things to do and you can’t leave here looking like this.’
Looking like this…Through glazed eyes Caroline stared down at herself, saw the pulsing tightness of her distended nipples, her flushed skin, her long white thighs still trembling from the way he had made her feel. Even Luiz’s jacket was no longer where she’d thought it was.
He was shrugging it back onto his own broad shoulders with what was a callous disregard for her raw sensibilities as she stood there almost naked in front of him, feeling completely humiliated and cheap.
Instead of burning up with undiluted passion she was now icy cold with dismay. The nausea arrived, attacking her throat and forcing her to swallow thickly a couple of times before she dared let herself speak.
‘I hate you,’ she whispered.
‘Not as much as you would like to, I think,’ was his reply.
She was completely demolished by it, because it was such a dreadful truth. Slipping back into her dress took the concentrated effort of just about every brain cell that hadn’t been atomised. As she shimmied the black creˆpe up her body, she noticed her bra lying on the tiled floor and wanted to crawl away in shame.
Luiz bent to scoop it up, stuffing the flimsy piece of silk into one of his pockets before turning her around to do up her zip. She moved like a rag doll, unable to think, unable to speak, and just stood there while he bent to feed her feet into her strappy black shoes.
He straightened again, then waited while her shaky fingers attempted to smooth some of the creases out of her dress. And the tension sizzling between them was dreadful. Not once did either attempt full eye contact. Not once did either of them attempt to speak again after that last telling comment of his.
When she eventually went still, in an indication that she had made the best of herself she could under the circumstances, Luiz opened the door, then stood back in a grim gesture for her to precede him back into the basement foyer.
The stranger she had encountered in the lift was standing talking to one of the dinner-suited bouncers. He glanced up as they appeared and was suddenly riveted. Caroline didn’t even notice him; she was too busy being repulsed by the feel of Luiz’s hand resting on her back as he escorted her to the stairwell.
She didn’t want him to touch her now. She didn’t want Luiz anywhere near her. Her chin was up, her head held high and her body erect—but her eyes were blind and inside she felt as if she were dying.
The moment they reached the upper main foyer, she stepped right away from him.
‘Where are you going?’
Already two blissful steps away, Caroline paused but didn’t turn. ‘If you want to ruin my father a second time then go ahead,’ she invited coldly. ‘I certainly can’t stop you—but I don’t have to watch you.’
After that, she began walking again.
‘But we haven’t finished.’ His hand came out to capture one of hers. And without another word he began trailing her across the foyer towards a door marked ‘Private’ that seemed to open magically as they approached it.
Frowning, because she just didn’t understand what was happening here, she found herself inside yet another foyer that had her high heels tapping on black and cream marble. Luiz led her across to another door, which he opened by hand this time, gestured her to precede himself inside, then quietly closed the door behind them.
It was an office, Caroline saw. A very elegant black and cream office.
‘What is this place?’ she asked warily.
Stepping past her, Luiz walked across the room towards the desk, then placed himself behind it. ‘My office,’ he answered, bending down to unlock and open a drawer.
‘You mean…’ Her eyes flickered around the room. ‘You mean, you actually work here?’
‘Work here. Live here…’ He placed a heavy leather-bound dossier on the desk in front of him. ‘This is my hotel, Caroline,’ he added levelly.
CHAPTER THREE
HIS hotel…? Caroline gave a small shake of her head. ‘But this is an Angel Hotel,’ she stated. ‘Part of the Angel Group!’ And the Angel Group was huge. Not just because of the string of deluxe hotels it owned throughout the world, but because it had other, much more powerful interests wrapped up in its multinational package.
Lifting his dark head, Luiz just looked at her. It was all it needed for the penny to drop. Angel as in Luiz Angeles de Vazquez, she was suddenly remembering. But it was the Angel in the Angel Group that was slowly filling Caroline with a new sense of dismay. Because it was also the group which had very recently acquired a bank in London that the Newbury family knew very well.
‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed, as full enlightenment finally began to dawn. ‘It’s you we have been summoned here to Marbella to see about our debts, isn’t it?’
He didn’t answer. But then he didn’t really need to when confirmation was already written on his lean dark face. And she could only stand and watch as every image she had ever built in her mind to form Luiz Vazquez slowly cracked, then shattered right there in front of her until she could no longer see Luiz the exciting lover. Or even Luiz the ruthless con-man who’d fleeced her father of tens of thousands of pounds.
‘What is it you want?’ she whispered frailly as the shattered pieces that had once been Luiz settled back into their new order of things. And now she was seeing Luiz the ice-cool operator, whom, it seemed, had only gone up and up in the world while she and her father had gone steadily down.
‘I want you to come and sit down,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got much time. And now that you understand just why you are here we may as well get down to business…’
Business. The word sent an icy chill chasing down her spine. As she walked across the room towards him on legs that were shaking badly Luiz sat himself down, opened the dossier, selected a piece of paper from it, then slid it towards her as she sank into the chair placed opposite him.
‘Tell me if you agree with what’s written on there,’ he invited.
Eyes flickering in an effort to get them to focus, heart slowed by the weight of what was unfolding in front of her now, Caroline pulled the piece of paper towards her, then picked it up in trembling fingers and forced herself to read.
Finely listed, tightly lined, it was a very precise inventory of every penny she already knew they owed—and a whole lot more that she actually hadn’t known about, but she couldn’t doubt their authenticity when the names of all her father’s favourite London haunts were inscribed next to them.
And the bottom figure was so utterly repellent that her skin began to crawl. ‘Could I have some water, please?’ she breathed.
Without a single word, Luiz got up and walked over to a black-lacquered sideboard. He returned in seconds to place a frosted glass of iced water down in front of her, then just as silently returned to his chair while she picked up the water and sipped at it sparingly.
‘We can’t pay you, Luiz,’ she told him, once she’d found enough voice to speak. ‘N-not all of it anyway.’
‘I know that,’ he returned.
She swallowed thickly, and took a couple more sips of water before making herself go on. ‘If you refuse to play him at cards tonight, then the money he won in the casino plus some money I have of my own should clear a small part of this.’ But not all, she added with a silent bleakness. Not anywhere near all…
‘The planned card game and this are two separate issues,’ he informed her. ‘And I never—ever—mix business with pleasure, Caroline. Understand me?’
Understand? No she didn’t! ‘But we have the means to clear s-some of this, Luiz!’ she cried, tossing the wretched debt list back at him. ‘And you