The Abducted Heart (Sweetly Contemporary Collection) Read Online Free PDF Page A

slight young man carrying a pad and pen who might have been a secretary, and also a uniformed official. Neither were introduced. With the señor’s hand under her elbow, Anne walked with the three men into the airport terminal. There she was shown into a small, comfortably furnished lounge, and before she could either ask for an explanation or make her own, she was left alone.
    An hour passed with excruciating slowness, and then another. She leafed through the magazines that were available, but since they were printed in Spanish, they could not occupy her for long. Plaques on the wall representing a smiling sun and the frowning moon caught her interest and she studied them minutely. They appeared handmade with excellent craftsmanship, as did an ashtray on a carved teakwood table that she took to be a reproduction in turquoise-colored mica of the Aztec calendar stone. She stuffed a little, touching her fingertips to the roughness of the ashtray. It might be as close as she would ever come to the real thing.
    She had just convinced herself, for the third time, that she had better take matters into her own hands and begin making her own arrangements, when the señor returned.
    “My apologies for keeping you waiting,” he said, holding the door for her. “Everything is in order. We can go.”
    Anne did not move. “Go where?” she asked bluntly.
    “To my home. There is no commercial flight to Dallas until well into the morning. I offer you the hospitality of my house until that time.”
    The stiff formality of his last phrase was not unbecoming to him. Neither did it imply a very warm welcome. “I think I would prefer to stay here at the airport until the flight is called,” she said.
    “It would be most uncomfortable. Besides, you will miss your breakfast,” he reminded her.
    Lifting her chin, she replied. “I’m sure that won’t hurt me.”
    “Maybe not, but it offends my sense of hospitality,” he returned, a small smile curving his mouth.
    “I would prefer not to be obligated to you any more than necessary. You must know I cannot pay you for my return ticket just now, but if you will give me your address, I will send the money to you as soon as I can.” It had been a difficult speech. It was irritating to see how little effect it had on him.
    “Surely there can be no need. If you are the innocent victim you claim, a return ticket and a night’s hospitality are the least I owe you by way of reparation for carrying you off against your will, and if you are not, then shouldn’t you be ready and eager to take advantage of what I may offer you?”
    Anne eyed him warily. “I thought you had little use for the women who ‘foisted themselves on you.’”
    His brows lifted a fraction and a silver gleam shone in the depths of his eyes as he replied, “I don’t remember saying that.”
    “But your attitude...” she protested.
    “...depends on the woman,” he ended. “But why worry? Such matters have nothing to do with you, do they?”
    “No,” she answered in as firm a voice as she could manage.
    “Well, then? What need have you to distrust my hospitality?” His tone hardened. “It may help you to know that my grandmother is in residence with me. I assure you my thoughts at the moment are for her alone. I feel also that I have delayed long enough here at this time. The car is waiting. May we please go?”
    At the reminder of his grandmother’s illness, color swept into Anne’s face. “Yes, I’m sorry,” she said in distress, moving toward him.
    “There is no need for such remorse,” he told her, the sternness of his features relenting as he smiled. “I have put a call through to my home in San Angel on the outskirts of the city and they tell me she is sleeping comfortably.”
    Anne slanted a thoughtful glance at him as she walked beside him to the long, sleek car — and its driver, the bespectacled secretary — that waited for them outside the terminal. For reasons of his own, he had made it