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The old and sadly neglected book-lined room that had used to be her father’s sanctuary rang to the sound of raised voices and the fierce-eyed fury of one of its two occupants.
‘For goodness’ sake, Cristina, will you listen to me? If you—’
‘No, you listen.’ A small clenched fist ma
de angry contact with the desk. ‘I said no!’
Sheer frustration threw Rodrigo Valentim back into his seat. ‘If you will not take my instruction,’ he sighed out impatiently, ‘then what am I doing here?’
‘You are here as my attorney to find a way to get me out of this!’
‘And I keep telling you,’ he enunciated tightly—but then this had been going on for ages now, and the longer it did the more angry both of them became—‘I cannot do that!’
Cristina straightened, her fine-boned slender figure giving no hint to the strength of the woman within. With a proud toss of her head she sent her long black tresses flying back from narrow shoulders. Eyes like flashing devils pierced Rodrigo Valentim with a defiant glare.
‘Then I will have to find myself a lawyer who can, will I not?’
Another loaded sigh and Rodrigo’s forty-years-in-the-business jaded expression suddenly gave way to a rueful smile. ‘If I believed it could make the difference then I would take you to one myself. Do you not understand, minha amiga?’ he pleaded. ‘Santa Rosa is all but bankrupt. If you do not agree to this offer it will die!’
It was like taking a whip to a wounded animal. Cristina’s pained little whimper crucified the tough lawyer’s ears. She turned away, tense fingers jumping up to burrow into the sleeves of a well-used sweater as she paced away from the desk. The window beckoned, drawing her hopeless gaze to the open pampas, where the gauchos roamed free and machismo still ruled.
Out there, where most of the other large estates had turned their land over to soya or wine, Santa Rosa was one of the few traditional working cattle ranches left functioning in this part of Brazil. A Marques had ruled here since her Portuguese ancestors had claimed the land and built this house she was standing in.
And here she stood, Cristina thought bleakly, the last Marques in a long invincible line—and a female, of all things.
A female who was being forced to face the demise of the Marques land, name and pride.
‘Your father should have let you run things years ago, then you would not be in this mess,’ Rodrigo gruffly pronounced. ‘He was a stubborn old fool.’
That word machismo echoed again, and Cristina’s lovely mouth stretched into a bitter, wry smile. The men in these parts did not defer to their women. Her father had preferred to turn a blind eye to what was happening around him and wait to die rather than hand a single decision about Santa Rosa over to her.
‘You need big investment to put this place back on its feet again,’ Rodrigo continued. ‘And you need it urgently. The Alagoas Consortium offer is more than generous for your purposes, querida.’
‘At an impossible price.’
The consortium wanted to scythe off a whole section of Santa Rosa, which would give them access to part of a subtropical forest that was of particular natural beauty—not that this was what interested them. The forest blocked the rest of the world from mile upon mile of white sandy beaches, making them impossible to reach by land at present. They aimed to buy the tract of land, then bulldoze the forest and build a road link to the Atlantic, where they planned to build skyscrapers along a beautiful and rare stretch of untouched coast.
‘When is there never a price?’ Rodrigo posed sadly. ‘You of all people should know this.’
Because she had paid a heavy price once before to save Santa Rosa. That ‘price’ was dead now, thank goodness. Along with the man who had been content to sell his daughter to gain a few extra years of comfort in his blindness to what was happening. Now here she stood with her eyes wide open, seeing all too clearly who must pay the price this time around. If she did accept the offer, the land, the people who lived on it and the forest would become the sacrifice.
‘How long do I have to make a decision?’ It stuck in her throat to ask the question and it showed in the husky tone of her voice.
‘They want the deal badly enough to wait only a little while,’ Rodrigo answered.
Cristina turned and nodded. ‘Then keep them hanging on for their—little while,’ she instructed. ‘And I will make one last plea to the banks for help.’
‘You have done this several times already.’
‘And I will do it as many times as it takes until time runs out for me.’
‘It is running out, Cristina,’ Rodrigo said heavily. ‘The wolves are already baying at your door.’
‘I must still keep trying.’ Dark eyes and soft mouth firm in their stubbornness, Cristina turned back to the window. Behind her, Rodrigo studied her too-slender figure with a kind of pained exasperation tinged with genuine but useless respect.
She was beautiful—exquisite—the kind of woman who at only twenty-five years old should have had the whole world lying at her feet. Indeed, she had once been that favoured person.
Then something had happened in this house to make her run away, and she had not been heard of again for over a year. When she eventually had come back she’d been a different person, hardened and cold, as if someone had snuffed out the burning light that had made her the wildly beautiful creature she had once been. She’d walked back into this house and within weeks out of it again, as the wife of Vaasco Ordoniz, a man as old as the father who had happily sold her to him.
