In Name Only. Diana Hamilton

measure of alcohol after another, inviting her opinion in that suave, wickedly sexy voice of his, intent on giving himself the proof that she wasn’t a fit mother for an earthworm—let alone his nephew!

      How she regained her feet and got herself to the door in more or less a straight line, she never knew. She even managed a stiff ‘Goodnight’ before he slewed round in his chair, one black brow tilted in sardonic enquiry as he questioned,

      ‘Tell me, you say your name is Cathy, so why do your colleagues and friends know you as Cordy—or Cordelia?’ A very slight shrug, an even slighter smile. ‘I am sure there is a logical reason, but I don’t like puzzles. So humour me.’

      Cathy could only stare at him, her eyes going so wide that they began to ache. He suspected; she knew he did. Had he waited until her fuddled brain would be incapable of thinking up some credible lie? Was that another of his devious reasons for systematically getting her drunk?

      Somehow her tongue had got fused to the roof of her mouth, and her heart, tripping with alarm, didn’t help her to think clearly, and his smile had a definite feral quality as he added with a cool politeness that made her skin crawl, ‘Perhaps your memory requires a little help.’ White teeth glittered between those sensual lips. ‘After I read those letters, particularly the second, telling of the existence of my brother’s alleged son, I made a few initial enquiries. I found the signature indecipherable, as you recall, but my description, my reminders of the party to mark the end of the assignment you were part of, all produced the same name. Cordelia Soames. Or Cordy to her friends—who, I might say, seemed to be numerous and almost exclusively male and, practically to a man...intimate.’

      If nothing else could have sobered her, the hateful inflexion he placed on that last word did the trick. How dared he make her sister out to be a tramp, happy to fall in bed with anything in trousers? Cordy simply loved the reflected glamour of her job, the glitzy parties and socialising. And flirting was just a game to her, had been since she was fifteen years old. She wasn’t promiscuous, not really. Surely the fact that she had got pregnant pointed to that? If she’d been in the habit of sleeping around she would have made sure she was protected.

      Her head now miraculously clear, Cathy gave him a withering smile, her voice dripping with acid as she told him, ‘Far be it from me to allow you to lose any sleep over such a tricky puzzle, señor. Cordelia was my professional name. I thought plain old Cathy a little too homespun. Satisfied?’

      He would have to be, she thought as she swept out of the door. He would have to come up with better trick questions than that before he caught her out—tipsy or sober. She was getting quite expert at the game of deceit!

      

      Cathy closed her eyes against the brilliant white dry heat and pulled the shady brim of the floppy straw hat Rosa had lent her further down over her face.

      She had hitched a ride on a tractor with Rafael, the eldest of Paquita and Tomás’s brood, right to the edge of the vineyards, and now she set her sights on the shade offered by the grove of parasol pines she could see in the distance.

      Behind her the tractor roared out of sight, leaving a cloud of white dust on the still air—the dust of the Albariza soil which made this vast triangle, stretching between the sherry towns of Jerez, Puerto de Santa Maria and Sanlúcar de Barrameda and encompassed by the rivers Guadalquivir and Guadalete, the one place in the world where the unique wine could be produced. So much she had teamed from Rosa, who had been determined to educate as well as befriend her, Cathy thought with a quirky smile.

      In fact her unexpected sense of relaxation was probably due as much to Rosa’s friendship, the way she had taken pains to tell her so much about the area, as to the absence of Campuzano.

      Not that he had left the finca; he hadn’t. But he dined out every night. With his mother, Rosa said, but, with a cynicism that had appeared out of nowhere, Cathy had expressed her doubts. The lady he dined with so regularly would be many years younger than Dona Luisa, the relationship between them certainly not that of mother and son!

      And the rancour she felt when, ears straining, she heard the sounds of his return in the early hours of each morning was entirely due to the way he had insisted on dragging her away from home only to forget her existence, and the purpose of the visit—the introduction of the baby to his grandmother—which was seemingly just as far away as it had ever been.