Tell that to your body, he thought darkly, and rid himself of the glass, then rubbed his wet hands over his face again. Tension had hold of him in a manacle. Standing up, he dripped water from taut rippling muscles as he stepped out of the bath. As he hooked up a towel to dry himself, it accidentally brushed across that part of him that was an aching agony of untamed want. With an indrawn quiver of cursing contempt, he tossed the towel aside and headed for a cold shower instead.
He didn’t want to want Cristina. He did not want to remember how she was. He wanted to be utterly turned off by reality, and hoped that when he eventually came face to face with her she’d have turned into a complete hound dog!
And he would come face to face with her, he vowed as he stepped out of the shower cubicle feeling more like a man in control of himself. The wheels to make it happen were already turning, and very soon he would have his confrontation with Cristina Marques.
The telephone began ringing as he was finishing shaving. Walking naked out of the bathroom, he picked up the receiver.
‘I have tracked her to Rio, senhor,’ a distinctly Brazilian male voice informed him. ‘She is residing with Gabriel Valentim. He will be escorting her to the charity gala tomorrow evening, as hoped.’
She was hooked; the sting was on. The hot burn of satisfaction that flung itself down his body excited a sexual arousal he had thought he’d brought under control.
‘Good,’ he said, as cold as an English winter. ‘Tell me the rest tomorrow.’
‘Before you go there is something I have discovered that I think you should know, senhor!’ Afonso Sanchiz put in hurriedly. ‘It was not mentioned in the profile you sent to me—but six years ago the lady in question married a man called Vaasco Ordoniz. She is widowed now, and has reverted to using the Marques name, but…’
Cristina did not want to be here. Partying while her life was tumbling down around her placed a very bad taste in her mouth. But Gabriel insisted it was the only way. The best deals were struck in the social arena, not across a desk in some bank.
So here she was, standing in the foyer of one of Rio’s top hotels, dressed to kill in sparkling black silk. Her hair was up in an elegant twist and her late mother’s diamonds sparkled at her ears and throat.
She would have sold the diamonds if they’d been worth anything, but she’d found out the hard way that they were not. They were fakes—very good fakes, but fakes all the same. She did not know when her father had cashed in the genuine articles and replaced them with paste, but she had little doubt that he had done so. In fact, she’d discovered over the months since he died that there was very little left in Santa Rosa that was not a copy of its original. She now lived with the hope that when Lorenco Marques met his art-collecting ancestors on his way up to heaven they’d give him a swift push in the other direction.
And, yes, she told that shocked part of her that did not like what she was thinking, she felt that bitter and that bad.
Gabriel was guiding her towards a pair of doors beyond which the charity gala they were about to attend should be in full flow. Two smiling lackeys jumped to open the doors for them. The smooth background sound of a bossa nova song drifted out towards them as the foyer gave way to a vast reception room set against a backcloth of wall-to-wall glass, offering breathtaking views towards a night-lit Sugarloaf.
People glittered and sparkled beneath overhead lighting, the warm tones of their conversations floating towards her on richly perfumed waves. Cristina’s stomach lurched, then rolled, and for a moment her courage completely failed her, pulling her to a trembling halt.
From the other side of the room Anton watched as she entered on the arm of just about the most attractive man here. She was still unutterably beautiful, he noted, allowing himself a small grimace at his unanswered hound dog prayer. The hair was too neat for his liking, and the dress might be glamorous, and sexy enough to knock most men’s eyes out, but he’d never liked to see her wearing black. She suited bright colours, colours that flagged her hot-blooded temperament. But the face, the wide-spaced almond-shaped eyes, the mouth…
Ah, the mouth, he observed darkly. It was still as lush and red and kissable as he remembered it. A mouth that instinctively knew how to—
Her escort murmured something to her. As she looked up to smile at him sudden tension was bathing Anton’s body in a fine layer of sensual heat. It was the smile of a born seductress. A smile she had once used to keep exclusively for him. It was the deceit in that smile that had ruined all other smiles every woman had offered him since.
Did she sleep with Gabriel Valentim? Had the handsome lawyer got to share a steamy hot interlude in a bath with the widow of Vaasco Ordoniz before they’d set out here?
‘Anton, your glass is empty…’
Looking down, he saw it was, frowning slightly because he didn’t remember drinking the champagne. He must have been sipping it while observing Cristina with her latest lover. Now he became aware of the tension in the fingers that held the glass and the angry fizz of champagne in his mouth.
‘Here, let me replace it…’
Reaching out, Kinsella took the empty glass from him. As she did so her body brushed against his. She was wearing no bra beneath the slip dress she was wearing. He’d felt the button-tight brush of her nipple against the back of his hand.
Yet another sexual message from his secretary? Irritation hit, then was instantly lost when he caught sight of Cristina’s escort lowering his handsome head to brush a kiss to her cheek.
‘Stop worrying,’ Gabriel softly chided her, feeling the tension in the stiff set of her spine beneath the resting palm of his hand. ‘No one is going to eat you.’
No? Cristina would question that. Six years ago she had scandalised these people by marrying a man old enough to be her father. She had become a gold-digging freak worthy of derision and scorn from that moment on. Discovering that Vaasco Ordoniz had left her virtually penniless would not have altered their opinion of his widow.
A waiter appeared, carrying a silver tray of drinks.
‘Here.’ Hooking up two fluted glasses frothing with champagne Gabriel slotted one into her hand. ‘Remember why you are here,’ he said firmly. ‘Get some of this fortifying champagne inside you and stop looking so tragic.’
‘I am not in any way tragic,’ Cristina denied, trying hard to ignore the hectic thrum of her pulse. ‘I just dislike the prospect of having to be pleasant to people I no longer like.’