Salzano's Captive Bride. Daphne Clair

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СКАЧАТЬ spending the morning making expensive telephone calls and checking his e-mail, he had studied the phone book in his room and later interviewed a private investigator.

      Marco had given him as much information as would be needed to do a background check on Azure Odell, vaguely suggesting she was suspected of fraud.

      “Can’t do much today, but I’ll get onto it tomorrow,” the detective promised, “since you say it’s urgent.”

      And since Marco had laid down a handsome initial fee. Now all he could do was wait.

      Moodily he swilled the wine in his glass, ignoring the chatter in the crowded hotel bar and avoiding the eyes of two women perched on high stools that showed off their legs, who had been covertly inspecting him for some time.

      For almost two years he’d put out of his mind the memory of that single night shared with a stranger, scarcely remembering the details. Yet now, after meeting her again, his body seemed to have a memory of its own—and an inconvenient desire to repeat the experience.

      She was an attractive woman, even beautiful. But the women of his own country were renowned for their beauty. There was something else about her, some indefinable quality that eluded his mind yet appealed to his senses. Something he’d missed during that first casual encounter. Because now he couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind, couldn’t stop his body growing hot and restless.

      He scowled at an open portfolio of papers lying on the table in front of him, a clear sign that he was working and didn’t want company, but for fifteen minutes he’d stared at the printed sheets without comprehension. Idly scanning the room again, his gaze chanced upon the two women at the counter. Neither evoked a flicker of interest.

      Next morning he breakfasted early before returning to his room. It was too soon to expect a call from the investigator, but that didn’t stop him staring balefully at the light on the phone that refused to obligingly blink.

      He killed time checking e-mail and researching the New Zealand beef industry on his computer, noting possible contacts if he should be here for a few more days. It was afternoon when the man contacted him. “The lessee of the address you gave me is an Amber Odell,” he said. “Single, twenty-seven, works for a film and TV company in the city. She does apparently have a sister named Azure, but—”

      “A sister?” Marco queried sharply.

      “Yeah. She—the sister—doesn’t live at that address.”

      “A twin?”

      “Uh, don’t think so. I could find out, get her address. It might take a bit longer if she’s married and changed her name, but which woman are you interested in? Or is it both?”

      “Yes—no.” There was a faster way. “You have the address of this…Amber’s…workplace?”

      After putting down the phone Marco swore in his mother tongue, left his chair to pace the floor and swear some more, opened the bar fridge, then slammed it shut. This whole thing had started because for once he’d gone over his usual strict limit. He had to think. To control his first instinct, which was to find the woman, whatever her real name was, and wring her smooth, graceful, deceitful neck!

      He wouldn’t, of course, do that. But, he vowed, disciplining his hot, out-of-control rage to a contained, ruthless anger, he would see that she paid in full.

      No one played Marco Salzano for a fool and got away with it. Not even a beautiful woman who set his blood on fire.

      He consulted a map and found the street address the investigator had given him for the film studio. Marco’s lip curled. Wasn’t the film industry notorious for its casual attitude to sex? Like sister, like sister. Amber Odell had probably had dozens of lovers.

      His gut tightened. Why should it matter how many men she had slept with? Especially if he wasn’t, after all, one of them? The only reason for his driving need to see her was to find his son. Who surely did exist. Obviously the two sisters had cooked up that charade he’d been subjected to.

      Leaving the Filmografia building in central Auckland, Amber stopped dead when Marco Salzano loomed in front of her, his face looking as if some sculptor had chiselled it out of unyielding rock. In his eyes was the banked fire of the anger he’d displayed at their first encounter.

      “Hello, Amber,” he said, with dark, steely mockery in his tone.

      “What are you doing here?” she gasped, her heart contracting into a shrivelled ball. “How did you find me?” She looked about her, but most of her colleagues had either already left or were still working. Filming wasn’t the kind of business where working hours were cast in stone.

      His expression changed slightly, as if she’d just satisfied him in some way. “We must talk.”

      He took her arm but she shook off his hand. “I don’t need to talk to you,” she said, trying to sidestep him, but this time he caught her arm in an unshakeable grip, trying to walk her along with him.

      “Come, we cannot discuss anything here.”

      “I’m not going anywhere with you. Let go of me or I’ll scream. Someone will call the police and I’ll tell them you’re stalking me.” She opened her mouth and he dropped his hand from her arm, looking grimly amused.

      “And I will tell them you are attempting to deprive me of my legal rights by fraud and deception. I’m not stalking you. I merely wish to talk about your sister.”

      Her sister? Of course, he’d called her by her own name, which she’d automatically reacted to. Not Azure’s. How much did he know? “How did you find out where I work?”

      “I hired an investigator,” he said calmly.

      “You…?” For a second she was stunned as well as angry. The idea of a stranger prying into her life gave her the creeps. “How dare you!”

      “How else could I discover the truth? You lied to me.”

      “I didn’t,” she protested unconvincingly, her conscience stabbing. “I told you over and over you had the wrong person.”

      “Sí. The first time I came to your apartment. But the next evening you did not deny you had slept with me, written to me.”

      “What would be the point?” she said, pushing away a wildly inappropriate mental picture of herself and Marco in the same bed. “You’d jumped to a conclusion, and trying to set you straight hadn’t worked before. I figured nothing I said was going to convince you.”

      “You did not say, My sister slept with you in Caracas and had your baby.”

      “How do you know there’s a baby?” Her stomach went hollow.

      Marco said, “Why else would you have played out that absurd pretence?”

      Oh, hell! “Azure’s married.” Surely he could understand that no married woman wanted a previous lover turning up on her doorstep?

      He said, “To the boyfriend who abandoned her in a foreign city full of men who had been drinking heavily?”

      “It was a misunderstanding.” СКАЧАТЬ