Rebecca Winters - At His Service - Flirting with the Boss

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REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include three beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wild flowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her Mills & Boon ®romance novels, because writing is her passion, along with her family and church. Rebecca loves to hear from her readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website at: www.cleanromances.com.

“A COGNAC IN CELEBRATION, Don Remi?”

Remigio Alfonso de Vargas y Goyo sat back in the leather chair with his long legs crossed at the ankles. He disliked being addressed as if he was a royal relic. It was archaic. Remi was a man of the soil. In this day and age a title was absurd. He studied his loyal accountant with a jaundiced eye. “Of what?”

The tidy older man approaching seventy years of age poured himself a drink. “Your business has surpassed what it was befo—” He stopped short of finishing the sentence. A slight flush tinged his cheeks before he looked away and swallowed the swirling amber liquid. “Well, let’s just say Soleado Goyo is once again on its way to giving your competitors a major headache.”

“Don’t count my chickens too fast, Luis. We’re in the middle of another drought cycle with no end in sight. The olive groves are always hit hardest. You know that.” With the loss of the Spanish colonies in the l850s, Spain’s wealth had diminished and the Goyos had been forced to work for a living. Gone were the fortunes of the previous Dukes of Toledo from which the Goyo line had descended.

“So you diversify in anticipation.”

His caustic laugh resounded in the room. “Like my father once did? It ended up being the costliest mistake of his life and drove both my parents to an early grave. I’m afraid I’m a purist.”

Luis shrugged. “It was a mere suggestion, Remi. You’re the expert. Far be it from me to tell you anything.”

“Your long association with Papa gives you the right.”

“Nevertheless I’m only good with numbers.”

“Which you do very well indeed,” he muttered.

“Gracias.”

Remi levered his tall, powerful body from the chair. After two long, grueling years of blood and sweat he’d finally paid off the last of his late father’s bank debt. It had saved his family’s honor and reputation in the region. However, he’d still dreaded this meeting with Luis. Each time he drove to Toledo on business it called up dark, bitter memories he only managed to suppress as long as he stayed too busy to think.

Right now he could feel the acid bitterness of betrayal scorching his insides like a river of molten magma. Once its journey started, no power could stave it off. At times like this he wasn’t fit company for anyone, least of all Luis who’d been his cheering section for as long as he could remember. The older man deserved better.

In a few swift strides he reached the door, anxious to get back home.

“Remi?”

He turned his dark head in Luis’s direction. “Sí?”

“I’m very proud of what you’ve accomplished. Your father would be proud, too.”

Not if his papa had already turned over in his grave.

Remi sincerely hoped his parent had no way of knowing how close his thirty-three-year-old son had come to losing everything five generations of Goyos had worked so hard to achieve.

If Luis didn’t recognize Remi anymore, that was no surprise. The man who stared back at Remi in the mirror every morning couldn’t possibly be Luis Goyo’s son—his firstborn offspring whose appalling lack of judgment in his personal life still continued to blacken Remi’s world.

He gave Luis an unsmiling nod and left the office. In an economy of movement he descended the two steep flights of stairs to the narrow street where he’d parked his black sedan.

As a boy he’d been able to walk beneath the gothic arches of these ancient streets without feeling as if he was part of a parade crowd. Since that time tourists from around the globe had discovered Toledo and now flowed in and out of the city no matter the season. When at all possible, he went out of his way to avoid them. They were more stifling than the heat that had come to the heart of central Spain.

July brought an unforgiving summer sun that portended dry lightning and fires. A lick of flame could make a torch out of a gnarled olive tree. Maybe one day it would mistake him for one of them. Why not?

It was a hard life fewer and fewer owners of the large latifundia chose to embrace, but it was his life. Though every dream of his had been destroyed, the estate he’d inherited remained, giving him the last remaining reason to get up in the morning.

He removed his lightweight suit jacket and tie. After tossing them in the backseat, he got behind the wheel and started the engine. Soon he was winding his way past Moorish walls to the outskirts. For a while the road bordered the Tagus River, then opened onto the solitary plain where the traffic had thinned.

As he sped south, the great Alcázar of Toledo, standing like a sentinel on the granite hill behind him, disappeared. At three in the afternoon there were few vehicles on the road. While his car ate up the kilometers, he felt his taut muscles relax knowing that inside of fifteen minutes he’d be back on the estate with a ton of work to do before going to bed.

Work saved his life.

During the day physical labor kept him from reliving the past. Unfortunately the long dark hours of the night brought the demons he was forced to wrestle with over and over again. When he awakened in the mornings, he was emotionally exhausted.

Deep in his torturous thoughts he was barely cognizant of a car in the distance. It had just rounded the long curve and was coming in his direction. The driver must have seen the stray bull crossing the highway at the same time he did.

Remi’s speed was such that he knew it would be too dangerous to brake, but the other driver obeyed the opposite instinct and the car swerved. In a split second it was on a collision course for him. He yanked the steering wheel to the right to escape impact. The other driver overcorrected to avoid him. To his horror the other car rolled behind him onto the shoulder and landed on the passenger side, coming to a stop.

He brought his car to a halt, then shot out and raced to the blue compact car whose tires were still spinning in the air. The front and rear windows had been broken. Glass lay everywhere. He looked inside. The driver was the only occupant. A woman. She was moaning.