that had torn her apart in the weeks and months after the miscarriage had faded with time, but there would always be a lingering ache in her heart for the child she had lost.
‘I need to speak to your father.’
Fool, Sabrina berated herself, remembering that the butler had said Cruz had asked to see Earl Bancroft. The reason for his visit had nothing to do with her. He hadn’t cared about her ten years ago. The only reason he had asked her to marry him was because he had wanted his child. But having witnessed her parents’ disastrous marriage, Sabrina had been wary of making such a commitment. She had been sure Cruz did not love her and so she had turned him down.
Cruz did not look as though he was besieged by memories of the past. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored grey suit that moulded the lean lines of his body, and a white shirt that contrasted with his darkly tanned face. He looked the phenomenally successful multimillionaire businessman that she had read about in both the financial pages and the gossip columns of the newspapers. Yet beneath his air of suave sophistication she sensed there was still a wild, untameable quality about Cruz Delgado that had so intrigued her when they had been lovers.
Once again she felt the urge to flee from the library but she forced herself to walk into the room, closing the door behind her with a decisive click.
Cruz was standing behind the desk, his hawk-like features set in an arrogant expression as if he owned Eversleigh Hall, damn him. A memory slid into her mind of when she had been a little girl called into her father’s study to explain some misdemeanour. Earl Bancroft had not been a particularly strict parent, more an uninterested one. He’d spent most of his time abroad and when Sabrina was a child her father had been a stranger who upset her mother and created a fraught tension in the house that disappeared when he went away again.
Lifting her chin, Sabrina walked around the desk to where Cruz was standing by the window, but she regretted her actions when she realised how close she was to him. She was sure it was not by accident that he’d moved his position slightly so that she was trapped between his powerful body and the desk. The musk of his sandalwood cologne was instantly familiar and she recognised the brand of aftershave she had given him as a present soon after she had given him her virginity. Had he deliberately worn that particular brand tonight to torment her?
Unwilling to meet his gaze, she glanced towards the window and made a choked sound when she saw what appeared to be a group orgy taking place on the lawn. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ she muttered as she quickly twitched the curtains shut.
‘Your friends are clearly enjoying themselves,’ Cruz drawled.
‘They’re not my friends.’ Sabrina could feel her face burning. She wasn’t a prude but the behaviour going on—not to mention the amount of clothes coming off—in the garden was unacceptable.
‘Are they your brother’s friends?’ Cruz was curious. ‘Is it Tristan’s party?’
‘Tristan is away at university.’ Thankfully her brother was nothing like Hugo Ffaulk and his ilk, Sabrina thought to herself. Tris knew that to fulfil his ambition of being an airline pilot he had to gain a first-class degree. Of course there was also the little matter of the one hundred thousand pounds required for the pilot training. The merry-go-round of worries inside her head did another circuit. Somehow, she vowed, she would find the money for her brother to train for the career that he had dreamed of since he was a small boy.
‘So, are those people your father’s guests?’
Sabrina had no intention of telling Cruz that giving parties at Eversleigh Hall was a business venture. No one apart from her and the bank manager knew of the financial catastrophe that was looming over Eversleigh, and so far she had managed to keep the news that Earl Bancroft was missing out of the media.
‘They are my guests, who I invited to my party,’ she said stiffly. ‘Some of them are just a little over-exuberant, that’s all.’
Cruz gave her a sardonic look. ‘I’ve heard gossip on the London social scene about the wild parties you throw at Eversleigh Hall. What does Earl Bancroft think about his stately home being overrun by upper-class yobs?’
‘My father isn’t here. He’s away on a trip and I don’t know when he’ll be back. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’ She tried to step past him and gave a startled cry when he caught hold of her arm.
‘That’s it?’ Cruz growled. ‘I see you haven’t changed in the past ten years, gatinha. You still think you can dismiss me as if I am dirt beneath your shoe.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She tried to jerk her arm out of his grip. ‘And don’t call me that. I’m not your kitten.’ Hearing him use the affectionate name he had called her when they had been lovers, in a sarcastic tone, hurt more than it had any right to.
His gravelly, sexy accent brought her skin out in goose bumps. She wanted to stop staring at him but she could not tear her eyes from the sculpted planes of his face and his sensual mouth. ‘I never treated you like dirt,’ she muttered, startled by the accusation. Surely she had made it embarrassingly obvious ten years ago that she’d worshipped the ground he walked on?
‘The first time we saw each other you put your nose in the air and ignored me.’
She gave a shaky laugh. ‘I was eighteen and painfully naïve. The nuns who taught at St Ursula’s College for Ladies never explained about handsome men who could make a girl feel...’ She broke off, flushing as Cruz’s gaze narrowed on her face.
‘Feel...what?’ he demanded. Sabrina recognised the predatory gleam in his eyes and she instinctively backed away from him until her spine was jammed against the desk.
‘You know how you made me feel.’ She silently cursed the huskiness in her voice. ‘And I didn’t ignore you for long. You made sure of that.’
He’d had her in his bed within a week of her arrival in Brazil. Memories assailed her of blistering hot days when they’d had blisteringly exciting sex in the shade of the rubber trees, and sultry, steamy nights when Cruz had climbed up to her balcony at the ranch house and they’d made love beneath the stars.
The rasp of Cruz’s breath warned her that he was also remembering their scorching passion. But sex was all they had shared, Sabrina thought. Their response to each other ten years ago had simply been a chemical reaction. Disturbingly, the mysterious alchemy of sexual attraction was at work again now. She could see it in the way his olive-green eyes had darkened so that they were almost black.
Her spine would be bruised from where she was pressing against the desk. She searched her mind for something to say to break the simmering tension in the room. ‘Why do you want to see my father?’
‘I believe he has something that belongs to me, and I want what is mine.’
* * *
Cruz stared at the stunning diamond pendant Sabrina was wearing around her neck. The Estrela Vermelha—the Red Star—was one of the largest red diamonds ever to have been found in Brazil. Cruz knew that diamonds could occur in a variety of colours, with red being the rarest. When his father had found the gem, the uncut, unpolished stone had not looked as though it was worth a fortune.
Earl Bancroft had had the stone triangular-cut, or trilliant-cut as it was known to gemologists. The red diamond had been set in a border of white diamonds and the contrast between the red and white sparkling gems was truly breathtaking. The pendant had never been for sale, but conservative
