Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) Read Online Free Page B

Eversleigh Hall because they liked the grandeur and history of the stately home, and they had no idea that, short of a miracle, the hall might soon have to be sold and would no longer be the ancestral home of the Bancroft family.
    The dark red diamond was the colour of blood, but Cruz’s words did not make any sense to Sabrina. ‘What do you mean? What does your father have to do with the Red Star?’
    ‘He found it, and it was his right to claim part of the value of the diamond. But he died before he received his percentage share. My father was killed doing your father’s dirty work,’ Cruz said harshly. ‘Earl Bancroft sent him into the mine to search for more red diamonds. Your father has Vitor’s blood on his hands and I have come to Eversleigh to demand compensation for my father’s life.’

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘ I WANT YOU to leave.’
    Sabrina whirled away from Cruz and faced him across the desk, breathing hard as she struggled to control her temper. ‘How dare you turn up at Eversleigh uninvited and make a ridiculous accusation against my father, who isn’t even here to defend himself?’
    ‘He couldn’t defend himself against the truth.’ Cruz welcomed his anger as a distraction from the infuriating knowledge that when Sabrina had squeezed past him, her breasts had brushed against his chest and his body had reacted with humiliating predictability. His eyes were drawn to the low-cut neckline of her dress and the jerky rise and fall of her breasts. He pictured her naked beneath him, the erotic contrast of her milky pale body against his dark bronze skin, and he remembered her soft, kitten-like cries in the throes of orgasm.
    Inferno! It was two months since he had dumped his last mistress and clearly he had gone too long without sex, he thought with savage self-derision. The purpose of his visit was to persuade Earl Bancroft to hand over the map of the abandoned mine, but all he could think of was how much he wanted to bend Sabrina over the desk and push her dress up to her waist, baring her silken thighs so that he could...
    Ruthlessly he controlled his imagination but he could not control the painful throb of desire in his groin as he tried to focus on what she was saying.
    ‘I didn’t know your father had died.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry... I know how close you were to him. But I don’t believe my father was responsible. How could he have had anything to do with Vitor’s death?’
    ‘When my father found the Estrela Vermelha, the earl sent him back to an area of the mine that he knew was unsafe to look for more diamonds.’ Cruz’s jaw hardened. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know. Bancroft must have told you about the accident at the mine even if he failed to admit his culpability for what happened.’
    ‘My father didn’t confide in me,’ Sabrina admitted. ‘We’ve never been close. I grew up at Eversleigh, but my father had inherited land and the diamond mine in Brazil from an uncle and he spent months at a time abroad. I visited him when I was eighteen, which is when I met you, but when I came back to England I had little contact with him.’
    She fell silent, remembering the bleakest period of her life when she had hidden away at Eversleigh like a wounded animal. There had been no one she could talk to about the miscarriage. Four years earlier, when she had been fourteen, her mother had walked out of her marriage to Earl Bancroft and abandoned her children for her lover, and Sabrina had learned a valuable lesson—that she could not trust anyone and she had to rely on herself.
    When she’d fallen pregnant by Cruz in Brazil she had told her father about her pregnancy. Typically he had said little then, or later, when she’d informed him that she had lost the baby. His only comment had been that he thought she had made the right decision to return to England and take up the university place she had deferred.
    The earl had paid an unexpected visit to Eversleigh Hall during the summer