Mediterranean Seduction

‘Because of you,’ cried his mother fiercely, realising too late that she had spoken a little too vehemently. ‘I mean,’ she said, modifying her tone, ‘naturally they want to meet you. You’re your father’s son.’

‘And yours,’ put in David at once. ‘And once they get to know you—’

‘They’re not going to get to know me,’ said Cassandra desperately. ‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? I never want to see any of the de Montoyas again.’

David’s face crumpled. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do mean it.’ Cassandra felt dreadful but she had to go on. ‘I know you’re disappointed, but if we can’t get a flight home, I’m going to see if it’s possible for us to move to another pensión along the coast—’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’ Cassandra was determined. ‘I’m prepared to compromise. I know you’ve been looking forward to this holiday, and I don’t want to deprive you of it, so perhaps we can move to another resort.’

‘I don’t want to move to another resort,’ protested David unhappily. ‘I like it here. I’ve made friends here.’

‘You’ll make friends wherever we go.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Of course you will.’

‘But—’

‘But what?’

David shook his head, apparently deciding he’d argued long enough. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered, and then looked considerably relieved when Horst Kaufman and his parents stopped at their table.

The German family had been having breakfast on the terrace and now they all smiled down at David and his mother.

‘Good morning, Mrs de Montoya,’ said Franz Kaufman cheerfully. ‘It is another lovely day, yes?’

‘Oh—yes.’ Cassandra managed a polite smile in return. Then, noticing their more formal clothes, ‘Are you going off for the day?’

‘Yes. We are going to Ortegar, where we believe there is a leisure facility for the children.’ It was Frau Kaufman who answered, and Cassandra couldn’t help but admire their grasp of her language. ‘A water park and such. We wondered if you would permit David to come with us?’

‘Oh.’

Cassandra was nonplussed. She hardly knew the Kaufmans and the idea of allowing David to go off with them for the day was not something she would normally countenance. But, she reminded herself, she was going to spend the day trying to change their hotel arrangements, and going off with Horst and his family might be just what her son needed to put all thoughts of the de Montoyas out of his head.

‘Can I, Mum? Can I?’

David was clearly enthusiastic, and, putting her own doubts aside, Cassandra lifted her shoulders in a helpless gesture. ‘I— I don’t know what to say.’

‘We would take great care of him, of course,’ put in Franz Kaufman heartily, patting David on the shoulder. ‘And as he and Horst get along together so well…’

‘We do. We do.’

David gazed at her with wide appealing eyes, and deciding that anything was better than having him dragging after her all day, making his feelings felt, Cassandra sighed.

‘Well, all right,’ she agreed, earning a whoop from both children. ‘Um—where did you say you were going?’

‘Ortegar,’ said Frau Kaufman at once, and Cassandra frowned.

‘Ortegar?’ she said. ‘Where is that exactly?’

‘It is along the coast. Near Cadiz,’ answered Franz a little impatiently. ‘Maybe twenty miles from here, that is all.’

And probably twenty miles nearer Tuarega, thought Cassandra, moistening her lips. She knew that because she had scanned the map very thoroughly before agreeing to David’s choice of destination.

Her heartbeat quickened. David’s choice of destination, she realised unsteadily. Goodness, how long had her son been planning to write to his grandfather?

‘I’ll go and get ready,’ said David eagerly, and she wondered if he suspected what she was thinking. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ murmured Cassandra, getting up from her chair and giving the Kaufmans another polite smile. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

‘We will be waiting out front.’ Franz Kaufman nodded his approval, and Cassandra was left with the uneasy feeling that she had been out-manoeuvred by her son again.

David had already bundled a towel and his swimming trunks into his backpack by the time she reached their room. He had evidently raced up the stairs and she tried not to wonder if he was desperate to get away.

‘Do you need any money?’ she asked, picking up a discarded tee shirt from the floor, but David only shook his head and edged towards the door.

‘I’ve got four hundred pesetas. That’s enough,’ he said quickly, and his mother stared at him.

‘That’s less than two pounds,’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t know how much it will cost to get into the leisure park.’

‘You can pay Herr Kaufman when we get back,’ said David impatiently. ‘Come on, Mum. They’re waiting for me.’

Not that urgently, thought Cassandra unhappily, but she had given her word. ‘All right,’ she said, accepting his dutiful peck on her cheek. ‘Be good.’

‘I will.’ David headed out of the door with a triumphant grin on his face. ‘See you later.’

Sanchia’s red sports car was just pulling up outside the palacio when Enrique came out of the building. Sanchia herself, tall and dark and exotically beautiful, emerged from the vehicle, smoothing down the narrow skirt of the green linen suit that barely skimmed her knees.

Once his brother’s fiancé, Sanchia had swiftly recovered from that fiasco. Within a year, she had married a distant relative of the Spanish royal family, and when her elderly husband died leaving her a wealthy widow, she had immediately transferred her affections to her late fiancé’s brother, making Enrique wonder if that hadn’t been her objective all along.

But perhaps he was being conceited, he thought now. Sanchia had been heartbroken when Antonio had married an Englishwoman and had then been killed almost before the ink on the marriage licence was dry. She had turned to him then, but he hadn’t imagined that her plea for his affection had been anything more than a natural response to the circumstances she’d found herself in. After all, Sanchia’s family had never had a lot of money and it must have been quite a blow when her wealthy fiancé abandoned her less than three months before their wedding.

In any event, Enrique had made it quite plain then that he was not interested in taking up where his brother had left off. He liked Sanchia well enough, he always had, but the idea of taking her to bed because his brother had let her down was anathema to him. He had been grieving, too, and not just because his brother was dead. He had let Antonio down, and he’d found it hard to live with himself at that time.

Now, things were different. Sanchia had been married and widowed, and he himself was that much older and more willing to accept that life could all too easily deal you a rotten hand. The relationship he had with Sanchia these days suited both of them. He doubted he would ever get married, despite what his father had had to say about it, and, although Sanchia might hope that he’d change his mind, she was not, and never could be, the only woman in his life.

Which was probably why he felt such an unexpected surge of impatience at her appearance this morning. His thoughts were focused on what he planned to do today and Sanchia could play no part in that.

She, of course, knew nothing of the events of yesterday. Even though there’d been a message from her waiting on his answering machine when he’d got back last night, he hadn’t returned her call, which probably explained her arrival now.

‘Querido!’ she exclaimed, her use of the Spanish word for ‘darling’ sounding warm and intimate on her tongue. She reached up to kiss him, pouting when her lips only brushed his cheek, before surveying his casual appearance with some disappointment. ‘You are going out? I was hoping we might spend the day together.’

‘I am sorry.’ Enrique was aware that his navy tee shirt and cargo trousers were not his usual attire, but they were less likely to attract attention in a holiday resort than the three-piece suit he’d worn the day before. ‘I have got—some business to attend to.’

‘Dressed like this?’ Sanchia twined her fingers into the leather cord that he’d tied at his waist. ‘I cannot see you visiting one of your clients in a tee shirt.’

‘Did I say I was going to visit one of my clients?’ asked Enrique rather more curtly than he had intended. He disentangled her fingers from the cord and stepped back from her. ‘It is a personal matter,’ he appended, feeling obliged to give her some sort of explanation. ‘Really. I have got to go.’

‘Is it another woman?’ she demanded, and just for a moment he felt a surge of resentment that she should feel she had the right to question his actions.

But then common sense reasserted itself. Why shouldn’t she feel she had some rights where he was concerned? They had been seeing one another for months, after all.

‘Not in the way you mean,’ he assured her, his thin smile hardly a reassurance. Then, belatedly, ‘Perhaps I can ring you later?’

Sanchia’s lips tightened. ‘You are not going to tell me where you are going?’

‘No.’ There was no ambivalence on that score.

Her mouth trembled now. ‘Enrique…’

His irritation was totally unwarranted, and he despised himself for it. But, dammit, he wanted to get to Punta del Lobo before Cassandra had time to disappear again. ‘Look,’ he said reasonably, ‘this does not concern you—us. It is—something to do with my father. A confidential matter I have to attend to.’

Sanchia’s jaw dropped. ‘Your father has been having an affair?’

‘No!’ Enrique was horrified that she should even think such a thing.

‘But you said it did involve another woman,’ she reminded him, and Enrique wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

‘I also said, not in the way you mean,’ he declared shortly. ‘It is just—’ Dios, what could he say? ‘—an unexpected complication.’

‘That involves a woman?’

‘Only indirectly.’

That, at least, was true, although Enrique could feel his stomach tighten as he thought of confronting Cassandra again. Dios, he hated that woman, he thought savagely. If only he could tell Sanchia how he really felt, she would have no further cause for concern.

‘Muy bien.’ She pivoted on her high heels and, waiting for him to fall into step beside her, she started towards her car. ‘But you will ring me later this morning, sí?’

‘Make it this afternoon,’ said Enrique, suppressing a sigh. ‘If I cannot reach you at home, I will call your mobile.’

‘Which will not be switched off as yours was last night,’ remarked Sanchia waspishly, inspiring another twinge of irritation. Dammit, when had they got to the point where every move he made had to be justified?

‘I will ring,’ he assured her, making no promises of when that would be. He swung open the door of the scarlet convertible. ‘Adiós!’

CHAPTER FOUR

CASSANDRA trudged back to the lodging house with a heavy heart. She had wasted the whole morning waiting to see her holiday representative to try and get David and herself transferred to an alternative pensión, but she was no further forward.

The trouble was, the kind of accommodation she and her son could afford was in short supply and, without paying a huge supplement and moving to a hotel, they were stuck. The young rep who was based at the nearby Hotel Miramar had been very polite, but after spending the morning dealing with other holidaymakers’ complaints, she was naturally puzzled by Cassandra’s request. Particularly as the only excuse she could offer for wanting to leave the Pensión del Mar was because Punta del Lobo was too quiet. The girl had probably thought she was used to frequenting bars and nightclubs, thought Cassandra unhappily. And what kind of a mother did that make her appear to be?

It was all Enrique de Montoya’s fault, she thought resentfully. If he hadn’t turned up and ruined what had promised to be the first really good holiday they had had in ages, she wouldn’t have had to tell lies to anyone, or now have to face the prospect of David’s disappointment when he discovered their options had narrowed. As far as she could see, she only had one alternative: to bring the date for their homeward journey forward. Whatever it cost.

And, as she approached the pensión, she was forced to admit that it wasn’t just the de Montoyas’ fault that she was in this position. David had to take his share of the blame. All right, perhaps she should have been more honest with him right from the beginning, but surely he had known that what he was doing was wrong? Wasn’t that why he had kept the letter a secret from her?

She turned in at the gate of the pensión, tipping her head back to ease the tension in her neck, and then felt a quivering start in the pit of her stomach. As she looked ahead again, she saw a man rising from the low wall that bordered the terrace, where chairs and tables offered an alternative to eating indoors. The striped canopy, which gave the Pensión del Mar its individuality, formed a protective shade from the rays of the midday sun, but it also cast a shadow that Cassandra at first thought had deceived her eyes. But, no, she was not mistaken. It was Enrique who had been sitting there, waiting for her, like the predator she knew him to be.

But, as always, he looked cool and composed, his lean muscled frame emphasised by a tight-fitting navy tee shirt and loose cotton trousers. Despite herself, she felt her senses stir at his dark, powerful masculinity, and it was that much harder to steel herself against him.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, taking the offensive before he could disconcert her, and he gave her a retiring look.

‘Where is he?’ he demanded, looking beyond her, and she was inordinately grateful that the Kaufmans had taken David out for the day.

‘He’s not here,’ she said, deciding to let him make what he liked of that. ‘You’ve wasted your time in coming here.’

Enrique’s eyes grew colder, if that were at all possible. He was already regarding her with icy contempt, and she was unhappily aware that again he had found her looking hot and dishevelled. But after a morning sitting in the open foyer of the Miramar, which was not air-conditioned and where she had not been offered any refreshment, she was damp and sweaty. Her hair, which she should really have had cut before she came away, was clinging to the nape of her neck, and her cropped sleeveless top and cotton shorts fairly shrieked of their chainstore origins.

But what did it matter what he thought of her? she asked herself impatiently. However she looked, he was not going to alter his opinion of her or of David, and, even if she’d been voted the world’s greatest mum, the de Montoyas would still be looking for a way to take David away from her.

‘Where is he?’ Enrique asked again, and this time she decided not to prevaricate.

‘He’s gone out with friends,’ she replied, making an abortive little foray to go past him, but he stepped into her path.

‘What friends?’ His dark eyes bored into her. ‘The Kaufmans?’

‘Got it in one,’ said Cassandra, acknowledging that Enrique never forgot a name. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me…’

Enrique said something that sounded suspiciously like an oath before his hard fingers fastened about her forearm. ‘Do not be silly, Cassandra,’ he intoned wearily. ‘You are not going anywhere and you know it.’

She didn’t attempt to shake him off. It wouldn’t have done any good and she knew it. But perhaps she could get rid of him in other ways and she widened her eyes challengingly at him as she opened her mouth.

But the scream she’d been about to utter stuck in her throat when he hustled her across the gravelled forecourt of the pensión, his words harsh against her ear. ‘Make a scene and I may just have to report Señor Movida to the licensing authorities.’

Cassandra stared at him. ‘You can’t do that. Señor Movida hasn’t done anything wrong.’

‘I am sure my lawyers could come up with something, if I paid them enough,’ retorted Enrique unfeelingly, propelling her around the corner from the pensión to where his Mercedes was parked. ‘And you, I am equally sure, would not risk that.’

Cassandra trembled. ‘You’re a bastard, Enrique!’

‘Better a bastard than a liar, Cassandra,’ he informed her coldly, flicking the switch that unlocked the car. ‘Please get in.’

‘And if I don’t?’

Enrique regarded her with unblinking eyes. ‘Do not go there, Cassandra. You are only wasting your time and mine. We need to talk, and you will have to forgive my sensibilities when I say I prefer not to—how is it you say it?—wash my linen in public?’

‘Dirty linen,’ muttered Cassandra, before she could stop herself, and Enrique’s mouth curved into a thin smile.

‘Your words, not mine,’ he commented, swinging open the nearside door and waiting patiently for her to get into the car. And, when she’d done so with ill grace, unhappily conscious of her bare knees and sun-reddened thighs, he walked round the back of the vehicle and coiled his long length behind the steering wheel. Then, with a derisive glance in her direction, ‘Do not look so apprehensive, Cassandra. I do not bite.’

‘Don’t you?’

Now she held his gaze with hot accusing eyes and then experienced a pang of anguish when he looked away. Was he remembering what she was remembering? she wondered, despising herself for the unwelcome emotions he could still arouse inside her. God, the only memories she should have were bitter ones.

His starting the engine caught her unawares. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she cried, diverted from her thoughts, and he lifted his shoulders in a resigned gesture.

‘What does it look like I am doing?’ he enquired, glancing in the rearview mirror, checking for traffic. ‘You didn’t think we were going to sit here and talk?’

‘Why not?’

‘Humour me,’ he said tersely, and although Cassandra was fairly sure that nothing she said or did would change his mind, she bit down on her protests. Why should she object when he was leaving the pensión? She might even be able to persuade him not to come back.

Or not.

‘I’m not going to Tuarega with you,’ she blurted suddenly, and Enrique gave a short mirthless laugh as he pulled out of the parking bay.

‘I have not invited you to do so,’ he observed drily, and she felt the flush of embarrassment deepen the colour in her cheeks. ‘I suggest we find a bar where it is unlikely that either of us will meet anyone we know.’

‘Don’t you mean anyone you know?’ she snorted, and he gave her a considering look.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not to me,’ she assured him coldly. ‘I just want to get this over with.’

Enrique shook his head. ‘We both know that is not going to happen,’ he replied flatly. ‘You should not have written to my father if you wished to keep your selfish little secret.’

‘I didn’t write to your father,’ Cassandra reminded him fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t do such a thing.’

‘No.’ He conceded the point. ‘I believe that now.’

‘Now?’ Cassandra was appalled. ‘Do you mean you had any doubts?’

Enrique shrugged. ‘I had my reasons.’

‘What reasons?’ Cassandra stared at him, and then comprehension dawned. ‘My God, you did think I’d written the letter, didn’t you? You honestly thought I’d want anything from you! Or your father!’

Enrique didn’t answer her and she was left with the shattering discovery that his opinion of her hadn’t changed one bit. He still thought she was a greedy little gold-digger, who had only latched onto his brother because she’d known what his background was.

Pain, like a knife, sliced through her, and she reached unthinkingly for the handle of the door. In that moment she didn’t consider that they had left the small town of Punta del Lobo behind, that the car was in traffic and that they were moving at approximately sixty kilometres an hour. Her only need was to get as far away from him as possible as quickly as possible, and even the sudden draught of air that her action elicited only made her feel even more giddy and confused.

She didn’t know what might have happened if Enrique hadn’t reacted as he had. At that moment she didn’t care. But, with a muffled oath, he did two things almost simultaneously: his hand shot out and grasped her arm, anchoring her to her seat, and he swung the big car off the winding coast road, bringing it to a shuddering stop on a sand-strewn verge above towering cliffs.

‘Estas loco? Are you mad?’ he demanded, and she realised it was a measure of the shock he’d had that he’d used his own language and not hers. Then, when she turned a white tear-stained face in his direction, his eyes grew dark and tortured. ‘Crazy woman,’ he muttered, his voice thick and unfamiliar, and, switching off the engine, he flung himself out of the car.

He went to stand at the edge of the cliffs, the warm wind that blew up from the ocean flattening the loose-fitting trousers against his strong legs. He didn’t look back at her, he simply stood there, gazing out at the water, raking long fingers through his hair before bringing them to rest at the back of his neck.

Perhaps he was giving her time to regain her composure, Cassandra pondered uneasily, as sanity reasserted itself. But she didn’t think so. Just for a moment there she had glimpsed the real Enrique de Montoya, the passionate man whose feelings couldn’t be so coldly contained beneath a mask of studied politeness, and she suspected he had been as shocked as she was.

Nevertheless, however she felt about him, there was little doubt that he had saved her from serious injury or worse. He’d risked his own life by swerving so recklessly off the highway, taking the car within inches of certain disaster, just to prevent her from doing something which, as he’d said, would have been crazy.

What had she been thinking? She trembled as the full extent of her own stupidity swept over her. What good would it have done to throw herself from the car? What would it have achieved? If she’d been killed—God, the very thought of it set her shaking again—who would have looked after David then? Whose claim on her son would have carried the most weight? She didn’t need to be a psychic to know that in those circumstances her own family would have been fighting a losing battle.

So why hadn’t Enrique let her do it? Or was that what he was doing now? Reproving himself for allowing a God-given opportunity to slip through his fingers? No. However naïve it might make her, she didn’t think that either.

She took a breath and then, pushing open her door, she got out of the car. She steadied herself for a moment, with her hand on the top of her door. Then, closing it again, she walked somewhat unsteadily across to where he was standing. The wind buffeted her, too, sending the tumbled mass of her hair about her face, but she only held it back, her eyes on Enrique’s taut profile.

‘I’m—sorry,’ she said after a moment, but although she knew he’d heard her, he didn’t look her way.

‘Go back to the car.’ The words were flat and expressionless. ‘I will join you in a moment.’

Cassandra caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘You’re right,’ she said, forced to go on. ‘What I did was crazy! I could have killed us both.’

Now Enrique did look at her, but she gained no reassurance from his blank expression. ‘Forget it,’ he told her. ‘I have.’

Cassandra quivered. ‘As you forget everything that doesn’t agree with you?’ she asked tremulously. ‘And everyone?’

Enrique’s features contorted. ‘I have forgotten nothing,’ he assured her harshly, and she shrank from his sudden antagonism.

‘Then how do you live with yourself?’ she was stung to reply, and with a muffled epithet he brushed past her.

‘God knows,’ he muttered in his own language, but she understood him. He headed for the car. ‘Are you coming?’

The bar he took her to was in the next village. A whitewashed building on the road, it was open at the back, spilling its customers out onto a wood-framed deck above a pebbled beach. Further along, a black jetty jutted out into the blue water, and several small fishing smacks and rowing boats were drawn up onto a strip of sand. Old men sat mending their nets, and, judging by the clientele in the bar, this was not a venue for tourists.