A Spanish Vengeance Part 5

The illusory mists of his seemingly gentle interest cleared from Lisa's eyes. If that wasn't scorn in his deep voice then she was a monkey's uncle!

'The only thing he ever gave me was a book token each Christmas-and a watch for my eighteenth, and he didn't even choose it himself; Honor Clayton let slip that he'd asked her to pick something out. And, as for getting my degree-I didn't get the chance, did I?' she shot back at him. 'As soon as I got back from Spain he told me the publis.h.i.+ng empire had shrunk to the size of a small island-Lifestyle! He asked me-more or less commanded, now I come to think of it-to give up my university place and join the staff, dogs bodying, trying to learn the ropes. All hands on deck and everyone pulling together is the phrase I remember.'

'And you were happy with that sacrifice?' Diego wanted to know, a slight frown pulling his slanting ebony brows together.

Her mouth set stubbornly. 'No. Just flattered that for once he was noticing me, wanting something. Of course I agreed. I wanted to please him, didn't I? I wanted him to value me.'

Diego felt his breath lock in his lungs. Her lovely eyes had flooded with moisture. His own eyes narrowed as he watched her blink furiously, drag in a breath and essay a tight smile as if to signify she'd said too much, revealed too much.

'Shall we go?' As she began to get to her feet, Diego captured both of her hands and held her.

'In a moment.'

Her hands felt so small within his. The delicacy of her bone structure had aroused all his protective instincts five years ago, left him in awe of her fragile beauty. As his eyes narrowed on the exquisitely modelled features, the soft mouth that trembled slightly, he could feel it happening all over again. The need to cherish and adore.

If she was telling the truth about her relations.h.i.+p with her father, and he was pretty sure she was, then he had misjudged her, he acknowledged heavily.

Had he misjudged her in other ways? Should he listen to what she had to say about that dreadful night without cynically presuming that whatever she said would be a tissue of lies?

If he confessed what his conscience was belatedly telling him-that he'd been wrong to give her no option but to break her engagement, come to Spain with him-then maybe, just maybe, they could start all over again. The spark was still there; it had been playing havoc with him since meeting up with her again. And they were both older and wiser.

Then the small, pa.s.sive hands came to life, the slender fingers curving around his, and the effect was electrifying.

He said thickly, 'And did he? Value you?'

Lisa couldn't answer. Simply stared into his lean, dark, shatteringly gorgeous face. Holding Diego's strong warm hands knocked all the breath from her body, made her quiver with a thousand memories of how it had been for them in those far off days when she'd truly believed he'd loved her as pa.s.sionately as she'd loved him. She wanted to be back in that beautiful magical time with a fierce longing that pushed everything else right out of her head.

She gently withdrew her hands from his and felt the loss of physical contact like a pain. She tried to concentrate on what he'd been asking her.

'He gave no sign of it,' she said at last, sadness darkening her eyes.

Diego leaned over the table, the dark glitter of his eyes pinning her to the spot. 'What kind of man is he'?' he asked rawly.

'I honestly don't know,' she answered truthfully. 'He never let me close enough to find out.'

'Yet you agreed to my demands, broke your engagement and, presumably, hurt the man you were supposed to be in love with, just to save the business and future financial security of a man who, from your account, showed very little parental interest in you.'

Put like that, so baldly, didn't explain her lifelong need to earn her father's approval and once having got it how she hadn't wanted to let it go.

Lisa shook her suddenly aching head. She wished she hadn't emptied that first gla.s.s so rapidly, wished she hadn't started this. 'It wasn't quite like that. You make me sound really hard-hearted. Ben and I never loved each other.'

Automatically, she glanced down at her ringless finger. 'We've always been fond of each other and I suppose we just drifted into the idea of marriage.' A tiny shrug. 'Actually, it was Ben who convinced me that letting Lifestyle fold wouldn't be the end of the world for our parents, or for the staff. That I could tell you where to put your "demands" with an easy conscience.'

But she hadn't, had she? A tide of warmth spread through the entire and towering length of Diego's body as he stood up from the table and held out his hand to her. Which must mean she had come because she wanted to. Which, in turn, meant that she still felt something for him. Madre de Dios! If the past could be forgiven, the bitter years erased, then...

'I was on the point of phoning you,' she told him as they reached the sun-drenched pavement and fell in step. 'And telling you I'd changed my mind and the deal was off, when my father told me he'd already had a meeting with you. I don't know what you said to him but he'd got the idea that your rescue package had everything to do with our knowing each other in the past.'

Her mouth curved in a wry smile, aware that her tongue was still running away with her. 'He told me I'd finally made up for not being the son he'd always wanted. Call me a fool if you like-I probably deserve it. But I couldn't tell him the whole thing was off and have him go from being indifferent to me to actively hating me, could I?'

Suddenly, for Diego, the sun went in. His blood ran cold then burned with fire. Imbecil! Had he no more sense than he'd had five years ago? Of course she hadn't agreed to come because she still wanted him, cared something for him!

She'd as good as sold herself to him for a period of time to earn her father's approval.

He put his jealousy of the other man-her own father, for pity's sake-down to anger, gritted the hard clean line of his jaw, the bitterness flooding back, and decided to take full advantage of what he'd bought and paid for.

Lisa.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

EVERYTHING had changed; she knew it had. The smallest shake of the kaleidoscope and a new pattern emerged. Pausing at the head of the wide stone staircase, wearing the ice-blue chiffon slip dress Diego had picked out for her, Lisa pinned down the defining moment.

It had come when she'd explained exactly why she'd agreed to his blackmail, back in Marbella that morning, when Buck's Fizz rapidly hitting an empty stomach had loosened her tongue.

To an onlooker the change in him might have been too subtle to cause comment. But to her, finely attuned to everything about Diego Raffacani, it had hit her like a ton of bricks.

Autocratic didn't come near to describing the way he'd stalked the pavements as if he owned the whole town and everyone and everything in it. His dark head high, his handsome face wearing the slightly contemptuous, highly a.s.sured expression of a man who knew his smallest whim would be immediately and fawningly catered to, he had ushered her through the plate gla.s.s doors of a high fas.h.i.+on boutique, the exclusive sort that had made Lisa feel immediately awestruck and very out of place in her worn jeans and bright pink top.

And she had simply, weakly, let it all happen.

Attended by a tall, pin-thin gus.h.i.+ng thirty-something with a permanent soulless smile, Diego had lounged back in a silk-covered baroque-style chair while garments of unbelievable style and quality had been paraded for his lordly nod of approval.

Two hours later a fresh faced youth, wearing a formal light grey suit and an aura of his own importance, had carried an armload of cla.s.sy carriers and boxes to Diego's car. Lisa had thought let him waste his money if he wants to, and almost had hysterics.

After a late lunch during which little was said and even less eaten they had begun the long drive back to the old monastery. Gripped with a strange foreboding, due to the new cold-edged authority she detected in him, the sense that he saw her as a mere puppet, bought and paid for and designed to perform whenever he pulled the strings, she couldn't regret having opened up to him, not only about her relations.h.i.+ps with her father and Ben but her reason for agreeing to his demands in the first place.

It had been a release of sorts, she decided as she began the lonely journey down to the main dining hall. And it was high time Diego opened up too. Ever since they'd met up again they had both been skirting around too many secret thoughts. Condemnatory thoughts coming from both directions, she supposed. Whatever, it would be better if they were spoken.

Manuel had carried the mountain of carriers up to her rooms on their return and Diego had broken his silence to tell her, 'Wear something beautiful. Tonight we eat in the formal dining hall and I like my possessions to be easy on the eye.'

His possession!

Earlier today that would have made her shudder; now she was able to take it in her stride. And she'd done as he'd asked, picked out this dress from the dozens of garments that Rosa, Manuel's pretty wife, had taken from the tissue-packed carriers and hung in the walk-in wardrobe.

High heeled court shoes covered in a matching ice blue silk gave her much needed extra height. She'd brushed her hair until it fell around her shoulders like a pale blonde waterfall, caught back from one side of her face with a tiny jet clip, and gone to town with her make-up'.

He couldn't accuse her of being an eyesore, although by the time she'd finished with him he'd probably accuse her of being a pain in the neck. Things couldn't go on as they were. And tonight she was going to make d.a.m.ned sure that they didn't!

Previously they'd taken their meals in the inner courtyard or in the small, homely breakfast room that overlooked the front terraces and the sweeping views of the mountains. If he'd chosen the formality of the great dining hall to humble her he wasn't going to succeed, she vowed as she opened the heavily carved double doors.

It was an impressive room by any standards, the carved vaulted ceiling soaring way above, lit by ma.s.sive wrought metal chandeliers, the frescoed walls punctuated by narrow arched windows, the immense glossy-as-gla.s.s table set with two places, one at either end.

Biting back the flippant comment that they would need walkie-talkies to converse with each other, Lisa walked forward, high heels tapping out a confident tattoo on the wide polished boards. Diego rose from the carved chair at the head of the table, a gla.s.s of what looked like whisky in one hand.

Dressed formally, he all but took her breath away. Elegant, immaculate and as cold as charity.

During his measured approach his heavily veiled eyes made a lengthy a.s.sessment, from the silky fall of her hair, over slender shoulders that the narrow straps of her dress left bare, the pert swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and down to the slender length of legs made elegantly longer by the just above the knee hemline and spiky heels.

It was difficult not to squirm beneath that expressionless scrutiny but Lisa just about managed it, nearly sagging with relief when he dipped his head, maybe in approval, maybe not, and turned to walk to a plain oak side table set near the hooded hearth where logs burned brightly against the evening chill of this immense stone room. Then she stiffened when he returned with a flat leather-covered box in his hands and told her, 'Not knowing what colour you would choose to wear, I decided diamonds would be the safest selection.'

The diamonds glittered with cold fire from their bed of faded blue velvet. Appalled, Lisa's eyes widened as he lifted the choker of magnificent stones in an elaborate white gold setting and moved behind her to fasten it around her neck.

Her vow to remain steadfastly calm and sensible flew out of her head as she jerked away and blurted, 'I don't want them!'

'You're not getting them, believe me. They are on loan for this evening only. To complete the picture and give me the pleasure of looking at outward perfection.'

Smarting under that deliberate put down, Lisa stood like a stone when he brushed her hair aside and fastened the choker around her neck. Move by so much as an inch and those strong hands would pull her back to him again. The touch of his hands would start her shaking all over. Already, knowing that those long fingers were just a hair's breadth away from her skin as he dealt with the tricky clasp, a tingling sensation spread all the way through her.

The bracelet came next. A double row of fine stones in an exquisite setting that matched that of the choker. Diego said flatly, 'The family jewels my mother finds too old-fas.h.i.+oned for her tastes are kept in the strong room here. She sometimes picks through them when she and my father visit. She says it gives her something to do.'

Diamond studs with tear-shaped droppers completed the suite. The backs of his fingers brushed the heated skin of her cheeks as he fixed them in place. When he stood back a pace to survey the finished result Lisa, even though her face was flaming as the result of that light, erotic touch, got a little of her own back as she asked with manufactured brightness, 'How often do they visit? Shall I meet them?' knowing that in his present mood of icy dignity the question would affront him.

'Hardly. There are women a man would be happy to introduce to his parents. Patently, you are not one of them,' he replied, a honed edge to his voice, and she knew she'd been right in her a.s.sumption and didn't care because, after what she had to say to him tonight, he wouldn't be able to hurt her any more.

At least that was what she told herself as Rosa and Manuel arrived to serve dinner, but when Diego held her chair out for her and murmured softly for her ears only, 'I will have something beautiful to look at while we eat. The sight of you will give me pleasure,' she wasn't so sure. He could hurt her simply by being himself, a man who was loved and loathed in equal and utterly confusing measure. Did she want to give him that kind of pleasure? The cool, objective pleasure of a man who had acquired an expensive artefact. Like the diamonds, a possession to be admired occasionally then locked away again and forgotten. Certainly not the pleasure of pa.s.sionate possession. And that did hurt although she did her best to convince herself that it shouldn't.

Between them, Rosa and Manuel served the baked scallops, poured wine, brought quails with herb dressing and roast vegetable salad, poured more wine and finally left them with coffee and little dishes of creamfilled profiteroles and tiny baskets of fruit.

'You should kit them out with roller skates,' Lisa said with forced lightness, an attempt to counteract the unnerving effect of having his eyes on her throughout the seemingly interminable meal. 'They'd get from one end of this mile-long table much quicker.' She said it partly to amuse herself but most of all to let him know that all this formal splendour, the king's ransom of diamonds on her neck her arm and in her ears, wasn't impressing her at all.

No reaction. Diego leaned against the elaborately carved back of his chair, his hands lightly placed on the armrests, his eyes still on her, considering. So she said firmly, 'I'm leaving in the morning. Even if I have to walk. Do what you like about the rescue package you put together. This unpleasant charade is beginning to bore me and I've decided that if you pull out of your side of the bargain I can put up with my father's displeasure. After all, I've endured it, or something very like it, for all of my life.'

She hadn't meant it, any of it, had only said it to jolt him out of this new unbearably autocratic coldness. She didn't want to leave until they'd talked over the wrongs of five years ago. He didn't know she'd seen him with that beautiful woman, witnessed so painfully how they'd been together, so he couldn't know her subsequent bad behaviour had been down to a heart that was shattered and twisted with jealousy.

It was time the truth came out. All of it. He'd stopped her, back in London, by saying he wasn't prepared to listen to a'tissue of lies'. Somehow she had to force him to hear her side of the story.

The sudden unwelcome thought that he might be just as bored by the charade as she'd said she was and would immediately agree to her leaving, chilled her for a moment, but the bleak smile he gave her, the softly spoken, 'If you go, I'll follow. If you hide, I'll find you,' froze her to the very core of her being.

For all the softening of his voice it sounded menacing but she wouldn't let it throw her. She said brittly, 'I'm sure there must be a law against that sort of hara.s.sment. And there's no law that says I have to stay here. However-' she took a last sip of her wine to bolster the nonchalant image she was desperate to portray '-I'll stay if you agree to answer one or two questions. But not here-it's far too formal. I'll be. in the courtyard if you think you can go along with that.'

How she got out of that room without falling down she would never know. And she didn't know if he would follow, either. But he did, unnumbered, nervescratching minutes later.

He had shed the jacket of his dark immaculate suit and the sleeves of his white s.h.i.+rt were rolled up above his elbows, his black tie discarded. In the pale moonlight he dazzled her with his physical perfection, with the careless arrogance of the way he moved.

He had taken his time before joining her but at least he looked far more approachable, Lisa decided thankfully, monitoring the s.h.i.+ver of excited antic.i.p.ation that quivered down her spine at the thought that at last they could go some way towards sorting out the past, putting it behind them.

But she changed her mind, realising that nothing concerning him could ever be that easy when he walked over the moon-bathed flagstones to the table beneath the sheltering, shading branches of an ancient fig tree and drawled, 'Let's get one thing straight, shall we? You may ask questions but I may not choose to answer them. And you stay here until I say you may go.' He put the bottle and gla.s.ses he carried down on the table. 'Sit where I can see you.' He indicated a seat facing the vine-covered wall and miraculously the area was flooded with soft light.

He must have pressed a hidden switch, Lisa thought distractedly as the diffused light of concealed uplighters and downlighters glowed through banks of lush foliage. He was obviously in no mood for a heart-to-heart, no mood for closure.

Diego Raffacani was still pulling her strings, she thought sinkingly as she sat where he had said she must. And, to her shame, she was actually letting him.

Determined to do something about that degrading state of affairs, she sat up very straight and said, 'You're treating me like a criminal. You heap the blame for what happened five years ago entirely on me. But consider this-you lied to me from the first time we met. So what does that make you?'

A liar, she answered inside her head, her eyes lowered as he calmly poured wine into both gla.s.ses, pus.h.i.+ng one of them across the table to her. And the only man she had ever loved. After him, no other man could hope to hold her stupid heart in the palm of his hand-and she still wanted him, warts and all, she acknowledged unhappily.

She wanted her Diego back, back the way he had been in those ecstatic days when they had been falling in love with each other. But it wasn't going to happen. Not a chance. He had not been what she had thought he was. Now she was seeing him in his true colours. And still wanting him, for her sins!

He lowered himself into the seat opposite hers. That was better because six foot plus of looming, magnificent, s.e.xually charged manhood was more. than she felt she could possibly cope with. But it made little difference to the lurching sensation around her heart because, whereas she was illuminated, he was in shadow.

It was impossible to read his expression, make a stab at guessing what he was thinking. His voice was just slightly amused as he came back with, 'As a criminal you're getting five star treatment without receiving your punishment. I really wouldn't complain if I were you. And-' his voice hardened '-I have never lied to you, so don't insult me by saying I have.' He lifted his wine gla.s.s and reflected moonlight s.h.i.+mmered and danced as he idly swirled the contents. 'But that's what women do, isn't it? When they're cornered they fling out patently absurd counter-accusations.'

'You must have known a few really weird women,' Lisa replied quietly. If she allowed her voice to rise by the merest fraction she would go out of control, start to rant and rave. 'So you can take back that s.e.xist remark and explain why you told me you were a humble waiter when all the time you were sickeningly wealthy.'

She picked up her own gla.s.s. Her hand was shaking. She put it down again before she disgraced herself and spilled the lot. Diego, leaning well back in his chair, remarked, 'You decided I was a humble waiter. I told you, quite truthfully, that I spent almost all of my evenings working in one of the hotel restaurants. You see, my tarnished angel, how I remember every word we ever said to each other? The hotel we were to meet in on that last night was the latest in the family chain. My father, being a sensible man, insisted that I had hands-on experience of each branch of the varied business enterprises. I was acting night manager at that time.'

Lisa's eyes filled with emotional tears. She couldn't help it. Her crazy heart seemed to turn to mush. He'd obviously meant to be scathing and he didn't realise what he'd just unwittingly given away-that he, too, had remembered every word they'd ever said to each other. That wouldn't happen, would it, if he'd thought of her as just a casual fling, something to amuse him and boost his inflated male ego?

She must have meant something to him... 'Why didn't you tell me who you were?' she asked shakily. 'I told you all about myself. What I mean is, I answered every question you ever asked. Why did you let me go on thinking you were sc.r.a.ping a living waiting on tables?' She had believed a lie and he had let her. He must have been laughing at her misconception, thinking she was a real fool. That really hurt. She had been open and frank with him and he... 'Why were you so sly?"

'Why do you think?' Diego countered grittily. 'And I'd prefer the word sensible to sly.' He put his emptied gla.s.s on the table top and Lisa blinked the recent moisture from her eyes and narrowed them at him through tangled damp lashes.

A single gla.s.s with dinner was all she'd ever seen him take but this evening he was drinking steadily. To drown his guilty conscience over his foray into the world of blackmail? Or was he seeking Dutch courage before he meted out the punishment he'd mentioned earlier? So far he'd shown no sign of wanting to have his wicked way with her!

Barely breathing at the thought of that, Lisa found it difficult to concentrate on anything else and had to force herself to tune in to him when he told her edgily, 'Since I turned seventeen I've been hunted down by females with their eyes on the main chance.' A brief silence, loaded with cynicism, then more softly, almost as if he were talking to himself, 'I rather liked the idea that you thought I was just an ordinary guy.'

Was that a hint of a smile in his voice? Lisa couldn't be sure, but hoped it was. And, prince or pauper, no one could ever call him ordinary.

And then, of course, he spoiled it all by drawling, 'You were very young. Both in years and experience. I would imagine it takes a little time for a girl to learn how to be more discriminating-financially speaking, that is-with her s.e.xual favours.'

Still mooning over his liking her because she'd thought he hadn't got two pennies to rub together, it took Lisa several seconds to work out the implication of what he'd just casually tossed at her.

He was calling her a gold-digger!

He obviously hadn't believed a word of what she'd said about her reasons for finally agreeing to his callous proposition. He thought she'd jumped at it for what she hoped she could get out of him. Lazing around in the sun, waited on hand and foot, fabulous food, beautiful new clothes. Borrowed jewels!

She would rip the dress from her back if she could bring herself to stand in front of him in nothing but her underwear! As it was his hateful diamonds could go, she told herself in a fury of hating him for thinking she was the lowest of the low, for making her carry on loving him when he really and truly and thoroughly despised her!

Her face flaming with hectic colour, she jumped to her feet and dragged the fabulous bracelet off her wrist. The earrings followed, tossed carelessly down on the table. She would have thrown the whole lot over the edge of the terrace, to get lost in the sweetly flowering shrubs, if she hadn't known he'd stand over her with a stick while she grovelled on her hands and knees until she'd found them-even if it took ten years!

The choker was a different matter. Frustrated, angry tears spiked her lashes and coursed unheeded down her cheeks as she struggled with the awkward clasp, her soft mouth compressing into a hard straight line as if that would somehow ease the problem.

'Allow me.' Diego s.h.i.+fted lazily to his feet and came to stand behind her. Lisa stiffened as his deft fingers removed the choker. Every last one of her senses were unbearably sharpened when he was this close. She was achingly aware of the warmth of his body, of every breath she took, of every quickened heartbeat. A faint trembling invaded her body and she choked back a sob as, his task finished, the necklace tossed on the table, his hands cupped her shoulders as he turned her to face him, the look of male superiority swiftly turning to a slas.h.i.+ng frown.

'I didn't mean to make you cry.'

Lisa saw his broad chest expand as he sucked in a hollow breath. She bit down hard on her quivering bottom lip as he stroked the tears away with his fingers. Gentle fingers. Too gentle. She could feel a fresh deluge of shaming tears building up behind her eyes.

She was angry with him, furious, for bunching her in with a whole load of greedy gold-diggers, wasn't she? So why did she want to bury her head in that broad chest and sob her heart out?

'Please don't,' Diego muttered thickly as he ran a finger over her tightly compressed lips. A driven groan was wrenched from him as her mouth instinctively softened in unstoppable response, parting on a breathless loss of sanity as her glimmering eyes lifted to meld with the melting darkness of his and absorbed the messages he was sending out.

'Kiss me!'