Passionate Relationship. PENNY JORDAN

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      Moving restlessly in her seat, she tried to banish Jaime and his family from her mind. Someone on the next table ordered a sandwich, and Shelley suddenly realised how long it was since she had eaten. it took her ten minutes to catch the waiter’s eye, but when he eventually returned with her order, she found the coffee he had brought her tasted hot and invigorating and the ham roll was deliciously fresh.

      It was six o’clock when she returned to her car. The directions the waiter had given her were easy to follow, and she found the villa at the end of a narrow, untarmacked road.

      Like the quinta, it was built primarily in the Moorish style, its wooden shutters closed and a large arched wooden doorway blocking her entrance. She should, of course, have realised that the place would be locked up. With a let-down feeling, Shelley stared at the white walls and shuttered windows, filled with a sense of depressed frustration. She would find nothing of her father here outside this shuttered, empty house.

      This part of the Algarve was renowned for its sandy beaches, and less than a couple of miles further down the beach Shelley saw that someone was constructing a large hotel. It was a strange sensation to realise that this land she was standing on actually belonged to her. In Portugal the beaches were all the property of the nation, but the villa and several acres of land that went with it were apparently hers.

      It was no good. She felt no sense of ownership, of belonging. If she could have gone inside the villa…or even perhaps seen some of her father’s work. But she had too much pride to go back to the quinta and ask.

      The sun was dipping into the sea, sinking slowly. Soon it would be dark. She ought to head back to her car and drive down the coast, otherwise she would never find a hotel where she could spend the night, but something father had lived here in this land, in this very building, but she couldn’t picture him here. She didn’t even know what he looked like, she reflected bitterly. Her grandmother had destroyed the wedding photographs after her mother had died.

      Coming here had been a stupid impulse, a waste of time. She turned round abruptly, tensing in shock as she saw the man watching her.

      ‘Jaime!’

      She wasn’t aware of saying his name, only of the intense panic locking her muscles. A confrontation here with this man was the last thing she wanted.

      ‘I hoped I might find you here.’

      Something had changed. He no longer looked quite as austere, and his eyes when they met hers held both regret and remorse.

      He stood within an arm’s length of her, but made no attempt to touch her.

      ‘What can I say?’ He spread his hands in a gesture that was totally continental.

      ‘Why did you not tell us, querida?’ His voice sounded rough and tired. ‘Had we known…’

      ‘You would still have resented me,’ interrupted Shelley curtly. ‘You wanted to believe the worst of me, and now that you’ve discovered that you were wrong, you’ve followed me here to apologise. But it’s not my feelings that concern you, but your own, your own pride. You don’t give a damn about me, or my pain; all you’re concerned with is your own precious pride.’

      ‘You are wrong. I am concerned about you; but I am not the only one to be guilty of the sin of pride. I believe it is your pride that leads you to punish us by leaving us with our burden of guilt by not allowing us the opportunity to make amends. Your father was one of the best men I have ever known, and I have always considered myself more than fortunate to have him as my mentor in the place of a father with whom I never got on. Since you share with me the sin of pride, I am sure you must know what it does to me to know that my gain, my good fortune, was your loss, your unhappiness.’

      Ridiculously, his words softened her resentment and made her eyes prickle with tears. She turned away from him, glad of the concealing blanket of dusk.

      ‘I grew up believing him dead. I only wish…’ She broke off and stared blindly at the dim outline of the villa. ‘I thought I might find something of him here…I don’t even know what he looked like…’ Her control threatened to desert her completely, and she knew she couldn’t stay here any longer. The dusk which earlier she had welcomed now seemed to promote a dangerously weakening intimacy.

      ‘I must go…I have already told the lawyer to draw up papers returning the villa to your family. I don’t want it… I…’

      She had her back to him and prayed that she could get to her car without him seeing that she was in tears. It was years since she had cried. She never cried, and yet here she was…

      She tensed as she felt his touch on her arm and pulled violently away from him, but inexplicably, as she moved away, his body blocked her path, his hands cupping her face and tilting it so that he could look into her tear-drenched eyes.

      ‘Ah, querida, do not hide your tears from me. Do you not think that I have wept for him too?’

      Incredibly, she was held fast in his arms, being comforted by the soft murmur of his voice and the gentle stroking caress of his hands as she sobbed out her pent-up anguish and pain against his shoulders. This was what she had always wanted, she recognised numbly—this safety…this caring, this reassurance of strong arms around her.

      ‘Come, let us put aside our differences and start again, little sister. Come back with me to the quinta now. My mother was most concerned for you. It is still not done in this part of the world for our young women to wander alone at night.’

      She wanted to protest, but it was like struggling against a heavy drug.

      ‘My car,’ she reminded him, but Jaime was already leading her away from the villa.

      ‘José will drive it back for you. Tomorrow we will come back with the key and I shall show you round the villa. If it is that you genuinely do not wish to keep it, then I shall buy it from you at its market price. No…say nothing now…it is something we will talk about later when we are both more ourselves.’

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