The Ultimate Persuasion. Cathy Williams

Not that that unduly bothered him. In fact, to call it a date was wildly inappropriate. He had had four dates with Chloe Bern and on the fifth he had broken it gently to her that things between them weren’t working out. She hadn’t taken it well. This was the sixth time he would be seeing her and it would be to repeat what he had already told her on date five.

      Aggie snorted derisively. She had feverishly tried to find a way of backing out, but all exits seemed to have been barred. Luiz was in hunting mode and she knew that the threats he had made hadn’t been empty ones. For the sake of her brother, she had no choice but to agree to this trip and she felt like exploding with anger.

      Outside, the weather was grimly uninviting, freezing cold and with an ominous stillness in the atmosphere.

      She followed him to his fancy car, incongruous between the battered, old run-arounds on either side, and made another inarticulate noise as he beeped it open.

      ‘You’re going to tell me,’ Luiz said, settling into the driver’s seat and waiting for her as she strapped herself in, ‘that this is a pointless toy belonging to someone with more money than sense. Am I right?’

      ‘You must be a mind reader,’ Aggie said acidly.

      ‘Not a mind reader. Just astute when it comes to remembering conversations we’ve had in the past.’ He started the engine and the sports car purred to life.

      ‘You can’t have remembered everything I’ve said to you,’ Aggie muttered uncomfortably.

      ‘Everything. How do you think I’m so sure that you never mentioned renting this dump here?’ He threw her a sidelong glance. ‘I’m thinking that your brother doesn’t contribute greatly to the family finances?’ Which in turn made him wonder who would be footing the bill for the romantic getaway. If Aggie barely earned enough to keep the roof over her head, then it stood to reason that Mark earned even less, singing songs in a pub. His jaw tightened at the certainty that Maria was already the goose laying the golden eggs.

      ‘He can’t,’ Aggie admitted reluctantly. ‘Not that I mind, because I don’t.’

      ‘That’s big of you. Most people would resent having to take care of their kid brother when he’s capable of taking care of himself.’ They had both been sketchy on the details of Mark’s job and Luiz, impatient with a task that had been foisted onto his shoulders, had not delved deeply enough. He had been content enough to ascertain that his niece wasn’t going out with a potential axe-murderer, junkie or criminal on the run. ‘So…he works in a bar and plays now and then in a band. You might as well tell me the truth, Agatha. Considering there’s no longer any point in keeping secrets.’

      Aggie shrugged. ‘Yes, he works in a bar and gets a gig once every few weeks. But his talent is really with songwriting. You’ll probably think that I’m spinning you a fairy story, because you’re suspicious of everything I say…’

      ‘With good reason, as it turns out.’

      ‘But he’s pretty amazing at composing. Often in the evenings, while I’m reading or else going through some of the homework from the kids or preparing for classes, he’ll sit on the sofa playing his guitar and working on his latest song over and over until he thinks he’s got it just right.’

      ‘And you never thought to mention that to me because…?’

      ‘I’m sure Mark told you that he enjoyed songwriting.’

      ‘He told me that he was a musician. He may have mentioned that he knew people in the entertainment business. The general impression was that he was an established musician with an established career. I don’t believe I ever heard you contradict him.’

      The guy was charming but broke, and his state of penury was no passing inconvenience. He was broke because he lived in a dreamworld of strumming guitars and dabbling about with music sheets.

      Thinking about it now, Luiz could see why Maria had fallen for the guy. She was the product of a fabulously wealthy background. The boys she had met had always had plentiful supplies of money. Many of them either worked in family businesses or were destined to. A musician, with a notebook and a guitar slung over his shoulder, rustling up cocktails in a bar by night? On every level he had been her accident waiting to happen. No wonder they had all seen fit to play around with the truth! Maria was sharp enough to have known that a whiff of the truth would have had alarm bells ringing in his head.

      ‘I happen to be very proud of my brother,’ Aggie said stiffly. ‘It’s important that people find their own way. I know you probably don’t have much time for that.’

      ‘I have a lot of time for that, provided it doesn’t impact my family.’

      The traffic was horrendous but eventually they cleared it and, after a series of back roads, emerged at a square of elegant red-bricked Victorian houses in the centre of which was a gated, private park.

      There had been meals out but neither she nor her brother had ever actually been asked over to Luiz’s house.

      This was evidence of wealth on a shocking scale. Aside from Maria’s expensive bags, which she’d laughingly claimed she couldn’t resist and could afford because her family was ‘not badly off’, there had been nothing to suggest that not badly off had actually meant staggeringly rich.

      Even though the restaurants had been grand and expensive, Aggie had never envisioned the actual lifestyle that Luiz enjoyed to accompany them. She had no passing acquaintance with money. Lifestyles of the rich and famous were things she occasionally read about in magazines and dismissed without giving it much thought. Getting out of the car, she realised that, between her and her brother and Luiz and his family, there was a chasm so vast that the thought of even daring to cross it gave her a headache.

      Once again she was reluctantly forced to see why Maria’s mother had asked Luiz to watch the situation.

      Once again she backtracked over their glossing over of their circumstances and understood why Luiz was now reacting the way he was. He was so wrong about them both but he was trapped in his own circumstances and had probably been weaned on suspicion from a very young age.

      ‘Are you going to come out?’ Luiz bent down to peer at her through the open car door. ‘Or are you going to stay there all night gawping?’

      ‘I wasn’t gawping!’ Aggie slammed the car door behind her and followed him into a house, a four-storey house that took her breath away, from the pale marble flooring to the dramatic paintings on the walls to the sweeping banister that led up to yet more impeccable elegance.

      He strode into a room to the right and after a few seconds of dithering Aggie followed him inside. He hadn’t glanced at her once. Just shed his coat and headed straight for his answer machine, which he flicked on while loosening his tie.

      She took the opportunity to look round her: stately proportions and the same pale marbled flooring, with softly faded silk rugs to break the expanse. The furniture was light leather and the floor-to-ceiling curtains thick velvet, a shade deeper in colour than the light pinks of the rugs.

      She was vaguely aware that he was listening to what seemed to be an interminable series of business calls, until the last message, when the breathy voice of a woman reminded him that she would be seeing him tomorrow and that she couldn’t wait.

      At that, Aggie’s ears pricked up. He might very well have accused her of being shady when it came to her and her brother’s private lives. She now realised that she actually knew precious little about him.

      He wasn’t married; that much she knew for sure because Maria had confided that the whole family was waiting for him to tie the knot and settle down. Beyond that, of course, he would have a girlfriend. No one as eligible as Luiz Montes would be without one. She looked at him surreptitiously and wondered what the owner of that breathy, sexy voice looked like.

      ‘I’m going to have a quick shower. I’ll be back down in ten minutes and then we’ll get going. No point hanging around.’

      Aggie snapped