His Suitable Bride(109)

She turned back.

‘I’ll see you at the office. The girls will be looking forward to seeing Zac.’

A moment of pure exhilaration gripped her at his banal words, for all the world as if this was normal, as if they were a happily married couple discussing plans for the next day. And then just as swiftly Rowan felt that everything was crystal-clear. How could she have been so stupid? Anger rose, swift and bright. She walked back into the room, clutching the phone.

She held it out. ‘This isn’t about security at all, is it?’

Isandro had the gall to look nonplussed.

‘You’re afraid I’ll try to run with Zac if you give me the slightest chance, aren’t you? You’re testing me.’

Two spots of colour were high on her cheeks and she was shaking. Isandro was genuinely taken aback. He hadn’t thought of that for a second, and now he felt stupid for not doing so. Because clearly it was uppermost in her mind. He advanced around the desk.

‘Is it cramping your style for me to know where you are at every moment of your journey?’

Rowan wanted to throw the phone back in his face. She could feel its imprint in her palm. She longed to tell him she didn’t want to go to Seville, but she knew this was an important step in the process of making him trust her with Zac. Still words slipped out, helplessly. ‘When will you just trust that I have only the best intentions where Zac in concerned?’

His eyes glittered down at her, a stormy blue. ‘Oh, maybe on the twelfth of never.’

Rowan backed away to leave again. ‘Send an army with us if you wish, Isandro. I don’t care.’

But she did, she knew, as she left and went upstairs.

Isandro went and sat down behind his desk, driving a hand through his hair. Even as she had been standing there, mocking him for his own lack of suspicion, he’d been aware of her. Aware of her body, of the rise and fall of those soft breasts under her shirt. He wanted her. Mistress or wife. In his bed. And he hated to admit that he’d been ridiculously comforted to see a spark return to her eyes after two days in which her only animation had been inspired by Zac.

He’d vowed after the other night not to touch her again, but he knew that might be taking his will a step too far. The woman was running rings around him and she didn’t even know it. But if she did, or if she suspected for a second …

His phone rang and he answered curtly. He heard his assistant’s voice. ‘What …? Nothing?’ His hand spiked through his hair again. ‘Yes, I want you to keep looking. Leave no stone unturned. She can’t have just disappeared off the face of the earth.’

He slammed down the phone. He also hated this impulse to find out for himself exactly where she had been all this time. Forewarned was forearmed, he told himself. It was clear she’d been trying to tell him, but he would not listen to her lies before he had the truth in his own hands.

The next day Rowan looked at the phone for a long time. It seemed to shine up at her malevolently. But at the last second she threw it into Zac’s bag of necessities. She knew it would be childish to leave it behind, and she had no doubt that Isandro would be most likely checking up on her.

She couldn’t help a frisson of excitement as she settled Zac into the baby seat of the Jeep. The thought of Seville didn’t scare her any more; she was feeling so much stronger these days. They loaded up—she in the back with Zac and Hernán driving. They waved goodbye to Ana-Lucía, who was on the steps.

Then Rowan was distracted, because Zac was grouchy and demanding attention. She tended to him for a few minutes, digging out water and a biscuit, so she didn’t see Hernán slowing down or coming to a stop until he had, about a mile outside the small town.

She looked around his seat and asked in Spanish, ‘Everything okay?’

‘No problem. A car has broken down and I recognise it as my cousin’s. I’ll just check to see if he’s okay …’

She looked back through the rear window. The broken down car was some distance behind them. Hernán had obviously passed it before he’d seen it. She made funny faces and played with Zac, and then cast another half-interested look back to the other car.

What she saw made her blood run cold and her heart stop. As she watched Hernán approach the car, a man stepped out from under the hood with a wrench and hit him on the head. It was so unbelievable and so fantastic that Rowan literally did not believe her eyes—not even when she saw another man emerge from the back of the car. Hernán fell to the ground, and the man with the wrench approached her in the Jeep.

She was stuck, couldn’t move, but finally, when he was mere seconds away and she saw the flesh-coloured balaclava, she jerked into action and fumbled for the locks on the doors. There was only one thought in her head: Zac.