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CHAPTER TWO
SARAH, bouncing about in the back of the taxi, almost wished she’d given in to temptation and hired a car. The drive from the airport to Arcos de la Frontera was a long one and her ears were being assaulted by the raucous music coming from the radio, her nose by the aroma of cheap tobacco and a particularly violent brand of aftershave, and her eyes by the plethora of tawdry fluffy and glittery mascots bouncing around on lengths of coloured string.
But as she only intended to be in Spain for two days at the very most she had deemed the expense of hiring a car a luxury she could do without. No one could accuse her of being mean, but she had learned to be careful, not throwing her money around unnecessarily.
Awkwardly, she wriggled out of the severely styled dark grey blazer she had chosen to wear over paler grey linen trousers and a matching shirt Even in April the heat was astonishing. She had forgotten how fierce the sun could be in southern Spain and couldn’t wait to get back to the cool English spring she had left behind. It was far more suited to her temperament, she decided tiredly, feeling an annoying crop of perspiration spring out on her upper lip.
Closing her eyes on the vibrant landscape, the terrifyingly twisty road, she picked over the situation that faced her.
On the one hand she could find her father alone, working like a man possessed, never having heard of the absconding Encarnación, in which case she would stay overnight and leave first thing in the morning with a huge sigh of relief.
Or—and this was the worst-case scenario, her secret fear—she could find him with his new young mistress and have the disagreeable task of making him see sense, pointing out, with graphic emphasis, what he could expect if Francisco Garcia Casals ever got within thrashing distance, trying to make the wayward young minx see the error of her ways and return to her family home.
That Piers would be at the house in Arcos, innocently or not so innocently, was in no real doubt now. When her mother had been alive they had often spent the spring there because Piers had always felt spiritually at home in the Andalusian mountains, executing some of his best work there.
After her death—when Sarah herself was only thirteen—Piers had closed the house up for a time but in later years he had often used it as a bolthole when he wanted to get down to serious, concentrated work.
He called it his cabaña, but it wasn’t, of course. It was a small house in a tiny warren of streets in the old town, but, as he said, he liked the way the word cabaña rolled off the tongue. Her father, she thought resignedly, wasn’t spectacularly clever when it came to seeing things as they really were.
And no matter how often she told herself that there had to be some mistake, the letter had been all too explicit. Impatiently, she dabbed her damp forehead with the back of her hand. It was all too tiresome to be borne and she could only pray that, as Encarnación had obviously met Piers at some time or other, the little minx had picked his name out of the ether and used it as a smokescreen for her own questionable activities.
The Spaniard had described his sister as being sheltered and protected—and that, of course, pointed to innocence. From the little Sarah knew of Señor Casals she guessed that translated into the fact that the eighteen-year-old had been utterly dominated by his sledge-hammer personality, that he expected his female relatives to stick to rigidly old-fashioned codes of behaviour, gave them no freedom whatsoever in a changing world, a world where female emancipation was the accepted thing in all levels of soc
iety, even here.
She didn’t blame the unknown girl for wanting out of such a stultifying situation. But that didn’t excuse Encarnación’s abuse of Piers’ name, if that was what had happened—and oh, how she prayed that it was. He was more than capable of making trouble for himself; he didn’t need help in that direction from a Spanish teenager who wanted to toss a red herring or two in front of her big brother’s aristocratic nose.
At last the driver flourished to an untidy halt, the ramshackle old Seat splayed across the narrow street, and Sarah scrambled out thankfully and paid him off, standing in the scorching sun for long moments after he’d reversed flamboyantly away in a cloud of exhaust fumes, trying to recover her poise after the hair-raising drive into the mountains.
Not many things gave her the jitters but bucketing around in the back of a car that had obviously long since passed its use-by date, driven by a man who took hairpin bends and horrifying gradients with as much apparent care as a swallow testing the thermals, was one of them.
Shuddering, she pulled herself together, becoming aware now of a round señora clad in voluminous black who was observing her with brightly inquisitive eyes from the doorstep of one of the neighbouring houses.
Alone in the tiny street, her father’s house looked neglected and shabby. The others were brightly painted, the window-boxes and balconies brimming with abundantly flowering plants, whereas Piers’ so-called cabaña had peeling paintwork, rusting balconies and seemed to sag, held up only by its neighbours.
But that was no surprise. When Patience had been alive she had done her utmost to keep up outward appearances, pretend that they were a normal family just like everyone else, creating a comfortable home wherever they happened to behere in Spain in the fecund months of spring or in the rented stone cottage on a remote mountain-flank in Wales which had been the nearest thing to a settled home Sarah had had during her early childhood.
Her mother, she decided, not for the first time, had been aptly named.
Her father had never cared what his surroundings were like. He actually seemed to thrive in an atmosphere of chaos and turmoil.
Bracing herself for the coming encounter with her wayward, irresponsible parent, she pushed on the bleached-wood door and found it securely locked, then hammered without any real hope on the grainy surface.
He would almost certainly be out in the surrounding countryside, sketching or painting. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She might have to wait for hours before he decided to come back.
The watching woman shuffled off her doorstep, bombarding her with a rapid carillon of Spanish, and Sarah, who had long ago forgotten the few words of the language she had picked up in her childhood, smiled tightly, shrugging her slim shoulders.
Her shirt was sticking to her in the heat. She was getting a headache, felt almost sick with thirst and almost had to add a threatened heart attack to her list of unpleasant physical inconveniences when the arrogantly confident, uncompromisingly masculine Francisco Garcia Casals said from directly behind her, ‘Having trouble, señorita?’
She twisted round, her insides clenching, her heart palpitating wildly under her breasts. How in the name of everything sacred had he got here? Followed her? All the way from London? Determined to get to Piers and beat him to a pulp?
She couldn’t ask because she couldn’t breathe. He filled all her space, stole the air from her lungs. And he was talking to her father’s neighbour, his Spanish smooth and rich, a deceptively soothing counterpoint to the elderly woman’s shrill stacatto. Deceptive, because he turned and held her eyes with the penetrating blackness of his, telling her with a twisted sardonic little smile that curled her toes, ‘Papá is away from home and not expected back for a number of weeks. But I have been reliably informed of his exact whereabouts.’ His smile as he turned to his compatriot was warm and beguiling, making him look thoroughly gorgeous, and watching the way the woman bridled, a grin splitting her face, made Sarah feel ill.
They said all men were suckers for a pretty face but the same could be said for women. If a sexy man turned on the charm they went to mush.
Not this one, though. She had far more sense. Very aware of the problems her father could be facing, she fixed the wretched man with cool blue eyes and demanded, ‘Then I insist you share the information.’
‘Do you indeed?’ One black brow drifted slowly upwards and she flinched under the impact of that slight, lopsided smile as he reminded her, ‘Did you share your information with me? I think not, señorita. I suspected the agent had said something to turn the wheels of your cold little brain. You put me to the trouble of following you.’
