Crime Of Passion Read online

  Yet she wanted him just the way he said she did. Help­lessly, instinctively, as though on some frightening sub­conscious level he had stamped her as his four years ago and her body alone knew it and accepted that reality. Sex, she decided wretchedly, was a primal hunger that respected no boundaries. Rafael Rodriguez Berganza should be the very last male alive capable of awakening her most basic urges. And yet he did, he did. On every primitive, physical level, Rafael drew her slavishly to her own destruction. Evidently sexual desire required nothing more intellectual.

  'Georgie...'

  For a split-second she couldn't face him, and she had to force herself to roll back, push her hair out of her eyes and look at him. She was intensely relieved to see that he was already half dressed. Brilliant dark eyes rested on her with paint-stripping intensity. He reached for his shirt, a wolfish smile hardening his sensual mouth.

  'Perdone... but we must postpone our pleasure,' he imparted with slumbrous mockery. 'That was Antonio on the phone. Maria Cristina has given birth to a son and the task of spreading the good news among our many relatives falls on me.'

  Astonishment filled Georgie's eyes. 'Maria Cristina

  has had her baby? But surely she wasn't due for another couple '

  'He came a little early, but both mother and baby are well. There were no complications,' Rafael assured her, and slowly expelled his breath, a softer light than she had ever seen briefly gentling his strong dark features. 'But I understand they barely made it to the hospital in time! A little boy...' His chiselled jawline clenched ana he cast her a sardonic glance. 'He is to be called George.

  His pronounced relief that Maria Cristina had come through childbirth safely, and the open emotion with which he contemplated his nephew's arrival in the world, twisted something painfully inside Georgie, reminding her just how close were the ties between brother and sister. Then she caught his final statement and her eyes widened. 'She remembered... She called him after me?' she gasped, tickled pink by the announcement. 'Gosh,

  I can't wait to see him '

  'But you won't unless my sister chooses to travel to London,' Rafael cut in harshly, his change of mood brutally swift. 'By the time she flies home next week, you will be long gone.'

  Losing her short-lived animation, Georgie stilled. Re­ality had never been less welcome. She collided with his cold dark scrutiny, and her stomach clenched painfully under the onslaught of that unashamed snub. She felt sick with shame, remembering their intimacy brief minutes earlier.

  'Is that clear?' Rafael persisted, with what she felt to be quite unnecessary cruelty.

  Two years earlier, she had missed out on her best friend's wedding. Maria Cristina had asked her to be one of her bridesmaids and it had almost broken Georgie's heart to refuse, for her parents had been willing to dig into their savings to make the trip possible for her. She had been afraid of running into Rafael again, although at the time she had not admitted that fear to herself. Her end-of-term exams had been just around the corner and she had used them as an excuse. But this time—this time, she told herself with sudden ferocity-she would not play the coward.

  'I'll do what I want,' she said tightly, and studied him, a tempestuous gleam in her bitter stare. 'You can't make me leave Bolivia.' 'But you cannot stay here.'

  "'I'll have money sent out from home,' she threw back. 'I don't care if I have to sleep on the street but I am not leaving without seeing Maria Cristina and George.'

  'I will not allow it,' Rafael drawled in a tone of for­bidding finality.

  Hunched below her sheet, rawly conscious of her lack of clothing, Georgie sent him a look of naked loathing. 'I want transport out of here tomorrow... do you hear me?'

  Rafael dealt her a glittering glance of hard amusement. 'No transport available. You don't leave until I want you to leave, and that won't be until I am finished with you.'

  'I'm finished now...I've had enough,' Georgie launched at him with a sob of rage in her shaking voice. 'If you don't get me back to La Paz fast, I'll make you very sorry!'

  Rafael lifted his dinner-jacket and viewed her with an insulting lack of concern. 'And how do you plan to do that?'

  'Wouldn't you just love to know?'

  'I would, indeed. Are you always this childish when you are thwarted?'

  'I am not childish!' Georgie spat back, raising her burnished head so that her hair tumbled like tongues of flame in the lamplight. 'If you keep me here against my will, that is an offence... you're breaking the law!'

  'But here I am the law,' Rafael told her gently.

  'I'll be six feet under the day I accept that!' Georgie slung back truthfully.

  'No...you'll very probably be under me,' he mur­mured silkily.

  'How dare you?' Georgie's hot temper simply boiled over. "There's a whole lot of ways I can get even, so don't push me! I can tell tales to Maria Cristina! I can go home and scream rape and kidnapping!'

  'And what proof will you have? These are empty threats. If you had any real affection for my sister, you would not wish to upset her but, even if you did,' Rafael countered very drily, 'she would not believe me capable of such behaviour. As for rape, there has never been any question of force. Kidnapping? You came here willingly as my guest.'

  The door thudded shut in his wake and she shuddered with frustration, inflamed by her inability to pierce his tough hide. It was slowly sinking in on her that Rafael hadn't been joking when he had said that she stayed until he chose to let her go. But she still found that incredibly hard to accept. Rafael was an outstandingly well-educated man with a brilliant intellect, outwardly the very epitome of cultured sophistication.

  He spoke half a dozen languages fluently, oversaw a vast and flourishing business empire spread across the globe, and still found time to lend considerable support to several international charities, not to mention his en­vironmental interests and the numerous philanthropic projects which made the Berganza name revered on the world stage... and this was the man now telling her that she was a prisoner in his home until such time as she satisfied his desire for revenge?

  Little wonder that she was feeling confused. But re­venge was Rafael's aim. He had brought her here to the estancia and put her in the bedroom she would have oc­cupied as his wife. Her stomach lurched sickly as she recalled his assurance that when she was gone these rooms would be stripped, every reminder of her eradi­cated forever. But, before he reached that dramatic and gothic conclusion, Rafael intended to possess her body in the very same bed in which she would have lain as his bride. Her skin literally chilled as she saw the savage parody he desired to enact to slake his macho pride of the slur she had cast on it four years ago by her apparent betrayal.

  As his bride, she would have been treated with respect and tenderness. But now Rafael saw her as a sort of any time, any place and with any available man kind of girl. He despised her and he wanted to humiliate her and he had chosen the most machiavellian method possible. The dark, primal depths of Rafael's essentially savage inner self stood revealed, unleashed by anger and un­quenchable arrogance. Why shouldn't he have what he firmly believed she had given every other man she had ever been with? She was the available space on his sexual score-card, she reflected in disgust.

  Four years ago, she had believed she knew Rafael... but she hadn't known him at all. For a start, she had accused him of being a sanctimonious stuffed shirt that final night t Then, she hadn't known she was being subjected to courtship Bolivian style, where you received flowers, occasionally held hands, barely kissed and generally conducted yourself with immense restraint and maturity. But at just turned nineteen... I wanted to dance all night in stuffy clubs, break speed limits in the Ferrari, neck in the Ferrari, be seduced in the Ferrari, drink pink champagne, wear outrageous attention-grabbing clothes—his attention—be seen by all my friends in a stretch limousine...

  Glory be... She had been far less grown-up then than she had fondly imagined. She only saw that now, looking back, and frankly marvelled that Rafael could
ever have thought of marrying her. Had the wedding taken place, there would probably be a gravestone out there some­where by now, she thought, an almost hysterical giggle lodged in her throat. She would have driven him crazy by the end of the first six months!

  The giggle died, her facial muscles tautening. But she had loved him in the wild, head over heels, obsessive style of her strong emotions. And, had he married her, she would no doubt have tried very hard to live up to his high standards... and with every failure she would have lost a little more courage. Rafael had a very powerful personality and a naturally domineering tem­perament. That came from being filthy rich and a lot brighter than ninety-nine per cent of the people around him. He would have swallowed her alive as a husband— only think of the traits he was freely demonstrating now...

  Crazy... Yes, she had to be crazy, but she just couldn't help the thought that Rafael was a whole lot more ex­citing a prospect as a vengeful lover than he had ever been as an unnaturally courteous and yet despotic po­tential husband, striving to contain and control a nat­urally exuberant and rebellious teenager. They met as equals now, she told herself squarely—well, almost equals, she adjusted. He couldn't humiliate her unless she allowed him to do so. And he couldn't keep her here unless she chose to stay.

  It was a kind of a compliment, she decided sleepily, that she should have left that strong an impression on a male of his experience. It was good to know that she hadn't been the only one burned that summer.. .but it was time he appreciated that, these days, Georgie was positively fireproof. A flame-thrower couldn't scorch her. Only love could hurt—love. Her sultry mouth down-curved expressively. That prison of the mind which had made such a fool of her in the past? When she fell in love again, some day in the future, it would be with someone blond and blue-eyed and frightfully British, someone who fully appreciated her brains, her guts and her passion, and who thought he was one hell of a lucky guy to catch her. As she slid into sleep, at peace with herself at last, she smiled at that consoling image.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Georgie made her plans while she was getting dressed the next morning. One way or another she needed to get off the estancia and persuading Rafael to do it for her would be the very easiest way to accomplish her escape. Deliriously sneaky, wonderfully simple. She strolled into the dining-room, vibrantly eye-catching in clinging pink Lycra shorts and an off-the-shoulder emerald lace-edged top. 'It's kind of quiet around here, isn't it?' she complained.

  Rafael's brilliant dark eyes slowly swept over her. He lowered his newspaper, his expressive mouth twisting.

  'Oh, no,' Georgie sighed mockingly. 'You don't like what I am wearing?'

  'You are not on the beach,' Rafael responded drily.

  'I have a thought for the day.' Georgie angled a bril­liant smile at him. It wobbled slightly as she collided with piercing dark eyes, screened by lush ebony lashes, and her intended act slipped momentarily. He really was gorgeous—devastatingly, dangerously gorgeous. Had she married him and been able to tape his nasty mouth shut, she could probably have passed her time just looking at him and thinking utterly brainless thoughts of the 'he's mine' variety.

  'Don't keep me in suspense,' he said with a distinctly cutting lack of interest.

  Georgie tore a croissant to pieces with her restive hands, angry and dismayed by the sudden lurch of lost concentration evoked by her response to all that virile masculinity lounging at the other side of the polished table. "Thank God, we didn't get married,' she said with helpless sincerity.

  'You expect me to credit that you feel that way?' Rafael derided, arrogantly unimpressed.

  'You'd have felt that way within two weeks if you had married me, and I bet there's never been a divorce in the family.' Georgie cast a speaking glance at the hu­mourless dark faces of the portraits on the wall. 'Your ancestors were a pretty miserable bunch, weren't they? The men probably got rid of undesirable wives with childbirth. In those days, pregnancy was as dangerous as sky-diving. Poison was quite a common method too, or a fall down the stairs. In the Dark Ages, being a woman was being a victim. You could be beaten to death by your husband and nobody did a thing.'

  Rafael murmured in a slightly strained tone, 'Desde luego.. .of course, you were always fascinated by history. But to my knowledge none of my ancestors ever became that desperate.' He spread fluid hands and, without warning, his spontaneous laughter rang out, banishing the austerity from his dark features. "Then, no doubt they took such dark secrets to their graves with them and, sadly, no one had the good sense to leave a diary of confession behind!'

  Georgie was furious with herself for straying off stu­pidly into actual conversation with him and, worst of all, making him laugh. For a split-second, she absorbed his blatant amusement, and never before had she been more disturbingly aware of the intense charisma he pos­sessed. Her face tightened. Hurriedly, she dived into the first move of her plan.

  'Do we have to stay here?' she pressed abruptly.

  His laughter died away, his eyes narrowing. 'I don't think I understand.'

  She leant forward confidingly. 'I would be a whole lot more amenable—if you know what I mean—some-where where I could have a little fun,' she told him softly, damning the tide of pink rising below her skin, terrified it would betray her. 'Twelve more hours out here in the boonies and I will drop dead with boredom. There is nothing but grass, cows and peasants out there.'

  Inwardly, Georgie winced at the ignorant role she had chosen to play.

  'My people are not peasants,' Rafael retorted with a flash of even white teeth, faint red darkening his hard cheekbones.

  Georgie shrugged and thrust her chin back up again with determination, ready to play out her plan to the bitter end. 'Let's just put our cards on the table. You want me, you can have me, but there are certain—er— terms.'

  'I want you, I can have you?' Intense golden eyes whipped over her beautiful face, resting on her hot cheeks. 'Now, then... let us go upstairs,' he challenged smoothly.

  Georgie's sip of coffee went down the wrong way. She coughed painfully, struggling to appear cool. 'Terms,' she reminded him chokily.

  'Am I to understand this is a form of negotiation?' Rafael enquired with immense calm, lounging back in his carved chair to study her, very much as though she was the hired entertainment. 'Would you mind telling me what I am to receive in return?'

  'You know damned fine what I'm offering you!' Georgie snapped back.

  A beautifully shaped ebony brow elevated. 'What I could have had for nothing last night,' he prompted very softly.

  Her teeth gnashed together, violence shimmering in her outraged violet eyes. But, as she parted her lips, Rafael moved a silencing hind. He watched her with intense stillness. 'How amenable is amenable?' he encouraged lazily.

  Hooked, she thought in triumph. 'Anything you want... whenever you want,' she whispered throatily, but she had to study the table to say it.

  'And my side of the deal? Taking you somewhere without cattle and peasants?'

  'I just want to have a good time and I'm not going to have it here, am I?' she pointed out tautly.

  'Anything I want, whenever I want,' Rafael mused smoothly. 'But I have everything that I want right here. No deal.'

  She stole a glance at his starkly handsome features, the cool dispassionate expression which revealed nothing. 'No deal?' she queried.

  'Next time you try to bargain with me, be sure to arm yourself with the promise of something which isn't already mine for the taking.' Diamond-bright dark eyes raked over her furious face. 'For you are mine. And next time—and I hope there is a next time, for this has been the most entertaining breakfast I have had in years,' he confessed lethally, 'struggle not to look as if you're overdosing on cyanide when you're offering to be my sex-slave!'

  'I am not yours and I never will be!' Georgie asserted fiercely. 'And I haven't got the temperament to be any­body's sex-slave!'

  'But mine—and that awareness is killing you, isn't it?' Rafael traded lazily. 'You c
an screw around with all the men you like, but why not with me? What makes me different? Shall I tell you why you fight me to the best of your limited ability?'

  A chill was enclosing her flesh. Another game had come to an end. She wanted to cover her ears and run but she sat there, looking blankly back at him, forcing herself not to reveal how sick she felt inside.

  'You remember what it was like between us four years ago, before it started coming apart... and, deep down inside, you would very much like to have that romantic illusion back.'

  She tasted blood in her mouth as her teeth bit into the soft underside of her lower lip. 'I wish I'd never met you, I certainly don't wish to relive any of it!'

  'But the past is still there. You can't escape it... any more easily than you can escape me. In the thirty years of my life, I have been the focus of female seduction routines more times than I can count,' Rafael told her with harsh amusement. 'Women who know what they're doing. You don't appear to '

  'I'm not really interested in your opinion.'

  'Subtlety evidently doesn't come with maturity. A Mae West impression at this hour of the day could only make me laugh.' Rafael expelled his breath audibly, shooting her a forbidding look from hooded dark eyes. 'Then you always did make me laugh, es verdad? It was that streak of highly deceptive naivete which blinded me for so long to your real nature. I should have been warned by the birth-control pills I saw in your bag '

  'The what?' Georgie broke in with a furrowed brow, and then she tensed with comprehension.

  Rafael shot her a sardonic glance. 'I assumed they were for my benefit.'