Her Latin Lover (Contemporary Romance) (9 page)

After they drank a cup of thick, dark coffee, Paulo stood up to leave.

“Is everything ok?” Mary asked.

“Yes, everything is fine. Jorge and Isabella came here after his car broke down. It appears that his spare tyre was flat and he was unable to change it. They had to walk back to the town to get someone to help them. However, Isabella is as strong as a horse and after she had something to eat and drink here, a neighbour gave her a lift back to my house. They left just half an hour before we arrived. Jorge has gone to find a friend of his to help him with his car. We should be getting back now. Isabella will be wondering where we are.”

After much hand shaking and farewells, they finally left the house and headed back to Paulo’s jeep. The drive back was more leisurely and Javier and Carlos sang songs in the back all the way home which prevented Mary from having much of a conversation with Paulo in the front. As soon as they pulled up in front of the hacienda, Isabella came running out, waving her hands in the air and crying. Paulo gave her a big hug and did his best to calm her down.

“She is very upset about coming back late and she’s worried that she won’t have time to cook us a proper meal this evening!” Paulo translated for Mary.

“She doesn’t need to worry about dinner. We could go back to Corazon for the fiesta and eat there,” Mary replied. She had never been to a fiesta before and by the look of things, it was going to be one huge street party.

“Absolutely not! We are staying here where you will be safe.”

“I’m not hiding away until it’s time for me to fly back to London. I’m not scared of El Leon. We should go to the fiesta and show him that he doesn’t frighten us. Surely it’s more dangerous up here all alone in the hills.”

“My men are here to protect us.” Paulo gestured at the dozen farmers who stood around the outside of the house.

“They could come with us. I bet they wouldn’t want to miss the fiesta, would they?” Mary could see that her suggestion had struck a cord. She pressed her point. “If we had a dozen armed men and the entire town around us, what could El Leon do?”

“Alright, we’ll go, but not too late and only for an hour. We’ll set off at eight and be back by ten.”

Chapter 8

Paulo spent what was left of the afternoon talking to the men and giving them instructions for the evening. All of them were thrilled that they would be going to the fiesta, as Paulo knew they would be, but they had strict instructions not to get drunk and to keep a close eye on Mary. Some of them asked if they could go home first and fetch their families. Paulo agreed reluctantly, but he asked them to come back to his house later that evening and not stay out all night at the fiesta. He would have preferred to have kept everyone safe at the house, as he had already had one scare that day with Isabella going missing and he didn’t need another one. However, he couldn’t keep Mary caged up in the house like a trapped animal. Also, he would show El Leon that he wasn’t scared of him. He would ignore his threats and go to the fiesta with her along with everyone else.

Just before eight o’clock he was standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for her. He presumed that as she was British, she would be on time unlike most South Americans who saw nothing amiss in turning up two or even three hours late to an appointment. He was correct: at one minute past eight she appeared at the top of the stairs. Paulo gasped when he saw her.

“Where did you find that?” he asked in a voice that was little more than a whisper. Mary didn’t seem to hear him and started to descend the staircase. She was wearing the exact same scarlet dress that Clara wore in the painting in front of him. The only difference was the hair. Instead of the dark flowing ringlets, Mary’s short, honey-coloured hair was curled softly around her face and she was wearing large gold hoops instead of the diamond earrings that had sparkled from Clara’s ears.

“Why are you wearing that dress?” Paulo asked as she stepped nearer.

“I found it in a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. We’re going to a fiesta, so I thought I’d dress up a bit. It fits perfectly, doesn’t it?”

The dress fitted her as if it had been made for her. He was not surprised. Mary was identical in build to the original wearer of the red silk gown.

“I can see that you don’t like it,” she said. “It’s the same dress, isn’t it?” She pointed to the painting.

The dress was a little crumpled in places, but otherwise it was no different from how it was ten years ago when it was first worn. It hadn’t even faded. Paulo didn’t know until now that it still existed. Isabella must have kept it stored away all these years in one of the empty bedrooms upstairs.

“Take it off and get changed, now.” He tried hard to keep his voice steady, but his words came out as more of a command than a gentle request.

Mary yanked up the silk sides of the gown and charged back upstairs.

Twenty minutes later she reappeared, this time she was dressed in plain navy blue trousers and a thin, white cotton blouse. It was the same outfit she had worn when he met her in the hotel bar, the night after the poker game. He could hardly believe that it had only been a couple of nights since that poker game. A week ago he was living quietly with nothing more to worry about than the falling price of coffee. Now, just a few days later, his coffee crop was lying unharvested in the fields, because his farmers stood guard outside his house in case an enraged El Leon tried to take away a woman that he was rapidly falling in love with. If only he had never walked into the bar in Corazon that night and met the awful Nick Kingsley! However, if he hadn’t been there, El Leon would have beaten Kingsley at cards and Mary would now be under his so-called protection. That is, if El Leon had allowed her to live this long. Paulo shuddered at the thought.

“You don’t like this outfit either?” Mary asked. “I’m not going to get changed again.”

“You look fine.” What was he saying? She looked more than fine. She looked absolutely gorgeous, though he bet she looked even more amazing with the clothes off. The blouse she was wearing was so thin that he could just make out a white, lacy bra underneath it. He wondered what type of panties she was wearing beneath her trousers and if they matched the bra. It had been a long time since he had seen a woman in her underwear. He would give anything to see her standing before him in hers. He took a deep breath and tried desperately to stop thinking about Mary’s naked body.

“You’re angry about the red dress, aren’t you?” Mary said.

“No, I’m not angry at all. It was just a bit of a shock seeing it again.”

“You are angry. I can tell by the determined look on your face. You’re just trying not to show it. Why was it a shock? Who is she?” Mary looked at the painting. “Isabella told me that her name is Clare, or something like that.”

“Clara,” he corrected her. “Clara de Santa Maria. She was my fiancé.” Poor Clara. She was so beautiful, so innocent, and so young. It was all such a long time ago and yet in some ways it all seemed as if it happened just a few weeks ago. Sometimes he still caught himself thinking, “I must mention that to Clara,” or “Clara would like this, maybe I’ll buy it for her,” and then he would remember that he would never be able to mention anything to her again; he would never see her again and her delicate young body was probably no more than dry bones and ashes in the ground. “Thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”

“What did you say?”

He looked at Mary, who looked so much like Clara, but who was so very different. Clara, with her strong Catholic faith, would have immediately known what Paulo was referring to.

“It’s from the Bible, Genesis, chapter 3. It’s what the priest says on Ash Wednesday before Lent, ‘Thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return’ to remind us of our mortality; one day we will all die.”

“So your fiancé is . . .”

“Yes, she’s dead. She died in a car accident.”

“How terrible!”

“It was.” It was more terrible than she could possibly imagine. He would never forget that awful night. Clara’s frail body was thrown from the car, through the windscreen and onto the road in front of him. Bleeding heavily himself, he’d managed to free himself from the wreck and stagger over to her, but there was nothing he could do. She was already dead. Her beautiful face had been smashed against the tarmac.

“When did it happen?”

“Ten years ago. It was the night before our wedding. There was a big dinner after the rehearsal at the church and we were driving back. Clara wanted to check the preparations at my father’s house, this house, the one we are standing in now. She wanted to make sure that everything was ready for the wedding party the next day. There was so much food, so much wine and hundreds of flowers to sort out. In the end they were her funeral flowers. It’s the only funeral I’ve ever been to that was decorated with pink and white roses; so pure, so delicate.” Paulo found it hard to continue.

“I’m so sorry.” Mary stepped forward and took his hand in her own.

“Thank you. You look a bit like her, you know.”

“I had noticed. It’s as though I’m her twin. Isabella and the man we met today in Corazon noticed it too. He couldn’t stop staring at me when we were at his house.”

“I apologise if they seemed rude. They don’t mean to be, but the local people here are very superstitious. Some of them think that you are the ghost of Clara, come back from the dead.” He did not add that they thought that Mary was Clara’s avenging spirit that had come back seeking retribution for her untimely death.

“How can I be? I’m sure I was born long before Clara died.”

“Indeed. It’s all just local superstition. I would not let their concerns worry you. You cannot possibly be a reincarnation of Clara. You existed long before Clara and I were even engaged. For example, when this painting was commissioned, you were probably running around playing with dolls.”

“I’m not that young. If this painting was done ten years ago, I was fourteen. I had given up dolls quite a while before that.”

“Actually the painting was done over fourteen years ago to celebrate our betrothal. She’s wearing the dress that she wore to our engagement ball when she had just turned eighteen.” He saw Mary raise an eyebrow.

“It was a long engagement. The wedding was scheduled to take place three years later, as soon as she turned twenty-one. After Clara died, I gave the painting back to her father and he hung it in his house for a short time, but then, when he died, he passed it back to me along with everything else. Clara had no brothers or sisters and I believe I was like a son to him, even though I never had the chance to become a true son by marrying his daughter.”

Paulo had received more than just the painting; he had received the entire estate of Clara’s deceased father. The coffee-growing plantation that he now owned was a combination of his father’s and Clara’s father’s lands. It was too much for one man to manage. He held Mary’s hand tighter in his own. What he needed was a strong woman like her to help him carry the burden. He pulled her closer to him until he could feel her firm breasts pressing against his chest. He was just about to put his arm around her waist when suddenly she pulled away. He was surprised by her reaction. Maybe she was worried about his reference to Clara’s avenging spirit. He looked up at the painting and knew deep down that Clara would want this. He had been alone too long. Clara would want him to be with someone; a woman like Mary whom he could love and who might love him in return. He almost wondered if perhaps, from beyond the grave, Clara had sent Mary to him.

“You like me because I look like her,” Mary said. “Don’t you think that’s a bit creepy?”

He could feel her bristling like a cat with its haunches up. “Not at all! You are not Clara. You might look like her, but as a person you’re completely different!”

“Great, thank you very much! So I’m nothing like the wonderful Clara. What am I? A substitute, a second-best for your dead girlfriend?”

“Don’t be absurd. I agree that you look similar and I admit I was a bit startled myself when I first saw you walk into the bar the other night in Corazon, but you aren’t the same as Clara.” He tried to pull her closer to him to reassure her and give her some idea of his feelings, but she held her ground, several feet away from him.

“Given the way you’ve talked about Clara tonight and the fact that you’ve practically set up a shrine to her in the middle of your house, when you say that I’m nothing like her, it hardly sounds like a compliment.”

“No, no, you’re wrong. I loved Clara, I still do and I will never pretend that I don’t, but I loved her like a sister. We grew up together, our families were very close, our fathers were like brothers, and we celebrated fiestas together like one big family. But Clara was shy; she was very reserved and fragile. You might look like her, but you are nothing like her in the best possible way. You are independent. You’re strong. You’re not scared of standing up for yourself.”

He certainly couldn’t imagine Clara ever sitting in a bar and drinking beer, or arguing or talking back to him, but most of all he couldn’t imagine having sex with Clara. They had kissed on many occasions and once, just after they became engaged had even gone as far as a few fumblings and clumsy caresses, but Clara had cried for hours afterwards and made him feel ashamed. He had felt even guiltier when he found out that Clara had gone immediately to the local priest and confessed everything. As much as he loved Clara, she had not been a girl that one lusted after.

However, that didn’t mean that Mary was like the women he sometimes saw in La Puesta: women whose skimpy clothing showed off their large breasts and rounded hips; women who promised to do things in bed that many men only dreamt of. No, Mary was nothing like these women either. What Paulo felt towards her was a heady mix of love and lust, the type of which he had never felt before for just one woman. He could feel himself becoming aroused again. He rubbed his cheek hard in an attempt to relax.

“Your scar,” Mary said, putting her hand over his and caressing the long white mark on his face. “That was how you got your scar, wasn’t it? You got it in the car crash when Clara died.”