have already come to that conclusion myself, Señor Perez,’ Annalisa heard herself snap as she held out the glass of water.
The ghost of a smile was the only sign that he had registered her ruffled tone of voice. ‘I am sure you have,’ he agreed pleasantly. ‘Why don’t you call me Ramon, Annalisa? Señor Perez sounds so formal.’
Common sense screamed at her to keep the relationship on a formal footing, but pride insisted they were equals. Why not call him by his first name? He had no difficulty using hers. But as she poured herself a glass of water Annalisa realised her hands were still trembling. Ramon’s invasion of this, her private space, was far more unnerving than she could ever have anticipated.
Avoiding eye contact as she shucked some ice into the glass, she drank deeply, relishing the cool sensation as it tracked through a body that was perilously overheated.
Waiting until she had come out of hiding from behind the glass, Ramon issued a reminder. ‘It was you who called a meeting between us.’
‘Yes,’ Annalisa protested, ‘but I don’t propose to hold it here…now.’
The look he gave her suggested that Ramon Perez was a man who had never learned the meaning of the word no.
‘OK,’ he said without missing a beat. ‘Let’s make it dinner.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘DINNER!’
‘Don’t sound so shocked,’ Ramon insisted. ‘I’m only suggesting a light meal…fresh fish…’ Then he shrugged, adding as an afterthought, ‘And perhaps a drop of champagne.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a little early for celebrations?’ Annalisa jumped in defensively. She might be eager to start discussions about water rights, but champagne made it all sound too much like a fait accompli—for him!
‘We both have to eat,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘If we do so together we can talk things through. Unless you have other plans, of course?’
She tried racking her brain for some excuse, but every brain cell was on strike. ‘Well… No, I don’t… But—’
‘But?’ Ramon queried, one sable brow raised in sardonic challenge.
How could he even ask? She steeled herself to ask the question. ‘What about Margarita?’
He frowned. ‘Margarita is in England at the moment. She was sorry to miss you at the house. She was packing. Well, Annalisa? What do you say?’
‘Say?’ she repeated, transfixed by the sight of his lean tanned fingers feathering an exploration over the tender surface of one of her plants.
‘Dinner. Tonight,’ he repeated, more sharply.
It would be a statement, not a question, she realised, if she didn’t get her brain in gear fast. ‘I don’t think Margarita—’
‘What the hell has Margarita got to do with this?’ Ramon demanded impatiently.
‘But she’s your—’
‘Margarita does not interest herself in my business affairs,’ he cut in coolly.
Well, that she could believe after the way Don Alfonso reacted when she told him she intended to work. ‘I’m not sure—’
‘You’re not sure?’ Ramon said incredulously. ‘I thought you would be as keen as I am to discuss the future of finca Fuego Montoya.’
Annalisa’s heart-rate steadied fractionally. In the course of her work she dealt with just as many men as women. The fact that Ramon proposed to open negotiations over dinner was purely a convenience for both of them. He knew how busy she was at the finca, and there was no reason to suppose his working day was any less demanding.
‘I need an answer,’ he reminded her sharply. ‘Or if you prefer we can leave it to our lawyers to draw up an agreement.’
He knew she would never agree to that. She was already far too committed to the finca. ‘No, I prefer to handle this myself.’
His eyebrow quirked expressively. ‘As you wish.’
His scrutiny made her uncomfortable at the best of times. Right now his flagrantly male presence shrank the room around them, giving her nowhere to look but straight up into his disturbingly lambent gaze.
She had to say something. Refusing his offer would make her look weak—hardly the best opening gambit. She held his gaze for a few moments, then agreed coolly, ‘Before we involve our respective legal teams there’s no harm in laying our cards on the table.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ he said. ‘We can do that over dinner, and once we come to an understanding we can instruct our lawyers.’
Annalisa’s smile grew more confident. Now he was talking her language. Though whether her work as a newly qualified solicitor equipped her to do battle with Ramon Perez remained to be seen—even with all of Don Alfonso’s years of experience to back her up. But, still, it would be better to have some idea of what she was up against. ‘Dinner will be fine,’ she said firmly.
‘Good,’ he said with a formal nod as he turned for the door. ‘I’ll pick you up around nine.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
She waited until the throaty roar of Ramon’s sports car had died away before racing upstairs to change. There wasn’t much point in entering discussions if she didn’t have a clue how to make the best use of his water. And she had no intention of looking foolish. If only she hadn’t been so busy making the finca attractive to prospective purchasers she might have paid more attention to the mechanics of fruit production. But what had started out as a short trip to lay the ghost of her Spanish father, sell his estates and return to England with enough money to set up her own legal practice, had suddenly mushroomed into something quite different. And now she had committed herself to the revival of the finca, she wasn’t about to back down.
Plucking some clean clothes out of her wardrobe, she shrugged them on and hurried out. Chances were the same people who’d used to work at the finca still lived in the village. She would seek them out and ask for advice.
Standing beneath the creaking hand-painted sign of the local bodega, Annalisa groaned. The owner, Juan, spoke a crazy form of Spanglish, but somehow they managed to communicate. She had gone straight to him, knowing he was a mine of information. But now… She blew some strands of hair off her face as she pulled away from the wall. Her head was bursting with facts. Whether she would be able to marshal them in time for her meeting with Señor Perez…
‘Pigs,’ she murmured fiercely, distractedly, as she marched off down the narrow pavement. That was one thing Juan had been adamant about. Pigs snuffled up the fallen fruit and kept the ground clean once it had all been cleared and weeded.
She stopped outside the bakery, not really seeing the rows of delicious pastries and fat crusty loaves, her mind full of Juan’s insistence that she clear out every single weed. She could have repeated his mantra by heart: weeds were the enemy; weeds drank all the water. And water… Annalisa’s mouth tipped down at the corners as she remembered what else he had said. ‘Feuds could last for generations where the precious agua was concerned.’
Didn’t she know it! she thought with a sigh, seeking sanctuary in the bakery.
‘Señorita?’
The vibrant woman behind the counter was the best possible advertisement for her fragrant assortment of freshly baked wares. Thrumming with vitality, she carried her weight lightly, and a dazzling flash of strong white teeth underscored the glow of genuine welcome in her attractive nut-brown eyes.
‘I don’t suppose…no,’ Annalisa said, shaking her head as if to shake some sense back into it. The smiling shopkeeper probably wouldn’t even understand her haphazard mix of Spanish and English, let alone know where she could lay her hands