Spaniard's Seduction / Cole's Red-Hot Pursuit. Brenda Jackson

seek out privacy far from everyone else? Caitlyn swallowed again, horribly conscious of how isolated they were here in the empty stable yard.

      Bravely she found her voice. “Perhaps the letter went astray.”

      “My mother wrote to him again, she was desperate. Is it likely that two letters went astray? New Zealand is, after all, hardly Mars.”

      The turmoil in his eyes twisted Caitlyn’s insides into a knot and her anxiety about her own safety subsided. She fell silent. It did sound bad. But she couldn’t believe Phillip would act so callously. Despite Rafaelo’s accusations, she knew Phillip was a man of honour, a decent man, respected throughout the region for his business acumen and the fund-raising he did for charity.

      She had to make Rafaelo understand that.

      But before she could try to convince him, he pushed his hands away from the wall. The suffocating space between them widened, and Caitlyn sucked in a breath of relief.

      “My mother even contacted him by telephone. Phillip Saxon made it clear that he wasn’t interested in the child he had fathered, told my mother that he wouldn’t be leaving his wife.” There was a corrosive bitterness beneath that exotic accent.

      Caitlyn glimpsed pain and suppressed rage in his expressive eyes. Unbidden, her hand came up, driven by an urge to rest it on his shoulder, to comfort him. Then the memory of his head bending over hers—of the suffocating closeness of a moment ago—returned and a sharp sliver of the poisonous fear pierced her. Hastily she dropped her hand to her side.

      “There must have been some mistake,” she whispered at last, thinking the response that he roused in her was definitely a mistake. She didn’t want, or need, this.

      “It was no mistake. Phillip Saxon abandoned her.”

      The edge in his voice took her mind off her body’s incomprehensible reaction and made her think about what it must have been like for his mother to find herself alone and pregnant. Three decades ago it would have been worse; society had been much less accepting.

      Yet Caitlyn couldn’t help the wave of sympathy for Kay that flooded her. Poor Kay! How humiliating this must be. How horrible to discover her husband’s betrayal of their marriage vows at a time when she was struggling to come to terms with grief over the loss of her son.

      In front of her Rafaelo shifted, his eyes unseeing, focused on an inner hell.

      The last lingering vestige of apprehension left her. Caitlyn stepped away from the wall. “You’re not the only one who has suffered.” Surely Rafaelo would see that he had more in common with his father than he believed? “Phillip lost a son recently. Can’t you find it in yourself to show him pity?”

      “I’m well aware that I am not the only person to suffer bereavement.” From this close her eyes were level with his mouth. His mouth…

      Quickly she glanced up, only to find Rafaelo looking down his haughty nose at her. At once Caitlyn realised that he’d misunderstood her.

      “I meant both of you are grieving. Perhaps you can offer comfort—”

      “I have no intention of offering him anything,” Rafaelo growled. “I owe him nothing. Nada.”

      Caitlyn’s cheeks grew hot at his stubborn intransigence. “He’s your father, and he’s just lost a son. Why don’t y—”

      The black eyebrows jerked together. Something violent flashed in the depths of his stormy eyes. “Phillip Saxon is not my real father. My father is dead. My father taught me to ride, to fish, to swim—and about wine. And that man is not Saxon.”

      “I’m sorry,” she muttered in a subdued tone, not knowing what else to say.

      He sighed then, a harsh, grating sound. “On his deathbed, the man who all my life I’d believed to be my father, informed me that he and my mother had lied to me, that I was not his son.”

      He’d felt betrayed. The sympathy Caitlyn felt for him grew. It had been wrong of his mother to keep the truth from him. But what choice would Maria have had? She’d probably wanted to forget Phillip existed. Now Rafaelo had arrived at Saxon’s Folly, betrayed, grieving…angry at the world.

      It was an explosive situation. “Kay doesn’t deserve—”

      “I concede that my timing is unfortunate.” The dark eyes lost a little of their angry fire. “But it was not my intention to deliberately set out to cause Kay Saxon pain.”

      “Only Phillip,” she retorted, and watched his head jerk back. “You want to hurt him. Why? Because he rejected you when you were a child? Or because you’re scared that he won’t accept you now?”

      A range of emotions flickered across his face, receding one by one, until only irritation remained. “I am not a child. I am a realist. I don’t even know this man who fathered me—”

      “But you want to get to know him?”

      “No! I don’t need to know him. I dislike him. I have no respect for hi—”

      “So you want to wound him, don’t you?” Caitlyn could feel herself getting hot and bothered as annoyance spread through her. “What do you plan to do to make up for the hurt he caused you?”

      “It’s not about me. I want the bastard to pay for what he did to my mother.” The words burst from him in a torrent.

      The silence that fell between them was deafening, broken only by the scrape of an iron shoe as a horse shifted.

      Rafaelo looked astonished.

      There was another emotion, too. Bewilderment? Confusion? Irritation? It passed too quickly for Caitlyn to read. Either way, it showed there was a chink in that impenetrable armour.

      Before she could respond, her cell phone rang. “Where are you?” Megan demanded. “We need you.”

      Oh, damn. She was supposed to be helping with the reception.

      “Be there shortly.” Caitlyn hit the button to end the call. Meeting his gaze, she said, “I have to go—and so should you. I think you’ve caused enough disruption today.”

      His eyes flashed. “I have every right—”

      “Not today,” Caitlyn said with certainty. “You need to calm down before you speak to your father.” She tensed, waiting for him to rail at her for calling Phillip that. But to her surprise he didn’t interrupt, so she continued, “Give the Saxons a chance to mourn, to remember Roland with dignity.”

      His eyes narrowed until all she could see were slits of onyx. “Tomorrow.”

      Caitlyn started to thank him. The compromise could not have been easy, but he steamrolled over her. “In the evening I am flying back to Spain. I do not have time to—how do you say?—twiddle my fingers.”

      “Twiddle your thumbs.” She started to smile, refusing to let his disgruntlement spoil her pleasure in his concession. “It will be for only one night.”

      Rafaelo stared at her. Caitlyn shifted uncomfortably.

      “You will have dinner with me tonight? At my hotel?”

      Suddenly his eyes held a lazy warmth that turned Caitlyn’s knees to liquid. The sensation was disturbing…and extremely unwelcome.

      “No, I will not have dinner with you.” She couldn’t. Dared not. Not even to try and talk him out of the hatred he held toward the Saxons. “But may I suggest—”

      “You are about to order me around again, no?”

      She drew a deep breath. “No. Not order. Make a suggestion that will benefit both you and Phillip—and your relationship in the future.”

      “I have told you, I have no relationship with him.” He was all disdain again, looking down that arrogant nose, the glimmer of interest that had warmed