravagance. There would have been little left to take home with you, for certain.’
‘Except that I found myself a husband who could afford to stay in places like this.’ She made a gesture of self-disgust. ‘Forget I said that, will you?’
The dark head inclined again. ‘It’s forgotten.’
Considering his expression a moment ago, Karen doubted it. If she wanted to alienate him any more than he already must be alienated, considering the reason he’d followed her to Rio, she was going the right way about it.
He was leaning against a chest of drawers on the far side of the queen-size twin beds. Karen could only be thankful that there were two of them—although the thought of sharing even a room with him was daunting.
‘I have the room next door,’ he said, reading her mind with an ease she found daunting in itself. ‘I’ve no intention of pressuring you into anything you find distasteful.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Karen scarcely knew what else to say. ‘It isn’t that I find you…unattractive.’
‘A start, at least.’ His tone was dry. ‘Patience is no particular virtue of mine, but it seems I must learn to employ it. Perhaps sight of our home will help.’
‘Perhaps.’ Karen hesitated, reluctant to put the idea in his mind if it wasn’t there already, yet needing reassurance. ‘You don’t think I’m pretending to have lost my memory, do you?’
His expression underwent an indefinable alteration. ‘What might cause you to do such a thing?’
She lifted her shoulders. ‘Fear of retribution, perhaps.’
‘You see me as a wife-beater?’
‘I don’t know what you’re capable of.’ She was beginning to wish she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘It isn’t true, anyway. If I were capable of putting on that kind of act, I’d belong on the stage!’
‘I believe you would.’ His shoulders lifted. ‘There have been moments in our relationship when you’ve sorely tried me, I admit.’
Karen eyed him in silence for a moment. ‘We had rows?’
‘We had some differences of opinion. You’re a strong-willed young woman.’
‘Where I come from, all women have minds of their own,’ she claimed.
‘As do Brazilian women—except that they are rather more subtle in their employment of it.’ The pause was brief, the sudden change of