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“Senhor? Will you help me?”
Jake cleared his throat. “I wish I could, but—”
“How much is Estes paying you?”
The sharp words matched her demeanor, which had changed in a heartbeat. Her eyes were still bright, but now it was with the flare of anger. She snatched back her hand as if touching him was the same as touching a maggot.
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think I’d do this for money?”
“How much?” she repeated. “Tell me, and I’ll double it.”
In that instant, he realized he’d been snookered. This was no sweetly obedient mouse; this was a woman. Mother Elisabete and Javier Estes had tossed him a hot potato.
His first instinct wa
s to turn the SUV around and take Catarina Mendes back to the convent. No way,, he’d say. You want to find the lady a husband, do it yourself.
And then what would he do? Return to Rio? Tell Marin he wanted to go to court even though he knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of breaking the airtight provisions of the will?
Spend the rest of his life wondering if every dark-haired man who bore even the slightest resemblance to him might also carry his blood?
“Not enough?” Catarina lifted her chin. “I’ll pay you triple whatever—”
“I told you, I’m not doing this for money.”
“I don’t believe you! Why else would—?”
She gasped as his hands closed on her shoulders. “Nobody can buy me, Mendes,” Jake said coldly. “You’d better get that through your head right now. I’m going to do what I have to do. The sooner you accept that, the better.”
Her eyes narrowed; a Portuguese word he didn’t understand hissed from her lips. Jake smiled grimly.
“Whatever you just called me was right on the mark. I am a son of a bitch, a hard-nosed bastard, your worst nightmare come true—you name it. You will live where I put you for the next two months, you will behave as I instruct, you will curb that nasty tongue and charm the men I introduce you to, and you will marry one of them when I tell you to. Do you understand?”
She understood, all right. Mother Elisabete and the attorney had handed her over to a monster. He didn’t look like one—her jailer was young and handsome—but nobody ever said monsters had to be ugly on the outside.
Somehow, that only made things seem worse.
His life stretched ahead of him.
All that stretched ahead of her was whatever he would force upon her.
She felt the hot prick of tears and blinked them back. She would not cry. She hadn’t cried since they’d told her she’d lost her parents. Tears were a sign of weakness. If she’d learned nothing else at the School for Young Ladies, she’d learned that. Still, she couldn’t keep her voice from wobbling.
“You’re going to regret this, Senhor Ramirez.”
Jake already did, but why give her the satisfaction of admitting it? Instead, he gave her a look meant to tell her that nothing she could say or do would affect him.
Big mistake.
Her hair had come loose from the pins that held it and fell around her face in waves. An image of himself putting his hands in her hair, winding the length around his fist as he drew her toward him and took that soft-looking, innocent mouth with his, flashed through his mind.
Jake pulled back, put the car in gear and drove for Rio as if the devil were on his tail.
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE pulled up to his hotel the same way he’d pulled up to the gates of the school, so fast and hard the tires of the SUV screamed in complaint.
If only he could get out of Rio and this nightmare the same way. Go straight to the airport, leave the selfish demands of the man who’d sired him behind, leave the burden of being guardian to Catarina Mendes behind, pick up the pieces of his life and forget everything that had happened since the arrival of the letter.
