‘We just didn’t reveal as much as we could have.’
‘Such as you live in a rented dump, your brother sings in pubs now and again and you are a teacher—or was that another one of those creative exaggerations?’
‘Of course I’m a teacher. I teach primary school. You can check up on me if you like!’
‘Well that’s now by the by. The fact is, I cannot allow any marriage to take place between my niece and your brother.’
‘So you’re going to do what, exactly?’ Aggie was genuinely bewildered. It was one thing to disapprove of someone else’s choices. It was quite another to force them into accepting what you chose to cram down their throat. Luiz, Maria’s mother, every single member of their super-wealthy family, for that matter, could rant, storm, wring their hands and deliver threatening lectures—but at the end of the day Maria was her own person and would make up her own mind.
She tactfully decided not to impart that point of view. He claimed that he wasn’t black-and-white but she had seen enough evidence of that to convince her that he was. He also had no knowledge whatsoever of how the other half lived. In fact, she doubted that he had ever even come into contact with people who weren’t exactly like him, until she and Mark had come along.
‘Look.’ She relented slightly as another point of view pushed its way through her self-righteous anger. ‘I can understand that you might harbour one or two reservations about my brother…’
‘Can you?’ Luiz asked with biting sarcasm.
Right now he was kicking himself for not having taken a harder look at the pair of them. He was usually as sharp as they came when other people and their motivations were involved. He had had to be. So how had they managed to slip through the net?
Her brother was disingenuous, engaging, apparently open. He looked like the kind of guy who could hold his own with anyone—tall, muscular, with the same shade of blonde hair as his sister but tied back in a ponytail; when he spoke, his voice was low and gentle.
And Agatha—so stunningly pretty that anyone could be forgiven for staring. But, alongside that, she had also been forthright and opinionated. Was that what had taken him in—the combination of two very different personalities? Had they cunningly worked off each other to throw him off-guard? Or had he just failed to take the situation seriously because he hadn’t thought the boy’s relationship with his niece would ever come to anything? Luisa was famously protective of Maria. Had he just assumed that her request for him to keep an eye out had been more of the same?
At any rate, they had now been caught out in a tangle of lies and that, to his mind, could mean only one thing.
The fact that he’d been a fool for whatever reason was something he would have to live with, but it stuck in his throat.
‘And I know how it must look…that we weren’t completely open with you. But you have to believe me when I tell you that you have nothing to fear.’
‘Point one—fear is an emotion that’s alien to me. Point two—I don’t have to believe anything you say, which brings me to your question.’
‘My question?’
‘You wondered what I intended to do about this mess.’
Aggie felt her hackles rise, as they invariably did on the occasions when she had met him, and she made a valiant effort to keep them in check.
‘So you intend to warn my brother off,’ she said on a sigh.
‘Oh, I intend to do much better than that,’ Luiz drawled, watching the faint colour in her cheeks and thinking that she was a damn good actress. ‘You look as though you could use some money, and I suspect your brother could as well. You have a landlord baying down your neck for unpaid rent.’
‘I paid!’ Aggie insisted vigorously. ‘It’s not my fault that there’s a postal strike!’
‘And whatever you earn as a teacher,’ Luiz continued, not bothering to give her protest house room, ‘It obviously isn’t enough to scrape by. Face it, if you can’t afford the rent for a dump like this, then it’s pretty obvious that neither of you has a penny to rub together. So my offer to get your brother off the scene and out of my niece’s life should put a big smile on your face. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it should make your Christmas.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Those big blue eyes, Luiz thought sourly. They had done a damn good job of throwing him off the scent.
‘I’m going to give you and your brother enough money to clear out of this place. You’ll each be able to afford to buy somewhere of your own, live the high life, if that’s what takes your fancy. And I suspect it probably is…’
‘You’re going to pay us off? To make us disappear?’
‘Name your price. And naturally your brother can name his. No one has ever accused me of not being a generous man. And on the subject of your brother…when exactly is he due back?’ He looked pointedly at his watch and then raised his eyes to her flushed, angry face. She was perched on the very edge of her chair, ramrod-erect, and her knuckles were white where her fingers were biting into the padded seat. She was the very picture of outrage.
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘I’m sure you’ll find it remarkably easy to adjust to the thought.’
‘You can’t just buy people off!’
‘No? Care to take a small bet on that?’ His eyes were as hard and as cold as the frost gathering outside. ‘Doubtless your brother wishes to further his career, if he’s even interested in a career. Maybe he’d just like to blow some money on life’s little luxuries. Doubtless he ascertained my niece’s financial status early on in the relationship and between the two of you you decided that she was your passport to a more lucrative lifestyle. It now appears that he intends to marry her and thereby get his foot through the door, so to speak, but that’s not going to happen in a million years. So when you say that I can’t buy people off? Well, I think you’ll find that I can.’
Aggie stared at him open-mouthed. She felt as though she was in the presence of someone from another planet. Was this how the wealthy behaved, as though they owned everything and everyone? As though people were pieces on a chess board to be moved around on a whim and disposed of without scruple? And why was she so surprised when she had always known that he was ruthless, cold-hearted and single-minded?
‘Mark and Maria love each other! That must have been obvious to you.’
‘I’m sure Maria imagines herself in love. She’s young. She doesn’t realise that love is an illusion. And we can sit around chatting all evening, but I still need to know when he’ll be here. I want to get this situation sorted as soon as possible.’
‘He won’t.’
‘Come again?’
‘I mean,’ Aggie ventured weakly, because she knew that the bloodless, heartless man in front of her wasn’t going to warm to what she was about to tell him, ‘he and Maria decided to have a few days away. A spur-of-the-moment thing. A little pre-Christmas break…’
‘Tell me I’m not hearing this.’
‘They left yesterday morning.’
She started as he vaulted upright without warning and began pacing the room, his movements restless and menacing.
‘Left to go where?’ It was a question phrased more like a demand. ‘And don’t even think of using your looks to pull a fast one.’
‘Using my looks?’ Aggie felt hot colour crawl into her face. While she had been sitting there in those various restaurants, feeling as awkward and as colourless as a sparrow caught up in a parade of peacocks, had he been looking at