She was waiting. She knew she was. She was waiting and waiting for it to be safe to go back indoors. And as she waited that same oppressive sense of foreboding stole over her.
Despite the brightness of the spring sunshine, and the warm shelter of the sunken garden, she shivered. Her ears strained for the sound of a car engine starting up, signalling that once more Salton was safe.
There was a footfall on stone. Her head flew up.
Diego Saez had walked into the sunken garden.
CHAPTER SIX
PORTIA had frozen again, he could see, just the way she had last night, when he’d walked into her drawing room. Going completely rigid as only an outraged woman of her class could. It was as if an invisible layer of ice had settled over her whole body.
As he strolled towards her his eyes flicked over her again, taking in the fine bones of her face, the slender wrist, the discreet swell of her breasts beneath the softest cashmere that made him want to hold her in his hands…
But if the thought of caressing her breasts heated him, the look on her face was designed to do just the opposite. Yet the icy disdain in those grey eyes merely acted like a spurt to the anger which he held, like a jaguar on a leash, beneath the surface of his conscious mind.
She had come here to avoid him—she might as well have written it in letters a metre high! Just as she had left the dining table last night and disappeared. Making her aristocratic disdain for him so obvious he’d have had to be a clod of earth not to recognise it. He felt the leashed jaguar growl silently as it crouched, waiting to be given the order to surge forward.
But he would not loose his anger on her. Would not reduce himself to her level—lashing o
ut at him like that, her eyes flashing with contempt for him for all the world to see, dismissing him like some peasant!
No—he stilled the tensing jaguar—he would not loose his anger on her.
He would play a far, far more enjoyable game with her.
Portia felt ice fill her veins. It was a mix of rage—and dread.
Rage because how dared, how dare Diego Saez persecute her like this?
And dread because there was something about the way he was walking towards her, something purposeful in his long, rhythmic stride, that crushed the breath from her lungs.
It did something else too. Something she pushed away blindly, urgently, as if she had suddenly seen a poisonous spider on her bare leg. But not before she had felt its fatal bite. Felt the poison enter her flesh.
Heating it.
She wanted to leap to her feet, wanted to turn on her heel and rush out of the garden, away from him as fast as she could. But the ice filling her veins kept her frozen in position. All she could do was let her fingers clutch at the sides of the cardigan at her throat, as if that might free the choking sensation in her throat.
In a voice as tight as steel she heard herself speak. Sharply. Cuttingly.
‘I don’t know why you came here but I want you to leave! I have nothing more to say to you!’
He stilled. He was about six feet away from her and seemed to be twice her height. Again she urged herself to stand up, and again realised that it was quite beyond her power.
For one long, paralysing moment he simply went on standing there, looking down at her. He was wearing a business suit, immaculately tailored, and it seemed to make him look taller, darker than ever. His obsidian eyes surveyed her, and she felt the breath stall in her lungs.
‘I have something to tell you,’ he said, in his deep, accented voice, ‘which you would be advised to listen to.’
Her lip curled.
‘I can’t imagine that there is anything in the world I want to hear you say!’
His face was expressionless. Then, with a slight turn of his head, he indicated the pale gold mass of the house across the lawn rising behind her. Slowly his gaze came back to her, and what she saw in his eyes hollowed her out.
Then, his face still completely expressionless, he spoke.
‘If you want to save your precious family home you will listen to every word I have to tell you.’
He had her.