CHAPTER 4

          He was disturbed but not that surprised by those revelations. He felt it would be insensitive to point out that, even before Alyssa had wed his brother, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to warn Jacqueline’s sibling of her future husband’s essential unreliability when it came to money.

“If that’s the truth, well, I’m so very sorry for it. Had I been made aware of those facts, I would’ve granted Alyssa all the help that it was within my power to give.”

          Jacqueline snatched in a jagged breath.

“Is this all you’ve got to say about this matter?”

          Diego had a low tolerance threshold for such personal attacks. In his blood ran the hot pure-bred pride of the Spanish and Mexican nobility and a long line of ancestors to whom honor had been a chivalrous, engrained concept of prime importance.

          He had lived his own life within those tenets and his principles were of the highest. He had a profound dislike of being scolded for his brother’s sins, for which he had too often paid a high personal price.

          His strong jawline squared. He had no intention of getting dragged into an exchange that was only likely to worsen the hostilities.

“It’s an unhappy fact that I can’t change the past,” Diego pointed out flatly. “The only subject I’m willing to discuss at this moment is Azura’s well-being.”

          Eyes glinting a ferocious green, Jacqueline surveyed him in raging frustration. Nothing fazed him. Nothing knocked even a chip off that cold, smooth, marble façade of his. He was neither shamed nor insulted by his younger brother’s appalling mistreatment of her poor sister.

          Indeed, there he stood, all six feet three inches of him, wonderfully insulated by his great wealth and aristocratic detachment from the harder realities of those less fortunate in life.

          Diego Martinez del Río lived in a huge Mexican mansion with servants. He had a private jet and a fleet of limos. His fancy suit had probably cost as much as she earned in a year. He would never know what it was to struggle just to pay the rent at the end of the month. He had even less compassion to spare for Alyssa’s sufferings.

“I’m not going to discuss Azura with you!” Jacqueline snapped in the feverish heat of her resentment. “You’re as much of a bastard as your sneaky brother was!”

          The dark color accentuated the superb slant of Diego’s fabulous cheekbones. His brilliant eyes suddenly flared gold as the heart of a fire.

“Oh, so now you really know who I am? On what do you base your awful comment? Ignorant prejudice?”

“I’ve got personal experience of what kind of a guy you are! I know your type,” Jacqueline declared in a tempestuous surge of hurt and anger. “And rest assured, it’s not my type anyway!”

“Oh…So sorry, Miss Maxwell! I’m not so much into tattoos,” Diego murmured in a sibilant tone designed to wound.

“Wow! Tattoos?”

          Jacqueline imitated in response to that particular taunt, feeling the image of the butterfly she had acquired at eighteen burned through the flesh of her shoulder like a brand. A fresh spurt of angry mortification took hold of her.

“You… snob! You snake! How dare you mock me like that? You act like you’re so superior and so polite, but you misjudged me since that night!”

          Diego’s intent dark golden gaze was welded to her flushed heart-shaped face and bright green eyes. Her passion was so fascinating to him. Temper was running through her like electricity and she couldn’t control it.

          He was grimly amused and unexpectedly pleased to discover that his justifiable reproach that night still resonating in her mind nearly three years after that unfortunate event.

“I don’t think so. I think you resent the fact that I saw you for what you were…”

          She was trembling with the force of her feelings.

“And how did you see me? I’m quite interested in finding out…” she challenged.

“You don’t want to know,” Diego asserted lazily, dangling that carrot with every hope of provoking her further.

          Jacqueline was already so mad she was practically jumping up and down on the spot and he couldn’t resist the temptation to see just how much further he could push her before she lost it altogether.

          With outraged stamped on her delicate features, Jacqueline took a hasty step closer and stared up at him, her hands on her hips like a warrior.

“Tell me… Go on, just tell me!”

          Diego lifted and dropped his wide shoulders in an infinitesimal shrug of dismissal, deliberately prolonging the moment to the punchline.

“Like most men, I confess that I can really enjoy a vicious woman, but I’m afraid that… promiscuity is a real turn-off. You missed your chance with me.”

          She hit him. She tried to slap him, but she wasn’t tall enough. His reactions were also faster than her own and Diego sidestepped her so that her palm merely glanced off his shoulder, leaving him infuriatingly unharmed.

“You bastard!” Jacqueline seethed up at him. “You think I care about missing out with you?”

“Attempted assault on that score nearly three years later rather speaks for you, querida,” Diego shared in his dark-timbered drawl, only dimly wondering why he was enjoying himself so much.

          White with shock and humiliation at her own behavior and the biting effect of his mockery, Jacqueline headed to the door.

“I absolutely refuse to have anything more to do with you.”

“Perhaps just once you could exercise some discipline over your temper and think of the child whose future is at stake here.”

          She froze as if his words had plunged a dagger into her narrow back. Guilt and shame engulfed her. Stiffly, she turned and tracked back to her seat without once looking in the direction of her bully.

“Thank you,” Diego murmured smoothly.

          Her fingers carved purple crescents of restraint into her palms. Never in her life had she hated anyone as she hated him at that moment. Never in her life had anyone made her feel so stupid and selfish.

          Diego invited the lawyer back in. Initially, she was silent for fear of letting herself down by saying the wrong thing, but Jacqueline had been planning to ask questions. However, there was no need for her to do so. He requested the clarification that she might have asked for her own benefit.

          Those answers told a mortified Jacqueline what she least wished to hear. All arrangements for Azura would have to be reached by mutual agreement between her and Diego.

          Either of them could refuse the responsibility or relinquish rights to the other. But, as executor, the lawyer was empowered, if he thought it necessary, to invite social services to decide how Azura’s needs would best be fulfilled.

          Satisfactory security and funding to support a child would naturally have to be taken into consideration.

“So, since I’m poor and he’s rich, I can’t possibly have equal rights with him over my niece, can I?” Jacqueline prompted tightly.

“That isn’t how I would view the situation, Miss Maxwell.”

          Discouraged by such blunt speech, the lawyer glanced at Diego for support. Diego Francisco Martinez del Río, Duque de Altamira, rose unhurriedly upright a split second after Jacqueline scrambled to her feet, eager to be gone.

“I see no reason why Miss Maxwell and I shouldn’t reach an amicable agreement,” he drawled with all the controlled calm and cool of a male who knew he had beaten his opponent down to a pulp. “I’d like to see Azura this evening. It’s 7 PM okay with you? I’ll call before showing up.”

“I’m sure you’re not giving me a choice,” Jacqueline framed bitterly.

          Having taken complete charge, Diego accompanied her out to the narrow hallway.

“It doesn’t have to be this way between us,” he murmured huskily.

“After what you said to me earlier, after the way you treated me, how else could it be?” she heard herself ask him promptly.

          He was so close that she could’ve reached out and touched him. The very sound of his rich, deep-pitched drawl was incredibly sensual. Jacqueline let herself look up and it was a mistake. He took her breath away and rocked her world.

          In the blink of an eye, it was as though time had slipped and catapulted her back almost three years. Meeting the slumberous darkness of his spectacular eyes, she trembled.

          Treacherous excitement seized her and made a prisoner of her. For a wild, endless moment, Jacqueline was so fiercely aware of him that it was agony not to make actual physical contact with his lean, powerful frame.

          She heard the roughened catch of his breathing and imagined the burn of his beautiful mouth on hers. Only the humiliating memory of his comments earlier forced her back to solid earth again and left her bitterly ashamed of her own weakness.

“Do you honestly think I’m stupid enough to fall for the same fake charm routine you used on me the last time?” Jacqueline asked with stinging scorn, sliding sinuously past him with the quicksilver speed that characterized all her movements.

          Jacqueline had vanished around the corner at the foot of the hallway before he was even properly aware that she had gone. Shaking his head, Diego swore long and low and silently and with a ferocity that would’ve astounded those who knew him.