could not have said why he was searching for her. He told himself that it was because she looked uncertain, another stranger in the Montijos’ magnificent midst. Being a stranger had its dangers. Maybe she didn’t know the creek. Maybe she could have fallen in and needed rescuing.
But it was not that and he knew it. Maybe it was that she looked as out of place as he was. Only in his case it did not show on the outside.
Or maybe it was because Isabel had been an uncertain stranger and nobody had rescued her.
Abby was utterly peaceful for the first time in days. She could hear the soft lap-lap of the creek, beyond the hedge of honey-tinged albas. The darkening sky was splashed with lemon and apricot at the horizon but the impatient stars were out already. In this wonderful clear air, they seemed so close, you could stretch up and touch them if you could bother to bestir yourself. And all around her was the scent of the roses.
They were not roses she knew. There was a peppery pink and a deep, deep crimson that smelled like hot wine. As for the palomino coloured climbing rose that surged around her stone seat—she reached up and buried her nose in it. What did it smell of? Abby shut her eyes. Concentrating.
Emilio found the grotto by accident. At first he thought it was just a gardener’s corner, hedged around to hide tools and a compost heap. But a perverse desire to see the decaying cabbage leaves of elegant Hacienda Montijo pushed him through the break in the hedge.
To find what he had not admitted he was looking for! He stopped dead.
She did not notice him at first, his crane fly girl. She had her nose buried in a big tatty rose. Its petals were the colour of French toast and its leaves were almost black. As he looked she raised her head and, eyes closed, inhaled luxuriously. Her oversophisticated dress was nearly falling off. But she was oblivious to everything but her rose.
‘Paper,’ she said aloud. ‘No—parchment. And something else. Cloves?’
She opened her eyes and bent to take another connoisseur’s sniff. She never got there. She saw him. Her eyes widened in dismay.
Well, at least she wasn’t going to ask him for his autograph, thought Emilio, trying to be amused. But he was not. That look piqued him. His time had not yet passed. People were still eager to welcome this celebrity. He did not like being toadied to, of course he didn’t, but he wasn’t used to people glaring at him as if he was an evil destroyer from another planet, either.
He nearly said so. But at the last moment he changed tack and decided to use the legendary charm instead. If it worked on journalists and crowned heads, who saw a lot of world-class charm, it ought to work on this odd creature in her ill-fitting dress.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he said with the crooked, rueful smile that the photographers loved.
It did not appear to work. Emilio was taken aback.
The girl frowned mightily. It looked fierce. But of course she must be having to translate in her head, he thought, suddenly understanding the significance of the words he had overheard. Now was she American? Canadian? Australian? English?
He said forgivingly, ‘I’ll go,’ and waited for her to tell him to stay.
She stood up and said with great care, ‘I thought I am—sorry, I thought I was alone.’
All right, she wasn’t going to tell him to stay. But she probably did not have the vocabulary for it. He recognised the wooden accent.
‘English?’ said Emilio in that language, strolling in to the centre of the bower.
She looked annoyed. ‘Yes. But I try to speak Spanish. I did a course before I came out here specially. Only no one will let me.’
He selected another rose from the torrent and lifted it on one long finger.
‘That’s probably because your ideas are too interesting to get lost in first-grade vocabulary.’ He tried another smile. ‘What was it you said this thing smelled of? Parchment?’
She nodded seriously.
‘And what does parchment smell like?’
To his amusement she closed her eyes to answer him with total attention. ‘Linen. Dust. Afternoon sunshine through tall windows onto a stone floor. Maybe a touch of beeswax.’
He blinked, startled.
She opened her eyes and saw it. It was her turn to be amused.
‘I know my smells. And I know my roses.’
‘So I see.’ He let the rose fall back among its brothers and looked at her curiously. ‘Isn’t that an odd hobby for someone your age? How old are you, as a matter of interest?’
Abby sighed. ‘Sixteen. And age has nothing to do with it. It’s not a hobby, it’s necessity.’
He sank onto the grass at her feet and looped his arms round his knees.
‘Explain,’ he commanded.
Abby looked down at him, taken aback. No man had ever sat at her feet before. Oh, her brothers sprawled all over the place. But they never actually sat and studied her, dark eyes intent, as if they had nothing in the world that interested them except her and what she had to say.
In spite of the evening breeze that stirred the roses, she suddenly felt uncomfortably hot.
He laughed softly. Abby pulled herself together.
‘Our garden,’ she said practically, ignoring the heat she could feel behind her ears. ‘It’s planted with all the old roses. But there’s no one but me to look after it. I learned which was which because people wrote letters about them and someone had to answer.’
His eyes were very dark brown, like the mahogany table in the big dining room at home, only when it was buffed so that it shone like glass. That had only happened a couple of times in Abby’s memory but she remembered it vividly. It turned the table halfway to a mirror, so that everything looked different. It was the same effect of this man’s strange eyes. Even in the twilight she could see the way they glittered. It was not comfortable.
The long, curling eyelashes did nothing to soften their expression, either. He looked as if he knew exactly what effect that melting expression had. As their eyes met, his mouth lifted in a half smile.
That made it worse. Abby raised her chin.
‘So tell me—’ His voice was like a lion’s purr, deep and languorous. Deceptively languorous. This was not, thought Abby, a creature you would want to lull you to sleep. ‘If I wrote to you about your roses, what would you tell me?’
Abby met his eyes and found they were like a caress. The warmth was palpable. Instinctively she turned towards it, like a flower to the sun. She could almost feel her skin being stroked.
She brought herself up short. Caress? Stroked? What was it her father had said? She thought that people always meant what they said and she had to learn that they didn’t?
Learn, she told herself feverishly. Learn. Whatever it feels like, it’s not real. No glamorous man wastes caressing glances on a scrubby teenager unless he
