From Venice With Love: Secrets of Castillo del Arco

‘Gabriella was waiting for you, as it happens,’ Raoul said, and she looked up at him, surprised. For, even if he had correctly assumed this was Consuelo, that would hardly explain the note of barely contained animosity in his words.

Consuelo didn’t seem to notice. He seemed far more interested in staring at Raoul’s hand where it lingered at her throat, as if just the heat from his glare would make it disappear. For the first time she wondered if maybe it had been there too long. She put her hand to his and tugged it down, but wasn’t about to let him go completely, sandwiching it between her own instead. She noticed he made no move to withdraw from her completely.

‘Am I missing something?’ she asked, looking from one to the other, for the first time realising the similarities in the two men—and the differences. Both shared Spanish colouring, with dark eyes and hair, but that was where the similarities began and ended. Raoul was taller, broader, more imposing. He made Consuelo look almost small. ‘Do you two know each other?’

‘Consuelo and I are old friends,’ Raoul uttered slowly, in a measured tone that suggested they were anything but. ‘Aren’t we, Consuelo?’ The other man’s eyes skittered with something approximating fear before he turned to Gabriella, tugging on his tie.

‘Phillipa said the priest wanted to say a few words,’ he said, ignoring the other man as much as it was physically able. ‘He’s waiting for you to arrive to begin. Now.’

‘Phillipa called you?’ Was that the phone call that had kept him so long? That was odd. Her friend had never before called Consuelo; Gabriella wasn’t convinced Phillipa even liked him. Unless Phillipa had figured—correctly, as it turned out—that her phone would be off and that Consuelo, with his twenty-four-seven phone addiction, would be a better bet. She nodded. At least that made some kind of sense. ‘Then we should go. Raoul, can we offer you a lift?’

Consuelo stepped closer alongside her, tugging at her arm. ‘Look, the car’s waiting. We should get going.’

Raoul smiled. ‘Thank you for your kind offer, Gabriella, but I wish to have a few words with your grandfather before I make my own way.’ He lifted his hand, capturing one of hers as he raised it to his mouth, pressing his warm lips to her skin, his dark eyes glancing up at her as dark tendrils of his hair fell free from his ponytail to dance around the sharp angles and shadowed recesses of his face. ‘Until we meet again, Bella,’ he said, using his old pet name for her, an endearment she hadn’t heard in over a decade.

But he had remembered.

And then those same eyes turned to meet the other man’s and somehow turned ice-cold in the interim. ‘Garbas,’ he said with a nod, so simply that it took Gabriella only a second to realise he’d dismissed the other man out of hand. Consuelo felt it too, for he took her hand and tugged her away.

Raoul watched them disappear along the misty path, unable to suppress a growl when Garbas looped a proprietorial arm around Gabriella’s shoulders and pulled her in close.

For his benefit, he had no doubt. Umberto had been right about the hyena sniffing around, watching and waiting for his chance to strike—not that he would see a penny of Gabriella’s fortune if Raoul had anything to do with it. Not now the dogs were closing in.

It hadn’t taken much. He’d known there would be dirt and plenty of it if he just dug deep enough. Now he just had to sit back and wait. It wouldn’t be long and then Gabriella would be safe from his clutches.

Gabriella.

Bella.

Forgotten for years, lost under the weight of time, yet still the endearment had come to him automatically, as if all he had to do was see her before it tripped from his tongue. Yet she looked so different now from the last time they had met. When had twelve years ever passed so profitably? For him, it had been a period of loss, betrayal, death and ultimately of his own self-imposed exile. For her, it seemed those years had worked some kind of magic, transforming her from a gangly child into a very beautiful woman.

They might just as well have been living on different planets.

Huddled alongside the grave, her coat lashed tightly around her slim waist, her glossy chestnut hair coiled behind her head, she had been almost unrecognisable from the child he remembered, yet he should have seen it coming. Her mother had been beautiful after all, half-English-rose, half-Italian-royalty, her father the crème de la crème of French aristocracy. Her heart-shaped face somehow captured the best of all of them: her mother’s cat-like eyes and smooth-as-silk complexion, her father’s passionate mouth. Beautiful. Fragile.

Much too good for the likes of him.

What had Umberto been thinking? Dealing with the likes of Consuelo was one thing, but why would he want to saddle his own granddaughter with a broken creature like him? Why make him promise to marry her?

“You don’t have to love her!” Umberto had said.

Just as well. What would a woman like her want with his love, even if he were able to give it? And why would she waste hers on him? Why would a woman like her ever want to marry him?

And why should she have to? Consuelo would soon be history, untouchable, locked away where he could not reach her—and not even someone who saw the good in everyone would want to defend him when she discovered the truth. Raoul could just as simply deal with any other Consuelos if it came to that. He could weed out the hyenas and the jackals, the parasites who came to prey on a rich, beautiful woman.

He could take care of them all.

Except then he remembered the touch of her skin, the smooth column of her throat and the trip of her pulse under his fingertips. He remembered the press of her cheek against his palm, remembered that moment when she had looked up at him and he had imagined the impossible, had wanted the impossible. For the first time in a long time he had felt his body stirring with want.

And that knowledge shamed him.

He hadn’t meant his fingers to linger. He had wanted just to establish a contact between them, as if that might help eradicate the years that lay between them. But one touch had not been enough, and when a stray strand of hair had blown free from the knot behind her head he had been unable to resist tucking it away, using the excuse of Garbas coming upon them to leave it there.

It had been worth it just to see the look of unbridled hostility in his eyes. It had been worth even more because she had felt so damned good under his fingers.

He squeezed his eyes shut on a groan. What was he thinking? She was his oldest friend’s granddaughter! The last time he had seen her she had been twelve, and it didn’t matter how old she was now; she was still more than a decade younger than him. And he had been charged with taking care of her, not with taking advantage of her. He was supposed to keep her safe.

By mauling her at her grandfather’s grave?

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Umberto, but what were you thinking?’ he muttered, as he stood by the grave of his friend with just the tangle of his conflicted thoughts and the mist for company. ‘Why would you make me promise such a thing when no good can come of it?’

The soft, damp air swirled around him, whispering no answers, offering no solutions, and leaving him with just one truth. He had promised his dying friend it would be so.

So he would make it happen.

CHAPTER TWO (#u7d127a67-62e8-55ca-a8aa-62c80c72c398)

‘WHAT is he doing here?’ Consuelo demanded as he strode along the path like a man with the demons of hell after him. ‘Why did he have to come?’

Gabriella skipped a step to keep up with him. ‘Raoul is an old family friend. Of course he would be here.’

‘But the way he was touching you—like he owned you. Like he meant something to you. You let him touch you!’

‘We grew up together, Consuelo. Our two families were practically inseparable, at least until I was twelve years of age. The last time I saw him was at our parents’ funerals. Of course there is some feeling between us. He is like a brother to me.’

He looked across at her suddenly, his eyes wild and frantic, and she wondered what else must be troubling him for him to overreact in this way. ‘And that’s all he is to you?’

‘But of course,’ she said, wanting to soothe, but mostly because there was nothing else she could say, even if she might so foolishly have once dreamed of more.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her close in to his body. She needed to be hugged but she wondered why this contact didn’t stir her blood or warm her as Raoul’s touch had done. Perhaps because she saw more of him, or because he was more familiar to her, more comfortable to be around. She shouldn’t encourage him—she knew he wanted more out of their relationship than she could commit to right now—but today she was glad to have someone to hold on to, even if his touch didn’t stir her like another’s …

She shuddered now with the memory of it, of how just the gentle touch of Raoul’s fingertips had set her blood fizzing. How was that possible—a man she hadn’t met other than in her dreams for so many years? Or had she just wished and hoped for it so much, she’d believed it had happened?

But then he’d always had that impact on her. He’d always seemed larger than life, and she’d always been drawn to his dark mystery. Why should it be any different now, simply because a dozen years had passed?

‘How do you know Raoul?’ she asked, curious as he hastened her towards the waiting car. ‘Is he one of the foundation’s benefactors?’

He laughed, a short, derisive laugh. ‘Him? No, he would not give to a charity such as ours, not even to save the lives of sick children.’

‘Why do you say that? Have you ever asked him?’

‘I do not bother with his sort. His kind have no heart.’

‘No, Consuelo,’ she protested, remembering back, thinking that Raoul had had the biggest heart of anyone she knew. Nothing had been too much trouble for him back then, nothing too much effort for his family and hers. And when the police had called that fateful evening with the shocking news it had been Raoul who had cradled her, letting her cry her eyes out, offering her the remnants of his own shattered heart. ‘That cannot be right.’

‘Then you do not know him very well, after all. Come,’ he said, opening her car door so she could precede him into the vehicle. ‘Forget Raoul; there are more important things to think about right now.’ He tapped the waiting driver on the shoulder to let him know they were ready. ‘Like arranging for your things to be moved from the house into my apartment. Given you’re on leave, it would be the perfect time.’

She blinked, momentarily stunned. Where had that come from? ‘What are you talking about?’