But, like a love scene in a movie or on TV, what she had seen had stirred up the powerful yearnings that, as they had no hope of being realised, she did her best to keep battened down.
She was also curious to know if the man in the bedroom at La Higuera was, in fact, the legendary womaniser whose amorous exploits provided so many titbits of gossip for his fellow foreigners to relish.
‘…a different girlfriend every time he comes here,’ was one of the allegations Liz had heard about him.
‘Not what you could call handsome, but madly attractive…my goodness, yes, as attractive as the devil and totally without morals. Still, as he isn’t married, can you blame him for grabbing his opportunities?’ was another comment that had stuck in her memory.
Liz, who had had her childhood and teenage years blighted by a man of the same stamp who had been married, was disposed to dislike all philanderers. She had no time for people who treated sex as a game. She despised them all.
Despite a disturbed night, she was up at her usual early hour the next day. Brushing her teeth in the bathroom, she thought for the umpteenth time how different she looked today from the way she had looked on arrival, pallid-faced and drawn after a cold and wet northern European winter and a succession of head colds caught while commuting from her home in the outer suburbs to her workplace in central London.
Now, even after a disturbed night, she had three times as much vitality as she had ever had in England. She had never been a beauty. Her dark blue eyes and her clear skin—once pale but now lightly tanned—were her best features, counterbalanced by a disastrous nose and a rather unfeminine chin.
In her other life, as she had begun to think of it, she had adapted her hairstyle to a conservative version of whatever was the prevailing fashion. Here, to save money, she had given up going to the hairdresser and let it grow to a length she could tie back or pin up. Her basic colour was mid-brown. In place of professionally-done highlights, these days she had only sun streaks, helped by rubbing selected strands with a cut lemon. There was always a lemon to hand because there was a limonero, that bore fruit all year round, growing in her little back yard.
After a quick hot shower, she dressed in a plain white T-shirt, a navy blue cotton skirt and navy sneakers. Later she was driving to the weekly produce market in a larger village a few kilometres away. She had planned, immediately after breakfast, to spend half an hour working in the walled garden of La Higuera.
In the same way that Alicia was supposed to look after the interior of the house, the previous owner of Liz’s house, an elderly Englishwoman called Beatrice Maybury, had undertaken to take care of the neighbouring garden. Beatrice had asked if Liz would be willing to continue this work and Liz had agreed. She had always liked gardening, and the generous fee paid to her predecessor in return for an hour’s work a week would be a welcome addition to her limited funds. At that time, of course, she had not known the kind of man the house belonged to. Beatrice had never mentioned his predatory tendencies. Perhaps she had been unaware of them since, by all accounts, she had kept herself to herself and not been part of the expatriates’ grapevine.
After their late arrival, and whatever had followed that passionate kiss, it seemed unlikely the people staying at La Higuera would be up and about before mid-morning. Liz decided to stick to her plan and do some weeding and watering before they surfaced for the day.
She entered the property by a gate at the side of the house that, by way of a narrow passage, led down to the ‘secret’ garden at the rear. Most of the larger houses in the main part of the village did not have gardens, only patios. In the rest of Europe, a patio meant any paved sitting-out area. But in Spain it was an open area within the structure of a building. In Valdecarrasca, many of the houses too small to have a patio had a small garden or yard. But the garden behind La Higuera was the size of a tennis court.
Her first task today was to plant out some cuttings she had taken from a clump of silvery-grey artemisia and kept, in water, in a dark green wine bottle until they put out small roots.
She was on her knees by the narrow bed at the foot of the wall clad with variegated ivy that spilled over the top and cascaded into her own little yard on the other side, when a man’s voice said, ‘Hello…who are you?’
The question gave Liz such a start that she let out a muffled squeak and, in scrambling to her feet, almost overbalanced. He stepped forward, grabbing her arm to steady her.
‘Sorry…I didn’t mean to scare you. I suppose you thought the house was still empty. I got back late last night, or rather early this morning. I’m Cam Fielding, the owner. And you are…?’
She had known who he was immediately. ‘Madly attractive’ had not been an exaggeration. He was unquestionably the most attractive man she had ever encountered.
Last night she had taken him for a Spaniard and he did have some of their characteristics: the black hair and eyebrows, the olive skin that tanned easily, and the hawk-like features that often indicated Moorish ancestry. But although by no means all Spanish people had brown eyes, she had yet to meet one whose irises were the colour of steel.
‘I’m Liz Harris,’ she said, acutely aware of his grip on her arm and also of the fact that, under a white terry bathrobe, he was undoubtedly naked. Glancing downwards, she saw that his feet were bare, which was why she hadn’t heard him approaching. Looking up again, she noticed his hair was damp. He must have just had a shower, come downstairs to make coffee and seen her from the kitchen window.
She had never been inside his house but Beatrice had described its layout so she knew that the two doors set close to each other led into the kitchen and the garage.
‘Are you Mrs Harris’s daughter…or her daughter-in-law?’ he asked.
‘Neither…I’m Mrs Harris.’ She wished he would let go of her arm and move back a bit. At such close quarters his physical magnetism was uncomfortably strong.
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘I see. I expected you to be much older…the same age as Beatrice Maybury. When she wrote that an English widow was buying her cottage, I assumed that you were contemporaries. How old are you?’
‘Thirty-six,’ said Liz, relieved that he had finally let go of her arm so that she could step back and widen the distance between them. It was rather a cheek to ask her age at this early stage of their acquaintance, she thought. ‘How old are you?’ she countered.
‘Thirty-nine,’ he replied. ‘Was your husband much older than you…or did he die untimely young?’
‘He was a year older. He died four years ago.’ She had never met anyone who asked such personal questions so soon. Most people carefully avoided mentioning anything to do with her premature widowhood.
‘What happened?’
‘He was drowned trying to rescue a child in a rough sea. He wasn’t a very good swimmer. They were both lost,’ Liz answered flatly. Duncan’s heroism was still a puzzle to her. He had been a cautious man, not one who took risks or chances. The courage and folly of his last act had been totally out of character.
‘That makes his action even braver,’ said Fielding. ‘Were you living in Spain when it happened?’
‘No, in England. We had stayed in Spain several times with his parents. They used to rent a villa to escape the worst of the winter. But I like the mountains better than the seaside resorts. Beatrice Maybury’s brother—the one she’s gone back to look after—knows my father-in-law. Mr Maybury thought my parents-in-law might like to buy her house. I came out with them to look at it. They didn’t like it, but I did.’
‘And how is it working out?’ Fielding asked. ‘The majority of the British expats in this part of Spain are retired…though the number of young working expats is building up, so I’m told. Do you have a job apart from keeping this garden in order?’
‘I’m a freelance needlework designer…mainly for women’s magazines. It’s work I can do anywhere—thanks to e-mail.’
Her