‘You live here?’ That explained the superior attitude and the faint air of disdain, the man obviously considered anyone who didn’t own a castle beneath him. Well, she for one was not impressed by inherited wealth.

She shook her head, not waiting for his confirmation, and said firmly, ‘That doesn’t change anything.’

‘I’m not the man you’re looking for. I’ve never met your niece.’

Frustrated and tired, tears springing to her eyes, Nell, who rarely cried, blinked angrily.

‘I don’t believe you!’ She struggled not to, because if he was telling the truth she was no nearer finding Lucy than she had been this morning.

‘But I do know the man you’re looking for.’

Nell looked at him with a mixture of hope and suspicion.

‘Come indoors and I’ll explain.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m not budging from this spot!’ Nell said, folding her arms across her chest.

‘Have it your way, but I wouldn’t like to have your epidermis tomorrow.’ He glanced up at the relentlessly blue sky, then back at her face. ‘You have the sort of fair skin that burns.’ A slightly distracted expression drifted across his face as he stared at the pale curve of her throat.

‘And freckles,’ Nell murmured with a sigh.

The comment seemed to wake him from his reverie. Possibly he was feeling the heat too, Nell thought, noticing the bands of high colour that attracted her eye to the slashing contours of his marvellous high cheekbones.





CHAPTER THREE



THE dull pain drumming in her temples intensified as Nell watched him stroll back to the castillo not pausing even once to look back. He was so damned sure that she’d follow him the way women had no doubt been following him all his adult life—not that she would be following him in the same sense.

She would have loved to have the luxury of calling his bluff, but that gesture would have been pretty self-defeating. If he was speaking the truth and he knew who Lucy was with she had no choice but to follow him. And his point about the heat was valid; the protective factor of the moisturiser she had used that morning had to have worn off hours ago.

The cool inside the stone-walled castle was sheer bliss after the oppressive heat of the Valencian sun. She hurried, her feet echoing on the stone floors, to catch up with him.

‘So who is the man?’ Nell asked, trotting to pass him.

She turned and came to an abrupt halt. He had to follow suit or fall over her. He didn’t do that, but he did get awfully close—close enough for her to receive a pretty hefty jolt as she got too close to the raw sexual aura he projected.

It passed through her body like an electrical current and was the weirdest and most disturbing thing that had ever happened to her. She pressed a hand to her heaving chest and hoped that he attributed her breathless condition to a lack of fitness combined with the altitude.

He glanced down, his dark eyes skimming her face. ‘My cousin.’

Nell opened her mouth to demand more information when he placed a hand on the wall above her head. Nell closed her eyes and edged closer to panic as he leaned into her, his big body curling over her. She held her breath, then released it a moment later as she found herself pushed through a door behind her and into a big, light, airy room.

‘Sit down. I’ll order some refreshments.’

Nell ignored the offer—a pretty pointless defiance considering her knees were literally shaking. ‘Your cousin?’ Was he just trying to wriggle out of it? Send her off on a false trail?

‘It fits. He had a holiday job at the hotel you spoke of. I arranged it for him myself.’

She still wasn’t convinced. ‘What about the name?’

‘We were both christened Luiz Felipe. This is not the first time confusion has arisen, but it is the most…amusing.’

‘You’re both called Luiz Felipe.’

‘I know—an appalling lack of imagination. We were both named after our grandfather, but in the family we call him Felipe usually.’

‘So how old is this cousin of yours?’ Nell’s feelings were mixed. While she was obviously relieved that Lucy hadn’t got mixed up with this man—hopefully his cousin was not the similar type of predatory male—it did mean that she still had no idea where Lucy was.