Agatha Collins was from the sort of women Luiz preferred—tall brunettes with legs up to their armpits and amenable, yielding natures—he couldn’t deny that she was startlingly pretty. Five-four tops, with pale, curly hair the colour of buttermilk and skin that was satiny smooth. Her eyes were purest aquamarine, offset by dark lashes, as though her creator had been determined to make sure that she stood out from the crowd and had taken one little detail and made it strikingly different.
Aggie flushed and mentally cursed herself for falling in with her brother and Maria. When Luiz had made his first, unwelcome appearance in their lives, she had agreed that she would downplay their financial circumstances, that she would economise harmlessly on the unadorned truth.
‘My mum’s insisted that Uncle Luiz check Mark out,’ Maria had explained tightly. ‘And Uncle Luiz is horribly black-and-white. It’d be better if he thinks that you’re…okay…Not exactly rich, but not completely broke either.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,’ Aggie dodged.
‘Where’s your brother?’
‘He isn’t here and neither is Maria. And when are you going to stop spying on us?’
‘I’m beginning to think that my spying is starting to pay dividends,’ Luiz murmured. ‘Which one of you told me that you lived in Richmond?’ He leaned against the wall and looked down at her with those bottomless dark eyes that always managed to send her nervous system into instant freefall.
‘I didn’t say that we lived in Richmond,’ Aggie prevaricated guiltily. ‘I probably told you that we go cycling there quite a bit. In the park. It’s not my fault that you might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.’
‘I never get hold of the wrong end of the stick.’ The casual interest which he had seen as an unnecessary chore now blossomed into rampant suspicion. She and her brother had lied about their financial circumstances and had probably persuaded his niece to go along for the ride and back them up. And that, to Luiz, was pointing in only one direction. ‘When I got the address of this place, I had to double check because it didn’t tally with what I’d been told.’ He began removing his coat while Aggie watched in growing dismay.
Every single time she had met Luiz, it had been in one of London’s upmarket restaurants. She, Mark and Maria had been treated over time to the finest Italian food money could buy, the best Thai to be found in the country, the most expensive French in the most exclusive area. Pre-warned by Maria that it was her uncle’s way of keeping tabs on them, they had been unforthcoming on personal detail and expansive on polite chitchat.
Aggie had bristled at the mere thought that they were being sized up, and she had bristled even more at the nagging suspicion that they had both been found wanting. But restaurants were one thing. Descending on them here was taking it one step too far.
And now his coat was off, which implied that he wasn’t about to do the disappearing act she desperately wanted. Something about him unsettled her and here, in this small space, she was even more unsettled.
‘Maybe you could get me something to drink,’ he inserted smoothly. ‘And we can explore what other little lies might come out in the wash while I wait for your brother to show up.’
‘Why is it suddenly so important that you talk to Mark?’ Aggie asked uneasily. ‘I mean, couldn’t you have waited? Maybe invited him out for dinner with Maria so that you could try and get to the bottom of his intentions? Again?’
‘Things have moved up a gear, regrettably. But I’ll come back to that.’ He strolled past her through the open door and into the sitting room. The decor here was no more tasteful than it was in the hall. The walls were the colour of off-cheese, depressing despite the old movie posters that had been tacked on. The furniture was an unappealing mix of old and used and tacky, snap-together modern. In one corner, an old television set was propped on a cheap pine unit.
‘What do you mean that things have moved up a gear?’ Aggie demanded as he sat on one of the chairs and looked at her with unhurried thoroughness.
‘I guess you know why I’ve been keeping tabs on your brother.’
‘Maria mentioned that her mother can be a little over-protective,’ Aggie mumbled. She resigned herself to the fact that Luiz wasn’t leaving in a hurry and reluctantly sat down on the chair facing him.
As always, she felt dowdy and underdressed. On the occasions when she had been dragged along to those fancy restaurants—none of which she would ever have sampled had it not been for him—she had rooted out the dressiest clothes in her wardrobe and had still managed to feel cheap and mousey. Now, in baggy, thick jogging bottoms and Mark’s jumper, several sizes too big, she felt screamingly, ridiculously frumpy. Which made her resent him even more.
Luiz gave an elegant shrug. ‘It pays to be careful. Naturally, when my sister asked me to check your brother out, I tried to talk her out of it.’
‘You did?’
‘Sure. Maria’s a kid and kids have relationships that fall by the wayside. It’s life. I was convinced that this relationship would be no different but I eventually agreed that I would keep an eye on things.’
‘By which,’ Aggie inserted bitterly, ‘you meant that you would quiz us on every aspect of our lives and try and trip us up.’
‘Congratulations. You both provided a touchingly united front. I find that I barely know a single personal thing about either of you and it’s dawning on me that the few details you’ve imparted have probably been a tissue of lies—starting with where you live. It would have saved time and effort if I’d employed a detective to ferret out whatever background information was necessary.’
‘Maria thought that—’
‘Do me a favour. Keep my niece out of this. You live in a dump, which you rent from an unscrupulous landlord. You can barely afford the rent. Tell me, do either of you hold down jobs, or were those fabrications as well?’
‘I resent you barging into my house.’
‘Mr Cholmsey’s house—if you can call it a house.’
‘Fine! I still resent you barging in here and insulting me.’
‘Tough.’
‘In fact, I’m asking you to leave!’
At that, Luiz burst out laughing. ‘Do you really think that I’ve come all the way here so that I can leave the second the questioning gets a little too uncomfortable for you?’
‘Well, I don’t see the point of you hanging around. Mark and Maria aren’t here.’
‘I’ve come because, like I said, things have moved up a gear. It seems that there’s now talk of marriage. It’s not going to do.’
‘Talk of marriage?’ Aggie parroted incredulously. ‘There’s no talk of marriage.’
‘At least, none that your brother’s told you about. Maybe the touching united front isn’t quite as united as you’d like it to be.’
‘You…you are just the most awful human being I’ve ever met!’
‘I
