Master Of Her Innocence
She had to be there on Sunday to pay Becky’s ransom. Clare remembered the instructions from the kidnappers to wait in a cave close to a waterfall just outside the town. She felt torn, knowing the gold prospector was right and they could not afford to be delayed. But she fervently believed that driving while under the influence of alcohol was wrong.
‘My aunt was killed by a drunk driver,’ she burst out. ‘Aunt Edith was knocked off her bicycle one Christmas Eve. The driver of the car who was responsible for her death was found to be three times over the legal alcohol limit.’
Diego squinted through the mud-smeared windscreen at the torrential rain. ‘I’m sorry about your aunt, but we’re unlikely to come across a cyclist in the middle of the rainforest.’ He looked at Clare, noting the stubborn set of her chin but also the faint quiver of her lower lip. She had the most beautiful eyes, twin sapphires that at this moment shimmered with a sheen of tears. ‘Damn it.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘All right,’ he muttered as he wound down the window and poured the beer on to the ground.
‘Satisfied?’ He glared at Clare as she silently handed him the keys.
The word hovered in the hot, humid atmosphere inside the Jeep as sexual tension exploded between them. Clare’s gaze locked with the prospector’s grey eyes. Satisfied made her think wanton thoughts and imagine how it would feel to be satisfied by him. With his rugged good looks and to-die-for body, he was every woman’s fantasy and, without consciously being aware of moving, she swayed towards him, her eyes unknowingly issuing an invitation as she moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
Seemingly in slow motion, he lowered his head until his face was so near to hers that she felt the whisper of his breath on her cheek. Another few centimetres and his mouth would brush across her lips. She held her breath, willing him, wanting him to kiss her.
Suddenly Becky’s face flashed into her mind. Dear heaven, what was she doing? Clare silently questioned. Self-disgust swept through her as she realised she had not given her sister a thought while she had been panting over the gold prospector.
She jerked away from him and inched across her seat until she could go no further and was pressed up against the door. ‘Please, can we continue our journey, Mr Cazorra?’ she said in a low voice.
For a moment she thought he was going to refuse. When she peeped at him she was shocked by the feral hunger that tautened his features and gave him a wolf-like appearance that was further enhanced by the hungry gleam in his eyes. She was relieved when he inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine.
Diego forced himself to concentrate on steering the Jeep around the rain-filled potholes. It was impossible to tell how deep the holes were and he wanted to avoid becoming stuck in the mud again at all costs. The quicker they got to Torrente and he could deliver his beautiful, infuriating passenger, the better it would suit him.
He glanced at her sitting primly beside him, her body hidden by her nun’s habit and her hair covered by her veil so that only her lovely face was visible. Her serene expression irked him. She was apparently unaffected by the fact that they had been a heartbeat away from kissing, while he was aware of a dull ache in his groin that felt as if he’d been kicked by a mule.
‘You seem to have trouble remembering my name, Sister Clare,’ he drawled. ‘I’ll remind you again. It’s Diego. If you call me Mr Cazorra once more, I might be tempted to assist your memory.’
‘Assist, how?’ Clare was curious, despite her determination to keep her distance from him, something that was difficult to do physically while they were cooped up in the Jeep. She was intensely aware of him every time he moved his arm to change gear, and when he took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, her fingers itched to brush back the dark blond strands that had fallen across his brow.
He took his eyes briefly from the road and sent her a smouldering glance that melted her insides. ‘I’ll have to kiss you until you have learned my name.’
CHAPTER THREE
HEAT SWEPT THROUGH Clare and she felt herself blush from the tips of her ears down to her toes as she visualised Diego carrying out his threat. This had to stop, she told herself firmly. She had come to Brazil for one reason only—to rescue Becky. She had no idea what kind of conditions her sister was being held in, but the severed piece of earlobe sent to her by the kidnappers made the situation very real and very dangerous. She could not allow herself to be distracted by the outrageously sexy man sitting beside her.
Unable to think of a suitable retort to what she assumed was his teasing remark, she turned her head to stare out of the window at the unending jungle. He would not really dare kiss her, she assured herself. But she remembered the Mother Superior’s warning about him being a womaniser and decided not to give him any opportunity to take liberties with her.
They had been driving for some while—Clare had been absorbed in her thoughts and had lost all track of time—when the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. The heat of the sun close to the equator caused the wet leaves to evaporate steam into the air so that the forest looked like a giant smoking cauldron. Even the huge puddles were steaming on the road that stretched ahead as far as the eye could see, like a giant brown snake wending through the green forest.
‘When was your aunt killed?’ Diego asked suddenly, his voice breaking the tense silence that had filled the Jeep for miles.
‘Almost two years ago.’ Clare remembered the cold grey day before Christmas when her mother had phoned to break the news that Aunt Edith had died after being knocked off her bike by a car. The fact that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident had only been revealed later at the inquest, and Clare had felt anger as well as grief that her aunt’s life had been ended by a thoughtless, selfish act.
It was hard to imagine that when she had left England three days ago the weather had, typically for November, been freezing cold with the promise of sleet, while in Brazil the temperature on the dashboard was showing thirty-seven degrees centigrade and the humidity was so high that Clare’s clothes were sticking to her.
‘The car driver said that he skidded on a patch of ice, but the police breathalysed him and found he was over the alcohol limit and shouldn’t have been driving,’ she said tautly. ‘My aunt was older than my parents, but she was fit and healthy until her life was cut short.’
‘You were obviously fond of her.’
It was strange how it was often the way that you didn’t appreciate what you had until it was gone, Clare mused. She missed Aunt Edith’s sensible advice and dry humour more than she would have believed.
‘I lived with her for part of my childhood.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘At the time I hated being packed off to her cottage in a remote Kent village while my parents remained at our home in London. It never occurred to me that my aunt might not have enjoyed having her life disrupted by a stroppy kid.’
‘Why did your parents send you away from home?’ Diego could not explain why he was curious about his passenger. Usually he avoided personal discussions. He was never even mildly interested in his mistresses’ private lives, and he discouraged curiosity about himself. His past was not a place he wanted to revisit or reveal to anyone.
‘My sister was very ill when she was a child. She was diagnosed with leukaemia when she was six years old and underwent chemotherapy for several years before she was finally given the all-clear. My parents couldn’t cope with spending weeks, sometimes months, in the hospital with Becky at the same time as trying to run their PR company and look after me.’
She sighed. ‘It sounds ridiculous, but I felt abandoned by my parents. I was only nine when Becky became ill, and I didn’t understand how serious her illness was. When my parents spent so much time with her I believed she was their favourite child.’
‘That’s understandable.’ Diego could appreciate Clare’s feeling of abandonment when she was a child. He had been abandoned by his father before he had been born, and his mother’s dependence on crack cocaine meant that he had learned to fend for himself from a young age. ‘You said your sister made a full recovery. Once she was better, did you return to live with your parents?’
‘No. I visited them at weekends, but I had started at a secondary school in Kent and my parents decided it would be better not to disrupt my education by moving me to a new school in London.’
‘You must have resented your sister because she lived with your parents while you were left with your aunt.’
Clare was surprised by Diego’s perception. There had been times when she had felt jealous of all the attention Becky received, she acknowledged, but she had hated herself for her jealousy because, of course, her sister had not chosen to have leukaemia.
‘I love my sister. It wasn’t Becky’s fault that I grew up feeling pushed out of the family. I was lucky that I hadn’t been struck down with a horrible illness or spent chunks of my childhood in the hospital. My parents dealt with a difficult situation in the best way they could.’
Thinking about Becky and wondering if the kidnappers had harmed her made Clare’s stomach contract. Becky had suffered so much as a child and it seemed desperately unfair that once again her life was threatened. Clare hoped her sister was not making the situation even more difficult. Becky had been over-indulged by their parents during the long years of her illness, and her subsequent career as a successful model meant that she was used to people rushing around after her. But it was unlikely the kidnappers would treat Becky like a princess.
The Jeep lurched as the wheels went down another crater in the road and Clare winced and rubbed her bruised spine. The continual jolting made her feel as though she was inside the drum of a washing machine on the fast spin cycle.
‘How much longer do you think it will take us to reach the village where we are going to stop for the night?’
Diego glanced at the instrument panel. ‘We’ve driven one hundred and forty miles. Inua village is two hundred and fifty miles from Manaus and because of the damned potholes in the road we’re travelling at an average speed of thirty-five miles an hour.’
‘So we should reach the village in just over three hours,’ Clare said instantly. She caught Diego’s surprised look. ‘I have a freakish brain when it comes to maths. At school, when my friends were trying to decide what careers to choose, I always knew that I wanted to be an accountant.’
‘So, did you go to university?’
She nodded. ‘I have a degree in Accountancy and Marketing and after I graduated I was headhunted by a top bank in the City of London. I worked for the bank for eighteen months, before I became chief accountant at my parents’ public relations company. Recently, I’ve become much more involved in the actual PR side of the business.’
Diego frowned. ‘I’m trying to understand what made you give up a good career and cut yourself off from your family and friends. How do your parents feel about your decision, especially as you have chosen to leave England and join a holy order in Brazil?’
Clare regretted telling him so much about herself. It was a sign of her insecurity that she felt she needed to boast of her academic achievements to make up for the fact that she wasn’t beautiful, she acknowledged ruefully. For a few moments she had forgotten that the Mother Superior had persuaded her to pretend to be a nun for her protection. She felt uncomfortable about her deception but she did not dare risk telling Diego the real reason why she was going to Torrente.
‘My parents support what I am doing,’ she murmured, remembering how her father had hugged her tightly when she’d said goodbye to him before leaving for Brazil. ‘What about you?’ She steered the conversation away from herself. ‘Do you have a family?’
‘No.’
When it became clear that Diego wasn’t going to add anything more, Clare tried again. ‘So, you’re not married?’
‘No.’
‘I imagine being a gold prospector means you spend a lot of time on your own. It must be a lonely way of life.’
‘I like my own company,’ he drawled.
Clare gave up. She wanted to ask him how he had developed an appreciation of classic literature if his education had been as poor as he had said. There was something about him that made her think he was more than a rough, tough prospector. It was not just because of the books she had found. She could not explain why she sensed an air of mystery about him, but the idea that he was hiding something reinforced her decision to keep the truth about her identity a secret.
* * *
The surface of the dirt road grew worse the further west they travelled. Twice more the Jeep became embedded in mud. The first time, Diego managed to free the wheels by placing wooden planks beneath them, but on the second occasion he had to use a specially designed jack to lift up the front of the Jeep. It was a lengthy procedure and Clare had to get out to help and found herself ankle-deep in mud which dried to the consistency of cement in the sun.
By the time they reached Inua she was wilting from the humidity and exhaustion and visualised a clean hotel room, hopefully with air conditioning and perhaps even a bath.
‘Where is the rest of the village?’ she asked Diego when he parked in a clearing in the forest where a few huts with thatched roofs were grouped around a larger hut that seemed to be a communal place for the villagers. The men sitting on the floor outside the large hut were mainly dressed in shorts and shirts, but the women were topless and the children who rushed up to greet the white-skinned strangers simply wore loincloths.
‘This is it,’ Diego told her. ‘Inua is home to a small community called the Yanomami.’
‘But you said that tourists stay here.’ Clare looked at the ramshackle huts. ‘Where will I sleep tonight?’ Her visions of a comfortable bedroom and en suite bathroom were disappearing.
‘The guest hut is over there.’ Diego pointed to a hut set slightly apart from the others. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said when he saw her expression. ‘The wooden cubicle next to the hut is a shower. The Yanomami children find the shower fascinating because they bathe in the river.’
He walked away to talk to an elderly tribesman and came back to Clare a few minutes later. ‘I’ll get your bag from the Jeep and show you your accommodation. The tribal elder, Jacinto, asked if we would like to eat dinner with the Yanomami people, but they do actually hunt monkey and that’s what’s on tonight’s menu. I guessed you’d want me to decline the invitation.’
‘Thank you.’ Clare shuddered. She hadn’t felt like eating much since she had heard about Becky being kidnapped, and the idea of eating monkey destroyed all vestiges of her appetite. She followed Diego into the guest hut and was relieved to see a wooden bed frame. The mattress was woefully thin, but at least she would not have to sleep on the floor.
‘I realise it’s not the New York Hilton,’ Diego drawled when he saw her expression, ‘but I assume you are used to living a simple life at the convent.’
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘How does a gold prospector and self-confessed loner know what the New York Hilton is like?’
He gave her one of his heart-stopping grins and ignored her question. ‘I’m going to cook dinner on the camping stove. I only have non-perishable tinned food, nothing fancy. But you’re welcome to join me.’
‘Actually, I think I’ll have a shower and an early night. It’s been a tiring day.’ The heat and her constant worry about Becky had made her feel drained both physically and emotionally. Her fierce awareness of Diego was not helping matters, Clare conceded as she watched him walk over to the Jeep. A brief spectacular sunset had streaked the sky with hues of pink and orange, but now darkness was closing in and she felt very alone in an alien environment.
It was a relief to take off the stiff serge habit and her veil. The shower was surprisingly powerful, but Clare was convinced she had glimpsed a snake slither out of the cubicle as she had entered and she did not dare hang around in case it came back.
Even at night the humidity was so high that she felt as if she was being smothered in a damp blanket. She had packed a light cotton chemise to sleep in, but she was still too hot and the mosquitoes were eating her alive. She lay on the bed, huddled beneath the mosquito net, and wondered where Becky was sleeping tonight. The rainforest was even noisier at night than during the day, as hundreds of species of insects and nocturnal creatures vied to make the loudest sounds.
What was that? Clare tensed when she heard a scurrying noise on the floor of the hut. Could it be a rat? Her muscles tensed and her heart was pounding. The noise came again and she switched on her torch and shone it on the floor. The beam of light revealed a huge cockroach, its hard black shell gleaming and its long antennae twitching as it moved purposefully towards the bed.
‘Ugh!’ Clare’s nerve crumbled. The rainforest was a terrifying place. She loved the English countryside, but here in the jungle she imagined what other creatures might be crawling or slithering inside the hut. Panic engulfed her and, without thinking of anything but her desperate need to find a place of safety, she leapt out of bed and remembered to grab the briefcase containing the ransom money before she tore out of the hut. She sprinted over to the Jeep faster than she had ever run in her life. The rough ground hurt her bare feet and the beam from her torch picked out glowing pinpricks of light that she realised were the eyes of animals hiding in the dark forest. Frantic with fear, she pulled open the back door of the Jeep.
‘Diego, there’s a huge cockroach in the hut.’ She paused to drag oxygen into her lungs—and stared.
Diego was sprawled on top of a mattress that he had unrolled to cover the floor of the Jeep. He was leaning back against a couple of cushions, bare chested, his jeans sitting low on his hips. A kerosene lamp emitted a bright glow that fell on the pages of the book he was reading and cast a pool of light on his torso, highlighting the golden hairs on his chest. With his tousled blond hair and the blond stubble on his jaw, he reminded Clare of a lion: sleek, muscular and supremely powerful.
‘Unlikely,’ he drawled in his laid-back manner that gave the impression he took nothing in life too seriously.
‘There is. I know what a cockroach looks like.’
‘I meant it’s unlikely there’s only one. Cockroaches like company and they like to hide in small spaces. There is probably a nest of them behind the headboard of the bed.’
Clare shuddered. ‘I can’t sleep in the hut with a family of cockroaches.’ She screamed as she felt something touch her foot. ‘There’s a snake on me. It’s running up my leg!’
‘Snakes don’t run.’ Diego held up the lamp so that it shone on the ground where Clare was standing. ‘It’s just a harmless lizard,’ he told her as he brushed the vivid green creature from her leg. ‘It’s probably far more scared of you than you are of it.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Clare muttered as she scrambled into the Jeep, unaware that as she did so the hem of her chemise slid up to reveal several inches of her bare thighs. She pushed her mane of long auburn hair out of her eyes and looked pleadingly at Diego. ‘Please can I sleep in here tonight?’
He did not reply and she wondered why he was staring at her as if she had grown another head. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said shakily. ‘Do I have another lizard on me?’
‘I thought nuns had to cut their hair short.’
Idiot, Clare silently berated herself. She had forgotten that she wasn’t wearing her nun’s habit and veil. Her hair had dried quickly after her shower, but the humidity and the fact that she did not have her straighteners had resulted in a wild tangle of curls tumbling halfway down her back. She tensed as Diego reached out and wound a curl around his fingers.
‘It feels like silk,’ he murmured. ‘And it’s such an amazing colour. It reminds me of the conkers I saw children collecting in England when I was there one autumn.’ His eyes narrowed on Clare’s flushed face. ‘It’s a pity to hide such beautiful hair beneath a veil.’
She sensed he was waiting for an explanation and searched her mind for one. ‘I’m a novice, which is why I wear a white veil instead of a black one. I don’t have to cut my hair until I take my final vows.’
‘When will you do that?’
‘Soon,’ she assured him quickly.
Diego shut the door of the Jeep and resumed his position stretched out on the mattress with his shoulders propped against a pile of cushions. He tucked his hands behind his head and the action drew Clare’s gaze to his bare chest and superb muscle definition.
‘So you are not yet absolutely committed to your cause?’ he said softly. ‘You could change your mind?’
The speculative gleam in his light grey eyes sent a quiver along her spine as she became aware of the sexual chemistry fizzing in the close confines of the Jeep. Clare realised she had swapped one danger for another. She had felt unsafe in the hut, but her intense awareness of Diego could prove to be a greater threat to her peace of mind, especially when his gaze lingered quite blatantly on her breasts that were inadequately covered by her cotton chemise.
She remembered Becky and the vital reason why she needed to get to Torrente. ‘Nothing will deter me from the path I have chosen.’
His mouth curved into a sexy smile that should be illegal in front of susceptible females. ‘You don’t think you could be tempted to choose a different path?’
Heaven help her. She wished he would stop looking at her as if he was imagining stripping her naked and having his wicked way with her. She glanced rather desperately around the Jeep for something to cover herself with. ‘Could I borrow a sleeping bag?’
‘Help yourself.’
She unzipped the bag and gave it a thorough inspection for tarantulas before she got into it and pulled the zip up to her chin. Immediately her temperature soared but at least her body was hidden from Diego’s gaze. ‘Temptation is the work of the devil,’ she said primly.
‘Are you telling me you have never been tempted by desire, which is a perfectly natural human instinct?’
His voice was like molten syrup sliding sensuously over her body, inciting all sorts of shocking images in her head. She was fiercely attracted to Diego but she certainly wasn’t going to admit it. ‘If I did ever feel tempted...I would pray until those feelings passed.’
The Jeep was suddenly plunged into blackness as Diego switched off the lamp. Clare heard him moving. He was obviously trying to get comfortable but his height meant that he had to lie diagonally across the Jeep.
‘While you’re praying to be delivered from temptation, maybe you could say one for me, Sister,’ he muttered. ‘You’d better pray real hard because I keep picturing you in your cotton nightdress and I’ll be honest, I’ve never been so tempted by a woman in my life.’
If the devil did exist and was waiting to receive sinners into the fires of hell, he was toast, Diego thought to himself. He was burning up with desire to unzip Sister Clare’s sleeping bag and remove the tantalising, almost see-through garment she was wearing. If he had ever given a thought to what nuns wore in bed he would have guessed something demure and ankle-length, not a sexy little slip that left little to his imagination.
‘I’m sorry I interrupted you when you were reading,’ she said quietly. Her voice was as soft as the velvet darkness surrounding them. ‘You told me you had a poor education, so when did you discover an appreciation of classic and contemporary literature? I noticed you have a collection of books by a wide range of authors.’
The question took Diego back almost two decades to when he and Cruz had been employed by Earl Bancroft. His first instinct was to tell Sister Clare to mind her own business, but he needed something to distract his thoughts from his damnable desire for her.