ANTON saw him as he was crossing the hotel foyer, and on a single heavy thump of a heartbeat he came to an abrupt halt.
It had been happening a lot since he’d been told he had two half-brothers out there. He would glimpse a man with dark hair, or with something about his physical appearance that reminded him of himself, and this thump at his heart would stop him in his tracks.
It was the not knowing that made it impossible to deal with—the deep-boned fear that he could be standing right next to his own flesh and blood and not have a single clue.
He hated it. He hated this sudden leap his heart would make just before the thick sinking rush that paralysed him.
And the need—he hated feeling this need he hadn’t known was there until he’d received that damn—
‘Anton …?’
Kinsella’s questioning prompt jolted him back to his surroundings. The stranger had gone, disappearing into one of the lounge bars and out of Anton’s sphere of temptation to just go up to him and ask outright if his father had been a rich polo-playing Brazilian who’d left bastard byeblows in just about every port!
Anger set him moving again, though it did not show on his face. They hit the lifts, four of them in all, the two junior executives looking limp with jet-lag while Kinsella, his new personal secretary, who had only recently been promoted through the Scott-Lee ranks, still looked as smooth and fresh as she had all day.
Anton glanced at her and she thoroughly jolted him by offering him one of those smiles that said I’m available if you want me. She was a great-looking blue-eyed blonde, with the kind of figure guaranteed to fire up most men’s heat. Until now she’d been good to have around because she was easy on the eye and her secretarial skills were unquestionable—but sex with the boss as a sideline?
He lowered his eyes and pretended he had not noticed the invitation—or the sudden tension that leapt around the confines of the lift. Apart from the unbroken rule that he never bedded his employees, he hadn’t wanted to touch a woman since the day when his life as he’d known it had been put to death.
The lift doors slid open. His two junior executives quickly stepped out into the corridor, eager to find their rooms, but Kinsella left it a couple of telling seconds longer before she did the same.
Once again Anton ignored the little hesitation. Eyes half hidden behind the low sweep of his eyelashes he said, ‘Get some food inside you, then sleep off the jet-lag. I’ll see you all for breakfast in my suite at seven-thirty prompt.’
The boss playing the boss, he noted wryly, as three heads nodded, getting the message, one looking faintly flushed now. Serves you right, Kinsella, he thought, without a twinge of regret.
‘Goodnight,’ he said, and the lift doors slid shut across their three murmured replies.
Anton yawned, stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and leant back against the lift wall as it took him up to the penthouse suite on the top floor, where not only did he get the best in accommodation that was available, but he also got adjoining offices and a conference room in which most of his business day would be spent.
He preferred working from his hotel when he made an unannounced spot-check on one of his international branches. That way he could sweep into the bank and take everyone by surprise, so that they did not have time to pull any cover-ups. He would then put every department head through a major grilling before sweeping out again, with his entourage in tow, and returning to his hotel to hold his post mortem, leaving his quivering staff to recover from the fallout of his unexpected invasion. They would call him a few tasty names to each other, enjoy a collective sigh of relief that he’d gone. Then they would start urgently boning up on what they’d thought they knew inside out but, after one of Anton’s interrogating sessions, had now realised they knew nothing at all.
Ruthless but necessary methods to keep his multinational army of employees on their toes, he judged without a qualm.
The lift doors slid open again. Levering himself upright, he crossed the private foyer and unlocked the door. The suite was much like any other hotel suite he had used over the years, with luxurious living space, two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, and a connecting door which led directly into the all-singing, all-dancing working environment business tycoons expected from their accommodation these days.
His luggage had arrived. Ignoring it, Anton made directly for the drinks cabinet to check that the hotel had provided him with a bottle of his favourite Scotch whisky. He poured himself a measure, added some bottled water to the mix, then took it with him to a pair of French doors which led out onto a terrace beyond.
The moment he stepped outside, the sights and sounds of Rio hit his senses, stirring them to a quickened rhythm only someone with Latin blood running through him would understand.
That quickened rhythm should be filling him with pleasure, but it wasn’t. In fact he resented the hell out of it. It was six long years since he’d last looked out on the Bay towards Sugarloaf, and if he’d had his way it would have been another six years before he’d look out on it again—if ever.
He took a sip of the whisky, the shape of his sensually moulded lips barely altering their grim tilt as they parted to receive the drink. Heat rolled over his tongue and fired up his increased pulse-beat. He’d used to love Rio de Janeiro. This beautiful, exciting city had once been like a home from home to him during his childhood, when he’d used to visit here regularly with his mother, and later, when he’d spent a full year working at the Scott-Lee Bank branch here.
With hindsight, he mused, he would have been better staying put in England, then he would not have met Cristina and spent that whole year in love with a lie.
Another lie.
That hot surge of anger he’d been nurturing for weeks now began to pump through his system. Going back inside, he closed the door on the sights and sounds of Rio, chose a bedroom at random to use, then set about removing his clothes. Ten minutes later he was shutting down the taps gushing water into a huge sunken bathtub.
The tub needed to be big to accommodate a man with his impressive framework. He stood six feet two in his bare feet, and every inch was made up of hard muscled bulk. And lean, he was very lean, but that leanness did not take anything away from the fact that, stripped to his natural golden skin, he presented the kind of masculine sight that could make women gasp. Wide shoulders, long torso, narrow hips, the lot supported on long and powerfully corded legs. Then there was the pelvis that cradled one of the major weapons in his sexual arsenal. He was built to seduce, built to guarantee hours of untold pleasure. He knew it—just as his women knew it.
Not that he cared about any of that right now as he stepped into the bath and sank down into its hot steamy depths. He was tired and fed up and still wishing himself elsewhere. Easing his wide shoulders back against the bath, he closed his eyes on a sigh.
If it wasn’t enough that he’d seen the interior of too damn many transit lounges as he’d criss-crossed the world to get here, he’d spent most of that time obsessively studying every tall dark guy that ventured into his vicinity, hunting for signs that one of them might be related to him.
He hated the not knowing.
He more than hated Rio.
If he’d been given the luxury of choice he’d rather be anywhere else on this earth than here. But choice was something snatched away from him by the simple insertion of a name.
Cristina Marques …
The satin gold muscular formation of his wide shoulders shifted, black silk bars for eyebrows drawing together across the bridge of his nose. Parting the grim tension holding his lips together, he gritted his teeth and wished to hell that other parts of his body would stop responding to that name.
Another sigh had him lifting a wet hand to swipe it over his tired face. The refreshing sting of hot water made his skin tingle, but did nothing to ease the discomfort of a twelve-hour beard growth. He should have shaved before he got in here, he mused grimly. He should have cleaned his teeth.
The second thought sent his hand reaching out in search of the glass of whisky he’d had enough sense to replenish before he climbed in here. Sipping the Scotch was a darn sight tastier than any toothpaste, and did a whole lot more to ease the tension from his aching muscles—though not from other parts.
What he needed was a woman—any woman. He hadn’t had one in way too long. He’d been too busy losing himself in work and bad temper and setting up this trip. A woman right now might just be the medicine he needed to effect the cure for the one woman he did not want to want.
Maybe he should have broken his own rule and taken Kinsella up on her offer, he mused idly. Maybe a slender, sleek, blue-eyed blonde would be the perfect cure for what was ailing him. But—
No. He might have closed the door on the sights and sounds of Rio, but its innate beat was still vibrating through his blood, and the only woman who would satisfy it would have to be one of the warm, dark, passionate kind. One who would know instinctively that all he wanted her to do was to climb naked into this bath with him and seduce him to one of those exquisite near death experiences.
A half smile touched the edges of his mouth, his shoulders beginning to relax as he let his weary mind drift. She would have a pair of decent-sized breasts that would weigh heavy in his hands but still be firm enough to pout. Dark nipples … he loved dark nipples … and a silky, slippery golden body that would arch over him in pleasure as he suckled to his heart’s content.
His mouth received attention from the whisky. It wasn’t nearly the same as the glorious sense-tugging taste of a woman, but he savoured it all the same while behind closed eyelids his fantasy woman began to take real shape.
Dark eyes … she’d have sultry dark eyes the colour of hunger, and sweeping black eyelashes that would half hide the glow of sensual relish she would experience as she aroused him while he lay back and enjoyed. Ebony hair, he decided, with a sexy hint of a twist to it that would trail over his chest and shoulders as she leant down to offer him a kiss from her gorgeous, greedy, voluptuous mouth, practised in the art of pleasing as she took him inside her with the …
‘Hell—’
The curse raked his throat and he sat up so abruptly he spilled whisky into the bath. He’d been describing Cristina. He’d been lying here flirting with fantasy and building himself the perfect replica of the one woman he was supposed to be blocking out!
Tell that to your body, he thought darkly, and rid himself of the glass, then rubbed his wet hands over his face again. Tension had hold of him in a manacle. Standing up, he dripped water from taut rippling muscles as he stepped out of the bath. As he hooked up a towel to dry himself, it accidentally brushed across that part of him that was an aching agony of untamed want. With an indrawn quiver of cursing contempt, he tossed the towel aside and headed for a cold shower instead.
He didn’t want to want Cristina. He did not want to remember how she was. He wanted to be utterly turned off by reality, and hoped that when he eventually came face to face with her she’d have turned into a complete hound dog!
And he would come face to face with her, he vowed as he stepped out of the shower cubicle feeling more like a man in control of himself. The wheels to make it happen were already turning, and very soon he would have his confrontation with Cristina Marques.
The telephone began ringing as he was finishing shaving. Walking naked out of the bathroom, he picked up the receiver.
‘I have tracked her to Rio, senhor,’ a distinctly Brazilian male voice informed him. ‘She is residing with Gabriel Valentim. He will be escorting her to the charity gala tomorrow evening, as hoped.’
She was hooked; the sting was on. The hot burn of satisfaction that flung itself down his body excited a sexual arousal he had thought he’d brought under control.
‘Good,’ he said, as cold as an English winter. ‘Tell me the rest tomorrow.’
‘Before you go there is something I have discovered that I think you should know, senhor!’ Afonso Sanchiz put in hurriedly. ‘It was not mentioned in the profile you sent to me—but six years ago the lady in question married a man called Vaasco Ordoniz. She is widowed now, and has reverted to using the Marques name, but …’
Cristina did not want to be here. Partying while her life was tumbling down around her placed a very bad taste in her mouth. But Gabriel insisted it was the only way. The best deals were struck in the social arena, not across a desk in some bank.
So here she was, standing in the foyer of one of Rio’s top hotels, dressed to kill in sparkling black silk. Her hair was up in an elegant twist and her late mother’s diamonds sparkled at her ears and throat.
She would have sold the diamonds if they’d been worth anything, but she’d found out the hard way that they were not. They were fakes—very good fakes, but fakes all the same. She did not know when her father had cashed in the genuine articles and replaced them with paste, but she had little doubt that he had done so. In fact, she’d discovered over the months since he died that there was very little left in Santa Rosa that was not a copy of its original. She now lived with the hope that when Lorenco Marques met his art-collecting ancestors on his way up to heaven they’d give him a swift push in the other direction.
And, yes, she told that shocked part of her that did not like what she was thinking, she felt that bitter and that bad.
Gabriel was guiding her towards a pair of doors beyond which the charity gala they were about to attend should be in full flow. Two smiling lackeys jumped to open the doors for them. The smooth background sound of a bossa nova song drifted out towards them as the foyer gave way to a vast reception room set against a backcloth of wall-to-wall glass, offering breathtaking views towards a night-lit Sugarloaf.
People glittered and sparkled beneath overhead lighting, the warm tones of their conversations floating towards her on richly perfumed waves. Cristina’s stomach lurched, then rolled, and for a moment her courage completely failed her, pulling her to a trembling halt.
From the other side of the room Anton watched as she entered on the arm of just about the most attractive man here. She was still unutterably beautiful, he noted, allowing himself a small grimace at his unanswered hound dog prayer. The hair was too neat for his liking, and the dress might be glamorous, and sexy enough to knock most men’s eyes out, but he’d never liked to see her wearing black. She suited bright colours, colours that flagged her hot-blooded temperament. But the face, the wide-spaced almond-shaped eyes, the mouth …
Ah, the mouth, he observed darkly. It was still as lush and red and kissable as he remembered it. A mouth that instinctively knew how to—
Her escort murmured something to her. As she looked up to smile at him sudden tension was bathing Anton’s body in a fine layer of sensual heat. It was the smile of a born seductress. A smile she had once used to keep exclusively for him. It was the deceit in that smile that had ruined all other smiles every woman had offered him since.
Did she sleep with Gabriel Valentim? Had the handsome lawyer got to share a steamy hot interlude in a bath with the widow of Vaasco Ordoniz before they’d set out here?
‘Anton, your glass is empty …’
Looking down, he saw it was, frowning slightly because he didn’t remember drinking the champagne. He must have been sipping it while observing Cristina with her latest lover. Now he became aware of the tension in the fingers that held the glass and the angry fizz of champagne in his mouth.
‘Here, let me replace it …’
Reaching out, Kinsella took the empty glass from him. As she did so her body brushed against his. She was wearing no bra beneath the slip dress she was wearing. He’d felt the button-tight brush of her nipple against the back of his hand.
Yet another sexual message from his secretary? Irritation hit, then was instantly lost when he caught sight of Cristina’s escort lowering his handsome head to brush a kiss to her cheek.
‘Stop worrying,’ Gabriel softly chided her, feeling the tension in the stiff set of her spine beneath the resting palm of his hand. ‘No one is going to eat you.’
No? Cristina would question that. Six years ago she had scandalised these people by marrying a man old enough to be her father. She had become a gold-digging freak worthy of derision and scorn from that moment on. Discovering that Vaasco Ordoniz had left her virtually penniless would not have altered their opinion of his widow.
A waiter appeared, carrying a silver tray of drinks.
‘Here.’ Hooking up two fluted glasses frothing with champagne Gabriel slotted one into her hand. ‘Remember why you are here,’ he said firmly. ‘Get some of this fortifying champagne inside you and stop looking so tragic.’
‘I am not in any way tragic,’ Cristina denied, trying hard to ignore the hectic thrum of her pulse. ‘I just dislike the prospect of having to be pleasant to people I no longer like.’
‘Does that include me?’
Glancing up into the lean golden face of the man she had known since childhood, Cristina saw the wry glint of amusement in his soft amber eyes and couldn’t help but smile.
‘Thank you for doing this for me,’ she said softly. ‘I know that your father had to push you into it.’
‘I don’t need pushing to be with a beautiful woman, querida.’ Reaching out, he covered her fingers and lifted the glass to her lips, then held it there until she took the first sip. ‘And you should know better than to think that I am one of those who believed the gold-digging rumours about you.’
Her smile faded. ‘Would it make a difference if I told you that those rumours were true?’
‘To my escorting you?’ Gabriel’s mouth assumed a small grimace. ‘Look at these people, Cristina,’ he prompted. ‘Do you think none of them have skeletons to hide? I am a lawyer, like my father. Such a profession allows access to privileged information that would make the hair on the head of the good father in the confessional box stand on end. Take my advice and look upon them all as crooks and you will begin to feel much better about yourself.’
Her eyes widened in fascination. ‘Are they all crooks?’
‘No.’ Gabriel laughed. ‘But it helps a great deal to see them like that.’
Someone came up to greet Gabriel then, a perfect stranger to Cristina, so she was able to relax a little as Gabriel made the introductions and even managed to smile as she sipped at her glass of champagne and listened to the two men converse. A few minutes later the stranger had moved off again, and they began to circulate.
Gabriel’s hand was always light on her waistline. He was well known and well liked, his good looks and his naturally friendly manner drew people to him, and she wanted to kiss him for the way he was carefully manoeuvring them around the room so that she was not forced to come face to face with any of the old crowd—though she had glimpsed many of them here.
It was then that it happened. Just as she was beginning to relax in the company she picked up the sound of a dark-timbred very English voice, speaking in such beautifully fluent Portuguese that she had twisted around without giving herself a chance to think.
By then it was too late. Her swift movement had caught his attention. The next instant she found herself welded to the spot as a pair of darkly hooded glinting green eyes fixed on her shocked face.
Luis, she thought. Meu Dues, it was Luis …
He was standing less than ten feet away, a tall, lean, solid, dark force backed by the night view of Rio. Her legs turned to water, her head swirling so dizzily that for a horrible moment she was afraid that she was actually going to faint. No one else was in the room suddenly. No voices sounded. No slow and sensual bossa nova beat. All she could hear was the blood pumping heavily through her body as those hooded eyes looked at her and took everything, stripping away six long miserable years to leave her standing there feeling so exposed and vulnerable that she just could not bring herself to look away.
And he wasn’t going to do it, she realised as she watched those eyes begin a slow, slow glide over her face. Her shock-blackened eyes. Her shock-whitened cheeks. He let his gaze linger on every telling detail until finally fixing it on her helplessly parted lips.
Those lips quivered as if he’d touched them. A knowing smile stretched the contours of his. It was electric, dynamic, so overwhelmingly sexual and intensely familiar she was nailed by it, drenched in sensation that slithered and danced across her skin. They had been lovers for twelve months more than six years ago, yet for these few breathtaking seconds those years just did not exist.
She trembled—all over. He watched that happen too, and swung his gaze up to clash with hers again. Mockery lanced through those glinting green eyes and he lifted his glass, tilting it towards her in a salute that was so dryly cynical it sucked her back through those six years with a painful, dizzying whoosh.
He hated her. It was there for her to see it. And she could not even blame him for feeling that way. She had encouraged him to hate—worked at it like an actress putting on an Oscar-winning performance. She’d mocked him and cursed him and died a little more inside with each slaying remark she had thrown at his face.
Tears began to gather, hot, like acid burning in her chest and her throat. She loved him, would always love him for as long as she had left to draw breath, but she’d wished—oh, how she had wished—never to set eyes on him again.
Someone shifted beside him, forcing her gaze to flicker 840sideways in time to watch a woman step in close to murmur something to him. She was beautiful, a reed-slender blonde wearing aquamarine silk. Whatever it was that she said to Luis, it lost Cristina her contact with his eyes as he turned to the woman with a lazy, sensual smile on his lips.
And Cristina knew that smile, recognised it with every sensory nerve she possessed. They were lovers. Jealousy roared up like a snarling, spitting wild animal inside her, and on a choked little whimper she spun away.
Trembling like mad, she moved in so close to Gabriel that she earned herself a curious glance as his arm accommodated her, though his attention did not falter from the discussion he was involved in.
‘The problem has been global,’ he was saying smoothly. ‘But the industry is showing signs of recovery, and we have a plan in place to get in first where this growth is happening. People will pay a high price for a flawless pedigree. Santa Rosa can give them that—hmm, Cristina?’ He prompted some input from her.
Gabriel was into his sales pitch, and she had to fight a gigantic battle with herself to find sensible words to speak.
‘S-Santa Rosa stock is conceived born and raised on the land on which it roams free,’ she heard herself say, as if from down a long dark tunnel. ‘We are proud that we still farm by traditional methods where quality always takes precedence over quantity.’
‘But quantity is what makes the big profit, senhorita,’ Gabriel’s companion wryly pointed out.
‘Sim.’ She nodded, battling to keep herself together. ‘We know this, which is why we want to diversify a little … turn Santa Rosa into a showcase where people can come and stay for a while, experience what it is like to live in a genuine Portuguese mansion house, and spend time with the gauchos learning of the life and true traditions of a working ranch. But such plans require investment—’
‘At great risk to the investor, I would say,’ a smooth-as-silk voice put in.
Both Gabriel and his companion turned to face the newcomer. Cristina didn’t—not again, she told herself as her pounding heart increased its crazy beat.
‘Most worthy investments require a certain amount of risk, senhor,’ Gabriel countered easily.
‘The knack for the successful investor is to pick out those investments that have at least a starting chance to earn him some profit.’
‘With commitment to hard work and true dedication we can certainly promise our investors their profit,’ Gabriel declared without hesitation, at the same time making out that he had a big stake in the project himself, when in truth he was simply playing the machismo rule to the hilt for her sake. ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he then offered affably, releasing Cristina to hold out his hand. ‘I am Gabriel Valentim, and this is—’
‘I know who this is …’ Anton smoothly put in, and the instant that Gabriel’s hand left the base of her spine his replaced it, fingertips moving in an all too familiar stroke that sent shock waves stinging up her spine.
His warm breath brushed her nape as he moved in closer. ‘Cristina, meu querida,’ he greeted with husky intimacy. ‘Surely you must remember me?’
It took every ounce of will power she could muster to turn and face him. Her insides were dipping and diving even before she lifted her chin and looked directly into his face.
‘Luis,’ she responded, with very shaky coolness.
‘But you’re mistaken,’ a cool English voice intruded. ‘This is Anton—Anton Scott-Lee.’
Anton Luis Ferreira Scott-Lee, to give him his full title, Cristina corrected silently. Anton to most people, but always Luis to her. A man with two faces—his English face and his Brazilian face.
And she was seeing his Brazilian face right now, as he smiled one of his slow, sensual smiles at her and reached out to take a light grasp on her hand. ‘Don’t look so shattered,’ he softly admonished. ‘I will answer to Luis if it still pleases you to use it …’
The air in her lungs ceased to be of any use to her. This close up he was everything she remembered about him—everything. Her lips parted, trembling again as she tried desperately to find something light to say.
‘This is some kind of joke, yes?’ Gabriel asked curiously, as a set of slender white fingers claimed Cristina’s attention by coiling possessively around Luis’ sleeve.
The fingers belonged to his beautiful blonde companion. Cristina glanced into a pair of gentian-blue eyes and blinked at the amount of ice she met with. Was this the kind of woman Luis preferred these days?
‘No joke,’ the man himself was denying, bringing Cristina’s eyes slewing back to his face. ‘Cristina and I are very old friends—hmm, amante?’
Lover.
Her senses went haywire. She had to fight to pull in some air, unaware of the silence slowly thickening around them, unaware of everything but those eyes and that smile and that word, playing like a silken caress across her skin.
A thumb-pad stroked against the skin of her palm and she looked down at it, staring blankly at the way his long fingers coiled so easily around the fragility of hers.
‘Cristina?’ Gabriel prompted an answer from her, because she was taking too long to speak.
She looked up at him next, not seeing him—not seeing anything. Not even the flash of venom that hit Luis’s companion’s eyes. Her heart had stopped beating. The thick curdling slurry of so many old feelings was churning inside her, leeching the last of the colour from her skin. She couldn’t think. Even as she tried very hard to find the right response that would defuse the tense moment a thick whooshing sound in her head stopped her from being able to think.
His thumb stroked her palm again and she looked back at her hand, still caught in his. She felt a strange lethargy creep over her, and on a shivered gasp tugged her hand free.
‘I—please excuse me,’ she heard herself mumble in stifled constriction. ‘I n-need to—use the bathroom …’
And on that crass, stupid and utterly unsophisticated exit line she turned and fled, leaving a stunning silence in her place.
On legs that felt dangerously like cotton wool she made it into the foyer. A passing waiter had only to take one look at her face to quickly direct her to the nearest private bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she leant back against it. She was shaking all over, locked in the kind of hard shock that turned flesh to ice. Lurching unsteadily across the room, she sank down onto the toilet seat.
Luis was here in Rio. ‘Meu dues,’ she whispered.
Why was he here? Why now, after all of these years? Why should he want to acknowledge her at all?
It came then, that final damning scene they’d had six years ago, swimming up through her mind to send her hands up to cover her face. She saw Luis standing there, stunned and bewildered, staring at her as if she had grown a forked tail and hooves.
‘What’s wrong with you? You love me. Why are you doing this? We lived here together for a year before I had to go back to England to attend my father’s funeral. That year must have meant something to you—told you that I was serious about us!’
‘Things change—’ He’d been too angry to notice her deathly pallor, or the agony etched into her face.
‘In three months? No, they don’t,’ he’d denied harshly. ‘You made me promise to come back for you and here I am as promised, with a rock-solid marriage proposal and plane tickets to a whole new life! For goodness’ sake, Cristina—’ his voice had roughened ‘—I love you. I want you to be my wife, I want to have children with you and grow old with you, watch those children grow into adults and have their own children!’
Cut to death inside by his vision of the future, she’d tossed her head at him. Sitting here in this room lined in glaring white marble, Cristina winced as she remembered the way she’d tossed her head at him that day. ‘I will never marry you, Luis. I will never have your children. There, I have said it. Will you accept it now?’
Oh, yes, he’d accepted it. Cristina had seen it happen as she’d watched the bitter look that overtook his face. ‘Because you don’t want to spoil that perfect body of yours?’
‘That is exactly it,’ she’d agreed. ‘I am selfish and heartless and incurably vain. I am also a Marques, with three centuries of pure Portuguese blood running in my veins. Diluting my blood with your half-English blood would be a sin and a sacrilege that would turn my ancestors in their—’
The brief knock on the door was the only warning she received before it was swinging open. Cristina lifted her face out of her hands, and froze yet again.