Secrets of Castillo del Arco Read Free Page B

Consuelo was one thing, but why would he wantto saddle his own granddaughter with a broken creature like him? Why make him promise to marry her?
    “You don’t have to love her!”
Umberto had said.
    Just as well. What would a woman like her want with his love, even if he were able to give it? And why would she waste hers on him? Why would a woman like her ever want to marry him?
    And why should she have to? Consuelo would soon be history, untouchable, locked away where he could not reach her—and not even someone who saw the good in everyone would want to defend him when she discovered the truth. Raoul could just as simply deal with any other Consuelos if it came to that. He could weed out the hyenas and the jackals, the parasites who came to prey on a rich, beautiful woman.
    He could take care of them all.
    Except then he remembered the touch of her skin, the smooth column of her throat and the trip of her pulse under his fingertips. He remembered the press of her cheek against his palm, remembered that moment when she had looked up at him and he had imagined the impossible, had wanted the impossible. For the first time in a long time he had felt his body stirring with want.
    And that knowledge shamed him.
    He hadn’t meant his fingers to linger. He had wanted just to establish a contact between them, as if that might help eradicate the years that lay between them. But one touch had not been enough, and when a stray strand of hair had blown free from the knot behind her head he had been unable to resist tucking it away, using the excuse of Garbas coming upon them to leave it there.
    It had been worth it just to see the look of unbridled hostility in his eyes. It had been worth even more because she had felt so damned good under his fingers.
    He squeezed his eyes shut on a groan. What was he thinking? She was his oldest friend’s granddaughter! The last time he had seen her she had been twelve, and it didn’t matter how old she was now; she was still more than a decade younger than him. And he had been charged with taking care of her, not with taking advantage of her. He was supposed to keep her safe.
    By mauling her at her grandfather’s grave?
    He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Umberto, but what were you thinking?’ he muttered, as he stood by the grave of his friend with just the tangle of his conflicted thoughts and the mist for company. ‘Why would you make me promise such a thing when no good can come of it?’
    The soft, damp air swirled around him, whispering no answers, offering no solutions, and leaving him with just one truth. He had promised his dying friend it would be so.
    So he would make it happen.

CHAPTER TWO
    ‘W HAT is he doing here?’ Consuelo demanded as he strode along the path like a man with the demons of hell after him. ‘Why did he have to come?’
    Gabriella skipped a step to keep up with him. ‘Raoul is an old family friend. Of course he would be here.’
    ‘But the way he was touching you—like he owned you. Like he meant something to you. You let him touch you!’
    ‘We grew up together, Consuelo. Our two families were practically inseparable, at least until I was twelve years of age. The last time I saw him was at our parents’ funerals. Of course there is some feeling between us. He is like a brother to me.’
    He looked across at her suddenly, his eyes wild and frantic, and she wondered what else must be troubling him for him to overreact in this way. ‘And that’s all he is to you?’
    ‘But of course,’ she said, wanting to soothe, but mostly because there was nothing else she could say, even if she might so foolishly have once dreamed of more.
    He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tuggedher close in to his body. She needed to be hugged but she wondered why this contact didn’t stir her blood or warm her as Raoul’s touch had done. Perhaps because she saw more of him, or because he was more familiar to her, more comfortable to be around. She shouldn’t