routine to him, probably. But to Caroline it was the worst—very worst thing she had ever experienced in her entire life. She’d done this, she was thinking guiltily. She had done this to him by not insisting on breaking Luiz’s deal to him in private and in her own less brutal way.
But she hadn’t cared. Not until she had seen his face just now. She had been angry with him, and bitter, and had actually wanted to shock him into seeing what he had finally brought her to!
But what she had brought him to by far outweighed what he’d done to her.
‘He is beginning to come round,’ Luiz’s aunt murmured.
The doctor was talking quietly to him and Luiz was still squatting beside them, his dark face honed into the hardest mask Caroline had ever seen it wear. And everyone else stood about, looking and feeling helpless, while right there in the middle of a beautiful cream carpet her father’s glass still lay on its side in a pool of golden liquid.
She saw one of her father’s hands move, going up to cover his eyes. He looked old and frail and pathetically vulnerable lying there, and as her heart cracked wide open she shook herself free from the comforting arm and went to him.
‘Daddy…’ she sobbed. She felt Luiz glance at her, then grimly straighten up to make room for her to take his place beside his uncle. Her hand went out, the fingers ice-cold and trembling as they closed around her father’s then gently pulled his hand away from his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered thickly.
‘It was a shock, that’s all,’ he answered weakly. ‘Didn’t expect it. Forgot to take my pill today. My fault. I’ll be all right again in a few minutes.’
The doctor was waiting with blood-pressure pad at the ready once the pill had been given a chance to take effect. Caroline flicked him an anxiously questioning look and he answered it with a small nod. Relief flooded the tears into her eyes.
Her father saw them and his grey face looked weary. ‘Don’t weep for me, Caroline,’ he sighed. ‘I have enough to contend with right now, without adding your tears.’
‘But it’s all my fault,’ she choked. ‘I should have warned you about Luiz and me. It was—’
‘Supposed to be a pleasant surprise for all of you,’ Luiz grimly put in, still aware of their audience, and protecting his damned deal from the risk of exposure even in the face of all of this, Caroline realised bitterly.
Her father seemed to understand and accept that. His tired eyes lifted to Luiz. ‘We need to talk,’ he murmured grimly.
‘Not tonight, though,’ the doctor decreed. ‘For tonight you will be staying as my personal guest in my private hospital.’
And even as he spoke the sound of a siren whined its way into the room, curdling Caroline’s blood and making her cling tightly to her father’s hand. But what really worried her was that her father didn’t attempt to put in a protest.
His eyes fluttered open. ‘Don’t look so stricken.’ He smiled at her wearily. ‘I plan to be a thorn in your side for a long time yet.’
‘Promise?’ she insisted with the kind of painful seriousness that had those who witnessed it lowering their eyes.
‘I promise,’ he ruefully complied. Then to Luiz, who was standing behind Caroline, ‘Not quite the response you were looking for, I think,’ he drawled.
‘No,’ Luiz quietly agreed.
‘Does she know yet?’
‘Know what?’ Caroline put in sharply.
But on a wince her father closed his eyes again, and all conversation came to a standstill as the doctor began pumping up the blood pressure pad wrapped around his arm.
Two medics entered the room then, and Luiz was gently drawing Caroline to her feet, to make way for them so they could do what they had to do unencumbered. But the moment the medics began to move her father onto their mobile stretcher she was back at his side. The rest of the people in the room had slithered off into the ether. She neither saw them nor wanted to see them.
The drive to the hospital was undertaken with the minimum of fuss. Caroline travelled with her father in the ambulance while Luiz followed behind in his car. After that everything became a worried blur again as they waited while her father was put through several examinations be fore Luiz’s uncle Fidel eventually came to pass on the reassuring news that it had not been a heart attack as such. ‘But his blood pressure has remained a little high,’ he added. ‘So I am going to keep him in here overnight, just to keep an eye on him.’
With a sinking sense of profound relief, Caroline leaned weakly against the wall behind her. But when Luiz attempted to touch her she shrugged him off abruptly. ‘I’m all right,’ she said.
‘You don’t damn well look it,’ he argued gruffly.
Ignoring him, she looked at his uncle. ‘Can I see him now?’ she asked.
‘For a few moments only,’ she was told. ‘He is sedated, so he will not know you are here.’
They did stay for only a few moments, for as the doctor had said he was asleep, but his colour was much better. Caroline stood by his bed gently stroking his hand for a few minutes while Luiz looked on in silence from his position at the bottom of the bed. Then, with the helplessness that came from knowing that she could do nothing more by remaining there, she allowed Luiz to take her away.
They didn’t speak as they walked through the hospital, but then they had barely exchanged a single word since the whole horror had begun in Luiz’s drawing room. They reached the exit doors to find Luiz’s uncle was waiting for them.
He glanced gravely from one face to the other—seeing too much maybe; Caroline wasn’t sure. ‘He is going to be fine,’ he assured her gently. ‘It really was only a small scare.’
‘Yes, I know…’ Nodding, Caroline fought yet another battle with tears, then impulsively stepped up to embrace Luiz’s uncle. ‘Thank you for being there,’ she whispered simply.
‘It was my pleasure,’ he replied, but his attention was fixed on her own drained pallor. ‘Take her home,’ he said to Luiz. ‘Make her go to bed, and don’t allow her to come back here until lunchtime at the earliest.’
They left almost immediately after that. The black BMW was waiting in the car park. Luiz had driven himself to the hospital, Caroline discovered when, after seeing her into the front passenger seat, he climbed in behind the wheel.
His expression was closed, and he still didn’t speak as he set the car in motion. Outside it was dark and very quiet now, the hour one of those ungodly ones where even the owls Luiz likened himself to had retired.
‘I want to go back to the hotel,’ she said—and received no answer. Turning her head to look at him, she saw only that closed cast of a profile. ‘Luiz…’ she prompted.
He changed gear and turned the steering wheel to take them off the main road which would have taken them back into Puerto Banus. He had the long, brown, skilful fingers of an accomplished magician, she found herself thinking stupidly. And she knew she was only letting her mind notice his hands because she didn’t want to get into another heated row with him.
Yet she couldn’t let the subject go. ‘I don’t want to face all those people again,’ she told him.
He decided to answer that one. ‘They’ve gone home.’ His voice was quiet, flat, utterly devoid of any inflexion when he added, ‘The party, I think you would agree, is well and truly over.’
‘Did it ever get started?’ she shot at him tartly. If ‘party’ was the right word to cover whatever it was Luiz had been hoping to set up tonight. In truth, the man’s motives baffled her. His family baffled her. One moment they’d appeared hostile and resentful, the next too ecstatic to be real.
‘They don’t like you,’ she said continuing her thought pattern