8

Her confidence lasted as long as it took her to join him at the table.

He’d changed into a dark shirt and a pair of lightweight trousers. In the fading evening light he looked masculine, sexy and totally unnerving.

‘Sit down. Drink? Caipirinha?’

She looked at the fresh, exotic-looking cocktail he was drinking. ‘I’d better not.’ She smiled at Maria, who was hovering. ‘Something non- alcoholic? Juice would be lovely.’

Rafael gave a faint smile. ‘Keeping your wits about you?’

Grace waited until the drink was in front of her and they were alone before she replied. ‘You’re very angry with me, aren’t you?’ Hating tense atmospheres, she decided on the direct approach. ‘I know I’ve made mistakes but everyone does when they start in business.’

‘Do they?’ He was relaxed and in control, his handsome features displaying not a flicker of emotion, and she watched with a growing feeling of helplessness.

How did you communicate with someone like him? Someone who lived his life through facts and numbers? Did he really feel nothing? And then she remembered his acrimonious divorce and knew that the man had to have scars. When life attacked you, it left wounds. She knew that. Is that what had happened with him? Had he learned to bear his scars and keep on walking? Had his wife’s abrupt departure stopped him feeling or had that happened long before his marriage had ended?

‘You’ve never made a mistake, Mr Cordeiro?’

His mouth twisted into a cynical smile and everything about his face was suddenly brutally hard—his aggressive jaw, the glint in his eyes and the set of his shoulders. ‘Yes.’

Grace looked at him closely, wondering.

He’d spoken just one word and yet why did she have the feeling that

the brevity of his response concealed a weight of suffering? Why did she feel that, when there was nothing about this man that suggested weakness or vulnerability? She sensed him wrestling with something deep and dark. Something he refused to surrender to. Because this man would never surrender, she knew that. He was a bare-knuckle fighter.

‘Well, I made mistakes, I admit that—’ she broke off and hesitated, finding it difficult to voice the truth ‘—I was foolish. Naïve. Inexperienced. Call it what you like.’

He studied her for a long moment. ‘Naïve, foolish and inexperienced.

Are those words you’re using supposed to describe yourself?’

‘If I did that then there’d be no chance that you’d carry on lending me the money,’ she said lightly, her eyes drawn to the strength of his forearms. ‘But they’re a fair description of the way I was five years ago when you first gave me the loan.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen. Fresh out of school.’ She said the word lightly, careful to betray nothing of the misery of her school days. ‘Why didn’t you go to university?’

All sorts of reasons.

Grace dropped her eyes to her plate, seeing the food for the first time. When had that arrived? It occurred to her with an uncomfortable jolt that when she was with him she didn’t actually notice anything but the man. ‘University wasn’t for me.’ Her heart rate increased as they grazed over a topic that she hated. ‘I wanted to set up the business.’ She’d needed to prove herself.

His fingers played with the stem of his wine glass. ‘You mean you wanted to start making money.’

Money? Grace frowned. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t about the money. Even now, she hardly took much of a salary, choosing instead to plough her share back into the business. For her, it had never been about the money, but that sort of honest admission was unlikely to get her far with a man whose driving force was financial gain. ‘I wanted something that was mine,’ she said finally, allowing him a small slice of the truth.

He paused as Maria added more bowls of food to the table. ‘But the business was your father’s.’

She shook her head. ‘Not the cafés. He was importing the coffee and selling it on, but the cafés were my idea. When I left school I worked in a café for a while and I enjoyed it but there were so many things I would have done differently. I had friends at university in London who had nowhere nice to meet up during the day and that’s when I had the idea of setting up on my own. I did some research, found a run-down café that was in receivership and I bought it with a loan from the bank. I spent day and night doing it up myself because I didn’t have enough money to pay anyone else to help.’ She reached forward and helped herself to some food. ‘There were cracks in the walls that paint wouldn’t cover so I decided to cover them with huge photographs of the rainforest. The effect was amazing. Everyone used to come in and ask “where’s that?” I probably could have started up a second business as a travel agent.’ Things had seemed so uncomplicated then. She’d started off with just one objective—to impress her father.

‘Brazil is a beautiful country.’

‘Yes. And the photos made me think about the whole experience I wanted to offer. It’s quite a crowded market but most of the coffee shops in existence were targeting young mothers with children and businessmen dashing in for a quick shot of caffeine.’ She picked up her fork and frowned. ‘I wanted to create a place where students could meet up with their friends and enjoy conversation and fantastic music in a lively environment. The atmosphere was young and vibrant. We played samba music, sold Brazilian snacks. We had internet points so that the students could work while they drank their coffee.’ ‘And it was a success.’

‘Yes. The place was packed and our profit was amazing. It was incredibly exciting.’ ‘Making money always is.’

Roused out of her memories by his slightly abrasive tone, she glanced at him, wondering if there was something more behind his comment, but his handsome face revealed nothing of his thoughts. Was she being over- sensitive? ‘Yes, well, that’s when I decided that we could do the same thing in other places. The bank wouldn’t lend me any more money because I was so inexperienced and they didn’t want to give too much money to an eighteen-year-old, which was when I approached your company. Because you were offering business loans to initiatives that supported Brazilian enterprise, I thought you might help us.’ And the loan his company had given her had changed her life.

He reached for his wine glass. ‘Your first café made you a profit, no?’ ‘Yes.’

‘But now you are not in profit.’ His tone was conversational. ‘That

must be very—disappointing.’

‘We spent too much on the refurbishment.’ Grace watched as he drank, unconsciously following the movement of his throat with her eyes. ‘I paid a building company to do what I did myself in the first café. They cost more than I’d budgeted. It was a mistake but it isn’t one I’ll make again.’

‘No.’ His gaze lingered on her face. ‘You won’t.’

The tension in the atmosphere overwhelmed her and she put her fork down. ‘You’re going to say no, aren’t you? And it’s just because I haven’t increased your investment yet.’ Emotion bubbled up inside her. ‘I haven’t lost your money, either. You haven’t lost anything. You’re a billionaire—this investment is nothing to you. But it’s everything to me and the people who work for me.’ She pushed her plate away, suddenly feeling too sick to even contemplate eating. ‘Why invite me to stay and visit the coffee farm if you’re just going to say no?’

He didn’t smile. ‘You still have time to change my mind, Miss Thacker. And I know that the family who own the fazenda would like to meet you and hear what you have to say.’

‘Hear what I have to say about what?’

She stared at him, her expression blank and uncomprehending. He made it sound as though she were going to stand up and give evidence.

‘Your business, Miss Thacker. As they are your sole supplier, your business is their business. Your fortunes are inextricably linked.’

‘That’s true.’

This man held her future in his hands and at that moment the future

looked precarious. She should have been using every last ounce of brainpower to try and understand him so that she could find ways to change his mind.

And yet she was finding it almost impossible to concentrate. Instead of being crisp and businesslike, all she could do was notice tiny irrelevant details. Like the tangle of dark chest hair just visible at the open neck of his shirt, the movement of his hands—decisive and confident. And then there was his mouth. There was something about the sensual lines of his mouth that constantly drew her attention—something wholly masculine that hinted at an extremely physical nature. Grace suddenly remembered the pilot telling her that women flocked around him.

At the time she’d dismissed his assessment as a natural consequence of wealth and power, but now she realised that it was something else entirely, something to do with the very essence of the man.

Rafael Cordeiro was full-blooded Brazilian male. He throbbed with concentrated, full-on sex appeal and masculine supremacy. If he’d been penniless, women would still have flocked. And sharing the same space as him made her immediately aware of their differences. Aware of her femininity.

She was so mesmerised by him that it was only when a cup of coffee was put in front of her that she realised that her plate had been discreetly removed.