Mistress of La Rioja. Sharon Kendrick
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open road before turning to him.
‘Where’s Teodoro?’
‘At home.’
‘Oh.’
He heard the disappointment in her voice. ‘You imagined that I would have brought him out on a hot summer’s night to await a plane which could have been delayed?’
‘So who’s looking after him?’
Did her question hint at reprimand? he wondered incredulously. Did she imagine that he had left the child alone? ‘He is in the charge of his ninera…’He saw her frown with confusion and realised that she, like her cousin, spoke almost no Spanish at all. ‘His mother’s help,’ he translated immediately.
‘Not any more,’ said Sophie quietly.
‘No,’ he agreed heavily. There was a short, painful pause and he shot her a side-glance. ‘How did your grandmother take it?’
Sophie bit her lip. Would it sound unfeeling and uncaring if she told him that, although the news had saddened her grandmother, it had come as no great surprise. What had she said? Miranda had flown far too close to the sun… But if she told Luis that then surely it would do a disservice to her cousin’s memory.
‘What happened, Luis? How did Miranda die?’
He pulled in a breath, choosing his words carefully, remembering that he must respect both her position and her grief.
How much of the truth did she want? he wondered. Or need?
‘No one knows exactly what happened,’ he said.
She knew evasion when she heard it. And faint distaste, too. She wondered what had caused it.
‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’
He didn’t answer, just kept his dark eyes straight on the road ahead, so that all she could see was his hard, shadowed profile, and Sophie said the first thing which came into her head. ‘Had the driver been drinking?’
There was a short, bald silence. But what would be the point in keeping it from her? It would soon be a matter of public record.
‘Sì. El habia estrado bebiendo.’ He was thinking in his native language and the words just slipped out of their own accord.
She spoke hardly any Spanish, but Sophie could tell what his answer was from the flat, heavy tone of his voice. She closed her eyes in despair. ‘Oh, God! Drinking very much? Do you know?’
‘The tests have not yet been completed.’
A sense of outrage and of anger burned deep within her—and for the first time it was directed at Miranda instead of the man beside her. Her cousin had been a mother, for heaven’s sake, with all the responsibility which went with that. She’d had a young child to look after—so how could she have been so stupid to have gone off in a car where the driver had been drinking?
Unless she hadn’t known.
But Miranda hadn’t been stupid. She’d been head-strong and impetuous sometimes, but she definitely hadn’t been stupid.
Unless this man beside her, who drove the car so expertly through the darkened Spanish countryside— unless he had made her life such a misery that she hadn’t cared about common sense and personal safety.
She shook her head. There was absolutely no justification for Miranda going off with a drink-driver. Whatever the state of her marriage, she had always been free to walk away from it.
She shot a side-glance at the darkly angled profile. Or had she? What if Miranda had tried to walk away, taking Teodoro with her? Couldn’t and wouldn’t Luis have used his power and his influence to try to stop her?
She turned her head and pressed her cheek against the coolness of the window and looked out, only half taking in the wild beauty of the silhouetted landscape beyond.
The air was violet-dark and huge stars spotted the sky with splodges of silver. They looked so much bigger and brighter than the stars back in England, and her home seemed suddenly a long way away. And then she remembered. She had responsibilities, too.
Through sheer effort of will she reached down in her briefcase to retrieve her mobile phone.
‘Will this work out here?’ she questioned.
His eyes narrowed as they briefly glanced over at the little technological toy. ‘That depends on what type it is.’ He shrugged. ‘But I have another you can use, if yours can’t get a signal.’
‘You have a mobile phone? Here? In the car?’
His mouth twisted into a grim smile. ‘Did you imagine that I communicate by bush telegraph? You will find every modern comfort, even here in La Rioja, Sophie.’
And yet his words seemed to mock the reality of his presence. ‘Modern comfort,’ he had said, when with his dark and brooding looks he seemed to represent the very opposite of all that was modern.
He watched as she punched out a string of numbers. ‘Is your call so very important that it cannot wait until we reach the hacienda?’ he questioned softly.
‘I have to let someone know that I arrived safely.’
‘A man, I suppose?’
‘Actually, yes. It is a man.’ Not that it was any of his business, but let him draw his own conclusions, which he very probably would. And obviously if it was a man then she must be sleeping with him!
The connection was made. ‘Liam? Hi, it’s me!’
Beside her, Luis stared into the abyss of the road ahead, wondering if she shared the same sexual freedom as her cousin. His gaze wandered unseen to her legs, and he was unprepared for the sudden buck of jealousy at the thought of those slender, pale limbs wrapped around the body of another.
He reminded himself that he knew women like these—with their blonde hair and their big blue eyes and their gym-toned bodies. The bodies of women but with the minds of men. They acted as men had been acting for years…they saw something they wanted and they went all out to get it.
And she had wanted him once, before she had discovered that he was to marry her cousin, just as he had wanted her—a wanting like no other. A thunderbolt which had struck him and left him aching and dazed in its wake. And it had taken her as well, he had seen that for himself, as unmistakable as the long shadows cast by the sun.
He listened in unashamedly to her conversation as the car ate up the lonely miles.
‘No, I’m in the car now. With Luis.’ A pause. ‘Not really, no.’ Another pause and then she glanced at her watch. ‘It’s just gone nine. No, that’s OK. Yeah, I know, but I can’t really talk now. Yes. OK. Thanks, Liam. I hope so, too. OK, I’ll do that. I’ll call you on Saturday.’
She cut the connection and put the phone back in the glove box.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.
There was a soft, dangerous pause as he saw her cross one slim, pale leg over the other. ‘Does he hunger for you already, Sophie?’ he asked silkily, and the blood began to pound in his head.
She couldn’t believe her ears. It was such an outrageous thing to say that for a moment Sophie was left speechless.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He gave a half-smile in the darkness. So beautiful and so unintentionally sensual, and yet she could turn her voice to frost when it suited her.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Liam is my business partner.’
‘Ah.’
Something dark and sensual conveyed danger in that simple word, and Sophie felt her heart race with something more than fear. ‘Is—is there going to be anyone else staying at the hacienda?’
He heard the tremor in her voice and it amused him,