His Suitable Bride(170)

‘You’ll leave and you’ll not come back, not until I say you can! If I say you can. When I’ve talked to my father, if I think we still need to talk, I’ll give you a call.’

Did she really think she was having any effect at all on him? He might have agreed to leave, but that was because it suited him, for now. His face was closed off again so that she had no idea if she was getting through to him at all. The truth was that she doubted very much that she was. Santos would do things his own way and only that way. He was only going along with what she said because she was doing what he actually wanted her to do. The feeling of having been manipulated, outmanoeuvred by a master was a nasty, creeping one along her skin. Just what would her father have to tell her when she got in touch with him?

Santos was shrugging himself back into his heavy overcoat, pushing his hand into one of the pockets and pulling out a small silver case. Flipping it open, he pulled out a slip of white embossed card and held it out to her.

‘My mobile number,’ he explained when Alexa could only stare in blank confusion. ‘You’ll need it when you ring me.’

When, Alexa noted. Not if. He was totally sure of himself, and of her, totally in control. She had never felt more like a stiff, wooden puppet, dancing at the command of the man who pulled the strings.

In a moment of petty rebellion she refused to take the card he offered, her chin coming up defiantly as her eyes locked with his until he gave a small bark of harsh laughter and tossed it down onto the arm of the settee.

‘You’ll need it,’ he said implacably. ‘Call me.’

He was turning away as he spoke, fastening his coat and turning his collar up high against the weather outside. Weather that was getting worse by the second if the wail of the wind howling round the cottage was anything to go by. It seemed amazing to Alexa that she hadn’t noticed the way it sounded before, but then she had been—distracted was all she would admit to herself.

She hesitated over insisting that Santos should leave when she saw just what conditions were like outside as she opened the door. Not only had the wind increased in both speed and power, buffeting the trees so that they swayed wildly and dangerously in its force, but the rain was lashing down too and some of it was in the form of icy hailstones, battering the few straggly plants in her garden.

‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’

‘What’s this, Alexa?’ Santos mocked. ‘Concern? I’m a big boy …’

‘I know you are,’ Alexa snapped, unsettled by both concern for his safety and the fact that she felt it, her stomach clenching unexpectedly at the thought of him having to drive in these appalling conditions. ‘Big enough and ugly enough. But I wouldn’t put a dog out in this.’

‘I’ll survive.’

He shrugged off her concern in a way that, strangely, only made her feel so much worse. From wanting him gone, needing the peace of her home to herself, free from his unsettling presence so that she could contact her father and find out just what was going on, she had veered towards a feeling that she should not let him go. What if something happened to him? The night was closing in and the road towards the village was very badly lit. Its surface was pitted and rough and, even if he knew its twists and turns well as she did, she feared that driving it in these conditions would be an ordeal.

‘Don’t go,’ she said suddenly, spinning round to face Santos, only to realise that he had already left her side, that he was opening the car door, sliding into the driving seat.

For a moment she considered running after him. She even lifted her hand to wave, to beg him to stop, but the roar of the car’s powerful engine had her dropping it down to her side again.

Santos wouldn’t stay to please her, to calm her fears. Why would he want to? And wouldn’t admitting to those worries give him more of a hold over her, knowing that she cared? And so she forced herself to stand there and watch as Santos put the car into gear and set off down the road away from the cottage.

It was unnerving seeing the way that the vehicle was pounded by the fearsome winds, once even knocked to the side by the force of the gale, but Santos quickly regained control. A moment later he had reached a turn in the road, and even the rear lights of the car had disappeared from sight. As she watched them go, another wild flurry of rain and hail lashed at her face, making her shiver in miserable response. It really was a vile night, and somehow with Santos gone it seemed darker, colder and bleaker than ever.

Talk to your father, Alexa. Santos’s voice sounded in her head, reminding her of what she must do, and with another shiver, one she wasn’t at all sure was completely physical, she turned and hurried back inside, letting the door swing to behind her as she moved to pick up the phone.