palms that they had left tiny crescent-shaped marks.
She was just on the point of getting back into bed when she heard a brief knock on the door. Stiffening slightly, she stared as it opened inwards.
The sight of her stepbrother carrying a tray of tea and sandwiches was the last thing she had expected. Her eyes rounded hugely as he carried it over to the bed and put it down beside her.
As though he sensed her shock he drawled mockingly, ‘You might be unwelcome among us, but it is not our policy to starve our guests.’
Her mouth almost watered at the thought of a cup of tea, but a coldly gracious, ‘Thank you,’ was the only acknowledgement of his thoughtfulness that she made. In truth, she was too shocked to say anything else. That he should actually think to provide her with something to eat and drink after the row they had just had totally astounded her, but then perhaps his Latin temperament was more accustomed to such heated exchanges than hers. And yet he had not struck her as a temperamental person; far from it. She had received an initial impression of a very cool and controlled man indeed.
‘My mother asks you to forgive her for not greeting you personally, but, as you will have seen, she is still suffering from the effects of your father’s death.’
‘Unlike me, you mean?’
The hostility was there again, his eyes burning their message of bitter contempt into hers as he leaned towards her, palms flat against her mattress.
‘You said it, not I,’ he told her coldly. ‘But since you have said it, you leave me free to comment that I do find your very obvious lack of grief rather…disturbing.’
Shelley could have told him that she had cried many tears for her father over the years, and more since learning the truth, but her grief was a very private thing, not something she could easily find relief for. She could have told him that, unlike his mother, she had no one to turn to, no shoulder to cry on, no firm supporting male arm to comfort her. Instead she said mockingly, ‘I’m surprised to learn that anything or anyone can disturb you, Jaime, least of all someone as insignificant and unworthy as myself.’
‘Unworthy, maybe, but insignificant, never.’
Shelley caught her breath as her heartbeat suddenly accelerated wildly. He was insinuating that he found her sexually desirable—but surely that was impossible? For no reason at all she felt acutely conscious of the fact that she was in bed and wearing her nightdress, even if it was a very sensible cotton affair without the slightest pretensions to being provocative. For one inexplicable and totally appalling moment she found herself wondering what it would be like to be held in those sinewy male arms, to feel that cynical, masculine mouth caressing her own. The treacherous direction of her thoughts shocked her into tensing back, her eyes widening with shock.
Appallingly, as though his mind too had travelled along the same intimate lines, Jaime raised one hand and touched her face. The sensation of the hard pads of his fingertips against her skin made her jerk back in horror, her reaction registered by the hard gleam in his eyes.
‘Unpleasant, isn’t it?’ he agreed softly. ‘But then nature does so enjoy playing these little tricks on us. For all that I, in my role as your father’s stepson, despise and dislike you, as a daughter, as a man I cannot avoid knowing that I would very much like to discover if all that fire and temper you have inside you would be there if we were together in bed. Lust is a tremendous leveller, but you need not worry; for both our sakes I intend to make sure that neither of us gives in to such an unseemly desire.’
Did he really desire her, or was he just trying to intimidate her? Surely it must be the latter?
Wordlessly Shelley watched as he got up and walked to the door. There were a thousand things she should have said to him, the most important of which was an instant denial that she felt the slightest degree of desire for him, but inexplicably she had said nothing.
It was no wonder she hadn’t slept well, Shelley reflected tiredly, studying her reflection rather grimly, and wondering what she should wear for this morning’s meeting with the advogado. Something cool, and yet not too casual; clothes were important. As she had quickly learned in her business life, it was impossible to be judged quite erroneously, simply on the manner of one’s dress. At home she would have had no problems. One of the elegant tailored outfits she wore for work would have done admirably, but she had not brought them with her.
Now that she had met her formidable stepbrother, she could see that that had been a mistake. Had he met her when she was dressed in her businesslike grey pinstripe suit instead of in casual jeans and top, he would not have dared to talk so insultingly about wanting to go to bed with her.
The hand applying her eyeshadow wavered slightly, and she cursed under her breath. With the morning had come a return of her normal self-control. Indeed, she found it hard to accept her own emotional outburst of the previous evening. Obviously it had been brought on by tiredness and shock. With hindsight she could see that it had been on the cards that her father’s second family would resent her. When Jaime accused her of being motivated by greed he was no doubt unaware that his erroneous assessment of her gave her the suspicion that his own motives might not be completely untainted by that same vice.
It stood to reason that for her father to leave her something must mean that that same something couldn’t be left to any members of his new family, and yet surely, with all the wealth so obviously possessed by Jaime and his family, they could hardly resent whatever small trifle of remembrance her father might want to leave her?
But then the rich were notorious for their meanness. As for Jaime saying he desired her… Her hand shook again, and she steadied it, frowning fiercely at her own reflection. No doubt that had simply been something he had thrown at her to disarm her. A man with his brand of sexuality and good looks could scarcely be unaware of his effect upon her sex. No doubt it amused him to pretend some fictitious feeling of desire for her.
Did he think her so stupid that she was not aware of his contempt, or of the fact that even if he did genuinely desire her, his own pride would ensure that that desire was quite ruthlessly stifled?
A knock on her door made her jump, but it was only the maid, who had come to collect her breakfast tray.
‘The Conde asks me to say to you that Senhor Armandes will be here in half an hour.’
Shelley waited until she had gone to continue her toilet. Her bedroom had two large windows, one overlooking the vine covered hillsides and the other, a large enclosed courtyard. She could have had her breakfast on the balcony that overlooked this courtyard, but she had purposely stayed in her room. She had no wish to look down from her balcony and find herself under observation by her stepbrother, and one quick look into the courtyard earlier on had shown her a table set for breakfast.
Stoically, she had refused to allow herself to be hurt by the fact that she had not been invited to join the family for breakfast. They did not want to welcome her among them; very well, that would be their loss and not hers. She had no real need of them, and if they chose to leap to completely unfounded conclusions about the fact that she had not made contact with her father before his death, well then, let them.
Her watch told her that she had still fifteen minutes to wait until the advogado arrived, and she was determined not to set foot out of her room until he did. Once she had spoken to him she intended to leave the quinta just as quickly as she could. Her bags were already packed. Unable to sleep, she had risen early before Luisa arrived with her tray and had soon packed away everything that the maid had so carefully hung up the evening before.
It
