She only scrambled for her senses after Cayo’s elegantly long legs had carried him to the door, with the information that he was heading back to his apartment to await an expected fax from Hong Kong, but would be in touch later to make the necessary arrangements for their removal to his mountain home.
Closing her still gaping mouth, she watched him leave. He was up to something. Something devious. And that was scary. He’d offered her money to leave, called her names, and made it plain that he thought her a species of low-life—and yet here he was, actually smiling at her, saying he’d welcome her as a guest in his no-doubt palatial home. A castle, no less. It made no sense at all.
‘You’ve made the right decision,’ she told the older man. ‘From what your nephew said it sounds as if you’ll have every comfort and care, and he seems genuinely fond of you.’ She conceded this somewhat unwillingly, because she didn’t want to admit there was anything remotely human or caring about the guy—at least where she was concerned. ‘He’ll be glad to provide for you,’ she went on, ‘but count me out. I can’t go with you. You won’t need a housekeeper. I’d only be a freeloader. I’d rather earn an honest crust, and I’ll soon find another job, you’ll see,’ she ended, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.
‘I understand,’ Miguel responded flatly. ‘But if that’s your decision I won’t go either. We’ll carry on as we are.’ His angular face softened in a smile. ‘In fact, now I come to think of it, I’m perfectly happy where I am.’
The penny dropped. Cayo must have foreseen this, she realised sinkingly. After all, he had to know his relative far better than she did. Hadn’t he intimated that the only reason the old gentleman hadn’t taken up his offer before had been because his uncle’s tender conscience wouldn’t have been easy if he’d made his previous housekeeper unemployed? Probably unemployable, judging by the state his humble little home had been in when Izzy had first set eyes on it.
In all probability Miguel would have confided in his nephew—told him of her own sorry circumstances when they’d first met—leading the younger man to realise that, having taken in a waif and stray, his gentle, soft-hearted uncle wasn’t about to throw her out on the street!
Hence the amazing suggestion that she tag along, too, until he thought up some spectacularly nasty way to get rid of her! It made perfect sense.
Nothing else for it in the circumstances. But she was confident that once her old gentleman got settled in comfortable surroundings, with three good meals a day produced like clockwork, and no more scrimping and scraping, he would accept a sudden bout of homesickness, or a fictitious job offer back in her own country. Her decision to leave would be made before Cayo had worked out how to get her thrown out of his aristocratic home and probably out of the country. So, ignoring her better judgement, she told him breezily, ‘If you insist on being stubborn then, okay—I’ll go along, too. I’ve never lived in a castle before—should be fun. When do we go? Did he say?’
The opulent chauffeur-driven car took the steep gradients with effortless ease and, having finally overcome her fear of the hairpin bends and terrifying sheer drops, Izzy began to relax and enjoy the ever-changing vista. Precipitous mountains dropped to deep river valleys hazed over with the silvery green of olive groves and the deeper green of forest trees, occasionally broken by the clustered rooftops of picturesque villages.
She would relax and go with the flow, she decided. Something she was good at, apparently. Her full lips curved into an amused smile as she recalled one of many lectures delivered by her father. ‘Unlike James, you have no direction! You meander through life, drifting from one dead-end job to another—have you no ambition?’
Not of the academic kind. There was no way she could compete with her older, cleverer, much praised and doted-upon brother, so she didn’t even try.
What her parents had never understood was that she did have an ambition. To fall in love, marry the man she loved, create a home together filled with warmth and love, and have children together. Children who would be equally adored and cherished, regardless of talent or lack thereof.
So far it was an unfulfilled ambition. The boys she’d dated in her teens had only been interested in one thing. Suspecting that because of her generous curves, and what James had once scathingly described as her ‘blond bimbo looks’, they’d clearly thought she would have been easy to get into bed and she’d steered clear, and put her secret ambition on hold until she’d met Marcus. She’d believed he was the one—that he really liked her, valued her. And he’d never tried to get her into the bedroom, which surely had to mean he’d respected her? In her mind’s eye she had pictured his tall blond figure waiting as she floated up the aisle.
Alarmingly, the remembered and now despised image faded, and a tall dark figure, stiff with Spanish pride, took its place. Izzy gulped, and blinked the fleeting mind picture away with extreme violence.
To add to her discomfiture, Miguel said from beside her, in an excruciatingly embarrassing coincidence, ‘My nephew really should cease his unemotional, businesslike arrangements with his occasional mistresses and take a wife. Las Palomas is exquisite, but sterile in its beauty. It needs a family to bring it to life. He will be there, waiting for us, and I shall tell him so. When the time is right.’ He chuckled, as if something had amused him.
Too mortified by the mental image her subconscious had thrown up to respond directly, she asked instead, just to change the subject, ‘You are familiar with his castle?’
‘I was born there,’ was his lightly dismissive response. ‘It has been in our family for many generations. I left to attend university in England, and after gaining my doctorate I lectured. America, mainly. I rarely visited my family, and after the deaths of my parents—one shortly following the other, sadly—I never went again. Roman, my brother who was Cayo’s father, had the use of Las Palomas while I preferred to live the quiet life of a humble scholar. The family have great wealth—’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Izzy butted in, wriggling round in her seat to face him more squarely, her brow pleated as she tried to follow what he was saying. Her voice was sharp with outrage on her old gentleman’s behalf. ‘You mean your brother got the lot—wealth and the castle and everything—and you got nothing?’
‘Good heavens, child! What gave you that idea? As the oldest son I inherited vast landed estates, while Roman took over the shipping business—which I believe Cayo has expanded massively since his father passed away. He also finds time to manage the income from my estates—investments and suchlike. I have never been interested in the acquisition of material wealth. I have annual meetings with Cayo and his money men, and although I am grateful for my nephew’s husbandry I must admit I find it all tedious. In any case,’ he added more cheerfully, ‘all I own will pass to Cayo in time, which is as it should be. The Garcia estates, properties and businesses will be under one ownership again, not divided.’
Her ready tongue stilled by Miguel’s disclosure, Izzy struggled to get her thoughts in order. She ignored her companion’s comments on the landmarks they were passing with aristocratic stateliness.
Despite all appearances the elderly man wasn’t dirt-poor, struggling to exist on a pittance. He had to be loaded!
For the first time since she had known him she wanted to shake him! So, okay, he wasn’t interested in money—given his other-worldliness, she could go along with that—but the thought of the way she’d boasted about her canniness in going to the market minutes before it closed to take advantage of stallholders who were virtually giving produce away made her feel such a fool. He might have taken the opportunity—and there had been many—to tell her that such frugality wasn’t necessary, or at least to enquire if the housekeeping allowance was so inadequate that it required such desperate measures.
She could forgive all that—laugh about it, even—but the misunderstanding had had dire consequences.
Cayo had believed those lies. Izzy Makepeace had been thrown out on her ear because she’d been trying to seduce a respectable