Frowning now, Senhor Estes dropped the nail file to pick up his pen and scrawl a few terse notes on the file open in front of him. The indication that those few notes represented a black mark against Anton showed in the way with which the words were underscored.
‘Obrigado, José. You will maintain your observation and keep me informed.’
With a nod, José left the office, and Senhor Estes withdrew a sealed envelope from the file. The envelope was addressed to Cristina Ordoniz.
Cats set among pigeons, Javier mused, invariably caused mayhem…
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUIS was sitting at the conference table, attempting to concentrate on the information being fed to him. His two executives kept looking at him oddly when they constantly had to repeat themselves. He didn’t blame them for the odd looks. He felt odd, enlivened and distracted, too damn sexually aware that Cristina was on the other side of that door over there.
The telephone by his elbow began to ring. Remembering that Kinsella was not in the outer office to intercept all calls because he’d sent her to the bank to pick up some documents, he reached out and picked up the phone.
‘Scott-Lee,’ he announced himself briskly.
‘At last!’ Maximilian rasped down the line at him. ‘Where the hell have you been, Anton? I’ve been trying to contact you all damn day!’
Tensing up at the urgency in his uncle’s voice, Luis flicked a quick frowning dismissal at the two other men. ‘Why? What’s wrong, Max? Has something happened to my mother?’
‘You could say that,’ the older man answered dryly. ‘She’s on her way to Rio,’ he warned his nephew. ‘Should be setting down at the airport as we speak.’
‘Coming here? What for?’
‘To put a stop to this crazy marriage you are planning, of course. What else?’
His marriage? ‘How the hell did she find out about it so quickly?’ he demanded incredulously.
‘Far be it from me to want to put a spoke in Maria’s plans, Anton—I adore that woman like she was my own sister, and I have no wish to see you throw yourself away on some gold-digging widow—but—’
Anton stiffened like a board. ‘Watch your mouth, Max,’ he warned thinly.
‘You mean this woman is not the widow of Vaasco Ordoniz?’
Anton did not answer that. Something else far more disturbing had grabbed his attention. ‘You know Vaasco Ordoniz,’ he declared in a driven undertone. It had been right there in Max’s tone.
‘I’m not getting into that one,’ Max refused. ‘That’s up to your mother.’
His mother knew Cristina’s late husband?
‘But I will tell you this,’ Max continued. ‘There is something going on within the ranks of your team that quite frankly stinks. And, love Maria though I do, I refuse to stand back and watch while you are stitched up by some jumped up little secretary who is paid to keep her mouth shut about your movements, not ring up your mother with all the gory details. I mean, how can a man have a private life if some—?’
‘What are you talking about, Max?’ Anton thrust furiously into this bewildering tirade.
There was a moment’s silence while his uncle absorbed that fury. Then he said, very seriously. ‘Kinsella Lane rang your mother yesterday to inform her of your intention to marry the Ordoniz widow. Your mother reacted like a demented chicken and caught the next flight she could get on to Rio.’
Anton swore soundly.
‘Maria has taken a suite on the floor below yours, Anton. And the very helpful Miss Lane arranged it.’
Kinsella had done all this behind his back? Anton was stunned and shattered.
‘I’ve been ringing you on and off all day, trying to warn you about this—did the secretary tell you? I bet she didn’t. I can read the tone of a machinating woman from thousands of miles away, and that one is dangerous. Do yourself a big favour and get rid of her. She’s a risk to your security.’
Anton eventually put down the phone on a string of tight curses. His mind was whirling at the flood of information his uncle had just fed into it. Kinsella had been passing on personal information about him to his own mother of all people? How had she got that information? Nobody attached to his entourage knew anything about his plans to marry Cristina! How had she heard, seen, picked up anything? Unless—
He remembered the file from his investigator, which he’d placed in the safe yesterday. Kinsella had been irritating the hell out of him since they’d arrived here in Rio, and Cristina had accused him of keeping Kinsella around as a lover within minutes of clapping eyes on her. He’d flicked the remarks away as unimportant when any man with sense knew he should never dismiss the uncanny power of the female instinct when it sensed a rival in its presence.
Had his not very private secretary been snooping where she should not look? Found out all she needed to know about Cristina and then calmly called up his mother to relay the information to her?
His mother.
His mind flipped to the next pending crisis. Reaching out, he snatched up the phone to ring down to Reception and find out the expected time of arrival of Maria Scott-Lee. The inner curses became progressively more colourful as that conversation was concluded.
Then he pulled himself together and stood for a few minutes, grimly sorting his priorities into some kind of order. By the time he’d done that he’d turned into the ice man.
As Cristina was the first to see.
He entered the bedroom like a bullet, strode up to where she was standing, staring out of the window, caught hold of her hand before she barely had a chance to turn round, and just hauled her out of the suite.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ she demanded as he tugged her inside the lift.
Swinging her into the far corner, he pinned her there with a hand pressed against the wall at either side of her startled face.
‘Why did you marry him?’ he delivered.
Cristina blinked, taken aback by the question. Then her eyes hooded over. ‘I have told you before. I will not discuss that with you.’
‘Why not?’
Folding her arms across her front, she stared down at her shoes and pinned her lips shut.
‘He was wealthy when you met him,’ Anton persisted. ‘He only started gambling the money away after you came into his life. Could the gambling have had something to do with the fact that you conveniently failed to give him a son?’
Cristina went as white as a sheet, but still refused to react in any other way.