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She looked surreptitiously at Luiz and wondered what was going through his head. His deep, sexy voice wafted around her and made her feel a little giddy, as though she was standing on a high wire, looking a long way down.
Eventually, Mrs Bixby left and Luiz asked politely in a friendly voice whether she was packed and ready to go.
‘We might as well take advantage of the break in the weather,’ he said, tossing his serviette onto his plate and pushing his chair back. ‘It’s not going to last. If you go and bring your bag down, I’ll settle up and meet you by reception.’
So this was how it was going to be, Aggie thought. She knew that she should have been pleased. Pleased that he was being normal. Pleased that there would not be an atmosphere between them. Almost as though nothing had happened at all, as though in the early hours of the morning she hadn’t bumped into him on the landing, he hadn’t strolled into her room wearing nothing but a couple of towels and he certainly hadn’t told her that he wanted her. It could all have been a dream because there was nothing in his expression or in the tone of his voice to suggest otherwise.
There was genuine warmth in Mrs Bixby’s hugs as she waved them off, and finally Aggie twisted back around in her seat and waited for something. Something to be said. Some indication that they had crossed a line. But nothing.
He asked for the address to the foster home and allowed her to programme the satnav, although her fingers fumbled and it took ages before the address was keyed in and their course plotted.
It would take roughly a few hours. Conditions were going to worsen slightly the further north they went. They had been lucky to have found such a pleasant place to stay a couple of nights but they couldn’t risk having to stop again and make do.
Luiz chatted amiably and Aggie was horrified to find that she hated it. Only now was she aware of that spark of electricity that had sizzled between them because it was gone.
When the conversation faltered, he eventually tuned in to the local radio station and they drove without speaking, which gave her plenty of time alone with her thoughts.
In fact, she was barely aware of the motorway giving way to roads, then to streets, and she was shocked when he switched off the radio, stopped the car and said,
‘We seem to be here.’
For the first time since they had started on this uncomfortable trip, Luiz was treated to a smile of such spontaneous delight and pleasure that it took his breath away. He grimly wondered whether there was relief in that smile, relief that she was to be spared more of his company. Whether she was attracted to him or not, she had made it perfectly clear that her fundamental antipathy towards him rendered any physical attraction null and void.
‘It’s been such a long time since I was here,’ she breathed fervently, hands clasped on her lap. ‘I just want to sit here for a little while and breathe it in.’
Luiz thought that anyone would be forgiven for thinking that she was a prodigal daughter, returned to her rightful palatial home. Instead, what he saw was an averagely spacious pebble-dashed house with neat gardens on either side of a gravel drive. There was an assortment of outside toys on the grass and the windows of one of the rooms downstairs appeared to have drawings tacked to them. There were trees at the back but the foliage was sparse and unexciting.
‘Same bus,’ she said fondly, drawing his attention to a battered vehicle parked at the side. ‘Betsy’s always complained about it but I think she likes its unpredictability.’
‘It’s not what I imagined.’
‘What did you imagine?’
‘It seems small to house a tribe of children and teenagers.’
‘There are only ever ten children at any one time and it’s bigger at the back. You’ll see. There’s a conservatory—a double conservatory, where Betsy and Gordon can relax in the evenings while the older ones do their homework. They were always very hot on us doing our homework.’ She turned to him and rested her hand on his forearm. ‘You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. I mean, the village is only a short drive away, and you can always go there for a coffee or something. You have my mobile number. You can call me when you get fed up and I’ll come.’
‘Not ashamed of me, by any chance, are you?’ His voice was mild but there was an edge to it that took her aback.
‘Of course I’m not! I was…just thinking of you. I know you’re not used to this…er…sort of thing.’
‘Stop stereotyping me!’ Luiz gritted his teeth and she recoiled as though she had been slapped.
He hadn’t complained once when they had been at the bed and breakfast. In fact, he had seemed sincerely impressed with everything about it, and had been the soul of charm to Mrs Bixby. Aggie was suddenly ashamed at the label she had casually dropped on his shoulders and she knew that, whatever his circumstances of birth, and however little he was accustomed to roughing it, he didn’t deserve to be shoved in a box. If she did that, then it was about her hang-ups and not his.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, and he acknowledged the apology with a curt nod.
‘Take your time,’ he told her. ‘I’ll bring that bag in and don’t rush. I’ll watch from the sidelines. I’ve just spent the last few hours driving. I can do without another bout of it so that I can while away some time in a café.’
But he allowed her half an hour to relax in familiar surroundings without him around. He turned his mind to work, although it was difficult to concentrate when he was half-thinking of the drive ahead, half-thinking of her, wondering what it must feel like to be reunited with her pseudo-family. He had thought that she had stopped seeing him as a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out, but she hadn’t, and could he blame her? He had stormed into her life like a bull in a china shop, had made his agenda clear from the beginning, had pronounced upon the problem and produced his financial solution for sorting it out. In short, he had lived down to all her expectations of someone with money and privilege.
He had never given a passing thought in the past as to how he dealt with other people. He had always been supremely confident of his abilities, his power and the reach of his influence. As the only son from a family whose wealth was bottomless, he had accepted the weight of responsibility for taking over his family’s vast business concerns, adding to them with his own. Alongside that, however, were all the advantages that came with money—including, he reluctantly conceded, an attitude that might or might not be interpreted as arrogant and overbearing.
It was something that had never been brought to his notice, but then again he was surrounded by people who feared and respected him. Would they ever point out anything that might be seen as criticism?
Agatha Collins had no such qualms. She was in a league of her own. She didn’t hold back when it came to pointing out the things she disliked about him although, he mused, she was as quick to apologise if she thought she had been unfair as she was to heap criticism when she thought she had a point. He had found himself in the company of someone who spoke her mind and damned the consequences.
On that thought, he slung his long body out of the car, collected the bag of presents which she had bought the day before and which he could see, as he idly peered into the bag, she had wrapped in very bright, jolly Christmas paper.
The door was pulled open before he had time to hit the buzzer and he experienced a few seconds of complete disorientation. Sensory overload.
Noise; chaos; children; lots of laughter; the smell of food; colour everywhere in the form of paintings on the walls; coats hanging along the wall; shoes and wellies stacked by the side of the door. Somewhere roundabout mid-thigh area, a small dark-haired boy with enormous brown eyes, an earnest face and chocolate smeared round his mouth stared up at him, announced his name—and also announced that he knew who he was, because Aggie had said it would be him, which was why Betsy had allowed him to open the door, because they were never allowed to open the door. All of this was said without pause while the noise died down and various other children of varying sizes approached and stared at him.
Luiz had never felt so scrutinised in his life before, nor so lost for something to say. Being the focus of attention of a dozen, unblinking children’s eyes induced immediate seizure of his vocal chords. Always ready with words, he cleared his throat and was immensely relieved when Aggie emerged from a room at the back, accompanied by a woman in her early seventies, tall, stern-looking with grey hair pulled back in a bun. When she smiled, though, her face radiated warmth and he could see from the reaction of the kids that they adored her.
‘You look hassled,’ Aggie whispered when introductions had been made. He was assured by Betsy that pandemonium was not usual in the house but she was being lenient, as it was Christmas, and that he must come and have something to eat, and he needn’t fear that there would be any food throwing at the table.
‘Hassled? I’m never hassled.’ He slid his eyes across to her and raised his eyebrows. ‘Overwhelmed might be a better word.’
Aggie laughed, relaxed and happy. ‘It’s healthy to be overwhelmed every so often.’
‘Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’ He was finding it difficult to drag his eyes away from her laughing face. ‘Busy place.’
‘Always. And Betsy is going to insist on showing you around, I’m afraid. She’s very proud of what she’s done with the house.’
They had passed several rooms and were heading towards the back of the house where he could see a huge conservatory that opened out onto masses of land with a small copse at the back, which he imagined would be heaven for the kids here when it was summer and they could go outside.
‘We won’t be here long,’ she promised. ‘There’s a little present-giving Christmas party. It’s been brought forward as I’m here. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Why should I?’ Luiz asked shortly. It irked him immensely that, even though he had mentally decided to write her off, he still couldn’t manage to kill off what she did to his libido. It was also intensely frustrating that he was engaging in an unhealthy tussle with feelings of jealousy. Everyone and everything in this place had the power to put a smile on her face. The kind of smile which she had shown him on rare occasions only.
He didn’t understand this confused flux of emotion and he didn’t like it. He enjoyed being in control of his life and of everything that happened around him. Agatha Collins was very firmly out of his control. If she were any other woman, she would have been flattered at his interest in her, and she wouldn’t have hesitated to come to bed with him. It had been a simple, and in his eyes foolproof, proposition.
To have been knocked back was galling enough, but to have been knocked back only to find himself getting back to his feet and bracing himself for another onslaught on her defences bordered on unacceptable.
‘I thought you might be bored,’ Aggie admitted, flushing guiltily as his face darkened. ‘Also…’
‘Also what?’
‘I know you’re angry with me.’
‘Why would I be angry with you?’ Luiz asked coldly.
‘Because I turned you down and I know I must have…You must have found that…Well, I guess I dented your ego.’
‘You want me. I want you. I proposed we do something about that and you decided that you didn’t want to. There’s no question of my pride being dented.’
‘I just can’t approach sex in such a cold-blooded way.’ Aggie was ashamed that after her show of will power she was now backtracking to a place from which she could offer up an explanation. ‘You move in and out of women and…’
‘And you’re not a toy to be picked up and discarded when the novelty’s worn off. I think you already made that clear.’
‘So that’s the only reason why I feel a little uncomfortable about asking you to put yourself out now.’
‘Well, don’t. Enjoy yourself. The end of the journey is just round the corner.’
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_e8bd0b4f-9adc-5bc5-91f8-d20e5fcbc423)
‘WE’RE never going to make it to Sharrow Bay tonight.’
They had been driving for a little under an hour and Luiz looked across to Aggie with a frown.
‘Depends on how much more the weather deteriorates.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t see the point of taking risks on the roads. I mean, it’s not as though Mark and Maria are going anywhere. Not in these conditions. We spent a lot longer than I anticipated at Sevenoaks and I apologise about that.’
Aggie didn’t know how to get through the impenetrable barrier that Luiz had erected around himself. He had smiled, charmed and chatted with everyone at the home and had done so without a flicker of tension, but underneath she could feel his coolness towards her. It was like an invisible force field keeping her out and she hated it.
‘I hope you didn’t find it too much of a chore.’ She tried again to revive a conversation that threatened to go in the same direction as the last few she had initiated—slap, bang into a brick wall of Luiz’s disinterest.
Her pride, her dignity and her sense of moral self-righteousness at having rightly turned down a proposal for no-strings sex for a day or two had disintegrated, leaving in its wake the disturbing realisation that she had made a terrible mistake. Why hadn’t she taken what was on offer? Since when did sex have to lead to a serious commitment? There was no tenderness, and he would never whisper sweet nothings in her ear, but the power of the sexual pull he had over her cut right through all of those shortcomings.
Why shouldn’t she be greedy for once in her life and just take without bothering about consequences and without asking herself whether she was doing the wrong thing or the right thing?
She had had three relationships in her life and on paper they had all looked as though they would go somewhere. They had been free-spirited, fun-loving, creative guys, nothing at all like Luiz. They had enjoyed going to clubs, attending protest marches and doing things on impulse.
And what had come of them? She had grown bored with behaviour that had ended up seeming juvenile and irresponsible. She had become fed up with the fact that plans were never made, with Saturdays spent lying in bed because none of them had ever shown any restraint when it came to drinking—and if she had tried to intervene she had been shouted down as a bore. With all of them, she had come to dread the aimlessness that she had initially found appealing. There had always come a point when hopping on the back of a motorbike and just riding where the wind took them had felt like a waste of time.
Luiz was so much the opposite. His self-control was formidable. She wondered whether he had ever done anything spontaneous in his life. Probably not. But despite that, or maybe because of it, her desire for him was liberated from the usual considerations. Why hadn’t she seen that at the time? She had shot him down as the sort of person who could have relationships with women purely for sex, as if the only relationships worth considering were ones where you spent your time plumbing each other’s depths. Except she had tried those and none of them had worked out.
‘The kids loved you,’ she persevered. ‘And so did Betsy and Gordon. I guess it must have been quite an eye-opener, visiting a place like that. I’m thinking that your background couldn’t have been more different.’
Like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces slowly began to fit together, Luiz was seeing the background picture that had made Aggie the woman she had become. It was frustrating and novel to find himself in a position of wanting to chip away at the surface of a woman and dig deeper. She was suspicious, proud, defensive and fiercely independent. She had had to be.
‘There’s a hotel up ahead, by the way, just in case you agree with me that we need to stop. Next town along…’ With every passing minute of silence from him, Aggie could feel her chances of breaking through that barrier slipping further and further out of reach.
‘Is there? How do you know?’ With her childhood home behind them, she was no longer the laughing, carefree person she had been there. Luiz could feel the tension radiating out of her, and if it were up to him he would risk the snow and plough on. The mission he had undertaken obviously had to reach a conclusion, but the cold-blooded determination that had initially fuelled him had gone. In its place was weary resignation for an unpleasant task ahead.
Aggie’s heart picked up speed. How did she know about the hotel? Because she had checked it on the computer Betsy kept in the office. Because she had looked at Luiz as he had stood with his arms folded at the back of the room, watching Christmas presents being given out, and she had known that, however arrogant and ruthless he could be, he was also capable of generosity and understanding. He could easily have turned down her request for that detour. He was missing work, and the faster he could wrap up the business with Mark and his niece, the better for him. Yet not only had he put himself out but he had taken the experience in his stride. He had shown interest in everything Betsy and Gordon had had to say and had interacted with the kids who had been fascinated by the handsome, sophisticated stranger in their midst.
She had been proud of him and had wanted him so intensely that it physically hurt.
‘I saw a sign for it a little way back.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back at that excusable white lie. ‘And I vaguely remember Betsy mentioning ages ago that there was a new fancy hotel being built near here, to capture the tourist trade. It’s booming in this part of the world, you know.’
‘I didn’t see any sign.’
‘It was small. You probably missed it. You’re concentrating on driving.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather just plough on? Get where we’re heading? If we stick it out for another hour, we should be there, more or less.’
‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’ It suddenly occurred to her that the offer he had extended had now been withdrawn. He wasn’t the sort of man who chased women. Having done so with her, he wasn’t the sort of man who would carry on in the face of rejection. Did she want to risk her pride by throwing herself at him, when he now just wanted to get this whole trip over and done with so that he could return to his life?
‘I have a bit of a headache coming on, actually. I think it must be all the excitement of today—seeing Gordon and Betsy, the children. Gordon isn’t well. She only told me when we were about to leave. He’s had some heart problems. I worry about what Betsy will do if something happens to him.’
‘Okay. Where’s the turning?’
‘Are you sure? You’ve already put yourself out enough as it is.’ Aggie held her breath. If he showed even a second’s reluctance, then she would abandon her stupid plan; she would just accept that she had missed her chance; she would tell herself that it was for the best and squash any inclination to wonder…
‘The turning?’
‘I’ll direct you.’
He didn’t ask how she just happened to know the full address of the hotel, including the post code, in case they got lost and needed to use his satnav. After fifteen minutes of slow driving, they finally saw a sign—a real sign this time—and Aggie breathed a sigh of relief when they swung into the courtyard of a small but very elegant country house. Under the falling snow, it was a picture-postcard scene.
A few cars were in the courtyard, but it was obvious that business was as quiet here as it had been at Mrs Bixby’s bed and breakfast. How many other people were slowly wending their way north by car in disastrous driving conditions? Only a few lunatics.
Her nerves gathered pace as they were checked in.
‘Since this was my suggestion…’ She turned to him as they walked towards the winding staircase that led to the first floor and up to their bedrooms. ‘I insist on picking up the tab.’
‘Have you got the money to pick up the tab?’ Luiz asked. ‘There’s no point suggesting something if you can’t carry it out.’
‘I might not be rich but I’m not completely broke!’ Nerves made her lash out at him. It wasn’t the best strategy for enticing him into her bed. ‘I’m doing this all wrong,’ she muttered, half to herself.
‘Doing what all wrong?’ Luiz stopped and looked down at her.
‘You’re nothing like the guys I’ve been out with.’
‘I don’t think that standing halfway up the stairs in a hotel is the place for a soul-searching conversation about the men you’ve slept with.’ He turned on his heels and began heading upstairs.
‘I don’t like you being like this with me!’ Aggie caught up with him and tugged the sleeve of his jumper until he turned around and looked at her with impatience.
‘Aggie, why don’t we just go to our rooms, take some time out and meet in an hour for dinner? This has already turned into a never-ending journey. I’ve been away from work for too long. I have things on my mind. I don’t feel inclined to get wrapped up in a hysterical, emotional conversation with you now.’
Luiz was finding it impossible to deal with his crazy obsession with her. He wondered if he was going stir crazy. Was being cooped up with her doing something to his self-control? It had not even crossed his mind, when he had made a pass at her, that she would turn him down. Was that why he had watched her with Betsy and Gordon and all those kids and the only thing he could think was how much he wanted to get her into his bed? Was he so arrogant, in the end, that he couldn’t accept that any woman should say no to him?
The uneasy swirl of unfamiliar emotions had left him edgy and short-tempered. He would have liked to dismiss her from his mind the way he had always been able to dismiss all the inconveniences that life had occasionally thrown at him. He had always been good at that. Ruthlessness had always served him well. That and the knowledge that it was pointless getting sidetracked by things that were out of your control. Aggie sidetracked him and the last thing he needed was an involved conversation that would get neither of them anywhere. Womanly chats were things he avoided like the plague.
‘I’m not being hysterical.’ Aggie took a deep breath. If she backed away now, she would never do what she felt she had to do. Falling into bed with Luiz might be something she would never have contemplated in a month of Sundays, but then again she had never had to cope with a sexual attraction that was ripping her principles to shreds.
She had come to the conclusion that, whilst she knew it was crazy to sleep with a guy whose attitude towards women she found unnerving and amoral, not to sleep with him would leave her with regrets she would never be able to put behind her. And, if she was going to sleep with him, then she intended to have some control over the whole messy situation.
A lifetime of independence would not be washed away in a five-minute decision.
‘I just want to talk to you. I want to clear the air.’
‘There’s nothing to clear, Aggie. I’ve done what you asked me to do, and I’m pleased you seemed to have had a good time seeing all your old friends, but now it’s time to move on.’
‘I may have made a mistake.’
