Page 103 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

They stayed in that hot, dark, old-fashioned hotel room all night, and made love and ate paella cooked specially by the hotel proprietor’s very eager wife, and slept in each other’s arms and awoke there. It was the first time Caroline had woken up to find him still there beside her. It made an oddly painful impression on her to realise that.

The next day Luiz had them flown to Cordoba, where Caroline played the future bride to a wealthy man to the hilt and shopped until she dropped. She was bright, she was flirtatious, and she was enchanting to be with. And if Luiz looked at her strangely now and then, as if he was trying to work out what was making her behave this way, Caroline just smiled at him, or kissed him, or demanded more money from him, diverting the risk of any questions.

Because how did you explain to someone like him that while reading his father’s diaries she had come face to face with the real Luiz Vazquez? She understood him now, and hurt for him, and loved him more deeply than she dared let herself dwell upon.

Even if Luiz could never come to love her in the same way that she loved him, then she could live with that—just. Because the other thing she had learned while reading those diaries was that love was not automatically given back by right.

CHAPTER TEN

THEY arrived back at the valley to find yet another wave of changes had been wrought while they had been away. The garden had been decorated with fairylights, the castle itself cleaned and polished to within an inch of its life, and the construction of a long banqueting table was in the process of being completed in the main hall as they walked in the door.

‘You are pulling out all the stops, I see.’ Felipe’s lazy drawl emerged before he did, from a dark corner of the hall.

He had a habit of doing that, Caroline thought as she took a small step closer to Luiz. His hand closed round her hand.

‘If one has to marry then let no detail be overlooked,’ he mocked. ‘No festive trick be ignored.’

His derision was acute. Caroline wanted to hit him for being so mean-mouthed. But Luiz took the criticism in his stride. ‘It must be the hotelier in me.’ He smiled. ‘If there is one thing I have learned to do well, then it is to put on a good party.’

‘With the relatives obediently gathered around you to help you celebrate.’ Felipe nodded. ‘It is quite extraordinary what healthy quarterly allowances can make people do that they normally would not deign to tolerate.’

‘Is that why you decided to hang around, Felipe?’ Luiz countered curiously. ‘Because you see the need to secure your quarterly allowance?’

‘I have money of my own,’ he declared, but Luiz had hit a raw nerve. ‘My father did not leave me quite destitute.’

‘No, he left you a finca in the Sierra Nevada and the means to make a success of it, if you could be bothered to try.’

‘While you get all of—this…’ Felipe’s smile was rancid. ‘Tell me…’ Suddenly he turned his attention on Caroline. She stiffened instantly, sensing it was her turn to receive the whip of his nasty tongue. ‘How did the poker game between your father and Luiz end? There are a lot of people who must be dying to know…’

He must have been there, in the casino, when Luiz had issued the challenge to her father, Caroline realised as she felt her cheeks grow pale. Her hand twitched in Luiz’s, in a silent plea for him to answer that question.

He tightened his grip a little, but surprised her by saying absolutely nothing. Instead he lifted his free hand and gave a sharp click of his fingers. Without warning, Vito Martinez materialised in front of them. Big and broad and built to smash rocks against, he stood waiting for Luiz to speak.

‘Escort Caroline to her room, Vito,’ he instructed, without removing his gaze from Felipe. ‘And remain there until I come…’

Caroline’s skin was prickling, and the shivery sense that he was issuing some kind of dire warning to Felipe with his security guard’s daunting presence was enough to keep her silent when Luiz let go of her hand and instructed quietly, ‘Go with Vito. Felipe and I have a few—things we need to discuss in private…’

She went, but she felt sick. She didn’t look bac

k, but she could almost feel the two men sizing each other up as if for battle. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she whispered to Vito.

‘They will talk,’ he answered simply. ‘As Luiz said.’

‘I don’t like him,’ she confessed, finding herself moving that little bit closer to this big tower of a man Luiz had made her escort.

‘Few people do,’ Vito replied. That was all, but it seemed to say more than enough. Both Luiz and Vito had Felipe’s measure. And that meant that if Felipe had been checking up on them then Luiz had certainly been checking up on him—using this man she was walking beside to do the checking, she suspected.

Vito didn’t leave her even when she slipped away to use her bathroom; he was still standing by the door when she got back.

‘You’ve known Luiz a long time, haven’t you?’ she questioned curiously.

‘Since we were both nine years old,’ Vito replied.

Which placed them, by her reckoning, in an orphanage together. ‘So you are friends,’ she concluded, smiling wryly to herself because she was remembering her own thoughts from the other day, when she’d been sitting in the back of Luiz’s car while Vito drove her.

‘He saved my life once,’ Vito answered, but didn’t elaborate, even though Caroline stared at him in disbelief because she couldn’t imagine anyone having to save this man’s life for him. He was just too big, too everything surely, to be put into that kind of danger.

The purchases she’d made while they’d been away began to arrive then, diverting her attention. And a few more minutes after that Luiz arrived. With a quiet word in Vito’s ear he dismissed the other man, who left with a grim nod of his head that made Caroline shiver.

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