pressed against his hard bulk in that fleeting moment.
That heated feeling had been with her ever since. All she’d needed was one glimpse of him and her heart would pound. She would smile and try to act nonchalant but had been painfully aware of her face resembling a tomato.
That heat was there now too, vibrating inside her. Not even the knowledge of his treachery had dimmed it. She hated herself for that.
He looked up from the bottle of black vodka he was examining and smiled unpleasantly. ‘The insults hurt, don’t they?’
‘You deserve yours and more for what you did to my brother.’ And to me, she refrained from adding.
Learning how deeply he’d betrayed her brother had cut her like a knife. The more she and Benjamin had put the pieces together, the deeper the cut had gone, all the way back to her earliest memories.
Had Luis and Javier always had contempt for her family? Or had the damage done by their mother’s horrific murder at the hands of their father been the root cause of it?
Their mothers had been closer than sisters. As far back as Chloe could remember Luis and Javier had been a part of their lives. They would come and stay with them for weeks at a time in the school holidays then, when she had reached eight and them eighteen and they had snubbed university to set out on their own path, they would still drop in for visits whenever they were in Paris.
Their visits had always made her mother so happy. When she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer they had been there for all of them. Luis had visited her mother so many times in hospital the staff had assumed he was one of her children.
Had the supposed feelings he’d had for her family all been a lie? If not, then how could he have tricked her brother into signing that contract on the day their mother’s condition was diagnosed as terminal?
Luis replaced the bottle of vodka in his hand with a bottle of rum, twisted the cap off and sniffed it. ‘Whatever we did to your brother he has repaid with fire. He has gone too far and so have you. Thanks to you and your brother conspiring against me and my brother, our names are mud.’
‘Good. You deserve it.’ She hated the quiver in her voice. Hated that being so close to him evoked all those awful feelings again that should never have sprung to life in the first place.
Her heart shouldn’t beat so wildly for this man.
She swallowed before adding, ‘You took advantage of him when our mother was dying. I hope the journalist investigating the injunction unveils your treachery to the world and that everyone learns what lying, cheating scumbags the Casillas brothers are.’
Hazel eyes suddenly snapped onto hers, a nitrogen-cold stare that sent a snake of ice coiling up her spine. ‘We did not cheat your brother.’
‘Yes, you did. I don’t care what that court said. You ripped him off and you know it.’
His nostrils flared before he stretched out a hand to the row of cocktail mixers. ‘I am going to tell you something, bonita. I had sympathy for Benjamin’s position.’
‘Of course you did,’ she scorned with a shake of her hair.
‘The terms of profit were reduced from twenty per cent to five per cent under the advice of our lawyer. Your brother’s contribution to the project was a portion of the funding whereas Javier and I would be doing all the work.’
Luis remembered that conversation well. It was one of only a few clear recollections from a day that had flown by at warp speed as he and Javier had battled to salvage the deal they had put so much time and money into.
‘You agreed on twenty per cent. That was a verbal agreement.’
He added crushed ice to the concoction he’d put in the cocktail shaker. ‘Benjamin was sent a copy of the contract to read five hours before we all signed it. He didn’t read it.’
Javier had been the point man on the Tour Mont Blanc project and emailed the contract to Benjamin. Luis had been unaware of his twin’s failure to mention the change in the profit terms in that email. When they had gone to his apartment to sign it, the atmosphere had been heavy, the news of Benjamin’s mother overshadowing everything.
Luis had only discovered three months later, at Louise Guillem’s funeral of all days, that Benjamin still thought he would be receiving twenty per cent of the profit. It had been a passing comment during the wake, Benjamin nursing a bottle of Scotch and staring out of his chateau’s window saying he didn’t know how long he would have to keep the wolves from the door and ruefully adding that, if only the Tour Mont Blanc project could be speeded up and he had his twenty per cent profit now, all his money troubles would be over.
Luis had had many arguments with his brother through the years but that had been the closest they had ever come to physical blows. Javier had been immovable: Benjamin should have read the contract.
His twin was completely hard-nosed when it came to business. Luis was generally hard-hearted when it came to business too. They weren’t running a charity, they were in the business of making money and at the time their bank balance had been perilously close to zero.
But Benjamin had been their oldest friend and Luis had been very much aware that Benjamin’s frame of mind on the day of the signing had been anywhere but on the contract.
With Javier digging his heels in, Luis had decided that it would only cause bad feeling and acrimony if he told Benjamin the truth. It had been better for everyone that Luis wait for Tour Mont Blanc, a project that would take years, to be completed and for all the money to be in the bank before speaking to Benjamin man-to-man about it and forging a private agreement on the matter.
‘He didn’t read it because he was cut up about our mother. He trusted you. He had no idea the terms had been changed. He signed that contract in good faith.’ Chloe’s eyes were fixed on his, ringed with loathing. ‘He gave you the last of his cash savings. That investment meant he couldn’t afford to buy the chateau outright and he had to get a huge mortgage to pay for it so our mother could end her days there. He almost lost everything in the aftermath. You took his money then watched him struggle to stop himself from drowning.’
‘We were not in a position to help him. It gives me no pleasure to admit this but we were in as dire a financial situation as Benjamin was. We’d grown too big too soon and over-extended massively. The difference between us and Benjamin was that Benjamin saw no shame in admitting it. We did, and I am only sharing this with you so you understand that I’m not the treacherous bastard you think I am. At that time we were all trying to save ourselves from drowning. I’d always had it in the back of my mind that when the Tour Mont Blanc project was complete I would come to a private agreement with Benjamin and pay him the extra profit he felt he was due...’
‘You didn’t do that though, did you? The first he knew of it was when he saw the final accounts!’
‘I’d been overseeing a project in Brazil. Javier sent the accounts before I had the chance to talk to Benjamin about it. I flew back for Javier’s engagement party and your brother came in all guns blazing firing libellous accusations at us. Call it human nature, call it bull-headedness but when someone threatens me my instinct is to fight back. I admit, ugly words were exchanged that day—we were all on the defensive, all of us, your brother included. He would not discuss things reasonably...’
‘Why should he have?’
