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delicate muscles searched for the silken force which had given them so much.
‘Luiz…’ she breathed, then wished she hadn’t, because even whispering his name was a sensual experience.
I should hate him, she told herself. I want to hate him for doing this to me again. No wonder it all felt so very scary.
A light tap sounded on the bedroom door then, jolting her into a sitting position in the middle of the bed. She had just managed to scramble a white sheet around her nakedness when the door came open and a young woman appeared carrying a breakfast tray.
She was smiling shyly. ‘Buenos días, señorita,’ she murmured politely. ‘Don Luiz instructed me to waken you in time to meet him at the hospital at noon.’
Noon. Hospital—her father! Oh, dear God, how could she have forgotten him as thoroughly as she had? She was about to leap from the bed in panic when the little maid added, ‘El señor also say to tell you that your papá is well, and will be discharged later on today.’
And as Caroline sat, needing long seconds to take this reassuring information in, the girl walked forward and put the tray down on a small table, then turned to enquire if there was anything else she wanted.
‘Er, no—thank you,’ she answered politely. But as the young maid walked back to the door, a sudden thought hit her. ‘Did el señor leave the address of the hospital?’ she asked. ‘Only I forgot to make a note of it in the panic last night.’
‘He has placed Señor Martinez at your disposal,’ the maid explained. ‘He will know where he is to drive you.’
With that she was gone, leaving Caroline to wonder just who Señor Martinez was. The maid seemed to think that Caroline already knew.
She soon found out an hour later, when, dressed casually in soft doe-coloured trousers and a pale pink V-necked top, she stepped into the villa courtyard and found the croupier-cum-waiter and now chauffeur standing waiting for her by the black BMW.
‘Good morning, Miss Newbury,’ he greeted politely. Deep-voiced, smooth-toned, he had the same pleasant American drawl as Luiz.
Which made him—what, specifically? she wondered as she watched him move to open the rear door of the car for her. Luiz’s personal bodyguard? His jack-of-all-trades assistant? His friend?
The very suggestion of Luiz possessing a genuine, slapontheback kind of friend made her smile as she sank into squashy soft leather. He wasn’t the type. Luiz was a man who stood alone and softened his guard for no one. Even when he made love he did so with a silent intensity that protected the inner man.
She shivered, not liking it. Not liking what he had been able to expose in her while keeping himself hidden. So, he enjoyed making love with her, she acknowledged with a shrug. She would have to be a fool to have missed the power behind the passion with which he had taken her. But he’d done it in silence. And even his climax had been a disturbingly silent thing that had kept whatever he was experiencing locked deep inside him.
So Señor Martinez couldn’t be Luiz’s friend, she concluded, because to a man like Luiz a friend would be seen as a weakness.
And, likewise, Señor Martinez didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a friend, she mused as she watched him settle his bulky size behind the wheel of the car. He had the cold face and tough body of a ruthless terminator—with a hint of the savage thrown in to add extra sinister impact.
All of which she was given the chance to consider only as long as it took him to set the car engine running then send up the partitioning piece of glass.
Shut out and shut in, she thought, and grimaced. Maybe they were brothers after all.
Her father’s room was on the second floor. Her feet trod spotless laminated wood flooring and she became aware of an increase of tension as the moment came closer when she was going to have to face her father with the truth—it was no use trying to pretend.
He knew too much—knew her, knew Luiz, and he knew himself. It was being that aware of all involved parties that had put him in here in the first place. What she didn’t want was to risk the same thing happening again once he’d heard the full story.
So, nervously she approached the room he had been allotted. The door was standing open; beyond it everything looked clean and neat. She saw Luiz first, standing gazing out of the window. With the sunlight streaming in around him he looked bigger and leaner and more intimidating than usual.
A force to be reckoned with, she likened with a small shudder. And had no concept whatsoever of how prophetic that thought was as she took a moment to brace herself, then stepped into the room proper.
He heard her and spun round, then went very still, watching her face as she glanced expectantly at the bed and began to frown when she found it empty. The room had its own bathroom. She looked next in its direction, saw the room inside was also empty, then finally—reluctantly—flicked her eyes towards Luiz.
‘Where is he?’ she asked, sounding afraid even to herself.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t had a relapse.’
Relief made her mouth tremble. ‘Then where is he?’ she repeated.
There was a lot to be said for having the sunlight behind him, she found herself thinking as she waited for an answer. At least with his face thrown into contrasting shadow she couldn’t tell what kind of expression he was wearing, didn’t have to guess what he was thinking as he stood there looking at her for the first time since they’d shared his bed.
‘Luiz?’ she prompted when she realised he still hadn’t answered her question.
‘He isn’t here,’ he told her quietly.
Isn’t here? Isn’t where? Her frown grew more puzzled. ‘You mean—he’s gone for more tests or something?’
The dark head shook and he took a couple of steps towards her. The moment he did it Caroline was having to fight the need to start moving back. It was the loss of the sun to hide his expression and the sudden awareness of his physical presence that intimated her.
He was dressed in much the same way that she was, in casual trousers and a plain tee shirt. But it wasn’t clothes that made the man inside them. It wasn’t designer labels or that air of subtle wealth he carried with him that made her insides draw tightly inwards in sheer self-defence.
She was too vulnerable to him, she realised helplessly. Too easily diverted by things that held no place in this room.
‘He’s gone home,’ he told her. ‘To England,’ he added almost reluctantly.
‘Home? England?’ She repeated stupidly. ‘But he can’t do that!’ she cried. ‘He isn’t well enough to travel! I need to see him!’
Luiz took another couple of steps towards her as she spun round in a full circle so her dazed eyes could check the room out again, as if she expected him to miraculously appear and prove Luiz wrong.
But her father didn’t appear. And as she made herself look back at Luiz the sickly suspicion that this was just another part of his overall plan, to separate father from daughter, began to take a firm grip. ‘You’ve sent him away,’ she breathed.
‘He’s gone home to put his house in order,’ Luiz sombrely replied.
But she shook her head. ‘You made him go so we can’t get together and spoil your plans by coming up with an alternative solution to our problems.’
‘Is there an alternative?’
Gently put, smooth as silk, the question pierced her like the lethal prick from a scorpion’s tail. ‘Then why has he gone?’ she demanded, her heart beating so fast that she could hear it hammering inside her head.
‘Guilt,’ he told her bluntly. ‘He couldn’t face you, so he left before you could get here…’
Deserted