Mistress of La Rioja. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ the fan-cooled air of the vast hacienda, Luis’s hard, dark features set themselves into bleak and unforgiving lines. ‘I was not in the car,’ he said roughly.

      Though her thoughts were fragmented by the enormity of what he had told her, Sophie frowned in confusion. Why not? she wondered. Why was Miranda travelling in the early hours without her family?

      Her fingers clenched themselves into a tight little fist. The whys and the wheres and the hows were not appropriate—not now, not when the cold practicalities of death must be dealt with in as sympathetic a way as possible.

      And Luis must be grieving—he must be. Despite the ups and downs of a marriage which Sophie knew had definitely not been made in heaven. His wife— the mother of his son—had met a tragically early end, and, no matter what had gone on before, Luis’s world had imploded.

      Her own feelings about him didn’t count—not at a time like this. He was owed her condolences and not her hostility.

      ‘I’m…I’m so sorry,’ she said stiffly.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘I rang to tell you the news myself rather than having the police contact you. And to enquire whether you wish me to ring your grandmother…’

      His words reminded her of the awful task which lay ahead—of telling her elderly and now frail grandmother what had happened. Sophie drew in a painful breath, thankful that her cousin’s parents had been spared the ordeal of learning the fate of their beautiful daughter. For wasn’t the premature death of a child the most terrible bereavement of all—even if they had treated Miranda with a kind of absent carelessness?

      Miranda’s parents had been nomads at heart, inveterate travellers who had journeyed to all four corners of the earth, greedily seeking out new experiences, never growing tired of the adventure of the unexplored. Until one day when their light aircraft had plummeted out of the sky and into the unforgiving mountains. Miranda had been just seventeen at the time, and soon after that, she had begun to live as though there were no tomorrow.

      And now there never would be, not for her.

      ‘No.’ Biting back her tears, Sophie slowly let the word out. ‘I will tell my grandmother myself, in person. It’ll be easier…’ She swallowed. She wouldn’t break down in front of him, she wouldn’t. ‘Less painful, coming from me.’ And try somehow to contact her own parents, who were having their own holiday of a lifetime, ensconced in luxury on some vast, ocean-going liner.

      ‘You’re sure?’ he questioned.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It will be…hard,’ he said, but his voice was un-characteristically soft now, soft as butter. ‘She is an old woman now.’

      She steeled herself not to react to that murmuring voice, because it was vital that she remained impervious to Luis de la Camara—for all their sakes. ‘It is thoughtful of you to care.’

      Did she mock him with that cool, unfathomable tone of hers? ‘Of course. She is family, Sophie—what did you expect?’

      What did she expect? She didn’t know, and she wondered how he could ask her a question like that at a time like this.

      She hadn’t expected her beloved Miranda to die so needlessly, or for her nephew to grow up without a mother, so far away from the land of her birth.

      Teo.

      Just the thought of him focused Sophie’s grief into energy and resolution. ‘Wh-when is the funeral?’

      ‘On Monday.’

      Which gave her three days.

      ‘I’ll be there. I’ll fly out on Sunday.’

      And, to Luis’s appalled horror, he felt the stirring of triumph and the impossible ache of knowing that soon he would see her once more, and he cursed the body which betrayed him so completely. ‘Contact my home or my office to let me know the times of your flight,’ he said tightly. ‘You will have to fly to Madrid and then take a connection on to Pamplona. I will arrange to have a car pick you up at the airport. Have you got that?’

      ‘Thank you,’ she said, thinking how in control he sounded, until she remembered that he was in control—always—and that, whatever happened, it was Luis de la Camara who was calling the shots.

      ‘Adios, Sophie,’ he drawled softly.

      With a shaking hand, Sophie let the phone fall down into its cradle, and at the harsh finality of the sound reaction set in at last. She stared blankly at the wall in front of her, her mind spinning with disbelief as she thought of Miranda.

      Her poor cousin—dying alone in a strange, foreign country! Poor, sweet Miranda—envied by so many women, solely because she was married to a man so universally desired. A man whose child she had borne, whose money she had enjoyed, but whose heart had always been tantalisingly locked away from her.

      A man, moreover, whose black eyes glittered with such stark sexual promise that Sophie could not imagine that he would have been able to remain faithful for even the first year of marriage.

      After all, she had ignored the unmistakable invitation she had read there, but that was because she loved Miranda. She doubted whether other women would have such scrupulous morals where Luis de la Camara was concerned.

      And now a little baby would now have to grow up without a mother.

      Sophie’s gaze was drawn to the silver-framed photo which stood in pride of place on her desk and she picked it up and studied it.

      It showed Teodoro and it had been taken just before his first birthday, only a few short weeks ago. He was an adorable child, but Teodoro’s looks owed very little to her cousin’s exquisite blonde beauty. Instead his face was stamped with the magnificent dominance of his father’s colouring, and as she stared at it the image of his hard and handsome face came flooding back into her mind with bitter clarity.

      Gleaming black eyes, fringed with sinfully thick lashes and hair which was as dark as the moonless night she had first met him. When she had virtually bumped into him in the deli at the end of her road and he had stopped dead, stared at her intensely, as if he knew her from somewhere, as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

      And the feeling had been mutual. When just for a moment her heart had leapt with a wild and unexpected joy. And an unmistakable lust which had set up a slow, sweet aching.

      The kind of thing which wasn’t supposed to happen to sensible city girls who were cool and calm in matters of the heart.

      Was it possible to fall in love in a split-second? she remembered helplessly thinking as she gazed at the proud, aristocratic features she seemed to have spent her whole life waiting for.

      She’d seen his eyes darken, the heated flare of awareness which moved along the angular curve of his high cheekbones. His lush lips had unconsciously parted and she’d seen a thoroughly instinctive movement as his tongue flicked through to moisten them, and outrageously she had imagined that tongue on her body…in her body…

      She had never been looked at with quite such insolent and arrogant appraisal before. He wants me, she’d thought, with the warm flooding of awareness. And I want him, too. She had found herself wondering whether she СКАЧАТЬ