a little embarrassment, couldn’t she?
So she held her head high, looking down the length of her neat nose, toughing it out.
‘I want a driver who is prepared to wait until Señor Casals and I leave. The señor will be driving the red car. I will want my driver to follow, at a discreet distance, naturally, to—’ Her voice faltered, echoing the way she was cringing inside, but she overcame the slight problem and went on firmly, ‘To wherever he goes. I am prepared to pay well over the odds.’
She refused to look away, even when he smirked with unconcealed amusement, just tilted her chin that little bit higher. She knew just what he was thinking. The handsome señor, who drove the kind of car only the seriously wealthy could afford to run, had grown bored with his English bit on the side—who could blame him?—and had dumped her. But the unglamorous, sadly plain creature wasn’t prepared to be dumped, was determined to follow wherever he went, make a nuisance of herself. The conclusion was so obvious that she couldn’t blame him for reaching it.
With a fatalistic shrug that implied that all men, even the mightiest, had to pay for their pleasures in the end, the receptionist spoke rapidly to one of the drivers and, the deal apparently clinched, turned back to Sarah, his smile very broad now.
‘You wish now to join Señor Casals?’
‘Of course.’ It was difficult to maintain her dignity in the face of his amusement, but she managed it as he escorted her to the terrace restaurant. The incident would have enlivened his otherwise dreary working day. And if the sly, sideways glance he gave Francisco Casals as he rose to his feet when Sarah was led to his table was anything to go by they would both be the subject of endless jokes and speculation among the rest of the staff here.
Oddly enough it gave her a weird sense of fellowfeeling with Francisco as he dismissed the receptionist with a curt word of thanks. As if, in some strange way, they were bound together.
Which was complete and utter nonsense, she dismissed as she took her seat at the white-covered table, refusing anything from the lavish bowl of luscious-looking fruits, just accepting the glass of orange juice he poured from a jug that nestled in a bowl of crushed ice.
He was her father’s enemy and that made him hers—because, whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation, violence was demeaning, it solved nothing, and she intended to be around to see that it didn’t happen.
Ignoring the magnificent view of rumpled, sunbaked mountains spread out in front of the terrace restaurant, she gave him her full attention. There was a gleam in his eyes she didn’t like—it gave her the mental shudders—so she ignored that too, offering him one last chance to redeem himself.
‘You say my father’s neighbour told you where he is, and that a girl answering Encarnación’s description was with him when he left Arcos. And that you intend right now to go and find them.’
She took a sip of her juice to moisten her suddenly parched throat, horribly aware of the way his black eyes never once left her consciously prim features, and then a huge gulp of the cold, delicious liquid because that sip hadn’t eased the annoying constriction in her throat. Then from somewhere she found the most businesslike tone she possessed and suggested sensibly, ‘Tell me where they are and let me sort it out. I promise to separate them and personally deliver your sister to you. I sympathise with your concern, believe me, but violence won’t solve anything.’
She couldn’t put it plainer than that. It gave him the opportunity to rethink, to do the civilised thing and allow the whole unfortunate affair to be settled without aggression.
‘No,’ he responded unfeelingly, with not even a flicker of one dark eyelash to change his expression. He went on, his tone unaltered, ‘Tell me, señorita, are you always so prim and pedantic, so completely lacking in passion? Your father is an undisputed amoral hedonist and he has seduced an innocent young girl away from her home, yet all you can do is say that you “sympathise with my concern”—’ his mouth tightened dangerously, the fingers of one hand now tapping restlessly on the spotless linen that covered the table ‘—and mouth meaningless, bloodless platitudes about the ineffectuality of violence. Do you really think I’m the type of man who would be willing to sit tamely in the background and allow a woman to deal with my family problems? Do you think I have no pride?’
Something deep inside her shuddered. This man would never do anything tamely; a basic, atavistic intuition told her that much. No appeal to more civilised instincts, however sensibly couched, could reach him because, for him, civilisation was only a thin surface veneer. But only the restless fingers, the smouldering fires in the dark depths of his translucent black eyes told of the volcanic rage inside him as he continued in the same chillingly measured tone, ‘If ever a man deserved a thrashing, it is your father. And I fully intend to teach him a lesson he will never forget. Without any interference from you. Now, señorita, if you have finished, I will find you a taxi to take you back to the airport.’
He got elegantly to his feet, his arrogant, remote features telling her more clearly than any words that she was dismissed, and, her eyes cloudy, she scrabbled around for her belongings, determinedly bottling up the unwelcome emotion that made her want to hurl her overnight bag at his head, wipe that superior, condescending expression from his face.
She straightened, quickly and nicely back in control again, firmly squashing that brief moment of insanity, her possessions held neatly in her hands. He had talked of passion and violence as if they were qualities to be admired. He disgusted her.
She had seen enough of both destructive emotions during her time with her father, witnessed the cheerful and, from her own viewpoint, utterly demeaning stoicism of her mother, and had made a solemn vow never to allow emotion of any kind to rule her life, mess it up and lead her into a state where she had no control over anything.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she told him coolly, her bluey-green eyes perfectly clear and steady now. ‘The hotel receptionist has already dealt with it.’ And she watched his tiny, elegant shrug, the small quirk of his beautiful, passionate mouth and put the sharp punch of sensation beneath her breastbone down to the sheer excitement of knowing she had outwitted him.
And now the sensation of churning, bubbling excitement was still with her, hardly containable. She had experienced nothing quite like it in the whole of her adult life. Ever since that proud chunk of Spanish manhood had assumed control—or so he, in his haughty arrogance, had believed—every single thing had gone her way. Which meant that the angels were on her side!
The red vehicle ahead disappeared from sight round a bend on the twisty mountain road and she was unconcerned enough to spare a glance at the awe-inspiring scenery. Dry rocky ranges dropped precipitously to deep river valleys mantled by the green of olive groves and forest trees and somewhere here, in this remote and ferocious landscape, her irresponsible father was hiding away with his latest conquest.
But even her deep distaste for yet again having to sort out the problems Piers had created for himself was almost forgotten in the intense satisfaction to be had from beating the Spaniard at his own game.
She had been eighteen years old when she had finally decided that enough was enough, that it was high time she abandoned her father to his own wild devices and got on with her own life. She had stuck rigidly to that earlier decision and going against it didn’t seem to matter now, not when they rounded the bend and saw the Ferrari disappearing in a puff of arrogant dust around the next.
Whatever his faults, Señor Casals was certainly a careful driver. His sober speed couldn’t have been more granny-like if he’d set out to break a record. Which begged the question of why he’d equipped
