‘It was exactly like that!’
Meu Dues, Cristina closed her eyes—because he was right, it had been just like that. ‘If you will just listen to me for a moment, I can explain—’
‘You know what?’ He unclipped his fingers from her shoulders. ‘I don’t want you to explain. Your reasons no longer interest me. You owe me. I’m collecting—on my terms.’
He turned back to his drink.
‘Terms I cannot deliver.’
He twisted round again. ‘My terms,’ he repeated hardly. ‘As in you as my wife, my willing sex slave and the mother of my child.’ He spelled it out yet again. ‘In return you get your precious Santa Rosa, gift-wrapped, with all debts cleared. Fair exchange, in my view.’
‘Or a choice that is no choice,’ she murmured indistinctly.
‘Which means…?’
Which means…She was feeling so very cold now that she had to wrap her arms around herself. ‘I will marry you,’ she said.
There was a single second of total silence. A long, sharp needlepoint second when he stared at her as though he could not believe she had surrendered at last.
Then, ‘Say it again,’ he instructed. ‘And this time say it much clearer, so there can be no more misunderstanding. Because this is it, Cristina. Your last chance. I am not playing any more games here. So say it loud and clear so I know that you mean it.’
‘You will regret it,’ she whispered.
‘Say it,’ he repeated.
‘All right!’ she flashed at him, and in true Cristina style she rose to her surrender with the proud lift of her chin. Silky black hair went spiralling back from her narrow shoulders, her eyes flashing his coldly ruthless and unremitting face a look of burning contempt.
‘I will hate you, Luis, for treating me like this and making me behave like a whore,’ she told him. ‘I hate you already, for your threats and your blackmail and your thirst for revenge that makes you want to treat me this way. But I will marry you,’ she repeated clearly, as instructed. ‘I will sell myself to you like a whore in the marketplace in exchange for Santa Rosa—and when you discover how empty your revenge cup will be I will stand like this in front of you and laugh in your face!’
Luis moved without warning. She was trembling and panting so badly by the time she had finished that she just didn’t see him coming, and before she knew it she was somehow plastered to his front.
Her stomach flipped. ‘No,’ she protested.
‘Say that again in thirty seconds,’ he challenged, and delivered his mouth to hers with a lip-crushing deep-tongued kiss.
Cristina did not need those thirty seconds. She did not need even ten to reduce to such a melting, boneless mass of quivering compliance that she couldn’t think of anything else. She was useless, lost, his eager plaything. Her mouth clung to his mouth; her fingers clung to his head.
Then it stopped. Why it stopped she had no comprehension. It took more seconds than it had taken her to sink into it to float back out of it again.
‘Great way to hate, querida,’ his husky voice taunted. ‘It excites the hell out of me, anyway…’
It was like being smashed when he’d already broken her. On a pained little whimper she pulled herself free and ran for the bedroom.
Anton winced as the door landed in its housing. He spun around and snatched up his drink, downed it, then went to pour another one—only to stop himself when he realised what he was doing, and stare grimly into the bottom of his empty glass instead.
He’d got what he wanted from her, so why wasn’t he feeling better about it? Why was he standing here feeling as if he’d just lost something vital instead?
Her face. It had been the look on her face when she’d finally accepted there was no other way out for her. She called it hate; he called it—pain.
Why pain? He slammed the empty glass down, because he suddenly remembered that he had seen that look once before—six years ago, when she’d sliced him to pieces with her rejection. Had the scorn she’d used to do it been masking pain then, only he had been too blind to see it?
Oh, stop looking for excuses for her, he told himself angrily. He did not understand her. Thinking about it, he never had understood what really made Cristina tick.
What was it about her that she could make out that she despised him with all she had in her, yet fall apart in his arms without much of a sign that she had any control over what she did?
The buzz words were Santa Rosa, he reminded himself. Not him. Not the sex. Santa Rosa.
The bedroom door suddenly flew open. Cristina was standing there like a wild thing. He felt his body respond with enough heat to set him on fire.
‘You can tell that manic secretary that your affair with her is over!’ she tossed at him.
‘You are in no position to bargain,’ he threw back. ‘Just think of Santa Rosa and I’m sure you will get over her presence in my life.’
The door slammed shut again. On a tight curse Anton turned and poured himself that second drink. Then he laughed—he laughed!
God, there was no other person alive on this earth who could arouse him to just about every emotion going.
He put down the glass because he discovered that he suddenly did not need the whisky. Still trying to control the smile, he headed for the conference room instead, where a full day’s business awaited his attention. Where the hell he had got the idea that he could come to Brazil and play the hotshot banker and deal with Cristina he would never know.
While Anton was trying his best to lose himself in business matters, in a very sedate, very upmarket office in another part of Rio, an old man with white hair and immaculate grooming sat carefully filing his nails while he listened to the report being relayed to him by an unassuming young man with the unassuming name of José Paranhos.
Until now Senhor Javier Estes had been quietly satisfied with the information being relayed to him. All, it seemed, was going to plan. Senhor Scott-Lee had taken up the challenge, and the object of that challenge was making it difficult enough to keep him dancing on his toes. He’d even smiled when he heard that Cristina had spent the night with Scott-Lee in his suite.
It was the next part that lost Senhor Estes his smile and sharpened his attention. ‘Say that again?’ He prompted confirmation. ‘This woman accosted Senhorita Marques as she was exiting the elevator?’
José nodded. ‘Senhorita Lane was very angry and very unpleasant,’ the younger man expressed. ‘She claimed that she and Senhor Scott-Lee are lovers and that they had slept together only the night before. Naturally, Senhorita Marques was upset.’ He went on to relay what else the secretary had thrown at Cristina.