Passionate Relationship. PENNY JORDAN

her completely, and she knew she couldn’t stay here any longer. The dusk which earlier she had welcomed now seemed to promote a dangerously weakening intimacy.

      ‘I must go…I have already told the lawyer to draw up papers returning the villa to your family. I don’t want it… I…’

      She had her back to him and prayed that she could get to her car without him seeing that she was in tears. It was years since she had cried. She never cried, and yet here she was…

      She tensed as she felt his touch on her arm and pulled violently away from him, but inexplicably, as she moved away, his body blocked her path, his hands cupping her face and tilting it so that he could look into her tear-drenched eyes.

      ‘Ah, querida, do not hide your tears from me. Do you not think that I have wept for him too?’

      Incredibly, she was held fast in his arms, being comforted by the soft murmur of his voice and the gentle stroking caress of his hands as she sobbed out her pent-up anguish and pain against his shoulders. This was what she had always wanted, she recognised numbly—this safety…this caring, this reassurance of strong arms around her.

      ‘Come, let us put aside our differences and start again, little sister. Come back with me to the quinta now. My mother was most concerned for you. It is still not done in this part of the world for our young women to wander alone at night.’

      She wanted to protest, but it was like struggling against a heavy drug.

      ‘My car,’ she reminded him, but Jaime was already leading her away from the villa.

      ‘José will drive it back for you. Tomorrow we will come back with the key and I shall show you round the villa. If it is that you genuinely do not wish to keep it, then I shall buy it from you at its market price. No…say nothing now…it is something we will talk about later when we are both more ourselves.’