Mistress of La Rioja

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘I know very few facts. Just that she was in a car crash. I was too…too shocked to ask for any details, I guess.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Her husband, Luis—he rang me from Spain to tell me.’

He frowned. ‘That’s the millionaire guy—the one you can’t stand?’

‘That’s the one,’ she said tightly, thinking how much more complex the truth was than a simple case of not being able to stand the man.

‘And when’s the funeral?’

‘Monday. I’m flying out on Sunday.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, Liam, I don’t know if I can bear it.’

He nodded understandingly. ‘Well, it’ll be hard, but at least after that you need never meet again.’

Sophie shook her head. ‘But it isn’t that easy. I wish it was. I can’t just spirit Luis out of my life, however much I might want to. Don’t forget—he’s the father of my nephew, and I feel I owe it to Miranda, and to Teodoro…’ The words seemed to come from an unknown place deep inside her. ‘To fight for him.’

Liam stared at her. ‘Fight for him?’ he echoed. ‘You surely don’t mean you’re going to apply for custody, Sophie? You wouldn’t stand a hope in hell. Not if he’s as rich and as powerful as you say he is. And he is the father.’

Tiredly, Sophie rubbed at her temples. ‘I don’t know what I mean—other than knowing I have to get out there. To let Teo know that he has relatives, and that we care.’

‘And once the funeral is over? Will you come straight back?’

She met his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I can’t commit to a time scale. But I’ll still be able to do some work— I can always use my laptop, and you’ll be able to manage here without me for a bit, won’t you?’

‘Of course we can manage,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll just miss you, that’s all.’

‘Thanks,’ she whispered, and, gulping back more tears, she began to pack her briefcase.

She and Liam went way back.

They had met at university and discovered a shared sense of humour coupled with an ambition to make lots of money while having fun. Which had been how the Hollingsworth-Mills advertising agency had come about. Now they were tipped for the top. A combination of enthusiasm and employing bright young staff with similar high-reaching goals meant that Sophie and Liam were poised on the brink of unforeseen success.

But what did any of that matter at a time like this?

Feeling too shaky to drive safely, she took the train to Norfolk, her heart weeping for her grandmother as she walked up the path of her Norfolk country cottage, where she and Miranda had spent part of their school holidays, every summer without fail. They had walked for miles on the vast, empty beaches which were close by, and climbed trees and fed the fat ducks on the pond with pieces of bread.

And Sophie had watched as Miranda’s beauty had become something more than breathtaking. Had seen for herself the bewitching power which that beauty gave her over men…

She rang the old-fashioned jingly-jangly doorbell, praying for the right words to tell her grandmother what had happened, and knowing that there were none which would not hurt.

But Felicity Mills was almost eighty, and there was little of life she hadn’t seen. She took one look at Sophie’s face. ‘It’s bad news,’ she said flatly.

‘Yes. It’s Miranda—’

‘She’s dead,’ said her grandmother woodenly. ‘Isn’t she?’

‘How? How could you possibly have known that?’ Sophie whispered, much later, when tears had been shed and they had sought some kind of comfort in old photographs of Miranda as a baby, then a sunny toddler and every other stage through to stunning bride. But Sophie hadn’t wanted to linger on that photo—not when the dark face of Luis mocked her and stung her guilty conscience. ‘How?’ she asked again.

‘I can’t explain it,’ sighed her grandmother. ‘I just looked into your face and I knew. And, in a way, there was a dreadful inevitability about it. Miranda always flew too close to the sun. One day she was bound to get burned.’

‘But how can you be so accepting?’

‘How can I not? I have lived through war, my darling. You have to accept what you cannot change.’

She squeezed the old woman’s hand. ‘Is there—is there anything I can do for you, Granny?’

There was a long silence and Mrs Mills stared at her. ‘There is one thing—but it may not be possible. I’m too old and too frail to fly to Spain for the funeral—but I should like to see Teodoro again before I die.’

Sophie swallowed down the lump in her throat. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask—even of Luis— not under these circumstances. ‘Then I’ll br-bring him to you,’ she promised shakily. ‘I promise.’

‘But Luis might not allow it.’

Sophie’s eyes glimmered with unshed tears. ‘He must, Granny—he must!’

‘It is a big favour to ask him. Tread carefully, Sophie—you know how fiercely possessive he is about his son and you know the kind of man you’re dealing with,’ her grandmother added drily. ‘You know his reputation. Few would dare to cross him.’

‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that,’ said Sophie, then stared up at her grandmother, her eyes confused.

‘Don’t you hate him, Granny? For making Miranda so unhappy?’

‘Happiness is not the gift of one person to another,’ answered her grandmother slowly. ‘It takes two people to be happy. And hate is such a waste of emotion—and a total waste of time. What good would be served if I hated the father of my great-grandson?’

But if Sophie took hate out of the equation, then what did that leave her with? An overpowering attraction which she prayed had weakened with the passing of time.

All she wanted was to have grown immune to his powerful presence and his dark, unforgettable face. After all, she hadn’t seen him since just after Teodoro’s baptism, a year ago, when they had brought the baby over to England.

Sophie had deliberately kept her distance from Luis, although she’d been able to feel those steely dark eyes watching her as she moved around the room. She’d wondered if he had broken his wedding vows yet, and when she’d had a moment had asked her cousin if anything was wrong, but Miranda had just shrugged her bare brown shoulders.

‘Oh, Luis should have married a docile little Spanish girl who didn’t want to set foot outside the door,’ she had said bitterly. ‘It seems that he can’t cope with a wife who doesn’t whoop for joy because she happens to live in the back of beyond.’

And Sophie had directed a look of icy-blue fire across the room at Luis, meeting nothing but cold mockery in return.

Sophie’s plane touched down in Pamplona in the still blazing heat of an early Spanish evening and she hurried through Customs, her eyes scanning the arrivals bay, expecting to see a driver holding a card aloft with her name on it, but it took all of two seconds to see the tall and distinctive figure waiting there.

And one second to note the hard and glittering black eyes, the unsmiling mouth and the shuttered features. He was taller than every other man there, and his face still drew the eyes of women like a magnet. No, he hadn’t changed, and Sophie’s heart gave a violent and unwelcome lurch.

He stood in the crowd and yet he stood alone.

It seemed that Don Luis de la Camara had come to collect her in person.

CHAPTER TWO (#u613beb7f-7dda-5a24-8175-6f00e10d36b8)

LUIS watched as Sophie walked through the arrivals lounge, unsmilingly observing the heads which turned to follow her as she walked, though she herself seemed completely oblivious of it. But of course she had the fair skin and hair which made the hearts of most male Spaniards melt, though none of the deliberately provocative style of her cousin.

He felt his pulse quicken and his blood thicken as she made her way towards him, her light cotton dress defining her slender legs and such delicate ankles that he was surprised they could support her weight at all. He remembered the very first time he had seen her, when she had captured his imagination with her natural beauty and grace, and such completely unselfconscious sexuality.