THE agonising confession left her lips at the same moment that the weather front moved in. Anton just froze where he stood as the sky blackened around him. Nothing moved on his face—nothing!
Christina was suffering from the opposite. She was shaking all over, her arms wrapping tightly around her body as if they were trying to hold it all in.
And she could not look at him. It hurt to look at him. As the first flash of lightning lit the room Luis spoke. ‘Pregnant?’ he repeated hoarsely. ‘You were pregnant with our child and you didn’t tell me?’
‘I did not know then.’ Staring fiercely at her bare feet, Cristina was fighting to hold back the tears now. ‘I f-found out later—af-after you’d gone …’
It had all been so wonderfully perfect to her. She was in love with Luis and carrying his baby, and he was going to come back for her as soon as he could, and then they would—
‘I wanted so much to tell you each time you called me on the telephone. But you were grieving for your papa and busy trying to walk in his shoes, so I decided to wait until you came back to Rio. But …’
The baby had not waited that long.
‘I l-lost it, Before you came back for me …’
‘How did you lose it?’ he questioned huskily.
‘I was working in the café when I got this—pain. The next thing I knew I was rushing to hospital in an ambulance. I was frightened and you were not there—’
Like a man who did not want anyone to see his expression, Anton spun his back to her, eyes closing as he listened to her trembling voice.
‘I was in danger, they told me. The baby was not growing in the right place. And they said—they said that if they did not remove it I would—’
She stopped to swallow. It was too much. Anton spun round and attempted to take her in his arms. But Cristina didn’t want that. She wanted—needed—to stand alone with this, because that was how she had dealt with it then. And it had all been so quick. One minute she was carrying Luis’s beautiful baby, the next thing she knew she was—
She shrugged his hands away. ‘W-when I woke up it was over,’ she continued. ‘They said there had been—complications. They had to remove—too much. There would be no more babies …’
‘Dear God …’ She heard him swallow.
‘My—father arrived at my bedside.’ Still she kept her eyes fixed on her bare feet. ‘S-someone had contacted him when I w-was admitted. He …’
Stood over her like an angel of darkness and poured his shame and contempt over her. Accused her of sullying the Marques name.
‘He w-wanted to know what use I was to him now that there would never be a grandson to inherit Santa Rosa. He …’ She stopped to moisten her dry, trembling lips. ‘He asked what kind of man would want to marry a barren woman.’
‘Dear God,’ Anton breathed. ‘What kind of man was he, to say such a thing to you?’
‘A desperate one,’ Cristina answered. ‘Santa Rosa was deep in debt even then. His only chance of saving it was to marry me off to some man willing to pay him well for the honour. I ran away when he first began parading his suitable candidates in front of me. That’s when I met you, lived with you, became pregnant by you, and …’
She left the rest unsaid. Luis was Brazilian enough to know how things worked in the archaic corners of society. A nice young, protected virgin would win a high price on the marriage market. A spoiled one would earn much less.
A barren one was worth nothing.
The next crack of lightning lit the bedroom. Cristina folded her arms more tightly across her chest. ‘The next time he came to the hospital he brought Vaasco with him,’ she continued. ‘Vaasco was willing to put a large injection of cash into Santa Rosa if I married him.’
‘So you said yes, just like that?’
‘No, I did not!’ For the first time she lifted her eyes to him. He looked pale in the darkness of the room, shocked, appalled—revolted by her now? She looked away again. ‘I s-sent them away,’ she continued quietly. ‘I n-needed time to be on my own, to grieve and to think. I had nowhere else to go so I returned to your apartment. There was a message from you waiting for me on the answering machine, telling me you were on your way to Rio. So I w-waited for you to come …’ One of her hands unclipped itself from her arm and lifted to rub her trembling mouth before it dropped back down again. ‘I was going to tell you what had happened, but we had that big row—’
‘You needed to hurt me as you were hurting.’
‘You were talking about marriage and babies.’ Her voice choked on the memory. ‘How do you think that made me feel, Luis? I was in love with you and I was hurting. I was in shock. Would you have preferred it if I had said yes to your marriage proposal and then said—By the way, Luis, there will be no children because I am barren, you see?’
‘Yes, I would have preferred it,’ he replied. ‘I had a right to know. Do you think I would have walked away from you if you’d told me the truth?’
‘I did not want to give you that choice.’
She heard his breath hiss from between his teeth. ‘You blamed me.’
Cristina stared down at her feet and thought about it. Yes, she concluded, she had blamed him—for not being there when she needed him—but as for the rest …
Luis let out a sigh and moved right away from her. ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it,’ he muttered heavily. ‘Right now I am blaming myself.’
‘No. Her head came up. ‘I did not tell you this to make you feel guilty about it!’
‘Then why did you tell me?’
‘To make you see why I cannot marry you!’
‘You married Ordoniz knowing you could not give him children. Why not me?’ he bit out roughly.
‘I did not care about him. I care about you.’
Anton pulled in an unsteady breath. ‘The man was childless, Cristina,’ he delivered painfully. ‘Surely he must have married you so that you could give him a son?’
‘I am not that wicked!’ For the first time since this little scene had begun she let her eyes make contact with his. ‘Why do you always have to look for the bad in me?’
She was right; he did. Hell, I’m losing my head here, Anton thought. And he wanted to—
‘Vaasco could not have children!’ she threw at him. ‘He could not have sex! He—the accident,’ she added on a shivering breath, ‘the horse—it damaged him there. And he did not want me because I was young and for everything else I see twisting around in your head!’ she threw at him. ‘He wanted to punish me because I—I caused his accident, and …’ She paused before asking warily, ‘Has your mother explained what Vaasco was to her?’
‘Oh, yes.’ His mother had been totally honest with him—at last.
‘Vaasco never forgave her,’ Cristina said, then released a sudden cold laugh. ‘He forgave Enrique Ramirez for his part in your mamma’s affair because he was a man, and “a man is allowed to sip the nectar if it is there to sip”—Vaasco’s words exactly,’ she explained. ‘He also knew about you and me—my father had told him. He expected you to come back for me. He wanted to watch me hurt you when you did. He wanted you to be hurt in your mamma’s place, by seeing me married to him. He made me stay in Rio with him for a full year, w-waiting for you to come back.’
But he hadn’t come back.
‘You let him do this to you without putting up a fight?’
Her eyes were cold now. ‘He bought me from my father in the same way that you have been trying to buy me. When you sell yourself you lose the right to think for yourself.’
Anton turned away from that coldly honest statement, a hand with decidedly shaky fingers going up to scrape through his hair, then ending up grabbing the back of his neck.
What now? he asked himself as he stood there trying to numb the shockwaves crashing into him. Cristina was right about him. He did always look for the bad in her. He had done it six years ago, when he had taken what she’d said to him without bothering to question why she was saying it. What kind of man did that make him?
He had even come back here to Brazil bent on seeking his revenge on her for what she’d done. He need not have bothered. Cristina had been punishing herself.
He found he was staring at the bed, with its humble picnic, and suddenly he felt the sting of tears attack the back of his throat as he began to see every single thing she had done since he came back into her life for what it really was.
An act of love for him that was so damn hopeless in her eyes she had to be tough afterwards—or how did she let him go?
He turned to look at Cristina next, standing there in his T-shirt and his bowtie and nothing else. His scent on her body, his kisses on her lips. His love was wrapped all around her if she would dare to let herself to feel it.
‘Let’s go back to bed,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Have you listened to anything I have said to you?’
‘All of it.’ He nodded. ‘It doesn’t change a single thing.’
‘Oh, meu Dues,’ she sighed, as it all flared up again. ‘Luis, I know about Enrique’s last will and testament!’ she cried. ‘I know why you need to marry quickly and produce a child! You have half-brothers you need to—’
‘Don’t talk about them,’ he uttered. They did not belong here—not in this room with this situation and this woman who had sacrificed so much! Well, he was about to learn what it felt like to sacrifice something he wanted badly. Because from this moment on he had no half-brothers. How could he have when—?
God, he did not want to go there right now. He could not allow himself to if he was going to get through the rest of this.
‘We have to talk about them,’ Cristina insisted. ‘The only way you can meet them is by marrying s-some woman who can give you a baby …’
Anton stiffened. She didn’t know—not all of it anyway.
‘Well, you cannot do that with me,’ she went on. ‘S-so you can go now and—and marry that h-horrible Kinsella Lane person,’ she suggested with tremulous bite.
He laughed. It was bad of him to laugh with so much anguish creasing the atmosphere, but that was what he did. Because here stood this beautiful, proud, tragic woman telling him to go—yet she was protecting that damn door as if her life depended on it!
He heeled his shoes off. For a moment he thought she was going to leap on him in a rage. ‘Luis—!’
‘That’s me,’ he acknowledged, and pulled his shirt off over his head.
She stamped a foot. Now, that’s more like it, he thought as he began to undo his trousers.
‘If you don’t stop this I will—!’
He reached her so fast that it was all she could do to gasp out a protest as he clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Now, listen to me …’ he said, bringing his head down so he could look right into those dark pools of tragedy. ‘I am not going to stop loving you because you think that I should, and I am not going to walk away from this. I am going to marry you, whether you like it or not, and I am going to keep on loving you until I draw my last breath—so get used to it.’
After that he straightened up, took his hand from her mouth and lowered it to grasp both her arms, where they still linked defensively across her front. He used them to pull her over to the bed. It took him five seconds to get rid of the tray, another two to grab her again, then stretch out on the bed, pulling her down on top of him so she had no option but to unwrap her arms to support herself.
Her eyes were dark and her mouth small, and as he looked up at her he knew she had not given in to him yet.
‘Sad little thing,’ he murmured, and stroked a gentle finger across an unhappy cheek. ‘Am I such a bad bet?’
She gave a sombre shake of her head, ‘Arido,’ she whispered.
It came then. Six years of grief and misery pouring out of her as she lowered her face to his chest and wept.
Anton said no more. He did not attempt to stem the flow. He just held her. Held her and wished there was something he could do to make it all go away for her—but there wasn’t.
Arido, he thought bleakly, and rolled with her, pulled the covers up over them, then curled his body around her as much as he could.
Of course he ended up kissing her out of it. How long was a man supposed to lie passive while the woman in his arms broke her heart all over him?
And he used words—husky, soft, honest words—like, ‘Eu te amo.’ I love you. ‘Nada matérias outras.’ Nothing else matters. ‘Eu te amo. Eu te amo.’ Until words became warm, thick, tear-washed kisses, and kisses became—something else. It even shocked him how an overdose of heartache and anguish could generate the driving depths of passion they ended up sharing.
Anton still wasn’t over it when he carefully slid from beneath her and stood up from the bed. She was asleep, coiled around the pillow he’d slipped into the place where his body had been. Turning away, he hunted down his discarded clothes and put them on again with a dry promise that this time they’d stay on. Then he let himself out of the room as quietly as he could do.
He needed some time alone to think.
Cristina came awake to find she was hugging the pillow. She sat up, blinking owlishly, trying to decide if the grey light she could see seeping into the room was the fading day or a new day just come.
She felt hot and sweaty, and every one of her muscles ached as if she hadn’t moved them for hours and hours. She had a cloudy recollection of the events that had led up to her falling into a deep sleep here in this bed, but in truth she did not want to think about them.
Luis’s bag still sat on the ottoman, but a swift glance around the room told her that he was not here. She got up, discovered she was wearing his T-shirt again—though she did not recall when she’d pulled it back on after—
She sucked in a sharp breath, not wanting to go there—not yet anyway. Instead she crossed the room to look out of the window, then bit out a very unladylike curse.
It was daylight out there! She had slept the evening and the whole of the night away—plus most of the morning too!
Spinning around, she headed quickly for her own bedroom, where she showered and pulled on clean jeans and a fresh green T-shirt, then tried to soothe her fidgety nerves before she went to find Luis. Only to receive the shock of her life when she found a man—a complete stranger—dressed in a suit, wandering the hall with a clipboard.
‘Good morning, senhorita,’ he greeted her politely when he saw her standing there on the stairs, then just continued with what he was doing!
Anger began to fizz. ‘Do you happen to know where Senhor Scott-Lee is?’ she demanded.
‘I think most of them are in the kitchen,’ he replied absently as he wandered off into one of the reception rooms.
Most of them?
Cristina headed for the kitchen. On her way there she passed one of the women from the village, coming away from the kitchen carrying a mop and bucket. She dipped a shy hello at Cristina and, when asked what she was doing, said she was here to help Orraca with the household chores.
Since Cristina did most of those chores herself, she took the fact that someone had given this woman a mop and bucket and told her to go and clean something as a very personal slight.
Luis, of course. It just had to be him. She’d given in to a little weak weeping on his shoulder and now he thought he could—
Those thoughts ground to a stop at the sight that met her in the kitchen. For a few seconds she could not believe what she was seeing, and even thought of going out and coming in again. For there at her table sat Orraca, sharing what looked like a pot of tea served in the best china with none other than Luis’s mother, who was looking lovely in a soft cambric shirt and pale blue linen trousers, her dark hair loosely looped at her slender nape.
‘Ah, good morning, Cristina,’ the lady herself greeted her warmly.
‘Good—morning.’ Good manners made her reply accordingly.
Mrs Scott-Lee smiled. ‘I can see you are surprised to see me here, and I don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘When my son wishes to move mountains, he moves mountains. Please—come and sit down and join us. Orraca and I were just reminiscing about the old times.’
‘How—how long have you been here?’
‘I arrived just half an hour ago. But Anton’s team of experts were here at the crack of dawn.’
‘Team—?
‘The men who are surveying the land edging the forest with the intention of acquiring a protection order for it.’
‘Protection? She was bewildered.
‘Sim. Anton thinks it is best to do it officially, then you will not have to put up with greedy people like the Alagoas Consortium coming at you through the back door, so to speak. Come and sit down,’ his mamma urged yet again. ‘Orraca, another cup and saucer, if you would be so good, my dear …’
Orraca, Cristina saw to her utter amazement, meekly stood from the table and did as she was bade—when no one, but no one, told Orraca to do anything!
Cristina’s eyes gave a flash. ‘Where is Luis?’ she demanded.
‘In Sao Paulo, dealing with some other business. He said to tell you to eat a proper breakfast before you start shouting at me,’ his mother relayed, dark eyes twinkling, and so thoroughly, unfairly disarming that Cristina found herself sitting down and accepting the cup of tea Orraca provided, along with one of her unreadable stares.
‘I suppose you think it is okay to let strangers wander my home?’ she said to the housekeeper.
‘He is an architect.’ Mrs Scott-Lee provided the reply. ‘An expert in historical renovation. And he is so in love with your house, Cristina, he almost begged Anton to give him the commission. What do you usually eat for breakfast, meu querida?’
‘She does not eat breakfast.’ Orraca spoke for the first time. ‘She does not eat lunch. Why do you think she is so thin? I am amazed your handsome son wants to marry such a—’
‘I think we will have some hot toast with proper butter,’ Luis’s mother smoothly cut in. ‘I usually deny myself butter,’ she confided. ‘Not good for the figure or the heart. But, since you make your own here, how am I supposed to resist it?’
Orraca moved off without another word to make the suggested toast, while Cristina tried a couple of calming breaths before she attempted to make sense of what was going on here.
‘Senhora Scott-Lee—’
‘Please call me Maria—everyone does—except for Anton, of course. If you prefer it you can call me Mother, as he does, though I always think it’s such a stuffy name—very English.’ She grimaced.
‘He is English,’ Cristina said.
‘You think so?’ His mother looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose he must seem it to you.’
‘Mrs—Maria …’
‘Still, you haven’t met his uncle Maximilian yet. Now, there is the quintessential Englishman—complete with bowler hat and umbrella in his prime. Now he prefers Harris tweed and a walking stick.’
‘Senhora—’
‘Ah, here is our toast. Orraca, I think I would like to steal you away from Santa Rosa. Would you like to live in London, do you think?’
As it began to dawn on Cristina that she was not going to be allowed to ask any questions as to what was going on here, she took a piece of toast, liberally spread with butter, bit into it, and sipped her tea while the other two women slipped into conversation about the advantages and disadvantages of living abroad. She silently seethed.
She was going to kill Luis when he put in an appearance. Who did he think he was? Taking over her home as if he owned it just because she had agreed to—
She stood up. It was the shock that made her do it.
But she had said it—hadn’t she? She had lain in his arms and said yes to his marriage proposal—his proper marriage proposal, complete with—
‘Cristina, what’s wrong?’ his mother asked sharply.
‘I want to see Luis,’ she insisted tautly. ‘I demand to see Luis!’
‘Querida, he isn’t here …’
‘I am not your darling, Mrs Scott-Lee,’ Cristina replied. ‘I am viuva de Ordoniz—the woman you travelled thousands of miles to stop from marrying your son!’
‘That was yesterday.’ Maria touched Cristina’s hand in a gentle conciliatory gesture. ‘Today I could not be happier for both of you—’
‘Why should you be?’ Cristina demanded.
‘Ah, here are my two handsome young escorts.’ She smiled with relief as Luis’s two executives appeared at the kitchen door. ‘I hope this means that Anton has returned?’ she enquired hopefully.
‘He went straight to the library—’
‘My library?’ Cristina swung on them.
‘Er—yes.’ They were startled. She did not blame them. If Luis had been there to see her face he would be taking a very wary step back by now.
‘Please excuse me,’ she said, with an icy politeness that did not reflect what she was feeling inside.
Polite? she thought as she walked out of the kitchen, having to sidle past the woman from the village who was mopping the hall floor. Then she caught sight of the architect person, carefully scraping at the plaster on the walls. It was like being invaded, she thought as she stalked past him across the hall and pushed open the library door. Luis was there, all right, standing by her desk, using her telephone, dressed in a sharp dark pinstripe suit and giving off the arrogant appearance that he ruled the world!
Her world.
Cristina slammed the door shut to get his attention. He swung around and snatched her breath away, because he looked so big and lean and alive and—
‘What do you think you are playing at?’ she scythed at him.
The smile that had been about to arrive on his lips disappeared before it made it. With smooth aplomb Anton concluded his call and replaced the receiver on its rest. Then he settled his hips against the desk and just looked at her while he decided how he was going to tackle this.
The tempting way was to provoke what he could already see was erupting. The safer way was to soothe the situation down.
He went for the irresistible. ‘You’ve forgotten.’
‘Forgotten what?
‘That in a week you and I will be getting married,’ he provided. ‘It is usual to—’
‘A week? I didn’t think it would be so soon!’
‘I moved the date up. I told you I was going to do it last night, when we—’
‘All right.’ She held up a hand. ‘We will begin this stupid conversation again!’ She took in a deep, calming breath. ‘Luis—there is a man wandering around my house, picking plaster off the walls.’
‘An architect.’ He nodded.
‘I know what he is!’ she snapped. ‘Your mother kindly informed me of it. I want to know when it was exactly that I gave my permission for him to be here!’
‘You didn’t. I did.’
‘And your permission came from where?’
He sent her one of those seductively appealing lazy grins. ‘I’m not answering that. I daren’t,’ he confided.
She frowned and crossed her arms. ‘I believe there is also a team of surveyors on my property?’
He nodded in confirmation. ‘After we marry. Santa Rosa will be placed in a trust—or have you forgotten about that too?’
‘A trust for whom?’ she almost choked out.
‘Whoever you decide will inherit it from you.’ He shrugged. ‘Since we won’t be able to spend all our time here it seemed sensible to protect Santa Rosa as much as is possible. The surveyors will also be looking at the forest. The Government frowns on deforestation these days. In fact I am amazed a protection order was not placed on it years ago.’
There was so much sense in what he was saying that he could see she was struggling to find an argument—though she did find one.
‘I would have liked to be consulted about all of this before Santa Rosa was invaded.’
‘No time,’ he said. ‘You were asleep and I needed to get things moving. My mother—’
‘Why is your mother here?’
‘She’s not welcome?’
‘Of course she’s welcome.’ Cristina frowned. ‘But I—’
‘She wants to help you choose your wedding outfit. But if you would rather she—’
‘Luis—I am not marrying you!’
‘Not that again.’ He sighed. ‘Which door would you like me to try and leave by, so you can have a running start at barring my way?’
She flushed. And so she should, Anton thought, losing enthusiasm for the provoking game. He had known she would change her mind again the moment she opened her eyes this morning. He had known that the tragic creature he’d loved in every way he could last night had only been recharging her batteries before she went on the defensive again. He’d meant to stay out of her way—had planned to do that right up until the moment he’d stood over her this morning, watching her sleep with his pillow clutched in her arms, and something had hit him.
The sense of honour that Sebastian must have instilled in him—because he sure as hell hadn’t got it from his real father. Cristina deserved to have her say, even if it did mean yet another battle.
‘I’m going to tell you something I had vowed to keep to myself. But having you continually try to make me walk away from you, I’ve changed my mind.’
Her chin came up in defensive readiness. Anton thought about going over there and just kissing her into surrender, then grimly stuck to his guns and pushed himself into speech.
‘When Ramirez tempted me out to Brazil to look for you he did it with just one clever sentence that insisted I “make reparation” to the woman I ran out on six years before, leaving her in dire straits.’
‘But you didn’t do that.’
‘Did I not?’ He looked grimly at her whitened face. ‘I thought I hadn’t. I thought that you should be making reparation to me for the way you kicked me out of your life—but look at you, Cristina.’ He indicated brutally. ‘Look at the prickly, self-defensive, half-empty shadow you’ve become of that wonderful, excitingly vital and light-hearted creature I knew six years ago.’
She went pale. Anton sighed. ‘Would you have become this person if I’d stayed around and fought for what I wanted? No, you would not,’ he declared without expecting a reply. ‘You would not have let your father sell you to some no-good vengeful swine because you didn’t care what happened to you. You would have been mine! And, on being mine, you would have been pulled by your beautiful hair out of your shock and your grief and made to see that you did not need to be anything other than the beautiful person you are—to be loved by me! However, I walked,’ he breathed in contempt. ‘Which makes the accusation Ramirez made against me true. Because I do owe you—for not being man enough to stop still long enough to think why you needed to lash out at me. I owe you, querida, for six long miserable years of existing in a vacuum breaking your poor heart over me!’
She walked out. Anton stood there staring at the door she’d shut behind her. His hand went up to wipe the angry pallor from his face. He didn’t know why she had walked out, or what she was thinking. He didn’t even know if he’d just made the biggest mistake by telling her that he had his own guilt to feed.