In Name Only

Suppressing the inching, quivering feeling of alarm, Cathy dressed quickly in the simple, sleeveless black crêpe shift she had already laid out, and braided her long blonde hair. The minimum of make-up and she was ready, ten minutes early. A pity, that. Counting off the seconds to the coming confrontation could only put her already jangling nerves even more on edge.

Meeting her wide violet eyes in the mirror, she made a conscious effort to ease away the tiny frown line between her arching brows, and wondered again how Javier Campuzano could have mistaken her for Cordy.

At five feet seven, they shared the same height, and both had fine, clear skin and blonde hair to shoulder-blade length. But there, as far as Cathy was concerned, the resemblance ended. Cordy’s blue eyes were more sapphire than violet, her cheekbones far more pronounced, her nose longer and slightly aquiline, giving her features far more sophistication than Cathy’s. And whereas Cordy’s figure was model-girl-svelte, truly elegant, Cathy’s curves were far more generous—positively earthy, she sometimes felt.

But then he would no doubt put the weight gain down to recent motherhood, and he had admitted he’d only stayed at the party for a very short time. And she hadn’t put him right, had she?

She wasn’t at all easy about the deception; in fact if she thought about it for too long she ended up feeling definitely ill! But she’d had no option and would keep up the pretence to the bitter end, because if he ever found out that she was merely Johnny’s aunt, that his real mother had done a bunk, then he would take control of the baby and make sure there was nothing she could do about it.

But it wouldn’t come to that. She would lie until she was blue in the face if she had to. And on that positive—if reprehensible—thought she stiffened her spine and strode forth to do battle with the man who was her enemy.

CHAPTER THREE

‘AN APERITIF, Cathy?’

She hovered in the open doorway and watched as he laid the papers he’d been engrossed in aside, his urbane smile not quite reaching his eyes as he rose to his feet.

‘Thank you.’ She sound breathless. Her heart was performing a mad tattoo against her breastbone. He rarely used her given name, preferring the formal ‘señorita’, investing it with the delicate sarcasm she had come to dread. And now his lightly hooded eyes were making a lazy yet thorough inspection of her black-clad body and she saw his wide shoulders rise in a minimal shrug that barely moved the surface of the fine white alpaca jacket he wore.

Cathy turned on teetering heels, trying not to stumble as she made for one of the soft leather-covered armchairs arranged around the massive open fireplace, the chimney breast soaring way up to the raftered ceiling. The drift of his cool eyes had been a slow sexual insult, making her shatteringly aware of all that dominant Spanish machismo so tenuously concealed beneath the suave veneer of grace and good manners.

Warily, she watched as he poured the pale golden liquid from a bottle bearing the distinctive Campuzano label, and he sounded as if he were purring as he placed the curved, slender glass beside a silver bowl of plump olives on the low table at her side.

‘Try the fino. If it is too dry for your palate we can substitute an oloroso. The British used to be our biggest market for the sweeter, heavier sherries—the drink for elderly maiden ladies, we consider it here— but now their tastes appear to have changed; we now export far more fino to your country—’

‘Don’t knock it!’ Cathy advised in a cold little voice. ‘Maybe all those elderly ladies have acquired more sophisticated tastes. Or drink gin.’

Did he have to act so superior all the time? Or couldn’t he help it because it was an integral part of his nature? The latter, she suspected, and was thrown off balance when he smiled—really smiled this time—as he assured her,

‘I don’t knock it, believe me. When Drake singed the beard of the King of Spain he also carried home around three thousand casks of sherry and so founded our highly profitable trade links with England. So no, I wouldn’t dream of knocking one of our best markets!’ He seated himself almost directly opposite her with an indolent grace that only served to remind her of his powerful masculine virility, his grey eyes appearing almost seductively drowsy as he questioned, ‘Is the drink to your taste?’

Pulling herself away from the mesmeric spell of his hooded gaze, Cathy took a hasty sip and then another. The pale wine was crisp and delicious, slightly aromatic, the chilled liquid sliding down her throat, tasting like sunlight gently touched by frost.

‘Very much so.’ Her eyes smiled into his, her heart warmed by this rare moment of something she could almost believe to be closeness. ‘I confess, I could become addicted.’ Idly she traced a line in the condensation on the curved surface of the glass and heard herself asking with an interest she had never expected to feel, ‘If the market for the sweet sherries is declining, why don’t you produce more dry?’

‘It is not so simple. It all depends on the development of the flor... However—’ he spread his strong, finely made hands at her look of incomprehension and rose to refill her glass ‘—when we visit Jerez I will take you to the bodega where I shall attempt to explain. If you are interested.’

She was, almost in spite of herself, in spite of those feelings of mutual mistrust which flowed so strongly between them, the deceit on her part and the dictatorial arrogance on his. But he had given her an opening she couldn’t pass and, taking another fortifying sip, she leant back in her chair, making an effort to relax, crossed her legs above the knee, and asked, ‘When, exactly, shall I get to visit Jerez and your mother?’

‘Why the hurry?’ There was a touch of contempt in the steady grey gaze, a flick of something that made her shudder as his eyes deliberately assessed the long, exposed elegance of her crossed legs. ‘Is the finca too quiet, too rustic for your tastes? Lo siento—I’m sorry you have become so quickly bored.’

Horrible, horrible man! Cathy’s face turned an uncomfortable red as she hastily set her feet side by side and tugged down her skirt. He’d been looking at her unthinkingly exposed legs as if they were goods on offer—shoddy, second-hand goods—and instantly rejected them. Cordy—or her reputation—had a lot to answer for!

‘My main reason for agreeing to come to Spain was to allow your mother to see her grandson,’ she told him with a cool dignity she was proud of. ‘If you won’t take us to her, then I must find some means of going on my own. I’m sure Tomás—’

‘My mother will receive you when she is ready,’ he injected suavely. ‘It is not so long since Francisco’s death; she needs time to adjust to the idea that he left a child. And Tomás will take you nowhere; I forbid it.’

Forbid? Yes, he was perfectly capable of doing so. As far as he was concerned, his word was law and Tomás and every other subject in his kingdom would obey it right down to the very last letter. Something sharp and hot rose in her throat to choke her and her voice was hoarse with anger as she flung at him, “Then what the hell am I doing here? Couldn’t you have waited until she was ready to see him? Why waste my time?’

Anger turned back on her in waves of frustration as it met the unbreachable wall of his apparent disregard. There was not a flicker of emotion on those dark, impressive features, merely the schooled control of a man who had witnessed the demeaning antics of a fishwife but was too polite to comment. And she sagged back in her seat, suddenly drained, as he rose with inherent grace and pressed a discreetly concealed button near the wide cedarwood door.

‘Come, it is time to eat.’

Just like that. Just as if her angry questions had never been asked, Cathy fumed, rising in a jerky movement, following him, wanting to get the meal over and done with and get back to her room, shut herself in with the sleeping baby, and try to work out what to do.

Facing him across the oval table, Cathy spread her linen napkin over her lap with a fierce twist of her wrist and waited for Paquita to serve her with, as she proudly announced, ‘Sopa de mariscos al vino de Jerez,’ which, for her benefit, Campuzano translated more prosaically as sherry and shellfish soup.

Whatever, it was delicious and welcome. Cathy ate quickly and appreciatively, fully aware that she wouldn’t have agreed to share his table at all if she hadn’t been ravenously hungry.

The warm crusty bread served with the tangy, ocean-flavoured soup was irresistible, and Cathy, her mouth full, saw the lean brown hand slide a glass over the linen cloth, found her eyes held by the dusting of dark hair between the white of his cuff and the soft leather strap of his wafer-thin watch, and felt her throat close up for no reason at all.

‘Manzanilla makes the perfect accompaniment. Part of the pleasure of savouring a meal,’ he said softly, coolly, and she replaced the spoon in her bowl and swallowed her mouthful with immense difficulty. He was letting her know that her table manners were no better than a greedy child’s. He never lost an opportunity to put her down. Her appetite disappeared very suddenly.

‘This comes from the Campuzano vineyards in the area of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. It is believed that the breeze from the Atlantic gives it its unique and slightly salty flavour.’ He took a reflective sip from his own glass, his lightly veiled eyes challenging her fulminating violet stare and, more as a reflex action than anything else, she took an apprehensive sip. Salty sherry?

But it was crisp and cold and intriguingly tangy, paler in colour than the chilled fino he had given her as an aperitif, and if he noted the surprise, followed by the pleasure in her eyes, he made no comment other than, ‘Finish your soup. Paquita will be devastated if you don’t clear your plate.’

‘I am not a child,’ Cathy returned stiffly.

She felt his eyes slide over the lush curves of her breasts, heard him agree, ‘Obviously not,’ and decided to maintain a dignified silence, and managed to do exactly that, right through the Sevillana salad, the chicken with garlic and one glass too many of a light Rioja wine.

‘You will take a little caramel flan?’ Paquita had withdrawn, and the silver cake knife was poised in long, lean fingers. Cathy shook her head. She couldn’t eat another crumb, and the wine, on top of all that sherry, had gone straight to her head. She wasn’t used to alcohol in such profligate quantity.

The silver serving knife was gently placed back on the linen-covered table and Campuzano leaned elegantly back in his chair, his attractively accented voice much too smooth as he remarked, ‘I hear you have made Rosa redundant.’ A smile curled at one corner of his wide, sensual mouth, but his eyes were cold. ‘If it was done in an attempt to persuade me of your sterling qualities as a mother, it was misguided.’ Again the unmistakable challenge in those deep grey eyes, and Cathy bit back the heated words of rebuttal. She couldn’t trust herself to speak without getting her tongue in a tangle and could have boiled herself in oil for drinking all that sherry—not to mention the wine.

Hoping he would put her silence down to a refusal to dignify his snide remark with any comment at all, she rose from her seat, wobbled alarmingly as her head began to spin, and sat straight down again, only to hear his dry, sarcastic, ‘For Juan’s sake, I hope he is not in need of your ministrations tonight. If he is, then might I suggest you call Rosa out of her enforced retirement?’

Drunk in charge of a baby! Cathy thought, her head whirling. The hateful wretch had probably done it on purpose, feeding her one innocuous-looking measure of alcohol after another, inviting her opinion in that suave, wickedly sexy voice of his, intent on giving himself the proof that she wasn’t a fit mother for an earthworm—let alone his nephew!

How she regained her feet and got herself to the door in more or less a straight line, she never knew. She even managed a stiff ‘Goodnight’ before he slewed round in his chair, one black brow tilted in sardonic enquiry as he questioned,

‘Tell me, you say your name is Cathy, so why do your colleagues and friends know you as Cordy—or Cordelia?’ A very slight shrug, an even slighter smile. ‘I am sure there is a logical reason, but I don’t like puzzles. So humour me.’

Cathy could only stare at him, her eyes going so wide that they began to ache. He suspected; she knew he did. Had he waited until her fuddled brain would be incapable of thinking up some credible lie? Was that another of his devious reasons for systematically getting her drunk?

Somehow her tongue had got fused to the roof of her mouth, and her heart, tripping with alarm, didn’t help her to think clearly, and his smile had a definite feral quality as he added with a cool politeness that made her skin crawl, ‘Perhaps your memory requires a little help.’ White teeth glittered between those sensual lips. ‘After I read those letters, particularly the second, telling of the existence of my brother’s alleged son, I made a few initial enquiries. I found the signature indecipherable, as you recall, but my description, my reminders of the party to mark the end of the assignment you were part of, all produced the same name. Cordelia Soames. Or Cordy to her friends—who, I might say, seemed to be numerous and almost exclusively male and, practically to a man...intimate.’

If nothing else could have sobered her, the hateful inflexion he placed on that last word did the trick. How dared he make her sister out to be a tramp, happy to fall in bed with anything in trousers? Cordy simply loved the reflected glamour of her job, the glitzy parties and socialising. And flirting was just a game to her, had been since she was fifteen years old. She wasn’t promiscuous, not really. Surely the fact that she had got pregnant pointed to that? If she’d been in the habit of sleeping around she would have made sure she was protected.

Her head now miraculously clear, Cathy gave him a withering smile, her voice dripping with acid as she told him, ‘Far be it from me to allow you to lose any sleep over such a tricky puzzle, señor. Cordelia was my professional name. I thought plain old Cathy a little too homespun. Satisfied?’

He would have to be, she thought as she swept out of the door. He would have to come up with better trick questions than that before he caught her out—tipsy or sober. She was getting quite expert at the game of deceit!

Cathy closed her eyes against the brilliant white dry heat and pulled the shady brim of the floppy straw hat Rosa had lent her further down over her face.

She had hitched a ride on a tractor with Rafael, the eldest of Paquita and Tomás’s brood, right to the edge of the vineyards, and now she set her sights on the shade offered by the grove of parasol pines she could see in the distance.

Behind her the tractor roared out of sight, leaving a cloud of white dust on the still air—the dust of the Albariza soil which made this vast triangle, stretching between the sherry towns of Jerez, Puerto de Santa Maria and Sanlúcar de Barrameda and encompassed by the rivers Guadalquivir and Guadalete, the one place in the world where the unique wine could be produced. So much she had teamed from Rosa, who had been determined to educate as well as befriend her, Cathy thought with a quirky smile.