Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Copyright

“I’ll have you hammeringon my door before long.”

Gemma tensed. “Sure you will,” she conceded. “I’ll be hammering with a feather and I won’t have to do it twice, will I? Because you’ll be waiting eagerly enough, and you won’t have torment on your mind.”

Felipe’s face darkened. “Sleep well, querida,” he said, controlled and immobile. “And prepare yourself for the onslaught. It’s not a threat but a promise.”

NATALIE FOX was born and brought up in London, England, and has a daughter, two sons and two grandsons. Her husband, Ian, is a retired advertising executive, and they now live in a tiny Welsh village. Natalie is passionate about her three cats, two of them strays brought back from Spain where she lived for five years, and equally passionate about gardening and writing romance. Natalie says she took up writing because she absolutely hates going out to work!

Love in Torment

Natalie Fox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘You can’t go! It’s out of the question!’ Isobel Soames had cried. ‘Gemma, I absolutely forbid it!’

Gemma would never forget those words as long as she lived. The forerunners of what was to come to crumble her world. Another shock, the second of recent months that would stamp her twenty-sixth year as the most emotionally traumatic of her life.

Even now, staring blindly out of the window of the Tropicana hotel in the heart of heat-hazed Caracas, she couldn’t decide which shock had hit hardest: losing Felipe, the only man she had ever loved, or finding that the man she had called ‘Daddy’ all her life hadn’t been her father at all!

‘Mother,’ Gemma had argued formally, ‘the travel arrangements have been made. I have accepted this commission and I’m going to do it…’

‘There will be other commissions. You’re talented and in a position to pick your own clients. I don’t want you to go to Venezuela!’

It was on the occasion of one of Gemma’s fortnightly visits to her mother at the family home in Surrey, usually so amiable and packed with art-world gossip, but not this time. Gemma’s news that she had been commissioned to paint the portrait of one of Venezuela’s oil barons had not filled her mother with delight as she had anticipated. Far from it; her mother’s face had frozen in shock and then had come the fury.

Shocked herself, Gemma had gaped at her mother as she’d paced the drawing-room of Whitegates. Her mother had never stood in her way before. On the contrary, she’d been delighted when Gemma had echoed her own artistic talent. Their professions lay in different directions, though. Isobel was society’s favourite interior designer and had been for the last two decades, whereas Gemma’s career had veered towards portraiture. People interested her more than the trappings they surrounded themselves with. It had never caused dissent between them before.

‘South America isn’t another planet—’ Gemma had protested.

‘South America isn’t the problem!’ Isobel had snapped, clutching her shoulders, her painted nails digging into the fine silk of her blouse. Then her whole body had sagged and when she had turned to Gemma she seemed to have aged desperately. She was still beautiful, of course, classically elegant with sculptured features that were timeless. Her dark hair, tinted now to banish the wisps of grey at her temples, was drawn back into a tight coil of twisted silk. The eyes suddenly aged her, Gemma had thought at that moment. Normally so clear and bright, as deep a brown as Gemma’s own, they were now misted painfully.

‘It’s not the place, Gemma, darling, it’s the man,’ she had husked painfully.

‘The man? Agustªn Delgado de Navas, one of the richest oil men in South America? How can you possibly object to him?’ Gemma had cried in amazement.

She remembered the silence that had preceded her mother’s reply more than anything else. That awful, aching gap where considerations were weighed and a decision made to tell or not.

‘He’s your father,’ had come the flat statement that had so brutally stunned Gemma. Those few crippling words that had torn at her heart, which had already suffered so badly in the past months.

‘He’s your father’…the words echoed and echoed in Gemma’s head. Were still echoing now, halfway round the world and weeks later.

Gemma crossed the hotel room and impatiently snapped off the air-conditioning. She poured herself a cold drink from the courtesy bar, slid open the patio doors of the balcony and was immediately swamped by a heat that took her breath away. She gasped, quickly acclimatised then slumped down in a cane chair and closed her eyes wearily, unaware of the city traffic thundering ten floors below in the tropical metropolis.

She had defied her mother and now here she was, waiting in Caracas for her escort for the last stage of her journey, a short flight in comparison to the long haul from Heathrow. Private jet from Caracas, over the mountains to the plains of Loma de Grande and the Villa Verde where she would come face to face with the man who was her father but would never know it.

‘If you insist on going, Gemma, you must promise me you’ll not reveal your true identity,’ Isobel had bargained.

‘Just what is my true identity? A Soames, a Villiers, a de Navas?’ Gemma had questioned bitterly. ‘For nearly twenty-six years I’ve believed myself a Soames; now I find I’m the offspring of some dubious Latin oil baron—’

‘You are a Soames,’ Isobel had interjected levelly. ‘And don’t you ever forget it. Peter adopted you and thought of you as his own. He loved you and cherished you.’

‘But he wasn’t my real father,’ Gemma had croaked, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘How could you have cheated me so?’ She had bitten her lip miserably and looked at her mother. If she thought she was suffering, she could imagine what her mother was going through. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d whispered, regretting hurting her mother with her outburst. ‘It’s such a shock…I can hardly believe it. But I want to know everything. Tell me, Mother, everything.’

Gemma had listened without interruption. The irony of it all had amazed her. The story her mother related was almost a carbon copy of her own affair with Felipe, with one exception. Agustªn had left his lover not knowing she was carrying his child. Felipe had left Gemma with nothing—though a broken heart could hardly be described as nothing.

Was it a cliché associated with all South American men—love ‘em and leave ‘em? And how strange that she had fallen for the same type of charismatic man her mother had.

Isobel Soames had spared nothing; it was a story so poignantly paralleled with her own affair with Felipe that soon Gemma was in tears.

‘Would you have told me all this if Daddy was still alive?’ she had murmured at last. At seventeen she had mourned his death not knowing he wasn’t her own. Even knowing the truth now didn’t alter the love she held for him. He’d been a wonderful father.

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Isobel had answered honestly. ‘Your father loved you and you loved him. I saw no reason to make waves in our life. There were no more children to come after you…it was a difficult birth and…and, well, Peter loved me enough not to mind.’

‘And did you love him?’

‘Yes,’ her mother had insisted quickly, and then sighed. ‘Of course I loved him, we’d been friends for a long time, but not like——’

‘Not like my real father?’ Gemma had finished for her, furiously swinging her long black hair away from her face. Her moods had been lurching dangerously from anger to sadness as her mother talked. Some of the time she’d understood, sometimes she just hadn’t.

‘My love for Agustªn was quite different, Gemma,’ Isobel had said softly. ‘A once-in-a-lifetime love, never to be repeated at such a depth. The day he went back to South America was the worst of my life. He said he would send for me, but he didn’t.’

‘And yet you let him go, you just let him walk out of your life!’ Gemma had protested hotly. ‘You were pregnant with me and you didn’t even put up a fight for him? He didn’t even know you were carrying his child?’

Even as the words had spurted angrily from her mouth she’d known why her mother hadn’t fought for the man she loved. Hadn’t she done the very same thing herself? Let Felipe go because pride and confusion and the sting of betrayal had bitten so deeply into her soul, scarring her so deeply that grovelling was out of the question.

Pride. She was as deeply imbued with it as her mother. Felipe had been there one day, gone the next, Bianca, his stunning cousin, along with him. A week later he’d left a message on her answerphone, to contact him on a New York phone number. She hadn’t, of course. He’d walked out and left her, taken Bianca with him, hadn’t he? All she had was a recorded message, cryptic and to the point, no words of love or missing her, no inflexion of caring in the tone of his voice. God knew, she’d played it back enough times, each time hoping to find what she was seeking, some small hint of their past love, their week of love and passion. She had found nothing.

‘How long did your affair last?’ she had asked her mother.

‘Six months. The most wonderful months of my life.’

That was the subtle difference, Gemma dismally thought as she went back into her hotel room now to shower away the stickiness of the tropical heat. Her affair with Felipe was a drop in the ocean compared to her mother’s and Agustªn’s. Six months was long enough to form a deep, lasting relationship, for all the good it had done her mother, but a solitary week barely touched the perimeters of real love; so the agony aunts would have you believe.

Gemma knew better. She had given Felipe her heart and soul. She’d not led a sheltered life; her mother’s career alone had seen to that. There had been social gatherings at Whitegates that had broadened her mind, packed full as they were with the so-called beautiful people. Her father’s friends too, academics from the university, writers, poets, philosophers. And her own career had hardly been without event. Her first one-woman exhibition in the much acclaimed Portia Gallery in Paris had set the ball rolling. Nepotism, one cruel art critic had pronounced in a Sunday paper known for its hardline tactics with new artists, but nepotism had nothing to do with the commissions that poured in. Gemma was mature and wise enough to know she had talent. A pity that wisdom and maturity didn’t follow through in her personal life. Yes, she’d seen life, but it hadn’t helped her where Felipe was concerned.

Gemma towel-dried her hair and combed it through in front of the dressing-table mirror. It had grown long since that week with Felipe in London, and now hung like a sable curtain beyond her shoulders. Straight like her mother’s, thick and glossy too, but there the likeness ended. Her mother’s beauty was classical whereas Gemma’s was softer. Her lips fuller, not nearly so well defined, and her large brown eyes more limpid and fawn-like than Isobel’s. Vulnerability—did that have something to do with the difference in their looks? Whatever, they weren’t alike and in the circumstances it was a blessing. Agustªn would never associate her with his mistress of the past.

Gemma peered at herself more closely. She was vulnerable, but hadn’t been before Felipe. Once she had handled her associations with men with detached aplomb. Felipe had changed all that with a single glance across a crowded gallery floor on the opening night of her London exhibition. Their eyes had met and Gemma, who had never believed in such a thing as love at first sight, had fallen as if she had been flung from Westminster Bridge with lead weights round her ankles.

‘I like your work,’ he’d said after battling his way through the crowds to reach her. His dark, nocturnal eyes held hers and everyone and everything around them faded away into nonentity.

‘Thank you,’ she’d murmured, and he’d smiled.

‘Can I do us both a favour and whisk us away from all this? I want to make love to you,’ he’d husked softly.

She hadn’t even been surprised at his outspokenness, it had just seemed so right. He’d taken over her life in a brief, blatantly honest exchange of words and taken her elbow and guided her out into the cold, wintry London night.

There was no pre-nuptial dinner to melt her reserves, no voyage into pasts to get to know each other better, nothing but the feeling that it was right and beautiful and so very exciting. He held her hand in the back of the taxi, this tall, dark, enigmatic stranger. Her experienced artist’s eye registered beauty beyond compare, deep-set sultry eyes that hinted of Hispanic descent, an aquiline nose so perfectly proportioned above a mouth that was strong yet sensuous. His hair was as black as a moonless night and she knew that when she touched it the tight curls under the tips of her fingers would spring like coils of eastern silk.

Felipe Santos was the most perfect of lovers. Only one small doubt wavered hesitantly within Gemma when they reached his mews house in St John’s Wood. Never in her life had she done this, given herself to a man without thought to the consequences. But it was a passing hesitation, as swift as a cloud powered away by the wind of change.

He took her in his arms as soon as he had shut the door behind them. His mouth was warm and tender, no hint yet of the power of his passion, the near violence of his lovemaking.

‘You’re the most beautiful animal I have ever seen,’ he grated at her throat, and Gemma smiled. No man had ever compared her to an animal before, and her excitement mounted.

He led her up to his sumptuous bedroom, which was thickly carpeted and furnished with swags of silk hung at the windows. There were warm antiques and the bed was huge, soft and inviting, draped in heavily embroidered blue silk. A lover’s bedroom.

Felipe undressed her, stripping the black silk lace from her trembling body, the act almost a ritual with softly spoken words of adoration for her creamy skin, and the perfection of her firm round breasts.

‘I will make love to you every day of my life,’ he murmured throatily. ‘Whether we are together or apart, in the flesh or in my mind, but every day I will possess you.’

No man could compare to this one. He was unique, charismatic, hedonistic in his approach to sexuality.

She watched in awe as he removed his own clothes, peeling off his evening suit and shirt to reveal a body as perfect and faultless as any Rodin sculpture. Smooth bronzed skin, dark curly hair that massed his chest, narrowing down his stomach in a column of hazy blackness to his groin. The need to touch was overpowering but part of his ritual was to wait, to suspend the feeling-need till the moment was right.

Eventually he stretched his hands out to her and she took them and slowly he drew her into his arms, drawing her into his power, into the heady realms of a world she had never known before.

He carried her to the sensual bed, and laid her down. His tongue explored, lightly at first, and then his urgency powered them both to a fierce eroticism that swam them into a haze of white-hot passion.

Her breasts ached with her need, her heart pounded fiercely with the depth of that need. Her body wasn’t her own. It floated mystically under his touch then rose in flames of desire as he entered her for the first time, driving hard into her, groaning her name over and over till it became a primeval incantation deep in his throat.

Their need for each other was insatiable that first night. They made love till dawn then made love again. They slept and murmured words of love to each other, lay in each other’s arms wondering at all that was happening to them. Later, they rose, showered, drank sweet thick Turkish coffee, talked quietly, made love on the soft leather sofa downstairs in the lounge.

The hours ran into days and Gemma forgot work and all that passed for her life before Felipe. They were both cocooned in their ethereal, perfumed lovenest, oblivious to outside intervention. Then Bianca arrived. Rich, angry and beautiful Bianca.

‘You were supposed to pick me up from the airport, Felipe!’ she cried when Felipe answered the door to her one morning. ‘Pay the taxi, will you?’ she ordered, thrusting her way into the house.

Gemma stood at the top of the elegant spiral staircase watching this scene below, too afraid to move, her heart racing. It didn’t stop racing when Felipe urged her down to meet his cousin who had just flown in from New York.

Cousin—it didn’t help somehow. Bianca was exotically beautiful, so was Felipe, and, cousins or not, the look Bianca gave Felipe was one of raw anger, and it had little to do with arriving at Heathrow and having to hail a taxi to St John’s Wood.

Felipe was unaware of his cousin’s hostility to Gemma; men often didn’t see what was obvious to another woman. But Gemma registered every look, every adverse vibration the girl gave off. She was younger than Gemma but exuded that mature air common to women who were beautiful, rich and spoilt.

‘So this is your excuse for not meeting me, is it?’ She flicked her eyes frostily over Gemma and slid out of her feather-weight cashmere coat, letting it fall carelessly over the sofa. ‘I might have known. No thought of me sweating it out at the airport, hanging around waiting——’

‘I forgot,’ Felipe interjected with a tolerant smile.

‘Well, damn you! I need sleep. I’m exhausted. Don’t wake me.’ With that she swept upstairs, slamming the door of the guest bedroom behind her.

‘I’d better go,’ Gemma murmured uncomfortably.

‘Like hell you will!’ Felipe grated, pulling her into his arms.

‘Don’t, Felipe, not with——’

‘Not with Bianca in the house? Why so suddenly prudish?’

‘I’m not!’

‘Forget her, then…’

‘As you forgot to pick her up from the airport?’

‘Is it any wonder?’ He grinned down at her. ‘Since you, I’ve forgotten there was a life before.’

His kiss melted away her doubts and she stayed, for a while.

Suddenly they were a threesome. Felipe took them both out to dinner that night and was charming and sweet, secretly squeezing Gemma’s hand yet dividing his conversation equally between the two women.

Gemma didn’t return to the mews house with them but diplomatically insisted on getting a taxi to her home and studio in Maida Vale.

‘I’ll call you first thing in the morning,’ Felipe told her outside the restaurant, not arguing with her but kissing her tenderly. Somehow that kiss had seemed so final.

But the next morning, true to his word, he phoned and sent flowers. Later he came round to the studio, saying how much he had missed her, and she locked all thoughts of Bianca away in the depths of her mind.

She showed him the latest project she was working on, a portrait of an industrialist for some élite boardroom.

‘He looks boring and pompous,’ Felipe told her, without meaning to offend.

‘He is,’ Gemma told him abruptly, and he swept her into his arms to kiss away her petulance.

‘You’re offended?’ he laughed.

‘Not at all. I paint what I see.’

‘Paint me.’

‘Never!’ She grinned. ‘I don’t do animal portraits!’ He growled at her neck then and they laughed and everything was suddenly all right. Later she cooked supper and he stayed all night, loving her till the small hours as if Bianca had never been part of the last two days. Gemma didn’t mention her; it would have been an intrusion on something so very special between them. There was only herself and Felipe and their love in the whole wide world…

She’d never seen him again after that. He’d left her at lunchtime, promising to call her later, but he hadn’t. The next day she had driven to the mews house in St John’s Wood, Felipe’s London home when he was in the country. She’d sat in the car and stared up at the house, just knowing it was empty. He’d gone and so had Bianca.

A week later had come the call from New York, but by then it was too late. Gemma had suffered enough.

Gemma glanced at her watch now and frowned. Her escort was late and she was restless and bored but there was little choice but to sit tight and wait. It was too hot to wander the streets of Caracas, and if she did venture out into the soporific heat she might miss Mike Anders, her father’s pilot, who was to fly has the last leg of her journey.

Gemma shivered. She mustn’t think of him as her father; he was a client, a Venezuelan oil man, nothing more, nothing less.

The phone purred and Gemma lifted it. ‘Thank you, I’ll be right down.’

She swung her leather satchel with her brushes and oils over her shoulder and wheeled her suitcase to the lifts. She’d faxed through her other requirements to the Villa Verde: an easel and several canvases. She didn’t know yet what sort of conditions she was expected to work under. A proper studio with the correct light was ideal but on these sort of assignments, in the client’s own home, she would have to make do.

‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Soames…’ ‘Call me Gemma.’ She smiled at the young American pilot, who was cool, blond and sporty.

‘Gemma it is,’ he grinned back. ‘Pretty heavy schedule today, I’m afraid—that’s why I’m late. Flew de Navas out to Maracaibo last night and just got back this morning. One helluva problem out theremassive oil leak as they were loading one of the tankers. No doubt the ole man will sort it all out.’

‘He’s still there?’ Gemma frowned. She wanted to start as soon as possible, as she had other commissions waiting back in the UK.

‘Yeah, he won’t leave till it’s under control. Hey, don’t worry, be happy, plenty to keep you buzzing out at the ranch,’ he laughed, ushering her into a taxi to the airport. ‘Pool, horses, tennis, shooting; you name it, they got it. Hey, are you really going to paint the old man? Queer sort of a job for a woman, ain’t it?’

Gemma was glad of his company. Hadn’t Wordsworth waxed lyrical about the bliss of solitude? He’d obviously never been holed up in blistering Caracas trying not to think of people he’d rather forget. ‘They’ troubled her mind at this very moment in spite of Mike’s boisterous running commentary as they hurtled through the busy streets of Caracas. Agustªn would probably have a wife and a family. It was one of the arguments her mother had put up to try to stop her coming.

‘You’ll only hurt yourself when you meet his family. You can’t do it, Gemma. Leave things as they are.’

Gemma had shaken her head determinedly. ‘I can’t be hurt, Mother, not any more. I don’t know him, he’s a stranger to me but I have to go, more so now after what you’ve told me. He’s my father; I’m curious. Can’t you understand that?’

She had at last, but hadn’t given Gemma her blessing; that was too painful for her.

She still loves him, Gemma thought as Mike loaded her suitcase and satchel into the Lear jet, after twenty-six years and life with another man she still loves him. Somehow she understood.

The mountains beyond Caracas were enthralling, threatening and savage. Mike kept up his commentary, unknowingly diverting Gemma away from her own troubled thoughts. She talked herself into thinking it was a good thing Agustªn wouldn’t be there to meet her. She wasn’t ready yet, but would she ever be?

‘There she blows!’ Mike laughed, tapping the window to the left as they lost height and powered down over green plains, far lusher than Gemma had expected.

‘Quite a spread, isn’t it?’

Gemma nodded, mute with awe. Southfork paled into insignificance. This was how real oil barons lived. The Villa Verde was the centre piece of the massive hacienda. And was that a church, the white-washed building closest to the impressive villa? Bright blue caught her eye as they swung down low over the estate, bright blue of a pool shaded by palms and dark green cypresses.

There were cottages dotted around and Gemma wondered if they all belonged to the man whose portrait she had come to paint. It was more like a village than one man’s home. So maybe he had a large family, sons and daughters with their own families. Suddenly she didn’t want to be here, wished she had heeded her mother’s advice.

Registering her sudden look of concern Mike misinterpreted it. ‘Don’t worry,’ he laughed, unbuckling his seatbelt after they had landed smoothly on the airstrip far away from the hacienda, ‘you’re not expected to walk to the villa.’

‘I’m glad of that,’ Gemma smiled as Mike slid open the door and a furnace of heat assailed her. ‘It’s hotter than Caracas.’

‘Hell isn’t hotter than Caracas,’ Mike joked.

They walked to the hangar and Mike hauled her case into the back seat of an open-topped Chevrolet. ‘Hop in, and we’ll be there in no time.’

They were. Mike drew to a halt in front of the palatial stone steps at the front of the Villa Verde and Gemma slid out of her seat and stared up at the sprawling two-storey house. It was gleaming white, rough-plastered in some age-old traditional way, its roof capped with antique tiles of shiny green. The shutters at the windows were ornate and painted green to match the roof. The old villa looked cool and just a little imposing—or was it her ragged nerves that gave the impression of the world closing in around her?

A short, dark, middle-aged woman, clothed in the customary black of a widow, came out of the huge studded double doors of the house and stood waiting for Gemma.

‘Senorita Soames, I am happy to greet you. I am Maria.’ She smiled and put a hand out to Gemma, which she took. ‘You are tired, si? I show you your room and then you eat and rest.’ She turned to Mike as he strode into the huge reception hall with Gemma’s suitcase, his trainers squeaking on the highly polished terracotta floor tiles. ‘Christina, she wait in the kitchen for you. She miss you.’ Maria grinned and winked at Gemma.

Mike dropped Gemma’s suitcase at the foot of the great stone stairway with its wrought-iron banister of twisted vines coiling up to the upper floor. He turned and grinned at the two women. ‘Misses me, eh? And so she should.’ With that he disappeared down a long corridor, a definite spring in his step.

Maria laughed. ‘Love, eh? Is good, si? Christina is my daughter. She love the Americano. Come, I take you up. Pepe will bring the case.’

Gemma, clutching her precious satchel, followed Maria upstairs, gazing in awe at the huge paintings that hung from the rough-plastered walls. A lot of them were portraits, which Gemma promised herself she’d study more closely later. For the moment all she wanted to do was get unpacked and cool off, though the house was cool enough; pretty dark too, she noted. The windows were all narrow and some of them shuttered to keep out the heat of the sun. She wondered where she would be expected to work and hoped that wherever it was there was more light than was being allowed to filter in the vaulted hallway and the stairs.

It was a huge villa, much bigger inside than it appeared outside. It was almost medieval in its décor, the stark white walls hung with what looked like iron objects of torture but were probably antique farming implements. All it needed was a couple of strategically placed suits of armour and she would feel she was in a castle of the Middle Ages. Heavens! There they were, round the next corner. Gemma skirted them warily, suppressing a grin.

Her room was coolly furnished, the bed an ornate affair with carved nymphs twirling vines around their heads on the mahogany headboard. It was draped with a creamy lace bedspread and there were matching lace drapes at the two narrow windows. There were huge rugs on the stone floor, pale orange with Aztec designs in blues and cream. The furniture, deeply carved wardrobes and chests of drawers, were heavy and ponderous but not unpleasant to live with. The room was scented with roses, which was nice, though the vases were filled with exotic waxy orchids in vibrant blues which gave off no smell. A Caribbean fan throbbed dully above the bed.

‘It’s lovely,’ Gemma breathed, slipping her satchel from her shoulder. It wasn’t her taste in décor but she nevertheless acknowledged it to be a beautiful room. Her mother would have adored it.

‘The bathroom, too.’ Maria smiled proudly, opening a heavy wooden door across the room.

Gemma peered in to see a wealth of marble and gold dolphin taps and sparkling mirrors.

‘It’s perfect,’ she smiled, as a small, leathered Pepe delivered her suitcase to the room she would occupy till the portrait was finished.

‘I unpack for you,’ Maria said, stepping to the case as Pepe went out of the room.

‘No, Maria. Thank you, but I can manage.’ Gemma wanted to be alone, to get her emotions together. She was here, in her father’s house, and it all felt very strange.

‘I leave you, then. I bring food to the terrace when you are ready.’

Gemma stood by the window when she was alone and gazed down over the gardens at the back of the villa. Lush tropical gardens full of colour and brightness. Flagstoned paths trailed through beds of roses; no doubt where the perfume came from, Gemma mused, breathing deeply. The swimming-pool lay beyond a screen of cypresses. Gemma could see the gleam of blue through the dark green and longed to cool her travel-weary body. She turned to her suitcase—first things first…

She stood frozen in time, half turned away from the window. A figure stood in the doorway of the bedroom. A figure she knew so well, but the apparition was some cruel trick of the dim light, surely, accentuated by this sombre old villa. It moved, came towards her, and Gemma’s hand shot to her mouth to stem the half-scream that rose in her throat.

‘It’s not possible!’ she breathed at last as the apparition stopped in front of her.

‘Anything is possible in my world,’ Felipe breathed heavily, ‘especially if you are fired by revenge and have the resources to avenge a betrayal.’

Stunned, Gemma stared up at him, too devastated to think straight. How, why…?

‘You look shocked, my darling. Have I changed so very much since last we loved?’

Her heart strained at her ribcage till she thought it would burst through the fragility of her bones. Oh, God, he had changed. He was thinner and gaunter than before. There was no love in his eyes, no love in his harsh voice though he talked of love.

‘I don’t understand,’ she grated at last, her eyes warily searching his for some answer. There was such menace in the dark depths of them that she shook her head to try and dispel the terror of it. Why? Why was he here?

‘I don’t suppose for a minute you do,’ he said slowly, bringing his hand up to tilt her chin. He laughed softly at the fear in her eyes. ‘I’ve brought you here for one purpose, sweet one: to torment you the way you tormented me. No woman does that to me, no woman twists my emotions till they are left wrung dry like a discarded rag…’

‘Felipe,’ Gemma cried, her eyes misted and wide. She couldn’t think, didn’t understand what was happening. He was the last person she expected to see here at her father’s home.

‘Did…did you arrange all this?’ was her first coherent question. He had to have done; coincidence didn’t stretch to these limits. The commission had been arranged through her agent, direct from the wealthy Venezuelan himself, so she had supposed.

‘Naturally. It was the only way I could get you here. You wouldn’t have come otherwise, would you? Or maybe you would. You came to me easily enough once before,’ he breathed cruelly.

The pain of those words cut deep into Gemma. What was powering this cruelty?

Running her tongue over her dry lips, she forced words to her mouth. ‘I still don’t understand. You talk of revenge, betrayal. What did I do to deserve such treatment?’

Somehow it seemed doubly painful to Gemma. She had thought she had been asked here to paint a portrait of the man she now knew to be her father. It was obvious now she wasn’t. It had been a trick, a ruse to get her here…but…but Mike had known her purpose, and surely he wasn’t in on this cruel deception?

‘You obviously do not know our ways. Women here do not treat South American men the way you treated me. Women know their place, and you will know your place in time, querida.’ His hand snaked up behind her neck and pulled her towards him in a swift movement that gave Gemma no chance to protest.

His mouth crushed hers and it was as if a stranger was the perpetrator. This wasn’t the man she had loved so desperately. There was no tenderness, no passion, merely harsh pain that grazed her lips brutally. She tore herself away from him, her lips burning, her mind buzzing dully. She had loved this man once, truly loved him, and now he struck fear and confusion inside her.

‘Don’t you ever touch me like that again,’ she cried, desperately controlling the tremor in her voice. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you——’

His eyes narrowed warningly. ‘Well, you will, Gemma. I will show you, in words and deeds. I will drive you to the limits of your desire and then I will discard you as you discarded me. Torment—you will know the true meaning of the word by the time I have finished with you.’ He smiled cynically. ‘You will learn, and it won’t be a pleasant lesson, I assure you.’ With that he turned on his heel and strode from the room, leaving Gemma mortally afraid for her sanity and her life.

CHAPTER TWO

GEMMA couldn’t move with shock, though her mind suddenly put a spurt on as if it had a sudden tail-wind behind it. She had never seen this side of Felipe before and she didn’t like it. He terrified her. He had loved her once but Bianca had come between them, so why was he suddenly making such wicked threats to hurt her?

Slowly the life came back to her numbed body and she moved, hesitantly, though. He had shaken her and the shock waves thrummed through her nerves, stretching them crazily till her whole body seemed to ache with fear. She crossed to her suitcase and stared at it blankly, her eyes wide. For once in her life she was terribly unsure of herself, even unsure what to do. Should she unpack? There was no commission, no portrait to be painted. She was here on a fool’s errand, manipulated by her former lover who seemed hell-bent on some sort of revenge.

Clenching her fists tightly, she braced herself. She had to find out what was going on and there was no time like the present. She didn’t bother to change but flew out of the room in the clothes she had travelled from Caracas in, thin white cotton jeans, crumpled in the heat of the day, and a loose, wispy black top that flapped around her midriff as she ran.

She didn’t know where to find him but find him she must. Damn this place, it was like a maze. She ran down the stone stairs and out into bright sunlight, blinking her eyes against the fierce sun.

Not a human soul to be seen. Gemma bit her lip and walked to the end of the villa, calmer now but still uncertain. Maria had said something about a terrace which must be at the back of the house.

She rounded the villa and saw wrought-iron tables and chairs, shady umbrellas—and Felipe.

Determinedly she walked towards him, mouthing questions in her mind, trying to find answers before she spoke them.

He was standing looking over a low stone wall that enclosed the terrace, hands plunged deep into the pockets of white linen trousers. There was a slight breeze which ruffled his short-sleeved shirt, otherwise he might have been as stiff as one of the stone statues that decorated the patio.

‘Felipe, we must talk,’ she murmured behind him.

‘Must we?’ he drawled, not turning to face her. ‘From what I remember we didn’t do much of that before. We spent our time in bed, locked in each other’s arms.’

There was a step behind them and Gemma whirled, startled by the sudden intrusion into the bitter-sweet memories Felipe had evoked. Locked in each other’s arms. She had wanted to die there, wrapped around his body, his around hers. Drifting in and out of sleep and passion. Days and days of love and laughter and more love. Had she dreamed it all? Now, standing here on this tropical terrace, a million miles away from home, her lover’s implacable shoulders turned away from her, she imagined she had. She shivered with trepidation and watched Maria place a silver tray of food and drink down on one of the tables.

‘Felipe, you eat with Se?orita Soames?’

‘No, thank you, Maria. I’ll eat later. Bring me a brandy, though.’

Gemma’s mouth dropped open at the familiar exchange between the two. She waited till Maria laid out cutlery, salad and cold meats for her and when she stepped back into the villa Gemma spoke.

‘She called you Felipe…’

‘Why shouldn’t she? She’s known me most of my life.’ He turned to her then, coolly motioning her to sit and eat. ‘Starvation isn’t one of the punishments I have in mind for you——’

‘Will you stop this absurdity,’ Gemma burst out, ‘and will you tell me what all this is about? I came here to paint a portrait but so far I’ve received nothing but abuse.’ Her outburst did nothing to ease the scowl on his face. ‘You live here, don’t you?’ she breathed when he said nothing.

‘Some of the time, yes.’

Shocked, Gemma slumped into the nearest chair. The familiarity between him and Maria had spurred the question but actually hearing it verified didn’t make it any easier to accept, in fact it made it worse. She recalled he had an apartment in New York and another home in South America but because of his Colombian ancestry she had presumed his home was there, not here in Venezuela.

‘This…this isn’t the home of Agustªn Delgado de Navas?’ she husked. What cruelty! She’d had such expectations and now this rapier-like thrust to add more sorrow to what she had already suffered.

The smile he gave her did nothing to warm his harsh features and chilled Gemma to the marrow.

‘He lives here, of course. And you do have his portrait to paint, which no doubt answers your next question. It was my idea, in fact. I convinced Agustªn his portrait was necessary. It took some doing, I assure you. He has little time for such eccentricities, as he put it. The idea of a female portrait painter didn’t appeal to him much either.’

‘Great, that’s all I need,’ Gemma huffed, bitterness pushing aside her confusion. ‘You threatening revenge and torture and a chauvinist who doesn’t want his portrait painted. It’s nice to know you’re wanted!’

Felipe smiled cynically. ‘Oh, you are wanted, my love. The revenge and torture will have its moments of hedonism, I promise you. And don’t worry about Agustªn. I convinced him of your great artistic talent, but kept your others to myself. You have a number of talents, Gemma, bed being one of them, and rest assured I’ll put all of them to the test while you are here.’

‘You expect me to go to bed with you?’ she whispered in disbelief. Once his sexual honesty had excited her; now his presumptuousness struck hard and cold inside her.

‘I don’t expect it, I demand it, when and where I please.’ He took a step towards her and Gemma tensed as his hand smoothed down her cheek while she gazed up at him. Months ago that caress would have inflamed her senses instantly, but now it merely inflamed her anger. She jerked her head away from his touch.

‘Am I so abhorrent to you?’ He smiled, coldly. ‘Not for long, querida; lust like ours doesn’t dim with time. I’ll have you begging for it before I’ve finished with you.’

Maria stepped back on to the patio with Felipe’s brandy and Gemma stilled her fury till she had gone. Felipe sat down at the table across from her and swirled his brandy before swallowing it in a single draught.

Gemma forced a wan smile to her lips. ‘Needed that, did you? You’ll be a raging alcoholic before I’d consider begging you for the sex you think I so desperately need.’

A genuine smile slicked his face then. ‘This is the Gemma Soames I know nothing about—such biting hypocrisy. I like it. It makes a change from the simpering compliance I generally run up against in women.’ He shrugged his shoulders dismissively. ‘It makes no difference, just adds spice to an otherwise racing certainty.’

‘Well, I’d hedge your bets if I were you. I’m not the woman you seduced so easily six months ago——’

‘And it was easy, wasn’t it?’ he cut in cruelly.

Gemma steeled herself, and somehow found the strength to fight him his way—dirty. ‘Very,’ she parried. ‘It didn’t take much to get you into bed either, did it?’

His fists bunched on the wrought-iron arm of his chair and his eyes blazed angrily. ‘Don’t talk that way, like a whore!’

Gemma held his eyes, fighting the whiplash of the insult. Suddenly she wasn’t afraid of him any more, not afraid to hurt him either because this wasn’t the man she had loved so passionately and wouldn’t have dreamed of hurting for all the world six months ago. This man was a cruel, heartless stranger.

‘It’s all right for you to insult me, though, isn’t it?’ She sighed theatrically. ‘But of course this is South America, not St John’s Wood, and here women do as they’re told, so you tell me.’

‘Because they want to. They love their men enough to bow to their every wish.’

‘How very quaintly old-fashioned. The women’s movement would have a field day down here.’

‘They’d get nowhere.’

‘You’re probably right,’ sighed Gemma. ‘I’m not interested enough to argue with you.’

‘And your complacency was the reason you didn’t call me in New York?’ he accused bitingly.

There was a long pause before Gemma could answer. Surely that wasn’t what all this was about, a wretched phone call that was never made?

‘Did you really expect that I would?’ she answered bleakly. Had he honestly expected her to go running after him after what he had done to her?

‘I should have known. Your sort of women want it all one way—their own. You took what you wanted from me and cast me aside for the next acquisition. Many no doubt in the circles you mix in.’

There was no room for hurt when indignation rose in her throat. ‘Is that why you came to my exhibition, to pick up the sort of woman you expected would frequent such a place? I thought exhibitions were for the purpose of viewing art, not trawling for loose women. My mistake again, as everything seems to be my mistake where you are concerned.’

‘You haven’t eaten,’ he said, nodding to the food in front of her.

Very revealing, thought Gemma. Point out a few home truths and a change of subject is always worth a try.

She pushed the plate away. ‘After your brutality I have no appetite,’ she told him. ‘How’s Bianca, by the way?’ she asked sarcastically, adding her own slice of brutality, though it was hurting her more than him, she realised as soon as she said it.

His eyes pierced hers and a muscle at his jawline tightened threateningly. ‘She’s well and will be here next week, so you will see for yourself,’ he told her cruelly.

Can’t wait, Gemma murmured inwardly, and reached for the jug of orange juice Maria had left. She couldn’t eat—his cruelty drove hunger from herbut fluids were essential. The heat was making her feel very light-headed—or was it the thought that Bianca’s arriving next week was engineered by Felipe to add insult to the injury he was already inflicting on her?

‘Why did you bring me here?’ she asked after slaking her thirst.

‘Because I was bored with making love to you in my mind. I wanted you in the flesh. I couldn’t live another day without possessing you for real.’

Gemma gazed at him painfully. He made making love sound as if it only meant sex. Was that how he had seen their affair? He’d said a thousand times that he had loved her, and, gullible as she had been, she had believed him. Not now, though. He wanted to punish her, drive her to the edge of desire and then spurn her as he thought she had done to him and that was spiteful and cruel and was aeons away from the caring he had shown before.

‘To punish me, or for your own pleasure?’ she asked levelly.

‘Both. I hate myself as much as you for what happened in London.’ He smiled cynically at her. ‘Trouble is, I still desire you, and you know the best cure for an obsession, don’t you? Face it. Over and over again till you exorcise it from your life.’

‘You hate me that much,’ Gemma breathed sadly, ‘and all because I didn’t phone you?’ She drew in a ragged breath, still not able to fully understand. ‘Felipe, I didn’t call you because you walked out of my life as easily as you walked into it——’

‘I had reason to, but you didn’t give me a chance——’

‘Should I have done? The call came a week later! Why not sooner?’ She shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering arguing with you. It makes no difference now.’ She stood up and looked across at him. ‘I did love you, Felipe, and I thank you for bringing me here. You’ve exorcised any ghosts I had spooking around after you left me. If you want help to get me out of your system, go summon a psychiatrist; no way are you going to do it by taking me to bed, how and when you please.’

He stood up and faced her, anger darkening his face. ‘I might not need to stoop so low,’ he grated, ‘because I’m seeing you in a new light. What happened to the soft, sweet Gemma I fell in love with?’

‘She got hurt, Felipe. So now we both know how it feels.’ She tilted her chin defiantly. ‘You can’t hurt me any more than you already have. I dare say with your expertise you could tempt me into your bed, but for what? Sex, no more, no less. It could never be anything else for me, Felipe, never!’

How easily the lies slid from her tongue. Sex: it had never been just that, and it wouldn’t be if ever he did manipulate her into his bed again. She had truly loved him and yet now she wanted to hurt him as he was hurting her, and suddenly she didn’t care that she was cheapening herself in his eyes.

‘You talk like a bitch!’ he breathed.

‘If you say so, so be it,’ she conceded frostily, and turned away from him.

He didn’t follow her, and Gemma went straight back into the house the way she had come out, round the side of the villa to the front. There were tears of fury and pain in her eyes but she willed them away, at least till she got to her room. The house was blessedly cool, and, sweeping her hair from the heat of her face, she started to climb the stairs.

‘Señorita, you don’t like the food I prepare for you?’

Gemma swung round and looked down at the hurt expression in Maria’s eyes as she stood in the hallway. For a few seconds she was dazed by the statement and then she understood.

‘No, Maria, it wasn’t that. I’m just too hot and tired to eat at the moment. I’m sorry you went to the trouble.’

She wished she’d eaten, not for her own sake but Maria’s. It was mid-afternoon and probably the custom here, as in most hot countries, to take siesta. Maria had gone out of her way to prepare food for her when she should have been resting.

‘It’s no trouble. You eat with Felipe later, si?’

‘No!’ Her retort came too quickly and Maria frowned. Gemma smiled and softened her voice. ‘I want to rest and…and…’ And what? She needed space and time to think, that was what. Somehow she had to get out of this hateful predicament.

‘Si, I understand,’ grinned Maria. ‘Later I bring you food.’ She ambled away into the shadowy depths of a corridor. Relieved, Gemma ran up the rest of the stairs to her room.

She stripped off her clothes, showered, wrapped herself in a towel and slumped on the bed. Her head ached miserably from the heated exchange between her and Felipe. He’d said it all in that brief but painful altercation. This was a Gemma Soames he knew nothing about. But was it any wonder? Once she had been happy and carefree, but lately she had been morose and bitter, and it was all his fault.

How very little they did know of each other. They were familiar with each other’s bodies but that was all. She would never have believed him capable of such cruelty. The very idea of him bringing her here to make her suffer was quite astonishing. He believed she had rejected him, his Hispanic descent had taken that as a personal humiliation and now he was determined to humiliate her in return.

Gemma buried her face in the cool lace bedspread. She felt sick and weary and wished with all her heart she had listened to her mother and not taken this assignment.

When she finally raised herself out of a deep sleep it was dark. Amber candle lights glowed softly in wrought-iron fixtures on the wall. The fan above the bed whirred softly. For a second Gemma wasn’t sure where she was and then it all folded over her, a black cloud of depression.

She got up, splashed her face with water, and found her white satin robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, freshly ironed.

She slid into it and found that Maria had unpacked for her, ironed all her clothes and put them away.

‘You are awake,’ Maria said as she stepped softly into the room. ‘Felipe would like you to go down for dinner but he said not to worry if you have the lag jet.’

Such thoughtfulness from Felipe would have gone unnoticed before, but now it throbbed with suspicion. But maybe he’d had time to think how unreasonable he had been.

‘I feel a little better, Maria, but not enough to dress and go down for dinner. Is Se?or de Navas back yet?’

‘No, not for a few days yet,’ Maria told her, straightening the bedspread.

Pity, thought Gemma, she would have made the effort for him, her father. The thought didn’t excite her any more, just speared regret through her. She shouldn’t have come.

So she had a few days to kill before he came back. Under any other circumstances she would have welcomed the wait. It would give her the chance to fully recover from her ‘lag jet’ and emotionally prepare her for coming face to face with her real father. Now, with Felipe around to torment her, the waiting could be doubly insufferable. Depression washed over her in a fresh wave of despair.

‘Señorita…’ Maria started, but suddenly she became tongue-tied and a slight flush rose to her cheeks.

‘Please call me Gemma,’ Gemma said, trying to put her at her ease.

Maria smiled, ‘Gemma,’ she repeated, having difficulty with the soft G, and it came out as if she had something stuck in the back of her throat. ‘Felipe, he tell me why you are here…’

Gemma froze, her hand suspended over her head as she was brushing her hair. Surely he hadn’t confided in the housekeeper, told her they had been lovers and the reason he had engineered this commission?

‘Is my daughter, Christina. She love the Americano and he one day go back home and maybe he take my daughter with him…she is all I have. Maybe…you have time to do a…to do a small picture…’ Suddenly she shook her head. ‘No, I should not ask…’

Gemma grinned, half with relief, half with pleasure. ‘Oh, Maria, you want me to paint your daughter?’

Maria shook her head again, twisted her hands in front of her. ‘I should not ask…’

‘I’d love to do it,’ Gemma laughed with relief. It was a marvellous idea. It would keep her occupied and soothe her ravaged thoughts and how could she refuse such a heart-rending request?

‘I pay,’ Maria smiled, relief flooding her motherly features.

‘You won’t!’ Gemma protested. ‘It will be a gift from me to you. It will be a pleasure to do it,’ she told the woman, lightly squeezing her arm to prove she meant it.

Flushed with pleasure Maria turned away and stopped at the door. ‘I bring you food. You must eat and I tell Christina. She will be much excited.’

Gemma finished brushing her hair and wished she could brush away the depression with it. Well, at least, that was one problem solved—what to do with herself while she waited for Agustªn de Navas. Would Felipe mind? She presumed that Maria’s daughter also worked here but there was no reason why the girl couldn’t sit for her in her spare time. But what had it to do with Felipe anyway—this was Agustªn’s home, wasn’t it? But Felipe lived here and Maria addressed him as if he was the head of the household in Agustªn’s absence.

She frowned in bewilderment as she lay her brush down on the dressing table. Why did Felipe live here anyway? True, only some of the time, but he was here now, none the less. She knew he had something to do with finance in the oil-field sector. Was he an adviser to her father…to Agustªn? The remoteness of the sprawling hacienda would warrant a long stay if Agustªn operated his empire from home. But that was only a presumption. The truth she longed to know but would it make any difference to the terrible predicament she found herself in?

The blackness outside her bedroom window gave no answers as she stared bleakly out, holding back the drapes with one hand. Strange how life twisted and turned, forever catching you unawares. She had come out here with trepidation in her heart at the thought of coming face to face with the man who was her father. Now that trepidation was for another man, her one-time lover, Felipe Santos. The fear of what he had in mind for her now outweighed the apprehension she felt at meeting Agustªn de Navas.

‘I’m sorry you don’t feel well enough to join me downstairs for dinner. The mountain comes to Mahomet, as you probably intended.’

His voice was raw with sarcasm and Gemma swung to face him.

‘That wasn’t the intention.’ She scowled as he put a tray of food down on one of the sideboards. ‘I’m not playing games as you suppose. I could hardly anticipate your doing such a menial task as bringing my dinner up, could I?’

‘Nothing surprises me about you. You’re sharp enough to realise that I would be annoyed by your stubbornness and not let it pass.’

‘I was under the impression I had a choice—to join you downstairs or to eat in my room,’ Gemma retorted. ‘In fact, I thought how considerate you were to think I might be suffering from jet lag. How wrong I was.’

‘Are you suffering from the after-effects of your long journey?’ He smiled coldly, his deep-set eyes sweeping over the provocative white satin of her robe.

Gemma stood her ground, not rising to the giveaway action of tightening it around her in an attempt at propriety. He knew what lay beneath it well enough.

‘Aren’t I allowed even that small weakness?’ she asked bitterly.

‘Only if I’m allowed one too.’

Because she wasn’t expecting it, her body wasn’t geared for defence. His hand shot out and slid round her waist and in one swift thrust she was hauled hard against him. His mouth was hot on hers, hot, demanding and deadly in the instant desire it sprang in her. His tongue eased past her lips, grazed heatedly over the soft inner skin of her lips, numbing her senses to why he was doing this.

A noise came from his throat, animal-like, predatory, uncontrollable. It was one she recognised and had always thrilled to in the past. An admission from him that the power of his love demanded her complete surrender, here and now and with an urgency that left her breathless. She had always matched his eagerness with a depth of desire that never ceased to arouse him to the limits of his endurance.

It was happening now, that turbulent flush of emotions coursing through her that had her aching so intensely for his penetration. His hand now sliding over the soft satin, now kneading her flesh beneath it till the white heat of desire scorched every negative pulse under her skin as if a virulent flame had flashfired over her body.

Her mind spun with the depth of the need, and so intense was it that she couldn’t register that this was just a punishment, his revenge, his torment. His hands, burning now, hard with intention, thrust beyond the thin fabric, scored across her breasts, drawing a deep gasp from Gemma’s throat.

He held her breast fiercely to guide her aroused nipple to his mouth, drew deeply on it as if he was sampling some rare, sweet wine and wanted to savour the very last drop.

Gemma’s hands flew to his hair, twisting the familiar springy silken coils in her fevered fingers, holding him against her for fear of losing him again.

But he was lost, her tormented senses reasoned. He hated her. Believed she had wronged him and not the other way around. This was the torment he had promised her. But surely he must be in pain too? Surely this wasn’t an act put on for the purpose of revenge? He needed her, desperately. The hardness of his body thrusting against the heat of her own, the breath quickening in his throat, his moist mouth so possessive and demanding on her breasts, couldn’t be faked.

And then it was all over, the desire swept away on a swirling current of painful memories of betrayal. Their thoughts and reasoning coupled as their bodies weren’t going to be allowed to.

They both drew back from each other at the same instant and their glazed eyes locked painfully.

‘Hardly the way I had anticipated it ending,’ he grated harshly, pulling her robe around her and tightening the belt viciously.

Gemma clasped her shoulders and hugged herself for some sort of comfort. Her body trembled under the satin, not with desire but with the shock of the cold cessation of his embrace.

‘I…I thought that was the whole point of the exercise,’ Gemma whispered in a voice roughened by the intensity of her confused feelings. She knew in that moment that she wanted him as much as she ever had, not a need fuelled by just wanting his body but a need fuelled by love. She hadn’t been wrong about her feelings for him and a week had been long enough to prove that it was real. Her love was all still there, badly tarnished by his cruelty, but nevertheless there, deep in her heart. The confusion came for him. Didn’t he realise that too, that they had had something special and that whatever had passed could be resolved?

‘You’d better eat before your food gets cold,’ he said brittly, turning away from her and stopping at the door.

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, this abrupt change of subject once again. She wanted him to tackle her, she wanted a blazing row because sometimes good came out of such furious confrontations. But he had stopped and he was facing her and he had something more to say. She held her breath, absurdly anticipating and wishing something harsh and cruel to come from his beautiful mouth, an insult she could match and thrust back at him to start the ball rolling.

‘Tomorrow, after you are fully rested, I’ll show you over the rest of the hacienda. You’ll find enough to occupy yourself with till Agustªn returns.’

‘I already have something to do,’ she blurted, ridiculously hoping that he would object to her intermediary commission and so start the row she so longed for. ‘Maria asked me if I would do a painting of Christina for her.’

Her heart raced as his brow darkened. ‘She shouldn’t have done that,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ll have a word with her.’

‘No!’ Gemma cried, clenching her fists at her side. That hadn’t been her intention, to get Maria into trouble. She’d handled it all wrong and now Maria was going to be on the receiving end of his wrath, not her.

His eyes narrowed at her protest and his fingers whitened on the edge of the door.

‘No,’ Gemma repeated. ‘She was hesitant about asking me, said she shouldn’t have, but Christina is all she has and…and she wanted something to remember her by if…if one day she decided to go away.’

She didn’t mention Mike. He might not know that Agustªn’s pilot was in love with Maria’s daughter. She was walking a tightrope for Maria as it was.

‘She kindly offered to pay, but I said I would do it for nothing. It will keep me busy while I’m waiting. I don’t know what Christina’s position is in the household, but I promise I won’t let it interfere with her duties.’

Suddenly she didn’t want the row she had been needling for. It had all gone wrong and he wasn’t angry with her any more but with Maria, and that wasn’t fair.

‘She has enough spare time, so I don’t think it will be a problem,’ he said quietly, and relief flooded Gemma. ‘At least it will keep you out of my hair,’ he added brutally. ‘Give you time to reflect on what nearly happened in this room tonight. Don’t think for a minute that I’ve eased up on you, Gemma. Making love to you tonight doesn’t fit into my plans. But when I’m good and ready for you, you’ll know. I’ll have you hammering on my bedroom door before very long.’

All hope faded and Gemma tensed the body that only minutes before had melted in his arms like butter in the sun.

‘Sure you will,’ she conceded, braving a cynical smile. ‘I’ll be hammering on your door with a feather and I won’t have to do it twice, will I? Because you’ll be waiting eagerly enough, and you won’t have torment on your mind, will you?’

She thought that his rage would burst out and he’d murder her there and then and put them both out of their misery. His face darkened thunderously, his grip tightened so fiercely on the door that she feared he’d rip it from its iron brackets. But this was a new Felipe, one she was so terribly unsure of, one who didn’t do what she expected of him.

‘Sleep well, querida,’ he said, controlled and immobile now. ‘Think on what I have said and prepare yourself for the onslaught. It’s not a threat but a promise.’

He closed the door infuriatingly softly behind him and Gemma stemmed a cry of frustration in her throat.

CHAPTER THREE

GEMMA was up early the next morning. She’d slept enough for a month and awoken refreshed, though as soon as her feet touched the rug by the bed Felipe’s threats swamped her once again.

She wasn’t going to let it weigh her down, though, she determined. That was what he wanted: to undermine her confidence till she was an emotional wreck. She was halfway there, she suspected, but no one was going to know it.

After showering she dressed in a cool lemon sundress with thin shoulder straps and slipped on soft leather flip-flops. She grabbed her Ray-Ban sunglasses as she went out of the room. Her eyes ached this morning, a reminder that she wasn’t as brave as she was trying to be. She’d fought tears last night, battled with them till her eyes ached so badly that she had been tempted to give in and let them flow. But she wouldn’t give him an inch, let alone her tears!

The villa was still and Gemma hoped she was first up, hoped that no one would mind if she got her bearings in the old villa.

She paused on the stone stairway to study the paintings. Nothing she recognised, like a Renoir, a Turner or a Picasso. Mostly old portraits of the family, handed down from generation to generation. She wondered if any were of Agustªn but saw none that had been painted in the last fifty years. There were no portraits of women, she noted, but wasn’t surprised. This was a macho country where the women didn’t count for much, she cynically supposed.

The downstairs rooms were cool and airy. Huge rooms with high ceilings, heavily beamed, whitewashed stone walls and polished terracotta floor tiles throughout. The furnishings were in keeping with the villa, heavy antiques of dark carved wood. Tapestries of ancient hunting scenes decorated the walls and the sprawling sofas were upholstered in luxurious brocades. The Hereke rugs on the tiles were flat woven in shades of blue, red and ivory with flashes of gilded thread. Real gold? Gemma wondered.

There were bowls of flowers everywhere, roses to scent the air, lilies and the exotic orchids that decorated her own bedroom. The house, though sombre, was very beautiful, and a peculiar thought struck Gemma—that no children had exploded with laughter within these walls. In fact it had the awesome feel of a museum where children were inhibited and silent.

One room was locked and Gemma presumed that to be Agustªn’s private domain, his study possibly. Running out of rooms, she followed the corridor to the kitchen. She opened a door at the end, a heavy studded affair similar to all the doors in the house but this one somewhat newer.

This was where the heart of the home pulsed. The kitchen was huge, bright and a century more modern than anything she had seen so far.

Maria turned from the huge stainless steel range where she was frying crisp bacon and turning round flat pancakes in a pan. The smell was delicious and cheered Gemma, which made her reflect that though the rest of the house was beautiful it had slightly depressed her.

‘Gemma, you are well, si? Felipe is with the horses.’

Gemma could see for herself. She saw him through the open door at the back of the kitchen. He was exercising a black stallion in the paddock in front of the stables. He wore a black T-shirt with white riding breeches and even from this distance she could see that the gauntness she had first noticed about him was confined to his face, not his body. He was still a muscular, powerful man, but the hunted look gave the impression of an overall weight loss.

Her heart ached to think she might be the cause, but surely not? He hated her now, didn’t he? But the torment he had promised her was giving him no satisfaction. This revenge that was powering him was doing more harm than good.

Gemma turned away from the door as Maria called her for breakfast, an informal affair round an oak refectory table, which reminded Gemma that she was here for a purpose, to work—she wasn’t a guest in the house.

‘Christina cleans the bedrooms and will be finished soon. You start the picture then?’ Maria asked eagerly as Gemma ate her breakfast.

‘Later, Maria,’ came a voice from the back door, and Gemma turned her head to look at Felipe. He stood framed in the doorway, the glaring light of the day behind him silhouetting him as if he were the devil himself taking a day out from hell.

‘I wish to spend the morning with Gemma. Christina can sit for her this afternoon.’ He sat across the table from her and laid his riding crop down on the bench seat next to him as if he might need it at any moment.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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