Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (32 page)

It had to be Luiz coming to find her. She didn’t even let herself think that it might be anyone else. In fact, that was the most stupid part of Felipe’s plan of abduction—to actually believe he could just drive away with her without having Luiz hard on his tail. Had he truly believed he would get as far as seduction? The crazy idiot. If she knew Luiz, the road off the mountain towards Los Aminos was probably blocked by now anyway. Felipe would have been stopped before he’d even got started.

The car was coming closer; she could hear the smooth, neat way it was being driven into the bends and corners—could even pick out the gear changes, the braking, the steady increase in speed then the smooth throttling back.

Yet he arrived round the final bend without warning. Odd that, she thought, as she lifted her head and just watched as he brought the strange car to a standstill perhaps ten feet away.

He didn’t get out of the car immediately, either. He just sat there with the headlights trained on her and, she presumed, looked at her looking at him.

Then his door came open. His feet scraped on gravel. And, finally, the full lean length of his body appeared. She couldn’t see his face—well, she could have done if she’d looked at it, but for some unaccountable reason she just didn’t want to.

He walked towards her. Stopped about two feet away and took a look around their remote surroundings. It was so quiet up here you could hear an ant move a leaf. The sky was a navy blue star-studded cloth and the mountains soared like giants standing on guard.

‘Where is he?’ was the first question he asked her, and he did it softly, with no inflexion whatsoever.

‘Unconscious,’ she replied. ‘In the car.’

Luiz nodded. That was all, no further questions. He didn’t even take a look at Felipe. With a flick of his fingers all the other doors flew open on the car he had been driving. Three men got out; one of them was Vito. They came towards them.

‘Deal with him,’ he said.

Caroline felt her blood turn cold. ‘No, Luiz,’ she protested, having visions of poor Felipe being thrown off the edge of the mountain. ‘He’s hurt. He needs help. I…’

Swooping down, he gathered her into his arms and straightened. He began striding back to the car he had arrived in, and Caroline had a ludicrous vision of herself in all her bridal finery, now ripped and soiled, with her pretty lace veil trailing on the dusty ground behind them.

It was only when they reached the open passenger door that she let herself dare look into Luiz’s face. What she saw there brought the first tears to her eyes since the whole ordeal had begun.

‘Don’t,’ she whispered unsteadily. ‘Don’t shut me out.’

He didn’t respond, just placed her in the car then walked round to climb in beside her. The engine fired and then they were moving, continuing down the mountain, because even she could see that it was too narrow here to turn the car around.

As they passed the drunken BMW she saw Vito heaving Felipe out of the car by using sheer brute strength. But he was gentle when he laid him out on the road to check him over. It was faintly reassuring to see that gentleness. Surely men like Vito would not be gentle with a man they were intending to tip over the edge of a mountain, she consoled herself.

A half-mile further on Luiz stopped the car where the road was a little wider and turned them back the way they had come. As they passed by the BMW again, she noticed
that another car had pulled up behind it and that Felipe was on his own two feet, leaning weakly against it with his head in his hands, while the rest of the men were wrestling the BMW out of harm’s way.

‘They won’t hurt him, will they?’ she asked Luiz anxiously.

‘No,’ was all he said.

It was reassuring, short though it was. On a small sigh she began to shiver. Luiz instantly flicked the car heater on, but the shivering continued. She knew it was shock, not cold—Luiz probably knew it too.

‘Tell me what happened after that fool of a waiter let Felipe convince him he was me so he could lure you out to my car.’

‘When you start shouting and swearing, I might tell you,’ Caroline countered dully. ‘But not before.’

‘All right.’ His fingers tensed around the steering wheel. ‘Let’s just deal with your problem with my self-control first,’ he clipped. ‘You want to see the man dead?’ he gritted. ‘You want to see his head hanging from the castle wall? You want to see me drive you up this mountain the same way he brought you down it?’

‘No.’ She answered all of his questions at the same time.

‘Then tell me what happened after he got you into my car,’ he repeated flatly.

So, quietly and as flatly as him, she told him everything, even the way it had been her fault that the car had ended up where it had. The only bit she missed out was the hellish row she and Felipe had had about Luiz’s father.

By then they were driving through the village and everyone was out. It was like a replay of the first time they had come through here. Only then it had been daylight and the expressions had been curious. Now they looked pale and worried and anxious. So she waved and smiled and hoped
to goodness they couldn’t tell that she was just about ready to cry her eyes out.

It was the same when they got back to the castle. Everyone was huddled around Neptune, waiting with anxious eyes as Luiz brought the car to a stop then grimly told her to stay exactly where she was.

He got out, ignored everyone, and came around the car to lift her out of her seat. Some gasped when they saw the state of her lovely dress and her pale face.

Her father stepped up and took hold of her hand. He looked dreadful. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him, and another one of those reassuring smiles appeared.

‘You don’t look it,’ he rasped.

‘Well, I am—I am,’ she repeated firmly.

‘Nevertheless, I will come with you…’

It was Luiz’s uncle Fidel. He fell into step beside Luiz as they walked into the great hall with her father still clinging to one of her hands. The first person she saw inside was Consuela. She was just standing there by the huge banqueting table, her face so white it could have been marble.

‘Put me down, Luiz,’ Caroline insisted.

He paused in his step but didn’t immediately comply.

‘Please,’ she pleaded.

Without a word, and with his dark face still that tightly closed book, he set her feet onto the cool stone floor and made sure she was steady before letting go of her. Caroline walked up to Consuela and simply—sadly—just put her arms around the older woman.

Instantly Consuela stiffened so violently that Caroline thought it was with rejection. Then she realised, as that stiff body began to tremble, that Consuela just wasn’t used to being held in any way. For all she had deserved punishment for what she had done to her own sister, she had paid for it—with thirty-five years of a barren marriage living
in a barren atmosphere where love and affection had been non-existent.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, for the other woman’s ears only. ‘He’s fine. Luiz’s men are looking after him.’

‘He should not have done it,’ Consuela said, but some of the tension eased out of her.

‘He’s bitter,’ Caroline explained. ‘And he has a right to be bitter, Tía Consuela,’ she added gently.

The older woman looked into Caroline’s face and sighed knowingly. ‘The
padre
gave you the diaries,’ she said.

At Caroline’s nod, she nodded also. That was all. They understood each other. If Caroline had read the diaries then she knew that if Luiz thought his life had been hard, growing up in the slums of New York, then Felipe’s life had been no easier, living here with a father who had despised him and a mother who had locked herself away in an emotional prison of her own making.

Then Consuela said. ‘We will leave here tonight.’ It was a decision that made Caroline glance at her anxiously.

‘You don’t have to do that, Consuela,’ she told her. ‘This is your home. It’s Felipe’s home. Can’t we at least try to live here together?’

‘No.’ Consuela shook her head. ‘In truth, I will be glad to go. It is time. Perhaps…’ She heaved out a heavy sigh. ‘Perhaps more than time that we began making a life for ourselves.’

In a lot of ways Caroline could only agree with her. Felipe, at least, needed to get away from here. It was the only way he would learn to put aside his bitterness.

The sound of another car arriving alerted Caroline to the return of the others, and her immediate concern turned to getting Luiz away from the hall before his men brought Felipe into it.

Releasing Consuela, she turned back to Luiz. He looked so big and grim that she felt the threat of tears tighten her
chest muscles as she walked back to him. She turned impulsively to Luiz’s uncle. ‘Felipe will need you more than I do, Tío,’ she told him.

There was a moment when he looked as if he might argue with her, then with a glance at Luiz he changed his mind and nodded. To her father she gave a hug and a kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said quietly.

He too understood. He was being dismissed. Standing back, he watched her slip her hand into Luiz’s hand, saw the larger fingers tighten possessively around her more slender ones, and together the two of them moved up the stairs.

Behind them, not a single word was spoken.

Instead of to her old room Luiz took her directly to his. It was the master suite of the castle. Huge. Grand. All heavy baroque furniture and ancient artefacts. The moment the door shut behind them Caroline felt reaction begin to set in.

Her legs felt suddenly weak, sending her over to the nearest chair to drop shakily down into it. Still without a word, Luiz walked across the room and into his bathroom. Ten seconds later she could hear the sound of running water.

Coming back into the room, Luiz found her sitting there, with her face hidden in her hands. A muscle along his jaw clenched, but that was the only reaction he showed as he came to stand over her, then bent to gently remove the tiara and veil from her hair before scooping her into his arms again.

‘Oh, very macho,’ she said, trying to lighten the leaden atmosphere.

He didn’t respond to it. Grim-eyed, tight-lipped, he carried her into the bathroom, then set her down on her feet and turned her back to him so he could begin untying the
silk lacing that was holding the bodice of her wedding dress together.

‘If you don’t start talking to me, I’ll throw a tantrum,’ she informed him quite casually. The lacing gave, the bodice slipped, sending her hand up to catch it before it revealed her breasts.

‘Luiz!’ she snapped, spinning round to face him.

His eyes caught fire. The fury he had been keeping severely banked down now came bursting out through those hot, bright, burning black eyes to completely envelop her at the very moment his arms did the same. And he was lifting her off her feet, so he could bring her startled mouth on a level with his own mouth.

It was a kiss like no other. It didn’t just burn, it consumed. Her arms went up, slender forearms using his wide shoulders as a brace to keep that fierce mouth-to-mouth contact. She didn’t care now that the dress was slipping, that her breasts were bursting free to press against him. She didn’t care that the knock on her head hurt or that her bare feet were stinging or that he was holding her so tightly that he was in danger of crushing her ribs.

But she cared that she could feel him trembling, that even his mouth, where it fused with hers, was struggling to maintain some control over what was finally pouring out of him.

‘I love you,’ she murmured through a fevered grab at air. ‘I love you so much, and I hate it when you hide away from me!’

‘It’s either hide or devour you,’ he muttered. And he meant it, fantastic though the statement might seem. He meant every harsh, rasping word of it.

He claimed her mouth again, putting a stop to any more talking, because at this moment
doing
was more important. Caroline wound her thighs around his hips, long skirts rustling as she locked her bare feet together at his back. Her
fingers were in his hair, her thumbs urgently caressing the tension along his rigid jaw.

On a driven groan he turned back to the bedroom.

‘The bath,’ she reminded him.

He issued a hoarse curse against her lips and changed direction without breaking the heated contact of their mouths until he absolutely had to. But he refused to let go of her as he bent to turn off the taps. And when he straightened again she was waiting for him, flushed-cheeked, misty-eyed, the two creamy slopes of her breasts heaving against the boned bodice now resting beneath them.

His dark lashes floated downward as he looked her over. She looked delectably pagan, uninhibitedly wanton. A bride ready for the taking by her passionate Spanish husband.

Looking upwards again, he studied her soft, full, inviting mouth, pressed another claiming kiss to it, then let his eyes clash with hers. He was moving again. Back into the bedroom, across the priceless Indian carpet covering its solid oak floor, to the bed, which looked like an island you could quite easily live upon without needing to leave for a long, long time.

Caroline certainly didn’t want to leave it. She wanted to take off her clothes and crawl beneath its snowy white linen topped by the really decadent blood-red and dark gold brocade coverlet, to survive on hot kisses and rich dark flesh and the passions of a man who was incomparable.

Allowing her feet to slide to the floor, Luiz took a step back, then began undressing. She didn’t move, didn’t attempt to take her own dress off. That was for him to do. It was his duty to unwrap his bride himself.

But her breasts pouted provocatively at him all the while he was undressing, and the moist pink tip of her tongue
kept snaking slowly around her kiss-swollen lips in needy anticipation.

‘You,’ he murmured when he eventually reached for her, ‘ought to be locked up.’

She just smiled a very wicked smile and lifted up her arms to receive him. The dress slipped lower. On a growl, Luiz helped it the rest of the way, and had seen off everything else she was wearing before he straightened up again.

Outside, beyond the four-foot thick walls, the party went on without them. Somewhere else, in another wing of the castle, two people were packing.