Michelle Reid Collection. Michelle ReidЧитать онлайн книгу.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’ve only been an entity in their lives for a few months.’ In profile she caught the slight hint of a grimace. ‘Since my father died, in fact,’ he tagged on, ‘and it was revealed that he had left his estates, his money and his title to the bastard son they’d all preferred to pretend never existed.’
Sitting there beside him, Caroline took her time absorbing this information, because it helped explain so many other things about Luiz that had been a mystery to her until then.
‘Did you know about him?’ she questioned softly.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Always?’
‘More or less,’ he replied. Economical and to the point.
‘But he never acknowledged you until recently,’ she therefore concluded.
Luiz turned the car in through the gates of the villa and drove them beneath the arch into the courtyard. As the engine went silent neither tried to get out of the car. Caroline because she sensed there was more information coming, and Luiz because he was, she suspected, deciding how much he wanted to tell her.
‘He tried, once,’ he admitted. ‘Seven years ago, to be exact. But it—didn’t come to anything.’
Seven years ago. Seven. Caroline’s lungs suddenly ceased to work. ‘Why?’ she whispered.
Luiz turned to look at her, his closely guarded eyes flickering over her pale, tired, now wary face, and it was like being bathed in a shower of static. For, whatever he was thinking while he looked at her like that, she knew without a single doubt that his thoughts belonged seven years in his past and most definitely included her.
Then he flicked his eyes away. ‘He wasn’t what I wanted,’ he declared, and opened his door and climbed out of the car, leaving Caroline to sit there, making what she liked of that potentially earth-shattering statement.
Was he was talking about her? Was he talking about them? Was he talking about seven years ago, when he must have been here in Marbella to meet his father and had instead got himself involved with an English girl and her gambling father?
Her door came open. Luiz bent down to take hold of her arm to help urge her out. She arrived beside him in a fresh state of high tension, trembling, afraid to dare let herself draw the most logical conclusions from her own shock questions.
But Luiz couldn’t have meant that she had been what he had wanted seven years ago, she decided, or he would not have fleeced her father dry at the gambling tables the way he had done.
‘Come on,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘You’ve taken enough for one night.’
Yes, he was right; she had taken enough, she agreed as a throbbing took up residence behind her eyes. She didn’t want to think any more, didn’t want to do anything but crawl into the nearest bed and fall asleep.
The house was in darkness. Luiz touched a couple of wall switches as they entered and bathed the hallways in subdued light, then led the way to the bedroom.
Once inside, she didn’t seem to have energy left to even undress herself. Luiz watched as she sank wearily down onto the edge of the bed and covered her aching eyes. After a few moments he moved across the room to begin opening cupboards, then she heard his footsteps crossing the cool marble floor towards her and something silky landed on her lap.
Drawing her hand away from her eyes, she saw her own smoke-grey silk nightdress. With a cool disregard for her utter bone-weariness, he pulled her to her feet and aimed her towards the bathroom. ‘Wash, change,’ he instructed.
She went on automatic pilot, and came back a few minutes later to find that Luiz was no longer there and that the bedcovers had been turned back ready for her to crawl between. She did so without hesitation. She was just sinking into a blissful oblivion when the door opened and he came back in.
The distinctive clink of ice against glass brought her gritty eyes open in time to watch him place a jug of iced water on the bedside table, along with a couple of glasses, then he strode off to shut himself away behind the bathroom door without uttering a single word.
Caroline lay there, not sure if she should be jumping up and making a run for it while she had the chance, or whether she should just give in to everything and let him do whatever it was he had planned to come next.
She didn’t run, was too tired to run. And his next, was to reappear wearing nothing but a short black robe that exposed more of his tanned skin than it covered. He brought the clean scent of soap into the room with him—and a heightening of tension because he looked so damned sexually sure of himself, the way he obviously thought he could climb into this bed with her—and naked, by the looks of things!
‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she informed him flatly.
He was hanging his clothes away in the cupboard when she spoke, but he paused, glanced at her. ‘Sleep as in sleep?’ he asked. ‘Or sleep as in make love?’
‘Both,’ she replied. ‘And I don’t know how you’ve got the arrogance to think that I would.’
He didn’t answer that one straight away. Instead he went back to what he had been doing while Caroline followed his every movement with a heart that was trying hard not to beat any faster.
It didn’t succeed very well—especially when he turned towards the bed and began to approach. And his face was wearing that hard, implacable look she didn’t like very much. Bending down, he braced himself with one hand on the pillow beside her head and one right by her curled-up knees. He looked very dark, very dangerous—and very, very serious.
‘Let’s just get a couple of things straight, Caroline,’ he suggested quietly and chillingly. ‘As far as I am concerned our deal still stands. If you decide not to go through with it, then you know the consequences. They haven’t changed because your father was taken ill,’ he pointed out. ‘But,’ he then added, ‘if you decide to keep your side of our bargain, then I will expect you to convince your father, and everyone else for that matter, that I am what you want more than anything else in your life. Understand?’
Yes, she thought dully, she understood. Her choices here were still non-existent. ‘If anything happens to him,’ she said thickly, ‘you know I’ll never forgive you, don’t you?’
He allowed himself a small grimace at that. ‘I think I had already worked that one out for myself,’ he replied dryly.
‘And if you try to touch me now, tonight, I shall probably be sick.’
This time it wasn’t a grimace but a weary sigh, and his dark head came closer—close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath caress her face. ‘If I touched you now, Caroline, you would probably burst into tears—then cling to me as though your life depended on it,’ he taunted softly.
And to prove his point he brushed his mouth across her mouth. Sure enough, even as he straightened away, the tears were flooding into her eyes.
And she didn’t feel sick. She felt—vulnerable. Too vulnerable to say another word as Luiz reached out to flick a switch that plunged the room into darkness. A few seconds later there was a rustling of fabric before she felt the other side of the bed depress.
He didn’t attempt to reach for her, didn’t try to cross the invisible barrier that ran down the centre of the large bed. She fell asleep still struggling with a mix of emotions ranging from the bitterly resentful to the wretchedly disgusted with herself—because he was right, and she did want to cling to him.
She awoke during what was left of the night, though she wasn’t sure what it was that had woken her. But in those few drifting moments before she remembered just where she was, she was only aware that she was lying on her stomach, sprawled diagonally across the bed, feeling so sublimely at peace with herself that it came as a shock to realise that not only was it Luiz’s bed she was lying in, but that her cheek was pressed up against his satin-smooth shoulder