Marriage in Mexico

  Marriage in Mexico

  By

  Flora Kidd

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  MARRIAGE IN MEXICO

  Dawn Aylwin's search for her missing sister, Judy, had landed her deeply in trouble. Robbed of all her possessions and left to drown off the coast of Mexico, she was miraculously rescued by Sebastian Suarez. Sebastian gave Dawn shelter and his protection and said he would help her in her search. But he wanted something in return—and Dawn wasn't sure whether she could accept his terms of repayment…

  Books

  by

  Flora Kidd

  in the

  Linford Romance Library:

  THE LEGEND OF THE SWANS

  PASSIONATE PURSUIT

  THE LOVING GAMBLE

  A RISKY AFFAIR

  First published in Great Britain in 1978

  First Linford Edition published 2004

  Copyright © 1978 by Flora Kidd

  ISBN 1-84395-310-2

  1

  Only the distant sound of surf falling on an unseen shore, coming through the slightly open window, saved the room from being completely silent and only the pool of rosy light cast by a standard lamp saved it from being completely dark.

  On a wide bed which was canopied and flounced with sea-green silk a young woman lay on her back. She was covered up to her armpits. The skin of her bare arms and shoulders gleamed like ivory against the green silk of the sheets and pillows and the flaxen hair which fanned out from her head sparkled here and there with silvery light. Her eyes were closed, their long dark lashes sweeping down into the faint violet shadows beneath.

  Suddenly her mouth quivered and she moaned, turning her head restlessly on the pillow. She was regaining consciousness slowly and reliving the moments of terror she had experienced that afternoon when she had been grasped and hurled into the thundering surf of the Pacific Ocean.

  Once again she could hear the wild laughter of the young men who had taken hold of her. She could feel their rough hands on her arms, bruising and dragging, as they had forced her into the sea. Then she was being sucked down under roaring green water. Its saltiness was in her mouth and nose, stinging her eyes and filling her ears. Feeling as if her lungs would burst she struck out, arms and legs, flailing weakly in the surging sea. She struggled to the surface to gasp for breath, only to be slapped in the face by the splintering white foam of another long breaker. Again she was sucked down, down and down into darkness.

  She opened her eyes and saw a graceful arch curving over a window. Her eyes widening with surprise, she looked around. She was in a room she had never seen before; a lovely gracious room where glossy furniture gleamed in the lamplight and a large black-haired woman who was wearing a black dress and white apron sat in a high-backed sewing chair close to a standard lamp, concentrating on her embroidery.

  The young woman stretched and felt the slither of silk over her body. Lifting the covers, she slid a hand beneath them and touched herself. She was without a stitch of clothing. She raised her head slightly and tried to speak. Her voice made only a faint sound in the silence of the room, but the other woman heard it. Putting her embroidery on a small table, she left the chair and came across to stand beside the bed.

  'Como esta usted, seňorita?' she asked. Her dark slightly slanted eyes were wary and no smile lightened the sombreness of her broad Mexican face.

  The young woman stared. She had not understood a word the other woman had said and panic flickered through her.

  'Where am I?' she whispered in English. 'What is this place?'

  The dark-haired woman frowned fiercely and her eyes flashed. She burst into a torrent of Mexican-Spanish, her plump hands gesturing wildly. The young woman's panic increased and she seemed to shrink into the bed.

  'I don't understand,' she said plaintively. 'I don't understand you.'

  The Mexican woman gave an exclamation of impatience, flung up her hands in a gesture of surrender and swinging round went from the room through an arched doorway.

  Left alone, the young woman pushed with her elbows against the mattress of the bed in an attempt to sit up. Her head whirled and she fell back against the pillows. Eyes closed, she tried to remember why she was in bed in that strange room, but her brain seemed to be full of fog and she had a great longing to drift off to sleep.

  The sound of a man's voice speaking the language the woman had spoken roused her slightly, but she didn't open her eyes. Then all was silent again and she was just floating off into sleep when she felt something touch her cheek. Someone was stroking it with a lean, hard finger.

  'Don't go to sleep, little one, not yet,' said a cool masculine voice which spoke English with just the slightest of fascinating accents, a slurring of consonants and a lengthening of vowels. 'It's important that I know who you are.'

  She opened her eyes and looked up into eyes which were as golden as an eagle's and just about as clear and hard. They were set in a lean sun-tanned face on either side of a dominant high-bridged nose and above them fine dark eyebrows followed the curve of the bone which arched over each of them.

  'Who are you?' she whispered.

  A faint smile lifted the corners of his wide broad-lipped mouth and was reflected briefly in his eyes. Then it had gone and he was staring down at her coldly.

  'We could go on like this forever asking one another who the other is,' he said. 'But since this is my house, I have first go. Tell me, who are you?'

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed very close to her. Thick damp black hair clustered about his high forehead and grew down the sides of his lean cheeks. His shoulders were wide under a crisp white evening shirt which was unbuttoned at the neck and part way down the front and she could see the shimmer of a golden chain against the sun-dark skin of his chest.

  There was a formidable air of authority about him which disturbed her. Who was she? The fog swirled into her mind again and for a terrifying moment she couldn't remember anything. Then a name came to her like a gleam of light slanting through the fog.

  'I think I'm Dawn,' she muttered. His mouth took on an unpleasant, cruel curve and his eyes narrowed. Gold cuff links glittered briefly as he folded his arms across his chest and she caught the glint of a gold watch on a dark wrist beneath a white cuff.

  'You think,' he jeered. 'Now don't tell me you've lost your memory. If you have the faster I have you out of here and in the psychiatric ward of the hospital the better.' His eyes glittered with a cold sardonic light as their glance roved over her hair, lingered on her eyes, then swept down insolently over her throat and shoulders to the fold of sheet barely covering her breasts.

  'Dawn,' he drawled. 'It is, I suppose, an appropriate name for someone with your colouring—silver-gilt hair and silvery grey eyes. Is that why you chose it?'

  The hostility in his manner rasped on her like a steel file, sharpening her wits so that she suddenly knew exactly who she was.

  'I didn't choose it. It's my baptismal name,' she retorted, raising her head slightly.

  'Dawn what?' he rapped.

  'Dawn Aylwin.'

  'So at last we make some progress. Dawn Aylwin from where? You're not Mexican, that much is obvious. You're from north of the border, aren't you?'

  Again fog swirled through her mind and she lay back and closed her eyes. North of the border? Which border? With slender fingers she rubbed her forehead trying to ease the throb that was there.

  'I think…' she began vaguely.

  'Listen, chiquita,' the cool voice interrupted her. 'I'm not much interested in what you think. This act of yours may go over big with your friends way back home, but it isn't making any impression on m
e.'

  'It isn't an act,' she spluttered furiously, and reached up in the bed. The bedclothes fell away from her, revealing her slender high-breasted body. His glance flashed down and she gasped, grabbed the sheet and clutched it to her with one hand to cover herself. 'I'm confused, that's all, and it's taking me time to remember. You're not helping by being so… so bossy.'

  'I'm bossy,' he retorted equably, 'because I want to know the town, the state and if possible the number and name of the street where you usually live so that I can contact your family, tell them that you are safe… '

  'There isn't anyone you can contact,' she mumbled.

  'What? No doting parents?'

  'No. My mother died when I was quite small, when we lived in Ireland. After her death Dad decided to emigrate to Canada. He… he… Her voice trembled and she had to pause. 'He died a few weeks ago, in Toronto,' she went on. 'That's why I'm looking for Judy. Dad told me to find her. He was worried about her.'

  'And who is Judy?'

  She glanced at him searchingly. His handsome face was unrevealing, his eyes hard and steady.

  'My sister,' she said.

  'Why are you looking for her on this coast? What would she be doing here? Touring?'

  'I… I… don't know. Last time she wrote to us she gave us an address in Los Angeles.'

  'When was that?'

  'Six months ago. She was very pleased because she had managed to get a small part in a film. Dad and I were going to fly out to see her, but he became ill. I wrote to her asking her to come back to Toronto to see him. But she didn't write and she didn't come.' Tears of weakness welled in her eyes at the memory of those last few weeks of her father's life and she lay back again. 'After he died,' she went on, 'I drew out my savings and went out to L. A.'

  'And she wasn't at the address she had given you,' he added, dryly. 'Isn't that how the story continues?'

  She glanced at him warily. The curve to his mouth was cynical and scepticism gleamed in his eyes.

  'If you're not going to believe me I don't see why I should tell you any more,' she snapped, anger flaring up in her.

  'What did you do when you couldn't find her?' he asked, ignoring her protest.

  'I went to the film studios where she said she'd worked,' she muttered woodenly. 'No one there seemed to know where she was. Then I met Farley.' Her mind cleared suddenly with the mention of the name. She sat up again, remembering to hug the sheet about her and glanced about the room as if expecting to see a tall young man with sun-gilt skin, blond hair and blue eyes step out of the shadows. 'Where is he?' she demanded, turning on the man who was sitting so close to her and who in his dark satanic way was so different from the young man who had befriended her. 'Where's Farley?'

  'I have no idea,' he drawled.

  Suspicion mushroomed inside her as she stared at him.

  'What is this place, and who are you?' she demanded huskily. 'What have you done with my clothes and my money?' Then as he continued to stare at her something seemed to burst inside her. Forgetting to hold the concealing sheet about her, she clenched her hands and beat at his shoulder. 'Tell me, tell me,' she cried. 'Where is Farley? What have you done with him? Where is he? Where is he?'

  All the anxiety of the past two months, the illness and death of her father, the search for her sister, had taken their toll of her mental stamina. And now Farley had gone too and she was with this cold-eyed, devilish stranger who asked so many questions and who was impervious to her appeals. Tears spurted from her eyes and sobs shook her. She stopped beating him and covered her face with her hands while she wept, for her dead father, her lost sister and her lost friend.

  Arms, strong and tensile, came about her and she was drawn against the warmth of a hard body, sheathed in silk. Hands stroked her back soothingly and a voice spoke softly in her ear.

  'Now, now, chiquita, take it easy, calm down.'

  He rocked her gently as if she were a child and slowly her sobs subsided. With her head against his shoulder she lay limply, feeling the heat of his sun-tanned skin burning against hers through the thin silk of his shirt. He smelt of the sun and the sea and a little of the fragrance of cologne, and as she leaned against him a strange wish formed in her mind. Being held by him was the closest to heaven she had ever been, she thought hazily, and she wished she could stay there for ever.

  But he was pushing her away from him, easing her back against the pillows. He lifted the sheet and covered her with it, tucking it in under her armpits, and once again she felt he was treating her as he might treat a child who had been left in his care for a short time.

  'If I knew where Farley is right now and where your clothes and money are I wouldn't have to ask you questions, would I?' he said, coolly impersonal. 'Neither he nor your belongings were on the beach when I brought you ashore.'

  'You brought me ashore?' she whispered, her eyes opening wide.

  'Si,' he replied. 'You remember being in the ocean?' She nodded and a long shudder shook her from head to foot.

  'I was surf-riding…' he began.

  'Oh, I remember seeing you!' she interrupted, a smile curving her lips and her wet eyes glowing with remembered pleasure. 'You were a long way out, riding the waves like some dark god of the sea…' She broke off, a flush of embarrassment staining her cheeks when she saw his eyebrows lift and his eyes glint mockingly at her description of him. She turned her face away from him, feeling her body fill with a strange pulsing heat as she realised he had held her in his arms twice, once when he had brought her ashore and just now when she had been completely bare.

  'I came across you one of the times you surfaced,' he went on. 'You were bobbing about like a piece of flotsam and I lost a good surfboard when I dived in to grab you before you could sink again. I managed to give you some mouth-to-mouth respiration to get you breathing again, then carried you to the beach and up here to the house.' He paused, then added crisply, 'Why were you trying to drown yourself?'

  She turned her head quickly on the pillow to glance at him with surprise.

  'I wasn't,' she denied.

  'Then what happened?'

  'They… they threw me in,' she said, and again she shuddered.

  'Who did?'

  'Brett, Farley's friend, and another man. They'd all known one another before and were having a party.'

  'Mmm. I saw them and heard them.' His mobile mouth grimaced in disgust. 'They were all pretty high on something.' The hard eyes considered her closely. 'Were you?' he rapped. 'Is that why you couldn't swim?'

  'No, oh, no. They tried to make me take some sort of drug… I don't know what it was, but I got away from them. Then they chased me and caught me. They dragged me towards the sea. I screamed at them to let go of me because I'm not a very strong swimmer and I was frightened of the surf. But they wouldn't listen to me. It was horrible, horrible!' She moved her head from side to side on the pillow, trying to shake off the nightmare feeling.

  'Where did you meet this Farley?'

  'In L. A. At the film studio. He'd been working there as an extra in a film and when he heard me asking about Judy he came up to me and told me he'd known her quite well. He showed me a photograph of her which he said she had given him. She had written on the back of it. He said he hadn't seen her for a while and was worried about her.' Dawn plucked at the sheet with her fingers. 'I liked him,' she muttered defensively, avoiding his eyes. 'He was kind and helpful when I most needed kindness and help.'

  'Did he know where you might find your sister?'

  'He said he believed she might be in Mexico, with a movie director who has a residence somewhere in the area of Manzanillo.'

  'And did he know the name of the movie director?'

  'Yes. Roberto Suarez. Have you heard of him?' She watched him closely for the slightest change in expression. But his face remained as impassive as that of an Aztec idol carved out of stone of which she had once seen pictures in a magazine.

  'Si, I've heard of him,' he replied coolly. 'So what did your kind an
d helpful friend suggest then?'

  She didn't like the sarcasm in his voice and showed her dislike by giving him an underbrowed glare which he returned with a mocking glint.

  'He suggested that if I'd like to hire a car he and his friend Brett would come with me to help me find Roberto Suarez's house, and I agreed,' she said stiffly.

  'How long had you known him before you agreed to such a suggestion?' he demanded.

  'Four days.'

  'Por dios!' he exclaimed. 'You must be very naive.' His glance raked her as if he would have stripped the skin from her to find her soul. 'Didn't anyone ever tell you to beware of strange men?' he mocked.

  'Farley wasn't a stranger. At least he didn't seem like one because he had known Judy, could talk about her and the things they'd done together,' she retorted, her eyes dark and stormy in her pale face. 'You're the stranger,' she accused. 'It's you I should beware of.'

  His eyebrows tilted provocatively and he leaned towards her threateningly.

  'But of course you should beware of me,' he taunted softly. 'I'm very dangerous, especially to a young woman like you. I want to seduce you and keep you here to live with me.'

  She seemed to be mesmerised by the gleam in his eyes. Her own eyes were wide with apprehension. Her heart thumped crazily as she shifted uneasily and lifting the edge of the sheet she pulled it up to hide her bare shoulders from his gaze.

  A strange bitter expression chased across his face and he sprang to his feet. Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his well-cut black trousers, he paced away from the bed towards the window. There he turned, a dark shadow against the starlit darkness outside.

  'So when did you arrive in Manzanillo?' he demanded curtly.

  'Saturday, that was yesterday, and we found out that the Suarez house was further down the coast built on a cliff near a fine beach. Farley and Brett like surf-riding too, so they left me at the house and went down to the beach.'