Maid for Montero

Chapter TEN



INITIALLY IT HAD BEEN scary working in the gallery, but Zoe had soon gained more confidence and now she loved it. Especially since Polly had begun to give her responsibility, which she thrived on.

Today had been a good one. A buyer for an insurance firm had left having purchased several very expensive pastels by a new up-and-coming artist, and there was a spring in her step when Zoe finally locked up the gallery and fastened her jacket against the cold breeze blowing down the street. She was wondering if she’d make the early train when the loud honk of a car horn made her look up.

Pulled up beside the pavement, showing a selfish disregard for the parking restrictions, was a car she recognised. Her heart picked up tempo as she walked towards it, and as she reached it the window on the driver’s side rolled down.

‘What are you doing here?’

Isandro smiled. He hadn’t actually known where he was heading until he had arrived just as she was emerging from the gallery. The sight of her slim, trim figure had, if not lifted his spirits, definitely alleviated the gloom.

‘I’m heading home. Do you want a lift?’

The terse delivery made her look more closely at him, her brow furrowing as she studied his face. There was nothing specific, but she could tell that something was wrong.

‘That would be good—my feet are killing me,’ she admitted.

They had been driving along in total silence for ten minutes before she spoke. ‘So what’s wrong?’

He flashed her an impatient sideways glance. ‘Nothing is wrong…What makes you think anything is wrong?’

‘You haven’t said a word.’

‘Can’t a man enjoy a little silence? Do we have to indulge in an endless stream of boring, meaningless drivel?’

She let out a long silent whistle. ‘If you’re going to speak to me in that tone you can drop me off.’

By way of reply he pressed his foot on the accelerator. ‘Don’t be so bloody touchy.’

‘Me! So are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’ She gripped the door and closed her eyes as they approached a hairpin bend. ‘Or are you going to drive us off the road?’

‘I am perfectly in control of this car.’

Despite his reply she was relieved that he did perceptively slow his speed as the powerful car came out of the bend.

‘I heard from my father today.’ He compressed his sensual lips hard enough to rim them with white in a physical effort to stem the flow of information.

‘That’s nice.’ Clearly it wasn’t, and prodding gently was a dangerous strategy but she couldn’t think of any other way to get him to open up. It was obvious to her he needed to even if he was too pig-headed to admit it.

Was there some problem between him and his father…? He had mentioned his mother once in past tense, and as he’d never said anything about his father she had always assumed that both his parents were dead.

‘Nice!’ he snarled.

Zoe’s confusion and concern grew as her gaze travelled from his white-knuckled hands on the wheel to his taut profile.

‘Sorry, is it bad news?’ He couldn’t accuse her of prying when he had introduced the subject…not that he wouldn’t if it suited him, she thought with a wry smile.

‘He’s invited me to his wedding.’ He elaborated, but as the additional information was in his native Spanish she was none the wiser.

‘I suppose it’s hard to see your father moving on. Has your mother been dead long?’ Her blue eyes shone with sympathy as she looked at him through her lashes.

‘Moving on!’ His teeth came together with an audible grating sound. ‘You think this is my problem?’

‘It’s only natural, especially if you were close to your mother—’

‘My father moved on so fast the headstone was still being carved. My father—’ He broke off, a nerve in his taut jaw clenching as he stared with white-faced intensity at the road ahead.

‘There’s a layby up ahead. Pull over, Isandro,’ she said quietly.

‘Why?’

She had wondered why he had chosen the minor road, a slightly longer route, in preference to the shorter journey on the motorway. Now she was glad; at least this road was almost empty.

‘Because I don’t particularly want to end up a road-traffic-accident statistic.’ For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her, but to her intense relief at the last moment he swerved into the layby, sending up a shower of gravel.

He turned off the engine, and without a word got out of the car. Leaving the door wide open, he began to pace up and down on the grassy verge of the road.

Zoe didn’t follow him. Isandro was a man who needed space, so she let him walk while he fought the devils that drove him. He couldn’t not be elegant—the animal grace was an integral part of him, and even vibrating with anger he was riveting to watch.

This was a part of his personality he concealed behind a carefully contrived mask. This was the part of his personality that he liked to deny—the passion and fire—allowing it out only behind closed doors. She knew from experience that driving something underground didn’t make it go away; it just consumed you.

Ignoring the fact she had fallen in love with him had not lessened her feelings. It had just meant that when it surfaced…She shivered and wrapped her arms protectively around herself, hugging tight. She wouldn’t let it surface.

She stayed silent when he finally slid back into the car.

‘What do you think?’

‘About what, Isandro?’

‘I was twenty-one when my mother died, and already married.’

Zoe had lost her own father when she was a baby and she had no memory of him. Her mother’s death remained a strong and sad memory, even though at the end it had been a release.

‘My father was a wreck. Then two months after she died, out of the blue he rang and told me he’d met a wonderful woman who reminded him of my mother.’ His lips curled into a contemptuous smile. ‘Turned out the wonderful woman had a sweet daughter who he planned to adopt. And yes, the likeness to my mother was startling. It became obvious pretty quickly to everyone but him that she was a con artist. Friends, colleagues told him…’

‘You told him?’

Isandro nodded. ‘He told me I was jealous. When they finally did a flit, he was one step away from bankruptcy. He’d mortgaged my mother’s home, sold off her jewellery, and…’ His chest heaved as he struggled to contain his feelings.

‘And now he’s met someone else?’

‘Apparently.’

‘And he’s invited you to the wedding?’

She got another nod.

‘Do you really want to know what I think?’

‘I asked, didn’t I?’ The belated realisation sent a wave of shock through his body. One of the reasons Dana had cited for the breakdown of their marriage was the fact that, according to her, he never listened to her, or asked her opinion.

I need to be needed, Isandro, and you don’t need me—you don’t need anyone.

He had not disputed it, because it had been true…It still was.

Zoe arched a delicate brow and wondered about the odd expression on his face. ‘That doesn’t mean you won’t yell if I say something you don’t want to hear.’

He pushed his dark head back into the leather headrest and gave a half-smile as he looked at her from under the dark mesh of his preposterously long eyelashes.

‘Since when has that stopped you?’

Zoe was the only woman who ever challenged him. She didn’t go out of her way to say what he wanted to hear, and sometimes it seemed to him she took a perverse pleasure from winding him up.

‘I think you should go to the wedding and wish your father well.’

He clenched his jaw and swore under his breath.

Zoe didn’t let his response throw her. It was pretty much what she had anticipated. ‘Well, not going isn’t going to stop him. I know he screwed up once, but who doesn’t?’

‘He didn’t just screw up, he—’

‘He thought he was in love. That’s not a crime.’ Though Isandro’s expression suggested he thought it should be. ‘I’m sure he feels pretty stupid about what happened. Ashamed and embarrassed.’

‘I suppose so.’ Isandro rubbed his jaw. Had he ever really thought about how his father felt? Would a stronger man have shown more compassion?

He turned his brooding gaze on Zoe. Such uncomfortable thoughts had never come to him before.

‘And I expect he knows you’re still angry with him.’

‘I’m not…’ He caught her eyes once more and sighed, dragging a hand through his sable hair until it stood up in tufts around his bronzed face.

‘All right, I am angry…How could he take the word of that woman and not his friends, people who he had known for years?’

‘You, you mean?’

He shrugged and issued his response through clenched teeth. ‘It is not important.’

Zoe felt her heart squeeze in her chest in sympathy. ‘It must have been hurtful.’

Isandro looked from the blue eyes brimming with sympathy to the hand that lay on his arm and thought, What the hell am I doing?

Regretting the outburst that had made him reveal so much of his feelings, and equating it with weakness, he slid his arm from under her hand. He was not a man who shared his problems. His cure for extreme frustration was mind-numbing laps of the pool, or a run that battered body and mind into numbness.

This time he had not sought the pool or donned his running shoes. He had…Why had instinct made him seek out Zoe?

‘What was hurtful, as you put it,’ he countered in a harsh voice, ‘was being forced to put my own life on hold and pull in every favour I had owing in order to stop the firm going under and my father ending up in jail. It wasn’t just his money the bitch got. He’d “borrowed” from clients’ accounts.’

Zoe watched the shutters go back up, hearing the lack of emotion in his hard voice. She could have screamed in sheer frustration, but instead she put her hand back in her lap, her feelings see-sawing violently between empathy and a strong desire to shake him.

Did he imagine allowing her even a glimpse of the man beneath the mask gave her some sort of special power?

‘Don’t worry, Isandro, I’d already guessed you’re actually human.’ Their glances connected and Zoe saw the shock he was not quick enough to hide flicker in the second before his hooded eyelids lowered, leaving her looking at the gleam of his eyes through the mesh of his eyelashes. ‘But I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me,’ she promised.

His lips tightened, but the faint flush along the angle of his cheekbones suggested she had made her point. ‘I am not in the mood for word games, Zoe.’

‘Fine, is this straightforward enough? Your dad made a mistake once…all right, a big mistake,’ she conceded in response to his snort. ‘That doesn’t mean there isn’t an outside possibility he actually loves this woman.’

His lip curled contemptuously. ‘My father believes in fairy tales.’ While he despised the childlike credulity, there had been moments when Isandro almost envied his father.

‘Isn’t that a good thing? That the awful woman didn’t win?’ she said softly.

The suggestion caused Isandro to turn his head sharply to look at her, the compassion glowing in her eyes as much as the statement causing him to frown. A nerve jumped spasmodically in his lean cheek. A man was allowed some privacy, yet she continually ignored the ‘keep off’ signs and crossed the boundaries.

Didn’t you invite her in when you offloaded your emotional garbage?

His frown deepened as he pushed away the question and barked, ‘How do you figure that one out?’

Watching as she stuck out her chin to a belligerent angle, he felt his anger slipping away to be replaced with an emotion he was less comfortable putting a name to. The woman had more guts than anyone he had ever met.

‘If your father had come out of the experience a cynic she would have won, but he hasn’t. He hasn’t become bitter, cynical and twisted.’

She saw the flicker of an emotion she could not name in his dark eyes before he turned his head away from her. The rain had begun to drum against the window.

‘Are you saying I have?’

Instead of responding to the question, she voiced one that had popped into her head during the conversation. ‘Is that why your marriage failed?’

He turned to face her and instead, as she half expected, of telling her to mind her own business, shook his head and repeated the question.

‘Is what why my marriage failed?’

Did he lay the blame for his failed marriage at his father’s door? It would certainly go a long way to explain why, all these years later, he could not forgive and forget. Common sense told her this was a subject she shouldn’t broach but a need to understand this man who had captured her heart was stronger. ‘You were forced to concentrate your energy on saving your father and the firm and you didn’t have time for your…’ Her voice faltered as she stopped and gave a self-conscious shrug. ‘It’s none of my business. I just…’

‘Want to pry and prod.’

Encouraged that he sounded amused, but not antagonistic, she lifted her gaze, studying his face as he replied.

‘No, my marriage did not fail because I was busy rebuilding the company. Though I imagine it might have speeded up the process. Simply put, my marriage was never my priority. We married too young—we both wanted different things from life. Marriage requires compromise.’ His dark eyes brushed her face. ‘I do not do compromise.’ He gave a sardonic smile, to which she had no response. ‘The end was inevitable.’

Did this clinical analysis hide a broken heart Isandro could not admit to even to himself?

‘I was not surprised when Dana left.’ One side of his mobile mouth lifted in an ironic half-smile. ‘Though I was not expecting her to leave with my best friend,’ he conceded.

Unable to control her reaction, Zoe gasped.

Isandro placed a finger under her chin and lifted it. ‘The open-mouth look is not so bad on you.’ Head tilted a little to one side, he drew back slightly to look at her face, realising as he did so that nothing was a bad look on her.

His eyes darkened as he ran the pad of his thumb down her smooth, downy soft cheek. Inhaling the scent of her warm skin through flared nostrils, he felt the desire that was always close to the surface. Unable to resist the lush softness of her mouth, he bent his head, feeling her sigh as she opened her mouth to deepen the penetration of his tongue, winding her fingers into his hair, pulling him in close.

When he lifted his mouth they stayed that way, her nose pressed to the side of his, her fingers in his hair, their warm breaths mingling.

Reluctant to break physical contact, she slid her hands slowly down over his broad muscular shoulders before crossing them across her stomach in a protective hug. She was still shaking in response to the soul-stripping kiss, the barely leashed violence in his embrace; the simmering hunger still in his eyes made it hard for her to speak, let alone focus.

She felt his hand go to her breasts, cupping them through her clothes, as his other hand skimmed down the side of her face.

She was breathing hard now; her fingers went to his belt.

‘If anyone comes…’ she said thickly.

He pulled down his jeans and reached across to slide her skirt up her thighs, his fingers sliding up her silky warm skin under the hem of her panties.

‘They won’t.’

His hard, predatory expression made her shiver inside. Excited and aroused beyond reason or caution, she climbed onto his lap, facing him. His hands moved in a sweeping motion up and down her back and down her buttocks before coming to rest on her hips.

He wanted her so badly that he couldn’t breathe; all he could think about was sinking into her. It was crazy and intense.

Zoe reached down to caress his shaft, waiting until he was groaning before she raised herself up and impaled herself on the hard, silky, hot length. Perfectly in tune, they moved together fast and hard in perfect harmony until they both came in a hot, violent flood.

Adjusting her clothes, aware that beside her Isandro was doing the same, she could hardly believe what she had just done. Anyone could have driven by and seen them, and she hadn’t cared.

Her body still warm with the flush of desire, she turned to look at him.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about…It must have been terrible for you.’ Dana was a beautiful name. Had she been beautiful? Of course she’d been beautiful.

And he’d loved her…Zoe was shocked by the animosity she felt towards a woman she had never met. Had he been thinking about her while he made love just now?

It took him a few seconds to realise what she was talking about—his ex-wife! They had just made devastating love and she was talking about his ex. He didn’t want to talk about Dana; he wanted to talk about where this was going. He wanted to talk about having Zoe in his bed nights.

‘I was a hell of a husband. Basically I lived my own life and expected her to take it or leave it. In the end, she left it. I do not blame her. She was lonely and Carl was able to give her the things she wanted.’ He held her blue eyes as he said, ‘Some men are not meant for marriage.’

The warning was implicit. Wondering uneasily what she’d done to make him feel the need to spell out the obvious, she pulled her hands out from the warmth of his and laughed.

‘I suppose there’s still time to cancel the engagement notice I sent to the paper. Relax, Isandro, I’m not about to propose.’

And not even in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined Isandro doing so. She had accepted that what they had would never be deep and meaningful for him. What choice did she have? She was taking it one day at a time, enjoying the moments when they were together. Perhaps the knowledge that they would not last gave them a sweet bitterness, but she was determined not to waste a second.

Isandro leaned back in his own seat and turned his head to look at her. ‘So you think I should go to my father’s wedding?’

‘Does it matter what I think?’

‘Sometimes an objective view is good.’

Zoe laughed, the sound dredged from somewhere deep inside her bubbling from her lips. She couldn’t help herself—objective where Isandro was concerned was something she could never be.

Biting her lip to stem the flow, she responded to his quizzical look with a shrug. ‘I thought I was emotional and illogical?’

‘You have the occasional lucid moment,’ he threw back with a lazy grin.

‘So will you go?’

‘There is no point in burning my bridges.’

Zoe nodded and lowered her gaze. She had burnt her bridges some time ago. Would she regret it…? She shook her head; she didn’t want to think about that now.

She glanced at her watch and was shocked to see how long they had been here. ‘I need to pick up the twins. I promised Chloe’s mum-in-law I’d pick them up at half past.’ It was almost that time now. While she was being utterly selfish she would never let her own selfish desires come ahead of her duty to her sister’s children.

‘Calm down—it won’t take long.’

It didn’t. He delivered her to the cottage door only five minutes late. Zoe got out of the car. About to join her, Isandro paused and responded to the bleep of his mobile.

He scanned the screen and with a curse slid it back into his pocket. ‘Are you all right getting home alone?’

‘Of course.’

‘I will see you…’ He paused, as if unable to commit himself even to a minor thing like a time, and, nodding curtly, slammed the door and drove off.