Page 110 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

Then he laughed as Caroline’s face went white.

‘But I am not quite that hungry,’ he said. ‘My original plan suits my idea of revenge a lot better.’

‘I don’t know w-what you’re talking about,’ she stammered, through tense teeth that were beginning to chatter.

‘Yes, you do,’ he argued. ‘You are from the right stock to know all about ancient tribal rites. If you just think of me as the rightful owner of what we have just left behind, then the whole experience could be quite exciting—a bride on her wedding night who finds herself sleeping with the lord of the castle, rather than the peasant she married herself to.’

‘Luiz is not the peasant around here,’ Caroline tossed back. ‘And if you think I would let any other man but Luiz touch me, you are sadly mistaken.’

‘So you are pretending to be in love with the bastard,’ he drawled, eyeing her curiously. ‘Why? Does it make it easier to let him touch you when you can close your eyes and see el conde instead of a New York thug?’

‘I don’t need to pretend. I do love Luiz,’ she declared.

‘And will you keep your eyes on the road?’ she choked out when he took them swerving round a deep curve in the road with scant regard for what might be on the other side of it.

‘Stop worrying,’ he said. ‘I’ve been driving this road since I was a teenager. I know every twist and rut in it from here to Cordoba.’

Caroline could only hope and pray that was true! One of her hands had fixed itself to the car door handle; the other was clutching the strap of her seat belt. Felipe took in her taut posture—and recklessly swung the car round yet another curve.

She closed her eyes, unable to watch any more.

‘You married him because he offered to pay off your father’s debts if you did.’ He calmly returned to the other subject. ‘It had nothing to do with love.’

‘I married Luiz because I can’t bear to be without him,’ Caroline countered through tightly gritted teeth.

‘Liar,’ he jeered. ‘You were bought! Bought with his money. Bought with his name. Bought by the bastard of Don Carlos Vazquez,’ he spat out scathingly. ‘And you are prepared to lie in his bed and close your sweet English eyes to his low beginnings, his prostitute mamá and the questionable way he earned his millions. Because it is better to close your eyes and pretend he is Don Luiz Vazquez el conde rather than the crook that stole from his own family!’

‘Luiz didn’t steal from you.’

‘He stole my title!’ he rasped. ‘He stole my money and my home! He stole what was my God-given right from birth!’

His fist hit the steering wheel in sheer anger. Caroline flinched, and began praying fervently that they made it round the next bend.

‘But I will steal one thing back from him before I leave here for ever,’ Felipe continued thinly. ‘I will steal his wedding night,’ he vowed. ‘And my reward will be in knowing that he will know every time he looks at you that it was me who had his beautiful wife first!’

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bsp; ‘Luiz and I have been lovers for years!’ She laughed at the sheer idiocy of what he was saying. ‘You can’t steal what he has already had!’

‘His wedding night, I can,’ he insisted grimly.

This was crazy. He was crazy! ‘You stole from him, Felipe!’ Caroline contended shrilly. ‘It was not the other way around! You aren’t even his half-brother! Your mother is a cheat and a liar, and she tricked her own sister out of Don Carlos’s life so that she could take her place! She set up a situation and used it ruthlessly to her own ends. She twisted everything around so that it appeared that Luiz’s mother had been sleeping with her married lover! Then your mother stepped neatly into the breach left by her sister—having first made sure that Serena had safely disappeared to America with her unborn child!’

‘That is a lie!’ he barked. The car swerved precariously. Caroline’s heart leapt to her throat and stayed there while she clung on for dear life.

Don’t argue with him! she told herself frantically. Ignore him and just let him get you down this wretched mountain in one whole piece!

But she couldn’t seem to stop the words from coming. They burst forth from the cold dark place she had been keeping them hidden ever since she had read the full horrible truth about the Vazquez family.

‘A few months later your mother married Don Carlos—with her lover’s child already spawned in her belly. That child was you, Felipe,’ she persisted, quoting almost verbatim Luiz’s father’s own wretched words. ‘Your real father was Don Carlos’s best friend. His married friend!’ she declared. ‘And the moment you opened your eyes on the morning you were born he saw his best friend looking back at him and knew—knew he had been tricked and used and betrayed by your mother to secure her own future at the expense of her sister’s! Since that same day Luiz has always been his father’s heir and you have never been led to think otherwise!’

‘How the hell do you know all of this?’ Felipe rasped, beginning, for the first time, to sound choked by his own wretched lies.

‘From Don Carlos himself,’ she said. ‘He kept detailed diaries of everything that happened, including the years he spent looking for Serena and his true son and the fact that he never kept any of this secret from you.’

‘I hated the bastard,’ Felipe gritted. ‘He spent thirty-four years of my life mourning a son he never knew while I was right there, waiting to be loved if he could only see it!’

‘He was wrong to treat you like that,’ Caroline acknowledged. ‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, Felipe! And what you are doing here now is wrong—can’t you see that?’

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