is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Crime of Passion
Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

THE Bolivian policeman growled across the table. ‘Es usted inglesa? Donde se aloja usted?

The small room was unbelievably hot and airless. Georgie shot her interrogator a glittering glance from furious violet eyes and threw back her head, a torrent of tousled multi-coloured curls every shade from gold to copper to Titian red dancing round her pale triangular face. ‘I do not speak Spanish!’ she said for the twentieth time.

He thumped the table with a clenched fist. ‘Como?’ he demanded in frustration.

Her teeth gritted, the naturally sultry line of her mouth flattening. Suddenly something just exploded inside her. ‘I’ve been robbed and I’ve been attacked and I’m not going to just sit here while you shout at me!’ she burst out, her strained voice threatening to crack right down the middle.

Plunging upright, the man strode over to the door and threw it wide. Georgie gaped in disbelief as her attacker was ushered in. All the fear she had striven to hide behind her defiant front flooded back, images of rape and violence taking over. She flew up out of her chair and stumbled backwards into the corner, one trembling hand attempting to hitch up the torn T-shirt which threatened to expose the bare slope of her breasts.

Her assailant, a heavily built young man, glowered accusingly and self-righteously across the room at her and burst into vituperative Spanish.

Georgie blinked bemusedly. Her own blank sense of incomprehension was the most terrifying aspect of all. Why did the creep who had mauled her in his truck behave as though he was the one entitled to make a complaint to the police? In fact, the lunatic, apparently ignorant of the fact that the attempted sexual assault was a crime, had actually dragged her into the tiny, dilapidated police station!

In exaggerated dumb-show, the policeman indicated the bloody tracks of Georgie’s nails down one side of the younger man’s unshaven face.

Dear heaven, was a woman not allowed to defend herself when she was assaulted in Bolivia? Without warning, the artificial strength of outrage began to fail Georgie. Her independent spirit quailed and, for the first time in her life, she longed for family back-up.

But her father and stepmother were enjoying a three week cruise of the Greek islands in celebration of their twentieth wedding-anniversary and her stepbrother, Steve, was in central Africa reporting on some civil war that had recently blown up. Her family didn’t even know where she was. Georgie had impulsively splurged her late grandmother’s legacy on her flight to Bolivia. A once in a lifetime holiday, she had promised herself.

Just thirty-six hours ago she had landed at La Paz, cheerfully anticipating her coming reunion with her friend, Maria Cristina Reveron. How many times had Maria Cristina pleaded with her to come and stay? It had undoubtedly never occurred to her friend, an heiress from the day of her birth, that simple lack of money might lie behind Georgie’s well-worn excuses. In the same way, it had not occurred to Georgie that Maria Cristina and her husband, Antonio, might not be in residence when she finally arrived!

The Reveron villa had been closed up, guarded by a security man with two vicious dogs. He had not had a word of English. Refusing to surrender to panic, Georgie had checked into the cheapest hotel she could find and had decided to do a little exploring on her own while she waited for the Reverons to return to La Paz. Since Maria Cristina was eight months pregnant, Georgie was convinced that her friend could only be away for the weekend at most.

‘A little exploring,’ she reflected now, on the edge of hysteria as she studied the two angrily gesticulating men several feet away. Panic was threatening her. She was more than out of her depth, she was drowning. Intelligence told her that it was time to play the one card she had refused to play when she found the Reveron villa inconveniently and dismayingly empty of welcoming hosts. The wild card, the one move that she had never dreamt she would ever be forced to make.

She could have phoned Rafael to ask him where his sister was…but her every skin-cell had cringed from the idea of contacting him, asking him for his assistance. Stupid pride, she saw now, hardly the behaviour of a responsible adult. Four years was a long time. So he had dumped her. So he had hurt and misjudged her. So he had humiliated her. Well, join the real world, Georgie, she taunted herself, with the thickness of tears convulsing her throat, you are not the only woman ever to suffer that way!

Approaching the table, where a notepad and pen lay, Georgie drew in a deep sustaining breath. But suppose they had never heard of Rafael? Suppose he wasn’t the big wheel her friend had always led her to believe? And, even if both those fears proved unfounded, just how likely was it that Rafael Cristobal Rodriguez Berganza would flex a single aristocratic finger to come to her aid?

With an unsteady hand, Georgie carefully blockprinted Rafael Rodriguez Berganza across the pad and then pressed it across the table. It hurt to do it—oh, yes, it hurt to write that name.

A furrow appeared between the policeman’s brows. With an air of questioning confusion, he looked up and across at her. He repeated the name out loud with more than a touch of reverence. ‘No entiendo,’ he said, frowning his lack of understanding.

‘Friend.’ Good friend!’ Georgie tapped the pad with feverish desperation and then crossed her arms defensively over her breasts. ‘Very good friend,’ she lied, forcing a bright and hopefully confident smile, while inside herself she curled up and died with mortification.

The policeman looked frankly incredulous, and them he vented a slightly nervous laugh. He pointed to her and then he tapped his own head and shook it. He cut right across the language barrier. You’re nuts, the gesture said.

‘I am telling the truth!’ Georgie protested frantically. ‘I’ve known Rafael for years. Rafael and I… we’re like this!’ She clutched her hands together, striving to look sincere and meaningful.

The policeman flushed and studied his shoes, as though she had embarrassed him. Then, abruptly, as the youthful truck-driver exploded back into speech again, the policeman thrust him unceremoniously out of the room and slammed the door on him.

‘I want you to telephone Rafael!’ Feeling idiotic, but now convinced that she was actually getting somewhere, Georgie mimicked dialling a number and lifting a phone while he watched her.

With a sigh, the policeman moved forward. He clamped a hand round her narrow wrist, prodded her out into the corridor and from there at speed down into the dirty barred cell at the foot. He had turned the key and pocketed it before Georgie even knew what was happening to her.

‘Let me out of here!’ she shrieked incredulously.

He disappeared out of view. A door closed, sealing her into silence. Georgie stood there, both hands gripping the rusting bars. She was shaking like a leaf. Well, so much for the influence of the Berganza name! A gush of hot burning tears suddenly stung her eyes. She stumbled down on to the edge of the narrow, creaking bed, with its threadbare blanket covering, and buried her aching head in her hands.

About an hour later an ancient woman clad in black appeared, to thrust a plate through a slot in the bars. Georgie hadn’t eaten since breakfast but her stomach totally rebelled against the threat of food. The chipped cup of black coffee was more welcome. She hadn’t realised how thirsty she was.

After a while she lay down, fighting back the tears. Sooner or later, they would get an interpreter. This whole stupid mess would be cleared up. She did not need Rafael to get her out of trouble. But she was a walking disaster, she decided furiously. Her first solo trip abroad, she had boobed with spectacular effect. Why? She was impulsive, always had been, probably always would be. This was not the first time impetuosity had landed Georgie in trouble… but it was absolutely going to be the last, she swore.

Male voices were talking in Spanish when Georgie wakened. Disorientated, she sat up, hair tumbling in wild disarray round her. The heat was back. The new day pierced a shard of sunlight through the tiny barred window high up the wall. Sleepy violet eyes focused on the two male figures beyond the bars.

One was the policeman, the other was… Her heartbeat went skidding into frantic acceleration. ‘Rafael!’ she gasped, positively sick with relief in that first flaring instant of recognition.

In the act of offering the policeman a cigar, Rafael flicked her a stabbing glance from deep-set dark eyes, treacherous as black ice, and murmured lazily in aside, ‘Pull your skirt down and cover yourself…you look like a whore.’

Without missing a beat in his apparently chummy chat with the policeman, Rafael presented her with his hard-edged golden profile again. Georgie’s mouth had dropped inelegantly wide, a tide of burning colour assailing her fair skin. With clumsy hands she scrabbled rather pointlessly to pull down her denim skirt, already no more than a modest two inches above the knee. She fumbled with the sagging T-shirt, angry violet eyes flashing.

‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that,’ she hissed.

Both male heads spun back.

‘If you don’t shut up, I walk,’ Rafael spelt out, without an ounce of compassion.

Georgie believed him. That was the terrifying truth. Just give him the excuse and he would leave her here to rot—it was etched in the icy impassivity of his slashing gaze, the unhidden distaste twisting his beautifully shaped mouth. He had worn that same look four years ago in London… and then it had almost killed her.

Her throat closed over. Suddenly it hurt to breathe. She fought back the memories and doggedly lifted her chin again, refusing with all the fire of her temperament to be cowed or embarrassed. But Georgie could still wake up in a cold sweat at night just reliving the humiliation of their final meeting. She hated Rafael like poison for the way he had treated her. It was a tribute to the strength of her fondness for his sister that their friendship had survived that devastating experience.

As the two men continued to talk, ignoring her with supreme indifference, Georgie studied Rafael. Against this shabby setting he looked incongruous, exotically alien in a fabulously well-cut grey suit, every fibre of which shrieked expense. The rich fabric draped powerful shoulders, accentuated narrow hips and lithe long legs. Her nails clenched convulsively into the hem of her far from revealing skirt. Maybe he thought she looked like a tart because he was so bitterly prejudiced against her.

His photograph had been splashed all over the cover of Time magazine the previous summer. Berganza, the Bolivian billionaire, enemy of the corrupt, defender of the weak. Berganza, the great philanthropist, directly descended in an unbroken line from a blue-blooded Castilian nobleman, who had arrived in Bolivia in the sixteenth century. The journalist had lovingly dwelt on his long line of illustrious ancestors.

Georgie had been curious enough to devour the photographs first. He was very tall, but he dominated not by size but by the sheer force of his physical presence. A staggeringly handsome male animal, he was possessed of a devastating and undeniable charisma. His magnificent bone-structure would still turn female heads thirty years from now.

She searched his golden features, helplessly marking the stunning symmetry of each, the wide forehead, the thin arrogant nose and the savagely high cheekbones. She wished she could exorcise him the way she had burned that magazine, in a ceremonial outpouring of self-loathing and hatred. Her voluptuous mouth thinned with the stress of her emotions.

A split-second later, it fell wide again as she watched the ‘enemy of the corrupt’ smoothly press a handful of notes extracted from his wallet into the grateful policeman’s hands. He was bribing him. In spite of the fact that Georgie had always refused to believe in the reality of Rafael Rodriguez Berganza, the saint of the LatinAmerican media, she was absolutely shattered by the sight of those notes changing hands.

Her cell door swung open. Rafael stepped in. His nostrils flaring as he cast a fastidious glance round the cell, he swept the blanket off the makeshift bed and draped it round her stiff shoulders. ‘I almost didn’t come,’ he admitted without remorse, his fluid, unbearably sexy accent nipping down her taut spinal cord, increasing her tension.

‘Then I won’t bother saying thanks for springing me,’ Georgie stabbed back, infuriated by the concealing blanket he appeared to find necessary and provoked by the unhappy fact that she had to throw her head back just to see him, her height less than his by more than a foot. But beneath both superficial responses lurked a boiling pool of bitter resentment and remembered pain which she was determined to conceal.

‘Were it not for my sister, I would have left you here,’ Rafael imparted with harsh emphasis. ‘It would have been a character-building experience from which you would have gained immense benefit.’

‘You hateful bastard!’ Georgie finally lost control. Having been subjected to the most frightening experience of her life, his inhuman lack of sympathy was the last straw. ‘I’ve been robbed, assaulted and imprisoned!’

‘And you are very close now to being beaten as well, es verdad? Rafael slotted in, his low-pitched voice cracking like a whiplash. ‘For if I will not tolerate a man offering me such disrespect, how do I tolerate it from a mere woman?’

Hot-cheeked and furious, Georgie literally stalked out of the cell. A mere woman? How could she ever have imagined herself in love with Rafael Rodriguez Berganza? Then, it hadn’t been love, she told herself fiercely. It had been pure, unvarnished lust, masquerading as a bad teenage crush. But at nineteen she had been too mealy-mouthed to admit that reality.

He planted a hand to her narrow back and pushed

her down the corridor, and she was momentarily too shaken by the raw depth of naked rage she had ignited in those dark eyes to object. What the blazes did he have to be so angry about? OK, so it had no doubt been inconvenient for him to come and fish her out of a cell at eight in the morning, but dire straits demanded desperate measures and surely even a self-centred swine like him could acknowledge that?

Outside, the sunlight was blinding, but she was disorientated by the crowd of heaving bodies surrounding the two Range Rovers awaiting them outside. With a slight hiss of irritation, Rafael suddenly planted two hands round her waist, swept her off the ground and thrust her into the passenger seat in the front one. Then he turned back to his ecstatic audience.

All the men had their hats off. Some of the women were crying. Kids were pressing round his knees, clutching at him. And then the crowd parted and the policeman reappeared, with an elderly priest by his side. The priest was grinning all over his face, reaching for Rafael’s hands, clearly calling down blessings on his head.

What it was to be a hero! It made her stomach heave. Georgie looked away, only to stiffen in dismay as she noticed the squirming sack on the driver’s seat. What the blue blazes was in the sack? She shrank up against the door.

Frozen into stillness, Georgie watched the sack wobble and shiver. There was something alive in it, unless she was very much mistaken… With an ear-splitting shriek of alarm, Georgie catapulted herself head-first out of the car. She came down on the hard dusty ground with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs.

‘Not happy unless you’re the centre of male attention, are you?’ Rafael breathed unpleasantly, bending over her as she scrambled up on to her knees. Two of his security men had climbed out of the vehicle behind to see what was happening.

Red as a beetroot but outraged, Georgie gasped, ‘There’s a snake in that sack!’

‘So?’ Rafael enquired drily. ‘It’s a local delicacy.’

He dumped her back in the seat she had left in such haste, the blanket firmly wrapped round her quivering limbs. Perspiring with fright, impervious to the amusement surrounding her, Georgie watched the policeman smilingly tie the sack more securely shut and deposit it back in the car.

‘Please take it away, Rafael,’ she mumbled sickly, leaning out of the window. ‘Please!’

A lean brown hand reached for the offending article and removed it, putting it in the back seat.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered as he swung into the driver’s seat. A stray shaft of sunlight gleamed over the blue-black luxuriance of his silky hair. Like a reformed kleptomaniac in an untended store of goodies, Georgie clasped her hands, removed her eyes from temptation and hated herself. Why did memory have to be so physical? She shifted on the seat, bitterly ashamed that she could still remember just how silky his hair felt.

‘So tell me, how—in your view—did you land yourself in a cell less than twenty-four hours after your arrival in my country?’ he invited curtly, making it clear that whatever was on his mind, it was certainly not on a similar plane to hers.

‘Yesterday, I decided to go and see the Zongo Valley ice-caves’

‘Dressed as you are now?’ Rafael cut in incredulously. ‘In a mini skirt and high heels?’

‘I’ A mini skirt? He regarded a glimpse of her

knees as provocative?

“The climb to the caves takes almost two hours even for an experienced hill-walker!’

Georgie’s teeth clenched. ‘Look, I simply saw this poster in the hotel. I didn’t know you had to be an athlete to get up there!’

‘When did reality dawn?’

‘When I got out of the taxi and saw a trio of brawny, booted, bearded types swarming up the hill,’ she admitted in a frozen voice, empty of amusement. ‘So I thought I’d walk back and see the lake instead, and I turned back to tell the taxi-driver that I wouldn’t be long and he’d gone…with my handbag!’

‘Jorge suspected something of that nature.’

‘Who is Jorge?’

‘The village policeman,’ Rafael said drily.

‘My bag was stolen. The driver just took off with it on the back seat!’

‘It may have been an oversight on his part. Had you asked him to wait?’

Georgie stiffened. ‘Well, I thought he understood’

‘Do you know the registration of the taxi?’ Rafael surveyed her with an offensive lack of expectation.

Angrily she shook her head.

‘Your bag may yet reappear,’ Rafael asserted. ‘If your bag is not handed in, then you may say that it has been stolen, not before. You were stupendously careless!’

‘Lecture over yet?’ she demanded shortly.

‘When you found yourself stranded, what did you do?’

‘By the time I realised he wasn’t coming back, the place was deserted, so I started walking and then I…’ She hesitated. ‘Then I hitched a lift. You wouldn’t believe how pleasant and unthreatening the driver was when I got into his truck—’

‘I believe you. I should imagine he came to a wheel-screeching halt,’ Rafael murmured with withering sarcasm. ‘Then what?’

Georgie lifted her chin. ‘He offered me money and while I was pushing it away he lunged at me. I thought I was going to be raped!’

‘I understand you kneed him in the groin and drew blood. One may assume you are reasonably capable of self-defence. He thought you were a prostitute’

‘A what?’ she exploded.

‘Why do you think he offered you money? Female tourists do not travel alone in Bolivia, nor do they hitch alone.’ Grim dark eyes flicked a glance at her outraged face before returning to the road.

‘Have you any idea how scared I was when he drove off and wouldn’t let me out of his truck?’

‘He was determined to report you for what he saw as an attempt to rip him off. But he was happy to drop the charge once he realised that his neighbours would laugh heartily at him for being attacked by a woman half his size!’

Georgie was enraged by his attitude. The message was: you asked for it.

‘You had a very narrow escape. He might have beaten you up to avenge the slur upon his manhood. This country has been dominated by the cult of machismo for four centuries,’ Rafael drawled in a murderously polite tone. ‘It will take more than a handful of tourists to change that but, happily, the great majority of travellers are infinitely more careful of their own safety than you have been.’

‘So I asked for what I got… in your view!’ she flared.

‘An attempted kiss, a hand on your knee—he swore that was all. He said you went crazy and I believe him. It’ll be weeks before he can show his face without his neighbours sniggering.’ Rafael actually sounded sym-

pathetic towards the truck-driver.

Silence stretched endlessly. He made no attempt to break it. The four-wheel-drive lurched and bounced over the appalling road surface with the vehicle behind following at a discreet distance. Briefly, Rafael stopped the car and sprang out. Incredulously she watched him open the sack to release the snake. Wow, environmentally friendly man, and sensitive enough not to offend the villagers by refusing the unwanted gift. It crossed her mind bitterly that the snake was getting more attention than she was.

Then, that was hardly a surprise. Four years ago, Rafael had made it brutally clear that she failed his standards in every way possible. Her morals, her behaviour—her sexually provocative behaviour, she recalled angrily—had all been comprehensively shredded by that cruel, whiplash tongue. But what still hurt the most, she was honest enough to admit, was that she hadn’t had the wit to take it on the chin and walk away with dignity. Like a fool, she had attempted to prove her innocence.

‘He’s from a different world,’ her stepbrother Steve had derided once. ‘And he belongs to a culture you don’t even begin to understand. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he speaks English as well as we do. Rafael’s a very traditional Latin-American male and the women in his life fall into two categories. Angels and whores. The females in his family—they’re the angels. The females who share his bed—they’re the whores. When he marries, he’ll select an angel straight out of a convent and she’ll be as well-born and rich as he is. So where are you planning to fit in?’

And ultimately Steve had been proved right, that dreadful evening when her short-lived relationship with Rafael had been blown apart at the seams. Rafael had treated her like a whore. Scorched by that memory, Georgie sank back to the present and cast aside the sweltering blanket in a gesture of rebellion. She stretched out her lithe, wonderfully shapely legs and crossed them. She didn’t give two hoots for his opinion, did she? She wasn’t a stupid, besotted little teenager any more, was she?

‘Where are you staying in La Paz?’ he asked after a perceptible pause, firing the engine again.

She told him. That was the end of the conversation, but the atmosphere was so thick all of a sudden that she could taste it. It tasted like oil waiting for a flame: explosive. She tilted her head back, a helplessly feminine smile of satisfaction curving her lips as she noticed the tense grip of his lean hands on the wheel. So, in spite of all the insults, Rafael was still not impervious to her on the most basic level of all. A little voice in the back of her mind demanded to know what she was doing, why she was behaving in this utterly uncharacteristic way. She suppressed it.

She was surprised when he sprang out of the car and silently accompanied her into her shabby hotel, but she chose not to comment. Why lower herself to talk to him? She strolled ahead of him, every tiny swing of her hips an art-form. Presumably he was intending to take her straight to his sister. Maria Cristina was probably home again by now. But how on earth was Georgie to settle her hotel bill? Her missing handbag had contained not only her passport, but all her money as well.

Her room looked as though a bomb had hit it. Yesterday, she had gone out in a rush. Reddening, Georgie grabbed up her squashy travel-bag and snatched up discarded items of clothing and stuffed them out of sight. Rafael lounged back against the door, like a bloody great black storm-cloud, she found herself thinking, suddenly made nervous and grossly uncomfortable by his presence in the comparative isolation of the small room.

You can wait outside while I get changed, she muttered, because there was no en suite bathroom, just a washbasin.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Rafael murmured very drily.

‘I am not being ridiculous,’ Georgie returned tautly, her colour heightening even more. Dear heaven, surely he wasn’t seriously expecting her to strip in front of him?

Intent black eyes collided with violet bemusement. Whoosh! It was like grasping a live wire, plunging a finger into a light-socket. Violent shock thundered through Georgie’s suddenly taut body. She was electrified, wildly energised, before she strained mental bone and sinew to shut out the rich dark entrapment of his gaze, badly shaken by that terrifying burst of raw excitement.

No… no, it simply couldn’t happen to her again. She was immune to all that smouldering Latin-American masculinity now. She had not felt like that, she told herself frantically. She had not felt that stabbing, shooting sensation of almost unbearable physical awareness which had reduced her to such mindless idiocy in the past. That was behind her now, a mortifying teenage crush in which hormones had briefly triumphed over all else.

Rafael bent down fluidly and lifted a silky white pair of very brief panties off the worn carpet and tossed them to her. Already sufficiently on edge, Georgie failed to catch them and ended up scrabbling foolishly on the floor, stuffing the wretched things into her bag with hands that were trembling so badly that they were all fingers and thumbs.

‘You wouldn’t have given me a knee in the groin,’ Rafael murmured very softly.

Crouching over her bag, Georgie slewed wildly confused eyes in his direction, chose to focus safely on his Italian leather shoes.

He moved forward. She froze, the sound of her own breathing loud in her ears.

‘You would have knocked me flat with enthusiasm,’ Rafael completed thickly.

Bastard, she thought, absolutely shattered by his cruelty. She had believed she was in love, had held nothing back, had often told herself since that she was lucky he had dumped her before she ended up in his bed. But now shame drenched her and she hated him for that. He didn’t have to make her sound so cheap, did he? In the most essential way of all, she had been innocent, and there had been nothing calculated about her response to him.

Teenagers aren’t very subtle when they have a crush on someone.’ Determined not to show that his cracks had got to her, Georgie even managed a sharp little laugh.

‘But it wasn’t a crush,’ Rafael breathed, subjecting her to the full onslaught of deep-set dark eyes that disturbingly lingered and somehow held her evasive gaze steady. ‘You were violently in love with me.’

Georgie very nearly choked. The bag in her hand dropped unnoticed as her fingers lost their grip. Abruptly, she turned away, sick inside. What kind of sadist was he? Did it give him some sort of perverse kick to throw that in her teeth? It had not been love, it had never been love—she had told herself that ever since.

‘And the vibrations are still there…1 feel them,’ Rafael delivered in a purring undertone that still sliced through the throbbing silence.

‘I feel nothing… nothing!’ Georgie threw back tremulously over her shoulder, wildy disconcerted by the direction of the dialogue, it having been the last subject she would have believed him likely to refer to. She had thought herself safe from any reference to the past, had been grimly aware of his aloof detachment. Now the tables were turned with a vengeance.

Rafael reached out a strong hand and spun her back to face him. ‘Why pretend? We’re both adults now, and I know that you take your pleasure where and when you find it… and with any man who attracts you.’

Oxygen rasped in her throat and she trembled under the onslaught of that character assassination, fighting off the memories threatening to assail her. ‘How dare you?’

Insolent dark eyes mocked her ferocious tension and her sudden pronounced pallor. He lifted his other hand calmly and ran a forefinger along the full curve of her taut lower lip. ‘Does it scare you that I know you for what you are? Why should that matter? We don’t have to like each other, we don’t even have to talk,’ he murmured in a deep, dark voice. ‘I just want you in that bed under me once…and I really don’t care if it is sordid, I’ll still be the best lover you’ve ever had.’

The fingertip grazing her lip was sending tiny little shivers through her. Georgie tried and failed to swallow. She couldn’t believe what he was saying to her. She just couldn’t get her mind round the shock of such a proposal. ‘You have to be joking…’

He laughed softly. ‘You were always so honest… in this, if nothing else,’ he breathed, with a sudden edge of harshness roughening his intonation. ‘You want me. I want you. Why should we not make love?’

Georgie shuddered with barely concealed fury, but beneath the fury was a pain she flatly refused to acknowledge. ‘Because I don’t want you! I’m not that desperate!’ she spelt out hotly, and jerked free of him, ashamed that her breasts were swollen and full beneath her wispy bra, ashamed that it should actually have taken will-power to step back, and ashamed that for a split-second she had allowed herself to think of that intimacy she had once craved with the man she loved.

Yes, loved—why continue to pretend otherwise when even he knew just how deeply she had been involved? A small sop to pride? ‘We’re both adults now.’ The ultimate humiliation and he just hadn’t been able to resist the temptation. She was good enough for a sleazy roll in a grotty hotel room, not good enough for anything else, and even with all that smooth sophistication and experience at his fingertips he hadn’t bothered to wrap up that reality.

‘I’d like you to leave,’ Georgie said with as much dignity as she could muster, and it was not a lot.

‘I’ll won’t visit you in London. There will be no second chance. You see, I know where you live,’ he spelt out with sizzling bite, his dark golden features rigidly cast.

Georgie lived in a tiny attic flat of a terraced house which belonged to her stepbrother, Steve. But the significance of Rafael’s reference to that fact quite escaped her. What did where she lived have to do with anything? she wondered briefly, but she was in such turmoil that the oddity of the comment as quickly left her mind again.

She was enraged by the awareness that Rafael had not expected her to refuse that sordid proposition. Rafael had actually expected her to spread herself willingly on the bed. Her narrow shoulders rigid, she turned back to him. ‘Just forget where I live’

‘I try to.’ Rafael dealt her a chilling look of derision, his nostrils flaring. ‘But why else did you come to Bolivia? You knew we would meet again…and that was what you wanted, es verdad?’

Georgie was stunned by his arrogance. ‘Like hell it was! I want nothing to do with you… absolutely nothing!’

‘Prove it,’ he taunted, reaching out without warning to drag her up against him with an easy strength that shook her.

‘Get your hands off me!’ she gasped.

But his mouth crashed down on hers, hard, hungry, hot, forcing her lips apart. And, for Georgie, the world rocked right off its axis, dredging a shocked whimper of sound from deep in her throat. Every physical sense she possessed was violently jolted. His tongue expertly probed the sensitive interior of her mouth, blatantly imitating an infinitely more intimate penetration, and her bones turned to water and she quivered and moaned, electrified by the fierce excitement he awakened. He crushed her slender length to him with bruising hands and she gasped, her thighs trembling, an unbearable ache stirring low in her stomach.

Rafael lifted his dark head slowly. ‘Do I take you on that bed or do I take you to the airport?’ he prompted silkily, blatant masculine satisfaction in the narrowed gaze scanning her rapt face. ‘The choice is yours.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘THE airport?’ Georgie repeated blankly, endeavouring to return to rational thought and finding it unbelievably difficult.

‘For your flight home,’ Rafael extended, with a slashing and sardonic smile.

‘But I’m not going home.’ Georgie broke slowly from the loosened circle of his arms, still reeling from the effects of his lovemaking and trying very hard not to show just how shattered she was by the response he had dredged from her. She was in shock. ‘I’m going to stay with Maria Christina.’

‘My sister is in California.’

‘California?’ Georgie parroted after a shattered pause. Incredulously she stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Antonio’s mother lives there and Maria Cristina and Rosa are very close,’ Rafael explained smoothly. ‘My sister is expecting her first child and, since her own mother is dead, it is natural that she should want Rosa’s support at such a time.’

Georgie was in a daze. ‘But I received a letter from her less than two weeks ago, inviting me over here. She hoped I’d still be here when she had her baby!’

‘She only decided to go to San Francisco last week. She couldn’t have been expecting you to come.’ Rafael exhibited a magnificent disregard for her natural distress.

‘It was a last-minute decision and I got cancellation tickets,’ Georgie conceded tautly. ‘I tried to phone her the night before the flight but she wasn’t in—’

‘But you came all the same,’ Rafael drawled with an ironic lack of surprise.

‘I wanted to surprise her!’ Georgie slung back. ‘Why didn’t you tell me immediately? Obviously you knew I was here to stay with your sister—’

‘I had hoped you were not that foolish. I told you to stay away from Maria Cristina four years ago,’ he reminded her with grim emphasis. ‘It is a most unsuitable friendship and I made my feelings clear then ’

‘Stuff your bloody feelings!’ Georgie gasped, suddenly swinging away from him, her voice embarrassingly choked. ‘My friendship with Maria Cristina is none of your business.’

Her bruised eyes were filled with tears. So this was what it felt like to be at the end of her tether. She had really been looking forward to staying with her friend. This disappointment was the last straw. She also knew that, as a recently graduated student teacher, who had yet to find employment, it would be many years before she could hope to repeat such an expensive trip.

It was unlikely that Maria Cristina would come to London under her own steam. Rafael’s sister was very much a home-bird, who had only tolerated her English boarding-school education because it had been her late mother’s wish and who had freely admitted that she hadn’t the faintest desire to ever leave Bolivia again once her education was completed. Her marriage to a doctor, no more fond of travelling than she was, had set the seal on that insularity.

‘Anything which threatens my family is my business.’

‘Threatens?’ Georgie queried jerkily, fighting for composure. ‘And how do I threaten your family?’

‘I will not allow you to hurt my sister, and the day that she realises what kind of a woman you really are, she will be hurt.’

‘God forgive you.., I would never hurt Maria Cristina!’ Georgie gasped painfully, swinging back to him in a rage. ‘She’d be a whole lot more hurt if she knew that the brother she idolises is a slimy toe-rag!’

‘What did you call me?’ Dark eyes had turned incandescent gold, his savagely handsome features freezing into sudden incredulous stillness.

Georgie vented a shaky little laugh. All that bowing and scraping people did in his vicinity did not accustom him to derision. But she knew that she would never forget the depths to which he had sunk in his desire to humiliate her today. ‘If think you heard me, and let me assure you that your seduction routine leaves a lot to be desired!’ she spelt out, hot with anger and bitterness.

‘Seduction was quite unnecessary,’ Rafael asserted softly, his beautifully shaped mouth twisting with blatant contempt. ‘If I’d kept quiet, I’d be inside you now, and the only sounds in this room would be your moans of pleasure. You’d share a bed with any man who attracted you! I don’t pride myself on the idea that there is anything exclusive about your response to me.’

Georgie was trembling violently. Every scrap of colour had drained from her features, leaving her white as snow. Her hand flew up of its own volition but steel-hard fingers snapped round her wrist in mid-air.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Rafael grated down at her in a snarling undertone.

And the violence in the atmosphere was explosive, catching her breath in her dry throat. Raw aggression had flared in his smouldering gaze and instinctively she backed away, massaging her bruised wrist as he freed her, her heartbeat thumping so loudly in her ears that she felt faint and sick, but still she wanted to kill him, still she wanted to punish him for saying those filthy things to her.

‘I’m not like that,’ she murmured tightly, turning away, despising the little shake that had somehow crept into her voice, betraying her distress. ‘And even if I was, it would be a cold day in hell before I let you touch me.’

There was so much more she wanted to say but she didn’t trust herself. Once before, she had attempted to reason with Rafael in her own defence. He hadn’t listened. He had shot her every plea down in flames, immovably convinced that she had betrayed him in another man’s bed. Afterwards she had felt even more soiled and humiliated by his derision. She would never put herself in that position again.

The silence went on forever, reverberating around her in soundless waves.

‘Are you able to settle your bill here?’

Four centuries of ice in that chilling enquiry—well, what did she care? Numbly she shook her head.

‘I’ll take care of it.’

For five minutes, she simply stayed there in the empty room, struggling harder than she had ever had to struggle for control. When she had managed it, she walked down to Reception and found him just moving away from the desk. Without once glancing in his direction, she climbed back into the Range Rover. He would take her to the airport, put her on a flight back home. She really didn’t care any more.

The silence smouldered, chipping away at nerves that were already raw and bleeding. ‘I presume you can take care of the passport problem,’ she muttered, half under her breath, thinking of the bribery he had apparently employed to get her out of her cell.

‘What passport problem?’ His accented drawl was dangerously quiet.

‘Well, obviously it went with everything else in my bag,’ she pointed out, surprised that he hadn’t grasped that fact yet.

He uttered a raw imprecation in his own language.

‘Oh, don’t be shy…say it in English!’ Georgie suddenly heard herself rake back with a sob in her voice. ‘You think I’m a stupid bitch!’

‘Georgie…’ Fluent though his English was, he couldn’t quite handle the two syllables of her name coming so close to each other. He slurred them slightly, his rich dark voice provoking painful memories. ‘Don’t start crying’

‘I am not crying!’ She bit her tongue, tasted blood, blinked back the scorching tide dammed up behind her eyelids.

Soon after that, he stopped the car and got out, leaving her alone for about ten minutes. She waited, enveloped by a giant cloud of unfamiliar depression. It took Rafael to do this to her. He slammed a lid down on her usually bubbly personality. He made her seethingly, horribly angry. And he hurt her. Nothing had changed. She didn’t even lift her head when he rejoined her.

‘We’re here.’

Rafael opened the door. One of his security men already had her bag in one beefy hand.

Rafael extended a black coat.

‘What’s this?’ Georgie had yet to focus on any part of him above the level of his sky-blue silk tie.

‘I bought it for you. You cannot walk through the airport with—with your top falling off,’ Rafael shared flatly.

She wanted to laugh, because she had managed to forget that she was still wearing yesterday’s torn and dirty clothes. But somehow she couldn’t laugh. She stuck her arms in the sleeves of the expensive silk-lined raincoat. It was light as a feather but so long it had to look like a nun’s habit. Numbly she watched Rafael’s fingers do up the buttons. It took him a surprisingly long time, his hands less deft than she had expected.

His double standards were perhaps what she most loathed about Rafael Rodriguez Berganza. He had undoubtedly stripped more women than Casanova. Maria Cristina had been a gossip while they were at school. Rafael had a notorious reputation for loving and leaving beautiful women. But Georgie would have known anyway.

Many very good-looking men missed out on being sexy. But not Rafael. Rafael was a blatantly sexual male animal, flagrantly attuned to the physical. The air around him positively sizzled. So why the heck was this sophisticated, experienced Latin-American lover having so much difficulty buttoning up her coat? Unwarily she collided with glittering golden eyes, and it was like being struck by lightning.

He was so close she could smell a hint of citrusy aftershave, overlying clean, husky male. Her nostrils flared. Her nipples tightened into painful sensitivity, a spiralling ache twisting low in her stomach. Nearby, someone cleared their throat. She tore her gaze from Rafael’s and met the looks of visible fascination emanating from his bodyguards, standing several feet away. She realised that she and Rafael had simply been standing there staring at each other. Devastated by her overpowering physical awareness of him, Georgie turned away, her throat closing over.

In silence they entered the airport. Her head felt incredibly light and her lower limbs weak and clumsy. Exhaustion, stress and lack of food, she registered, were finally catching up with her.

Officialdom leapt out of nowhere at them. The crowds parted. Uniformed guards paved every step through the airport, down an eerily empty concourse, their footsteps echoing. There was no sign of other passengers. Clearly she was being put on the flight home either first or last.

As they emerged into the fresh air and crossed the tarmac, she realised incredulously that Rafael intended to see her right on to the plane to be sure she went. It made her feel as though she was being deported in disgrace. And that was when it happened—something that had never happened to Georgie before. As she fought to focus on him and say something smart on parting, her head swam alarmingly. The blackness folded in and she fainted.

‘Lie still.’ As Rafael made the instruction for the second time and Georgie attempted to defy it, he lost patience and planted a powerful hand to her shoulder, to force her back into the comfortable seat in which she was securely strapped. ‘I don’t want you to swoon again.’

If he used that word again, she would surely hit him. ‘I didn’t swoon, I passed out!’ she hissed, twisting away from his unwelcome ministrations. ‘And will you take that wet flannel out of my face?’

Dense black lashes screened his clear gaze from her view, a curious stillness to his strong, dark face. ‘I was trying to help,’ he proffered very quietly.

‘I don’t want your help.’ She turned her head away defensively.

You swooned with Rafael and you really hit the jackpot, though, she conceded. The entire aircrew seemed to be hovering with wet flannels, tablets, and glasses of water and brandy. Any minute now the pilot would appear and offer her some fresh air! Dear Lord, she hoped not! Her violet eyes widened in disbelief on the clouds swirling past the port-hole across the aisle… they were already airborne!

‘What are you doing on this flight?’ Georgie demanded, feverishly short of breath. ‘We’ve already taken off!’

Rafael rose up off his knees, smoothed down the knife

creases on his superbly tailored trousers and said something to the crew. Everybody went into retreat. He lowered his long, lithe frame fluidly into the seat opposite and fixed hooded dark eyes on her.

‘This is my private jet.’

‘Your what?’ Georgie gaped at him.

‘I am taking you home with me. Until your passport can be replaced, you are stuck in Bolivia.’

‘But I don’t have to be stuck with you!’

Unexpectedly, Rafael sent her a shimmering, sardonic smile. ‘A lamb to the slaughter… I don’t think.’

‘I don’t know what the heck you’re getting at, but I do know you could have left me in my hotel…or thrown a few backhanders in the right direction the way you did to get me out of my prison cell!’ Georgie derided, horrified at the prospect of being forced to accept his grudging hospitality.

He went white beneath his dark skin, his facial muscles freezing. ‘How dare you accuse me of sinking to such a level?’ he ground out incredulously. ‘I have never stooped to bribery in my life!’

Georgie licked at her dry lips. ‘I saw you give the policeman the money,’ she whispered.

Rafael surveyed her with growing outrage, registering with an air of disbelief that his denial had not been accepted. ‘I do not believe that I am hearing this. The policeman, Jorge, took the money straight to the village priest! The roof of the village church has fallen in and my donation will repair it, thereby enhancing Jorge’s standing in the community but granting him no personal financial gain,’ Rafael spelt out with biting emphasis. ‘I wanted to reward him for his efforts on your behalf. Although he did not believe that you were entitled to claim my friendship, and he was afraid of being made to look foolish, he telephoned me. Were it not for his persistence and his conscientious scruples, you would still be in that cell!’

His explanation made greater sense of the villagers’ response to him than her own hasty assumption that he had used cash to grease the wheels of justice. She reddened, but she did not apologise.

‘The young truck-driver had lied about you but he withdrew his story,’ Rafael continued icily. ‘You were then free to leave without any further output from me. I did nothing but straighten out a misunderstanding.’

She bent her head, her empty stomach rumbling. ‘Do you think you could feed me while you lecture me?’

‘Feed you?’

‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.’

‘Por Dios,’ Rafael grated with raw impatience. ‘Why did you not say so?’

A microwaved meal arrived at speed. Georgie ate, grateful for any excuse not to have to speak while she attempted to put her thoughts in order. ‘I am taking you home with me,’ he had said, as if she was a stray dog or cat. ‘Home’ was the ancestral estancia on the vast savannah bounded by the Amazon. And the concept of Rafael taking her back there quite shattered Georgie. Even when she had been Maria Cristina’s best friend at school, Rafael had blocked his sister’s every request to bring Georgie out to stay on the estancia with them during the holidays.

Memory was taking her back, although she didn’t want it to. Georgie had won a fee-assisted place at an exclusive girls’ school to study for her A levels. She had met Maria Cristina in the lower sixth. At half-term, she had invited her friend home for the weekend but, in some embarrassment, the Bolivian girl had explained that her brother, Rafael, who was her guardian, would not allow that unless he had first met Georgie and her parents.

Georgie’s father had been amused when he received

a phone call from Rafael, requesting permission to take Georgie out for the afternoon in company with his sister.

‘Charming but very formal for this day and age,’ he had pronounced. ‘You’d better mind your “p"s and “q"s there, my girl. I think you’re about to be vetted.’

Georgie still remembered coming down the steps in front of the school as the limousine swept up. She had guessed just by the way Maria Cristina talked that her friend was from a wealthy background, but she had not been prepared for a stretch limousine complete with chauffeur and security men. Then Rafael appeared and Georgie had been so busy looking at him that she had missed the last step and almost fallen flat on her face.

He had reached out and caught her before she fell, laughing softly, dark eyes rich as golden honey sweeping her embarrassed face. ‘My sister said you were accident-prone.’

As Maria Cristina introduced them, his hand had lingered on hers, his narrowed gaze oddly intent until rather abruptly he had stepped back, a slight flush accentuating his hard cheekbones.

He had taken them to the Ritz for afternoon tea. Georgie had been quieter than she had ever been in her life before and painfully shy, a condition equally new to her experience. Right from that first moment of meeting, Rafael had attracted her to a frighteningly strong degree. And Georgie hadn’t known how to handle that attraction. It had come out of nowhere and swallowed her alive, draining her of self-will. She had sat there on the edge of her seat, barely able to take her eyes off him, terrified he would notice.

After the Ritz, he had taken them shopping in Harrods. Maria Cristina had casually spent an absolute fortune on trifles, and when Rafael had bought his sister a gold locket he had insisted on buying one identical for Georgie, smoothly dismissing her protests. Then he had ferried them back to her parents’ home where he had been invited to stay to dinner.

Newly conscious of just how rich her friend and her brother were, Georgie had been uncomfortable at first, fearfully watching for any signs of snobbish discomfiture from either of them. Her father was a primary schoolteacher and her stepmother, Jenny, a post-office clerk. Their home was a small, neat semi-detached. Half the neighbourhood had come out to stare at the stretch limousine. But Rafael and Maria Cristina had made themselves perfectly at home with her family… Steve hadn’t been there that first time, Georgie recalled absently.

‘Do you want to know the only thing Rafael asked about you?’ Maria Cristina had laughed after her brother had gone, shaking her head in wonderment. ‘Is that hair natural?’

For the remainder of her time at school, Georgie had been included in all of her friend’s term-time outings with her brother. Gradually she had lost her awe of Rafael, learning to judge her reception by the frequency of that rare and spontaneous smile of his that turned her heart inside out, but also learning to accept that he observed strict boundaries in his behaviour towards her and was prone to cool withdrawal when her impulsive tongue came anywhere near breaching that barrier.

‘Rafael likes you,’ Maria Cristina had said once—just one of many desperately gathered little titbits.

‘You make him laugh…’

‘He thinks you’re very intelligent…’

‘He wonders why you aren’t studying Spanish…’ What an agony of hope that had put her in! But then, it hadn’t all been good news.

He thinks you flirt too much…

‘He said if you wore your skirts any shorter, you’d be arrested…’

‘He believes that the two of us will only be adults when we stop telling each other absolutely everything!’

But Georgie had never told Maria Cristina whose photograph she kept in that locket which she wore constantly. She had been horribly embarrassed the day her friend chose to tease her about that secrecy in front of Rafael. He had silenced his sister. Dark eyes had intercepted Georgie’s anxious gaze and he had smiled lazily, and she had known that he knew perfectly well that it was his photo, taken by her with immensely careful casualness the previous year.

She had met Danny Peters at a sports event a few months before she sat her final exams. They had run into each other several times, quickly forming an easy friendship. Danny had just been ditched by his steady girlfriend and Georgie had supplied a sympathetic ear. When he had asked Georgie to attend his school formal with him, she had agreed, well aware that he merely wanted to save face in front of his friends. It had been a fun night out, nothing more. But Maria Cristina had gone all giggly about it and had insisted on talking about Danny as Georgie’s boyfriend. Had she mentioned Danny to Rafael?

For, one week later, Georgie had come home from visiting her grandmother one afternoon and a scarlet Ferrari had been parked in the driveway. She had raced into the house and frozen on the threshold of the lounge, seeing only Rafael, nothing else but Rafael impinging on her awareness. His very presence in her home without his sister in tow had told Georgie all she needed to know.

‘Rafael thought you might like to go for a drive,’ her stepmother had mumbled in a dazed voice. ‘You should get changed.’

She remembered Steve catching her by the arm before she disappeared into her bedroom. ‘He’s going to make a bloody fool of you,’ he had condemned in a furious undertone. ‘But money talks, doesn’t it? I can’t believe my mother is encouraging him!’

Georgie sank back to the present. With a not quite steady hand, she massaged her stiff neck and strove not to lift her head and look at Rafael. But it was so difficult when she was remembering that glorious afternoon, the sheer joy that he had come, the overwhelming excitement of just being alone with him for the very first time. She had walked on air into that Ferrari.

Before he reversed the car, he had lifted a hand and quite calmly reached for her locket to open it. And then he had smiled lazily, pressed a teasing promise of a kiss against her readily parted lips and dropped a bunch of red roses on her lap. ‘If it had been anyone else, I do believe I would have killed you,’ he had laughed softly.

He had been outrageously confident of his reception, hadn’t even tried to hide the fact. Georgie had had the bewildering feeling that she was being smoothly slotted into a pre-arranged plan, and in a sense that had offended her pride. She might have been head over heels in love with Rafael but she hadn’t liked the idea that he knew it too.

He had been entirely complacent about the idea that she had spent eighteen months waiting for him to show an interest in her, that he was indeed her first real boyfriend…if a male of his sophistication could even qualify for such a label. But he had also been careful to tell her that the day she told her sister she was seeing him, their relationship would be at an end. At the time, not telling

Maria Cristina had really hurt. But later she had been grateful that she had kept quiet.

‘She’s asking you if you want coffee.’

Georgie’s head jerked up, her cheeks warming as she found both the stewardess and Rafael regarding her enquiringly. ‘I’d love some,’ she mumbled, shaking her head as if to clear it and hurriedly fixing her attention elsewhere.

Rafael added that she liked her coffee with both milk and sugar.

Georgie tensed, childishly tempted to say she now took it black and unsweetened but biting her lip instead. Four years ago, Rafael had chosen her food for her, and had allowed her only the occasional glass of wine, refusing to allow her any other form of alcohol in his company.

‘He’s a flipping tyrant,’ Steve had sneered that final evening, witnessing Rafael’s unashamed domination in action. ‘I can’t believe the way you let him order you around. If you want a drink, I’ll get it for you!’

And he had. He had got her several, just daring Rafael to interfere. Georgie did not want to recall where that foolishness had led. Her cup in an unsteady hand, she sipped at her coffee, badly shaken by the uncontrollable force of the memories washing over her.

It had upset Georgie then that her stepbrother and Rafael should barely be able to tolerate each other. Nor had she ever been able to decide who was most at faultSteve for being a bossy, interfering big brother, who didn’t like to see his kid sister being bossed about by anyone else, or Rafael for never once utilising an ounce of his smooth diplomacy in Steve’s hot-headed direction.

In those days she had been very proud of Steve’s success as a photo-journalist. He was four years her senior, her brother in all but blood ties, and she had relied heavily on Steve’s opinions, Steve’s advice… And then those ties had been almost completely severed the same night that she had lost Rafael. Truly the worst night of her life, she conceded painfully.

‘This is Rurrenabaque,’ Rafael informed her as the jet came in to land.

Georgie concentrated on the fantastic views as the land dropped dramatically away below them to spread out into the thickly forested expanse of the Amazon basin. Less than half an hour after landing they were airborne again in a helicopter, from which she saw the very physical evidence of the logging operations in the area. Then the rough tracks forged by man-made machinery petered to a halt, leaving them flying over untouched wilderness, broken only by lonely mountain plateaus and dark winding rivers until the rainforest finally gave way to the vast savannah, cleared centuries earlier for cattle ranching.

‘You will want to rest.’ Rafael sprang down from the helicopter in her wake and something she caught in his voice made her turn her head.

She met icy dark eyes, read the harsh line of his compressed mouth and the fierce tension in his strong features as he stared fulminatingly back at her. He doesn’t want me here. That reality hit her like a bucket of cold water on too-hot skin. Defensively she looked away again, wondering why on earth he had brought her to his home if he felt that strongly and cursing her own weakened, stressed condition earlier.

‘At the airport, you let me think you were going to put me on a flight home,’ she reminded him accusingly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’

‘I was abducting you,’ Rafael delivered smoothly. ‘Why would I explain my intentions in advance?’

Her bright head spun back, violet eyes wide, her brow furrowed. Then she laughed a little breathlessly. ‘I never could tell when you were joking and when you were serious!’

‘You will learn.’ Unreadable dark eyes glittered intently over her animated face. ‘I’m looking forward to teaching you.’

CHAPTER THREE

SUDDENLY cold, even in the sunlight, Georgie stilled. Two dark-skinned men were attending to their luggage. Rafael spoke to them in a language that was definitely not Spanish and then strode forward to greet the older man who was approaching them.

He was Rafael’s estate manager, Joaquin Paez. He shook hands with her. ‘Sefiorita Morrison,’ he murmured gravely, with an old-world courtesy much in keeping with their gracious surroundings.

The estancia was a beautiful white villa, built in the Spanish style. The rambling spacious contours hinted at the alterations made by different generations. Fabulous gardens, lushly planted with shrubs and mature trees, ringed the house, and beyond she could see a whole host of other buildings stretching into the distance. Maria Cristina had told her that the ranch was a self-contained world of its own, with homes for its workers and their families, a small school, a church and even accommodation for the business conferences which Rafael occasionally held here.

A small, plump woman in a black dress appeared as they reached the elegant veranda at the front of the house. As Rafael addressed her in Spanish, the little woman’s smile faltered. She shot a shocked glance at Georgie and then quickly glanced away again to mutter something that just might have been a protest to Rafael.

Georgie hovered, feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Of course they weren’t talking about her…why should they be? She was here at the Berganza home on sufferance until such time as her passport could be replaced. Rafael had come to her aid when she got herself locked up in prison purely because she was his sister’s friend and Maria Cristina would have been deeply shocked had he done otherwise. In the same way, Rafael’s sister would doubtless also expect her brother to offer hospitality to Georgie in her own unfortunate absence.

So, Rafael was grimly going through the civilised motions for the sake of appearances, Georgie told herself, Maria Cristina had no idea how her brother and her best friend felt about each other and, at this late stage, neither one of them could wish to be forced to make pointless explanations. Georgie’s passport would be replaced within record time if Rafael had anything to do with it… she was convinced of that fact.

‘My housekeeper, Teresa, will show you to your room,’ Rafael drawled.

Teresa, whose wide smile had almost split her face on their arrival, now bore a closer resemblance to a little stone statue. With a bowed head, the housekeeper moved a hand, indicating that Georgie should follow her.

Georgie entered the impressive hall and stepped on to an exquisite Persian rug, spread over a highly polished Wvooden floor. Rafael swept off through one of the heavy, carved doors to the left. A wrought-iron staircase of fantastically ornate design wound up to the floors above, Georgie climbed it in Teresa’s rigid-backed wake. The walls were covered with paintings, some of which were clearly very old. They crossed a huge landing, Georgie’s heels clicking at every step. A door was flung wide with a faint suggestion of melodrama.

‘What a heavenly room,’ Georgie whispered helplessly, absorbing a level of opulence which quite took her breath away. And the décor was so wonderfully feminine, from the delicate contours of the gleaming antique furniture to the gloriously draped bed awash with lace. Lemon and blue and white—her favourite colours.

Doors led out on to a balcony, adorned with tubs of riotously blooming flowers.

Unselfconscious in her enchantment, Georgie walked past the silent older woman and opened a door that revealed first a fully fitted dressing-room and then, beyond it, a positively sinfully sybaritic bathroom with a marble Jacuzzi bath, gilded mirrors and gold fitments shaped like…mermaids. Mermaids? As a child Georgie had been fascinated by fantasy tales of mermaids and unicorns. A peculiar sense of déjà vu swept her, a funny little chill running down her taut spinal cord.

‘Ees crazy bathroom,’ Teresa said almost aggressively, and Georgie spun. ‘You like crazy bathroom, señorita?’

Georgie moistened her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue and simultaneously caught a glimpse of the wonderful painting on the wall opposite the bed. Unless she was very much mistaken—and closer examination told her she was not—the exquisitely detailed oil portrayed a unicorn in a forest…

Realising that Teresa was still awaiting a reply, Georgie mumbled weakly, ‘I like the bathroom, the room…everything, but I feel a little—a little tired.’

‘Dinner is served at nine. If send maids to unpack,’ Teresa announced with a stiff little nod, and indicated a bell-pull on the wall. ‘You wish anything, you call, senorita.’

On cotton wool legs, Georgie sank down on the edge of the bed. It was coincidence that the d£cor should mirror her own taste to such an extent. What else could it be but coincidence, for goodness’ sake? Kicking off her shoes and dispensing with the coat, Georgie lay down, smothering a yawn. In a minute, she would get up and wash and change and explore. She intended to make the best of this unexpected stay at the estancia. After all, she was on holiday and, had the concept of

being grateful to Rafael not been utterly repellent to her, she would have thanked him for making it possible for her to spend at least a few more days abroad.

A lamp was burning by the bed when she woke and the curtains had been drawn. Checking the time, Georgie rose in a hurry. Her pitifully slender wardrobe had been hung in a capacious closet in the dressing-room while she slept and every crumpled garment had been ironed as well. A single drawer contained the rest of her clothing and she sighed. Her collection of neat skirts and jackets which she had worn on teaching practice had all been winter-weight and, when it had come to packing for a hot climate, Georgie had had to fall back largely on outfits last worn in Majorca two years earlier on a family holiday. Beachwear, strictly speaking, she conceded, fingering a pair of Lycra shorts with a frown.

She was desperate for a bath but there was only time for a quick shower. Then, donning her one smart outfit, the elegantly cut fine white dress which she had worn for her graduation ceremony, Georgie brushed her rippling mane of curls and dug through her few cosmetics to add some delicate colour to her cheeks and lips. A maid passing through the hall showed her into a formal drawing-room which she found rather oppressive. She was studying a portrait of a forbidding but very handsome man when the door opened behind her.

‘You find your accommodation comfortable?’

She turned, her wide hesitant gaze falling on Rafael and, although she had told herself that she would be perfectly composed, her stomach cramped instantly with nerves. The sight of Rafael in a dinner-jacket, a white shirt accentuating the exotic gold of his skin and the darkness of his eyes, took her back in time and she tensed, tearing her attention from him and sliding down on to the nearest seat. ‘Very,’ she said stiffly.

‘What would you like to drink?’

Georgie tensed even more and she was furious with herself for being so over-sensitive. ‘Any thing,’ she muttered.

Taut as a bowstring, she watched him cross the room to a cabinet and listened to the clink of glass. How did he contrive to make her feel that every sentence he spoke to her was a put-down? A someone’s-walking-over-mygrave sensation seemed to take over more strongly with every minute she remained in his radius. Angrily, she bent her head. She hated him. Naturally it was a severe strain to be forced to accept his hospitality and feel the need to be at least superficially polite.

Indeed, Georgie only had to think of the damage he had done when she had been at a very impressionable age, and her blood boiled. Rafael’s deliberate attempt to reduce her to the level of a promiscuous slut back in her hotel room had simply provided fresh fodder for the bitterness of the past. But it had also brought alive again raw emotions which she had put behind her a long time ago, and she was finding that experience unexpectedly painful.

Right now, she was recalling the staggering response she had given him when he had kissed her, a response she had been too confused even to think about earlier in the day. Now that memory haunted her, shamed her. Four years ago, Rafael had taught her things about herself that, afterwards, she would have given anything to forget. She was a very physical person, or at least she had been with him. In his arms, she had never been in control. She had been entrapped by an uncontrollable passion which made mincemeat of every moral principle Jenny had dinned into her while she was growing up.

Had he so desired, Rafael could have gone to bed with her on the first date and, long after he had gone, Georgie had tortured herself with the fear that that wanton ability to forget everything when he touched her had actually laid the basis of Rafael’s cruel misjudgement of her. Angels and whores… Steve’s reading of Rafael had often returned to haunt her. And she had told herself that if Rafael was that primitive, she had had a very lucky escape indeed.

But what did she tell herself now? How could she have stood there and allowed him to kiss her in that horribly intimate way? She wasn’t a besotted teenager any more. Admittedly, she was still sexually inexperienced, she allowed grudgingly, but then, having been scorched as badly by passion as she had been at nineteen, that was not really surprising. So why hadn’t she objected to being manhandled this morning?

Because you liked it, a dry little voice put in to her flood of inner turmoil. She froze, her pallor suddenly washed by hot colour. Rafael chose that same moment to slot a tall glass between her nerveless fingers.

‘A Tequila Sunrise,’ Rafael drawled softly, ‘I have an excellent memory and I can only hope that you have no ambition to get seriously sloshed tonight.’

Georgie stared at the glass in stricken horror. The offer of a cup of poison could not have made her feel more threatened. One sip of that mixture and she was convinced she would throw up. His brutality absolutely devastated her. That evening, that ghastly final evening four years ago… Her narrow shoulders clenched as though he had laid a whip across them. The lousy sadist, she thought wildly, burning tears of sheer humiliation lashing her lowered eyelids. If there had been a gun within reach, she would have shot him dead without remorse.

‘I see you remember too,’ Rafael murmured smoothly.

Georgie threw her head up, a blaze of raw hostility leaping through her veins. She put that glass to her lips and she drank like a sailor on shore-leave after six months of sobriety. In her rage, she tasted nothing. ‘Thanks,’ she said tautly. ‘I needed that!’

‘Evidently, you did.’ A hard smile curved Rafael’s sensual mouth.

If he fondly imagined she was about to hang her head in shame because one time in her life she had got stupidly drunk, he was wrong!

‘Do you think there would be time before dinner for another one?’ Georgie murmured hopefully, taking up the challenge with a vengeance. If he chose to think that she was a drunk as well as a slut, he was quite free to do so. Anything was better than letting him see that he could still get to her. And displaying a total lack of concern for Rafael’s prehistoric ideal of how a ‘lady’ ought to behave was surely the best way possible to demonstrate her complete indifference to him?

Recalling her own eagerness to please in the past could only make her cringe. All her life she had been extrovert, fiery and opinionated. But Rafael had put a clamp on such emotional excesses, making her feel that to be acceptable she had to tone herself down into a paler version of herself. Afraid that if she couldn’t be what he wanted, she would lose him, Georgie had done a very fair imitation of a doormat until inevitably she had begun to resent his arrogant assumption of supremacy.

Another drink arrived. Georgie swallowed hard in a silence that was beginning to slice along her nerveendings and made herself sip through clenched teeth.

‘I have often wished that I had taken you up on your offer that night,’ Rafael delivered, fixing brilliant golden eyes to her openly transfixed face. ‘But it would have meant breaking every honourable instinct I possessed. I’ve never made love to a woman under the influence of alcohol before, but with you it would have paid dividends. I would have known then that I wasn’t your first

lover—’

‘And I dare say I would have known that I wasn’t yours either!’ Georgie slung back at him in growing outrage. In throwing up her reckless behaviour that night, Rafael demonstrated a savage, unashamed desire to humiliate her.

‘Naturally not… what would you expect?’ Rafael demanded shortly, after a decidedly stunned pause that such an irrelevance as his sexual experience should be mentioned. Dark colour accentuated the fierce angles of his hard cheekbones, his handsome mouth a compressed line.

Georgie tossed back another swig of alcohol, well aware she had disconcerted him. ‘Oops, to think I had one chance in my entire life to be ravished in a Ferrari and I blew it!’ She fluttered her lashes in an attitude of deep regret, beginning to enjoy herself as much as she had thoroughly enjoyed herself in the amateur dramatic society at college. ‘That one perfect spontaneous moment missed… But then, you’re not a spontaneous kind of guy, are you?’

‘Not in a public car park…no,’ Rafael breathed in a driven undertone, with more than a suggestion of gritted white teeth to the reply as he studied her with lancing dark eyes. ‘I find it hard to believe that you can refer to that night so casually.’

Georgie flicked him a glance, adrenalin fairly roaring through her. A determined smile tilted her mobile mouth as she regarded him from below her thick copper lashes. ‘Why not? After all, you weren’t the only one deceived four years ago… I was as well.’

‘You were?’ Rafael breathed, with an incredulous expression.