Cristina turned and nodded. ‘Then keep them hanging on for their—little while,’ she instructed. ‘And I will make one last plea to the banks for help.’
‘You have done this several times already.’
‘And I will do it as many times as it takes until time runs out for me.’
‘It is running out, Cristina,’ Rodrigo said heavily. ‘The wolves are already baying at your door.’
‘I must still keep trying.’ Dark eyes and soft mouth firm in their stubbornness, Cristina turned back to the window. Behind her, Rodrigo studied her too-slender figure with a kind of pained exasperation tinged with genuine but useless respect.
She was beautiful—exquisite—the kind of woman who at only twenty-five years old should have had the whole world lying at her feet. Indeed, she had once been that favoured person.
Then something had happened in this house to make her run away, and she had not been heard of again for over a year. When she eventually had come back she’d been a different person, hardened and cold, as if someone had snuffed out the burning light that had made her the wildly beautiful creature she had once been. She’d walked back into this house and within weeks out of it again, as the wife of Vaasco Ordoniz, a man as old as the father who had happily sold her to him.
For the next year she had lived in Rio as a rich old man’s beautiful ornament. She’d outfaced her critics and their bitching cruelty without a hint of her true feelings showing on her face. When Ordoniz had taken sick and retired from society to his isolated ranch he’d taken Cristina with him, and neither had been seen or heard of for the next two years. Then Ordoniz had died, and the mocking laughter had truly been heard when it had come to light that he’d been quietly gambling his wealth away, leaving his fortune-chasing wife so penniless she’d had to move back to her father’s house to become unpaid servant and nurse to yet another sick, money-squandering old man.
Yet her stubborn chin had never faltered. Those beautiful eyes had always looked out on life with defiance and pride. Rodrigo admired her for those things and respected her refusal to give up on life no matter how many bad things it threw at her.
‘Okay, we will give it one more try,’ he heard himself utter, and wondered straight away if he was being cruel to offer her a small chink of light? ‘I think we will enlist some help this time. Gabriel knows all the right people.’ He did not add that his son had already been approached by some anonymous businessman looking for new investment in Brazil. Rodrigo did not want to raise her hopes. ‘Gabriel just might be able to get you a hearing with those who would not listen to you before.’
Still, when Cristina turned to look at him, her hopes were already rising in the new shine in her eyes.
Rodrigo heaved a sigh. ‘Gabriel might run in the right circles, Cristina, but money men are notoriously ruthless. They will not invest in you without demanding something solid back in return.’
CHAPTER TWO
ANTON saw him as he was crossing the hotel foyer, and on a single heavy thump of a heartbeat he came to an abrupt halt.
It had been happening a lot since he’d been told he had two half-brothers out there. He would glimpse a man with dark hair, or with something about his physical appearance that reminded him of himself, and this thump at his heart would stop him in his tracks.
It was the not knowing that made it impossible to deal with—the deep-boned fear that he could be standing right next to his own flesh and blood and not have a single clue.
He hated it. He hated this sudden leap his heart would make just before the thick sinking rush that paralysed him.
And the need—he hated feeling this need he hadn’t known was there until he’d received that damn—
‘Anton…?’
Kinsella’s questioning prompt jolted him back to his surroundings. The stranger had gone, disappearing into one of the lounge bars and out of Anton’s sphere of temptation to just go up to him and ask outright if his father had been a rich polo-playing Brazilian who’d left bastard byeblows in just about every port!
Anger set him moving again, though it did not show on his face. They hit the lifts, four of them in all, the two junior executives looking limp with jet-lag while Kinsella, his new personal secretary, who had only recently been promoted through the Scott-Lee ranks, still looked as smooth and fresh as she had all day.
Anton glanced at her and she thoroughly jolted him by offering him one of those smiles that said I’m available if you want me. She was a great-looking blue-eyed blonde, with the kind of figure guaranteed to fire up most men’s heat. Until now she’d been good to have around because she was easy on the eye and her secretarial skills were unquestionable—but sex with the boss as a sideline?
He lowered his eyes and pretended he had not noticed the invitation—or the sudden tension that leapt around the confines of the lift. Apart from the unbroken rule that he never bedded his employees, he hadn’t wanted to touch a woman since the day when his life as he’d known it had been put to death.
The lift doors slid open. His two junior executives quickly stepped out into the corridor, eager to find their rooms, but Kinsella left it a couple of telling seconds longer before she did the same.
Once again Anton ignored the little hesitation. Eyes half hidden behind the low sweep of his eyelashes he said, ‘Get some food inside you, then sleep off the jet-lag. I’ll see you all for breakfast in my suite at seven-thirty prompt.’
The boss playing the boss, he noted wryly, as three heads nodded, getting the message, one looking faintly flushed now. Serves you right, Kinsella, he thought, without a twinge of regret.
‘Goodnight,’ he said, and the lift doors slid shut across their three murmured replies.
Anton yawned, stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and leant back against the lift wall as it took him up to the penthouse suite on the top floor, where not only did he get the best in accommodation that was available, but he also got adjoining offices and a conference room in which most of his business day would be spent.
He preferred working from his hotel when he made an unannounced spot-check on one of his international branches. That way he could sweep into the bank and take everyone by surprise, so that they did not have time to pull any cover-ups. He would then put every department head through a major grilling before sweeping out again, with his entourage in tow, and returning to his hotel to hold his post mortem, leaving his quivering staff to recover from the fallout of his unexpected invasion. They would call him a few tasty names to each other, enjoy a collective sigh of relief that he’d gone. Then they would start urgently boning up on what they’d thought they knew inside out but, after one of Anton’s interrogating sessions, had now realised they knew nothing at all.