‘Does that include me?’
Glancing up into the lean golden face of the man she had known since childhood, Cristina saw the wry glint of amusement in his soft amber eyes and couldn’t help but smile.
‘Thank you for doing this for me,’ she said softly. ‘I know that your father had to push you into it.’
‘I don’t need pushing to be with a beautiful woman, querida.’ Reaching out, he covered her fingers and lifted the glass to her lips, then held it there until she took the first sip. ‘And you should know better than to think that I am one of those who believed the gold-digging rumours about you.’
Her smile faded. ‘Would it make a difference if I told you that those rumours were true?’
‘To my escorting you?’ Gabriel’s mouth assumed a small grimace. ‘Look at these people, Cristina,’ he prompted. ‘Do you think none of them have skeletons to hide? I am a lawyer, like my father. Such a profession allows access to privileged information that would make the hair on the head of the good father in the confessional box stand on end. Take my advice and look upon them all as crooks and you will begin to feel much better about yourself.’
Her eyes widened in fascination. ‘Are they all crooks?’
‘No.’ Gabriel laughed. ‘But it helps a great deal to see them like that.’
Someone came up to greet Gabriel then, a perfect stranger to Cristina, so she was able to relax a little as Gabriel made the introductions and even managed to smile as she sipped at her glass of champagne and listened to the two men converse. A few minutes later the stranger had moved off again, and they began to circulate.
Gabriel’s hand was always light on her waistline. He was well known and well liked, his good looks and his naturally friendly manner drew people to him, and she wanted to kiss him for the way he was carefully manoeuvring them around the room so that she was not forced to come face to face with any of the old crowd—though she had glimpsed many of them here.
It was then that it happened. Just as she was beginning to relax in the company she picked up the sound of a dark-timbred very English voice, speaking in such beautifully fluent Portuguese that she had twisted around without giving herself a chance to think.
By then it was too late. Her swift movement had caught his attention. The next instant she found herself welded to the spot as a pair of darkly hooded glinting green eyes fixed on her shocked face.
Luis, she thought. Meu Dues, it was Luis…
He was standing less than ten feet away, a tall, lean, solid, dark force backed by the night view of Rio. Her legs turned to water, her head swirling so dizzily that for a horrible moment she was afraid that she was actually going to faint. No one else was in the room suddenly. No voices sounded. No slow and sensual bossa nova beat. All she could hear was the blood pumping heavily through her body as those hooded eyes looked at her and took everything, stripping away six long miserable years to leave her standing there feeling so exposed and vulnerable that she just could not bring herself to look away.
And he wasn’t going to do it, she realised as she watched those eyes begin a slow, slow glide over her face. Her shock-blackened eyes. Her shock-whitened cheeks. He let his gaze linger on every telling detail until finally fixing it on her helplessly parted lips.
Those lips quivered as if he’d touched them. A knowing smile stretched the contours of his. It was electric, dynamic, so overwhelmingly sexual and intensely familiar she was nailed by it, drenched in sensation that slithered and danced across her skin. They had been lovers for twelve months more than six years ago, yet for these few breathtaking seconds those years just did not exist.
She trembled—all over. He watched that happen too, and swung his gaze up to clash with hers again. Mockery lanced through those glinting green eyes and he lifted his glass, tilting it towards her in a salute that was so dryly cynical it sucked her back through those six years with a painful, dizzying whoosh.
He hated her. It was there for her to see it. And she could not even blame him for feeling that way. She had encouraged him to hate—worked at it like an actress putting on an Oscar-winning performance. She’d mocked him and cursed him and died a little more inside with each slaying remark she had thrown at his face.
Tears began to gather, hot, like acid burning in her chest and her throat. She loved him, would always love him for as long as she had left to draw breath, but she’d wished—oh, how she had wished—never to set eyes on him again.
Someone shifted beside him, forcing her gaze to flicker 840 sideways in time to watch a woman step in close to murmur something to him. She was beautiful, a reed-slender blonde wearing aquamarine silk. Whatever it was that she said to Luis, it lost Cristina her contact with his eyes as he turned to the woman with a lazy, sensual smile on his lips.
And Cristina knew that smile, recognised it with every sensory nerve she possessed. They were lovers. Jealousy roared up like a snarling, spitting wild animal inside her, and on a choked little whimper she spun away.
Trembling like mad, she moved in so close to Gabriel that she earned herself a curious glance as his arm accommodated her, though his attention did not falter from the discussion he was involved in.
‘The problem has been global,’ he was saying smoothly. ‘But the industry is showing signs of recovery, and we have a plan in place to get in first where this growth is happening. People will pay a high price for a flawless pedigree. Santa Rosa can give them that—hmm, Cristina?’ He prompted some input from her.
Gabriel was into his sales pitch, and she had to fight a gigantic battle with herself to find sensible words to speak.
‘S-Santa Rosa stock is conceived born and raised on the land on which it roams free,’ she heard herself say, as if from down a long dark tunnel. ‘We are proud that we still farm by traditional methods where quality always takes precedence over quantity.’
‘But quantity is what makes the big profit, senhorita,’ Gabriel’s companion wryly pointed out.
‘Sim.’ She nodded, battling to keep herself together. ‘We know this, which is why we want to diversify a little…turn Santa Rosa into a showcase where people can come and stay for a while, experience what it is like to live in a genuine Portuguese mansion house, and spend time with the gauchos learning of the life and true traditions of a working ranch. But such plans require investment—’
‘At great risk to the investor, I would say,’ a smooth-as-silk voice put in.
Both Gabriel and his companion turned to face the newcomer. Cristina didn’t—not again, she told herself as her pounding heart increased its crazy beat.