IT WAS into the afternoon by the time Cristina let herself into Gabriel’s apartment.
‘Where have you been?’ Gabriel demanded, almost before she had managed to close the door. ‘It was bad enough that the rushed message you left with my answering service last night said almost nothing, but did you have to go missing today too?’
Having spent most of the day trawling through the banks and financial houses of Rio, it was all she could do to utter a weary, ‘Sorry.’
‘Not good enough, Cristina,’ Gabriel censured. ‘I was worried about you. When I rang Scott-Lee to find out what was going on, all I got was some cold Englishwoman claiming that she had never heard of Cristina Marques!’
The lovely Kinsella, Cristina thought dryly. ‘I was there,’ she said, then explained about the mix-up in names.
Gabriel shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘I was beginning to think he’d abducted you,’ he said gruffly. ‘I had this image of him bundling you into a sack and shoving you in the boot of his car, then driving off to some unknown location to have his evil way with you.’
‘Not very English of him, Gabriel,’ she mocked, though Luis had bundled her into bed pretty effectively, she allowed.
‘He does not look very English … just sounds it.’
He makes love in English, Cristina thought, then had to turn away before Gabriel could see the look in her eyes.
Too late, though. ‘You look like death, querida,’ he observed gruffly.
Feel it too, Cristina thought. ‘I need a shower,’ she said, and walked down the hall towards her allotted bedroom.
Gabriel followed. ‘You want to explain why you look like death?’
Not particularly, Cristina thought as she crossed the bedroom to open a drawer that held the bits of underwear she’d brought with her.
‘I spent the day visiting the banks,’ she told him, shifting to the wardrobe to rifle through the few items of clothing she had. Just two good dresses worthy of the kind of social events like the gala last night—both black. Vaasco had only allowed her to wear black.
‘Scott-Lee’s offer was not good enough?’
Her shoulders ached with the strain of trying to appear normal. ‘It was not the right one.’
‘As in …?’
As in I would be his willing mistress for the next fifty years even if he married another woman and had twenty children with her. But that was not what Luis wanted.
‘He wanted your body,’ Gabriel derived from her silence. ‘Since you spent the night with him, I conclude that he had your body?’
A strained laugh escaped past the lump in her throat.
‘I cannot believe that you were stupid enough to give him his reward before he’d handed over the money, Cristina,’ he muttered.
It was so like advice for a street hooker that she swung on him angrily. ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Gabriel!’
But he was angry too. ‘What did he do? Seduce you with a load of promises, take what he wanted, then throw you out on the street this morning?’
No, I sneaked away when he wasn’t looking, Cristina thought heavily. ‘Can we leave the lecture until after my shower, please?’ she requested.
‘Sure,’ Gabriel replied, and stormed out, leaving Cristina to wilt down onto the end of the bed, recalling how she had left Luis.
She’d pretended to be perfectly content to lie curled in his bed while he got dressed for a business meeting at his bank. She’d even smiled when he’d kissed her farewell and let that kiss cling enough to send him away with a rueful smile upon his face. The moment he’d left the suite she’d been out of that bed and racing for the shower.
Coward, she thought now. Weak little coward.
It was probably appropriate that she should have met Kinsella Lane in the hotel lobby, wanting to come into the lift as she was leaving it. The blonde had taken one look at her and said, ‘Bitch,’ shocking a neatly dressed young man standing to one side of the lifts. When she’d tried to walk away Kinsella had grabbed her wrist and spat the kind of venom at her that was still turning her stomach. ‘Don’t kid yourself that I will stand back and let you take my lover away from me, because I won’t. It was my body he drowned in the night before you fell into bed with him, and it will be me he will return to London with.’
Odd how the truth had the power to hurt so much, Cristina thought now. Because Luis would be returning to London with Kinsella, and she—
She spied her suitcase, sitting at the bottom of the wardrobe, and on a sudden burst of urgency pulled it out and tossed it onto the bed. She did not want to think about what she would be doing when Luis returned to London. She did not want to think of anything other than packing her case and catching the first flight to Sao Paulo she could get a seat on, and to hell with—
The door swung open. Gabriel stood there. Big and lean and endearingly handsome, even with that look of contrition on his face. ‘I did not mean to insult you,’ he apologised gruffly.
‘I know that.’ And, strangely enough, she did. Gabriel had been her friend for too long for her to take any real offence because he gave it to her as he saw it.
‘I was worried about you.’
‘Sim.’ She understood that too.
‘I was concerned that you were desperate enough to snatch at any rescue package placed on the table if it stopped the Alagoas Consortium from raping your land.’
‘You know what, Gabriel?’ Her shoulders sagged suddenly. ‘I thought so too …’
‘But it did not work out like that?’
No, it didn’t. Luis had found her ceiling price without even knowing it.
‘I’m going home,’ she said quietly.
‘Since I am watching you pack, minha amiga, I have managed to make that assumption,’ Gabriel drawled. ‘But then what will you do?’
The answer to that was frighteningly simple. ‘I don’t know.’
And neither, by his silence, did Gabriel.
‘Get your shower,’ he advised, after one of those dull, throbbing moments. ‘I will see if I can get you a seat on a flight to Sao Paulo tonight.’
The shower went part-way to lifting her flagging spirits, aided by her refusal to let herself think. She spent time blow-drying some of the wetness from her hair, then left it to do its own thing while she applied a light layer of make-up, then put on fresh underwear, followed by the jeans and a white T-shirt. All she had left to do was to finish packing.
Placing the case ready by the front door, she made her way along the hall towards the kitchen, following the aroma of freshly made coffee. Pushing open the door was the simple part. Taking in the sight that met her eyes was not simple at all.
Her heart ceased to beat, robbing her of the ability to do anything other than stand there and stare at the two men casually propping up the kitchen units, drinking coffee like old friends. Both were wearing dark business suits, their jackets hanging carelessly open over white shirts and dark ties as they sipped coffee from white porcelain mugs. Only one of them had the power to hold her so thoroughly trapped like this.
‘Luis …’ She breathed his name.
‘Does she always call you Luis?’ Gabriel asked curiously.
‘Unique to Cristina,’ Anton replied, eyes like green granite as he flicked them over her loose hair and her casual T-shirt and jeans.
‘W-what are you doing here?’ she demanded stupidly.
‘Treading in the shadow of your stubborn path.’ A black eyebrow arched. ‘Did you really expect me not to come after you?’
‘Cristina has always been stubborn,’ Gabriel put in conversationally. ‘You have an English saying I cannot quite bring to mind that describes this stubbornness perfectly …’
‘Cutting off her nose to spite her beautiful face?’
‘Ah, sim.’ Gabriel nodded. ‘She also hates to admit it when she is wrong …’
Dragging her gaze away from one man, Cristina looked at the other. It did not take many brain cells to read the message in Gabriel’s tone. While she had been showering he and Luis had talked. Gabriel now knew that the rescue package was not only rock-solid but that it came with a very respectable offer of marriage as well. The dream solution, in other words, for not only did she get the money she needed to save Santa Rosa from the wicked developers, she got herself a good looking, filthy rich husband willing to save her miserable, empty little soul at the same time!
Cristina pulled in a breath. Her chin went up. ‘I see,’ she said as she breathed out again. ‘From hating each other, the two of you have now become firm allies over a friendly cup of coffee. Well, forgive me if I don’t bother to join you.’
With that she turned and walked out—escaped was a more honest word. Inside she was trembling and shaking, shocked to find Luis here and truly afraid of what it was going to mean. She’d seen the anger burning in the green granite. She’d heard the warning threat threading his smooth silken voice. And even as she hurried down the hall towards her suitcase she knew she was running scared.
The hand that reached for her suitcase before she could pick it up told her everything. The strong arm that became a manacle around her middle said a whole lot more.
‘Packed already?’ Luis said lightly. ‘Good. Then we can leave.’
‘I am not going with you,’ she told him, standing like a wooden plank in the crook of his arm.
‘You are,’ he returned without compromise. ‘We made a deal.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Before or after the sex?’
‘Before,’ she declared. ‘I took the sex because it came free.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’
‘Nothing comes free in this world, sweetheart,’ Anton mocked. ‘So, say thank you nicely to Gabriel, for letting you stay with him, and then set your treacherous little backside moving out of the front door or I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out!’
Cristina heaved in a hot breath as she twisted round in his grasp with the intention of fighting herself free. Only it didn’t work out that way. His arm banded her closer, and she found herself inhaling the clean, washed smell of him, and the much more disturbing scent of very angry male. Looking up into his face, she caught the flare of green in his eyes just before she heard her case hit the ground. Then his other hand was taking control of her nape, and all she managed was a husky, quavering, ‘Don’t …’ before she received the full force of his mouth on hers in a punishing, plundering act of pure vengeance that left her shocked, shaken and shamefully desperate for more.
Feeling like a boneless quivering wreck, it was all she could do to subside weakly against him, her face pressed into his shirt front while he held her there and talked over the top of her head to Gabriel as if the kiss had been nothing at all.
Just the fact that Gabriel had witnessed it was a further humiliation she had to contend with. When she heard him say, ‘I will leave the small print to you, Anton,’ Cristina felt as if she’d lost her only friend in the world.
Anton retrieved her case and pushed her towards the door. She went quietly after that. The lift took them downwards. Neither spoke. A chauffeur driven black Mercedes waited at the kerb. The moment they were both encased in its plush leather interior the car moved off. She sat staring out of the window. He sat staring directly ahead. He was angry … she was angry.
‘I suppose you told Gabriel that I am the love of your life?’ she said tightly.
‘I told him what he needed to hear to let you walk away with me.’
He released a dry laugh. ‘You fell apart in my arms over one short kiss, so don’t blame him for believing what his own eyes could see,’ he charged. ‘And we are both good at lying, Cristina, so you can drop that reproof from your voice. It cuts no ice with me.’
‘Does anything?’ She sighed.
‘No.’
‘Gabriel—’
‘Is no fool,’ he incised. ‘He knows I make a better friend than I would an enemy. Let him believe he allowed you to come with me because it’s what you really want. It’s safer for him.’
She turned her head to look at him then. ‘You are so powerful these days?’
He didn’t even bother to look at her. ‘Yes,’ he said.
He made her shiver. He made her truly fear the man he had become.
‘Leave Gabriel alone,’ she whispered.
‘If you possessed a modicum of sense, querida, you would be worrying about your own situation more than your friend.’
He turned his head to look at her for the first time since they’d left Gabriel’s apartment then, and Cristina’s heart gave a wary little squeeze in her breast when she looked at him. Everything about him was hard, coldly angry, intimidating.
‘I don’t know where you get the arrogance to think you can play games with me a second time,’ he delivered coldly.
‘I was not playing a game,’ Cristina replied. ‘I just needed—’
‘The sex,’ he cut in. ‘So you thought, Why not get it from Luis since he’s so damn good at it?’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘We did not have sex, we made love,’ she corrected.
The expression of derision in his eyes as they glinted at her made her want to crawl away inside her own skin and hide. She knew on one level that she deserved his anger. She knew that in the way she had sneaked out of his suite while he slept she had taken the coward’s way out. But—
‘You were bullying me, Luis!’ she hit back accusingly. ‘You backed me into a corner and gave me no room to think! I left because I needed some time to consider what you were proposing!’
‘I’m sorry to tell you this, querida, but you don’t have the luxury of time or choice.’
Something landed on her lap. Cristina stared down at it for several long seconds before reluctantly picking it up. By the time she’d finished scanning the sheets of legal jargon tears were clogging up her throat.
‘When did you acquire these?’ she asked in a stifled whisper.
‘Before I stepped foot in Brazil,’ he replied. ‘As you can see, I own you, Cristina. Not various banks and loan companies. I own the power to decide what happens to your precious Santa Rosa. And if I decide to foreclose on your debts and sell out to the Alagoas Consortium, I can promise you that it will happen—the very next time you attempt to walk out on me.’
It was such a brutal, totally unequivocal statement of intent that she shuddered. Luis owned her. He all but owned Santa Rosa by taking on the never ending length of her debts—the bottom line total of which, when laid out in black and white, actually made her feel ill.
They arrived at his hotel. Anton got out of the car and came around to her door, then took hold of her hand and pulled her out.
She came without protest, and it was crazy but that annoyed the hell out of him. He didn’t want her beaten and subdued. He wanted her out here fighting—because when she was fighting he could fight back.
And he wanted to fight with her. He wanted to build it and build it until it progressed to a different kind of fight. She was in his blood again, like a fever. The sexual fever that was Cristina Marques.
His hand trailed her into the hotel foyer. The concierge saw them enter and attempted to catch Anton’s eye but he pretended not to notice. He did not want to talk to anyone, be pleasant or polite. He made directly for the bank of lifts, cursed silently when they were forced to share it with a pair of young lovers who couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They laughed and teased and touched and kissed all the way up to the floor below his own. Standing rigid beside him, Cristina stared unblinkingly at the lift console. He stared grimly at the floor.
The moment they reached the privacy of his hotel suite Cristina twisted her hand free and walked away from him. Anton made for the bedroom to deposit her suitcase. When he came back she was standing in the middle of the room, staring at an empty wall.
His chest made that tightening clutch at him. Grimly ignoring it, he crossed to the drinks cabinet.
‘Why?’ she fed unsteadily after him.
He did not attempt to misunderstand the question. ‘Call it payback for six years ago,’ he answered. ‘You owe me for six years. For my inability to believe what any other woman says to me—for not daring to believe what my own senses are telling me about them.’
‘I never meant to do that to you.’
He swung round. ‘Then what did you intend?’
Exactly what she had achieved, Cristina thought bleakly, which had been to make him hate her enough to leave her and never come back.
Only he had come back, and now here he stood—hard, coldly angry, still hating her for which she had done to him. Though now the hate had sexual desire to feed his determination to carry this through to its bitter end.
‘So all of this is for revenge,’ she murmured emptily.
Glass in hand, Anton offered a shrug. ‘And to solve the immediate problem I have that demands I get married and produce a child.’
Those words cut so deep that Cristina actually quivered, dark pain clouding her eyes. ‘Then you have chosen the wrong woman for this—quest you are bent on,’ she told him, and had to pull in a breath to steady herself before she could go on. ‘B-because I cannot give you that child, Luis. I am not able to—’
It was like watching ice explode. The way his face altered as he slammed down the glass and then made a grab for her set her whimpering in surprised shock.
‘Don’t ever utter that lie to me again—understand me?’ he rasped down at her.
Cristina lifted her pale face. ‘It was not a lie—’
‘You lie every time you open that lush red kissable mouth!’ he bit out. ‘You lied six years ago when you told me you loved me, then enjoyed watching me squirm as you put that particular lie to death!’
‘No!’ she cried brokenly. ‘It wasn’t like that! It—’
‘It was exactly like that!’
Meu Dues, Cristina closed her eyes—because he was right, it had been just like that. ‘If you will just listen to me for a moment, I can explain—’
‘You know what?’ He unclipped his fingers from her shoulders. ‘I don’t want you to explain. Your reasons no longer interest me. You owe me. I’m collecting—on my terms.’
He turned back to his drink.
‘Terms I cannot deliver.’
He twisted round again. ‘My terms,’ he repeated hardly. ‘As in you as my wife, my willing sex slave and the mother of my child.’ He spelled it out yet again. ‘In return you get your precious Santa Rosa, gift-wrapped, with all debts cleared. Fair exchange, in my view.’
‘Or a choice that is no choice,’ she murmured indistinctly.
‘Which means …?’
Which means … She was feeling so very cold now that she had to wrap her arms around herself. ‘I will marry you,’ she said.
There was a single second of total silence. A long, sharp needlepoint second when he stared at her as though he could not believe she had surrendered at last.
Then, ‘Say it again,’ he instructed. ‘And this time say it much clearer, so there can be no more misunderstanding. Because this is it, Cristina. Your last chance. I am not playing any more games here. So say it loud and clear so I know that you mean it.’
‘You will regret it,’ she whispered.
‘Say it,’ he repeated.
‘All right!’ she flashed at him, and in true Cristina style she rose to her surrender with the proud lift of her chin. Silky black hair went spiralling back from her narrow shoulders, her eyes flashing his coldly ruthless and unremitting face a look of burning contempt.
‘I will hate you, Luis, for treating me like this and making me behave like a whore,’ she told him. ‘I hate you already, for your threats and your blackmail and your thirst for revenge that makes you want to treat me this way. But I will marry you,’ she repeated clearly, as instructed. ‘I will sell myself to you like a whore in the marketplace in exchange for Santa Rosa—and when you discover how empty your revenge cup will be I will stand like this in front of you and laugh in your face!’
Luis moved without warning. She was trembling and panting so badly by the time she had finished that she just didn’t see him coming, and before she knew it she was somehow plastered to his front.
Her stomach flipped. ‘No,’ she protested.
‘Say that again in thirty seconds,’ he challenged, and delivered his mouth to hers with a lip-crushing deep-tongued kiss.
Cristina did not need those thirty seconds. She did not need even ten to reduce to such a melting, boneless mass of quivering compliance that she couldn’t think of anything else. She was useless, lost, his eager plaything. Her mouth clung to his mouth; her fingers clung to his head.
Then it stopped. Why it stopped she had no comprehension. It took more seconds than it had taken her to sink into it to float back out of it again.
‘Great way to hate, querida,’ his husky voice taunted. ‘It excites the hell out of me, anyway …’
It was like being smashed when he’d already broken her. On a pained little whimper she pulled herself free and ran for the bedroom.
Anton winced as the door landed in its housing. He spun around and snatched up his drink, downed it, then went to pour another one—only to stop himself when he realised what he was doing, and stare grimly into the bottom of his empty glass instead.
He’d got what he wanted from her, so why wasn’t he feeling better about it? Why was he standing here feeling as if he’d just lost something vital instead?
Her face. It had been the look on her face when she’d finally accepted there was no other way out for her. She called it hate; he called it—pain.
Why pain? He slammed the empty glass down, because he suddenly remembered that he had seen that look once before—six years ago, when she’d sliced him to pieces with her rejection. Had the scorn she’d used to do it been masking pain then, only he had been too blind to see it?
Oh, stop looking for excuses for her, he told himself angrily. He did not understand her. Thinking about it, he never had understood what really made Cristina tick.
What was it about her that she could make out that she despised him with all she had in her, yet fall apart in his arms without much of a sign that she had any control over what she did?
The buzz words were Santa Rosa, he reminded himself. Not him. Not the sex. Santa Rosa.
The bedroom door suddenly flew open. Cristina was standing there like a wild thing. He felt his body respond with enough heat to set him on fire.
‘You can tell that manic secretary that your affair with her is over!’ she tossed at him.
‘You are in no position to bargain,’ he threw back. ‘Just think of Santa Rosa and I’m sure you will get over her presence in my life.’
The door slammed shut again. On a tight curse Anton turned and poured himself that second drink. Then he laughed—he laughed!
God, there was no other person alive on this earth who could arouse him to just about every emotion going.
He put down the glass because he discovered that he suddenly did not need the whisky. Still trying to control the smile, he headed for the conference room instead, where a full day’s business awaited his attention. Where the hell he had got the idea that he could come to Brazil and play the hotshot banker and deal with Cristina he would never know.
While Anton was trying his best to lose himself in business matters, in a very sedate, very upmarket office in another part of Rio, an old man with white hair and immaculate grooming sat carefully filing his nails while he listened to the report being relayed to him by an unassuming young man with the unassuming name of José Paranhos.
Until now Senhor Javier Estes had been quietly satisfied with the information being relayed to him. All, it seemed, was going to plan. Senhor Scott-Lee had taken up the challenge, and the object of that challenge was making it difficult enough to keep him dancing on his toes. He’d even smiled when he heard that Cristina had spent the night with Scott-Lee in his suite.
It was the next part that lost Senhor Estes his smile and sharpened his attention. ‘Say that again?’ He prompted confirmation. ‘This woman accosted Senhorita Marques as she was exiting the elevator?’
José nodded. ‘Senhorita Lane was very angry and very unpleasant,’ the younger man expressed. ‘She claimed that she and Senhor Scott-Lee are lovers and that they had slept together only the night before. Naturally, Senhorita Marques was upset.’ He went on to relay what else the secretary had thrown at Cristina.
Frowning now, Senhor Estes dropped the nail file to pick up his pen and scrawl a few terse notes on the file open in front of him. The indication that those few notes represented a black mark against Anton showed in the way with which the words were underscored.
‘Obrigado, José. You will maintain your observation and keep me informed.’
With a nod, José left the office, and Senhor Estes withdrew a sealed envelope from the file. The envelope was addressed to Cristina Ordoniz.
Cats set among pigeons, Javier mused, invariably caused mayhem …