Free Her Latin Lover (Contemporary Romance) by Katheryn Lane Page B

her a sultry look and laid his hand on her arm.
    Mary looked straight back at him into his large, dark brown eyes. She could feel the strength of his fingers on her bare skin. A warm heat rose up from deep inside her. Her checks started to burn red. She pulled her arm back and turned aside only to be confronted by the portrait of the lady in the scarlet frock. The woman in the painting gazed down at her.
    “What about your wife?” Mary asked. She wondered what his wife thought about her staying in their house, especially as her husband, Paulo, seemed to be making advances on his guest. “What does she think about me being here with you?”
    “My wife? What do you mean? I’m not married. Who told you that I was?” He looked genuinely surprised.
    “Isabella. She told me that you had a wife.”
    “Impossible! Isabella has known me all my life. She knows that I’ve never been married. Why would she say such a thing? In fact, how could she say such a thing? She doesn’t speak any English and I thought you didn’t speak any Spanish. You must be mistaken.”
    “Yes, I must have misunderstood,” Mary felt embarrassed, but she was also very pleased at the same time. She was thrilled to hear that there was no wife. Not only was Paulo single, but so was she. She looked up at him and tried to give him her most beguiling smile. However, Paulo was not looking at her. He had started walking off in the opposite direction, towards the kitchen.
    “Where is Isabella? She should be back by now.” Paulo called out to Isabella in Spanish, but there was no reply. “Have you seen her?” he asked Mary.
    “No, I haven’t. The last time I saw her was this morning when she brought me some breakfast. Paulo, this painting,” Mary pointed at the portrait next to her and was about to ask him about it when he interrupted her.
    “I don’t have time to talk about that now. I must find Isabella. God forbid that anything should happen to her.” Paulo rushed off through the house leaving Mary staring at the woman in the picture who gazed back at her with identical, golden brown eyes.
    When Paulo walked back into the hallway several minutes later there was a look of panic in his eyes.
    “I can’t find her anywhere,” he called out to Mary. “She should’ve been back several hours ago. There’s no sign of her. I’ll have to go out in the jeep and look for her. If that bastard, El Leon, has laid a single finger on her . . .”
    “I’ll come with you,” Mary said, following him out the door and onto the broad driveway.
    “No, you have to stay here, where you’ll be safe.” Paulo called out something in Spanish to the men that were standing around the house.
    “I’m coming with you.” Mary climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep.
    “Get out of the car.”
    Mary shut the passenger door and put on her seat belt. “If anything has happened to Isabella, it’s because of me. I’m coming with you to look for her.”
     “I don’t have time to argue.” Paulo got into the jeep next her, while Javier and Carlos jumped into the back, both with rifles over their backs. As soon as they were in, Paulo drove off at full speed.
    As he drove, Paulo explained that Isabella had moved into the house when he was just four years old, after his mother died of cancer. Isabella looked after him as a child, and continued to care for him by cooking and looking after the house. She had never married, but every Friday she went back to her village on the other side of Corazon to visit her sister and her sister’s family. Her brother-in-law, Jorge, would pick her up after breakfast and bring her back after lunch. Paulo always insisted that Isabella could stay longer at her sister’s house, but Isabella always argued that she had to get back in time to start cooking the dinner. In the thirty years that Paulo had known her, she had never come back late, not even once, until today.
    After driving at a break-neck speed along hills covered in coffee