jerk back in horror, her reaction registered by the hard gleam in his eyes.
‘Unpleasant, isn’t it?’ he agreed softly. ‘But then nature does so enjoy playing these little tricks on us. For all that I, in my role as your father’s stepson, despise and dislike you, as a daughter, as a man I cannot avoid knowing that I would very much like to discover if all that fire and temper you have inside you would be there if we were together in bed. Lust is a tremendous leveller, but you need not worry; for both our sakes I intend to make sure that neither of us gives in to such an unseemly desire.’
Did he really desire her, or was he just trying to intimidate her? Surely it must be the latter?
Wordlessly Shelley watched as he got up and walked to the door. There were a thousand things she should have said to him, the most important of which was an instant denial that she felt the slightest degree of desire for him, but inexplicably she had said nothing.
It was no wonder she hadn’t slept well, Shelley reflected tiredly, studying her reflection rather grimly, and wondering what she should wear for this morning’s meeting with the advogado. Something cool, and yet not too casual; clothes were important. As she had quickly learned in her business life, it was impossible to be judged quite erroneously, simply on the manner of one’s dress. At home she would have had no problems. One of the elegant tailored outfits she wore for work would have done admirably, but she had not brought them with her.
Now that she had met her formidable stepbrother, she could see that that had been a mistake. Had he met her when she was dressed in her businesslike grey pinstripe suit instead of in casual jeans and top, he would not have dared to talk so insultingly about wanting to go to bed with her.
The hand applying her eyeshadow wavered slightly, and she cursed under her breath. With the morning had come a return of her normal self-control. Indeed, she found it hard to accept her own emotional outburst of the previous evening. Obviously it had been brought on by tiredness and shock. With hindsight she could see that it had been on the cards that her father’s second family would resent her. When Jaime accused her of being motivated by greed he was no doubt unaware that his erroneous assessment of her gave her the suspicion that his own motives might not be completely untainted by that same vice.
It stood to reason that for her father to leave her something must mean that that same something couldn’t be left to any members of his new family, and yet surely, with all the wealth so obviously possessed by Jaime and his family, they could hardly resent whatever small trifle of remembrance her father might want to leave her?
But then the rich were notorious for their meanness. As for Jaime saying he desired her… Her hand shook again, and she steadied it, frowning fiercely at her own reflection. No doubt that had simply been something he had thrown at her to disarm her. A man with his brand of sexuality and good looks could scarcely be unaware of his effect upon her sex. No doubt it amused him to pretend some fictitious feeling of desire for her.
Did he think her so stupid that she was not aware of his contempt, or of the fact that even if he did genuinely desire her, his own pride would ensure that that desire was quite ruthlessly stifled?
A knock on her door made her jump, but it was only the maid, who had come to collect her breakfast tray.
‘The Conde asks me to say to you that Senhor Armandes will be here in half an hour.’
Shelley waited until she had gone to continue her toilet. Her bedroom had two large windows, one overlooking the vine covered hillsides and the other, a large enclosed courtyard. She could have had her breakfast on the balcony that overlooked this courtyard, but she had purposely stayed in her room. She had no wish to look down from her balcony and find herself under observation by her stepbrother, and one quick look into the courtyard earlier on had shown her a table set for breakfast.
Stoically, she had refused to allow herself to be hurt by the fact that she had not been invited to join the family for breakfast. They did not want to welcome her among them; very well, that would be their loss and not hers. She had no real need of them, and if they chose to leap to completely unfounded conclusions about the fact that she had not made contact with her father before his death, well then, let them.
Her watch told her that she had still fifteen minutes to wait until the advogado arrived, and she was determined not to set foot out of her room until he did. Once she had spoken to him she intended to leave the quinta just as quickly as she could. Her bags were already packed. Unable to sleep, she had risen early before Luisa arrived with her tray and had soon packed away everything that the maid had so carefully hung up the evening before.
It was pointless regretting the lack of the chilly formality of her business outfits, but she had had the forethought to bring a tailored linen suit with her, and she put this on now, frowning a little over the soft mint green colour, unaware of how poignantly the easy fit of the skirt showed up her recent weight loss.
Make-up was a wonderful disguise, she decided grimly, glancing at her watch and carefully removing the last of her personal belongings from the room.
Calculating how much petrol she had left in her car and how far it was to the last garage she had passed on her drive occupied the last few minutes before she heard a polite knock on her door.
‘The advogado is here,’ Luisa told her shyly when she opened it.
She could see the maid glancing past her, her eyes widening as she saw the suitcases on the bed.
‘I shall be leaving shortly, Luisa,’ said Shelley coolly. ‘Thank you for looking after me so well.’
She suspected it would be considered bad form for her to offer the girl a tip, but she had bought herself a new bottle of perfume before leaving home and luckily it was unopened. She would leave it as a present for the girl, whose open-mouthed surprise betrayed that she had expected Shelley’s visit to be of a much longer duration.
‘If you will just direct me…’
Collecting herself, the girl said hurriedly, ‘The advogado is in the Conde’s study. I will show you the way.’
As she followed the maid Shelley realised that there must be more than one flight of stairs to the ground floor of the house, and then wondered if it had been built along the Moorish lines of separate wings for various members of the household.
The stairs led down to an elegant hallway with three doors off it. Luisa knocked briefly on one of them and stood back, indicating that Shelley was to go in.
At first glance the room was faintly intimidating, full of heavy, dark furniture and lacking in light, but as her eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness Shelley recognised a richness to the furnishings that muted its heavy authority. A French window gave on to a small and obviously private courtyard—the sacred preserve of the males of the family, she thought sardonically as she turned to face the other occupants of the room.
There were only two of them: Jaime, and another man who she guessed must be the advogado.
She was not really surprised at the absence of her stepmother and sister, but she wondered a little cynically how her father would feel if he knew how completely her new family had thrown her to the wolves, or rather to the panther, for it was that beast of prey who most reminded her of her arrogant and dangerous stepbrother.
‘Ah, Shelley, let me introduce you to Senhor Armandes. I shall leave it to him to explain to you the intricacies of your father’s will, where it touches upon your inheritance.’ He turned and said something in Portuguese to the lawyer, who looked grave and bowed over Shelley’s hand.
Resentment shook her. It was all right for her arrogant stepbrother to misjudge her if he wished, for she did not intend to allow the lawyer to labour under the same misapprehension.
The moment the door closed behind her stepbrother, she launched into impetuous speech.
‘Please, let us both sit down, so that we will be more comfortable,’ suggested Senhor Armandes, gently interrupting her before she had said more than half a dozen words.
Unwillingly