The Buenos Aires Marriage Deal

‘She did not stay, señor.’

The housekeeper was delving inside the pocket of her long black skirt for something. In the next instant she handed Pascual a slim white envelope. The cold feeling inside him deepened to ice.

‘She told me to give you this letter.’

‘Gracias.’ He all but snatched it from her hand and headed towards the grand winding staircase, taking the steps two at a time before she’d barely finished speaking.

In his personal suite of rooms, he started to rip open the envelope, now frankly hating the presentiment of doom that seemed to be clutching his vitals in a vice. What was wrong with him? Was he coming down with something? With his wedding only days away, he sincerely hoped not. Standing by the opened balcony doors of his sitting room, he felt a gentle welcome breeze that carried the enticing scents of jasmine and honeysuckle ripple across the single page of cream vellum notepaper that his hand clutched so avidly.

As he started to read, the icy sensation that had gripped him sickeningly intensified.

Dear Pascual

Where do I start? This is so hard for me to tell you, but I have decided that I can’t go through with our marriage after all. It’s not because I have fallen out of love with you or anything like that. My feelings are still as strong as ever. But I have increasingly begun to realise that a marriage between us could never really work. The reason is that our backgrounds and who we are as people are just too different. I’ve tried discussing this with you, but you always tell me there is nothing to worry about and I am just inventing problems where there are none.

I’m afraid you’re wrong. Ultimately our vast differences can only impinge negatively on our relationship. Already there have been repercussions within your family because you want to marry an outsider. They mean the world to you, I can see that, and I don’t want to come between you and for you to gradually grow to resent me because of it. So, rather than cause any worse heartache by staying and watching what we have slowly disintegrate, I have made the decision to go back to England and resume my life there.

I realise this news will come as a tremendous shock to you, and I am so sorry for any hurt or grief I may cause, but I believe that ultimately this is the right decision for both of us. You have been so good to me and I will never forget you, Pascual, no matter what you might think as you read this letter. I’m also sorry that you have to be the one to tell everyone that the wedding will not be taking place after all—but, having come to know your family a little, I am certain that this news will only confirm their beliefs that I was totally unsuitable for you in the first place.

Please don’t try to contact me again. That’s all I ask. It would only prolong the pain for both of us, and I think it’s best if we just make a completely new start. Take care of yourself, and I wish you only good things—now and always. All my love Briana.

‘Dios mio!’

As wave after merciless wave of disbelief, hurt and disappointment submerged him, Pascual scanned the letter again, hardly able to take on board the devastating contents that had been so cruelly revealed to him. She had left him…Briana—the woman of his heart—the beautiful girl he had fallen so hard for almost on sight and had been going to marry—had left and gone back to England, without even having the guts to tell him to his face the unbelievable decision she had made.

Last night at the party she had seemed so happy. Hadn’t she? Now he remembered that later on during the evening at his parents’ house she had been looking a little tired and strained, and he had longed to get her alone and find out what was troubling her. In the end—because his friends had not wanted him to desert the party too early—he had conceded to stay and had got his chauffeur to drive Briana home, thinking he would see her tonight and get to the bottom of her disquiet then.

It was too cruel to realise that his intention would now never materialise because she had elected to leave rather than wait and talk to him. Why had he not listened to what she had tried to tell him before? he asked himself, anguished. Clearly Briana had believed there definitely were problems, even if he had not. But how dared she assume that she knew what was ‘ultimately best’ for both of them? She was merely speaking for herself…not for him!

Suddenly feeling that the generously sized room had become a stifling prison, the growing need inside him to escape and breathe some fresher air galvanised him into unhappy action. Throwing the letter down on a nearby bureau, he once again went outside. A violent expletive left his lips as he strode purposefully out into the hot mid-morning sun, the heels of his hand-crafted, made-to-measure calf leather riding boots ringing out clearly on the bleached white cobblestones before him.

For the second time in his thirty-six years he had been brought starkly face to face with what loss meant and it had left him reeling. The year he had turned thirty his best friend Fidel had lost his life in a horrific car crash, leaving behind a wife and child. Pascual had been brutally awakened to the fact that life was short—and what was the use of having great wealth at his fingertips if he had nobody significant to share it with? Soberly he had reflected on the future and realised that he craved a wife and family of his own. But in his hopeful search for a mate it had unfortunately transpired that he had given his heart to a woman who had clearly thought so little of his feelings that she imagined it was nothing to him for her to simply walk out without warning or giving him proper explanation.

Again it hit Pascual that Briana had left and such was his agony of spirit that for a moment despair almost brought him to his knees. Why had she not trusted him enough to talk to him about her doubts for their future—if doubts were what she had had? As far as he was concerned right now, her actions put her beneath his contempt! His only consolation was that he hoped she would come to bitterly regret her hasty desertion of him and suffer accordingly.

Because he would not go after her…Not for a second time would he invite her rejection of him—no matter how desperate he might become to see her again in the following few days, weeks, years. And if he ever happened to discover that she had left him because of the unthinkable…because she had fallen in love with somebody else…then he would honestly curse her to the very end of his days…

Five years later, London, England.

‘Was that the postman, love?’

‘Yes, Mum.’

Staring down at the slim brown envelope that she’d retrieved from the mat, Briana felt her heart drop like a lead weight inside her chest. If she wasn’t mistaken it was another missive from the bank, and this time maybe the threat of a court summons that had been hanging over her head for weeks now had become a horrible reality.

Just eighteen months ago the hospitality business she had set up, providing administrative and organisational services for visiting business people from abroad, had been flourishing almost beyond her wildest dreams. But since the threatening global recession had taken a grip the way Briana’s thriving business had started to plummet was no joke. People were not so eager to use less well-established businesses like hers when other, more long-standing companies could risk undercutting their fledgling competitors and charge less for the same services.

She had a son to raise and rent to pay—and how was she going to do either of those things when there was barely enough money coming in to feed them, let alone pay bills?

‘Briana? Are you going to come in and have some breakfast with me and Adán before you leave for your weekend away?’

‘Of course. Just give me a minute, will you?’

Stuffing the offending envelope unopened into her bag, Briana sighed heavily. She had no intention of sharing with her mother the news that she had received yet another worrying letter regarding her debt. Frances Douglas would sell the clothes from off her back if it would help her daughter and grandson make ends meet, and she had already threatened to take a second mortgage out on her own house to help them. She had done enough. Without her help Briana wouldn’t have been able to set the business up in the first place. Now it was up to her to get them out of the hole they were in.

Pushing her fingers resignedly through the mane of silky brown hair that seemed to have a mind of its own, she returned to the kitchen with a deliberately cheerful smile on her face. Her young son was seated up at the breakfast bar on a high stool, eating his cereal, and his grandmother was busy slotting two slices of wholemeal bread into the toaster.

The child beamed when he saw Briana. ‘Mummy, this is my second bowl!’ he happily announced, milk glistening on his small dimpled chin.

‘Is it, my angel? No wonder you’re getting so big!’ Lovingly dropping an affectionate kiss on the top of his silky dark head, Briana started moving away towards the boiling kettle on the marble-effect worktop. ‘Cup of tea, Mum?’

‘Why don’t you sit down with Adán and let me do it? And you’re not going out of this house this morning until you eat at least a couple of slices of toast, either! All this worry is making you thin and pale—and how is it going to help anybody if you fall ill?’

‘It’s not that I’m not eating.’ Curling her hair behind her ears, Briana sighed and dropped teabags into the two waiting mugs, ‘I’ve just been a bit distracted, that’s all. This weekend simply has to go well, Mum. I’ve got three entrepreneurs entertaining some billionaire from abroad, and I’ve got to help take care of them in a Tudor mansion I haven’t even had a chance to familiarise myself with yet. I have to get there early and get my act together to greet them or I’ll be for the high jump! Thank God Tina went there yesterday, to do some groundwork for me! If I impress, it’s been hinted that there might be some more work coming my way from that direction—so keep your fingers crossed for me, won’t you?’

‘You shouldn’t need me to keep my fingers crossed!’ Frances Douglas announced, her smoothly powdered features gently chastising. ‘You are the very best at what you do, Briana Douglas, and don’t you forget it! Your trusting nature brought you that bad debt that’s got the business into trouble…not your lack of ability!’

‘Thanks, Mum. I needed a boost this morning. You’re an angel!’

‘And don’t fret about Adán either. I have a lovely weekend for us both lined up. I just want you to go to work and concentrate on what has to be done without worrying about us.’

‘I promise I won’t let you down.’

The older woman’s light grey eyes glistened. ‘You’ve never let me down in the whole of your twenty-seven years, child, so don’t even think such a thing!’

Her own eyes moist, Briana sniffed and gave her mother a brief hard hug. She was so lucky. She had the most wonderful mother a girl could wish for, and a darling little boy who was the light of her life. All things considered—financial problems aside—she wasn’t doing badly. So why, then, just at the moment when she had determinedly decided to look on the bright side, did a disturbing vision of her child’s father slide across the cinema screen of her mind and clamp her heart hard enough and painfully enough to take her breath away?

The house was startlingly impressive. Set in the napped velvet green of the gently undulating Warwickshire landscape, in what was known as Shakespeare country, it was a genuine beautiful relic from England’s tumultuous Tudor past that anyone with half an interest in history would relish.

Pascual had stood outside for several minutes after the chauffeur had opened the door of the Rolls-Royce that had brought him from the airport—simply to admire its black and white three storeyed wattle and daub façade and the small arched windows with their leaded panes. The grounds were stunning too. On the way in they had driven past an imposing gatehouse and parkland, as well as some trees that looked as durable as any fascinating ancient monument he had ever seen. As if to doubly remind him that he was in the English countryside now, and far from the vibrancy, colour and heat of Buenos Aires, rain had started to fall—softly at first, then hard enough to make him immediately dash for cover.

As he did so he literally bumped into a young slim blonde who announced that her name was Tina and that she was working for the businessmen who were hosting Pascual’s stay this weekend. After showing him to his suite of rooms she said she would bring him some coffee and refreshments—then her colleague would take him to meet his hosts.

Welcoming the opportunity to shower and take stock of his surroundings before partaking of any refreshments and putting on his ‘business head,’ Pascual took his time getting ready for his meeting. All the while the steadily falling rain drilled against the diamond-patterned leaded windows of his bedroom and, glancing outside, seeing the boughs of the surrounding trees bend almost to the ground, he realised that the wind was whipping up quite a storm too. But inside it was cosy and warm, and the kind of peace and quiet that he almost never experienced at home descended like a soft down blanket, cocooning him from the rest of the world.

His ensuing sigh was almost contented. After all…what had he to worry about? However long he made his hosts wait, the last thing they would do would be to voice a complaint. They were getting the chance to buy the most sought-after thoroughbred polo ponies in the business—the elite of the elite—and so they would stem their impatience and relax for however long it took before Pascual finally sought them out.

Absorbed with fastening the small diamond cufflinks on his tailored deep blue Savile Row shirt, he frowned at the sudden knock on the door. No doubt it was the little blonde, returning with his refreshments, he thought lazily. Good. He could do with some strong black coffee.

Outside the panelled oak door in the long, lowceilinged corridor, Briana was schooling herself to try and breathe more slowly. She’d arrived late, despite all her best efforts, and had just got there in the nick of time to take the tray of coffee from Tina and bring it up to their VIP guest’s room. Patting down her hair, she hoped her motorway dash and her lack of time to retouch her make-up would not detract from the warmth and professionalism that was usually her byword. She hadn’t even had the presence of mind to ask Tina what their important guest’s name was! Never mind. Perhaps he’d just be so grateful for the coffee he wouldn’t notice that she didn’t address him by his name.

The silver coffee pot, patterned cup and saucer and little white jug on the elegant silver tray rattled a little between her hands as Briana held it, and she made herself take another steadying breath.

‘Good timing! I was just—Dios mio!’

Hooded eyes the intensity and colour of luxurious cocoa set in a handsome strong-boned face with high cheekbones and the most sensuous masculine mouth imaginable stared back at her, as though its owner hardly believed the validity of his own eyesight.

‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’