time and breath, Karen acknowledged silently. Whatever she’d done, she was his wife and she was staying his wife.
Topped by the towering white statue of Christ, the granite peak of Corcovado afforded a panoramic view over both city and coastline. The skyscrapers below were reduced in size to toytown dimensions, the beaches of Copacabana and Impanema to curving crescents of white dotted with ants. Karen was overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle.
‘You were equally impressed the first time you saw it,’ said Luiz, watching her face as she gazed at the scene. ‘As you were with everything.’
‘Including yourself,’ she murmured.
‘Including myself,’ he agreed. ‘As I intended you to be.’
‘How long did I hold out?’
Dark brows lifted. ‘Hold out?’
‘Before you got me into bed with you?’
It was a moment before he answered, his tone quizzical. ‘Does it matter to you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I need to know.’
His shrug was brief. ‘We made love on the first night of our acquaintance.’
Karen swallowed. ‘You must have thought me the easiest conquest you’d ever made!’
‘No such thought entered my mind,’ he denied. ‘We were two people drawn by the same overwhelming force.’
She couldn’t bring herself to meet the dark eyes full on. ‘Would you still have wanted to marry me if I’d had previous experience?’
‘I would have accepted it, yes.’
Karen looked at him then, oblivious to the other people on the platform. An arm resting against the guard rail, head outlined against the sky, he looked at ease in a way she envied. She had a sudden urge to disrupt that equanimity.
‘Tell me about Lucio Fernandas,’ she said with deliberation. ‘Who exactly is he?’
She gained her wish as his face hardened. ‘I prefer not to speak of him.’
‘We have to talk about him,’ she insisted.
Straightened now away from the rail, Luiz studied her for a moment in silence. When he spoke it was in tautly controlled tones. ‘There’s little enough I can tell you of his background. He was employed by one of my foremen. Had I had any notion…’ He broke off, gritting his teeth together. ‘Suffice to say he would have been in no fit state to arouse any woman’s interest!’
Karen’s chest felt tight as a drum. Luiz Andrade was a proud man; it didn’t take intimate knowledge to be aware of that. The discovery that his wife had been having an affair at all would have hit him hard enough, but for her to have become involved with a mere employee!
‘I’m still not convinced it’s the truth,’ she said defensively. ‘What actual proof do you have that there was any affair to start with?’
Amber lights glinted in the depths of his eyes. ‘What proof do I need other than that you provided yourself in running off with him?’
‘There had to be some prior signs, surely?’
‘There apparently were, had I been willing to see them. Beatriz suspected, but failed to warn me.’
Karen put up an involuntary hand to her temple as pain lanced briefly through it. There was an odd buzzing in her ears, a sense of being drawn somewhere she didn’t want to go.
Luiz moved swiftly to catch her as she swayed, arms sliding about her to hold her close. She could feel the strong beat of his heart at her breast, the sun-stoked heat of his body.
‘I’m all right now,’ she managed. ‘Just a bit of a dizzy spell, that’s all.’
He made no attempt to stop her as she pulled away from him. ‘I should have refused to discuss the matter,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the place.’
What attention they’d drawn from those in the vicinity had now been returned to the scenery. Karen tilted her head to let the breeze cool her cheeks, both hands on the guardrail to steady herself.
‘Who is Beatriz?’
Luiz made a curt gesture. ‘As I said, this isn’t the place. We’ll return to the hotel.’
She made no protest. The name had meant something to her, that was obvious, but there was no further break in the curtain.
It was well into the afternoon when they reached the hotel again. Luiz accepted Karen’s plea that she was tired and needed rest rather than food without demur, simply saying that he would see her later.
A shower was a first priority on reaching her room. She luxuriated for several minutes in the glass-walled cabinet, blanking out everything but the feel of the water streaming over her skin.
Towelled dry, she donned the robe provided and returned to the bedroom to extract fresh underwear from the suitcase. There seemed little point in unpacking fully when she had no idea how long they would be here.
Her throat closed up at the thought of what she would be facing when they did return to the ranch. However much she might want to disbelieve it, all the evidence pointed to the fact that she really had been having an affair with another man.
Where would she have been now, she wondered, if there had been no accident? What kind of life would she have had with a man capable of leaving her lying unconscious in the road? How could she have been drawn to another man at all when she was married to one as charismatic as Luiz Andrade?
Unless Luiz wasn’t the man he appeared to be either. How could she be sure what their marital relationship had really been like? There had been rows, that much he’d admitted. She only had his word that there had been no serious rift between them.
He left her alone until eight, by which time she had begun to wonder if he had deserted her after all. When he did put in an appearance he was wearing a light linen suit that sat on his frame as if made to measure.
‘I felt the need of fresh clothing,’ he said. ‘You at least have that facility.’ He ran an appraising glance over her slender curves in the lilac silk tunic that had been one of the few items in the suitcase she considered suitable for dining out. ‘Did you rest well?’
Karen turned away, unable to hold his gaze for long. ‘As well as can be expected, considering. What happens now?’
‘We have dinner here in the hotel. If we repeat, as far as is possible, the details of our time here together, perhaps it will stir something in your memory.’
‘Every detail?’ she asked after a moment.
‘I said as far as is possible,’ he responded. ‘I make no demands on you.’
‘For now,’ she murmured, and heard him draw a roughened breath.
‘Do you think me so easily able to banish the thought of you with Fernandas from my head? Whenever I close my eyes I see you in his arms!’
Karen
