Indebted To Moreno

Of course—he’d been a complete fool. How could he have not realised? It had all been there in front of him, but he had been so set on his mission for Esmeralda—and so stunned to find himself face-to-face with Red after all these years—that his intelligence had failed him and he hadn’t made the connections that he should have done.

Red. Scarlett. The name written above the window of the small boutique. And the designer’s name was Rose Cavalliero.

Rose red. Scarlett.

The velvet curtains had opened and a model had emerged from behind them, walking up the runway, her progress marked by gasps of delight and admiration. She was a willow-slim beauty, and the dress she was wearing was a masterpiece of lace and silk, a fairy-tale wedding gown.

But he spared it only one brief glance. There was no space in his mind to focus on anything but the woman who stood on the side of the runway, microphone in hand, talking about trains, beading, boned bodices...

All he could think was that she—Red—was also Rose Cavalliero—

Scarlett’s talented designer—the one his sister dreamed of having to create a dress for her upcoming wedding.

The woman he had once known as Red was the woman he had come to London to meet—and to persuade her to come back to Spain with him.

Suddenly the room that had already felt so alien to him in its total focus on femininity, the overwhelming reek of clashing perfumes, seemed to constrict around him, the lights dimming. It couldn’t be any further from the rooms in his father’s home where he had lived as a boy. The old-fashioned high-walled castle so wrongly named Castillo Corazón—the castle of the heart! But the feeling of being trapped was just the same.

As an adolescent, he had felt this sensation of being cornered when his new stepmother had insisted that he meet all her female friends—the wives or daughters of acquaintances, some of whom had once been or still were his father’s mistresses. They had almost mobbed him, circling round him like brightly painted predators. He had learned fast and young to recognise when someone was genuine and when they were fake.

Or he’d thought he had.

He hadn’t recognised the secrets behind Red’s green eyes. And he had known the slash of betrayal when he had found out the truth.

‘And perhaps for an older bride, this elegant look...’

The clear, confident voice carried perfectly, no real need for the microphone, but it was not the woman on the runway whom Nairo was seeing. Instead it was the woman he had met in the boutique that morning.

Hell, she’d still deceived him even then. She had known who he was, known that he had come to see her, and yet she had let him linger in his belief that she was just the receptionist and that Rose Cavalliero was someone else entirely.

She had had the opportunity to tell him the truth then, but she hadn’t taken it. Instead she had dodged the issue, kept it to herself, and then she’d dismissed him once again in a brief and curt email.

Scowling, Nairo remembered the message that had reached him in his suite just an hour and a half ago. Rose Cavalliero was sorry, but she was afraid that she couldn’t manage to fit in a meeting with him after all. She apologised for the inconvenience, but the truth was that she wasn’t taking on any more commissions at the moment. She was sorry that he had been inconvenienced in coming to London for nothing, but she needed to take time to care for her mother...

Coldly polite but dismissive. All of which could only mean that she had something to hide.

‘And this is the highlight of the Spring Collection. I’ve named it the Princess Bride.’

Perhaps it was the name, perhaps it was the sound of the murmurs of appreciation that flowed around the room, but something made Nairo look up to see yet another model emerging from behind the scarlet curtains.

In that instant he knew just why Esmeralda had been so insistent that this particular designer should create her dress. If she could make these women—every one of them—look so stunning, then what would she do for his sister? She would turn his shy, uncertain sibling into a glorious beauty—the princess she was meant to be—and surely that would give Esmeralda the confidence to face up to Duke Oscar’s critical and demanding family without making herself ill again. And that was what he owed to his sister.

A memory stirred in his mind. The image of Esmeralda when he had come back from Argentina, where his father had sent him as penance for his adolescent rebellion. His sister had always been slim, but then she had been frail and delicate as a tiny bird. He’d even been afraid to hug her in case she might break. It had torn at his conscience to realise that the truth was that she was suffering from anorexia. It had taken him months to encourage her to let go her hold on her appetite and eat.

There and then he’d vowed that he would never let her down again. That he would do whatever it took to make her happy—keep her healthy and strong. To do that he now had to bring Rose Cavalliero back with him. Even if she had turned out to be the woman he had known all those years ago.

And when he had Red—or Rose or whatever her name was—in the castle in Andalusia, then he could tie up all the loose ends that were left hanging from when they had been together before. He would get rid of this unwelcome desire that still made him burn for her and he would teach her how it had felt to be the one cast aside when something better presented itself.

Leaning back against the wall, he folded his arms and prepared to wait and watch until it was time to talk to her.

Rose had been so focussed on the fashion show and making sure that everything ran smoothly that she had had no time at any point to actually look up and take notice of the crowd. But now, with the last dress displayed and the final parade of models down the runway, she could relax and look up, take a breath, glance out across the room...

And that was when she saw him.

Apart from the fact that Nairo Moreno was the only male in the room, it was impossible to miss him. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, dressed all in black, with his shirt open loose at the neck. Like a big dark bird of prey amongst a flock of gaudy, chattering parrots. The burn of his golden-eyed stare was like a laser beam coming across the room.

He must have read the email she’d sent trying to get out of the commission he wanted. She’d asked for a receipt, so she knew he’d opened it. But he had determined to ignore it. She’d tried to avoid telling him who she was—who the designer Rose Cavalliero really was—but it seemed she’d failed miserably. Because now he was here—waiting, watching like some dark sentinel at the door.

‘Rose!’

‘Ms Cavalliero!’

Belatedly becoming aware of the way that she had been standing, silent and stunned, while her audience grew restless, Rose blinked hard, clearing her eyes of the haze of panic that had blurred her vision and forced herself to focus. At the front of the audience were the special guests, the reporters who had been invited specially in the hope of giving the new collection a great opening. That even more hopefully would lead to the sort of sales that would save her business, pay the rent for another twelve months. Give her mother a place to live and rest as she recovered from the draining bouts of chemotherapy. They’d only just found each other again properly; she couldn’t bear it if their time together was so short.

Dragging her gaze away from the dark figure at the door, she switched on what she hoped was a convincing smile as she turned her attention to the first reporter to get to her feet—a well-known fashion writer for a luxury magazine.

‘Do you have a question?’ she managed. ‘I’m happy to answer...’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

It wasn’t the fashion reporter who spoke but another woman, a blonde she hadn’t spotted before. Rose’s heart sank. She knew this woman and so what was coming.

‘Don’t you think it’s something of an irony, the fact that you are publicising your new collection now—with images of love and happy-ever-afters—when your own story is so very different?’

The bite in her voice was unmistakeable, sharp as acid. Rose recognised her as Geraldine Somerset, a person she had seen at one of Andrew’s parties. The woman everyone had expected to be his fiancée before he’d met Rose.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you do.’

Geraldine lifted a newspaper that had been lying on her chair. Rose had no need to see it to know that it was a notorious scandal rag. She also knew just what headline the woman wanted everyone to see. Geraldine unfolded the sheet to its full length, waved it above her head, turning so that everyone could read the banner headline: ‘Dream-maker or dream-breaker?’

Rose even knew what pictures went with that story. How could she not when a copy of just that paper had been pushed through her letter box less than a week ago? On one side of the text was a picture of Andrew, head down, frowning and glum. The other was a picture of Rose herself, striding into her boutique—the name Scarlett perfectly clear and in focus. It had been taken shortly after the news of the broken engagement, the cancelled wedding, had hit the fan.

‘Would you want to buy your wedding dress from a woman who only cancelled her own marriage just three days before the ceremony?’ Geraldine was demanding now. ‘Would you entrust the most important day of your life—or your daughter’s—to someone who had so little care about her fiancé that she left him broken-hearted practically at the altar?’

‘That isn’t the way it was...’ Rose protested, only to have the newspaper waved even more violently in rejection of her words.

‘“Dream-maker or dream-breaker?”’ Geraldine declared, clearly very proud of the headline it was obvious she had created.

It was equally apparent that she was having the effect she wanted. The whole mood of the evening had changed. The murmurs of appreciation and approval that had marked the end of the fashion show had now changed to darker, more critical comments. Already people were pushing back their chairs, getting to their feet.

‘This has nothing to do with my work!’ Rose tried, but it was like Canute asking the sea to go back. Everything had changed and Geraldine, with her emotive headline, the carefully slanted photographs, had turned the tide of opinion.

Rose had forgotten that Nairo Moreno was here. That he was watching all this.

The moment the thought had crossed her mind she lost her concentration as she flicked a hasty, nervous glance to where Nairo leaned against the wall by the door. Or rather, where Nairo had been leaning. Even as she watched she saw his eyes narrow sharply, the beautiful, sensual mouth tighten until it was just a thin, hard line. The frown that snapped his black brows frankly terrified her.

Not meeting her eyes, his gaze fixed on the scene before him, he levered himself up from his position and stood tall and dark and powerful as he surveyed the room.

‘The woman’s bad luck—she taints everything she touches.’ Geraldine was getting into full flow again, her voice rising to almost a screech, the newspaper flapping wildly as she waved it high. ‘I mean—who would want her to design a dress...?’

‘I would.’

Cold and clear, the response cut through the buzz of outrage and comment that had filled the room. The silence that fell was as if a huge blanket had been dropped over everyone, stifling any sound. The audience stilled too, as Nairo moved forward, his movements the dangerous prowl of a predatory wild cat. A path opened up to let him through and even Geraldine froze to the spot, her words deserting her as he came closer.

Rose couldn’t blame her. Seen like this, Nairo Moreno was the sort of man who could suck all the air out of a room simply by existing. She found herself struggling to breathe, waiting and watching...

‘I said I would.’

Nairo had reached Geraldine’s side now and he snatched the newspaper away from her, sparing it only the briefest, iciest glance before he crushed it brutally in one hand and tossed it aside, contempt in every inch of his powerful body.

‘I would have Miss Cavalliero design a dress for someone I loved. Anyone with eyes to see would do the same—wouldn’t you?’ he challenged, his fierce gaze raking over the rest of the audience. ‘Anyone but a fool could see that as a designer Miss Cavalliero is hugely skilled. As a man, I’m no expert in fashion...’

Rose watched in amazement as he actually shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of assumed self-deprecation.

It had to be assumed, didn’t it? Even as the Jett she’d known he wouldn’t willingly admit to any sort of weakness in his own make-up. But the gesture had worked. The women surrounding him had actually smiled. Some of them were nodding.

‘But even I can see that these dresses are works of art.’

He had the room in the palm of his hand, Rose realised. He was turning the tide of disapproval that Geraldine had threatened to direct against her.

‘Miss Cavalliero...’

Nairo had moved closer, was holding out a hand to her. For the space of a dazed heartbeat she stared at it, only realising after a moment that he meant to help her down from the runway, onto the floor of the main ballroom.

She needed that help. Needed the support of his strength and the warm power of that hand. But even as his grip closed over her fingers, she knew a sudden stunning change, felt the sting of burning electricity fizz through her so that the hold she took on him was more than to get down the steps to the floor. It was like being taken back in years, to the days when she had been just a stupid, crazy, hormone-ridden teenager and she had first met Jett. Back to the days when she had given him her heart, her soul, her virginity. And he had only to touch her to send her up in flames.

From being cold with shock, she was now burning with response and could feel the colour heating her cheeks.

‘Now can we talk about the dress you will create for my sister?’

Rose knew that everyone was watching, that she was the focus of all eyes, and she knew there was only one answer she could give. He had saved her reputation, her business, and the slam of the door told its own story: that Geraldine had conceded defeat and was on her way out of the room, out of the building—please heaven, out of her life.

She had caught that firm and deliberate emphasis on the word now even if no one else had. He knew she had tried so hard to get out of the commission he had proposed. The commission that would mean she would have to work with him, for him, all the time she was planning the dress for his sister. At least it was not for his bride.

But she’d been here once before, when Nairo had seemed to be her saviour and turned out to be a threat of danger she had barely escaped. So now had she been rescued or entrapped? Was he offering her freedom and a new security or had he actually caught her tight in some carefully planned and deliberately achieved spider’s web? Did he really just want her to design a dress for his sister or was there more to his intervention than that?

Right now it seemed that he was her saviour—at least that was what everyone else would think. And because of everyone else, all those eyes on her, she knew she had no option but to give him the response he wanted.

‘Miss Cavalliero?’

The prompt sounded easy, almost gentle, but she had regained enough composure to look into his eyes and easy and gentle were not what she saw there.

What she saw was ice, resolve and the sort of ruthless determination that warned her that if she didn’t do as he wanted, then he was more than capable of turning this apparent rescue mission into one of total, devastating destruction.

She had been offered a lifeline as long as she went along with what Nairo Moreno wanted. Her life had been full of problems before, but now it seemed that by escaping one set of difficulties she had landed herself with a whole new adversary. One who she suspected was much more formidable than anyone she’d come up against before.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. But what else could she do?

‘Of course, Señor Moreno...’ She forced her stiff lips into what must have looked like the most wooden and unbelievable of smiles. ‘I’d be happy to discuss your commission with you.’

CHAPTER THREE

NAIRO MIGHT HAVE said that he wanted to discuss the design for his sister’s wedding dress, but he showed no inclination to deal with that business right then and there. Instead he waited, smiling, courteous—apparently patient—while Rose spoke to the women who wanted to talk to her about designing their dresses, or their daughters’. The endorsement that Nairo Moreno had given her was apparently enough to convince them that Scarlett was the designer that everyone wanted now.

Which was not surprising really, Rose admitted to herself. After all, as she had discovered earlier in a quick, mind-blowing search on the Internet, the wedding that he was organising for his sister was to be the society event of the year. Esmeralda Roja Moreno was to marry into powerful Austrian aristocracy, it seemed. Duke Oscar Schlieburg was the eldest son of Prince Leopold of Magstein and his wedding was to be almost a state occasion. Her head was spinning simply at the thought of the boost of publicity and the prestige that would come to her business as a result of her involvement with such an event.

A boost that had already started, it seemed, as she collected up the lists of names and addresses of all the potential new customers she’d gained.

‘That seemed to be a success,’ Nairo’s cool voice drawled as the last customer went out the door.

‘Success is an understatement.’

Her response came faintly. She had been so absorbed in the matter in hand that she hadn’t really been aware of the fact that he had been there all the time, a silent observer, sitting on the edge of the runway, his long black-clad frame standing out so starkly from the white and silver décor. She’d been fooling herself, of course, if she’d let herself think that he had gone. He had set this response in progress with his intervention for his own personal reasons, and now he was going to claim what he felt he was owed.

A chill breeze seemed to blow across Rose’s skin as he dropped down from his place on the runway and started towards her and she wished everyone hadn’t left her quite so alone.

‘Th-thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.’

His dark head nodded, bronze eyes hooded to hide any emotion he might feel.

‘There is a price for my assistance.’

Of course there was. This was Nairo Moreno she was dealing with now. A man who had somehow built himself up from the shabby, broken beginnings of their lives when they had first met and who now was this powerful, wealthy man. There had to be a price on anything he did. He was no longer Jett, the youth she had run out on so long ago.

‘A price?’

‘Oh, don’t look so panicked,’ he mocked as she turned uncertain eyes on him. ‘I’m not going to demand your body in return for my favours in some odd modern version of droit du seigneur.’

He paused just long enough for her skin to smart under the bite of his mockery.

‘There wouldn’t be much point, would there? After all, we’ve already been there, haven’t we, querida?’

The pointed reminder that they had once been lovers, that he had been the one to take her virginity all those years before, drained the strength from her muscles, making her grab at a nearby chair for support. An innocence that then she had relinquished happily and unhesitatingly, she had been so much under the sway of the heated hunger she had known for this man, blinded to anything but her need for him.

‘Been there, done that—didn’t bother to stay around to get the tee shirt,’ she flashed at him, then immediately regretted her too-aggressive tone.

He might have stepped in to save her business earlier this evening, but what he had decided so surprisingly to give her, he could take away in the blink of an eye. Just as so many new customers had followed his lead to want to use her services, they could easily follow him away from her again if he chose to reject her after all.

She must not forget that she was no longer dealing with the Jett of ten years before. This man was a very different sort of male. Tall and powerful, his broad frame had filled out and strengthened where Jett had had a whipcord leanness that had been defined even further by the fact that there was never quite enough to eat in the squat.

Added to that he was someone else entirely—a man of status, with power and money no object. He had a sister who was marrying into the aristocracy and an estate which, if the Internet reports were to be believed, was more than the equal of his prospective in-laws. How he had come by that she had no idea; she didn’t want to think about it too closely. She had bitter memories of the appalling ways he had planned on acquiring more money ten years before. But it all added up to someone who was light years away from the scrawny, long-haired Jett she had once believed herself in love with.

Thank heaven she was well over that particular nasty infection! But the scars the past had left on her soul reminded her that she would do best to play this particular game very carefully. Every instinct warned her that Nairo Moreno played to win and that he would prove a spectacular opponent if she was foolish enough to challenge him too far.

‘Querida...’ she echoed cynically. ‘How come you’re suddenly living in Spain and tossing about Spanish endearments?’

‘Not suddenly,’ Nairo corrected flatly. ‘I always did live in Spain—or, rather, my family home was in Andalusia. And so, naturally, I grew up speaking Spanish.’

‘You never used Spanish when we— In the squat.’

‘No.’ There was even less emotion in the response this time if it was possible. ‘I didn’t. But then I didn’t want anyone there to know who I was.’

Shockingly the fact that he included her in the ‘anyone’ he hadn’t wanted to know the truth about his background, combined with the fact that he had only ever used his native language to her in the brutally sarcastic way he had said querida just now, stung at her deep inside.

‘And obviously neither did you. So tell me, when did “Red Brown” become the much more exotically named Rose Cavalliero?’

The room suddenly felt chill, as if the heating had been turned off, as from a shadowy corner of her mind came the echo of her mother’s voice on the day she had been called to the hospital to find Joy recovering from a brutal beating that Fred Brown had given her.

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