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What was he doing here? She cast her mind about desperately. Surely Tom could not have invited him here deliberately?
Reason came to her rescue. Why shouldn’t Tom have invited him? They moved in the same world of high finance, even if Diego Saez operated on a vast global scale. Desperately she found herself hoping that Tom would not have business dealings with the man! Let alone discuss them here, at Salton. At the same time she knew, with a ghastly hollow feeling that was opening up inside her, that the very last thing she could do was tell Tom just why she objected so much. How could she possibly tell her brother that, actually, Diego Saez was not welcome at Salton on account of the fact that he was trying to get her into his bed and she’d had to make her objections to his ambitions very, very plain indeed?
Of course she couldn’t tell Tom. She couldn’t do anything—anything at all except accept, with a trapped feeling of horrible inevitability, that she would have to spend the evening playing the gracious hostess to a man she wished to perdition! For some hideous reason Tom had seen fit to invite Diego Saez here, to Salton, on some kind of banking matter, and there was nothing, nothing she could do about it.
It took every ounce of her poise and self-control to get through dinner with some semblance of normality.
Throughout the long, excruciating meal—at which she did nothing more than pick—she took as little part in the conversation as she could get away with. Unfortunately, though she longed for her brother and his unwelcome guest to immerse themselves in banking talk, so she would not be required to join in, Tom insisted on making general conversation. She tried to support him out of loyalty, and also, as she belatedly realised, because he was clearly under visible stress himself. His face was still haggard, and to her own sense of anger at Diego Saez’s presence at Salton was added yet more indignation that he should have accepted an invitation from a man who was so clearly unwell.
Tom was manfully trying to get through the evening, lurching from one innocuous topic to another, with Portia doing her best to behave as though the man sitting between them were nothing more than a business acquaintance. Yet all through the meal the undercurrents swirled at her feet. She could feel the pressure of Diego Saez’s presence as if it were a tangible force, was supremely aware of him seated only a few feet away from her. Desperately she tried not to watch the way his long, tanned fingers curved around the stem of his wine glass, or the silver fork he was using. Tried not to look at the lean strength of his wrist, banded with a slim gold watch, at how white the gleaming cuff looked against his skin.
But at least, she realised, he was not looking at her the way he usually did. When he spoke to her his eyes rested on her with a shuttered expression. It took her a while to realise she was finding that even more oppressive than the usual sensual assessment he subjected her to.
Her nerves started to stretch unbearably, and she longed for the meal to be over, so she could finally escape and leave them to their business discussion over the port.
She headed straight upstairs. Urgency drove her. She had thought herself safe at Salton, but Diego Saez had walked in as if he had the keys to the place!
Why? The question circled in her brain, as it had all evening, but now she could give free rein to it. He was not here because of Tom—he was here because of her. She knew it with every fibre of her being.
And she knew why.
He was angry. Angry with her for having dared to reject him. She had dared to heap scorn on him for his arrogant assumption that she was his for the taking, dared to be revulsed at his libertine lifestyle.
Well, so what? Anger lashed through her. She had spoken nothing but the truth—why should she care that he was angry at it?
Because he’s dangerous…
The voice in her head stopped her restless pacing around her bedroom.
She stared, blank-eyed, ahead of her. A deep foreboding filled her. Diego Saez was here for a purpose.
Surely to God he did not think he could still succeed with her? Did he think he could pay some midnight visit to her under her brother’s own roof?
And if he does, what will you do? If, in the middle of the night, you hear the bedroom door open?
The sly, insidious question slipped past her defences. Even as it formed she stilled totally.
And into her mind came an image—heavy, sensual—of Diego Saez walking into her bedroom, taking off his tie as he advanced upon her, shrugging off his jacket, his hands going to his belt…
And her, lying back on the sheets, waiting for him…
She felt a slow, viscous heaviness subsume her body, flow through her dilating veins. Felt a flush of low, building heat mount through her, licking like a slow, sensuous flame.
Then, as if she were deep underwater, she fought her way back up to the surface. To sanity. To reality.
The reality of standing in the middle of her deserted bedroom, trying to fight down the dark, oppressive feeling of foreboding that shimmered all about her.
She slept fitfully, waking often from heavy, unremembered dreams which left a heavy feeling of dread in her heart—and something other than dread, something she would not give a name to. The knowledge that in the other wing of the house was Diego Saez, beneath the very roof of Salton, filled her with disturbing emotion. Although her room had no lock, she had placed her dressing table stool in front of the door—a frail barrier against a man such as the one who had pursued her.
But there was no nocturnal visitation, and when, finally, she fell into a proper sleep it was as dawn set the birds into their early chorus. She did not wake until gone ten. As she realised the lateness of the hour a sense of relief went through her. She had missed the ordeal of breakfasting with her brother and his unwelcome guest. With any luck he might even have left by now.
But when, after she had gone cautiously downstairs, she enquired of Mrs Tillet, it was to learn that her brother and his guest were incarcerated in the library. Well, at least she could have her breakfast in peace, and count the time until Diego Saez took himself off.
She helped herself to tea and toast in the Morning Room, but found she was incapable of eating. Her ears still strained for sounds of masculine voices emerging from the library, and she had scarcely finished her cup of tea when she pushed her plate aside and stood up.
Instinct made her head outdoors. She didn’t bother with a jacket, and her feet in their short suede ankle boots were fine for the pathways, even if the dew-wet grass would get them sopping wet. She scrunched rapidly over the gravel, heading for the Italian garden. On the far side of it a paved path led down to a little sunken garden that was always a sun-trap in the morning, with a bowered bench set there for that very purpose. After mopping the ironwork seat dry, with some tissues brought for the purpose, she sat down.
Her eyes gazed blindly over the spring flowers bobbing in the light morning breeze. The leaves of the rose bushes were dark red, still furled. Blossom from the ornamental tree in the centre shone palest pink against the blue sky. The tiny bite of cold she had felt when she first sat down stung and made her shiver.
