Rourke Martinez, she thought calmly. It could be done. Even while he had been slagging her off, he had been aware of her as a woman. She knew that, and at the time it had simply fuelled her resentment of him, but now, she acknowledged, she could turn it to her advantage maybe.
She would have to apologise sweetly, she thought, grinding her teeth. Tell him helplessly that jet-lag always affected her temper. She would have to flatter him, of course. No man with his brand of dynamic good looks could be without his share of sexual vanity. It might even be—amusing to let him fancy her a little. To let him think she could be—interested herself.
She had done it before, she thought with a little inward giggle. There wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t be conned into thinking he was irresistible.
She would have to be discreet about it, of course. The journey to Atayahuanco would be fraught enough without having to fight off unwanted advances from her guide.
With new determination, she knocked at the door of the inner office. It opened almost at once, and the girl looked at her enquiringly.
‘Sí,señorita? You are having a long wait, I think.’
‘I think so too,’ Leigh said briskly. ‘It might be better to leave Doctor Martinez a note, if you can give me a sheet of paper and an envelope.’
The note took a lot of thinking about. She wanted it to sound reasonably enticing, without actually grovelling to the creature.
‘Dear Doctor Martinez,’ she wrote at last, ‘I feel we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. May I make amends by inviting you to have dinner with me at my hotel either tonight or tomorrow? I expect to be out for the rest of the day, but a message left at reception will be quite sufficient.’ She added, ‘Sincerely yours’ and her signature, and looked at her handiwork with satisfaction. That should bring him, if only out of curiosity.
And by the time dinner was over, she would have him eating out of her hand, she thought, smiling to herself, sealing the envelope as if she were sealing his fate with it.
Leigh could not have said she thoroughly enjoyed her sightseeing that day. Armed with a guide book, she dutifully toured the Plaza de Armes, stared into the swirling waters of the Rimac from the Bridge of Stones, and recoiled, shuddering, from the mummified remains of the great conquistador Francisco Pizarro, preserved ghoulishly in a glass case in the Cathedral.
She wasn’t sure she approved of Pizarro. Everything she had ever read about the Inca civilisation suggested it had worked perfectly well without outside interference. But the gold which they took so much for granted had lured the conquerors and plunderers from the Old World, and the Spaniards had overthrown the Inca Atahualpa by a trick, then held him to ransom. But the riches of his kingdom, which his bewildered people had brought in load after weary load, were not enough to save him. Pizarro, having sworn not one drop of his blood should be spilled, kept his word by having the Inca strangled.
It was not, Leigh thought with distaste, an uplifting story, and it seemed only fitting that a few years later Pizarro should have been betrayed and murdered by his own men.
But her mind wasn’t really on Peru’s savage history. Over and over again, she found herself thinking about Rourke Martinez, trying to gauge his reaction to her note.
She supposed his most likely response would be to ignore her completely. But I’ll worry about that when it happens, she thought.
And much as she hated to admit it, she was beginning to realise that Lima might not be a safe city for a woman on her own. She was attracting all kinds of unwelcome attention. She could deal with the normal range of wolf whistles and goodhumoured sexual innuendo, but the kind of macho aggression her slender fairness seemed to be inciting was altogether outside her scope. Over-loud remarks accompanied by blatantly lecherous gestures, made her face burn, and she decided to abandon her plan to visit some of the city’s museums, almost running the remaining blocks back to her hotel.
To her amazement, when she asked without much hope if there were any messages, the clerk handed her a folded paper.
‘Dear Miss Frazier,’ his letter read, ‘Your olive branch is accepted. I’m afraid tonight is the only night I can manage, as my time in Lima is strictly limited. Shall we say eight o’clock?’ His signature was as uncompromising as the man himself, she noted ruefully.
But she could feel glee welling up inside her just the same.
As simple as that, she thought in self-congratulation. She said to the reception clerk, ‘Would you send the maître d’hotel to my suite right away, please. I wish to entertain a guest privately there to dinner tonight.’
The clerk stared at her. ‘But our dining-room is excellent, señorita, and tonight there will be a musical show with folk dancing which you and your guest will enjoy.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Leigh in a tone which brooked no argument. ‘My—guest and I have business to discuss which requires peace and privacy, so please do as I have asked.’
As she rode up in the lift, she re-read his note. So his time in Lima was limited. Did that mean he was going back to Atayahuanco very soon? It seemed more than likely.
But what he didn’t realise, she told herself pleasurably, her nails curling into the palms of her hands, was that she would be going with him.
She devoted the rest of the afternoon to relaxing and getting ready, smoothing away any ragged edges with a leisurely session with the hairdresser and manicurist in the hotel’s beauty salon.
Dressing that evening, she subjected her wardrobe to minute scrutiny before deciding what to wear. She felt rather like a general planning some spring offensive. And it was, she thought, definitely time for the big guns!
Her silky black dress relied for its effect on the chic and daring of its cut. It moulded itself lovingly to her slim figure before breaking out into a brief swirl of a skirt, and the halternecked bodice, although reasonably demure at the front, plunged well below her waist at the back.
She fixed delicate gold spirals in her ears, and added a discreet misting of Hermès, before deciding she would do.
Rourke Martinez, she thought smiling, would not know what had hit him.
The telephone rang promptly at eight.
‘Your guest is here, señorita,’ an expressionless voice told her.
‘I’ll come down,’ said Leigh. ‘Ask him to wait for me in the bar, por favor.’
She took a deep breath, as she gave herself a final considering survey in the long mirror. Black shoes with slender, spiked heels and pale stockings with embroidered seams completed her ensemble, and her hair gleamed like silk.
She thought, I look like a woman going to meet her lover, and the realisation stopped her in her tracks. For the first time, she felt a qualm about her plans for the evening, then she squared her slender shoulders, lifting her chin defiantly. However loathsome she might find it having to play up to a man like Rourke Martinez, it would be worth it, if it meant she found Evan at last.
And after the way Rourke Martinez had treated her, it would be amusing to see if she could make him grovel, even for a short while.
She caused a minor sensation as she entered the bar, but she would have enjoyed it more if she
