the older couples started reminiscing about the distant past, long before the rest were born, Anna suggested Nick take Liza and his cousins outside and show them his latest addition to the stables, a particularly fine racehorse.
Nick was standing, his hand on the halter of the magnificent black stallion, and smiling with obvious pride of ownership as he stroked the sleek, glossy neck. Everyone enthused over the animal.
Man and beast looked magnificent, Liza acknowledged. Two of a kind, superb male specimens. Nick looked so breathtakingly good-looking, devastatingly cool and in control of the animal. Choking back the sudden swell of emotion just watching him caused, she tore her gaze away, suddenly afraid he had been controlling her with the same accomplished ease.
She glanced around and a split-second later the colour drained from her face and involuntarily she shivered as she realised exactly where she was. The horse was in the one stall she had never wanted to see again.
Liza lifted appalled eyes just as Nick glanced in her direction, and the brilliant smile on his lean, strong face vanished as their eyes met, his expression suddenly harsh, and all her suspicions resurfaced with a vengeance.
Spinning around, Liza dashed back out of the stable, and for a moment leant against the wall, taking deep, steadying breaths, hating herself for panicking in front of everyone. It seemed in Nick’s company she could not help but regress into the besotted child she had once been, and it had to stop. Straightening up, she set off across the cobbled courtyard towards the house. To hell with Nick and his horses, she had had enough of both for the moment.
Nick handed the halter to Marco. ‘You four have a look around. I need to check on something,’ he said before he followed Liza out.
Liza had only gone a dozen yards when a strong arm wrapped around her waist and hauled her hard against a taut male body.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Nick demanded roughly.
‘Anywhere away from you,’ she shot back defiantly. She had made an enormous mistake. Nick did not need to say anything; it had been there in his face as he had glanced at her. He still thought she was no better than the slut he had accused her of being years ago, and she had compounded the notion by freely coming to Spain with him and succumbing with wild abandonment to his lovemaking. Whatever his reason for wanting her here, she was pretty sure it was not just his stated desire to sleep with her. He could have any woman he wanted, after all.
Nick hauled her around in one powerful arm and marched her towards the back of the house without a word.
‘Let go of me, you great brute,’ Liza cried, trying to break free.
‘No.’ His dark eyes without a glimmer of expression rested for a moment on her flushed, defiant face. ‘It was insensitive of me, I know, but save the recriminations until we get back to the house,’ he advised hardly.
‘Why the hell should I?’ Liza was hurting and suspicious and furious with herself for being such a push-over.
A black brow lifted sardonically. ‘Because this is a celebration, remember, fifty years married, and you are not going to cause a scene. Though how any man could stand a woman for fifty years is beyond me,’ he bit out cynically.
Hectic colour tinged her face. ‘Me, cause a scene. Your poor mother—’
‘Enough,’ Nick exploded. He was not used to having his actions questioned by anyone, and certainly not by a slip of a girl. Acting on impulse, he swung her off her feet and carried her through the kitchen, oblivious to the astonished looks of Manuel and the staff, and didn’t stop until he reached her room, and flung her on the bed.
‘Right, Liza, let’s have it,’ he demanded roughly.
For a stunned moment Liza thought he was referring to sex. Her face paled, and then a swift tide of red suffused her cheeks. ‘Why, you—’
‘My, but you do have a one-track mind…’ Nick drawled mockingly, the knowing light in his deep brown eyes telling her he had read her mind.
‘Hardly surprising around the Spanish Stud,’ she flung back.
‘Ah, Liza,’ he glanced down at her, viewing her angry expression with an indulgent smile, ‘you should not believe everything you read in the gossip columns.’ He grinned smugly. ‘Though I didn’t hear you complaining this morning—quite the contrary.’
His impregnable confidence in his masculine prowess made her temper rise to boiling point, and, leaping off the bed, she marched up to him.
‘I am glad you think it is funny.’ She poked him in the chest with a finger. ‘You conniving bas—’ Her wrist was caught in an iron grip and the insults stuck in her throat.
‘No one talks to me like that.’ Nick’s hard jawline clenched and glittering black eyes scanned her angry face. ‘Especially not a woman of your kind,’ he told her icily.
‘My kind?’ Liza repeated, a terrible coldness taking the place of her anger that he could be so callous.
‘You know what I mean, Liza. I was not your first lover and I certainly won’t be your last, though if your overreaction is anything to go by your past lovers must have been pretty ineffectual. You were as up for it as I was from the moment we met again. Why the outrage now?’ he demanded with a cruelty she would not have thought him capable of. ‘Simply because you found yourself in a stable that held a memory of a past indiscretion?’
Colour tinged her cheeks; she did not need to be reminded of her helpless surrender to his sexual expertise, and certainly not of her juvenile reaction to him years ago. ‘That is a filthy thing to say…but about what I would expect from a man of your morals.’ And, blue eyes flashing flames, she stared furiously up into Nick’s face. ‘But this isn’t about sex,’ she said, fighting to retain her temper. ‘There is something going on here that I don’t understand. Who the hell is Carl Dalk? Your mother thought you had an urgent meeting with him yesterday, and I can’t believe you would lie to your own mother but you told me you had just come from the airport when we met, and you spent the whole day with me. I am not conceited enough to think a man like you would dump an emergency meeting for me.’ Once Liza started listing her suspicions she could not stop. ‘Your mother thought this Carl chap was coming back with you.’ She fixed angry, assessing eyes on his hard face. ‘And another thing, last night you let me think your mum was ill, and yet when I met your mum she said she has never felt better in her life. Don’t take me for a fool, Nick.’
Nick absorbed her flushed and angry face with arrogant detachment. He had known it was coming but he had hoped to divert her. Liza’s mention of Carl was a little too close for comfort. Narrowed dark eyes met brilliant blue and he was impressed—not many people stood up to him or even tried. He supposed he should be flattered that at least Liza did not want to think him capable of lying to his own mother, but what to tell her?
‘Watch it, Liza, your paranoia is showing,’ he tried to tease, but she met his attempt at humour with an elegantly elevated brow. She was an intelligent woman and wanted answers, Nick recognised, and humour wasn’t going to do it for her.
‘Just answer the question,’ Liza demanded.
‘Carl Dalk is an old friend of mine and, contrary to what you assumed, I did speak with him yesterday afternoon, after I left you at your hotel.’
‘Oh.’ Liza supposed that was possible, but it didn’t strike her as very urgent if he could wait all day to meet the man. ‘Not that much of an emergency, then,’ she prompted defensively, beginning to wonder if maybe he was right and she was being paranoid…
‘My, my, Liza, you do have a suspicious mind in that very lovely body. As for Mamma, I told you she was feeling down.’ He shrugged a shoulder. ‘You drew your own conclusion.’
‘And you let me!’ Liza exclaimed, amazed at the sheer gall of the man. ‘You dragged me a thousand miles to sle…to Spain…’ She stuttered to a stop, having almost said to sleep with me and stared at him, scanning his strong dark