Mistress of La Rioja. Sharon Kendrick
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attraction which she prayed had weakened with the passing of time.
All she wanted was to have grown immune to his powerful presence and his dark, unforgettable face. After all, she hadn’t seen him since just after Teodoro’s baptism, a year ago, when they had brought the baby over to England.
Sophie had deliberately kept her distance from Luis, although she’d been able to feel those steely dark eyes watching her as she moved around the room. She’d wondered if he had broken his wedding vows yet, and when she’d had a moment had asked her cousin if anything was wrong, but Miranda had just shrugged her bare brown shoulders.
‘Oh, Luis should have married a docile little Spanish girl who didn’t want to set foot outside the door,’ she had said bitterly. ‘It seems that he can’t cope with a wife who doesn’t whoop for joy because she happens to live in the back of beyond.’
And Sophie had directed a look of icy-blue fire across the room at Luis, meeting nothing but cold mockery in return.
Sophie’s plane touched down in Pamplona in the still blazing heat of an early Spanish evening and she hurried through Customs, her eyes scanning the arrivals bay, expecting to see a driver holding a card aloft with her name on it, but it took all of two seconds to see the tall and distinctive figure waiting there.
And one second to note the hard and glittering black eyes, the unsmiling mouth and the shuttered features. He was taller than every other man there, and his face still drew the eyes of women like a magnet. No, he hadn’t changed, and Sophie’s heart gave a violent and unwelcome lurch.
He stood in the crowd and yet he stood alone.
It seemed that Don Luis de la Camara had come to collect her in person.
LUIS watched as Sophie walked through the arrivals lounge, unsmilingly observing the heads which turned to follow her as she walked, though she herself seemed completely oblivious of it. But of course she had the fair skin and hair which made the hearts of most male Spaniards melt, though none of the deliberately provocative style of her cousin.
He felt his pulse quicken and his blood thicken as she made her way towards him, her light cotton dress defining her slender legs and such delicate ankles that he was surprised they could support her weight at all. He remembered the very first time he had seen her, when she had captured his imagination with her natural beauty and grace, and such completely unselfconscious sexuality.
He had met her and wanted her in an instant and had despised the hot, sharp hunger she had inspired in him, a hunger which would never—could never— be satisfied.
And then she was standing in front of him, all honey-coloured hair and pale, translucent skin. As slender and as supple as a willow—with a look of almost grim determination glittering from the china-blue eyes.
Luis sensed danger in that determination, but he did not acknowledge it. Keeping his face a mask of formal courtesy, he inclined his head in greeting. To any other woman he might have given the traditional kiss on either cheek, but not this one. He had wanted to kiss her the first time he had seen her, but by then it was too late.
And now it was later still.
‘Sophie.’ A small, formal bow of his dark head. ‘I trust that you have had a pleasant flight?’
He was so tall that she had to look up at him, and Sophie’s heart sank as she realised that all that raw and vibrant masculinity was as intact and as potent as it had ever been. But the way he was speaking, he might as well have been enquiring about the weather. He certainly didn’t sound like a bereft and newly-widowed man, and for the first time she wondered if tragedy had not, in fact, proved a convenient ending to an unhappy marriage.
She kept her face neutral—though God only knew how. ‘It was smooth enough, thank-you.’ Though in truth the hours had passed in a blur as she had tried to equip herself with the emotional strength to stay polite and impassive towards him.
She wondered what his emotional state was. Untouched, she would guess. There was no tell-tale red-rimming of the eyes, no hint that tears had been shed for the mother of his child—but then, whoever could imagine a man like Luis shedding tears?
Today, he looked remote and untouchable. His face was as cold and as hard as if it had been hewn from some pure, honey-coloured marble—but only a blind fool would have denied that he was an outrageously attractive man.
He stood at well over six feet and his shoulders were broad and strong. Lightweight summer trousers did little to conceal the powerful shaft of his thighs, and beneath the short-sleeved cotton shirt his arms looked as though they were capable of splitting open the trunk of a tree without effort.
But it was the face which was truly remarkable— it effortlessly bore the stamp of generations of Spanish aristocracy. Proud, almost cruel—with only the lush lines of his mouth breaking up the unremitting hardness of his features. A mouth so lush that it exuded the unmistakable sensuality which surrounded him like an invisible cloak.
No wonder her cousin had fallen for his devastating brand of charisma, Sophie thought, and a sudden sense of sadness left her feeling almost winded.
He saw the hint of tears which misted the Mediterranean-blue of her eyes. All the fire and determination had been wiped out, her sadness betrayed by the slight, vulnerable tremble of her lips, and he reached out to take her hand. It felt so tiny and cool when enclosed in his.
‘You have my condolences, little one,’ he said gravely.
She lifted her chin, swallowing the tears away, and removed her hand from his warm grasp, despairing of the not-so-subtle chemistry between them which made her want to leave it exactly where it was. ‘Thank you,’ she returned softly, letting her gaze fall to the ground, just in case those perceptive black eyes had the power to read exactly what was going on in her mind.
He looked at her downcast head and the stiff, defensive set of her shoulders. She was grieving for her cousin, he reminded himself—although the defiant, almost angry spark in her eyes on greeting him had little to do with grief, surely?
‘Come, Sophie,’ he said. ‘The car awaits us and we have some drive ahead of us. Here, let me carry your suitcase for you.’
It sounded more like a command than an offer to help, and, although Sophie could have and would have carried it perfectly well on her own, she knew that it was pointless trying to refuse a man like Luis.
He would insist. Instinct told her that just as accurately as anything her cousin had ever divulged. He came from a long line of imperious men, men who saw clearly delineated lines between the roles of the sexes.
Spain might now be as modern as the rest of Europe, but men like Luis did not change with the times. They still saw themselves as conquerors—superior and supreme—and master of all they surveyed.
She could see women looking at him as they passed. Coy little side-glances and sometimes an eager and undisguised kind of hunger. She couldn’t see into his eyes from here, and wondered if he was giving them hungry little glances back.
Probably. Hadn’t he done just that with her, before he had discovered her identity?
And of course now, without a wife, he could behave exactly as he pleased—he could exert that powerful sexuality and get any woman he wanted into his bed.
The airport buildings were refreshingly air-conditioned, but once outside the force of the heat hit her like a velvet fist, even though the intensity of the midday sun had long since passed.
He saw her flinch beneath the impact of the raw heat, and he knew that he must not forget to warn her about the dangers of the sun. ‘Why don’t you take your jacket off?’ he suggested suavely.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said tightly.
His mouth hardened. ‘As