Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) (7 page)

Monty pawed the ground restlessly, bored by the prolonged inactivity. Sabrina patted his neck. ‘Come on, boy, let’s go home,’ she said in a choked voice. The woeful state of her finances meant that selling her horse seemed unavoidable.

Cruz was waiting for her in the stable yard. It was the first time since he’d come back into her life that Sabrina had seen him in daylight and her heart slammed against her ribs as her eyes were drawn to his black hair gleaming like raw silk in the sunshine.

She dismounted and let Monty loose in the paddock while she dealt with Cruz.

‘You’re up early,’ he commented. ‘I thought you might be tired after the events of last night.’

‘Nothing happened between us...’ She broke off and flushed hotly. ‘Oh, you meant the fire.’ Idiot, Sabrina told herself furiously. She didn’t want Cruz to guess that she had been kept awake for most of the night by erotic fantasies of him making love to her. ‘Dawn is my favourite time to ride, when the sun is pale pink in the sky and the dew on the leaves sparkles like diamonds.’

Outwardly, Sabrina was the archetypal ice princess, Cruz thought as he studied her cool beauty. Her pale blonde hair was tied in a long plait that fell to halfway down her back and her intelligent grey eyes surveyed him with an unflattering lack of interest. Only the faint tremor of her sensual mouth and the delicate rose flush on her porcelain skin gave a clue to her inner fire.

His arousal was instant and uncomfortably hard. Damn her witchery, he thought grimly. He could not take his eyes off her. Last night she had looked glamorous in her scarlet evening gown, and when he had returned to the house after hearing about the fire he had been turned on by the sight of her in a silky robe. This morning she was no less sexy wearing jodhpurs that fitted her like a second skin, teamed with a soft grey cashmere sweater that echoed the colour of her eyes and clung with loving attention to the firm swell of her breasts. The sound of her cut-glass accent catapulted Cruz back to the present.

‘I trust you slept well?’

He recalled the previous night tossing and turning beneath the sheets and sweating like a teenage boy with a surfeit of hormones. ‘I didn’t stir all night,’ he lied. ‘I have to go back to London, but I’ve arranged for a local building firm to come to the house and make it secure.’

‘That’s unnecessary. There’s no need for you to get involved,’ she said stiffly.

‘You have no money,’ Cruz reminded her. His eyes rested on the stubborn set of her lips and he wondered how she would react if he were to crush her mouth beneath his and kiss her into submission. She would probably slap his face again, he decided with a mixture of amusement and reluctant admiration, remembering her explosion of temper in the library the previous evening.

‘On the subject of your financial difficulties—I have a proposition to discuss with you. Not now.’ He did not give her a chance to speak. ‘I’m due at a meeting at eleven.’ He handed her a business card. ‘This is my London address. Meet me there at six tonight if you are interested in finding out how I might be able to help you.’

Pride snapped Sabrina’s spine straight. ‘I don’t need your help.’

‘Don’t be late.’ Cruz swung his jacket over his shoulder, but instead of walking away he stepped closer to her and wrapped her long plait around his hand. ‘And wear your hair loose tonight, Sabrina, to please me.’

Sabrina’s chest heaved as she sucked oxygen into her lungs. ‘Why on earth would I want to please you?’

He grinned before dropping a brief, hard kiss on her lips. ‘Because you need salvation,
querida
, and I might just be the answer to your prayers.’

CHAPTER FIVE

S
HE
WOULD
RATHER
walk barefoot over hot coals than meet Cruz at his London home, Sabrina thought grimly as she watched the taxi that had come to collect him drive away from the house. As for him being an answer to her prayers! She gave a snort of derision.

Her heart lurched when in the distance she saw a car turn into the main gates of Eversleigh Hall and she thought for a moment that Cruz was coming back. The sound of a blowing exhaust pipe was a clue to the visitor’s identity.

‘Tris!’
Sabrina forgot her worries as she gave a cry of pleasure and ran to meet her brother. ‘I wasn’t expecting you this weekend,’ she said when Tristan uncoiled his lanky frame from his old car. She inspected him with loving eyes. ‘I’m sure you’ve grown.’

He grinned. ‘When are you going to stop saying that? I’m not a kid any more, I’m twenty-one.’

Tristan might be a good six inches taller than her, but he would always be her little brother and she would probably always try to mother him, Sabrina thought ruefully. She had taken on the role when their mother had left. Tris had only been seven.
‘When is Mother coming back?’
he’d asked tearfully as they had stood at the nursery window and watched Lorna Bancroft drive away from Eversleigh.

Fourteen-year-old Sabrina had swallowed hard.
‘She isn’t. But we’ll visit her at her new home in France in the summer holidays.’

‘But who will look after me for the rest of the time? Father is always going away, and I don’t like the new nanny.’

‘I will,’
she had promised her brother.
‘I’ll always take care of you
.
’

Cruz had not understood how much she had missed her brother. She had rushed back to Eversleigh Hall after the miscarriage because it was where she felt most secure. Tris had been her only source of comfort in those dark days when she had grieved for her baby. Having lost her own child, she had poured her maternal feelings onto her brother, and, even though he was now a strapping six-footer about to graduate from university, Sabrina still felt protective of him.

‘What the hell happened to the hall?’ Tristan’s shocked voice pulled Sabrina’s mind from the past. She followed his gaze to the burnt-out wing of the house and quickly sought to reassure him.

‘There was a fire, but fortunately only the annexe was affected.’

Her brother gave her a worried look. ‘You’re all right? What about John and Mary?’

‘No one was hurt.’

Tristan slung his arm around her shoulders. ‘Well, that’s the main thing. As long as you’re okay, the damage can be repaired, and the insurance will cover the cost of rebuilding.’

Sabrina’s heart sank. ‘Tris, I need to talk to you about Eversleigh.’

He gave her another of his quick smiles. ‘Let me tell you my news first, before I burst. I’ve passed the selection process to be a commercial pilot and been offered a place at an aviation school that provides airline-pilot training.’

‘Oh, Tris, that’s fantastic.’

‘Of course, I’ll need to get a first-class degree, but I’m on track to do that. The training is expensive though. I’ve been careful with my allowance, but I can’t afford the flight school’s fees. Dad promised he would invest in my career. Have you heard from the old man lately? I’ll need the money soon so that I can start the training programme in the summer.’

Tristan was looking up at the burnt-out roof of the annexe and did not see Sabrina’s troubled expression. She had not wanted to worry her brother while he was taking his final exams and had played down their father’s disappearance, saying that Earl Bancroft was on an extended trip abroad. She couldn’t keep the truth from Tristan for much longer, she realised, but she was certainly not going to ruin his excitement at being accepted for pilot training by revealing that there was no money to pay for it. This was it—she’d have to sell Eversleigh. It was the only way that would allow Tris to fulfil his boyhood ambition, the only way to raise the aviation school’s fees. Wasn’t it?

She remembered Cruz’s parting comment.

I might just be the answer to your prayers.

She’d have to be desperate to turn to him for help. But she
was
desperate, she acknowledged grimly. What was Cruz’s proposition that might help her? Was it a way to keep Eversleigh Hall and pay for Tristan’s pilot tuition? Would it do any harm to find out?

Lost in her thoughts, she followed Tristan into the house and forced a smile when he put his hands on her waist and swung her round.

‘Every time I come home I realise how much I love Eversleigh,’ Tris said softly. ‘I plan to have a career as a pilot, but one day I’ll become the next Earl Bancroft and I’ll settle here and take care of the place properly. After all, the estate is our heritage and it’s my duty to look after it for future generations.’

Sabrina’s heart clenched. Tristan’s words echoed her own sentiments about Eversleigh. They were guardians of the historic house and she could not bring herself to tell her brother that they might be forced to sell it to a hotel chain. Ironically, if the estate was sold, there would be plenty of money to pay for Tristan’s pilot training. If only her father would reappear, Eversleigh would be saved and she might even be able to get on with her own life without the burden of responsibility and worry that had haunted her for months.

Tristan stayed for lunch before driving back to university. ‘You said you wanted to discuss something about Eversleigh,’ he remembered as he was leaving.

‘It’s not important. Concentrate on your exams,’ Sabrina told him. She lifted her face so that he could kiss her cheek and recalled how when he was a young boy she had often leaned down to kiss him and ruffle his hair. She loved her brother dearly and would do anything for him—even if it meant asking Cruz Delgado, the man who had once broken her heart, for help.

* * *

Cruz sipped his vodka martini and savoured the hit of alcohol at the back of his throat. He glanced at his watch—not the first time he had done so in the past half an hour—and gave a wry grimace. He did not usually drink this early in the day but he was annoyed to admit that he felt tense, wondering if Sabrina would arrive.

He looked out of the window of his serviced penthouse apartment opposite Kensington Palace. In the distance he could see the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park sparkling in the clear light of the spring evening. The street below was lined with exclusive top-of-the-range cars. This was the most affluent part of London and the five-star hotels and chic boutiques were as discreetly elegant as their high-class clientele.

Kensington was a long way from the
favela
in Belo Horizonte, but in his dreams Cruz still walked the labyrinth of narrow alleyways that stank of rotting rubbish. A few times he had seen a body lying in the gutter, a victim of warring drugs gangs, or maybe just a poor fool who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had learned from a young age to look over his shoulder and check around every corner before stepping out. Fear and hunger had been his constant companions.

His thoughts returned to Sabrina. Would she turn up tonight, lured by his hint that he could help with her financial problems? His jaw hardened. He was a gambler and his instincts for a sure bet told him she would come because she would do anything to safeguard her beloved Eversleigh Hall.

But would she agree to his ultimatum? His lip curled into a cynical smile. Sabrina would be a fool to refuse him. This afternoon, he’d discovered just how close Eversleigh was to bankruptcy because Earl Bancroft had bled the estate and used the money to fund his trips abroad and invest in numerous ill-advised business ventures. Coldness gripped Cruz’s heart and he felt a sense of satisfaction that once he had been reliant on Earl Bancroft to pay his wages but in a reversal of fortune Sabrina would have to come to him for help to save her family home. The shift of power intrigued him and he wondered how she would react to him knowing that he had the upper hand. Surely the ice princess would have thawed—if she came?

He took another sip of his drink and stiffened when he heard the muted peal of the doorbell followed by the low murmur of voices as the butler invited the visitor into the apartment. Cruz recognised the cultured feminine tones and a ripple of anticipation ran through him. He swung round from the window as the sitting-room door opened and the butler ushered Sabrina into the room.

Most women who wanted something from him—and that was most women, he thought sardonically—would have dressed seductively in sexy, revealing clothes. Sabrina’s plain black dress with its demure neckline and three-quarter-length sleeves was starkly simple, but as Cruz studied her he realised that the dress was exquisitely tailored to show off her slim figure. The silky material flowed over her body, moulding her high, firm breasts and following the contours of her narrow waist and hips.

He lowered his gaze to her legs encased in sheer hose and her black stiletto shoes that emphasised the shapely curve of her calves, before he lifted his eyes to her fine-boned face, beautifully made up and with the merest touch of pale pink gloss on her lips. The double string of pearls around her neck shimmered with a soft sheen that reflected her creamy skin and her pale blonde hair was swept up into a businesslike chignon. Sabrina looked what she was, a member of the English aristocracy with an impeccable pedigree; elegant, refined—untouchable.

For a moment Cruz was a young man again, a poor miner from a
favela,
entranced by an English rose but knowing she was out of his reach. Sabrina had been his once, he reminded himself. Ten years ago he hadn’t been able to forget the difference in their social status. Now he was determined that she would be his again, but things were different. He was Sabrina’s equal. He had made his fortune but she had lost hers and she needed his help. This time when they became lovers he would be in control and Sabrina would have to play by his rules, he decided as he strolled towards her.

* * *

The muted click of the door signalled to Sabrina that the butler had left the room and she was alone with Cruz. She was aware of her heart thudding hard beneath her ribs and fought the panicky feeling that made her want to run out of his apartment. She was not Cruz’s prisoner, she reminded herself, she was his guest and she could leave whenever she chose.