gasped. ‘You’ve what?’ She couldn’t believe it.
‘I think you heard me, Olivia.’
‘But—’ She struggled for words. ‘You had no right to do that.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ she spluttered. ‘It’s too soon for him to be moved. You said he has a fractured pelvis. He probably has whiplash. And what about the concussion—?’
‘The mild concussion?’ he inquired evenly and she wanted to scream. ‘He will survive.’
‘I still think you shouldn’t have made the decision to move him,’ she declared hotly. ‘Just because you can’t be bothered to take time off from your personal schedule to go and see him, you’re prepared to risk possible complications to satisfy your own ends.’
‘That’s your opinion, is it?’
He was breathing heavily now. She could hear it, and for a moment she was tempted to say nothing more. But she couldn’t let him intimidate her and, squaring her shoulders, she said, ‘Yes, it is.’ She paused and then added defensively, ‘And whatever his faults, I’m sure it would have been Tony’s opinion as well.’
‘You think?’ He blew out a breath and, although she couldn’t see him, she sensed the anger that was simmering just beneath his iron control. ‘Well, querida, for your information, Luis’s doctor has assessed his condition and sanctioned the transfer to the hospital in Miami. An air ambulance, fully equipped with both doctors and nursing staff, will fly him from the local airport in San Francisco. Subsequently, he will be airlifted to the Sacred Heart. Does that reassure you?’
Olivia moistened her lips. ‘I—I suppose it has to.’
‘Good.’ But he was sardonic. ‘Then that only leaves us with the question of when you will come to Miami to visit him.’
Oh, God! Olivia sank back against the soft leather. She’d known it was coming, of course, but it sounded so much more ominous when he said it.
‘You—you say Luis is being flown back to Miami tomorrow?’ she asked, prevaricating, and Christian agreed.
‘Naturally, with the time change, you would be advised not to try and see him until the day after,’ he observed drily. ‘I suggest I send a helicopter for you on Thursday morning. If you can be ready for, say, ten-thirty, we could—’
‘I don’t need your help to get back to Miami,’ Olivia interrupted him swiftly. The idea of Christian coming here, invading her sanctuary, didn’t bear thinking about. ‘I can get a flight myself.’
‘When?’ Christian sounded impatient. ‘Come on, Olivia, we both know that you’ve got to get from San Gimeno to New Providence before you can even think about taking a flight.’
‘There are such things as charter flights,’ she retorted, desperate to avoid his intervention. ‘I do have the money to hire a pilot, you know.’
‘But why should you want to do that when the Mora Corporation owns a couple of choppers?’ demanded Christian infuriatedly. ‘If what you’re really saying is that you don’t want me to escort you, then okay. I’ll have Mike Delano make the trip.’
‘There’s no need for you to send anyone,’ she persisted, but now she had gone too far.
‘Forget it, Olivia,’ he said harshly. ‘So far I’ve managed to keep this under wraps, but once you start hiring a plane to get back here, someone’s going to find out. I accept that you don’t like me. Dios, I’ve known that for the past eight years. And yes, what happened the night Tony died was unforgivable and you’re not going to let me forget it. Well, okay. I can live with that. I won’t insult you by saying you wanted it as much as me. But this—this is something different. We’ve got to protect Luis from the kind of publicity this is going to create. After what happened when his father died, I’d have thought you’d have wanted that, too. Luis is the only son you’ve got.’
For a heart-stopping moment Olivia wondered what he’d do if he found out why she’d run away. Convincing Luis that she’d needed some time alone to get over his father’s death had been easy. Convincing Christian of the same was something else.
His next words reassured her, however. ‘Look, Olivia,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to do this for me.’
I know. She quivered.
‘But Luis will expect to see you,’ he continued. ‘He has talked of little else since he recovered consciousness.’
Olivia expelled an unsteady breath. ‘Well, naturally I want to see him, too—’
‘So do the sensible thing and let me send the helicopter for you.’
Olivia hesitated. ‘On Thursday morning?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. In his eyes, it seemed so simple. And wasn’t she running the risk of arousing his suspicions by persisting in arguing with him now?
And yet…
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said at last, knowing he would take that as an acceptance, and rang off before he could ask her anything else.
IT WAS raining.
It didn’t often rain in Miami, but when it did it was usually a downpour. The present downpour was courtesy of Hurricane Flora, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm before it reached the mainland. It was probably the last hurricane of the season, but that didn’t make it any the less unpleasant. Nor did it improve Christian Rodrigues’s temper as he strode from his car into the Mora Building, brushing the drops of water from the shoulders of his fine wool Italian suit.
Thankfully, the hurricane hadn’t touched the Bahamas. It had come in over the Gulf of Mexico and dissipated itself in the islands that bordered the gulf coast. There was no reason why Olivia’s flight should have been delayed or for her to make any excuse for not flying. Yet the helicopter had come back without her and, although he’d tried to reach her by other means, she apparently wasn’t answering her phone.
He strode across the marble lobby, taking little notice of its arching roof or the exquisite examples of glass and artwork that gave the space its elegant appeal. A dozen journals had praised its architectural brilliance, but on this dull Thursday morning Christian was in little mood to appreciate his surroundings.
Or his own success in working there. Antonio Mora had been his father’s cousin and when he’d invited the much younger Christian to come and work for him it had been a marvellous opportunity. Christian had been in college then, working for a law degree and holding down two part-time jobs just to pay for his tuition fees. His parents were dead, killed in a landslide while they were visiting his grandparents in Venezuela, and until Antonio—Tony—came on the scene, Christian had never thought of contacting his distant relative.
But Tony had just heard that his cousin was dead and he wanted to help. He’d offered to pay Christian’s tuition fees himself if Christian agreed to come and work for him after he’d
