LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER TWO

      IF HE had been lost in thought, he reacted fast to the metallic rustle of the fly curtain as she swept it to one side. But he didn’t make a startled movement as she would have done.

      Nicolás glanced over his shoulder, saw her standing in the doorway, and scooped the cat off his thighs before standing up and saying, in a quiet voice, ‘It’s too fine a night for sleeping. Come and join us. I’ve been making friends with your cat. I assume he’s the house cat. Or is he a neighbourhood cat who uses your terrace?’

      ‘He’s ours,’ said Cally, stepping on the terrace. ‘My mother was walking the dog she had a few years ago. They were crossing a dry river bed when she heard a kitten mewing. It was inside a plastic bag with the rest of the litter. They were about a week old. All the others were dead.’

      Her tone was dispassionate, but even now, years later, remembering the incident made her blood boil with disgust for whoever had been too mean and heartless to dispose of the unwanted kittens humanely.

      Nicolás’s response was equally unemotional. ‘There are some rotten people in the world,’ he said.

      He was holding the cat as if it were a baby, on its back with his forearm under its spine and his other hand tickling its tummy. Mog, who normally disliked being touched by strangers, wasn’t lashing his tail but purring deep satisfied purrs.

      Unbidden and unwelcome, the thought came to Cally that being held and caressed by Nicolás might cause her to purr as well. She rejected the notion as soon as it entered her mind. It must be the time of the month when her hormones were on the rampage.

      The man was a stranger. She knew next to nothing about him. Because he had a way with cats didn’t mean he was equally good at making love to women. Even if he were, she was not into casual sex. She was not into sex, period. It was a snare and a delusion devised by Nature to trick people into perpetuating the species, though the trick didn’t work as well now that women had control of their bodies, at least to the extent of not getting pregnant. Controlling their reactions to the opposite sex was harder. But she had seen too many colleagues having their lives made wretched by disastrous relationships to want to risk it herself.

      ‘It’s very quiet here at night,’ said Nicolás, moving to sit on the low flat-topped wall that surrounded the terrace but in places was ranged with plant pots.

      ‘Some of our guests find the church clock disturbing.’

      Against her better judgment, but reluctant to return to her room when the surrounding mountains were bathed in moonlight and the October night air was as balmy as a fine summer night in the UK, Cally sat down in the armchair he had vacated. Although she had a white lawn nightdress under her ankle-length robe, she was conscious of being without a bra or briefs. Perhaps this was because, apart from having bare feet, Nicolás was still dressed.

      ‘On the way to bed, I was looking at the bookshelves on the next landing. Would it be all right if I borrowed one to read in my room?’

      ‘Of course…that’s what they’re there for. But not many of our guests are bookworms. Mostly they’re TV-watchers.’

      ‘Did your parents build up the library, or did they inherit it from the previous owners of the house? Your father mentioned that he and your mother only set up the business about six years ago and had a bit of a struggle to get it going.’

      ‘It wasn’t easy at first. Some of the Spanish and all the German books came with the house. The last owner was a German botanist. A lot of the books I’ve found on rastros or in the secondhand paperback libraries catering to foreigners. The prices are low because most people take them back for a half-price refund, but I usually keep them.’

      ‘You would enjoy the bookshops and book fairs in Madrid. Have you been to my home town?’

      ‘Once, when we were living in the south, we had to get to England in a hurry for a family funeral. We put the car on the train at Algeciras and got off in Paris, with a stop of some hours in Madrid en route. I wanted to see the Goya paintings in the Prado, but it was closed that day. Juanita, who is cooking for us because my mother is away, went to Madrid last spring on a coach with other pensionistas from the village. She had a wonderful time. Have you always lived there?’

      ‘No, I was born and grew up in the country. I enjoy Madrid, but—’ He broke off as the cat suddenly sprang from his arms to the ground and then jumped onto another part of the wall and peered over the outer edge of it.

      ‘He’s heard something moving about under our neighbour’s roof tiles,’ said Cally, as Mog vanished. ‘He fancies himself as an ace hunter, but I’ve never known him to catch anything. You were saying you enjoy Madrid, but…’

      ‘But I wouldn’t want to live in a city all the time. It’s exciting and stimulating, but it can get a bit frenetic. I like to escape now and then.’

      Cally was struck yet again by the fluency of his English but hesitated to press him for the explanation he had promised ‘some other time.’

      ‘Your situation is the reverse of mine,’ he went on. ‘Don’t you ever feel bored with Valdecarrasca? Does it offer enough excitement and stimulus for you?’

      She debated telling him that she didn’t live here on a permanent basis and in fact was only an occasional visitor. But she didn’t feel inclined to talk about herself while there seemed to be things about himself he preferred not to divulge.

      She said, ‘Nowhere is dull or isolated now that we have all resources of the World Wide Web at our fingertips.’

      ‘Do you spend a lot of time on the Web?’

      ‘Quite a lot. How about you?’

      ‘I subscribe to a couple of forums and read certain online columnists. What sort of things do you do?’

      Cally had the feeling they were fencing with each other, neither wishing to reveal themselves. Yet all the time she was conscious of how attractive he was. She liked the way his hair sprang from his broad high forehead, the clear definition of his chin, the way the moonlight accentuated the slant of his cheekbones under the taut dark skin.

      In her late teens, when she had sometimes indulged in romantic daydreams, this was the kind of face she had visualised but never seen in real life. Her parents had been living in Tarragona province then, and the Catalan men in that area had not been remarkable for their looks.

      ‘Mostly I read the book reviews at online bookshops. Sometimes I look at what’s on offer at the auction houses. The great thing about the Web is that it’s all things to all men…and all women,’ she said, smiling. ‘Whatever you’re interested in, you can find stuff about it and people who share your enthusiasms.’

      ‘Some people even find partners, one hears.’

      Cally shrugged. ‘So they say. Perhaps, if one’s looking for a partner, it’s a good place to find one. I’ve often thought that people who aren’t good-looking are at a huge disadvantage in the real world. They may have wonderful minds but they get written off because their faces aren’t pretty or handsome.’

      The

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