Page 98 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

CHAPTER NINE

CAROLINE was sitting quietly in the window of her allotted valley-facing guestroom when a light tap sounded at her door. For a few precious moments she seriously contemplated not answering.

It had been a horrible few days. Days filled with wariness and tension and eyes watching everything she did and everywhere she went as if they were worried she might decide to run off with the silver!

On top of that, Luiz had taken on the mantle of responsibility here as if it was just another new acquisition in his multinational group. He was quiet, he was calm, he was cool and he was exceedingly businesslike. People—staff, mainly—were already in complete awe of him. They scuttled about like little rabbits earnestly eager to make a good impression. And, all in all, the changes he had put into place already were enough to make the average person gasp.

But this wasn’t a business proposition, was it? It was a home—though admittedly a very unusual home. But how did you attempt to point something like that out to a man who barely acknowledged your existence?

Luiz wasn’t talking to her. He was angry about something, though she didn’t know what. It was difficult to find out when he seemed to have locked himself away inside a suit of armour that wouldn’t look out of place in the castle hallway!

She had an itchy feeling his mood stemmed from the fact that she’d met his half-brother before he had. He’d quizzed her about that chance meeting. No—grilled her was a better word.

‘Where did you meet? How did you meet? What did he say? How did he say it?’

When she’d grown angry and demanded to know why it was so important, he’d simply walked away! Five minutes later she’d seen him standing in the castle grounds with a cellular phone clamped to his ear. Whoever he had been speaking to had been receiving the lash of his angry tongue. Even from up here in this room, looking down into darkness, she had been able to see that.

Since then she had hardly set eyes on him, except to share meals across a dining table with others there to squash any hope of meaningful probing into what was rattling him. They even slept in separate rooms. Now if that was a simple case of maintaining some old-fashioned values here in this time-lock of a valley, then Caroline could understand and accept that. But his cold attitude towards her on every count hurt, even though she kept on telling herself that it shouldn’t.

The tap sounded again. On a sigh she got up, and went to answer it. It was one of the little doe eyed maids. ‘Excuse me, señorita,’ she murmured. ‘Doña Consuela send me to tell you that the padre is here wishing to talk to you?’

The padre. Her heart sank. ‘All right, thank you, Abril. Will you tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes?’

Where was Luiz? she wondered heavily as she crossed to her bathroom. But she knew where Luiz was—or least where he wasn’t, she amended. Because Luiz certainly wasn’t here in the valley. In fact, Luiz had flown off in the helicopter that had arrived to pick him up early this morning and hadn’t been seen or heard of since.

The helicopter landing pad was just one of the changes Luiz had brought into being since they’d arrived here.

He’d had ten men from the village clearing a spot over in the far corner of the garden before Caroline had even got out of bed on that first morning. Another addition he’d had put in at incredible speed was the telecommunications mast erected at the top of the valley—to improve satellite reception, he’d explained over dinner. Apparently you couldn’t run a multinational group without good communication.

Shame he didn’t apply the same principles to his personal life!

But he didn’t, so she now had to go and face the padre without knowing a single thing about the wedding proposed for next week, because Luiz hadn’t bothered to discuss it with her!

It was going to make her look really good in the padre’s eyes if he discovered that he knew more about it than the bride herself!

I’m going to kill you very soon, Luiz Vazquez, she promised him silently as she checked over her cream skirt and lavender top—which were beginning to look a little the worse for wear now, along with the other things she had brought to Spain with her.

When she’d left London she had packed for a three-day short break in a hotel. She had not packed for parties in villas and cross-country travelling, or exploring the many admittedly interesting rooms inside a castle!

She found the padre waiting for her in the small sitting room the family tended to use during the day because it opened directly into the garden. Tía Consuela was waiting with him, but once she had introduced Caroline to Padre Domingo, she left them alone.

In truth, Caroline felt sorry for Consuela. In the last few months she had lost her husband, seen her own son being disinherited of everything she must know he had every right to consider his, and was about to lose her right to live in the home that had been hers for the last thirty-odd years. Yet the way she had remained on here, taking whatever Luiz wanted to throw at her, had in Caroline’s view been rather impressive.

Personally she couldn’t have done it. Pride alone would have sent her running for cover well before her estranged nephew could show his face. But, cold and remote though she always was, she had answered all Luiz’s intense, sometimes acutely detailed questions about the running of the castle, and was quick to refer him on to those who knew more about the running of the rest of the estate.

While her son did nothing, offered no information and kept himself very much to himself by riding one of his beautiful Andalusian horses out each morning and not coming back until it was so dark that he had to.

Felipe had gone from charmer to brooder in a couple of very short phases. And he might have remained on here, like his mothe

r, but unlike her he did nothing to hide his simmering resentment.

Not that Caroline could really blame him for feeling like that. For, no matter what legal right Luiz had to be here, Felipe, had every excuse for feeling angry and bitterly betrayed by his father.

She just wished she could like him more on a personal level, then maybe she could become a kind of go-between for the two half-brothers, give them a fine line of communication which might help bring them closer together.

‘Señorita Newbury,’ Padre Domingo greeted her smilingly. ‘It is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.’

Taking his proffered hand, Caroline smiled in answer. ‘I called to see you yesterday but missed you.’

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