The Spaniard's Pleasure

‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’ she asked, following Fleur inside the cottage. ‘Have you any idea how good he is at not answering a question?’

Fleur flicked the switch on the electric kettle and turned back to her youthful guest. ‘What has happened to make you think…?’

‘That dear Dad isn’t waging a legal battle to get me back?’ the girl inserted, shrugging. ‘I was exploring yesterday and I found all my stuff from home boxed up…absolutely everything, and I mean everything. Baby photos, the lot.’

‘I expect he thought you might need your things…that you’d feel more comfortable with them around you,’ Fleur suggested lamely.

‘It’s more like he’s wiping me out of his life. Every time I ring his office they say he’s unavailable and our home number comes up as number unrecognised.’ She looked at Fleur with eyes that seemed far older than her years and said, ‘I’m right, aren’t I? He dumped me on Antonio.

‘Please tell me, Fleur. I’m sick of nobody giving me a straight answer. I need to know, I really do…I go back to school tomorrow and I need to know if it’s worth coming home for weekends. If Antonio really wants me to come home.’

Put on the spot, Fleur didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. She thought the girl deserved the truth, but she respected and understood Antonio’s decision to protect her. ‘What makes you think I know anything?’ she prevaricated.

‘I know if Antonio was going to tell anyone it would be you.’

This confident assertion made Fleur blink. ‘Tamara, I think you might have the wrong idea. I hardly know your father.’

‘But he did tell you, didn’t he?’

Fleur inhaled deeply and, unable to resist the appeal in the girl’s eyes any longer, reluctantly nodded. ‘I think that is how it happened. Try not to think too badly of your other father.’ The pathetic creep. ‘I expect he was hurt to learn that you weren’t his. People do crazy things when they’re hurt.’ As if this girl didn’t know all about hurting.

‘Relieved, more like. Still, it’s no big loss.’

Fleur’s heart ached for the girl as she tried to put a brave face on it. ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ she lied. ‘He probably acted on impulse and I’m sure he’ll regret it.’

‘He and Mum weren’t exactly kid people,’ Tamara revealed. ‘Until I went to school I saw more of my nanny than them. You know, she’d have me pretend I was younger than I was to her friends—until I grew too tall, that is. She hated me being tall.’

These casual revelations horrified Fleur, who had enjoyed a happy, carefree childhood to the core.

‘And now Antonio is stuck with me.’

‘He doesn’t think of it that way,’ Fleur said with total conviction.

‘He did say he wanted me around,’ the girl admitted. ‘He says he wants to make it official, have me take his name and everything.’

‘And how do you feel about that?’

‘I don’t know…he says it’s up to me.’

‘Family is ultra important to Spaniards.’

‘Really? I thought that was just, you know, in books and films and things.’

Fleur shook her head and offered the reassurance she sensed the girl was asking for. ‘No, it’s not just in films. I think you’ve got a family whether you want one or not.’

‘He’s awfully bossy.’

Fleur nodded.

‘And all my friends at school will have crushes on him, which will be extremely embarrassing.’

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

‘You think I should give him a chance, don’t you?’

‘Does it matter what I think?’

‘Well, he likes you.’

Fleur told herself that it would be juvenile and foolish to feel pleased. And felt pleased anyway. ‘My dog bit him,’ she confided. ‘About thirty seconds after we met.’

A giggle escaped a wide-eyed Tamara. ‘Honestly?’

Fleur shook her head. ‘As first impressions go it takes some beating.’

The grave pronouncement sent the teenager into fits of laughter.

‘But Sandy loves him now.’ There’s a lot of it about.

‘He is very…’

‘Charismatic?’ Fleur suggested.

Tamara nodded with enthusiasm. She glanced at her watch. ‘He said he’d ring around six, you know,’ she said casually. ‘I might make my way back home.’ At the door she turned with an impish grin. ‘Shall I give him your love? Or would you prefer to give him that yourself?’ Laughing, she left a redfaced Fleur staring after her. Out of the mouths of babes!

The journey along the minor roads took ten minutes. It probably ought to have taken a little longer, but Antonio was in a hurry.

When he arrived he discovered that the college consisted of several buildings sprawled over quite a large area, all red brick and none very inspiring to look at. Not that Antonio, who parked his Mercedes in front of the main building, was thinking about architectural merits.

He only had himself to blame and he knew it. He had trusted her, first mistake. You trusted a woman and you deserved what you got. Expect the worst of people and occasionally you were pleasantly surprised. It was a philosophy that had got him this far…and look what happened when he abandoned it!

Give something of himself, Sophia had said. It just showed how much, or in this case now little, his sister knew!

Fleur added the last mark to the list of grades with a sigh of relief, satisfied she had used her free period to good effect. Now she would have all evening to make herself look gorgeous. She was sliding the stack of papers into her bag when the door banged open without warning to reveal a tall and very angry figure.

Actually, angry did not do justice to the raw fury that the unannounced intruder was vibrating with. Jaw clenched, nostrils flared, his patrician features tautened another notch as he stepped fully into the room. His expression had a windchill factor of minus thirty.

A combination of shock and confusion held Fleur immobile while she tried to figure why on earth he was here.

‘I thought our date was tonight?’

‘How dare you interfere in what does not concern you?’ Antonio’s low voice had the sort of carrying quality that any member of her classes would have been proud to reproduce. And such was his tall, commanding presence that he would only have to walk onto a stage to have the audience fall under his spell.

The normally faint foreign inflection in Antonio’s voice was very pronounced as he raised a sardonic brow and added. ‘I am waiting.’

Prodded into action, Fleur closed her jaw with an audible snap. ‘I have a class in five minutes.’

‘And I, Ms Stewart, have a problem, and that problem,’ he said, ‘is you!’

As she walked past him to close the door, acting as though he weren’t there, her slender back stiff, her chin lifted to a disdainful angle, Antonio’s control remained intact, but only just. He considered himself a pretty good judge of human character, but the problem was for the first time since he was a teenager he had allowed old-fashioned lust to cloud his judgement.

But could lust alone explain the bizarre fact that he seemed to rip his soul bare if he was in her company for more than two minutes at a stretch? It was the modern fashion, he knew, to dissect your emotions and analyse your motivation to the point where you could not blink without it being a product of a childhood trauma.

But that was not his way.

There was a handful of people outside his family Antonio trusted, trusted with his life, but it would never have occurred to him to unburden his worries on them. And they would not expect it; his friends were the sort of people who respected his reserved nature.

This woman respected nothing, certainly not him.

‘Do I get a clue?’ she wondered, leaning back against the closed door. Her breath coming in short, choppy bursts, Fleur fought to contain her anger. ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I just want you to go. Just how dare you?’

‘How dare I?

His sneering tone sent a fresh wave of anger through her tense body. ‘Look, if you think I’m going to stand here and play whipping boy for you, you’re dead wrong. If you’ve got a problem with something I have done, you can tell it to my answering machine.’

He bared his teeth in a savage smile. ‘Oh, I have a problem.’ He had a problem with her mouth and the overpowering need he was experiencing to cover it with his own.

‘This is my place of work. How would you like it if I barged into your office and started yelling the odds?’

Had it even occurred to him that if anyone had seen or heard him she would be getting the fallout from this little stunt for the next six months? Of course it hadn’t, because he had never considered anyone else in his life!

‘I am not yelling. You are.’

Infuriatingly, he was right. Fleur compressed her lips and tried to regain control of her tumultuous breathing.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘I asked someone.’

Fleur buried her face in her hands and groaned.

This got worse!

There was no chance at all that no one had recognised him. Antonio Rochas changed his hairstyle and it was national news!

Occasionally the private life of staff intruded into the workplace and it became the subject of speculation amongst her colleagues and the student population. The idea of being the subject of staff-room gossip made Fleur feel nauseous.

‘You knew that I did not want Tamara to know about Finch. You knew my wishes, but you decided to ignore them. Why would you do that? Other than this natural desire you appear to have to flaunt my authority?’

Fleur’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re saying this is about me answering Tamara’s questions.’ Actually she knew it wasn’t. It was clear to Fleur that this was about establishing some ground rules. This was about her stepping over some invisible line that women he wanted to sleep with were not allowed within fifty feet of.

She’d already been in one unequal relationship. A shiver ran down her spine when she thought about how close she’d come to walking into another.

‘Your authority!’ she choked. ‘You don’t have any—not over me, anyway. I’m quite capable of making my own judgements. You’re not my father!’

‘No, but I am Tamara’s.’

‘And she has my sympathy!’ Fleur flared.

He flinched.

‘I do not pretend to be a perfect father,’ he retorted grimly.

‘You don’t have to be perfect…but maybe you do? Perhaps that’s your problem. You want to be the best at everything?’

Antonio’s lips curled as he looked down into her wide-spaced golden eyes. ‘I am not interested in your psychobabble theories. I have no idea what your motivation was when you told Tamara about her father. But I can guess—’

‘You’re her father.’

The soft interruption made Antonio pause, but his tone had not softened when he broke the taut silence. ‘A fact you decided to ignore when you went against my express wishes,’ he reminded her.

‘I can see how it might seem that way to someone as autocratic as you,’ Fleur conceded.

‘I am not autocratic!’

This blast drew an audible giggle from the corridor outside. Fleur grimaced and stifled a groan of horror; the walls in the building were paper-thin. A fact she really ought to have kept in mind before taking part in a slanging match.

‘Will you lower your voice?’ she begged in a hushed undertone. ‘I’m not trying to deny I told Tamara that the no-contact situation wasn’t your idea. But when she came to me she already knew. She’s not stupid; she had worked it out. What was I meant to do? Lie when she asked me?’ Even as she spoke she knew that he wasn’t hearing a word she was saying.

‘I have to tell you, if this was your way of ingratiating yourself—’

The furrows on her smooth brow deepened. ‘Ingratiate? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

One dark brow lifted. ‘No?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Then let me spell it out. You create a problem and then step in to heal it. ‘

Fleur blinked, totally bewildered by the angry assertion. ‘Why on earth would I do that?’

‘To use the influence you appear to wield over my daughter to worm your way into my life…make yourself indispensable—’

Her jaw dropped in shock. ‘Your life!’ she echoed in a stunned voice. ‘What are you talking about?’

Antonio ignored her bewildered question. ‘You pretend you care about her.’ And he had not just let her into their lives, he had actively nourished the connection.

A flash of angry colour travelled up Fleur’s neck until her pale cheeks grew hot. ‘I do care about her.’

‘You sound sincere, but then sincerity is your forte, isn’t it, Fleur? Sincere and sweet and a great listener…’ And he had fallen for it all, the phoney concern, the caring eyes, he thought, his lips curling into a grim smile of self-disgust. And how, how had he forgotten that women always wanted something, they always had an agenda? Maybe it was because he hadn’t been thinking with his head, but areas much farther south!

‘You think I used Tamara because I wanted…I wanted to be part of your life? You think I want to be part of your magic circle?’ She swallowed and loosed a low-pitched, ironic laugh. Well, at least she knew what he thought of her.

‘You think this is funny?’

‘Funny! My God, if I’m ever as cynical as you I hope someone puts me out of my misery. I knew you thought a lot of yourself, but even for you this must be a new high. I hate to blow your lovely conspiracy theory sky-high, but I really don’t go home at night and think about how to get myself a billionaire. People generally don’t.’

Antonio, who had been the target for unscrupulous and often inventive campaigns over the years, raised a brow and said sardonically, ‘You don’t think so?’

‘Oh, poor you!’ she drawled with insincere sympathy. ‘I suppose you have to fight them off with a stick. Do you work on the theory that every woman you meet wants your body…or is it your bank account, not your integrity, you’re worried about preserving? Oh, yes, I’d love a chunk of your money because I can see how damned happy it makes you.’

An expression of total astonishment chased across his patrician features. ‘You are trying to tell me you feel sorry for me?’

‘No, I save my pity for people who deserve it.’

The biting retort made his jaw tighten another notch. ‘And money means nothing to you, I suppose.’

Fleur considered the jeering question seriously. ‘Of course it does. It’s nice to feel secure and have nice things sometimes, but all money does—or at least the amount you have—is complicate things. Women do want other things, you know. We’re not all grasping sluts. Some of us can manage without millions in the bank and haven’t even had sex for two years…’ She stopped, all expression blanking from her face as the awful words hung in the air.

She’d have given anything to have retrieved them, but she couldn’t. They were out there doing all manner of damage to her self-esteem, not to mention her moral authority.

I did not say that. Please tell me I did not say that, she prayed silently.

But of course she had. The mother and grandfather of all Freudian slips and it was all hers. This was a situation where damage limitation was the best she could hope for.

‘Two years is a long time.’

Tell me about it, she thought, maintaining a tight-lipped silence in the face of his glittery-eyed scrutiny.

‘So you don’t want my money, just my body.’

Fleur cast him a look of intense dislike. ‘That was a figure of speech…’

‘No, that was a cry from the heart.’

‘My heart has nothing to do with this.’

‘You want me as much as I want you.’

Fleur’s teeth clenched as she heard the smug inflection in his voice. She wanted to scream with sheer frustration. She had done what she had sworn she would never do again, she had revealed her vulnerability.

‘Hormones, not heart!’ she snarled. ‘And get that look off your face. I wouldn’t have you if you came gift-wrapped!’

Unwrapping the parcel might be fun, though. The forbidden thought brought a fresh prickle of heat to her skin.

Her jaw clenched as she faced him with all the aggression of a small, cornered animal.

‘I like my life the way it is. Why the hell would I want to have any part of yours, or, for that matter, you? In case you hadn’t noticed, Antonio, you’ve got baggage.’

‘And you are one of those women who consider a family an undesirable encumbrance?’

His hypocrisy was more than she could bear. ‘This from the man who hasn’t stopped for one second since he learnt he was a father to appreciate how damned lucky he is.’

Antonio looked startled. ‘Lucky…?’

‘Yes, lucky. So very, very lucky.’ She felt her eyes fill and blinked angrily.

Antonio saw the tears and frowned. He knew there was something he was missing, but he knew when to keep quiet.

The words continued to spill from her. ‘A child may not fit in with your playboy image, but some people would envy you. Do you have any idea how many people would love to be in your position?’ she demanded. ‘You may have lost out on Tamara’s early years, but you have her now.

‘If you’re not totally stupid and blow it completely, she’ll be part of your life for the foreseeable future. Do you know how lucky that makes you in my book?’ she raged. ‘People like you who don’t appreciate what they have really make me mad!’

She dabbed the back of her hand angrily to brush away the tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘How many people want a family and can’t have one? How many people have a f-family and lose him…?’

Crying in earnest now, she covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes tight. The painful sound of her choked sobs filled the awful silence as it stretched.

‘Who did you lose, Fleur?’

‘I had a miscarriage…’

Antonio had never experienced a mood swing so swift or drastic. He looked at her bowed head and experienced the most overwhelming desire to make her stop hurting.

‘It was a difficult pregnancy…apparently these things happen for no reason sometimes,’ she explained, accepting the handkerchief that was pushed into her hand.

Their eyes met and she saw enormous compassion, which Fleur’s defensive mechanisms translated as pity.

Pity was the one thing she couldn’t, wouldn’t, take! She took one enormous gulping breath and tried to feign calm. Inside she was a breath away from completely losing it.

‘It was eighteen months ago, and I don’t want to talk about it.’

He studied her face in silence for a moment and then almost imperceptibly nodded. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘then let’s get back to a subject close to both of our hearts…sex.’

‘I don’t believe you; you’re such a callous opportunist!’ she cried.

‘You didn’t want my sympathy. I’m only offering what you do want. Don’t you think it’s ever so slightly childish under the circumstances to pretend that we don’t both need to get this thing out our systems?’

‘Oh, my, the romance!’ she gushed sarcastically. ‘The old-fashioned charm that is so absent from modern life. Now I know why no woman can resist you.’ She threw him a look of total contempt and stalked out of the room.

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