‘There is a settlement on the way to Torrente where we’ll stop tonight. The villagers offer basic accommodation for tourists who want to explore the rainforest.’
He started the engine and Sister Ann spoke to Clare. ‘Good luck, my dear. I will pray for your safekeeping and for your soul.’
As the Jeep turned out of the convent grounds Clare was gripped with apprehension that soon she would meet the kidnappers. She felt sad to be leaving the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, knowing she was unlikely to meet them again.
‘Good luck?’ Diego questioned. ‘Torrente must be an even worse place than it was the last time I visited the town if the Mother Superior needs to pray for you while you teach at the Sunday school.’
He glanced at his passenger and wondered why she blushed. The soft stain of colour on her face emphasised the delicate lines of her cheekbones and made her look even lovelier. But something about the situation didn’t feel right. He had an antenna for trouble, honed during his years living in the favela and the time he had spent in prison. His experiences of life had turned him into a cynic, he acknowledged. What could be suspect about a young nun who was as pure and beautiful as an English rose?
‘It was a figure of speech.’ Sister Clare turned her guileless blue eyes to him. ‘I’m sure Sister Ann prays for all souls, even yours, Mr Cazorra.’
He dismissed his strange feeling that she was not what she seemed and grinned. ‘Heck, that’s going to take a lot of prayers.’
CLARE WAS DETERMINED not to respond to the gold prospector’s undeniable charisma. She looked away from his toe-tingling smile to focus on the road ahead. The highway was signposted to Boa Vista, which she remembered from the map was in the far north of Brazil, but soon they turned off the main road on to a dirt track.
‘There are no paved roads going west,’ Diego explained. ‘Most people who want to visit the towns along the border with Colombia and Peru travel by boat on the Rio Negro.’
‘Why didn’t we take a boat instead of driving?’
‘The river narrows as it flows into Torrente, making it easy for the drug lords to control the area. There’s an airstrip at the edge of the town which they also control. Travelling by Jeep means I can go where I like and, more importantly, I can leave whenever I want to.’
Clare’s heart plummeted at the news that criminals controlled the air and river routes into and out of Torrente. Once she had paid the ransom money she hoped to get Becky to safety as quickly as possible. She wondered if she should tell the prospector the real reason she was going to the town and maybe he would agree to bring her and Becky back to Manaus. But, although Sister Ann had said he was trustworthy, Clare was afraid to trust anyone apart from the nuns who had helped her.
She thought of her father back in London. Rory Marchant would be desperately waiting for news of Becky but trying to pretend to his wife that there was nothing wrong. Tammi Marchant was only in her early fifties, but a year ago she had suffered a stroke that had left her partially paralysed. It broke Clare’s heart to see her once vibrant and still beautiful mother now so fragile. Her father had insisted on caring full-time for his wife and had handed the running of A-Star PR over to Clare.
It had been a daunting task to take charge of the agency, but Clare had risen to the challenge. She’d enjoyed developing her PR skills and had discovered a natural talent for devising advertising campaigns. At least being busy meant she’d had no time to brood over her break-up with Mark. Her mother’s illness and her father’s devoted care of his wife had shown her that she wanted a marriage as strong as her parents’ relationship, and she was prepared to hold out until she met a man she could love and trust with all her heart.
The one positive thing was that recently she had felt a deepening bond with her father as they’d shared looking after Tammi and discussed business together. For the first time in her life she sensed that her father was as proud of her as he was of her sister. Of course she was not in the same league as Becky, who was one of the world’s most sought-after models, but it made a nice change to realise that being the brainy daughter rather than the beautiful one wasn’t such a bad thing.
It was likely that Becky’s fame and high profile were the reasons she had been targeted by the kidnappers. Perhaps they had tied Becky up—or worse, Clare thought sickly, as she remembered the severed piece of earlobe the kidnappers had sent her.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. Allowing her imagination to run away with her would not help Becky. In an attempt to take her mind off the situation she searched for a topic of conversation.
‘What exactly does a gold prospector do? I mean, I realise that you search for gold, but there must be more to it than that.’
‘Actually, it’s pretty much as you described. I take my metal detector to areas where I think there might be gold deposits.’
‘But how do you know where to start looking?’
‘I have a good knowledge of geology and I know how to recognise signs of mineralisation. I carry equipment that allows me to analyse rocks, but often it’s down to intuition. I’ve been looking for, and mining, gold and diamonds for many years.’
Clare’s eyes were drawn to the prospector’s darkly tanned fingers on the steering wheel and she recalled that when she had shaken his hand the skin on his palm had felt rough, as if he was used to manual work. ‘Have you actually worked in mines? What made you choose such a dangerous job?’
He shrugged. ‘I needed to make a living, but I left school with few qualifications, which limited my career options,’ he said drily. ‘Mining is dangerous but it’s well paid.’
A poorly educated miner who read Tolstoy and poetry? Clare studied his chiselled profile and wondered where he had learned to speak faultless English, albeit with a sexy accent. She flushed when he turned his head and caught her looking at him. ‘You obviously lead an interesting life, Mr Cazorra,’ she murmured.
‘My name is Diego,’ he reminded her. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Sister. What made you decide to become a nun?’
Oh, help. She bit her lip as she searched her mind for an answer.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you are a beautiful young woman and committing yourself to a life of chastity is not normal, in my opinion.’
She shot him a startled glance at the same time as he turned his head towards her, and their eyes met. Once again she was aware of a sizzle of sexual chemistry between them. Did he really think she was beautiful? For years she had compared her very ordinary features to her sister’s stunning looks and she had never had much self-confidence in her appearance.
The Mother Superior had warned her that the prospector was a womaniser, Clare reminded herself. He probably flirted with every woman he met, but even if he did find her attractive, she could not respond to the gleam in his eyes without blowing her cover that she was a nun. She realised he was waiting for her to answer his question, but lying did not come naturally to her.
‘All of us are on a personal journey, and this is the road I have chosen to take,’ she said vaguely. It was not entirely untruthful because the road to Torrente led to her sister. She was eager to change the subject and at that moment a flock of brightly coloured birds flew out of the trees.
‘Oh, look! Are they parrots? I’ve only ever seen a parrot in a cage. There is such a huge diversity of wildlife in the rainforest. I recently watched a documentary about the Amazon. Did you know that over a thousand species of birds are found in the Amazon basin?’ Clare was determined to keep the prospector’s attention away from her personal life. ‘Sister Ann said you know the rainforest well. I suppose you must get the chance to see many different species of wildlife?’