Exotic Affairs(114)

He smiled. Then, before she could remark on that fresh piece of shock information, he was turning away again. ‘Read the diaries, Miss Newbury. And learn about the man who loves you as much I think as you love him,’ he advised as he left her alone.

Hours later she wished to God that she hadn’t read the diaries. She wished to God that the whole Vazquez family had kept to their old ways and stayed right out of Luiz’s life.

She hid the books away in her room on the top of a great oak wardrobe that stood against a wall. Then she went outside into the afternoon heat and paced the garden, lost in dark thoughts filled with heartache and betrayal, and the cruel sacrifice of one innocent child for the sake of another.

‘History repeating itself,’ Felipe had called it. Luiz had called it feuds and fortunes. Caroline called it unforgivable. And if Luiz knew only half of what she had just discovered via those diaries, then it was no wonder he had shut himself away inside an invisible suit of armour since coming here. This family was poison to anyone who touched them. Which brought to mind yet another remark made by his uncle the doctor. ‘Take a food-taster with you,’ he’d advised. He too knew that there was poison in this beautiful place.

The only bit of good she had gleaned from those diaries had been confirmation that the priest had been telling the truth about Luiz’s intentions towards her seven years ago. But even that truth had its poisonous side.

For, if Luiz had loved her then, why had he gone from her arms directly to a card table to try and bankrupt her father night after night?

When the sound of a helicopter came whirring over the mountain, she wished Luiz had stayed away. She was still too upset, too confused. She needed more time to think, to absorb, and decide how much she was going to tell him about what she had learned today—if she was going to tell him anything at all.

Yet as the helicopter landed on its newly prepared site she found herself standing there waiting for him. As he stepped down onto solid ground her heart began to fill with a multitude of emotions she just couldn’t separate.

Dressed in a dark grey business suit with needle-sharp tailoring, bright white shirt and a steel-grey tie, he looked the true tycoon, the true nobleman. In fact no one looking at his lean, dark, proudly arrogant profile would believe he had spent the first twenty years of his life living literally from hand to mouth.

He also looked sombre, she noticed, as if the worries of the whole world had suddenly descended upon him. She knew the feeling, since she was experiencing the very same thing herself.

The fault of this valley? Was the fatal flaw in its beauty its need to taint all that came here?

Fanciful though she knew she was being, she knew suddenly that she needed to be close to him—very badly. She also knew that she needed to get away from here, if only for a little while, to think, to regain some perspective.

So the moment he was free of the helicopter’s lethal blades she began walking across the lawn to meet him. He saw her coming towards him and stopped and stared, as if he was seeing his life’s dream, before those heavily defended eyes were hiding as usual.

And for no other reason than because she needed to, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him urgently. His surprise was evident in the moment of tension she felt grip him, and for a couple of horrible seconds she thought he was actually going to thrust her away.

Then his arms looped around her—tightly enough to crush her against his hard-packed body—and he began to kiss her back with a hunger that easily matched her own.

It was like finding herself after being lost in a dark place for days upon end. Whatever else was between them that didn’t make sense, this always—always—felt so very right.

He broke the kiss. She would have been content to remain right there, kissing him like this for ever. But those dark eyes of his were frowning down at her, probing the whitened pallor even the kiss had not managed to dispel. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded. ‘Who has upset you?’

Caroline just shook her head. ‘I missed you, that’s all,’

she told him huskily. ‘I’ve been missing you for days, though you didn’t seem to notice.’

‘I noticed,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘I just thought it was better if I gave you time to yourself to—come to terms with all of this…’

‘All of this’ being the fairytale castle standing behind them, that had suddenly become a very haunted castle for Caroline.

‘I don’t need time to come to terms with it,’ she denied. ‘I have something similar of my own in England, if you recall—though I admit it isn’t as grand as this. But—Luiz…’ Despite trying to, she couldn’t keep the strain from creeping into her tone. ‘Can we get away from here for a little while?’ she begged. ‘Just you and me, somewhere—ordinary? Can that thing fly us out—just for a couple of hours? Please?’