‘And peaches—they looked so scrummy I couldn’t resist!’
‘Scrummy?’ Miguel Garcia looked up from his seat at the desk that was half buried beneath tottering piles of books and papers, his lean, ascetic, once-handsome face breaking into a warm smile as he peered at her over the top of his spectacles, stuck together with sticky tape.
‘Delicious.’ Izzy grinned back at him, translating from the vernacular.
‘Ah. I understand!’ He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers, his dark eyes kind. ‘Then I shall enjoy our lunch. While I think of it—I have asked you before, and as you’ve been with me for five weeks now I no longer ask. I insist you address me by my given name. Miguel. It will be more companionable.’
‘Okay,’ she agreed blithely. ‘But only if you drop what you’re doing and come out with me for a little fresh air and exercise.’
He was researching the life of some obscure saint or other, he’d told her, and it was her gladly embraced mission to ensure he remembered to eat and forgot his work long enough to take a short stroll each morning and evening.
‘You bully me!’ But his gentle smile as he laid down his pen told her he didn’t object in the least. ‘May I claim an old man’s privilege and say how pretty you look this morning?’
‘Oh!’ Izzy’s face was bright pink. He was good for her confidence—at one time flat on the floor! So good, in fact, that she no longer needed the boost of killingly high heels, and had bought flat sandals from the open-air market. She had to admit they made her feel as wide as she was high—but, hey, it made walking so much more comfortable!
And the old gentleman was so grateful for everything she did. She was sure he’d never noticed the squalor he lived in until she’d got rid of it—washing, scrubbing and polishing until the humble little house positively gleamed. The praises following his initial stunned surprise at the transformation had come thick and fast, making her head spin. Because she couldn’t remember being praised for anything before in the whole of her twenty-two years.
Their separate guardian angels must have put their heads together on the day the del Amos had thrown her out and Señor Garcia had collapsed on the street. Both being in the right place at the right time had been really fortunate. The old gentleman was now looking much better, and she was thankful to have found a new job and a roof over her head so quickly, happy to be doing something worthwhile.
Remembering the ear-bending she’d received when she’d phoned her parents to tell them she’d quit her first job and landed another as a mother’s help in Cadiz, she didn’t want to repeat the experience. She had got around to writing last week instead, giving them her new address. That done, she wasn’t going to think about the kind of nagging reply she’d get when she could enjoy being appreciated for once.
‘I’ll put the shopping away,’ she told her employer, ‘then we’ll go out and enjoy the air before it gets too hot.’
Closing the study door behind her, she headed for the kitchen, her cool, brightly patterned cotton skirt swirling around her bare legs. She swung round as the street door opened to reveal a tall, dark stranger.
An impressively handsome stranger.
Her pansy-blue eyes widened as she took in his height and the breadth of shoulder beneath a stone-coloured fine cotton shirt tucked into the narrow waistband of obviously designer chinos. They clothed long, athletic legs, and ended in shoes that, at a guess, had to have been hand-made from the finest, most supple leather.
Slowly raising her eyes, she was stunned by the impact of sculpted high cheekbones, an aristocratic blade of a nose, and dark-as-night eyes fringed by lashes that were as soft and black as his expensively styled hair—eyes that were looking at her with blatant hostility.
‘Izzy Makepeace?’
The beautiful, sensual male mouth curved with what she could only translate as derision. Her heart thumped a warning.
Who was he? Surely not a plain-clothes policeman, sent to arrest her because Señora del Amo had reported her alleged lewd behaviour, calling her a danger to all innocent children and middle-aged married millionaires in Cadiz—if not the whole of Spain? But policemen couldn’t afford to dress in designer clothes that would have cost them the equivalent of a year’s wages. Nor would they wear anything like the slim gold watch that banded his angular wrist—that would have cost them their pension!
Stifling hysteria—she mustn’t let herself get paranoid over the gross injustice done her by the powerful del Amos—Izzy crossed her arms defensively over her midriff, lifted her neat chin and demanded, ‘Who wants to know?’
And she cringed with helpless inadequacy as he swept her a look of chilling contempt, making her feel several centimetres short of two inches tall.
‘Cayo!’
At the sound of her employer’s voice Izzy let her tautly held spine relax just a little. Señor Garcia—or Miguel, as she must now get used to calling him—knew this person. The sensation of threat that had been present ever since the stranger had spoken dissipated just a little, too. Perhaps, being so impressive in every detectable department, this haughty creature found it normal to look at lesser beings as if they were beneath his lofty contempt.
Her mouth softening with relief at having sorted out the less than flattering vibes winging in her direction from what had to be the most spectacularly handsome guy she’d ever seen, she moved closer to the old gentleman, as if for protection, as he proclaimed with enthusiasm, ‘It’s so good to see you—it’s been a long time! How long are you staying in Cadiz?’
‘Long enough to take you to lunch, Tio.’ Long enough to warn him of the type of creature he had taken into his home, to redouble his efforts to persuade him to move into the family country home, or at the very least to move into his luxurious apartment here in Cadiz.
Studiously ignoring the new ‘housekeeper’, Cayo extended a lean, tanned hand. ‘Shall we go?’ To his amazed annoyance he received a decisive shake of his uncle’s head. Until now Tio Miguel had always pandered to his every request or suggestion—except, of course, over the vexed question of his lifestyle.
‘We shall lunch here,’ Miguel stated with firm good humour. ‘Izzy shall cook for us. We have pilchards, I’m told. And peaches.’ He smiled down at her and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Izzy, may I introduce my workaholic nephew, Cayo?’
His nephew! Not in the least impressed now, Izzy shot the poor old gentleman’s uncaring relative a withering glance. If he could afford to dress himself in designer gear and sport a watch that must have cost thousands—and she knew about that sort of stuff because her brilliant, well-heeled big brother always dressed in the best, proclaiming that his position demanded it and that quality always counted—then surely he could alleviate his uncle’s hand-to-mouth existence and visit more often to check on his welfare? As Miguel had said, it had been a long time.
Barely registering Cayo’s response to the introduction, she drew herself up to her unspectacular height and stated, ‘I’ll start preparing lunch, Miguel.’
She headed for the kitchen, hoping the pilchards would stretch to feed three and not much caring for the idea of cooking for someone who had looked at her as if she were dirt. And how had he known her name? She should have asked—would have done if his chilling look hadn’t frozen her vocal cords. It was an omission she would rectify over lunch. Unless he refused to share a table with a mere menial.
Watching her go through narrowed eyes, Cayo recalled how Augustin del Amo had described her. A lush little package. Very apt indeed.
The top of her silvery blond