A Devilishly Dark Deal

‘Well, I know you must be a very busy man, so you needn’t worry that I’ll talk your ears off.’ She made a face, thinking that she sounded like some immature schoolgirl with that infantile remark. ‘I promise,’ she added quickly, as if to emphasise the point.

‘Talk my ears off?’ Marco echoed, chuckling, ‘I hope you won’t, Grace, because they are extremely useful at times … especially when I’m listening to Mozart or Beethoven.’

‘I shouldn’t have said that. It was a stupid comment.’

‘Why? Because you think I might lack a sense of humour? I hope I may have the chance to prove you wrong about that.’

Taken aback once more by such a surprising remark, Grace hardly knew what to say.

‘It may surprise you,’ the man on the other end of the line continued, ‘but I have unexpectedly found myself with an entirely free afternoon today. Instead of us talking on the phone, I could send my driver round to where you are staying and get him to bring you back to my house. That would be a much more agreeable way of conducting our conversation don’t you think?’

She must be dreaming. Confronting him outside the exclusive resort was one thing, and talking to him on the phone was another … but never in her wildest dreams had she envisaged a man like Marco Aguilar inviting her to his house to discuss the charity she was so determined to help—just like that. If she didn’t know better she’d think she was suffering from heatstroke!

‘If you—if you really do have the time then, yes … I’m sure that would be a much better way to discuss the charity.’

‘So you agree to allow my driver to pick you up and bring you back here?’

‘I do. Thank you, Mr Aguilar.’

‘Didn’t I already tell you to call me Marco?’ he answered, with a smile in his voice.

All Grace knew right then was that her parents would have a fit if they knew she was even considering going to a strange man’s house in a foreign country in the middle of the day—even if that stranger was an internationally known entrepreneur. But then they were always so over-protective. She’d literally had to steal her freedom to leave home. Even when she’d made the decision to go to Africa to visit the children’s charity she worked for in London she’d had to stand her ground with them …

‘You can’t keep me wrapped up in cotton-wool for ever, you know,’ she’d argued. ‘I’m twenty-five years old and I want to see some of the world for myself. I want to take risks and learn by my mistakes.’

‘Grace?’

Frowning, and with her heart beating a rapid tattoo inside her chest, she realised that Marco Aguilar was waiting for her reply. ‘I’m still here … I suppose I ought to give you my address if you’re sending a car for me?’

‘That would definitely be a good start,’ he agreed.

CHAPTER TWO

THEY called them casas antigas in Portugal … manor-houses and stately homes. Grace’s eyes widened more and more the further Marco’s chauffeur Miguel drove them up the long sweeping drive that had met them the moment he’d pressed the remote device in the car to open the ornate electronic gates at the entrance. As they drove past the colonnade of tall trees lining the way she caught sight of the palatial colonial-style house they were heading towards, with its marble pillars glistening in the afternoon sunshine. She stared in near disbelief, murmuring, ‘My God …’ beneath her breath.

Inevitably she thought of the ramshackle building that housed the orphanage back in Africa, and was struck dumb by the heartbreaking comparison to the dazzling vision of nineteenth-century architecture she was gazing at now. Did Marco Aguilar live here all by himself? she wondered. Just the thought seemed preposterous.

The smiling chauffeur in his smartly pressed black trousers and pristine white shirt opened the Jaguar door at her side to let her out, and as Grace stepped down onto the gravel drive the scent of heady bougainvillaea mingled with the heat of the day to saturate her senses. Lifting her sunglasses up onto her head, she glanced back at the house and with a jolt of surprise saw Marco, standing on one of the wide curving upper steps, waiting. ‘Olá!’ He raised a hand, acknowledging her with a brief wave.

He wore khaki-coloured chinos and a white T-shirt that highlighted his athletic, muscular torso, and his stance was much more at ease than when she’d seen him yesterday. Her trepidation at speaking with him again eased slightly … but only slightly.

When she reached the level just below where he stood, he held out his hand to warmly enfold her palm in his. He smiled. ‘We meet again.’

His touch submerged Grace in a shockwave of heated sensation that rendered her unable to reply immediately.

This is terrible, she thought, panicking. How am I supposed to sound at all competent and professional and say what I want to say if I’m completely thrown off-balance by a simple handshake?

‘Thanks for sending the car for me,’ she managed. ‘This is such a beautiful house.’ Quickly retrieving her hand, she tried hard to make her smile relaxed to disguise her unexpectedly strong reaction to his touch.

‘I agree. It is. Why don’t you come inside and see it properly?’ he invited.

If Grace had felt overwhelmed at the imposing façade of Marco’s house, then she was rendered almost speechless by the opulence and beauty of the interior. A sea of marble floor and high intricate ceilings greeted her over and over again as her host led her through various reception rooms to what appeared to be a much less ostentatious and intimate drawing room. Elegant couches and armchairs encircled a large hand-knotted Persian rug in various exquisite shades of red, ochre and gold, whilst open French doors revealed a wide balcony overlooking landscaped gardens stretching right down to the sea. This time it was the bewitching fragrance of honeysuckle drifting into the room that fell like soft summer rain onto Grace’s already captivated senses. She was utterly enchanted.

‘Do you want to sit outside on the balcony? I trust you are wearing suncream on that delicate pale skin of yours?’

‘I’m well protected—and, yes … I would very much like to sit outside.’

Settling herself beneath a generously sized green and gold parasol in a comfortable rattan chair, Grace glanced out over the lush landscaped gardens in front of her and sighed. ‘What an amazing view … your own private paradise on earth. I hope you regularly get to share it with your friends. It would be a crime not to. I bet you must really love living here?’

As he dropped down into a chair opposite her at the mosaic tiled table a myriad of differing emotions seemed to register on her host’s handsome face and she didn’t see one that reflected pleasure.

‘Unfortunately I probably don’t appreciate it as much as I should, seeing as I am not here very often,’ he said.

‘But you do originally come from here don’t you …? From the Algarve I mean?’ The impetuous question was out before she could check it, and straight away she saw that Marco was irked by it.

‘Now you are sounding like one of those too-inquisitive reporters again. By the way … where did you hear that I’d grown up in an orphanage?’

Swallowing hard, Grace sensed hot colour suffuse her. ‘I didn’t hear it directly … I mean … the person who said it wasn’t talking to me. I just happened to overhear a conversation he was having with someone else in a café I was sitting in.’

‘So it was a local man?’

‘Yes. He sounded very admiring about what you’d achieved … he wasn’t being disrespectful in any way.’

‘And when you heard that I was due to visit the Algarve, and that I was an orphan, you thought you would take the opportunity to petition my help for your orphans in Africa?’

‘Yes … I’m sure you’d have done the same in my position.’

‘Are you?’

Folding his arms, Marco looked to be pondering the assumption—not without a hint of sardonic humour, Grace noted.

‘Perhaps I would and perhaps I wouldn’t. Anyway, I think we should talk a little more in depth about what you came here for … get down to the details, hmm?’

‘Of course.’ Relieved that her admission about hearing a chance remark hadn’t prejudiced him against talking to her some more, she lifted her gaze and forced herself to look straight back into the compelling hooded dark eyes. ‘But I just want you to know that this isn’t the sort of thing I do every day … spontaneously railroading someone like you into giving their help, I mean. When I’m working at the charity’s office in London I have to be completely professional and adhere to strict rules. We either do a blanket mailshot of people likely to make donations, or once in a while I might get the chance to ring somebody who’s known for being charitable and talk to them personally.’

‘If you’re being honest, then that makes a very welcome change.’

Marco considered her so intently for a moment that Grace all but forgot to breathe.

‘Honesty I can deal with. Subterfuge is apt to make me angry.’

‘I’m not a liar, Mr Aguilar, and neither am I trying to fool you in any way.’

‘I believe you, Grace. I believe you are exactly who you say you are, and also the reason why you accosted me yesterday. Did you not think that I would check? So … That aside, tell me some more about this cause that makes you risk being apprehended to get to me—I would very much like to hear how you got involved in the first place. Why don’t you start by telling me about that?’

She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d checked up on her, but all the same she was.

Immensely relieved that she had nothing to hide, Grace told him about finishing her studies at university and still being unsure about what career she wanted to take up. Then she told him about a conversation she’d had with a friend of her parents whose son had been giving up his post at a children’s charity in London to travel a bit and see the world. That family friend had suggested she apply for the post. As luck had had it, she’d done well at the interview and got the job. Grace had been there for a couple of years when the opportunity had arisen for her to go out to Africa and visit one of the many orphanages the charity was endeavouring to assist. She had visited several times since, but that first visit had changed her life, she told Marco, feeling a renewed rush of the zeal that gripped her to personally try and do something about the heartrending plight of the children she’d witnessed.