CHAPTER 3

          Jacqueline hurried over to the door that led back into the reception area where an alarming amount of activity could be noticed. The reticent receptionist who received her so impassively was standing to attention with a megawatt smile of appreciation and a well-dressed older man was greeting Diego with a horrendous amount of bowing and scraping.

“Your Excellency,” the man murmured dutifully.

          As though some sixth sense warned him of her presence, Diego turned his proud dark head. Eyes as rich as gold ingots in sunlight encountered hers. Her stomach flipped, her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat escalated as though she was trying to run up a hill. It was like being hit by a truck and she reacted with panic.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jacqueline asked belligerently.

          Though taken aback by her unexpected appearance, Diego didn’t show any sign of it. In the space of a moment, he had absorbed every facet of the slender woman poised by the door.

          She had the fine structure and grace of a dancer and the fleeting air of a butterfly ready to fly at the first sign of trouble. Her toffee-brown hair fell in a wavy ocean around her delicately pointed face, framing wide green eyes bright and sharp as lancets, a freckled nose turned up at the tip and a full sweet cupid’s bow mouth.

          His intense gaze semi-cloaked by the lush density of his lashes, Diego tore his attention from the provocative appeal of that very feminine mouth and struggled to suppress a primitive and infuriatingly inappropriate flare of pure lust.

          Jacqueline folded her arms to hide the fact that her hands were shaking.

“I asked you a question, Diego… Who asked you to come here?” she demanded.

“His Excellency is attending this meeting at my request, Miss Maxwell,” the lawyer interrupted in a shocked tone of criticism.

          Diego moved a step closer and extended both his lean brown hands. His stunning dark golden eyes met hers in a head-on collision. Before Jacqueline even knew what she was doing, she was uncrossing her defensive arms and freeing her fingers to make contact with him, for a yearning she couldn’t deny had leaped up inside her.

“I know how close you were to your sister. Allow me to offer you my deepest condolences on her death,” Diego breathed with quiet gravity.

          Hot pink color like a flood tide to wash Jacqueline’s pale complexion. Her small hands trembled in the warm hold of his. Ferocious emotions gripped her and threatened to tear her apart. She couldn’t doubt his sincerity and his compassion pushed her to the brink of tears.

          Diego had put her in the wrong spot with his immaculate sense of occasion, social sophistication, and superb manners by answering her less-than-polite greeting with courtesy.

          For that alone, Jacqueline could’ve screamed at him and wept in rage. She refused to be impressed. She also refused to think about how much he had hurt her almost three years earlier.

          Instead, she concentrated on a more relevant line of attack. Where had Diego Martinez del Río and his rich, snobby family been when Alyssa had been desperate for help and support? She yanked her hands in stark rejection.

“I don’t want your precious condolences! I don't need them,” Jacqueline told him baldly.

“Nonetheless they are yours,” Diego purred smoothly, marveling at the level of her aggression and the novelty value of her rejection.

          Women were never aggressive towards Diego or ungrateful for his consideration. Jacqueline was the single exception to that rule.

“Again, you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Jacqueline said stubbornly.

“As you were just told, I was invited,” Diego reminded her gently.

“Your Excellency… please, come this way,” the lawyer urged him in a pained tone of apology.

          Although Jacqueline had grown increasingly pale with unease and nerves, her chin came up.

“I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me what’s going on here! What gives you the right to hear what my sister said in her will?”

“Let’s discuss that and other issues in a more private setting,” Diego suggested quietly.

          Once again Jacqueline’s face flamed pink with irritation. Squirming embarrassment afflicted her when she unwillingly recalled the consequences of her visit to Monterrey nearly three years earlier.

          His rejection had hurt like hell and devastated her pride. She had been too pathetically naïve to recognize that the blue-blooded Duque de Altamira was simply amusing himself flirting with the peasants.

          It requested a huge effort on her part to repress that wounding memory and concentrate on the present. Her slender spine stiff, she sank in a seat in the spacious office.

          Determined to emulate Diego’s cool, she decided to resist the temptation to give way to any further outbursts and she compressed her lips. At the same time, she was frantically striving to work out why Diego should’ve been asked to come all the way from Mexico. After all, Jaime’s arrogant brother hadn’t bothered to get in touch before, nor had he shown the smallest interest in the existence of Azura, his little niece.

          An annoying shudder of anxiety traveled through Jacqueline. The lawyer began to read the will with the slight haste of someone eager to get an unpleasant task out of the way.

          The document was short and simple and all too soon Jacqueline understood why Diego’s presence had been considered so necessary. However, she couldn’t accept what she had heard and questioned it.

“So, just to be sure I got it right… My sister nominated Diego a legal guardian as well?”

“Yes, Miss Maxwell,” the lawyer confirmed.

“What’s the point? I’m more than capable of taking care of Azura without any kind of help,” Jacqueline proclaimed brightly. “And since I can do it all by myself, I see no need for anyone else to get involved! Least of all, him,” she added without looking at Diego, though.

“It’s not so simple,” Diego slotted in smooth as a rapier blade, but a faint frown line now divided his ebony eyebrows.

          He was surprised that the will had made no mention of the disposition of Alyssa’s property and was about to query that omission. Jacqueline spared the tall Mexican her first fleeting glance since entering the room. Her troubled green eyes announced that a storm was coming.

“It can be as simple as you’re willing to make it. I don’t know what came over Alyssa when she chose to include you…”

“Common sense, maybe?” Diego batted back drily.

“I suppose Alyssa must’ve been scared that we both might be involved in an accident,” Jacqueline deemed heatedly, fighting to maintain her composure. “We’re talking worst-case scenario here, but luckily things aren’t as bad as that. I’m young and fit and well able to take care of Azura all on my own.”

“I'm having some serious issues with this statement,” Diego murmured.

          Her teeth gritted.

“Duque,” she shot back at him mockingly, “you can have issues with whatever you like but it’s not going to change anything!”

“Your sister nominated you and the His Excellency as joint guardians of Azura, her daughter,” the lawyer expanded. “That means that you have equal rights over the child…”

“Equal rights?”

          Jaqueline gasped in rampant disbelief.

“Equal rights,” Diego repeated with a silken emphasis he couldn’t resist.

“No other arrangement is possible without application to the courts,” the lawyer decreed.

“But that’s totally outrageous!” Jacqueline launched at Diego.

“With all due respect, I would suggest that my family is entitled to assist in the task of raising my brother’s child.”

“Why?” Jacqueline slung back wrathfully as she leaped to her feet. “So that your precious family can make as big a mess of bringing up Azura as they did with her father?”

          Angry disconcertion had tensed Diego’s lean, darkly handsome features.

“Both our siblings are now dead. Let’s respect that reality.”

“Don’t you dare ask me to respect Jaime’s memory!” she flared back at him in disgust. “Your brother wrecked my sister’s life!”

“May I speak to Miss Maxwell alone for a few minutes?” Diego asked the lawyer.

          The older man, whose discomfiture during that increasingly heated exchange of views had been extreme, got up with relief at the request and left the room.

“Please, sit down,” Diego instructed politely but coolly, determined not to rise to the bait of her provocative accusations. “Take note that I will not argue with you. Recriminations are pointless and wrong in this situation. The child’s interests must come first…”

          Jacqueline was so furious that only a scream could’ve expressed her feelings. Denied that possibility, she coiled her hands into tight little fists of restraint by her side.

“Don’t you dare tell me what’s right and what’s wrong! Let me tell you…”

          Diego rose upright with unhurried grace.

“I don’t need you to tell me anything that I don’t ask for. And if you insist, I will not listen. You will lower your voice and moderate your language. You will also stop disrespecting me.”

“How dare you talking to me like that? Like I’m some stupid kid?” Jacqueline launched at him. “You walk in here, you start laying down the law and acting like you know best…”

“Trust me, I do know best,” Diego incised and not in a tone of apology. “I recognize that you have suffered a recent loss and that grief may well have challenged your temper…”

“That’s not why I hate your guts and that’s not why I’m yelling at you!” Jacqueline informed him fiercely, green eyes bright with fury. “Your awful brother robbed my sister of everything she possessed and left her penniless and in debt. He was a hateful liar and a cheater. He took her money and threw it away at the gambling tables and the racetrack. When there was nothing left, he told her he’d never loved her anyway and he walked!”