Postcards From Rio: Master of Her Innocence / To Play with Fire / A Taste of Desire

Diego appealed to Sister Ann for support. ‘Torrente is a dangerous place, especially for a young woman.’

‘Sometimes we are asked to show courage, as the priest who once helped you did,’ the Mother Superior reminded him.

‘Damn it,’ Diego growled. It was true that if Father Vincenzi had not been brave enough to accept the role of chaplain at the violent prison where Diego had been an inmate he might still be rotting in a cell, or dead. Who was he to argue with what the English nun clearly believed was her religious duty?

‘All right. I’ll take you. But don’t say I didn’t warn you that Torrente is no place for innocents. We’ll leave straight away and if we’re lucky we might beat the bad weather.’

‘Thank you.’ Her smile was angelic and Diego felt a strange sensation in his chest as if a hand was squeezing his heart. His gaze dropped once more to the outline of her pert breasts and he felt as though another part of his anatomy was being squeezed! He’d obviously gone too long without sex, he thought derisively. When he went back to Rio he would remedy the situation and visit one of his casual mistresses, many of whom were dancers who worked at his nightclub.

His life as a wealthy entrepreneur was very different from the poverty and deprivation he had endured as a child, Diego mused. His mother had been a drug addict, and most of the time she’d been incapable of taking care of her son. From a young age, Diego had been left to roam the dark alleyways of the favela. He had witnessed things that no child should see, and sometimes when he’d felt really scared he’d taken shelter at his friend Cruz Delgado’s home. By the time he was a teenager he had become hardened to the grim realities of life in a slum, but one night he had found his mother being beaten by her drug dealer because she did not have enough money to pay him, and Diego had lost his temper—with catastrophic results.

Deus, don’t go there! He jerked his mind away from the dark pit of his past and glanced towards the Mother Superior, who had gone back inside the convent and now returned carrying a crate filled with bottles of drinking water. ‘You’ll need to take plenty of fluids with you for the trip,’ she said.

Diego preferred a stronger kind of liquid refreshment, but he shrugged. ‘Pack the water in the back of the Jeep,’ he told Sister Clare, ‘while I check over the engine.’

* * *

Clare’s hands were shaking as she gripped the crate of water bottles, and her legs felt so wobbly that when she climbed into the back of the Jeep she sank on to her knees, overcome with relief that she had persuaded the prospector to drive her to Torrente. She was a vital step closer to rescuing Becky. Her heart was beating painfully hard in her chest, but not only from fear of what lay ahead when she met the kidnappers.

When the Mother Superior had said the gold prospector was a womaniser, Clare had visualised the slimeball taxi driver who had flirted with her when he had driven her to the convent. She could not have been more wrong! Diego Cazorra was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. Working for her parents’ modelling agency meant that she had met hundreds of good-looking guys, but none, including Mark, came close to the smoulderingly sexy Brazilian.

She studied him through the window of the Jeep. The first thing that had struck her about him was his height. He was several inches over six feet tall, lean-hipped, his long legs encased in faded denim jeans, which he wore with calf-length leather boots. His broad shoulders and powerful pectoral muscles were clearly defined beneath his tight-fitting black T-shirt.

The biggest surprise was when he had removed his hat and revealed an unruly mass of streaked dark blond hair that reached to below his collar. His European appearance was further enhanced by his silvery-grey eyes and sculpted features: razor-edged cheekbones and a square jaw covered by several days’ growth of blond stubble. Add to that a blatantly sensual mouth and a wicked glint in his eyes when his gaze had lingered on her breasts that had made Clare feel flustered.

He was a fallen angel and he oozed sex appeal from every pore, but she was horrified by her reaction to the prospector when her thoughts should be totally focused on Becky. Even if Sister Ann hadn’t warned her that he was a womaniser, she would have guessed as much from the way he had eyed her up as if he was imagining her without any clothes on. She could still feel a tingling sensation in her breasts and was thankful that the stiff serge fabric of her nun’s habit disguised the hard points of her nipples. Suddenly the Mother Superior’s advice to travel to Torrente in the guise of a nun seemed a good idea. She could not afford any distractions.

The slam of the Jeep’s bonnet made Clare jump and she looked around for somewhere to store the bottles of water. There were no seats in the back of the Jeep, just a bench running down one side, a camping stove and cooking equipment and a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags. The Jeep was basic, but as long as it got her to Torrente she didn’t care that it promised to be an uncomfortable ride.

The storage area behind the front seats already contained a large crate of beers. She moved the crate over to make room for the water bottles and discovered a pile of books and, out of curiosity, she glanced at the titles and was surprised to see her favourite novel, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. There were a number of other classic novels by Orwell, Steinbeck and Tolstoy. She would not have guessed that the tough gold prospector’s choice of reading material included Anna Karenina, the iconic tale of doomed love—which just went to prove the adage that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, she mused, as she flipped through a well-thumbed book of poetry by John Keats before replacing it where she had found it.

The prospector called her, sounding impatient. ‘Are you holding a prayer meeting back there? Let’s go, Sister.’

Clare hurried round to the front of the Jeep and her heart gave a painful lurch when she realised that the briefcase containing the ransom money was no longer where she had left it on the floor of the courtyard.

‘Where is my case?’ she demanded in a panic-stricken voice.

‘I put it on the front seat.’ The prospector gave her a curious look. ‘Take it easy. What are you carrying in that case that is so valuable—the Crown Jewels?’ he asked in a teasing voice.

Five hundred thousand pounds to save her sister’s life. Clare swallowed. ‘Books for the Sunday school.’ Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Sister Ann had given her a few prayer books to take to Father Roberto, the priest in Torrente.

She was relieved to see the briefcase in the front of the Jeep. There was no elegant way of climbing up into the cab. She hitched her nun’s habit up to her knees so that she could put her foot on to the step, and gave a startled gasp when two hands gripped her waist and the prospector lifted her off the ground.

For a few breathless seconds she was aware of the strength of his arms around her and the imprint of his fingers burned through the stiff fabric of her clothes and set her skin on fire. The scent of sandalwood cologne mixed with his musky maleness stirred her senses, and she felt an inexplicable urge to turn her head and press her lips against the blond stubble on his jaw.

‘Thank you, Mr Cazorra,’ she mumbled as he plonked her on to the passenger seat. Her face felt hot with embarrassment that he might have guessed her thoughts.

‘Any time,’ he said laconically. ‘My name’s Diego. We’re going to be spending the next forty-eight hours together so let’s drop the formality.’

‘Forty-eight hours! Do you mean we won’t reach Torrente today?’ Clare stared at him and her stomach swooped as her eyes were drawn to the lazy curl of his smile. ‘Where will we spend tonight?’

‘I usually sleep in the back of the Jeep. Admittedly, it’s not very comfortable for someone of my height, but it does for a night or two.’

Clare pictured herself and the prospector squashed into the small space and her heart gave a painful jolt. ‘I can’t sleep in the Jeep with you.’

Diego silently acknowledged the truth of her statement. There was only one reason he would spend a night with a woman and it certainly wasn’t to sleep. Various inappropriate thoughts had run through his mind when he had lifted Sister Clare into the Jeep. His hands had almost spanned her tiny waist and he had been aware of the gentle flare of her hips and the swell of her breasts. He guessed that beneath the voluminous folds of her nun’s habit she had the curvaceous figure of a Pocket Venus, but he would have to curb his imagination or spend the five-hundred-mile journey to Torrente in his current uncomfortable state of arousal.

‘There is a settlement on the way to Torrente where we’ll stop tonight. The villagers offer basic accommodation for tourists who want to explore the rainforest.’

He started the engine and Sister Ann spoke to Clare. ‘Good luck, my dear. I will pray for your safekeeping and for your soul.’

As the Jeep turned out of the convent grounds Clare was gripped with apprehension that soon she would meet the kidnappers. She felt sad to be leaving the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, knowing she was unlikely to meet them again.

‘Good luck?’ Diego questioned. ‘Torrente must be an even worse place than it was the last time I visited the town if the Mother Superior needs to pray for you while you teach at the Sunday school.’

He glanced at his passenger and wondered why she blushed. The soft stain of colour on her face emphasised the delicate lines of her cheekbones and made her look even lovelier. But something about the situation didn’t feel right. He had an antenna for trouble, honed during his years living in the favela and the time he had spent in prison. His experiences of life had turned him into a cynic, he acknowledged. What could be suspect about a young nun who was as pure and beautiful as an English rose?

‘It was a figure of speech.’ Sister Clare turned her guileless blue eyes to him. ‘I’m sure Sister Ann prays for all souls, even yours, Mr Cazorra.’

He dismissed his strange feeling that she was not what she seemed and grinned. ‘Heck, that’s going to take a lot of prayers.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u1b601c10-3384-59a0-b683-cc59244c9b7a)

CLARE WAS DETERMINED not to respond to the gold prospector’s undeniable charisma. She looked away from his toe-tingling smile to focus on the road ahead. The highway was signposted to Boa Vista, which she remembered from the map was in the far north of Brazil, but soon they turned off the main road on to a dirt track.

‘There are no paved roads going west,’ Diego explained. ‘Most people who want to visit the towns along the border with Colombia and Peru travel by boat on the Rio Negro.’

‘Why didn’t we take a boat instead of driving?’

‘The river narrows as it flows into Torrente, making it easy for the drug lords to control the area. There’s an airstrip at the edge of the town which they also control. Travelling by Jeep means I can go where I like and, more importantly, I can leave whenever I want to.’

Clare’s heart plummeted at the news that criminals controlled the air and river routes into and out of Torrente. Once she had paid the ransom money she hoped to get Becky to safety as quickly as possible. She wondered if she should tell the prospector the real reason she was going to the town and maybe he would agree to bring her and Becky back to Manaus. But, although Sister Ann had said he was trustworthy, Clare was afraid to trust anyone apart from the nuns who had helped her.

She thought of her father back in London. Rory Marchant would be desperately waiting for news of Becky but trying to pretend to his wife that there was nothing wrong. Tammi Marchant was only in her early fifties, but a year ago she had suffered a stroke that had left her partially paralysed. It broke Clare’s heart to see her once vibrant and still beautiful mother now so fragile. Her father had insisted on caring full-time for his wife and had handed the running of A-Star PR over to Clare.

It had been a daunting task to take charge of the agency, but Clare had risen to the challenge. She’d enjoyed developing her PR skills and had discovered a natural talent for devising advertising campaigns. At least being busy meant she’d had no time to brood over her break-up with Mark. Her mother’s illness and her father’s devoted care of his wife had shown her that she wanted a marriage as strong as her parents’ relationship, and she was prepared to hold out until she met a man she could love and trust with all her heart.

The one positive thing was that recently she had felt a deepening bond with her father as they’d shared looking after Tammi and discussed business together. For the first time in her life she sensed that her father was as proud of her as he was of her sister. Of course she was not in the same league as Becky, who was one of the world’s most sought-after models, but it made a nice change to realise that being the brainy daughter rather than the beautiful one wasn’t such a bad thing.

It was likely that Becky’s fame and high profile were the reasons she had been targeted by the kidnappers. Perhaps they had tied Becky up—or worse, Clare thought sickly, as she remembered the severed piece of earlobe the kidnappers had sent her.

She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. Allowing her imagination to run away with her would not help Becky. In an attempt to take her mind off the situation she searched for a topic of conversation.

‘What exactly does a gold prospector do? I mean, I realise that you search for gold, but there must be more to it than that.’

‘Actually, it’s pretty much as you described. I take my metal detector to areas where I think there might be gold deposits.’

‘But how do you know where to start looking?’