LITMIR.BIZ

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lamps of the side and standing variety. French doors were draped in gauzy powder-blue curtains that undulated in the twilight sea breeze, wafting scents of salt and freshness with each billow. She sighed away her draining tension and pushed from the wood-paneled door.

      She crossed the gleaming hardwood floor to the suitcases. They were more evidence of Rodrigo’s all-inclusive care. She was certain she’d never owned anything so exquisite. She wondered what he’d filled them with. If the outfit she had on was any indication, no doubt an array of haute couture and designer items, molding to her exact shape and appealing to her specific tastes.

      She tried to move the one on the floor, just to set it on its wheels. Frantic pounding boomed in her head.

      Man—what had he gotten her to wear? Steel armor in every shade? And he’d made the cases look weightless when he’d hauled them both in, simultaneously. She tugged again.

       “¡Parada!”

      She swung around at the booming order, the pounding in her head crashing down her spine to settle behind her ribs.

      A robust, unmistakably Spanish woman in her late thirties was plowing her way across the room, alarm and displeasure furrowing the openness of her olive-skinned beauty.

      “Rodrigo warned me that you’d give me a hard time.”

      Cybele blinked at the woman as she slapped her hand away from the suitcase’s handle and hauled it onto the king-sized, draped-in-ivory-silk bed. She, too, made it look so light. Those Spaniards—uh, Catalans—must have something potent in their water.

      The woman rounded on her, vitality and ire radiating from every line. Even her shoulder-length, glossy dark brown hair seemed pissed off. “He told me that you’d be a troublesome charge, and from the way you were trying to bust your surgery scar open, he was right. As he always is.”

      So it wasn’t only she who thought he was always practically infallible. Her lips tugged as she tried to placate the force of nature before her. “I don’t have a surgery scar to bust, thanks to Rodrigo’s revolutionary minimally invasive approach.”

      “You have things in there—” the woman stabbed a finger in the air pointing at Cybele’s head “—you can bust, no? What you busted before, necessitating such an approach.”

      From the throb of pain that was only now abating, she had to concede that. She’d probably raised her intracranial pressure tenfold trying to drag that behemoth of a bag. As she shrugged, she remembered Rodrigo telling her something.

      She’d been too busy watching his lips wrap around each syllable to translate the words into an actual meaning. She now replayed them, made sense of them.

      Rodrigo had said Consuelo, his cousin who lived here with her husband and three children and managed the place for him, would be with her shortly to see to her every need and to the correct and timely discharge of his instructions. She’d only nodded then, lost in his eyes. She now realized what he’d meant.

      He didn’t trust her to follow his instructions, was assigning a deputy to enforce their execution. And he certainly knew how to pick his wardens.

      She stuck out her hand with a smile tugging at her lips. “You must be Consuelo. Rodrigo told me to expect you.”

      Consuelo took her hand, only to drag her forward and kiss her full on both cheeks.

      Cybele didn’t know what stunned her more, the affectionate salute, or Consuelo resuming her disapproval afterward.

      Consuelo folded her arms over an ample bosom artfully contained and displayed by her floral dress with the lime background. “Seems Rodrigo didn’t really tell you what to expect. So let me make it clear. I received you battered and bruised. I’m handing you back in tip-top shape. I won’t put up with you not following Rodrigo’s orders. I’m not soft and lenient like him.”

      “Soft and lenient?” Cybele squeaked her incredulity. Then she coughed it out on a laugh. “I wasn’t aware there were two Rodrigos. I met the intractable and inexorable one.”

      Consuelo tutted. “If you think Rodrigo intractable and inexorable, wait till you’ve been around me twenty-four hours.”

      “Oh, the first twenty-four seconds were a sufficient demo.”

      Consuelo gave her an assessing look, shrewdness simmering in her dark chocolate eyes. “I know your type. A woman who wants to do everything for herself, says she can handle it when she can’t, keeps going when she shouldn’t, caring nothing about what it costs her, and it’s all because she dreads being an imposition, because she hates accepting help even when she dearly needs it.”

      “Whoa. Spoken like an expert.”

      “¡Maldita sea, es cierto!—that’s right. It takes one mule-headed, aggravatingly independent woman to know another.”

      Another laugh overpowered Cybele. “Busted.”

      “Sí, you are. And I’m reporting your reckless behavior to Rodrigo. He’ll probably have you chained to my wrist by your good arm until he gives you a clean bill of health.”

      “Not that I wouldn’t be honored to have you as my …uh, keeper, but can I bribe you into keeping silent?”

      “You can. And you know how.”

      “I don’t try to lift rock-filled suitcases again?”

      “And do everything I say. When I say it.”

      “Uh …on second thought, I’ll take my chances with Rodrigo.”

      “Ha. Try another one. Now hop to it. Rodrigo told me what kind of day—what kind of week you’ve had. You’re doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and resting for the next one. And eating. You look like you’re about to vanish.”

      Cybele laughed as she whimsically peered down at her much lesser endowments. She could see how they were next to insubstantial by the super-lush Consuelo’s standards.

      This woman would be good for her. As she was sure Rodrigo had known she would be. Every word out of her mouth tickled funny bones Cybele hadn’t known existed.

      Consuelo hooked her arm through Cybele’s good one, walked her to bed then headed alone to the en suite bathroom. She talked all the time while she ran a bubble bath, emptied the suitcases, sorted everything in the dressing room, and laid out what Cybele would wear to bed. Cybele loved listening to her husky, vibrant voice delivering perfect English dipped in the molasses of her all-out Catalan accent. By the time she led Cybele to the all-marble-and-gold-fixtures, salonlike bathroom, she’d told her her life story. At least, everything that had happened since she and her husband had become Rodrigo’s house-and groundskeepers.

      Cybele insisted she could take it from there. Consuelo insisted on leaving the door open. Cybele insisted she’d call out to prove she was still awake. Consuelo threatened to barge in after a minute’s silence. Cybele countered she could sing to prove her wakefulness then everyone within hearing distance would suffer the consequences of Consuelo’s overprotection.

      Guffawing and belting out a string of amused Catalan, Consuelo finally exited the bathroom.

      Grinning, Cybele undressed. The grin dissolved as she stared at herself in the mirror above the double sinks’ marble platform.

      She had a feeling there’d once been more of her. Had she lost weight? A lot of it? Recently? Because she’d been unhappy? If she had been, why had she planned a pregnancy and a second honeymoon with Mel? What did Rodrigo think of the way she looked? Not now, since she looked like crap, but before? Was she his type? Did he have a type? Did he have a woman now? More than one… ?

      Oh, God …she couldn’t finish a thought without it settling back on him, could she?

      She clamped down on the spasm that twisted through her at the idea, the images of him with a woman …any other woman.

      How

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