A Devilishly Dark Deal

‘That’s right … it is.’ His usual guard slammed down into place and Marco deliberately ignored the first part of the question. Home was a concept that even his immense wealth had never been able to make a reality for him. When a man had grown up an orphan, as he had, ‘home’ was just a tantalising dream that was always mockingly out of reach … a fantasy that just wasn’t on the agenda, no matter how much his heart might ache for it to be possible …

A palatial house or mansion didn’t equal a home in the true sense of the word, although he had several of those round the globe. Lately he’d been working particularly hard, and his plan had been to stay in the Algarve for a few weeks at least, to kick back and take a long overdue rest, but the instant he had recalled his humble beginnings growing up Portugal, the idea suddenly lost most of its appeal. The prospect of spending time alone didn’t sit well with him either. Marco had plenty of acquaintances, but no real friends he could truly be himself around … Even as a child he had never made friends easily. One of the carers at the orphanage had once told him he was a ‘complicated’ little boy. With his child’s logic, he had judged that to mean that he was difficult to love …

Once more he flipped his pen, hating the sudden prickling of anxiety at the back of his neck and inside his chest—a sign that he was feeling hemmed in, almost trapped. Because for him there was neither solace nor reassurance in revisiting scenes from his past.

‘Let’s continue, shall we? I’m sure we are all very busy people with much to accomplish before the day is out, and time is not standing still,’ he announced abruptly.

Grimacing in embarrassment at his boss’s terse-voiced remarks, Joseph Simonson shuffled the sheaf of papers in front of him and cleared his throat before proceeding …

Grace’s insides were churning. It was a minute or two away from midday, and three times now she had snatched her shaking hand away from the telephone. Right then the fact that she might be just a conversation away from getting the financial assistance the charity needed to rebuild the children’s home, set up a school and employ a teacher, didn’t seem to help overcome her nerves. Yesterday she’d been fired up … brave … as if neither man nor mountain could stop her from fulfilling her aim of getting what she wanted. Today, after a more or less sleepless night when memories of Marco Aguilar’s piercing dark eyes had frequently disturbed her, she didn’t feel capable of much … let alone feel brave.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’

Exasperated, she grabbed the receiver from its rest on the kitchen wall and punched out the number she had determinedly memorized, in case by some cruel twist of fate she lost the card.

On arriving back at the villa yesterday afternoon, Grace had been seriously taken aback when she’d realised the number Marco had given her belonged to his personal mobile. It wasn’t the same as any of the numbers printed in gold on the front of his business card. Now, briefly shutting her eyes, she recalled the shining hopeful faces of the children she had left behind in that feebly constructed orphanage back in Africa and felt a resurgence of passion for helping make things right for them. Marco Aguilar was only a man. He was made of flesh and blood and bone, just as she was, she told herself. It didn’t matter that he wore hand-tailored suits that probably cost the earth, or that he might regularly make it onto the world’s rich lists. That didn’t make him any better than Grace. In this instance they were just two humane people, discussing what needed to be done to help those less fortunate than they were, and she would hold onto that thought when they spoke.

The softly purring ringtone in her ear ceased, indicating someone had picked up at the other end.

‘Olá?’

‘Olá.’

‘Mr Aguilar?’

‘Ah … is that you, Grace?’

She hadn’t expected him to address her by her first name, and the sound of it spoken in his highly arresting, accented voice made her insides execute a disorientating cartwheel. Staring out of the opened windows at the sun-baked patio, and the usually inviting deckchair that she’d had to vacate when the heat grew too intense to bear comfortably, Grace nervously smoothed her palm down over the hip of her white linen trousers.

‘Yes, it’s me. I presume I’m talking to Marco Aguilar?’

‘Just Marco is fine.’

‘I wouldn’t presume to—’

‘I am inviting you to address me by my first name, Grace, so you are not being presumptuous. How are you today? I trust you are enjoying this glorious weather?’

‘I’m … I’m fine, and, yes I am enjoying the weather.’ Threading her fingers through her wheat-coloured hair, Grace grimaced, taken aback that he should address her so amicably and not quite sure about how to proceed. ‘How are you?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I wasn’t planning on making this conversation that long,’ he commented wryly.

Colouring hotly, she was glad that he couldn’t see her face right then … just in case he imagined that she was one of those starstruck women who didn’t have the wits to separate fantasy from reality …

‘Well, I know you must be a very busy man, so you needn’t worry that I’ll talk your ears off.’ She made a face, thinking that she sounded like some immature schoolgirl with that infantile remark. ‘I promise,’ she added quickly, as if to emphasise the point.

‘Talk my ears off?’ Marco echoed, chuckling, ‘I hope you won’t, Grace, because they are extremely useful at times … especially when I’m listening to Mozart or Beethoven.’

‘I shouldn’t have said that. It was a stupid comment.’

‘Why? Because you think I might lack a sense of humour? I hope I may have the chance to prove you wrong about that.’

Taken aback once more by such a surprising remark, Grace hardly knew what to say.

‘It may surprise you,’ the man on the other end of the line continued, ‘but I have unexpectedly found myself with an entirely free afternoon today. Instead of us talking on the phone, I could send my driver round to where you are staying and get him to bring you back to my house. That would be a much more agreeable way of conducting our conversation don’t you think?’

She must be dreaming. Confronting him outside the exclusive resort was one thing, and talking to him on the phone was another … but never in her wildest dreams had she envisaged a man like Marco Aguilar inviting her to his house to discuss the charity she was so determined to help—just like that. If she didn’t know better she’d think she was suffering from heatstroke!

‘If you—if you really do have the time then, yes … I’m sure that would be a much better way to discuss the charity.’

‘So you agree to allow my driver to pick you up and bring you back here?’

‘I do. Thank you, Mr Aguilar.’

‘Didn’t I already tell you to call me Marco?’ he answered, with a smile in his voice.

All Grace knew right then was that her parents would have a fit if they knew she was even considering going to a strange man’s house in a foreign country in the middle of the day—even if that stranger was an internationally known entrepreneur. But then they were always so over-protective. She’d literally had to steal her freedom to leave home. Even when she’d made the decision to go to Africa to visit the children’s charity she worked for in London she’d had to stand her ground with them …

‘You can’t keep me wrapped up in cotton-wool for ever, you know,’ she’d argued. ‘I’m twenty-five years old and I want to see some of the world for myself. I want to take risks and learn by my mistakes.’

‘Grace?’

Frowning, and with her heart beating a rapid tattoo inside her chest, she realised that Marco Aguilar was waiting for her reply. ‘I’m still here … I suppose I ought to give you my address if you’re sending a car for me?’

‘That would definitely be a good start,’ he agreed.

CHAPTER TWO

THEY called them casas antigas in Portugal … manor-houses and stately homes. Grace’s eyes widened more and more the further Marco’s chauffeur Miguel drove them up the long sweeping drive that had met them the moment he’d pressed the remote device in the car to open the ornate electronic gates at the entrance. As they drove past the colonnade of tall trees lining the way she caught sight of the palatial colonial-style house they were heading towards, with its marble pillars glistening in the afternoon sunshine. She stared in near disbelief, murmuring, ‘My God …’ beneath her breath.

Inevitably she thought of the ramshackle building that housed the orphanage back in Africa, and was struck dumb by the heartbreaking comparison to the dazzling vision of nineteenth-century architecture she was gazing at now. Did Marco Aguilar live here all by himself? she wondered. Just the thought seemed preposterous.

The smiling chauffeur in his smartly pressed black trousers and pristine white shirt opened the Jaguar door at her side to let her out, and as Grace stepped down onto the gravel drive the scent of heady bougainvillaea mingled with the heat of the day to saturate her senses. Lifting her sunglasses up onto her head, she glanced back at the house and with a jolt of surprise saw Marco, standing on one of the wide curving upper steps, waiting. ‘Olá!’ He raised a hand, acknowledging her with a brief wave.

He wore khaki-coloured chinos and a white T-shirt that highlighted his athletic, muscular torso, and his stance was much more at ease than when she’d seen him yesterday. Her trepidation at speaking with him again eased slightly … but only slightly.

When she reached the level just below where he stood, he held out his hand to warmly enfold her palm in his. He smiled. ‘We meet again.’

His touch submerged Grace in a shockwave of heated sensation that rendered her unable to reply immediately.

This is terrible, she thought, panicking. How am I supposed to sound at all competent and professional and say what I want to say if I’m completely thrown off-balance by a simple handshake?

‘Thanks for sending the car for me,’ she managed. ‘This is such a beautiful house.’ Quickly retrieving her hand, she tried hard to make her smile relaxed to disguise her unexpectedly strong reaction to his touch.

‘I agree. It is. Why don’t you come inside and see it properly?’ he invited.

If Grace had felt overwhelmed at the imposing façade of Marco’s house, then she was rendered almost speechless by the opulence and beauty of the interior. A sea of marble floor and high intricate ceilings greeted her over and over again as her host led her through various reception rooms to what appeared to be a much less ostentatious and intimate drawing room. Elegant couches and armchairs encircled a large hand-knotted Persian rug in various exquisite shades of red, ochre and gold, whilst open French doors revealed a wide balcony overlooking landscaped gardens stretching right down to the sea. This time it was the bewitching fragrance of honeysuckle drifting into the room that fell like soft summer rain onto Grace’s already captivated senses. She was utterly enchanted.

‘Do you want to sit outside on the balcony? I trust you are wearing suncream on that delicate pale skin of yours?’

‘I’m well protected—and, yes … I would very much like to sit outside.’

Settling herself beneath a generously sized green and gold parasol in a comfortable rattan chair, Grace glanced out over the lush landscaped gardens in front of her and sighed. ‘What an amazing view … your own private paradise on earth. I hope you regularly get to share it with your friends. It would be a crime not to. I bet you must really love living here?’

As he dropped down into a chair opposite her at the mosaic tiled table a myriad of differing emotions seemed to register on her host’s handsome face and she didn’t see one that reflected pleasure.

‘Unfortunately I probably don’t appreciate it as much as I should, seeing as I am not here very often,’ he said.

‘But you do originally come from here don’t you …? From the Algarve I mean?’ The impetuous question was out before she could check it, and straight away she saw that Marco was irked by it.

‘Now you are sounding like one of those too-inquisitive reporters again. By the way … where did you hear that I’d grown up in an orphanage?’

Swallowing hard, Grace sensed hot colour suffuse her. ‘I didn’t hear it directly … I mean … the person who said it wasn’t talking to me. I just happened to overhear a conversation he was having with someone else in a café I was sitting in.’

‘So it was a local man?’

‘Yes. He sounded very admiring about what you’d achieved … he wasn’t being disrespectful in any way.’

‘And when you heard that I was due to visit the Algarve, and that I was an orphan, you thought you would take the opportunity to petition my help for your orphans in Africa?’

‘Yes … I’m sure you’d have done the same in my position.’

‘Are you?’

Folding his arms, Marco looked to be pondering the assumption—not without a hint of sardonic humour, Grace noted.

‘Perhaps I would and perhaps I wouldn’t. Anyway, I think we should talk a little more in depth about what you came here for … get down to the details, hmm?’

‘Of course.’ Relieved that her admission about hearing a chance remark hadn’t prejudiced him against talking to her some more, she lifted her gaze and forced herself to look straight back into the compelling hooded dark eyes. ‘But I just want you to know that this isn’t the sort of thing I do every day … spontaneously railroading someone like you into giving their help, I mean. When I’m working at the charity’s office in London I have to be completely professional and adhere to strict rules. We either do a blanket mailshot of people likely to make donations, or once in a while I might get the chance to ring somebody who’s known for being charitable and talk to them personally.’

‘If you’re being honest, then that makes a very welcome change.’

Marco considered her so intently for a moment that Grace all but forgot to breathe.

‘Honesty I can deal with. Subterfuge is apt to make me angry.’

‘I’m not a liar, Mr Aguilar, and neither am I trying to fool you in any way.’

‘I believe you, Grace. I believe you are exactly who you say you are, and also the reason why you accosted me yesterday. Did you not think that I would check? So … That aside, tell me some more about this cause that makes you risk being apprehended to get to me—I would very much like to hear how you got involved in the first place. Why don’t you start by telling me about that?’

She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d checked up on her, but all the same she was.

Immensely relieved that she had nothing to hide, Grace told him about finishing her studies at university and still being unsure about what career she wanted to take up. Then she told him about a conversation she’d had with a friend of her parents whose son had been giving up his post at a children’s charity in London to travel a bit and see the world. That family friend had suggested she apply for the post. As luck had had it, she’d done well at the interview and got the job. Grace had been there for a couple of years when the opportunity had arisen for her to go out to Africa and visit one of the many orphanages the charity was endeavouring to assist. She had visited several times since, but that first visit had changed her life, she told Marco, feeling a renewed rush of the zeal that gripped her to personally try and do something about the heartrending plight of the children she’d witnessed.

As she finished speaking, with hope travelling to the highest peaks one minute as she believed she might elicit Marco’s help, then plummeting down the slopes of anxiety the next in fear that he might refuse her, Grace heard nothing but the sound of her own quickened breath as she waited for his response.

The sun’s burning heat seemed to intensify just then—even beneath the wide umbrella that provided shade for them. A slippery trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts inside the silky white camisole she wore, and unthinkingly she touched her fingertips to the spot to wipe it away. When she glanced up again she saw an expression in Marco’s eyes that was so akin to naked desire that she froze, her heartbeat slowing to a deep, heavy thud inside her chest and a carnal longing so acute invading her that the power of it made her feel quite faint …

Her soft voice had died away to silence, but more than a little transfixed Marco found himself helplessly staring at the sight of Grace’s slender fingers moving to the neckline of her camisole. Diverted from her explanation about how she’d become involved with the charity, he’d already tracked the little bead of sweat that had slithered down from the base of her throat, and when he saw her dip her fingers inside the plain white silk underneath the small embroidered buttons to deal with it he was gripped by an all-consuming lust so blazing that it turned him instantly hard. His desire was fuelled even further by his conviction that her action had been totally innocent and unconscious.

Grace Faulkner was already making his heart race faster than it had done with any other woman whose company he’d shared in a long, long time, and he realised that he wasn’t in a hurry for her to leave him any time soon.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ he asked, getting abruptly to his feet. At his guest’s hesitant nod, he started to move back towards the open French doors. ‘What will it be? A glass of wine? Lemonade or some fruit juice, perhaps?’

‘A glass of lemonade would be perfect … thank you.’

‘I will go and find my housekeeper.’

When he returned from the kitchen, where he’d arranged for their drinks to be brought out to them by Inês—a local woman he had hired as housekeeper and cook—Marco returned to the balcony, feeling a little more in control of the fierce attraction his pretty guest had unwittingly provoked. Yet his pulse still raced at the sight of her sitting quietly beneath the parasol. With her pale blonde hair lying softly against her shoulders, even her profile was angelic. He privately confessed he would do almost anything to get her to stay with him for the rest of the afternoon.

Her smile was shy and a little reticent as he sat down again. He had the sense that when she wasn’t championing a cause she was the quiet, reflective sort. He liked that. It would be a refreshing change from the women he usually dated … all spiky demands and too-high expectations of where a relationship with him might lead.

‘Our drinks will be along shortly,’ he told her.

‘Mr Aguilar …’ she began.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Marco,’ he corrected gently.

Her incandescent summer-blue gaze slid away for a moment. He saw her take down a deeper breath, as if to centre herself.

‘I was wondering if you’d made a decision about whether you might be able to help the children or not?’

He took a few moments to marshal his thoughts. He hadn’t embellished the truth when he’d told Grace at their first meeting that there were many charities he supported, and there were quite a few children’s charities amongst them. Yet none of them was directly helping orphaned children. The subject was apt to bring back memories of a childhood that he had striven hard not just to forget but to hide from the world at large. Perhaps he had subconsciously aimed to dissociate himself from that quarter entirely in case it brought forth more intrusive and uncomfortable questions from the media about his past?

‘I have no doubt that your children’s cause is one that a wealthy man like me ought to readily support, Grace, and while I am definitely not averse to making a donation, having listened and talked to you, I would like a bit more time to reflect on what level of help I can give. If you leave the details with me I will look over them at my leisure and get back to you. Is that all right with you?’

‘Of course … and it’s fantastic that you’ve decided to help us. It’s just that …’

She leaned forward and he saw conflict in her eyes—maybe at trying to press him to take action sooner rather than later, which warred with her innate impulse to be polite. Even so, he wasn’t above using whatever weapon he could from his personal armoury to get what he wanted. His success in business hadn’t come about without a propensity to be single-mindedly ruthless from time to time. Pretty little Grace wanted something from him, and likewise he wanted something from her, he realised. He didn’t doubt there had to be a way of gratifying both needs.

‘It’s just that I don’t want to take up any more of your time than necessary,’ she said in a rush. ‘I know you must be an extremely busy man.’

‘Are you in a hurry to leave?’

‘Not at all, but …’

‘Yes?’

‘I really don’t want to offend you, or perhaps bring back hurtful memories of your past, but I just want to paint a picture for you if I may? Can you imagine what it must be like not only to have to contend with being be an orphan, with no mother or father to love you and take care of you, but also to live in a dirty shack without even the most basic amenities that most of us take for granted? I don’t mean to be pushy, I really don’t, but the sooner we can alleviate their dreadful living conditions and put up a new more sanitary building, the better. For that we desperately need financial help. So when you say you’ll look over the details at your leisure … do you have any idea how long that might take?’

Inside his chest, Marco’s heart was thundering. No, he didn’t have to imagine what it was like to grow up without a mother or father to take care of him … not when he’d personally experienced it, growing up in a children’s home where there had been about five or six children to every carer. The sense of emotional deprivation it had left him with would be with him for ever, and no amount of money, career success or comfortable living would alleviate his underlying feelings of being isolated from the rest of the world and certainly not as deserving of love as other people.

But at least the building he had lived in had been safe and hygienic. He abhorred the idea of innocent children having to contend with the dreadful conditions Grace had emphatically outlined to him, so he would be writing her a cheque so that they could have their new building. But he wouldn’t be hurried.

‘Whilst I am a compassionate man, Grace, I am first and foremost a businessman, who is meticulous about looking over the details of every transaction I make. I’m afraid you are going to have to be a little more patient if you want my help.’

‘It’s hard to be patient when you personally know the children who are suffering,’ she murmured, her cheeks turning a delicate rose. ‘You’ve checked out that I am who I say I am, and that the charity I represent is absolutely legitimate, so why delay? I can assure you every penny of the money you give us will be accounted for, and you’ll get a receipt for everything.’

‘I am pleased to hear it, but if you knew how many worthy charities petition me for financial aid you would perhaps understand why I must take the appropriate time to discern who receives it and when.’ He paused to bestow upon her a more concentrated glance. ‘You’re studying me as if you cannot understand my caution in writing you a cheque straight away? Maybe you think that because I clearly have the money I shouldn’t hesitate to give it to your charity? Perhaps you believe that I should feel guilty about having so much? If that is so, then you should know that I worked hard from a very young age to have the success I have now. One thing is for sure … I did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, and neither was good fortune handed to me on a plate.’

The woman sitting opposite him at the table bit down heavily on her plump lower lip and her glance suddenly became fixated on the mosaic-tiled tabletop. When she next looked up her lovely blue eyes were glistening, Marco saw.