then,’ she mocked. ‘Does that mean he’s the one that pulls out the toenails of your enemies for you in between making sure that sick old men catch flights out of a country you don’t want them to be in?’
‘Vito did not chauffeur your father to the airport; he chauffeured you to the hospital, if you recall.’
‘Ah, he has assistants, then.’ She nodded understandingly.
The steady gaze hardened fractionally. ‘You, I think, are gunning for a fight.’
He was right; she was.
Luiz’s eyes narrowed. ‘Be very—very careful, querida,’ he warned.
‘Stop the car,’ she demanded.
Why she said it Caroline certainly didn’t know—but without hesitation Luiz leant forward and pressed a switch that sent the glass sliding downwards.
‘Stop the car, Vito,’ he commanded. The car came to a smooth halt.
Caroline was out on the side of the road before she’d had a chance to realise she was there. It was crazy. The whole situation was crazy! She didn’t know what she was doing here in Marbella! She didn’t know what she was doing letting Luiz Vazquez control her life! And she certainly didn’t know what she was doing standing here looking out over the Bay of Malaga beneath a burning hot summer sun—shivering like a block of ice!
She heard Luiz’s feet scrape on loose tarmac but didn’t turn around. She felt his closeness when he came to stand behind her but didn’t acknowledge he was there. Her eyes were hurting, and so was her head. And, lower down, that band of steel was encasing her chest again.
‘In the hours since we met, you’ve tricked me, blackmailed me, kidnapped me and seduced me,’ she told him in a tight little voice. ‘You’ve helped me put my father into hospital, then had him neatly spirited away. In short, you’ve layered shock after shock after shock on me, in some neatly worked out little sequence aimed, I think, to keep me constantly knocked off balance. And you know what, Luiz?’
‘What?’ he prompted.
‘I haven’t got a single shred of an idea as to why you’ve decided to do this to me!’
He didn’t reply—had she really expected him to? Caroline asked herself bitterly as she swung round to look directly at him. His lean hard face was giving nothing away—as usual. And as she stood there, letting the silence stretch between them in the hopes that it would force an explanation out of him, she found her mind scanning back to their seven-week romance seven years ago, looking for clues as to why he was treating her like this.
But the only thing she could come up with was the ugly scene they had had on the night she’d left Marbella for good. Luiz had been standing there, much as he was now, tall and tense, while she’d flung accusation after accusation at him.
‘How could you do it, Luiz?’ she could hear herself sobbing. ‘How could you take everything I had to offer you then leave my arms to go and win money from my father in the casino night after night?’
‘I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that it was your father who was trying to win money from me?’ he’d bitten back coldly.
His attempt to shift the blame to her father had only infuriated her more. ‘You’re the professional!’ she’d cried. ‘You told me yourself that you used to make a living from gambling—whereas my father is just a gullible fool!’
‘He’s an addict, Caroline,’ Luiz had hit back brutally. ‘A compulsive gambler who is therefore willing to play anyone so long as he plays!’
‘Well, he says he played you,’ she’d told him. ‘Are you telling me that he lied?’
‘No,’ he’d said heavily. ‘He didn’t lie.’
It had been the death of a beautiful love affair, she recalled as she came swimming back to the present. She had walked away. Luiz had let her go. And not a single day had gone by since when she hadn’t closed her eyes and seen his ice-cold expression as she’d left him standing there—and wished more than anything that things could have been different.
‘This has nothing to do with the past, but with the future.’
Luiz spoke so suddenly that she had to blink a couple of times before she could realise that he was actually answering the question she’d put to him before she’d gone floating off into memories.
‘I need a wife to secure the final part of my inheritance,’ he explained. ‘And, having come to terms with the fact that I have to have one, I have decided that I would prefer that wife to be you. Does that make you feel any better?’ he taunted lazily.
No, it didn’t. She went pale. ‘I’m just a convenient means to an end, then,’ she said, seeing just how conveniently vulnerable to persuasion she had been for him. He hadn’t even had to woo her, just make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
‘As I am to you,’ he pointed out coldly. ‘Which seems pretty fair all the way round, don’t you think?’
She found herself stumped for an argument because, put like that, he was right! Luiz waited, though, ruthless devil, until he was sure she was not going to throw him yet another tantrum on some other quickly thought up charge.
Then, ‘Can we go now?’ he requested, oh, so sardonically. ‘Only I have a lot of things to do before we leave here in the morning.’
Leave…
He was doing it again! Knocking her off balance with yet another one of his little surprises! ‘Leave for where?’ she gasped out.
‘Cordoba,’ he replied, then turned on his heel and strode back to the car.
Caroline followed—did she really have any choice? she angrily mocked herself. ‘What’s in Cordoba?’ she demanded, the moment she was back inside the car.
‘A small valley in the mountains that goes by the name of Valle de los Angeles,’ he explained as the car began to accelerate. ‘And there in the valley stands the Castillo de los Angeles, which belongs to Luiz Angeles de Vazquez, Conde del Valle de los Angeles…’
And if she thought she’d plumbed the depths of cynicism in her own way a while back, then Luiz was now demonstrating what little she knew about cynicism at all.
‘There, el conde,’ he continued in the same nerve-wincing tone, ‘will wed his betrothed in the church of the Valle de los Angeles, as is tradition for all condes del Valle de los Angeles. Then he will carry his bride off to his impressive castillo—just in time to banish the resident wicked witch before he ravishes his new Condesa.’
‘Wicked witch?’ she quizzed, picking out the only part in the acutely sarcastic agenda that managed to completely baffle her.
‘Sı´.’ He nodded. ‘Don˜a Consuela Engracia de Vazquez—the present Condesa del Valle de los Angeles.’
‘The lady your uncle mentioned earlier,’ she remembered.
‘Sı´,’ he said again. ‘Tı´o Fidel is a very shrewd man,’ he allowed. ‘He is also the only member of my family that you can safely trust,’ he then added, more seriously. ‘It will be wise of you, querida, to mark that I said that…’
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARK it, he’d said…
But twenty-four hours later it was Luiz who seemed to be marking what he’d said, Caroline noted, as the closer they got to Cordoba, the more uptight he became.
Sitting beside him, she stared at the forever-changing vista beyond the car window and wondered what it was that was eating into him today. He should be happy, she mused testily. After all, he’d got himself one very meek and obedient passenger here, who hadn’t put up a single protest against his arrogant take-over of her life—well,