Spaniard's Seduction / Cole's Red-Hot Pursuit: Spaniard's Seduction

Caitlyn’s stomach dropped like a stone at the expression in Kay’s eyes. She clenched her hands into fists. Surely, Kay couldn’t believe what Rafaelo claimed was true?

Phillip took a large white handkerchief from his pocket and, without unfolding it, rubbed it across his brow.

“You are not going to deny it, are you?” Kay’s face had drawn into tight lines. She turned her attention back to Rafaelo, studying him with critical eyes. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-five.”

Kay was not telling Rafaelo to get lost.

“That’s the same age as Roland.” Kay paused and sucked in an audible breath. “When were you born?”

Rafaelo told her.

Hurt flickered across Kay’s face. “That makes you Phillip’s eldest son…even if Roland our—my—first child hadn’t died.”

There was a world of reproach in the look that Kay gave Phillip.

Hurriedly he reached for her. “Kay, I’m sorry. I never—” He broke off, shamefaced.

“Never wanted me to know?”

Phillip didn’t answer and Kay tugged her hand free and walked away. After a horrible silence, Phillip took off after her.

Finding that her hands were shaking, Caitlyn balled them against her mouth. God. It had all happened so fast…

And it appeared that Rafaelo wasn’t lying.

A sideways glance revealed that Rafaelo’s face held no expression. No glee. No gloating. So why had he done it? Why had he come all the way across the world and dropped this devastating bombshell on the Saxons?

He met her questioning gaze with a decided lack of expression and said, “So I am not a liar.”

Then Rafaelo was walking away from her, too, his back ramrod-straight, his black head held at a proud, arrogant tilt. Caitlyn stared after him, her mouth hanging open. Finally she came to her senses.

“What were you hoping to achieve by staging that little scene?” She hurled the words like pebbles at the space between his shoulders.

He stopped, then turned.

Caitlyn glanced around. A little way off a couple stared curiously in their direction. Farther away groups stood around talking. “It’s too public here for the conversation I have in mind. Come with me.”

He didn’t look like the kind of man who followed orders. She half expected him not to follow as she crossed the lane that led past the winery to the house and wound her way along the shoulder of the hill, down the northern slope planted with Cabernet Franc vines. For once Caitlyn didn’t notice the pale green of the leaves, or how the land opened up to meadows where wildflowers had started to bloom in deep drifts along the fence line. She was too mad.

His fault.

Normally, she was even-tempered, easy to get along with—she never lost her temper and rarely even told off any of her cellar hands. But Rafaelo Carreras had managed to get under her skin with his intransigence, with his hard-ass, unbending attitude. She glanced back, he was following. Good.

She quickened her pace.

Caitlyn took him to the stable block. As they entered the yard in front of the L-shaped block, several horses stuck their heads over the half doors, ears pricked with interest. The familiar warm smell of horses and hay calmed her a little. At the end of the row, one stall was closed top and bottom and Caitlyn could hear the animal inside battering the door with his hooves as he demanded to be let out.

That would be Lady Killer. Apart from him, there should be no interruptions. Certainly, there would be no danger of being overheard by guests who’d come to attend Roland’s memorial service.

She swung around and glared at Rafaelo. “Do you have any idea what you interrupted?”

“I called the winery. I made an appointment.”

Caitlyn raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think so. Not for today. Not when Kay and Phillip are unveiling a memorial plaque for their son.”

“No, no. The appointment was for yesterday.” His hands raked his hair. “But I experienced some delays.”

She scanned his appearance. Not even the wrinkles and specks of dust could hide the fact that the suit was unlike anything she’d seen before. It fitted like it had been handmade—even if it was looking a little shabby right now. “The security scare in London?” She nodded at his startled look. “I heard about it on the news. I’m sorry, but Phillip and Kay haven’t been taking appointments for the last few days.”

He looked a little abashed. “The woman who answered the phone said something but I wasn’t listening.”

So he wasn’t lying. The frustration in his eyes was too real.

“You must’ve spoken to Amy, the winery’s PA. Roland was her fiancé.” Poor, poor Amy. She would almost certainly not have remembered to tell Phillip about any appointment. She was perilously close to a breakdown. “So I’m sorry, but Phillip probably didn’t get the message.” But that still didn’t excuse Rafaelo’s harsh behaviour. “Once you realised that a memorial ceremony was taking place, couldn’t you have left?”

“So the memorial service is for Roland? The eldest son?”

His face wore a strange expression. Caitlyn gave up trying to decipher what it meant. “Yes, Roland died in a car accident, several weeks ago.” The night of the annual Saxon’s Folly masked ball. “A terrible tragedy.”

“My condolences.” He bowed his head. Briefly. Politely. Then, like a dog with a bone, continued, “I have travelled many miles, I came with a purpose—I’d made an appointment. I wasn’t to know Saxon knew nothing of it. Nor do I have any intention of turning tail and leaving without fulfilling that purpose.”

“That’s it? That’s all you can say?” Caitlyn stared at him in disbelief. “After that confrontation you just forced?”

“I had no intention of forcing a confrontation—it was you who provoked that.”

He gave her a frown filled with dislike. Caitlyn opened her mouth, then shut it again. Oh, why hadn’t she stayed out of it?

Yet she knew that would’ve been impossible. She’d taken one look at the tall, dark foreigner, heard the sardonic edge to his voice as he harangued Phillip and she’d leapt into the fray to protect her employer. Hell, Phillip was more than an employer. He was her sounding board…her mentor…a dear friend.

“You must understand that the Saxons are like family to me.” It was true. “I could no more leave you to bully Phillip than I could walk away from a delinquent drowning a kitten.”

“I am not a bully,” he growled, blood rushing under his olive skin. “I am not a delinquent. I do not drown kittens. I am a man of honour, something that your employer is not. I would never leave a young woman pregnant and alone.”

Suddenly aware of his height and the strength of him as he loomed over her, Caitlyn felt a whisper of fear and took a step back.

He followed, relentlessly closing the space she’d claimed. “I wanted to face my cowardly father with the fact that he has a son he has never cared to acknowledge—and a woman who he had abandoned without giving her any emotional or financial support.”

Another step and the whitewashed wall of the stables pressed against her back; Caitlyn could feel the roughness of the plaster through the linen jacket. She swallowed nervously. “Maybe he didn’t know—”

“He knew!” Rafaelo loomed over her, dark and menacing, and planted a balled fist on either side of her head. “My mother wrote to him when she first learned she was pregnant.”

“Perhaps—” Her voice cracked as he bent forward. Up close the snapping eyes were full of anger, his mouth drawn into a hard line that highlighted the small white scar below his bottom lip. No sign showed of the good humour that the laugh lines around his eyes suggested.

She didn’t know this man at all.

He was a stranger.