‘…you’ll be out of here so fast you’ll be choked by your own dust.’
‘Just what are you saying?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘What do you want?’
‘Why should I want something?’
‘Men always want something,’ Tiffany said with the certainty of long experience. She gave Chris a look of dislike. ‘You tried to kiss me earlier and you didn’t like it when I said no. You’ve telling me all this to threaten me. So that I’ll beg you to keep quiet.’
‘You did before,’ Chris reminded her.
She shook her head. ‘No, I asked you to give me a chance. But now you’re trying to blackmail me. And what would the price be, I wonder?’ she said jeeringly. ‘For me to go to bed with you? To give myself to you so that you can get your own back for me saying no before?’
His head came up and Chris’s eyes fastened on her. His jaw tensed, in anticipation, she thought, and for a moment he was silent, then he said, ‘And your answer?’
The loathing in her eyes deepened as she said curtly, ‘The answer’s no! It always will be no. Go ahead, tell your cousin. I’d rather leave and walk all the way back to Oporto than go to bed with you!’ She stood, short and fragile but full of defiance, her eyes alight with fury and her cheeks flushed as she faced up to him.
Chris’s eyes were still fixed on her but he had taken his hands from his pockets and clenched them at his sides. Conflicting emotions seemed to chase across his face and it was a moment before he said tersely, ‘You must know some very strange men, Tiffany.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ he said curtly, ‘that I also happen to play things straight, just like Calum. I said I’d give you a chance with him and I meant it. I have no intention of telling him about your scheming.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘You—you won’t tell him?’
‘No! And for your information I don’t have to resort to blackmail to get a girl I want. And, surprising as it may seem to you, I’m also civilised enough to take no for an answer without feeling any resentment.’
He stopped, as annoyed as she had been a moment ago, and all Tiffany could find to say was a faltering, ‘I’m sorry.’
Chris ran an angry hand through his hair. ‘Just who have you mixed with to make you think the way you do?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
He looked at her for a moment, then said, ‘Come on, let’s walk along here.’
He turned to the right, to a paved walk where a long, high brick wall divided the garden, shoring up the earth of the upper level and providing a sun-soaked backing for espalier fruit trees and climbing roses, all mixed in together. On the other side of the path were stakes that held up vines that spread themselves across wires attached to the wall, the bunches of grapes, still green and unripe, hanging down, waiting for the sun. The last bees of the day buzzed around the flowers, and butterflies in breathtaking colours fluttered against the deep flame of the setting sun. A beautiful, dream-like time and place.
The walk seemed to go on forever, but after a couple of hundred yards they tacitly decided to stop to look at the sunset. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ Chris asked after a while.
‘About why I’m broke, you mean?’ He nodded, and Tiffany sighed. ‘It isn’t a nice story. You really wouldn’t want to hear it.’
‘Try me.’
She hesitated, still not trusting him, then gave him an expurgated version. ‘I was offered a job out here, down in the Algarve, as a kind of organiser and hostess at a swanky golf centre where a lot of English-speaking people came over on corporate hospitality trips, that kind of thing. It was OK for a while but then the hospitality company got hit by the recession and went bust, so I was out of a job with a couple of months’ salary owing to me.’ She paused, wondering if it would click in his mind, whether he would realise that it was the Brodey Corporation which was responsible. But his face showed absolutely no reaction; it didn’t mean a thing to him that so many people had lost their livelihoods. Something close to hatred filling her, Tiffany added tersely, ‘Then I got a job selling time-shares on a commission basis but I became ill and had to give it up.’
‘What was the matter with you?’
She gave a short laugh. ‘I got glandular fever of all things. I’d saved enough money for my fare, but the airlines said I was contagious and wouldn’t fly me home. I was too ill to make the journey overland. So all my money went on the rent for a room, and by the time I was well enough to work again the time-share company had also gone into receivership.’
‘So how did you end up in Oporto?’
‘A girl who worked at the time-share development, a Portuguese girl, got a job here and thought there might be an opening for me as a guide. So I used up the last of my money to come here, but it didn’t work out. Most of the tour companies want home-grown guides. I’ve been able to get a little work but it only pays enough money to live on.’
‘So you thought you’d find yourself a rich husband,’ Chris said with irony.
It was natural he should think that, Tiffany supposed, and she had to admit that seeing Calum, seeing this magnificent house, it had also been natural for the possibility of marriage to cross her own mind, too. But how to explain that to Chris? He wouldn’t understand; what man would? To a man it was degrading for a woman to go in search of someone with money and deliberately set out to marry him. There were all kinds of phrases to describe it: running after a man, getting your hooks into one, selling yourself, gold-digging. But when you were in a strange country, without a job, hungry and desperate, it seemed like a very good idea. Especially when there was only one other easy way to make money that was open to an attractive girl. But to Tiffany the latter just wasn’t an option, even though she was as low as she’d ever been. It wasn’t as if she would sell herself short; if she married a man she would give darn good value for money, and be as loving and attentive as she knew how. He would have no cause to complain.
‘Marriage is an older profession than prostitution,’ she pointed out shortly.
He gave her a sharp glance, then said, ‘If I offered you the fare home, would you go?’
Tiffany laughed. ‘What would be the point? I have no place in England to go to, any more than I have here. Getting a job would be just as hard, finding a place to live probably impossible.’
‘Don’t you have any family?’ he asked for the second time.
‘No.’ Tiffany turned and began to stride back along the path and through the garden, not looking to see whether Chris followed her or not, not giving him the chance to ask her any more questions.
They walked back to the house and Chris glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose we might as well get ready for dinner. We meet for drinks in the drawing-room from seven-thirty.’ He stayed by her side as they climbed the wide marble staircase and stopped at a door only three down from her own. ‘See you later.’
There was a Jacuzzi in the bathroom opening off the guest room. Tiffany spent a good hour in it, only coming out when her skin began to wrinkle. She washed her hair again and took her time putting on her make-up and slipping into the
