The Playboy of Argentina(10)

He shook his head. 'Your family didn't strike me as being the most freethinking. It was a miracle that we weren't caught.'

She turned her head, pulled herself away. Lay back on the bed beside him and stared up at the ceiling.                       
       
           



       

'We were. Caught. Actually.'

'What? Are you kidding me?'

He shifted up. No way. No. Way. He would have known-he would have been  called to account. There was no chance her brother would have continued  to do business with him-no way their professional or personal  relationship could have withstood that type of interference.

She twisted her head. 'Oh, don't worry-I denied it. Until I was hoarse.  And Mark doesn't know-at least I think he doesn't. But my dad-let's just  say he has suspicions  …  deep suspicions.'

Damn. He hadn't considered that.

'Angel-I'm sorry. I'd never have left you to handle that on your own had I known. What happened?'

She sighed, and he saw her twist at the silver ring on her finger.

'I don't know. I don't know if we woke him with our noise or if he was  just awake anyway. But after you'd got your stuff together and walked  out I went to go back to my room and he was there-at the top of the  stairs. He asked me outright what the hell I'd been doing.'

He remembered every second of that night. Stifling her cries with his  mouth as she came in his hand from those few fevered touches. Pinning  her down and then reality crashing round him as he'd realised what the  hell had just happened-what the hell he'd been about to do. Trying to  get out of bed, pulling on clothes that were icy and damp, buttoning  himself up over the erection that wouldn't go down. Heaving on his boots  as she'd still tried to tempt him back to bed. Finally grabbing her  shoulders and hissing at her to stop, to leave him, she was too young!

But she hadn't given up. Naked, driving him wild. He'd hauled the sheet  off the bed and wrapped her up. As he'd yanked the door open and tried  to remember which way was out the farmhouse's narrow windows and dark  passages had lent him no clue.

Finally he'd stumbled down to the kitchen, past the sheepdogs lying in  front of the fire's dying embers, heard the tick of an old clock, heaved  on the rusty bolts that had held the door closed.

She'd come down to stand in the doorway to the hall with a haunted  look-as if the heart had been ripped out of her. He'd stopped  then-aching to go to her, to make her feel better, to take away the  hurt, take away his own hurt.

But he'd been young-only twenty-one! He'd spent so long getting to that  point, working through his own pain. La Colorada had finally been ready.  His polo career had been taking off. He hadn't been able to stay there,  to ally himself to a woman-a girl. He'd been only just beginning to  taste the chance of a sweet future. It would have been madness to go to  her.

So he'd turned back to the door, hauled it open and stepped out into the  early-morning rain. She'd come right out into the daylight, onto the  huge slabbed courtyard, called his name one final time. But he'd just  slung his bag onto his shoulder, taken one final look at her, wrapped up  like temptation's gift. And then gone.

'He was just standing there-then he went into the guest bedroom, saw you  were gone and the state of the room. Saw me in the sheet.'

She turned her face away.

'He slapped me and called me a whore.'

Rocco sat up, but she'd turned onto her side. He scooped her in close, feeling the shock of those words.

'Hermosa, lo siento mucho,' he soothed, furious that he had not known this.

'It's fine,' she said-too brightly. 'I lied. I said you must have left  ages earlier. That I'd just pulled the sheet off. I don't know what else  I said. I made it up.'

He kissed her shoulder, cursed his stupidity. Of course they had been  heard. They'd been wild for each other-then and now. And he'd thought  they hadn't been. Stupid.

'It's not fine. I apologise.' He pulled her back and turned her round,  right round, until her head was tucked under his chin. He rocked her,  hating the thought of her hurting. 'What did he do? Were you punished?'

She gave a hollow little laugh.

'If you can say being sent away to a convent for two years is punishment, then, yes, I was punished.'

He struggled to get his head around this, but knew he had no small part to play.

'And he made sure that Mark sold Ipanema. That she went to you was coincidence, but it made it all the harder.'

Rocco squeezed his eyes closed, feeling her pain.

'I see. Now I see. I didn't think  …  Angel, I'm sorry. If you'd got in  touch I could have sorted it-I could have spoken to him. I wish you'd  let me know.'                       
       
           



       

'You made it quite plain that the last thing you wanted was for me to  get in touch, Rocco. Anyway, it's totally in the past-it's fine. I  served my time.' She laughed. 'Honestly. It's done.'

He pulled her close. He couldn't deny that. Any more than he could deny  how deep the scars of childhood could wound. How hard they were to heal.  His own were like welts under his skin. No one could see them, but they  were always there-always would be. Despite the 'luxury' of enforced  therapy for five years. Five years until he'd learned to say what they  wanted to hear: that he didn't hold himself responsible, that it wasn't  his fault his baby brother had died.

Who else was to blame if not him? Who else had dragged him from doorway  to doorway, scavenging, begging, stealing and worse? Who else had got  caught up with the gangs, the drug runners and the killers?

He glanced past Frankie's scooped silhouette to the tiny battered photo  of Lodo that he carried with him and placed at his bedside wherever he  was. Precious life snuffed out before he'd even turned four years old.  Being responsible for him, letting him down, losing him-it was the  hardest lesson he had ever learned. But he had learned it. And he would  never ever forget it.

The knowledge that Martinez, Lodo's killer, had never been held to  account was like a knife to his ribs every day. But he would make it  happen. One day.

He felt Frankie stirring, trailing hot little kisses over him and  moaning with hot little sounds. She wriggled against him and he reacted  instantly, his mouth seeking hers, his hands cupping her breasts and his  knee shifting open her thighs. He positioned himself between her legs,  so ready to slip inside her.

'You owe me,' she said as she rolled beneath him, 'and I'm here to collect.'

He smiled as she slid her tongue into his mouth. He owed her, all right,  and he was going to pay her what he could. But the guilt that was  already unfurling from his stomach was telling him he was never going to  give her what she really wanted.

He reached for another condom, turned Lodo's picture face down and held her tight in his arms as he sheathed himself.

So if he wasn't going to give her what she wanted, what the hell kind of  game was he playing? Because he knew that with every kiss, every  stroke, every whispered word, while she might be calling it payback, he  was storing up a whole load of brand-new trouble.

She slipped around him, climbed on top, and his body responded hard and  fast again. He might have been able to hold back the tide in her  farmhouse but as he slid himself into that gorgeous sweet place he'd  been dreaming of for years he felt the world reconfigure.

Trouble?

Totally.





CHAPTER FIVE


HER EYES WERE SUNKEN. Her chin was grazed. Her thighs were weak and  sore. Frankie hung on to the porcelain sink and stared at the wreckage.

Making love could do this to a person? She'd thought she might be  glowing, radiant-rosy cheeked at the very least. The shadows under her  eyes looked like a sleep-deprived panda's. Was there any product on  earth that could work actual miracles? Not any that she had in her bag.  Nothing that Evaña sold could even come close.

She stared round the 'hers' bathroom in this glorious suite. It was  easily the prettiest she had ever encountered. Antique silver gilt  mirrors dotted the shimmery grey marble walls. Sweet little glass jars  held candles and oils, and there were feather-soft white folded towels.  Lush palms and filmy drapes. A huge bath like a giant white egg cracked  open was set on a platform atop four gilded feet. She pondered filling  it, but surely it would take hours?

And how many hours were left in the day? Had she really been in bed for  ten of them? A good, convent-educated girl like her? Though in the eyes  of her father she was 'just a whore'.

She shivered in the warm humid air at the memory of that slap, those  words. The stinging ache on her cheek had been nothing to the pain of  Rocco's walking away. And when he'd never come back, when all she'd been  left with was a crushing sense of rejection, she'd had no fight left.  Her father's furious silence  …  Her mother's hand-wringing despair  …   Going to the convent in Dublin had almost come as a relief. Almost.