‘My name is Carlos… Carlos Diablo.’

There was a strange break in the middle of the words, almost as if he had suddenly changed his mind and decided not to tell her. But he finished the sentence smoothly enough, looking her straight in the eyes as he spoke.

‘And I’m M…’

Her tongue stumbled thickly on the realisation that she had been about to give away her real name. What if he knew who she was? She had no idea how long he had been in England. If he had read it in the local newspapers. She didn’t want to take any chances.

‘I’m Miss Jones,’ she said, and winced at just how prim and restrained it sounded. But it would do for now. After all, she had no way of knowing if he had even given her his real name.

‘Pleased to meet you—Miss Jones…’

He gave the carefully formal name an ironic intonation, as if he was only too well aware of the way she was concealing the truth from him, but quite clearly he didn’t care a bit.

Diablo. The name spun round inside her thoughts. Diablo. The devil. Carlos the devil. That sounded so ominous. Scary. But it was just a name, Martha reassured herself. Just his name.

The devil and Miss Jones. It sounded like a gothic romance.

About the Author

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading.

You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com

Recent titles by the same author: THE RETURN OF THE STRANGER (The Powerful and the Pure) THE PROUD WIFE THE GOOD GREEK WIFE?

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Devil

and Miss Jones

Kate Walker

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT the devil…!’

He had to be imagining things, Carlos Ortega told himself. He couldn’t actually be seeing what was ahead of him.

Easing up on the throttle, he slowed the powerful motorbike to an almost crawl that was far more suited to the narrow country lane he had originally been riding down at a speed that much better expressed the turmoil of his inner feelings and stared straight ahead, frowning. But no matter how he blinked or adjusted his vision, the sight remained the same. The same impossible, unbelievable image just ahead of him. One that set his bemused mind wandering down strange and over-imaginative paths and into crazy ideas.

He’d heard stories of local ghosts. His companions in the bar last night had been only too keen to regale him with them over a pint of beer. This road, the villagers said, was haunted. By a bride who had been left at the altar, and had died broken-hearted, pining away for the man she had once loved but who had deserted her so cruelly. At least, that was the way that the traditional story went.

Not that Carlos believed in any such thing. The small, sleepy backwater of a place he had stayed in for the past couple of days was obviously riddled with stories and superstitions, some of which had been amusing enough last night while propping up the bar in the black-beamed old-fashioned inn where he had been staying. But now?

‘No way!’

He found he was shaking his head inside his crash helmet and almost laughing as he had done last night when they had first fed him the story, obviously thinking they needed to earn the drinks he had bought them.

He’d gone down to the bar from his room because for the first time in a long while he’d wanted company. He’d moved from the point of being alone and finding that that was the way he wanted things to be after all that had happened, to feeling strangely lonely, which wasn’t something he’d expected. He was used to his own company and he had, after all, come here deliberately to be on his own, to get away from the mess he had left behind him. He had wanted to be as far away from that—as far away from home as possible.

Home. Argentina wasn’t any sort of home to him, but then, where was? It had hit with a wrenching jolt that there was now nowhere in the world he could call home. Oh, he had houses of course, several of them in the most expensive and exclusive parts of the world, and any one of them he would be happy to live in. But none of them was where he had any roots; where he thought he truly belonged. Where his family…

‘Hah! Family!’ His laugh was harsh, raw.

What family? He didn’t have any family any more. Everything he had thought was his had been taken away from him at a blow. And the only thing he had been left with was his mother. His lying, cheating, unfaithful mother. The mother who had made him a bastard right from birth and who had never wanted him in her life after that. He didn’t even know who he was any more. His whole life had apparently been a fiction, his background, his ancestry, turning into a lie in the space of the time it had taken his grandfather to tell him the truth. A truth that had left him with precisely nothing of everything he had once valued, and once thought was what made him who he was.

So the stories he’d heard had been an amusement, a distraction from feelings he wasn’t used to dealing with. They’d helped him pass an unexpectedly restless evening. But this morning in the very cold light of an early April day, belief in ghosts, ghouls and things that went bump in the night was very far from his mind.

And yet…

The freezing fog was shrouding the edges of the road in swirling shadows, occasionally drifting to obscure the vision on the grass verge on the left-hand side. It came and went so that he was forced to blink hard to clear his vision and make sure there actually was anything up ahead.

And it—she—was still there.

A woman. Tall, curvaceous, pale. Hair a rich honey gold—what he could see of it through the mist. And because it was pulled up in some ornate style on top of her hair, most of it was covered by the filmy veil—white like the ankle-length dress—that covered her face and fell down her back. Her arms were bare, as were her shoulders, the pale skin almost as white as the fitted bodice that shaped her high, rounded breasts.

A bride?

The figure of a bride, in full wedding regalia. Just as in the legend of the ghostly bride that had formed part of the evening’s entertainment in the bar. But this was definitely no ghost because this particular bride was standing at the side of the road—incongruously clutching a bright blue very modern handbag.

And with her thumb raised in the time honoured gesture of someone hitching a lift.

‘What the…?’

This time he slowed the bike to a complete halt, coming to a careful stop just a short distance away from the woman.

‘Oh, thank God!

The voice was real. Not just something he had heard in his imagination or inside his head. Soft and slightly husky, it sent a shiver through him that had nothing to do with the paranormal ideas he had been conjuring up just moments before. A response that was all to do with the very real world. And the soft rustle of her silken skirts as she hurried towards him was not the silent drift of a spirit that didn’t actually exist but very clearly made by something totally physical.

So just what the devil was she doing here?

‘Oh, thank God!’

The cry escaped Martha’s lips involuntarily, pushed from her by the sheer disbelieving delight of seeing the motorbike pull to a halt at the side of the road.

‘At last!’

At last she was not alone. At last someone else was in the same place as her. Someone—a man—a big man from the size and shape of him—had appeared on the road that had been empty and isolated for almost too long to bear. Someone who might be able to help her and maybe even get her somewhere safe and warm before she actually froze. She was dangerously close to that already, she admitted to herself as just the effort of running towards him made the blood quicken in her veins, bringing stinging life to the toes she had feared might actually become iced to the ground.

Not for the first time she cursed the wild romantic impulse that had led to her choosing this isolated spot in which to hold her wedding. Of course, originally, the isolation had been everything she had wanted. The large stately home, set in its huge grounds, was miles from anywhere, and hopefully too far from civilisation and too hidden to attract the attention of the paparazzi or anyone else who had been trying to find out just who she was. When she had first seen Haskell Hall it had looked absolutely perfect. The wedding venue of her dreams. A fantasy come true. Here she could have her special day in total privacy and, after that, who cared if anyone who lived nearby ever found out why her life had changed so totally, so dramatically?

But the day she had seen the hall had been a bright, clear, crisp morning, with the sun high in a wide blue sky. The sweeping drive up to the big house had been clear of the mist that had swirled around it this morning, and the temperature had been a good ten degrees or more higher than the bitter chill that seemed to have crept into her bones, turning them to ice as she had trudged up the path towards the road.

It had never seemed such a long, long trek either, when she had first imagined the journey in a horse-drawn carriage that would take her from her fairy-tale wedding and off on the honeymoon of a lifetime, her new husband at her side. But that had been when she had only driven down it in the secure, warm confines of a sleek, powerful car, snugly wrapped in jeans and a cashmere sweater. She would give her soul to be able to wrap something like that around her right now and ease some of the chill that had made the last half an hour or more such sheer misery. Though the truth was that it was the coldness inside that was far worse even than the weather.

Back then, her feet had been comfy and protected inside soft leather boots, not the delicate satin, crystal-decorated slippers that were now totally soaked through and feeling like little more than sodden paper between her feet and the rough surface of the road. Her hair was damp and had started to slide out of the ornate style that had been created only an hour or so before, her carefully applied make-up running down her face, washed away by the rain as she ran down the drive.

And the man she had been planning on marrying was still somewhere back in the Hall, hastily erasing all evidence of the dirty, illicit passion he had just indulged in. A passion that he had never felt for her, except in his lies.

‘Please stop…’

She couldn’t get to her rescuer fast enough, almost tripping over her long skirts as she ran towards him.

Two cars had already rushed past her. She wasn’t sure if the drivers had actually seen her or, having seen, had decided to put their foot down and rush past, the sight of a bedraggled, mud-splattered bride, miles from anywhere, just too much for them to cope with. And she’d stood there, her feet turning into blocks of ice, her hands going blue, the skin of her face stinging with the cold.

She had thought that today was to be the start of her happy ever after. But for that to happen, then Gavin would have had to be her prince, instead of the ugly toad he had turned out to be. She supposed it could have been worse. If she’d still been caught up in the fantasy of being in love—in love with the idea of being in love—then she could have had her heart shattered as well. But she’d already had second thoughts, and it seemed that her instincts had been working true. But all the same the vicious, cruel words she had heard had taken every last trace of her self-esteem, her sense of herself as a woman, and shattered it into tiny pieces.

The thrum of the motorbike’s engine had her running headlong down the rutted road, suddenly fearful that this unexpected rescuer too would put his foot on the accelerator and speed away, abandoning her totally.

‘Please—please don’t go…’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

The voice, muffled slightly by the silver helmet he wore, didn’t sound quite English. Or perhaps that was because of the wind roaring in her ears, the racing of her heart in panic at the thought that he might be about to leave her alone again. She was so cold she couldn’t think straight.

But at least he had switched off the engine on his bike, had swung his long leg over the machine so that he was standing, tall and dark—so tall!—in front of her.

‘I promise I’m not going anywhere,’ he repeated.

‘Oh, thank heaven!’ It was a fervent sigh, rather ruined by the way that her teeth chattered together on the last word. ‘I…’

‘What the hell happened to you?’ he demanded, the rich dark voice rough with something she hoped was concern.

How much did she tell him? What did she tell him? It wasn’t just the cold that had numbed her brain so that she couldn’t think straight. In the moments that she had run to be near him, coming to a halt at his side, she had suddenly found that her mood had swung from relief and delight to a new and disturbing rush of something very different. A sense of apprehension mixed with a sharp, intense awareness of the simple fact that he was a man. A man whose powerful figure and strong frame suddenly made her heart lurch in a mind-spinning shock of response.

‘No—wait!’

It was a command, sharp, autocratic, and she realised that he was unzipping the substantial leather jacket he wore with battered denim jeans and heavy black leather boots. Shrugging himself out of it, he moved closer.

‘Here…’

He slung it around her shoulders, letting it settle like a thick black cape over the exposed skin, the soaked silk of her bodice.

‘You’re frozen.’

‘U-understatement.’

It was all that Martha could manage and even then her voice shook on the words. She was beginning to feel as if she had lost contact with her mouth, her lips frozen stiff so that it was hard to speak. The shivers she had been fighting off suddenly returned in full force, driving her to tug the jacket tightly around her, huddling into it for comfort. It was still deliciously warm from his body and it smelled faintly of clean musky male skin, and some tangy cologne that unexpectedly made her heart skip a beat. The feeling of relief from the cold was overlaid with another, unexpected pulse of heat that had nothing to do with the jacket but was a stunning, unexpected sensual response.

‘Th-thank you.’

She wasn’t quite sure how she got the words out. The shock that ricocheted through her in that moment seemed to clear her head, bringing her up short. She had been so overjoyed to have help, to see some other human being out here in the wilds, to have someone actually stop to help, that she hadn’t stopped to think—about anything. But right now she realised that thinking was what she had to do—and fast.

She didn’t know this man from Adam. Had no idea who he was and why he had actually stopped. She was here in the middle of nowhere, alone, defenceless— she couldn’t even run if she wanted to with the narrow, sleek skirt of her dress clinging close around her legs and ankles. She had thought that it looked so elegant when she had first tried it on. She had even—wonder of wonders—felt almost beautiful when she had looked in the mirror of her room back in the Hall when she had got ready. Well, Gavin had taken that impression and crushed it beneath his heel just moments later.

Was it really just an hour or so before?

His cruelty had driven her out of the house in a desperate need to escape—first from the wedding that had turned into her idea of a personal sort of hell and now, possibly from this man—this stranger…

Did he even plan to help her?

All at once the rush of warmth and delight that had sizzled through her when she had first seen him ebbed away fast, leaving behind a sort of bruised, painful feeling. Still clutching the jacket around her, pulling it tighter than ever as a sort of protection against the way she was feeling, at the same time she knew a longing to tear it off and throw it from her as if accepting it had led her into reckless danger. Unable to think straight, she took a couple of hasty steps backwards, almost missing her footing on a rough patch of grass and turning her ankle sharply so that she cried out in shock and pain.

‘Hey…’

The man’s hands, big, strong, encased in black leather gloves, came out to catch her, pulling her upright when she almost fell. Supporting her easily, he shook his head.

‘No—do not look at me like that.’

It was there again, that hint of something foreign—exotic—in his words. This time she was sure that it was not her hearing that was deceiving her, but very definitely the sound of some accent that was nothing like the local flat-vowelled burr. It was unexpected, somehow shockingly appealing.

‘I have no intention of hurting you, I swear… Look—’

His free hand unfastened his helmet swiftly. As he pulled it off he shook his head sharply, freeing the rather long jet black hair that was now exposed. The wind howled round them, blowing it against his face so that as he turned back to her he had to toss it out of his eyes.

And what eyes! Martha didn’t know what she had been expecting. She could see so little of him, with his long body, those powerful hands, all encased in black leather and denim, his face hidden under the silver helmet. But from the hint of skin she could just see—golden, olive-toned skin that was not the pallid white of an Englishman at the tag end of winter—and the trace of accent she realised that she had anticipated something dark, deep brown or maybe a polished jet. Instead she found herself looking into a pair of mossy green eyes, glinting with the light of a many-faceted jewel stone that made them deep and dark while at the same time shot through with an almost golden hue. They gleamed above high, slanting cheekbones, fringed with impossibly long, lush black lashes that should have looked effeminate on a man but that somehow, in this strongly carved, stunning face just looked amazing—and incredibly, gorgeously sexy.

But he also looked dangerous. Big and dark and powerful. Those impossibly long, lush eyelashes should have softened his face, but instead they somehow contrasted so sharply with the high, carved cheekbones, the square, forceful jaw and uncompromising mouth that the impression they left was one of concealment, hiding the beauty of those stunning green eyes behind their dark fringe, and turning it into something secret, inscrutable—disturbing.

Just who was this man who had come to her rescue—knight in shining armour or the devil himself?

‘Believe me, I have no intention of hurting you.’

He repeated the words with an added edge for emphasis and while they relieved her tension, that double edge to them had exactly the opposite effect. That accent didn’t help either. It was too foreign, too exotic, to belong in any sort of world where she lived.

‘How do I know that?’

He sighed, tossed back an overlong strand of hair that the wind had blown against his face. As she watched that sensual mouth twitch in something that might have been amusement—or an acknowledgement of her right to indignation—she felt a twisting bite of response that had nothing to do with unease and everything to do with a purely female reaction to a glorious specimen of manhood.

The problem was that it was not usually the way she felt about the opposite sex. The way she had ever felt about any man… even Gavin. That was one of the things that had made her face the fact that she was deluding herself about her proposed marriage.

‘I can give you my word.’

‘And what exactly will that mean to me?’

Once awoken, her sense of self-preservation had coming rushing back in double force. If she hadn’t learned anything about the way that since her life had changed, everyone would react so differently towards her, then surely the devastating scene she had witnessed back at the Hall would finally—finally have taught her that she needed to take so much more care with relationships from now on.

But surprisingly, the memory of the sight that had met her eyes as she had walked into Cindy’s room was having the strangest effect on her. Just when it should have made her stop and think, should have pushed her to have second and then very probably third thoughts about what she was doing, instead it seemed to have exactly the opposite effect. When she should have thought extra carefully and played things cautiously, sensibly, in the way that she had lived most of her life up to now, she suddenly felt that what she actually wanted was to break free, be less constrained. Sensible was very definitely not what she wanted to be.

Her life had been turned on its head. It had been blasted apart and there was no way she was ever going to be able to put the pieces back together again. At least not in a way that rebuilt the picture as it had been before. She had tried the safe, the careful—the damn sensible—and look where it had got her. Out here on an exposed moor, wearing a bridal dress for a wedding that had never meant a single thing that she had believed in. A future that had been a mistake from the start.

‘What good is your word to me when I don’t know who you are? Or anything about you.’

The look he shot her gleamed with challenge, a touch of dark humour flaring gold in those amazing eyes, reminding her that the truth was that she was in no real position to argue.

‘You know that I am probably your only chance of getting to where you need to be—or back to wherever you came from.’

His cool gaze swept along the deserted road, the rain soaked hills surrounding them.

‘Do you see a couple of hundred other cars—other bikes—queuing up to come to your rescue?’ he drawled sardonically. ‘To take you wherever you want to go?’

‘There’ll be someone else along…’

Even as she flung the words at him she knew that she was risking making a big mistake; cutting off her nose to spite her very cold and miserable face. His sceptical sidelong glance questioned her sanity in that statement just at the same moment as her own thoughts demanded to know if she was losing her mind.

‘Fine,’ he said, the single word curt and harsh. ‘Have it your own way.’

He turned away from her, towards his bike, putting a couple of strides between them, the silver helmet swinging from its strap at his side. The gesture was so obviously meant to show that he was calling her bluff that the sparks of irritation it ignited held her silent even as she knew she was risking possibly her last chance of rescue. She could challenge him too, and she would even if her stretched nerves screamed at her that this was crazy, that she was risking being abandoned again. But he couldn’t do that—could he?

But it seemed that he could as his long legs and powerful stride took him further from her, leaving her with only a view of his strong, straight back, those wide shoulders encased in tautly stretched white cotton, the black hair blowing wildly in the wind.

Indecision tore at her, making her feel raw and uneasy. Surely if he actually meant to do her harm then he wouldn’t just walk away like this? If only she had brought her mobile phone with her—but she’d left that on the dressing table in her bedroom at the Hall, forgetting to put it into her handbag at the last minute.

‘Wait…’ she tried, low and uncertain, but the wind whipped away the sound of her voice, scattering it across the deserted hillside.

He had only got a few metres away from her and yet already she felt shockingly lost and alone. The leather of his jacket seemed to have lost some of its protection against the wind, and she was gripped by a terrible sense of fear at the thought of being alone again. It had been bad enough before but she suddenly knew that it would be terribly, frighteningly worse this time after the brief spell of human contact that this man had provided.

‘Wait!’ she tried again, louder this time.

She saw his determined footsteps slow, come to a gradual but definite halt. He didn’t turn, but he had stopped, and the way that her heart lurched told her how important that was. Safe or not, her mind was made up.

‘What time is it?’

It was perhaps the last question he had been anticipating, and as he turned the quick dark frown that drew his black brows together told her that. But he turned a quick glance at the workmanlike watch on a heavy leather strap around his strong-boned wrist and then brought his eyes back to her face.

‘Almost two o’clock—is that important?’ His gaze and his tone had sharpened on the last words.

Her reaction had given her away. The start she had been unable to suppress, the way that her breath had hissed in through her teeth at the thought of the way her day should have been going right now.

‘Might have been,’ was all she could manage.

It should have been the beginning of her new life. The start of what she had foolishly believed was the happiness she had been looking for for so long. She might have turned up at Gavin’s door to tell him that she thought she was making a mistake, but the things she had heard and seen had stopped her dead, unable to deliver her message. And Gavin had been so intent on his own sensual pleasure that he hadn’t even heard the door open. So he would have no idea the wedding was not going ahead and if it was nearly two o’clock then the ceremony she had run from was officially about to begin.

‘Will you help me? Can we get out of here?’ A rather wild gesture of her hand indicated the sleek, powerful black and silver motorbike that stood at the side of the road. ‘On that.’

She had to get as far away as possible from the Hall where no doubt there must now be a search in progress, everyone wondering what had happened to the bride who seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

‘I take it that you need to get to your wedding?’ he asked now.

‘Oh, no!’

She couldn’t hold back on the horror that flooded her mind at just the thought of it. She could still hear those words, muttered in the thick rough tones of sexual passion.

‘It’s worth putting up with her in my bed—taking her much prized and held-onto virginity to be legally and fully her husband. Just think, darling—half of seven million when we get a quickie divorce—that’s worth consummating the damn marriage with Miss Prim, even if I do have to lie back and think of the money. Maybe that will turn me on because she sure as hell doesn’t. She’s so big, it’ll be like sleeping with a horse…’

‘No way! That’s the last thing I want!’

She’d shocked him so that his dark head went back, his amazing eyes widening for a second before narrowing again in swift assessment. Her nerves twisted painfully as she saw his frown.

‘I—I want nothing to do with my wedding,’ she declared, the bitter truth ironing out the shake in her voice. ‘It would have been the worst possible mistake I could make so I—got out of there fast. Leaving it all behind me. And I want it to stay behind me—as far behind me as possible.’

‘Es que la verdad?’

The slow drawl had a faintly mocking edge to it, one that had her tensing every muscle as she nerved herself for his next comment. His next question—inevitably it would be something on the lines of exactly what she had left behind and why. And she wasn’t ready to answer that.

‘What language is that?’ she asked sharply. ‘Are you—Spanish?’

She’d asked something that had sparked a new mood in him, one that seemed to have a shade coming down over his eyes, hiding their expression from her. But now she was intrigued, wanting to know more.

‘Argentinian, actually.’

‘And what do you do there?’

Somehow she’d stepped over a line that he didn’t want crossing and his response was brusque, dismissive.

‘Horses and wine.’

So, a gambler? Or a breeder? A drinker or… She didn’t know how to phrase the question and his stony face did nothing to encourage her to go further.

‘You—you’re a long way from home.’

‘A very long way,’ he agreed, his tone sombre in a way that made her feel he was talking of so much more than a physical distance.

‘So are you on holiday—or—?’

The rough shake of his head, sending that wild wet hair flying, had her cutting off the question sharply.

‘It seems that really we’re two of a kind,’ he said slowly.

There was a touch of dark amusement in his words, but there was also something more than that. Something that swirled, harsh and disturbing, at the bottom of his voice.

‘How so?’ Her voice caught sharply on the words.

That deep green gaze swept over her in cool assessment then swung back to his motorbike, eyes narrowed against the rain.

‘We both just took off—turned our backs, left everything behind. Two of a kind.’

CHAPTER TWO

TWO of a kind?

Just the thought of it took her breath away. It was true that was exactly what she’d done. She had felt that there was no other possible opening before her. But him?

Look at him! Did he look like someone in despair at anything? A man who had felt the need to walk, leave everything behind? A man who had lost…?

No, lost was the last thing he looked. Even with the drizzling rain misting his hair so that it hung damp around his face, the black strands whirled into crazy disarray by the wind, and the white cotton of his tee shirt plastered against the honed lines of his torso, the powerful ribcage, taut muscles, disturbed, or even dishevelled were the last words that came to mind to describe him. Strong, powerful, determined, totally in control fitted him better.

‘You can’t have!’ Disbelief rang in her voice.

‘And why not?’

It was flung at her and the flash of danger in his eyes held a warning that made her take a couple of hasty steps back and away. She had needed this sharp reminder that he was a total stranger and one she didn’t know whether she dared to trust or not.

‘But—don’t you have a job—a home—family who care for you?’

‘I have no home in Argentina now.’

It was a flat, hard statement, and it was only when it died from his eyes, leaving them bleak and opaque, that she realised there had actually been a light in the green depths, one that had made them warmer than ever before. And now she had driven it away with her foolish words.

‘No family either.’

‘I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…’ she began again, but he lifted his shoulders in a shrug that dismissed her concern. He deliberately switched on a smile but it was such a brief, on-off flash of a thing that it had no real warmth or even meaning. And that ‘now’ had had a special emphasis, one that made it plain the loss was of a recent date.

‘Perhaps we’re more alike than you’d think—both on the run, leaving our pasts behind.’

‘Is that really what you’re doing?’ She couldn’t see him running from anything.

But when she looked into those moss-coloured eyes she saw a shadow that swirled in their depths, giving them a look that she recognised. It was the expression that had been on her own face when she had looked in the mirror that morning and known that she was making a terrible mistake. That she couldn’t go through with the wedding to Gavin. It was the expression of someone who knew they had burned their boats and for whom life could never be the same again. And it was carefully masked so that only someone who had been through the same thing would see past the determined defences.

‘Everything?’

His laugh was harsh, dark, seeming to splinter in the damp-laden air like a glass that had been dropped on the stony, wet ground.

‘Take a look around you.’

The wide, vicious gesture embraced the empty, rain-swept road, the parked motorbike.

‘Right now what you see is what you get,’ he declared.

‘That’s all you have?’ she managed, on a very different note from the question she had asked before.

That dark head, the dishevelled overlong hair now soaked by the misty drizzle and clinging to the strong bones of his skull, nodded twice, hard, and undisputable.

‘That’s everything,’ he agreed. ‘A few changes of clothes, some bits and pieces in that bag, and what I stand up in. That’s it.’

‘But you… Why…?’ she began hesitantly but this time he shook his head with a touch of impatience.

‘I could ask the same of you,’ he said and she was relieved to see that at last a trace of lightness had crept into his voice, making it much less frightening, more reassuring. ‘But what would be the point? We’re just strangers, two ships passing in the night. So let’s leave the questions unasked. The whys unsaid.’

‘Not even names? If I’m supposed to head off out of here with you then you could at least give me a name to use.’

A shrug of those powerful shoulders conceded that point to her.

‘OK…’

He took a step towards her, pulling off one glove and holding out his hand to her.

‘My name is Carlos… Carlos Diablo.’

There was a strange break in the middle of the words, almost as if he had suddenly changed his mind and decided not to tell her. But he finished the sentence smoothly enough, looking her straight in the eyes as he spoke.

Diablo. The word spun round inside her thoughts. Diablo. The devil. Carlos the devil. That sounded so ominous. But it was just a name, Martha reassured herself. Nothing but a name.

‘And I’m M…’

Her tongue stumbled thickly on the realisation that she had been about to give away her real name. What if he knew who she was? About the money she had won—the millions that had been all that had attracted Gavin to her. She had no idea how long he had been in England; if he had read it in the newspapers. She didn’t want to take any chances.

‘I’m Miss Jones,’ she said, and winced at just how prim and restrained it sounded. But it would do for now. After all, she had no way of knowing if he had even given her his real name.

‘I am pleased to meet you—Miss Jones…’

He gave the carefully formal name an ironic intonation as if he was only too well aware of the way that she was concealing the truth from him, but quite clearly he didn’t care a bit.

The devil and Miss Jones. It sounded like a gothic romance. Or some blues song.

That hand was still between them, long and brown and strong and totally steady, totally dependable. Surprisingly it put Martha’s mind at ease and had her moving to put her fingers into his, feel them swallowed up in the heat and hardness, the strength and—yes and the comfort of it.

She was totally unprepared for the effect that just that simple gesture had on her. Her hand touched his, warm skin against warm skin, and suddenly it was as if she were in the middle of an electrical storm as sensation fizzed along every nerve. It was more than warmth, more than contact, and heaven knew she needed both of those. It was something deep and primitive, wild and dangerous and yet somehow essential to life. It swept away the chill that had pervaded her body as she’d stood, miserable and lost, at the side of the road and it threatened to splinter her mind into tiny pieces as she fought to get her much-needed control back again.

Suddenly Martha knew a crazy, irrational need to go somewhere—anywhere—with this man—this Diablo. And not just because she wanted to escape from all she had left behind her, but because she wanted to go forward into something new and different—and startlingly exciting.

When she looked up into his face she saw something change there too. A whole new expression suddenly came over his features, softening them, changing them in the most dramatic way. His eyes warmed so that their shadowed green now looked like the colour of the fields where the rainclouds had parted and let the rays of the sun shine through, illuminating them. And his mouth—dear heaven, how sensual was that mouth? It was firm and strong but the fullness of the lower lip gave it a sexy curve that made something tingle right through her body, particularly when he let a tiny hint of a smile curl at the corners just for a moment. His grip on her hand tightened, briefly, conveying a message of support and encouragement that she was anxious enough to welcome hungrily. She even let herself wonder just for one brief heady moment just what it might feel to have that mouth on hers, feel it caress her skin.

‘So now can we get on?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know about you but I’m getting tired of standing here in this wind, getting soaked.’

‘Of course!’ Guilt at the way she had kept him hanging around, the rain soaking into his hair and shirt, made her sound over-enthusiastic. ‘But how do I get on that—in this?’

Her gesture took in the long white silk skirt, sleek and clinging at the waist, hips, around her legs, with just the tiniest flare of material at her ankles. Her delicate veil, soft and flowing when she had put it on an hour or so before, now hung limp and weighted with rain around her face and head.

‘I’m not sure I can manage it.’

Why did women wear those skin-tight skirts? Carlos wondered. He was surprised that she could even walk in that dress, let alone do anything else. It was sexy as hell though, in the way that it shaped her breasts, exposing just a hint of creamy cleavage, the suggestion of seduction so much more enticing than a full-on plunging neckline. The silk then clung to the swell of her hips, taking the eye down the length of her body to the point where the flounces of material kicked out around the knees. Was there anything more calculated to emphasise the womanly shape, the curves that some—mostly other women, he suspected—might consider to be rather fuller and more lush than current fashion demanded?

Not him. He liked a woman to be a woman and that meant that she had to have a female shape. And this Miss Jones certainly was all woman.

‘We’re going to have to do something about that.’

She hadn’t expected to walk very far in the designer dress, he reminded himself. Only down the aisle… Just what the hell had happened to make her run out on her wedding? The need to know was like an itch in his mind though he didn’t feel that she would be prepared to answer if he questioned her about it. Not the woman who only gave her name as ‘Miss Jones’. So what was she so determined to hold back on? What did she have to hide?

And what sort of a groom would be fool enough to let a beautiful woman like this slip through his fingers when she had already agreed to marry him?

‘And what would that “something” we have to do be? How exactly do you expect to manage…?’

‘Easy,’ Carlos drawled. ‘Nothing to it.’

He had enough experience of getting women out of their clothes to have some understanding of how female garments worked. Admittedly, the women concerned had been only too eager to help him. He had never had to plan on dealing with a woman’s clothing so that he could help her run away from another man.

But from his memory of dealing with silk dresses in the past, they offered little resistance to strong hands. Just how hard could it be to get rid of some of that unwanted material?

‘Leave it to me.’

In a moment he was on his knees on the wet road at her feet, long brown hands reaching for her dress, tanned skin dark against the pale material. He gathered it into his fingers, twisting, bunching slightly so that it pulled against her legs, making her take an awkward step back and then forwards again, forced to stay where she was, held prisoner by his firm grip.

‘Just stay there,’ he muttered, a note of command in his tone, one that made her freeze where she stood.

But the small movement she’d made had been enough to make him freeze too—though in a very different sort of reaction. In the same moment that she’d stepped back and forward he had bunched the fine silk of her skirt in his hands, lifting it ready to get rid of the constricting skirt. And that had exposed the slender length of her legs.

Infierno! She was actually wearing stockings and suspenders, the nervous twitch of her body taking the skirt up higher so that the delicate pale blue lace of a garter too was exposed. Clinging round the top of her thigh. For a couple of heart-thudding seconds Carlos’s throat dried shockingly, his hands tightening in the slippery material.

‘Stand still!’

His voice was gruffer this time, and he didn’t care if she thought he was ordering her around. The struggle for control of his own senses, his own body, had put the rough note into his tone. This Miss Jones was one of those women who believed that the pulse point at the back of the knee was a good spot to spray some of her perfume. And she was damn right about that too if the heady, spicy scent that hit his nostrils was anything to go by. Not for Miss Jones the delicate floral perfume the lace and silk of her clothing and the fine blonde hair might suggest. Instead she wore something that spoke more of enticement, of sensuality. Obviously she had been planning on sharing that sexuality with the man she was supposed to have been marrying.

It was damned difficult to concentrate on what he was doing with his body hardening in instinctive response to the closeness of her delicate flesh, the scent of her skin combined with that sensuous perfume. A hot wave of jealousy of the unknown man she had planned to share this delectable body with tonight swept through him, making his fingers clench even more tightly on the white silk. He had to be a total fool to have let her get away—to have driven her away from him.

Well, maybe the fool’s loss was his gain. Miss Jones as a prospective bride he would have had to leave well alone. This woman as a bride who had clearly had more than second thoughts about marrying the man she was promised to and who obviously wanted to put as much distance between her and her groom as possible was a very different matter.

‘I said stand still!’ he repeated as another twitch of her body brought that sexy scent to torment his senses all over again.

‘I am standing still.’

Martha had to mutter the words between clenched teeth in order not to betray the way she was feeling. She just wished he would hurry up and get the job done as soon as possible. She didn’t feel that she could take the screaming tension of her nerves and every one of her senses for many moments longer.

He wasn’t actually touching her, only the material of her skirt, and yet the surface of her skin seemed to tingle as if he was actually stroking it, as if his breath was warm against her exposed flesh. The cold, miserable dampness of the afternoon seemed to evaporate in a second, leaving her body heated from the inside so that she felt sure that she would actually see steam rising from her clothes where the warmth dried them. But she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the man at her feet. Looking down at his dark head as he bent over his task, her gaze was grabbed and held, drawn by a sensual magnetism, and her fingers actually twitched against her sides as she fought the impulse to reach out and touch, stroke the black, disordered strands back into smoothness against the strong bones of his skull.

She wanted to touch him. No, it was more than a want—it was something close to a need. She had to feel him, make some physical contact—something more than just the warm, strong comfort of his palm on hers, her hand held safely inside his. And yet she knew she had to hold back, because if she gave in to this wild, irrational need, broke through the natural, instinctive restraints that held them separate, then some intuitive feeling warned that it would never stay that way.

There would have to be more. She just knew it. No other man had ever made her feel this way. But what if he found her as unattractive as Gavin had done?

… even if I do have to lie back and think of the money. Maybe that will turn me on because she sure as hell doesn’t. She’s so big, it’ll be like sleeping with a horse…

She couldn’t bear it if another man found her so unappealing. It would be like presenting the other cheek after someone had slapped her viciously already.

As if sensing her thoughts Carlos suddenly paused, turned his head, and looked up, straight into her eyes. A burn like a bolt of lightning went straight through her as she saw the new darkness in that green gaze. A darkness that mirrored the way she was feeling, the stinging sensitivity that flooded every nerve.

And that was too much. Already way off balance with all that had happened that day, she could barely cope with her own response. The prospect of having to cope with the fact that he might be feeling something of the same was more than she could handle. For a moment the world seemed to swing round her, the ground rocking beneath her feet and making her feel desperately insecure. In a panic she actually stamped her foot hard on the wet surface of the road.

‘What exactly are you doing?’

‘This…’ His response was as curt and raw-toned as her own as he turned his attention back to the task in hand.

She felt a sharp tug, heard a faint sound of something ripping and suddenly there was a rush of cold air around her ankles, her calves. She wasn’t quite sure what he had done until she saw him toss the white frill of silk to one side, having ripped it right off the bottom of her dress. Now she could move more easily. She could walk, might even be able to clamber onto that powerful beast of a bike.

‘Thanks—’

Testing, tentative, she took a step towards it—another—then froze, another thought stilling her feet.

If she got onto that bike then she would have to sit behind him. Close behind him. She would have to wrap her arms around that lean, tight waist, rest her chest, her breasts, against the broad, strong back, feel the heat of his body reaching hers. She would have to open her legs wide, spread them to accommodate…

‘No!’

‘What the hell now?’

Carlos was getting to his feet, wiping his hands down the taut length of his denim-covered thighs. The strange connection there had been between the two of them seemed to have evaporated in a rush and his voice held a thread of irritation that grated uncomfortably on her nerves.

‘Lady, make your mind up. What is it?’ he demanded again.

‘I—I’m scared.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say of what because she couldn’t even start to explain it to herself.

‘I’m a perfectly safe driver.’

‘I’m sure you’re a fantastic driver!’

But that didn’t mean that she would feel safe with him anywhere. And… From nowhere came another thought. One that shook her right through to the very core of her being.

If she felt like this now, with this complete stranger, how could she ever have thought that Gavin was the man she wanted to marry? How could she have been so blind as to think she felt enough for him to say yes to his proposal?

But after three long lonely years of nursing her mother through her last illness, she had been looking for love—for a family—for a future. And she had fallen into his grasp like a ripe little plum. A ripe, stupid, easily deceived little plum. She had needed to be loved, had been in love with the idea of love. At least she had seen sense before it was too late.

‘Isn’t there a law about wearing a helmet on a motorbike?’ she hedged, expecting and seeing his impatience at her reaction.

‘I thought you wanted to get out of here.’

‘I do—but only…’

‘Only if you can do it legally…’

The mockery in his eyes and his tone was open now. And never before had she wanted so desperately to throw off her careful, conventional personality, cast caution to the wind and just go with what life offered her. Being careful had led to her engagement to Gavin and look where that had landed her. She shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if she hadn’t seen sense…

What life offered her now was the chance to escape with this man, this Diablo. She should grab at it with both hands. But even as she opened her mouth to do just that Carlos had tossed his helmet towards her so that she only just caught it, managing to grab it before it hit the ground at her feet.

‘Here—will that suit, señorita?’

The exasperation in his voice was making her see this situation from his point of view, and with that came a strong sense of the absurd. What must he have thought when he had come speeding down the road and seen her—a vision in white silk and lace, in jewelled slippers that were rapidly approaching the consistency of damp tissue paper? She’d chosen those slippers so that she didn’t tower over Gavin, she recalled. There would be no such need with Carlos—he must be—what—five inches—more?—taller than her five feet eight.

‘But,’ Carlos continued, a hint of amusement lightening his tone, ‘there is no way that helmet is going to fit over that…’ He gestured towards the ornate hairstyle, the veil held in place by a delicate tiara.

‘I know—so please…’

Meeting his eyes was a big mistake. With that new warmth in them, it only threatened to set off her thudding pulse all over again. Her heart kicked so hard in her chest that she felt sure he must see it under the fine silk, the delicate lace. And the rush of heat along her veins meant that her throat had dried painfully and somehow she couldn’t swallow to relieve it.

‘Do—do you think that you could help? Can you unfasten this thing?’

She lifted a hand to tug at the securely pinned veil.

‘What am I—a lady’s maid?’ he muttered, but there was no harshness in his tone. And that disturbing gleam still burned in his eyes as he came closer.

‘Just pull them out—get rid of them. If you can rip my dress to pieces then surely you can deal with some hairpins.’

A sudden shocking thrill shot through her at the thought of Carlos really ripping her dress to pieces, not just tearing off the flared skirt, and she could feel hot colour flood her face in response.

‘Por supuesto… Let me see.’

She didn’t know if it was to hold her still or to soothe her, ease away the nervous mood that was making every muscle taut with impatience, but unexpectedly he lifted a hand to her face. Softly, almost delicately, he cupped her cheek, curving his hard palm over the soft skin as he angled her head to one side, turning it so that it caught the best of what dull grey light there was.

And that action seemed to freeze her where she stood. In a day of shocks, confusion and bewilderment, the effect of that light, gentle touch was the most mind-blowing of all. It was warm and soothing, easing the restless stinging in her nerves and making her feel as if she were melting from the inside out. She wanted to turn her face into his hand, rest her cheek more firmly against his palm and just let the feelings of tension seep away.

She expected that those big hands would fumble with the task before him. That at least he would tug at some of the pins, twisting them free. She knew that she would have done that herself, particularly if she was impatient to have the job done as she sensed that he was. He might have himself carefully under control but there was a tautness in the long powerful body next to hers that communicated the fight he was having to do so. She recognised it from the tension in her own body.

What was it he had said? That he had just taken off, leaving everything behind. Leaving what behind? And where? That accent didn’t belong here on the moors of the north of England. And the tanned olive skin, the polished jet hair marked him out as someone as alien to this landscape as if some sleek, powerful jaguar had suddenly stalked the mist soaked hills. Just the thought made her gasp in reaction.

‘Qué?’

Carlos had caught the tiny indrawn breath, pausing in this task, the deep green eyes going sharply to her face and locking with her widened grey ones.

‘Am I hurting you?’

‘Oh, no. No.’

‘Hurting’ was not the word for what was happening to her. She only knew that all the nerves in her stomach were tangling into tight, uncomfortable knots, and the stinging sense of tension might have ebbed away but only to be replaced by a new hot, tingling sensation, running like electricity over her skin. A yearning that was uncoiling deep inside and that made her want to reach out to this man. Be closer to him. She wanted more of that touch. More of him.

‘I want to get out of here.’

With you. She only dared let the words echo inside her head; too afraid, too unsure to actually let them out into the air. She didn’t know what she would be unleashing if she did.

‘So let’s do this…’

Carlos’s eyes locked with hers, lingering for a darkly revealing moment, before he bent his head again, turned his attention back to the task in hand. And it seemed that with each pin that was eased from her hair, tossed with the tiniest sound of metal hitting tarmac onto the road, something in her mood, her body, her whole life lightened and eased. She felt the knots untangling from her nerves, the tension leaving her muscles so that she could stand taller, straighter, easier. Something of the horror and the pain that had slashed at her soul seeped away, filling her with a new sense of anticipation and hope.

‘So, your wedding—just why did you run out on it? What did this guy do to you?’

She didn’t know if he was asking to distract her from the time it was taking to free her from the veil or because he really wanted to know but because she couldn’t see his face and, more importantly, he couldn’t see hers, she found it surprisingly easy to answer him.

‘Why did I turn round and get out of these as fast as I could, never looking back?’ she asked, trying to bring her chin up in defiance, adopt an I-couldn’t-care-less attitude that she felt might not be fully convincing.

‘You have to admit it’s not the usual way these things go. Normally by this time the bride and groom would be…’

‘Gazing into each other’s eyes as they made their loving vows? So are you feeling sorry for my poor, deserted groom, now that his wife-to-be has run out on him? Well, don’t—he’ll be more than happy having hot, passionate sex with my chief bridesmaid—that is if he hasn’t already exhausted himself shagging her on the bed we were supposed to have shared tonight.’

‘The bastard did that?’

A blazing sense of outrage was like a wildfire in Carlos’s voice and his hands tightened in her hair, twisting sharply so that she caught back a cry of pain. But in the same moment that she felt the small discomfort in her scalp, she also knew a sudden rush of relief mixed with a surprising bubble of unexpected delight. He cared enough to be angry at what Gavin had done. His outrage was like a balm to the wounds she’d carried with her from the Hall. Some of them at least.

‘I walked in on him—on them—while they were hard at it. I walked out again pretty damn fast,’ she added with brittle flippancy. ‘I don’t think they saw me—they were… totally absorbed. I managed to get out of the place without anyone seeing me and after that I just ran and never looked back.’

Until she had reached the road across the moor and, too tired and too cold and miserable to go any further in her stupid wedding finery, she had stopped on the verge and tried to hitch a ride.

She wasn’t going to tell him the rest. She couldn’t yet even bear to look at those other words for herself and take in just what Gavin had said. She hadn’t even been a woman to him—not a real person, just a source of a future income.

‘I’d like to deal with this snake. No man should treat a woman that way. You should let me take you back there.’

‘And do what?’ Martha challenged, finding the disgust in his voice almost too much to bear. ‘Storm into the Hall, all guns blazing, and challenge him to a duel? No, thanks! That way everyone would know exactly why I’d pulled out of the wedding—just how badly humiliated I’d been—instead of just thinking I’d got cold feet at the last moment.’

A raw, bitter laugh bubbled up in her throat, almost choking her. She’d had pretty cold feet by the time he’d found her. She could swear that it was only now that they were fully thawed out.

‘Which actually was the truth. And I’d much rather that Gavin think that I’d walked out on him before I found out how he’d been spending the hours before our wedding. He’ll never know for sure whether I caught him with his pants down or not—’

And would never have the cruel satisfaction of knowing that she’d heard herself described as someone he would have to lie back and think of the money when he slept with her.

‘That’s definitely the way I prefer it. Besides I can fight my own battles, thank you. I’ve been doing it for long enough.’

‘How so? What about your family?’

‘I don’t have one. I never knew my father—he ran out on my mother as soon as he knew she was pregnant, so it was always just the two of us. Three years ago, Mum was diagnosed with liver cancer—she died last summer.’

And it had been in the aftermath of that loss that on an uncharacteristic impulse she had bought the winning lottery ticket that had changed her future. If only she could have done that earlier so that she could have made her mother’s last months more comfortable. If only she hadn’t spent those years isolated as her mother’s carer so that she had no experience of life and men that might have helped her realise just what Gavin was up to, see past the pretty lies he told her.

‘I’m sorry.’

His words were kind, as was his tone, but Martha still found that they made her tense in nervous apprehension. If he made a move towards her, if he touched her, perhaps tried to take her into his arms to express his sympathy, then she would shatter, go to pieces, and she had no idea how she would ever put herself back together again.

But perhaps something of her mood communicated itself to the man at her side. The sympathy she’d feared—dreaded—didn’t come. Instead Carlos tossed one last pin away, completed his task and straightened up. The tiara dangled from one set of strong fingers, the veil clenched in the other hand. He held them out to her.

‘There.’

With the new sensations buzzing inside her it felt almost as if she had been set free, released from something that was more than just the restrictions of the wedding finery. She’d hit the lowest point just hours before. And if that was the lowest point in her life then surely the only way was up.

‘Now I can move on—leave it all behind me. You know, I’m not running away but going forward—getting away from what would have been a terrible mistake, starting again.’

She moved forward to take hold of them. But the new lightening of her mood pushed her feet further than she had anticipated, the lift in her spirits making her almost dance towards him. And suddenly she was on tiptoe, leaning forwards, reaching up to plant an impulsive kiss on the lean plane of his cheek.

‘Thank you!’

And that was when everything changed. When it seemed as if the world stood still, the countryside freezing around her in the same moment that her breath stopped in her lungs. The birds in the trees stopped singing, the wind stilled in the branches, dropping into sudden silence. The skin of his face was cold and damp against her mouth, the taste of his skin suddenly intense and smoky against her tongue. She was frozen where she stood, looking up into his eyes so that she saw the sudden darkness in them, the way that the irises had expanded until there was only the tiniest line of deep green at the rim.

She read what was coming in those eyes. Read it and welcomed it, her heart kicking sharply against her ribcage as she held her breath. She didn’t have to wait long. His arms came round her, warm and tight, strong as steel bands, lifting her even further off the tarmac and crushing her firmly against the powerful toned shape of his chest. His head came down fast, his mouth coming over her own, hot and hard, demanding and powerful. Her lips were crushed, parting slightly on a gasp of shocked response as she gave herself up to the pressure of that kiss.

She had never known anything like it, she recognised hazily, struggling to bring her thoughts under any sort of control. Never experienced a kiss—or a response—like this at any other time in her life. She had kissed, of course. Kissed and been kissed, but it had never been anything like this. And the caresses she had exchanged with Gavin had been like tepid water when compared with this deluge of red-hot lava swamping her, taking her control, her senses and her ability to think at all rationally with it. Her heart was pounding, her head whirling.