At The Spaniard's Pleasure. JACQUELINE BAIRD
He was smiling down at her like a long-lost friend, and somehow it didn’t ring true. A vulture about to pick her bones was more likely, she thought drily.
‘Well, Niculoso, fancy meeting you here,’ she said coolly, her mind spinning. ‘I thought you lived in Antequera.’
‘My mother still does. But I am a big boy now, Liza. I left home years ago,’ he drawled mockingly, and finally sat down beside her. He was big and he was more striking than ever, she realised, her skin breaking out in goose-pimples as his arm accidentally brushed hers.
‘As, I believe, did you after university,’ Nick continued, apparently casually. A large hand reached out and covered her much smaller one resting on the table, and to her amazement something akin to an electric shock sizzled up her arm. ‘My mother speaks about you often and it is really good to see you again,’ he said and squeezed her hand.
Good to see her! He had to be kidding… He could not stand the sight of her… Liza felt the colour rise in her cheeks. She had told herself she hated him for years and yet incredibly his touch sent a frisson of excitement flooding through her. Her stunned blue gaze clashed with deep dark brown—was it sincerity she saw in their depths? Never in a million years… She wasn’t falling for his Latin charm ever again. ‘Yes. Well…’ she murmured inconsequentially.
‘Forgive me for surprising you. I caught a glimpse of you and could not believe my eyes. You have developed into a stunning woman, Liza.’
Niculoso Menendez giving her a compliment! He had to be joking after the scathing things he had said about her in the past. ‘Thank you, I think,’ she said with a trace of sarcasm. She pulled her hand free from beneath his and lowered her eyes from his too astute gaze.
Liza remembered all too well every second of their encounter in the stable years ago.
After dispensing with the stable boy, Nick had hauled her hard against him and kissed her savagely, and to her undying shame she had responded in a way she had never imagined in her wildest dreams, clinging to him like a limpet. Then he had shoved her back into the stall, and insolently touched her tight breasts, and completely humiliated her. His words were engraved on her brain.
‘My God! A stable boy! How wrong I was about you. For two years I have watched you flirt and flaunt yourself around me. I thought it was innocent, a young girl learning the power of her emerging sexuality. But you obviously know it all, have done it all. You’re nothing but a cheap slut.’
The memory still had the power to hurt, but Liza drew some consolation from the fact that, young as she was, at least she’d had the sense to slap his arrogant face.
Nick leant back in his seat and eyed the woman before him. She had been a delightful, impulsive child, a thorn in his flesh as a very independent, precocious teenager, and a bitter disappointment to him when he’d found her cavorting with the stable boy. But she had developed into an exquisitely beautiful woman, and he didn’t like the way she still affected him after years of blanking her from his mind. His gut reaction last night when he’d realised she was involved had been to protect her any way he could, and the strength of his own feeling had surprised him.
But he was no fool; she had inherited her mother’s features and pale, almost translucent skin, and at the moment the red tinge to her cheeks and the evasive look in her brilliant blue eyes told him she was as guilty as hell about something. Whether it was because she was involved in the theft of the diamonds or not he did not know, but he was determined to find out for Carl’s sake.
‘I can see life has been good to you, Liza,’ Nick opined, his dark eyes sweeping over her face and lower to the soft curve of her breasts with blatant male appreciation. ‘It is great to see you happy and on holiday.’
‘Yes, well, the sunshine is a treat in the winter,’ Liza offered lightly. She was older and wiser now, and not prepared to accept his friendly overtures so easily.
Nick’s gaze narrowed intently on her lovely face, and he saw the swift tightening of her luscious lips; she was being evasive—hardly the reaction of an innocent, he was forced to conclude. ‘You are on holiday?’ he queried, pressing on in an attempt to discover exactly what Liza knew. ‘Or is it business? It has been so long since we last saw each other, I have no idea what you are up to now.’ For a fleeting moment he was tempted to ask, A bit of diamond-smuggling, perhaps, as my agency’s report implies? His lips twitched in the briefest smile at the thought.
The shock of meeting Niculoso Menendez was wearing off a little and, seeing his smile, Liza thought there was no harm in discussing her work. ‘I’m a PA for a director of a finance firm in London.’ It was a safe topic, and she told him the name of the firm. ‘As for this,’ she gestured with one hand around the bay, ‘it started out as a business trip to attend an environmental conference at Costa Teguise in the hope of investing in something green, I suppose, but surprisingly it has ended up as a holiday for me. My boss has a habit of changing his mind,’ Liza ended drily, something she was quickly discovering in the few weeks she had worked for Mr Brown.
She had arrived on the island yesterday with her boss. They were staying at a five-star hotel on the Costa Teguise to attend the two-week conference. But, after vanishing last night before dinner, Henry Brown had appeared this morning and informed her that, after reading the literature, the conference was of no importance to the firm.
Instead he had asked her to do him a favour and deliver a package to an opticians in Arrecife, the island’s capital, then take the rest of the time off. He told her she could stay in the hotel, as it was paid for, or go wherever she liked. Just to make sure she was around for the gala dinner on the final evening, and to take the flight back with him the day after.
He was going sailing, but would be back the morning of the gala. Plus, if his wife happened to call and catch Liza, Liza was to tell her he had been called away suddenly.
Liza had argued she was not prepared to lie to his wife, until he pointed out she was his PA now after four years of being the secretary to Mr Stubbs, who had recently retired. It was the first time she had travelled with him, and if she valued her job she had better get used to obeying his orders. Liza had a sneaky suspicion he had arranged the whole trip so he could slope off with his latest mistress.
Something green! Nick almost snorted. The only thing green Henry Brown was interested in was a green-back dollar… Liza could not be that naive…
‘Lucky for you,’ he prompted, his attitude towards her hardening. So she was not a complete liar, but she was extremely clever—enough of the truth mixed with fiction, Nick thought cynically, his dark eyes roaming once more over her face and body. He wondered if Liza was sleeping with her boss. She had been heading that way at sixteen, and he could not see any red-blooded male turning her down. Immediately he pushed the vaguely distasteful thought aside.
‘Yes,’ Liza agreed coolly. Henry Brown was supposedly a happily married man, but he had hit on her the first week she started work for the company, but, firmly rebuffed, he had accepted with good grace and over the years they had developed a formal working relationship.
Henry Brown was a charming rogue who was probably an asset in the world of venture capitalism, but not really husband material. Still, his private life was not her problem…she was not her boss’s moral guardian, she told herself firmly.
The waiter arrived with the coffee and Liza picked up the cup and took a sip of the aromatic brew. She could feel Nick’s dark gaze on her as the silence lengthened between them. But she saw no reason why she should carry the conversation. She had not instigated this meeting with him.
Twenty minutes ago, after delivering the package, she had sat down at this table, drunk a cup of coffee, and told herself she was going to enjoy the unexpected break. It was magic to be able to sit outside in the middle of January with the temperature a balmy seventy-eight degrees after the winter gloom she had left in England. Now she was not so sure… Suddenly it felt a whole lot warmer, and she set the coffee-cup down with a less than steady hand. She could not believe Nick was actually sitting beside her, and, worse, affecting her usual icy composure like no other man before.
‘I