Master of Her Innocence (Bought by the Brazilian) Read Free Page A

Diego had lost his temper—with catastrophic results.
    Deus , don’t go there! He jerked his mind away from the dark pit of his past and glanced towards the Mother Superior, who had gone back inside the convent and now returned carrying a crate filled with bottles of drinking water. ‘You’ll need to take plenty of fluids with you for the trip,’ she said.
    Diego preferred a stronger kind of liquid refreshment, but he shrugged. ‘Pack the water in the back of the Jeep,’ he told Sister Clare, ‘while I check over the engine.’
    * * *
    Clare’s hands were shaking as she gripped the crate of water bottles, and her legs felt so wobbly that when she climbed into the back of the Jeep she sank on to her knees, overcome with relief that she had persuaded the prospector to drive her to Torrente. She was a vital step closer to rescuing Becky. Her heart was beating painfully hard in her chest, but not only from fear of what lay ahead when she met the kidnappers.
    When the Mother Superior had said the gold prospector was a womaniser, Clare had visualised the slimeball taxi driver who had flirted with her when he had driven her to the convent. She could not have been more wrong! Diego Cazorra was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. Working for her parents’ modelling agency meant that she had met hundreds of good-looking guys, but none, including Mark, came close to the smoulderingly sexy Brazilian.
    She studied him through the window of the Jeep. The first thing that had struck her about him was his height. He was several inches over six feet tall, lean-hipped, his long legs encased in faded denim jeans, which he wore with calf-length leather boots. His broad shoulders and powerful pectoral muscles were clearly defined beneath his tight-fitting black T-shirt.
    The biggest surprise was when he had removed his hat and revealed an unruly mass of streaked dark blond hair that reached to below his collar. His European appearance was further enhanced by his silvery-grey eyes and sculpted features: razor-edged cheekbones and a square jaw covered by several days’ growth of blond stubble. Add to that a blatantly sensual mouth and a wicked glint in his eyes when his gaze had lingered on her breasts that had made Clare feel flustered.
    He was a fallen angel and he oozed sex appeal from every pore, but she was horrified by her reaction to the prospector when her thoughts should be totally focused on Becky. Even if Sister Ann hadn’t warned her that he was a womaniser, she would have guessed as much from the way he had eyed her up as if he was imagining her without any clothes on. She could still feel a tingling sensation in her breasts and was thankful that the stiff serge fabric of her nun’s habit disguised the hard points of her nipples. Suddenly the Mother Superior’s advice to travel to Torrente in the guise of a nun seemed a good idea. She could not afford any distractions.
    The slam of the Jeep’s bonnet made Clare jump and she looked around for somewhere to store the bottles of water. There were no seats in the back of the Jeep, just a bench running down one side, a camping stove and cooking equipment and a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags. The Jeep was basic, but as long as it got her to Torrente she didn’t care that it promised to be an uncomfortable ride.
    The storage area behind the front seats already contained a large crate of beers. She moved the crate over to make room for the water bottles and discovered a pile of books and, out of curiosity, she glanced at the titles and was surprised to see her favourite novel, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. There were a number of other classic novels by Orwell, Steinbeck and Tolstoy. She would not have guessed that the tough gold prospector’s choice of reading material included Anna Karenina , the iconic tale of doomed love—which just went to prove the adage that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, she mused, as she flipped through a well-thumbed book