Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) (8 page)

She was well acquainted with Kensington and had frequently shopped at the exclusive boutiques, but since her father’s disappearance her life had changed dramatically. A year ago she would have travelled up to town in the Bentley driven by the chauffeur. Now the Bentley was in the garage waiting to be auctioned, the chauffeur had a new employer, and she hadn’t dared splash out on a taxi and had caught the Tube across London to Cruz’s luxurious apartment. But she did not care about the loss of the little luxuries she had been used to. All she cared about was saving Eversleigh and helping her brother fulfil his dream of being a pilot.

She watched Cruz walk towards her and drew a swift breath as she acknowledged how handsome he was. His black trousers were superbly tailored and his pale blue silk shirt was open at the throat to reveal his darkly tanned skin. Sabrina noticed a flash of gold on his wrist and recognised his watch was an exclusive and exorbitantly expensive brand.

The situation felt surreal. It was hard to believe that the suave, sophisticated man standing in front of her was the poor miner who had been her first lover ten years ago. In Brazil, the only clothes she had seen Cruz wear were ripped jeans and tee shirts, but she hadn’t been bothered by his lack of money. She had fallen in love with his olive-green eyes and his wide smile, his springy, silky black hair that curled onto his brow and his fit, muscular body that he had used with dedicated skill to ensure her pleasure before he had taken his own.

Memories of him making love to her bombarded her mind and she quickly lowered her lashes to hide her thoughts from him, but she could not control the betraying thud of her pulse at the base of her throat when Cruz lifted his hand and removed the clip from her chignon so that her hair unravelled and fell in a heavy swathe down her back.

He met her fulminating look with a bland smile. ‘You need my help and I suggest you drop your defiance,’ he drawled. ‘Your hair is like silk.’ He wrapped a few strands around his finger. ‘Always wear it loose when you are with me.’

She longed to tell him to go to hell, but the memory of her brother’s excitement when he’d announced that he had been accepted for pilot training made her take a deep breath and she schooled her features into an expression of cool composure. ‘What is your proposition that you invited me here to discuss?’

‘All in good time,’ Cruz said urbanely as he strolled over to the bar. ‘Would you like some champagne?’

It might calm her nerves, Sabrina decided as she accepted the long-stemmed glass Cruz offered her. She noted that the champagne was an excellent vintage and once again she felt a sense of surrealism that the Cruz she had known ten years ago had drunk beer from a bottle, but now he seemed completely at ease with his millionaire lifestyle.

He waited for her to sit down before he lowered his tall frame onto the sofa facing her and stretched his arm along the backrest. The action caused his shirt to tighten across his chest so that Sabrina could see the delineation of his pectoral muscles. Although he presumably no longer worked down mines his physique was even more toned and powerfully muscular than when he had been a young man. Images filled her mind of his naked, bronzed body and she licked her suddenly dry lips and took a gulp of champagne.

‘I have shown the top gemologist at my jewellery company Delgado Diamonds some photographs of the Estrela Vermelha,’ Cruz said. ‘He estimates its value to be in the region of one and a half million pounds, but of course he will need to assess the diamond properly and I suggest that you have your own independent valuation carried out.’

Sabrina wondered where the conversation was leading. ‘It was valued at one point four million pounds for insurance purposes. But why are you interested in what the diamond is worth?’

‘Because I want it, and I am prepared to buy it from you.’ Cruz’s expression hardened. ‘I wish to give my mother the Estrela Vermelha as tribute to my father. Vitor wanted to give his family the chance of a better life away from the slums, but in doing so he lost his own life and was cruelly snatched from my mother, sisters and I.’

The sudden huskiness in his voice evoked an ache of sympathy in Sabrina and without thinking she leant forwards to put a comforting hand on Cruz’s knee, before it occurred to her that she was the daughter of the man he blamed for his father’s death and perhaps he hated her as much as he hated Earl Bancroft. Flushing, she shoved her hand into her lap, and in the tense silence she brooded on Cruz’s offer to buy the diamond. Her disappointment was acute even though she had told herself not to get her hopes up. She had clung to the possibility of a respite for Eversleigh, but now she knew there was none and it was hard to bear.

‘I can’t sell you the red diamond,’ she said flatly. ‘My father is its registered owner and it is listed as one of his personal assets, which, as I have already explained, I am unable to use as a means of raising capital.’

So that was that. She put her glass down on the coffee table in front of her, gathered her handbag and stood up. ‘I’m truly sorry about your father’s accident,’ she blurted. ‘I wish I could sell you the diamond, but I can’t and I have nothing else to offer you.’

‘That’s not quite true.’ A curious nuance in Cruz’s voice made Sabrina hesitate as she was about to walk over to the door. ‘There is something else I want and I am willing to pay the same amount that I offered for the Estrela Vermelha.’

She turned to look at him, her finely arched brows drawn together in a frown. ‘I’ve told you I have nothing, apart from Eversleigh Hall.’

He stood up and towered over her. He appeared relaxed but his eyes glittered with a fierce gleam that caused Sabrina’s heart to slam against her ribs. ‘I don’t want an ancient pile of bricks. I want you, Sabrina.’

Shock rendered her silent for several seconds as she registered his words and absorbed their meaning. She stiffened as he trailed his eyes over her in a frank appraisal, as if he was mentally stripping her naked, she thought furiously. Even worse was her treacherous body’s reaction to the sensual promise in Cruz’s gaze. Her breasts ached with a delicious heaviness and every nerve-ending on her skin tingled.

I want you
. No doubt he had said those words to the countless attractive blondes he was reputed to have had affairs with. The tabloids were full of stories about the hotshot Brazilian diamond tycoon’s playboy lifestyle, and she would just be another notch on his bedpost, Sabrina realised bitterly. But she would be an expensive notch because Cruz was offering to pay her to sleep with him as if she was a hooker he had picked up off the streets. His suggestion was deeply insulting and she hated him for it, but she despised her body even more for responding to his smouldering sensuality.

Her heart ached as she remembered a much younger Cruz with smiling eyes, who had taken her virginity so tenderly and whispered soft words in Portuguese while he’d made love to her with sweet passion. She had loved him so much, but by offering to buy her sexual favours he had given her the ultimate proof that she had never meant anything to him.

Years of practice at disguising her feelings meant that her expression revealed nothing of her thoughts. ‘Am I to understand that you are offering to pay me a million pounds to have sex with you?’ she said coldly. ‘Did you really think that I would
prostitute
myself? Let me make something absolutely clear. I would
never
demean myself by sharing your bed, however much money you offered me. You have become a wealthy man, but you need to learn that there are some things your money can’t buy.’

* * *

Ice replaced the fire in Cruz’s blood as he met Sabrina’s disdainful grey gaze, and he struggled to control his anger. Once more, he recalled Lord Porchester’s party.

‘Delgado’s a self-made millionaire...you can always pick out the nouveau riche by their lack of breeding.’

He jerked his thoughts back to the present. For a few moments Sabrina’s disdain had made him feel unworthy and ashamed of his poor background.
Deus
, he should not feel ashamed because he hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He owed his fortune partly to luck at discovering top-grade diamonds in the Montes Claros mine, but for years before that he had slogged his guts out to provide for his mother and sisters.

His jaw hardened. How dared Sabrina, who had only ever known a life of privilege and luxury, tell him in her cultured accent that she would not demean herself to have sex with him? In fact she had jumped to the wrong conclusion when she had accused him of offering to pay her for sex. What he had been going to suggest was that she would allow him to move into Eversleigh Hall so that he could search for the map of the diamond mine and in return he would pay for the cost of the repairs to the annexe and the ongoing expenses of maintaining the estate.

It was true he had hoped that if he and Sabrina lived under the same roof they might rekindle their affair. He desired her more than any other woman, and he knew she wanted him. God knew he had enough experience of women to be able to recognise the telltale signs of attraction. He had been prepared to woo Sabrina. He’d been looking forward to an enjoyable chase before she finally and inevitably succumbed to the chemistry that existed between them.

But she had scraped his pride raw and now the rules of the game had changed. She might look at him as if he were something unpleasant on the sole of her shoe, but he would have her in his bed and he would make her beg for him to possess her and give her more pleasure than she had ever known with any other man, Cruz vowed to himself.

* * *

She had to get out of Cruz’s apartment immediately, Sabrina decided, before her tenuous hold on her emotions cracked and she did something unforgivably stupid like agree to any demands he made if only he would take her in his arms.

Without saying another word she walked swiftly across the room, but her sense of relief as she gripped the door handle turned to panic when Cruz caught hold of her arm and swung her round to face him.

She flashed him a steely glare, which he returned with an amused smile.

‘I’m fascinated by the contrasts in your personality,’ he drawled. ‘As I’ve said before, you give the impression of being cool and controlled, but beneath your ice there is fire and passion and a depth of sensuality I’ve never known in any other woman.’

She did not want to hear about his other women. ‘Take your hands off me.’

‘Don’t push my patience,
gatinha
. I am your only hope of saving your precious Eversleigh Hall. I know you have applied to various banks for a loan and been turned down.’

Her temper simmered. ‘How can you possibly know personal information about me?’

‘Information isn’t difficult to obtain if you pay the right people.’ When she did not reply, he continued in a hard voice. ‘What I’m offering is a simple exchange. My money, which you can spend on maintaining your family’s ancestral home, and in return you will be my mistress for six months.’

‘Six
months
!’

He shrugged. ‘That’s somewhere in the region of one hundred and eighty nights, for which you’ll get paid one and a half million pounds. Not a bad return surely,
querida
?’

The Portuguese endearment transported Sabrina back in time to when Cruz had called her darling as if he had meant it. She searched his hard-boned features for any sign of softening but found none. ‘Why do you want to humiliate me?’ she whispered. ‘Once we created a child together and you asked me to be your wife. Did our relationship ten years ago mean so little to you?’

‘It meant little to you,’ he said harshly. ‘If it had meant anything you would have accepted my marriage proposal. But you would have preferred our child to have been born illegitimate than to marry a man you considered below your social class.’

‘That’s not true.’ She was shocked by his accusation. ‘I never thought you were below me. My decision not to marry you was because I had seen how unhappy my parents’ marriage had been. My mother once told me that the only reason she had married my father was because she had fallen pregnant with me. I didn’t want history to repeat itself.’

‘The argument about marriage became obsolete after you suffered a miscarriage,’ Cruz said flatly.

His comment confirmed what Sabrina had already guessed—that he had only asked her to marry him because he had wanted his child.

‘I’ll find a way to save Eversleigh that doesn’t entail having to have sex with you,’ she told him fiercely.

‘If I only wanted sex I could obtain it for a lot less than I am willing to pay you.’

She frowned. ‘What else do you think I can provide?’

‘Class,’ he said succinctly.

‘You’ve got a hang-up about class. A person’s position in society doesn’t matter.’

‘It shouldn’t matter, but it does.’ Cruz’s expression became cynical. ‘It doesn’t matter how much money I have in the bank, or how many yachts or penthouse apartments I can afford to buy. I will always be regarded as an outsider by the aristocracy because I wasn’t educated at one of the top public schools and I can’t trace my family tree back hundreds of years to show that my ancestors were linked to royalty like you can, Lady Bancroft.’

Sabrina gave him an impatient look. ‘Having a title means very little these days.’

‘It is an invaluable commodity in business, and especially to a business like Delgado Diamonds. My jewellery company is aimed at the top end of the market. My boutiques in Dubai, Paris and Rome have received acclaim, but the success of the company will be measured by sales at the flagship premises that I am about to open on Bond Street.’

‘What do your business plans have to do with me?’

‘Delgado Diamonds needs to attract a certain class of wealthy clientele, people who demand exceptional design and craftsmanship and will think nothing of spending thousands of pounds on an item of jewellery. The old-school aristocracy won’t be interested in a jewellery company owned by an ex-miner who grew up in a slum in South America,’ Cruz said bluntly. ‘But if I am seen to be in a relationship with an earl’s daughter who belongs to one of the oldest and most prestigious families in England, I’ll become acceptable in high society, particularly as I intend to move into Eversleigh Hall with you. It will be the perfect opportunity for me to search for the map of the diamond mine that belongs to me.’