Postcards From Rio: Master of Her Innocence / To Play with Fire / A Taste of Desire

‘I thought nuns had to cut their hair short.’

Idiot, Clare silently berated herself. She had forgotten that she wasn’t wearing her nun’s habit and veil. Her hair had dried quickly after her shower, but the humidity and the fact that she did not have her straighteners had resulted in a wild tangle of curls tumbling halfway down her back. She tensed as Diego reached out and wound a curl around his fingers.

‘It feels like silk,’ he murmured. ‘And it’s such an amazing colour. It reminds me of the conkers I saw children collecting in England when I was there one autumn.’ His eyes narrowed on Clare’s flushed face. ‘It’s a pity to hide such beautiful hair beneath a veil.’

She sensed he was waiting for an explanation and searched her mind for one. ‘I’m a novice, which is why I wear a white veil instead of a black one. I don’t have to cut my hair until I take my final vows.’

‘When will you do that?’

‘Soon,’ she assured him quickly.

Diego shut the door of the Jeep and resumed his position stretched out on the mattress with his shoulders propped against a pile of cushions. He tucked his hands behind his head and the action drew Clare’s gaze to his bare chest and superb muscle definition.

‘So you are not yet absolutely committed to your cause?’ he said softly. ‘You could change your mind?’

The speculative gleam in his light grey eyes sent a quiver along her spine as she became aware of the sexual chemistry fizzing in the close confines of the Jeep. Clare realised she had swapped one danger for another. She had felt unsafe in the hut, but her intense awareness of Diego could prove to be a greater threat to her peace of mind, especially when his gaze lingered quite blatantly on her breasts that were inadequately covered by her cotton chemise.

She remembered Becky and the vital reason why she needed to get to Torrente. ‘Nothing will deter me from the path I have chosen.’

His mouth curved into a sexy smile that should be illegal in front of susceptible females. ‘You don’t think you could be tempted to choose a different path?’

Heaven help her. She wished he would stop looking at her as if he was imagining stripping her naked and having his wicked way with her. She glanced rather desperately around the Jeep for something to cover herself with. ‘Could I borrow a sleeping bag?’

‘Help yourself.’

She unzipped the bag and gave it a thorough inspection for tarantulas before she got into it and pulled the zip up to her chin. Immediately her temperature soared but at least her body was hidden from Diego’s gaze. ‘Temptation is the work of the devil,’ she said primly.

‘Are you telling me you have never been tempted by desire, which is a perfectly natural human instinct?’

His voice was like molten syrup sliding sensuously over her body, inciting all sorts of shocking images in her head. She was fiercely attracted to Diego but she certainly wasn’t going to admit it. ‘If I did ever feel tempted...I would pray until those feelings passed.’

The Jeep was suddenly plunged into blackness as Diego switched off the lamp. Clare heard him moving. He was obviously trying to get comfortable but his height meant that he had to lie diagonally across the Jeep.

‘While you’re praying to be delivered from temptation, maybe you could say one for me, Sister,’ he muttered. ‘You’d better pray real hard because I keep picturing you in your cotton nightdress and I’ll be honest, I’ve never been so tempted by a woman in my life.’

If the devil did exist and was waiting to receive sinners into the fires of hell, he was toast, Diego thought to himself. He was burning up with desire to unzip Sister Clare’s sleeping bag and remove the tantalising, almost see-through garment she was wearing. If he had ever given a thought to what nuns wore in bed he would have guessed something demure and ankle-length, not a sexy little slip that left little to his imagination.

‘I’m sorry I interrupted you when you were reading,’ she said quietly. Her voice was as soft as the velvet darkness surrounding them. ‘You told me you had a poor education, so when did you discover an appreciation of classic and contemporary literature? I noticed you have a collection of books by a wide range of authors.’

The question took Diego back almost two decades to when he and Cruz had been employed by Earl Bancroft. His first instinct was to tell Sister Clare to mind her own business, but he needed something to distract his thoughts from his damnable desire for her.

‘I once worked at a diamond mine in Brazil which was owned by an English earl. My friend was dating the Earl’s daughter, and I used to go to the ranch house with him and chat up the housekeeper.’ He grinned. ‘Lucia was a few years older than me and she taught me a lot.’

‘About literature?’ Clare asked disbelievingly.

‘Well, no. I admit I was more interested in her physical attributes than her mind. But she used to let me borrow books from the Earl’s library while he was away.’

Diego remembered he had been blown away by the number of books to choose from. When he had been in prison, Father Vincenzi had taught him English and encouraged him to read, and he had developed a love of well-written stories—anything from classic literature to political thrillers. After his release he had gone to work at the diamond mine at Montez Claros and had spent his free time in Earl Bancroft’s library, glad to escape his life of hard physical labour while he was absorbed in a book.

‘What happened to your friend who was dating the Earl’s daughter?’ Clare asked curiously.

‘He married her, eventually, and now they have twin boys.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to get married like your friend?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

Diego gave a contemplative sigh. ‘I had a girlfriend once who liked me to buy her boxes of chocolates, but because she was watching her weight she only ate the strawberry creams and left the other flavours. To me, marriage is like only enjoying your favourite chocolate in a selection box and ignoring all the other flavours, which to my way of thinking is a waste,’ he explained laconically.

Clare made a choked sound. ‘That is the most chauvinistic statement I have ever heard. You are...’ she struggled to find an adjective that conveyed her disgust ‘...astonishing.’

‘You’re not the first woman to think so.’

Clare could not see his expression in the dark Jeep but she pictured his sexy grin. ‘I didn’t mean it in a good way,’ she muttered.

‘I still think that how I choose to live my life is more understandable than your decision to deny yourself the pleasures of physical intimacy,’ he drawled. ‘How can you be certain you won’t want to marry in the future if you have never had a relationship with a man? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to at least date a few guys before you make your final vows?’

‘As a matter of fact I did have a relationship, with a two-timing compulsive liar and cheater.’ She could not disguise the bitterness in her voice when she thought of Mark.

‘Ah.’ Diego’s response was laden with meaning.

Clare frowned. ‘What do you mean, “Ah”?’

‘My theory is that it is possible, likely even, that your decision to become a nun was the result of having your heart broken by the guy who cheated on you.’ Diego sounded satisfied that he had resolved a question that had been niggling him. ‘You were hurt once and you have decided to hide away from life so that you don’t risk getting hurt again.’

Clare was tempted to tell Mr Know-It-All what he could do with his theory but, although she hated to admit it to herself, there was a grain of truth in Diego’s words. Her break-up with Mark had not made her turn to a religious life, but she had become a bit of a hermit for the past year.

‘What was your ex-boyfriend, apart from a jerk? I mean, what job does he do?’ Diego reworded his question.

‘His name is Mark Penry, which I expect means nothing to you as you spend most of your time living away from civilisation, but he is a very successful male model. He recently appeared in an advertising campaign for the famous Lux brand of underwear. Pictures of Mark wearing just a pair of designer boxer shorts featured on billboards in just about every major city around the world.’

‘You mean you broke your heart over a pretty boy who advertises pants?’ Diego said sardonically.

‘He’s not a pretty boy... Well, actually he is,’ Clare conceded, remembering how she’d found it irritating when Mark had checked his appearance in every mirror he passed. ‘The point is that he let me believe we had a future together. I felt such a fool when I discovered that he was sleeping with another model, especially as many of the other staff at A-Star PR knew, but they didn’t tell me because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings.’

It was odd that in all other aspects of her life she was sensible to the point of boring, Clare mused, but her good sense seemed to desert her when it came to picking men. She remembered when she was seventeen she’d fallen for a boy at college and had believed Tony returned her feelings. But she’d been devastated when she discovered that he had only asked her out because he’d made a bet with his mates that he could get her into bed. Clare recalled the advice Aunt Edith had given her.

‘Don’t be in a rush to have sex. One day you will meet the right man, who you will love with all your heart and soul and who will love you.’

Aunt Edith’s rather brusque manner had hidden a kind heart. She had understood that Clare had felt second-best when she was a child because her parents had lavished most of their attention on Becky. Clare had taken her aunt’s words to heart, and all through university she had dated guys but had never been tempted to take the relationships further. When she’d met Mark she had thought that he was ‘the one.’ But finding out that he was a liar and cheater had shattered her illusions, especially when Mark had said he’d been forced to get sex elsewhere because of Clare’s insistence on waiting until she felt ready to give her virginity to him.

But Mark was a saint compared to Diego Cazorra! She would never be able to look at a box of chocolates again without being reminded of his outrageous attitude towards women. She wished she was brave enough to go and sleep in the hut. It seemed impossible that she would be able to fall asleep when she was supremely conscious of Diego’s half-naked body squashed up against her with only her sleeping bag to separate them.

It was her last conscious thought. When she opened her eyes again she saw through the window that the sky had lightened to pearly grey tinged with the palest pink as the sun rose above the tree tops.

Something had disturbed her. She vaguely remembered hearing a harsh voice and realised that Diego was speaking in what she assumed was Portuguese. She unzipped the sleeping bag so that she could sit up, and turned to find him muttering in his sleep. Heaven knew what he was dreaming about. His features were drawn into an expression of terrible anguish and he was tossing his head restlessly from side to side.

‘Assassino!’ He shouted the word and then covered his face with his forearm and gave a groan that sounded as if it had been ripped from his soul.

‘Diego!’ She called his name several times but could not wake him. He groaned again as if he was in agony. Was he ill? In desperation, Clare shook his shoulder. ‘Diego. Diego. Mr Cazorra, wake up.’

He moved so quickly that she was taken off guard when he slid his hand behind her neck and threaded his fingers into her hair.

‘Do you remember what I said I would do if you called me Mr Cazorra?’ he drawled.

CHAPTER FOUR

DIEGO’S SILVER WOLF’S eyes gleamed with a feral hunger as he drew Clare’s face down to his and angled his mouth over her lips. His kiss was like no other she had ever experienced—deeply sensual and so utterly irresistible that she did not stand a chance against his skilful seduction.

Still half-dazed with sleep, but more dazzled by him, her lips parted of their own volition when his mouth exerted subtle pressure. Like a connoisseur of fine wine, he tasted her slowly and unhurriedly, yet with such bone-shaking eroticism that she melted against him.

The sense of unreality she had felt since she’d arrived in Brazil increased, and she sank into a dreamlike state where she was only conscious of the strength of Diego’s arms around her, the divine smell of him, and the taste of him when she dipped her tongue into his mouth. He overwhelmed her and the feel of his hand smoothing up and down her spine evoked a languorous warmth in her veins.

It seemed perfectly natural when he rolled her on to her back so that she was lying beneath him. His weight crushed her and she felt the slight abrasion of his chest hairs brush against the upper swell of her breasts above the neckline of her chemise.

He deepened the kiss, and the languorous feeling was replaced with a fierce pull of desire in the pit of her stomach so that she lifted her hips, unconsciously seeking to assuage the ache inside her. She sensed a new urgency in Diego, a barely controlled savagery as he ravished her mouth with his intoxicating mastery, taking everything she offered him and demanding more.

Molten heat pooled between Clare’s legs when she felt the hard ridge of Diego’s arousal straining beneath his jeans and pushing insistently into the cradle of her hips. She heard him mutter something indistinct and the sexy huskiness in his voice scraped her sensitive nerve endings. He was so male, hard against her softness, his passion without frills, without subtlety, a primal hunger that threatened to consume her in its fiery flame.

She lifted her hand and touched the blond stubble on his jaw. It was not rough as she had expected, but felt silky beneath her fingertips. Utterly engrossed, she moved her hand higher to stroke his hair back from his cheek—and froze.

The top of his right ear was missing.

In an instant she was hurtled back to reality as she thought of Becky and the ghastly contents of the box the kidnappers had sent her. Shame engulfed her as she realised that while Diego had been kissing her she had forgotten about her sister’s plight.

Diego’s jaw hardened when he saw her shocked expression and he flicked his head so that his hair fell forwards to cover his mutilated ear. What did it mean? Clare wondered numbly. Why did he have the same injury that the kidnappers might have inflicted on her sister?

She pushed against his chest and when he rolled off her she snatched a breath and groped for her sanity in a world that had gone mad.

‘You were having a nightmare and I was trying to wake you.’ She bit her lip as she remembered the indescribable horror in his voice when he’d shouted out. ‘What was your dream about? You sounded like you were being tortured.’ Her own voice shook and she was incapable of making light of what had happened.

‘I don’t remember dreaming about anything.’ Diego swore silently. He knew what his dream had been about because it was always the same dream. The other inmates had called it the initiation, when new prisoners were beaten until they were a bloodied pulp and the prison guards looked the other way, or sometimes joined in. His horrific nightmares were a legacy of when he had been in prison and, although it was many years since he had been released from what had been a living hell, time had not erased the memories.

‘You spoke in your sleep but I couldn’t understand you.’ Sister Clare’s lovely face looked troubled. ‘I wonder if something traumatic happened in your past that you relive in your dreams.’

She was too close to the truth for Diego’s comfort. He shrugged. ‘You may be right,’ he drawled. ‘I was deeply traumatised when Brazil lost the football World Cup.’

‘I was being serious.’ She firmed her lips that moments ago had softened when Diego had kissed her. He dragged his eyes from the temptation of her lush mouth and opened the door of the Jeep, pausing to grab his rucksack containing his wash kit before he jumped down and walked away.

His nightmares were the reason why he had never spent an entire night with a woman before, Diego brooded as he strode through the tribal village. When he visited his mistresses in Rio he always left them after sex and went home to sleep alone. During daytime hours he could control his mind and suppress his memories, but while he slept the demons inside him tortured his subconscious so that sometimes he woke up believing he was back in the prison cell he had shared with ten or more other men. The cell had been so small that the inmates had been forced to take it in turns to lie down on the floor to snatch an hour of sleep if they were lucky.

The experience had left him with an irrational fear of confined spaces which made him come out in a cold sweat whenever he rode in an elevator. Even being in the Jeep sometimes made him feel claustrophobic, and he kept the windows open so that he could feel fresh air on his face. He was sweating now, partly from his nightmare and partly because, as the sun burned through the mist, the humidity in the air rose rapidly. He walked through the trees to where a tributary of the river made a natural pool, which was safe to swim in.

Why the hell had he kissed Sister Clare like that? He had only intended to tease her and brush his lips lightly over hers, but when she had opened her mouth for him and he’d felt her ardent response, he had been powerless to resist her. It had never happened to him before. He was always in control.

Diego’s jaw clenched. He had just proved that his self-discipline was not infallible and the discovery that he could be tempted to act without restraint shook him badly. If he could succumb to passion, he might just as easily succumb to anger and violence, like he had done when he was seventeen.

He stripped and dived into the pool, relishing the cool water washing over his heated skin. He felt more at home in the rainforest than he did in a city. Here, he was free to live his life on his terms without the need to bow to social conventions. Compared to the favela where he had spent his childhood, and prison where he had lost his soul, the tropical wilderness, although dangerous in its own way, provided him with a sense of peace. He would not allow a novice nun with the face of an angel and the body of Aphrodite to disturb his sanctuary, he assured himself.

He looked up at the sky and watched a bank of clouds roll in above the tree tops. Experience told him that another day of heavy rain lay ahead, and flooding would make the road from Inua village up to the border virtually impassable. He shrugged. His task was to escort Sister Clare to Torrente so that she could teach at the Sunday school and prepare to make her final vows and, although he felt she was making a mistake by committing her life to the church, it was her choice and none of his business.

* * *

Clare was conscious of Diego’s brooding gaze as she stepped out of the guest hut and walked over to where he was leaning against the Jeep. She assumed he had swum in the river as his hair was damp, but it was drying quickly in the stifling heat and turning blonder by the minute. At least he was fully clothed, but his tight-fitting white T-shirt clung to the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles and evoked memories of when she had run her hands over his naked torso.

Although she was too hot in her nun’s habit, she was glad that her body was hidden from his view, especially when she felt her hard nipples chafe against her bra. She was shocked by her wanton response to Diego and determined to keep her distance from him for the second leg of their journey to Torrente.

As she drew nearer to him he jammed his hat on to his head and pulled the brim down over his eyes, almost as if he wanted to hide his expression from her. If only her veil offered the same protection, she thought ruefully. A large raindrop landed on the dusty path in front of her, followed by another and another. She glanced up at the sullen clouds that had covered up the sun. ‘I’m ready to go. I expect you want to get on the road before the weather worsens.’

She expected him to agree, but he did not move, and her intense awareness of him detected his sudden tension.

‘Are you sure you want to continue?’ Beneath the brim of his hat his eyes gleamed as bright and hard as polished steel. ‘It’s not too late for you to change your mind...and choose a different path.’

Clare realised he was not talking about her journey to Torrente. For a split second she was tempted to tell him the truth about why she needed to go to the town, but she could not forget the kidnappers’ threat to kill her sister if she involved anyone else. She did not know if she could trust Diego. She barely knew anything about him and the few facts he had divulged about himself made him even more of an enigma.

‘I am quite sure of the path I must follow,’ she said in a low voice, her throat tightening with fear as she faced the prospect of meeting the kidnappers.

‘Deus. Just because your boyfriend was a jerk, you are going to cut yourself off from life, from love?’ Diego forgot his decision not to get involved in Sister Clare’s life. ‘When we kissed, you were warm and responsive in my arms. What will you do with all your passion and fire when you are shut away in a convent?’

Clare laughed derisively. ‘What do you know about love? A man who describes marriage as limiting himself to choosing only one flavour of chocolates from a selection box?’

He stared at her and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re right. I’ve never experienced love.’ He opened the door of the Jeep and, before Clare had time to realise his intention, he lifted her off her feet and dumped her on the passenger seat. She took a deep breath to steady her racing heart as he climbed in beside her and started the engine.

‘Never?’ she asked curiously. ‘Didn’t your parents love you?’

He did not reply while he negotiated a series of deep holes in the road, but after a few minutes he said, ‘I never met my father. He abandoned my mother after he got her pregnant with me. The only information she told me about him was that he was an Englishman called Philip Hawke who had come to work as a travel rep at the hotel in Brazil where my mother was a chambermaid. They had an affair, but when she told him she was expecting his child he returned to England and she never heard from him again.’

But Diego had heard from his father’s family. Soon after his release from prison he had been contacted by a law firm in England, who had explained that Philip Hawke had died some years earlier but had confided to his own father that he had an illegitimate child in Brazil. Geoffrey Hawke had spent his remaining years searching for his grandson without success. Before Geoffrey died he had instructed the law firm to continue the search, and eventually they had tracked Diego down and gave him the astounding news that his grandfather had left him a fortune in his will.

The money had allowed Diego to become a business partner with his friend Cruz Delgado. They had bought the Old Betsy diamond mine where Cruz’s father had found the famous Estrela Vermelha—the Red Star diamond. The discovery in the mine of diamonds worth millions of dollars—including a rare pink diamond, the Estrela Rosa, which Diego had found and kept in his private collection of gems—had made the two men multimillionaires. Recently, another mine that had been abandoned many years ago and was only discovered when Cruz had been given a map of the hidden tunnels by his father-in-law, Earl Bancroft, had been found to contain a huge supply of diamonds, making Diego and Cruz two of the richest men in Brazil.

Wealth certainly had great benefits, Diego mused. But his penthouse apartment in Rio, his various other properties around the world and even his collection of luxury sports cars were simply toys to amuse him. Nothing filled the void inside him or made him forget the poverty and deprivation of his childhood. When he was growing up, what he had wanted more than anything was to feel loved. Love was more precious than gold or glittering gems but, after thirty-seven years without it, his heart had become as hard and unbreakable as the diamonds he mined.