CATHY WILLIAMS - The Ultimate Persuasion - A Tempestuous Temptation / The Notorious Gabriel Diaz / The Truth Behind his Touch

‘Which is why you’re so close now. You said that your parents were dead.’

‘They are.’ She helped herself to a bit more wine, even though she was unaccustomed to alcohol and was dimly aware that she would probably have a crashing headache the following morning. ‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of? Don’t go coy on me, Aggie. How can people be sort of dead?’

Stripped bare of all the half-truths that had somehow been told to him over a period of time, Aggie resigned herself to telling him the unvarnished truth now about their background. He could do whatever he liked with the information, she thought recklessly. He could try to buy them off, could shake his head in disgust at being in the company of someone so far removed from himself. She should never have let her brother and Maria talk her into painting a picture that wasn’t completely accurate.

A lot of that had stemmed from her instinctive need to protect Mark, to do what was best for him. She had let herself be swayed by her brother being in love for the first time, by Maria’s tactful downplaying of just how protective her family was and why…And she also couldn’t deny that Luiz had rubbed her up the wrong way from the very beginning. It hadn’t been hard to swerve round the truth, pulling out pieces of it here and there, making sure to nimbly skip over the rest. He was so arrogant. He almost deserved it!

‘We never knew our father,’ she now admitted grudgingly. ‘He disappeared after I was born, and continued showing up off and on, but he finally did a runner when Mum became pregnant with Mark.’

‘He did a runner…’

‘I’ll bet you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, Luiz.’

‘It’s hard for me to get my head around the concept of a father abandoning his family,’ Luiz admitted.

‘You’re lucky,’ Aggie told him bluntly and Luiz looked at her with dry amusement.

‘My life was prescribed,’ he found himself saying. ‘Often it was not altogether ideal. Carry on.’

Aggie wanted to ask him to expand, to tell her what he meant by a ‘prescribed life’. From the outside looking in, all she could see was perfection for him: a united, large family, exempt from all the usual financial headaches, with everyone able to do exactly what they wanted in the knowledge that if they failed there would always be a safety net to catch them.

‘What else is there to say? I was nine when Mum died.’ She looked away and stared off at the open fire. The past was not a place she revisited with people but she found that she was past resenting what he knew about her. He would never change his mind about the sort of person he imagined she was, but that didn’t mean that she had to accept all his accusations without a fight.

‘How did she die?’

‘Do you care?’ Aggie asked, although half-heartedly. ‘She was killed in an accident returning from work. She had a job at the local supermarket and she was walking home when she was hit by a drunk-driver. There were no relatives, no one to take us in, and we were placed in a children’s home. A wonderful place with a wonderful couple running it who saw us both through our bad times; we couldn’t have hoped for a happier upbringing, given the circumstances. So please don’t feel sorry for either of us.’ The sandwiches were delicious but her appetite had nosedived.

‘I’m sorry about your mother.’

‘Are you?’ But she was instantly ashamed of the bitterness in her voice. ‘Thank you. It was a long time ago.’ She gave a dry, self-deprecating laugh. ‘I expect all this information is academic because you’ve already made your mind up about us. But you can see why it wouldn’t have made for a great opening conversation…especially when I knew from the start that the only reason you’d bothered to ask Maria out with us was so that you could check my brother out.’

Normally, Luiz cared very little about what other people thought of him. It was what made him so straightforward in his approach to tackling difficult situations. He never wasted time beating about the bush. Now, he felt an unaccustomed dart of shame when he thought back to how unapologetic he had been on every occasion he had met them, how direct his questions had been. He had made no attempt to conceal the reason for his sudden interest in his niece. He hadn’t been overtly hostile but Aggie, certainly, was sharp enough to have known exactly what his motives were. So could he really blame her if she hadn’t launched into a sob story about her deprived background?

Strangely, he felt a tug of admiration for the way she had managed to forge a path for herself through difficult circumstances. It certainly demonstrated the sort of strength of personality he had rarely glimpsed in the opposite sex. He grimaced when he thought of the women he dated. Chloe might be beautiful but she was also colourless and unambitious…just another cover girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth, biding her time at a fairly pointless part-time job until a rich man rescued her from the need to pretend to work at all.

‘So where was this home?’

‘Lake District,’ Aggie replied with a little shrug. She looked into those deep, deep, dark eyes and her mouth went dry.

‘Hence you said that they went somewhere that had sentimental meaning for you.’

‘Do you remember everything that people say to you?’ Aggie asked irritably and he shot her one of those amazing, slow smiles that did strange things to her heart rate.

‘It’s a blessing and a curse. You blush easily. Do you know that?’

‘That’s probably because I feel awkward here with you,’ Aggie retorted, but on cue she could feel her face going red.

‘No idea why.’ Luiz pushed himself away from the table and stretched out his legs to one side. He noticed that they had managed to work their way through nearly two bottles of wine. ‘We’re having a perfectly civilised conversation. Tell me why you decided to move to London.’

‘Tell me why you did.’

‘I took over an empire. The London base needed expanding. I was the obvious choice. I went to school here. I understand the way the people think.’

‘But did you want to settle here? I mean, it must be a far cry from Brazil.’

‘It works for me.’

He continued looking at her as what was left of the sandwiches were cleared away and coffee offered to them. Considering the hour, their landlady was remarkably obliging, waving aside Aggie’s apologies for arriving at such an inconvenient time, telling them that business was to be welcomed whatever time it happened to arrive. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

But neither of them wanted coffee. Aggie was so tired that she could barely stand. She was also tipsy; too much wine on an empty stomach.

‘I’m going to go outside for a bit,’ she said. ‘I think I need to get some fresh air.’

‘You’re going outside in this weather?’

‘I’m used to it. I grew up with snow.’ She stood up and had to steady herself and breathe in deeply.

‘I don’t care if you grew up running wild in the Himalayas, you’re not going outside, and not because I don’t think that you can handle the weather. You’re not going outside because you’ve had too much to drink and you’ll probably pass out.’

Aggie glared at him and gripped the table. God, her head was swimming, and she knew that she really ought to get to bed, do just as he said. But there was no way that she was going to allow him to dictate her movements on top of everything else.

‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Luiz Montes!’

He looked at her in silence and then shrugged. ‘And do you intend to go out without a coat, because you’re used to the snow?’

‘Of course not!’