An Undefended City Read online

  An Undefended City - Sophie Weston

  ’’Olivia's money was her only attraction!’’

  Or so she felt. Delicate and timid, she hadn't argued when her inheritance was put in trust with her Mexican uncle, Octavio. Visiting Mexico, Olivia met Luis, her uncle's business partner—a man unlike anyone she had ever encountered. He encouraged adventure and taught her love as well as courage. But when he offered marriage, Olivia wondered whether his motives were any different from those of her money-hungry uncle!

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  OTHER `Harlequin 'Romances by SOPHIE WESTON

  1925—BEWARE THE HUNTSMAN 2005—GOBLIN COURT 2129—WIFE TO CHARLES 2218—UNEXPECTED HAZARD.

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  Original hardcover edition published in 1979 by Mills & Boon Limited

  ISBN 0-373-02362-6

  Harlequin edition published October 1980

  Copyright C) 1979 by Sophie Weston.

  Philippine copyright 1979. Australian copyright 1979.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The Harlequin trademark, consisting of the word HARLEQUIN and the portrayal of a Harlequin, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in the Canada Trade Marks Office.

  CHAPTER ONE

  EVEN at midnight the airport was as crowded as a midday shopping centre. To a girl accustomed to doing her shopping—and indeed her travelling—in luxurious privacy the sight was alarming. Olivia Lightfellow shrank behind a pillar as an enterprising child of six or seven swept past with his badminton racquet at an aggressive angle.

  She had been full of trepidation about coming to Mexico in the first place, and the gruelling flight had not increased her optimism. Not, she assured herself, that she had any cause to worry. Indeed, most girls transported from a wet rural English landscape to Mexico for a holiday with a loving family would have counted themselves very lucky. But Olivia was nervous of meeting her family. Though she had encountered uncle and cousins briefly before, she had not met her aunt. There had been, too, an insistence on her making the trip which suggested that her uncle had more in mind than a relaxing holiday for his English niece.

  As so often in her life before, Olivia felt that she ought to brace herself to resist some further erosion of her independence, without being quite sure of whence the specific threat would come. And, as she knew full well, it would come in the guise of so much love and family concern that she would feel guilty about even wanting to resist.

  Chiding herself for being incompetent, she contrasted herself with the stout infant wading purposefully between her skirts and the collection of boxes and suitcases that someone had dumped beside her.

  `Carlitos! screamed a voice, and the seven-year-old halted instantly, catching Olivia a smart backhander in his praiseworthy obedience. For a moment he looked utterly

  crestfallen. Sufficiently fascinated to forget her own tiredness Olivia watched his head droop, the racquet slip sadly backwards through his fingers and his whole aspect change from bright interest to despondency. Only for a moment, however. The call was not repeated and Carlitos clearly took this as a sign that the gods were smiling. Once more taking a manful grip on his racquet he whirled about—this time connecting briefly and painfully with Olivia's shins—and set off once more into the crowd.

  Olivia watched him in admiration quite untinged with malice. She rubbed her bruised shins in some amusement, unaware that she was in her turn being watched. She was speedily awakened out of her preoccupation.

  `Oh, Livvy, there you are,' said her aunt, stopping breathlessly beside her. 'I thought you must have got lost in this dreadful crowd. Did that little ruffian hurt you?'

  Olivia who, in those few seconds, had conceived no small respect for Carlitos, was bewildered.

  `What ruffian?' she said, looking round vaguely for a sharp-suited thug that the epithet suggested to her.

  `That dreadful child,' said Aunt Betty who, having spent most of her life, before her sister-in-law died and she took over the care of Olivia, as headmistress of a junior school, had no great opinion of children.

  Olivia looked surprised and then, suddenly, laughed. It was an attractive laugh and not often heard. Her aunt's eyes narrowed.

  `Oh, he wasn't a ruffian,' Olivia assured her. 'In fact I think he was probably something of a hero. He was running away from the grown-ups.'

  Aunt Betty looked as if this proved all her worst fears, but before she could reply a man appeared at her elbow. He was tall and very dark and apparently as fascinated by Olivia as she had been by Carlitos.

  `You didn't think it would be a good idea to stop him and hand him back to his mother?' he asked quizzically, staring at her, as she afterwards complained crossly to Aunt Betty, as if she were a newly imported exotic animal.

  `Good heavens, no,' she exclaimed. 'He'd got clean away,

  you see. It would have been very unsporting to have interfered.'

  He threw back his head and laughed aloud at that, but Aunt Betty was not amused.

  `Oh really, Livvy, I despair of you. When will you grow up? You seem to get more childish instead of less. Can't you see that it was very irresponsible of you to let him get away? Why, he could lose himself permanently among all these people. And it would be your fault.'

  As always when rebuked in public Olivia flinched. To the man's watchful eyes it seemed as if she lost colour. Certainly the interest which had animated her in the encounter with the child evaporated and her original tiredness reasserted itself. He had been told she was delicate, and now he was presented with incontrovertible evidence. As the sparkle died he saw that her mouth was pale and pinched with exhaustion and there were great shadows like bruises under her eyes.

  `I'm sorry. I'm afraid I didn't think of that,' Olivia murmured.

  He was aware of an urge to comfort her. 'There is no need to worry, Miss Lightfellow. The airport may be busy, but it is correspondingly efficient. It would be virtually impossible for him to get lost. If he can't find his way back to his mother himself—and he looked to me an eminently capable child—I'm sure one of the ground staff will locate her for him. And he certainly won't be allowed out of the Customs hall, so you can banish any fears of him stowing away to Tierra del Fuego.'

  Olivia looked at him in surprise. She was not used to being championed in her frequent disagreements with Aunt Betty and she was quite as startled by as grateful for this intervention. Very slightly she raised her brows.

  Seeing it, Aunt Betty said hastily, `Livvy, I haven't introduced you—this is Senor Luis Escobar who works for your uncle. Octavio wasn't able to get away to meet us.'

  Olivia's eyebrows rose even higher. 'Get away from what, for heaven's sake?' she demanded. 'It's the middle of the night. I don't believe that even my perfectionist Uncle

  Octavio works all through the night as well as eighteen hours a day.'

  `That's not a nice way to talk about your un
cle,' reproved her aunt.

  Luis Escobar, however, seemed unoffended by the implied insult to his employer. 'No, certainly he is not working,' he assured Olivia soothingly. 'He has gone to his house in Cuernavaca. There will be things to see to on the estate, of course, but it is principally a holiday. He has not been in Mexico City for a week, which is why he asked me to meet you. As soon as you have recovered from your flight he wants you to join him in the country.'

  `I see.' Olivia passed a hand that had begun to shake with weariness over her eyes. 'Thank you.'

  The other two exchanged glances, Luis Escobar enquiring, Miss Lightfellow anxious.

  `You're tired,' said the latter accusingly. 'It was that dreadful flight. I told your uncle we ought to have had a private plane. You're just not strong enough for all this hurly-burly.'

  `Miss .Lightfellow would still have had to go through Customs,' pointed out Luis Escobar gently. 'Even Don Octavio could not have laid on a specially chartered Customs officer. But if you will give me your passports and cases I will see what I can do to speed things up. Wait here for me, please.'

  Aunt Betty bridled at the note of command, but Olivia was too tired (and, as she privately admitted, too used to being ordered about) to take offence. It was with the deepest gratitude that she saw him conjure a couple of porters out of nowhere and make purposefully for a Customs bench.

  `He seems to have no qualms about queue-jumping,' she murmured to Aunt Betty.

  `Just as well, with you in your present state,' returned her aunt. 'How do you feel?'

  Olivia considered the question. It was one to which she was accustomed and knew perfectly well that her aunt would insist on a full and detailed reply.

  `I really don't think I feel anything but sleepy,' she said at

  last. 'I shall be glad to get to bed.'

  Aunt Betty tutted, her concern not unmixed with triumph. 'I told your uncle,' she repeated. 'Those seats are much too uncomfortable for anyone to rest in.'

  Olivia was moved to protest. 'We had more room in the first class cabin than most people, and nobody else seemed to have trouble in sleeping.'

  `You,' said Aunt Betty coldly, 'are not just anybody.'

  Olivia was well acquainted with her aunt's unshakeable belief that to be the head of the Lightfellow family was to be considerably more important than any head of state since Elizabeth I. She therefore said mildly, 'I don't think the Princess and the Pea principle is still functioning, Aunt Betty. In fact, I would think any present-day princess would be so used to travelling she could sleep anywhere,' she added thoughtfully.

  'Oh, don't be silly, Livvy. I never said a word about princesses,' said Aunt Betty, whose mind was of a literal turn. She surveyed her niece with a severity practised to perfection in twenty years of junior school teaching. 'I think you must be jet-lagged,' she decided.

  They had been travelling for twenty-two hours, and Olivia had in that time come to the conclusion that a good deal of her weariness was directly attributable to the strain of Aunt Betty's conversation rather than the discomforts of the journey. She now sighed and began to scan the Customs hall for her uncle's appointee. It was with relief bordering on desperation that she saw him threading his way back towards them.

  'There, that didn't take long, did it?' he said to Aunt Betty. He cast a quick, frowning glance at Olivia's tense form and drew his own conclusions. 'Miss Lightfellow doesn't look well. I think I will take her straight back to the house. If you don't mind travelling in Don Octavio's car, Miss Betty? The chauffeur has gone to fetch it now and the porters are waiting outside with the luggage so they can pack everything into it as soon as it draws up to the-door. We have terrible parking problems here, you see. I've got my car parked on the tarmac.' He added with disarming mischief,

  `I was at school with the airport engineer. He has his parking place reserved, of course, but he's not here at this hour. So I took advantage of our friendship and his absence.' He took Olivia's arm and guided her gently away from her speechless aunt. 'Don't disturb yourself, Miss Betty. The porter will come and fetch you when the car arrives,' he tossed over his shoulder.

  Feeling that some protest was in order Olivia said feebly, `But I could wait with the luggage. Or it could go on its own.'

  `Certainly it could,' he agreed, taking her solicitously through automatic doors into a windy night. 'But we have to: my car only takes two. Don Octavio's car, on the other hand, could take a boy scout troop.'

  Olivia was still giggling when they reached the car. He opened the door for her and helped her into a sizeable vehicle.

  `That's better,' he said approvingly, before he closed the door.

  Open-mouthed, Olivia watched him walk round the bonnet and get in beside her.

  `What is?' she demanded. 'Better, I mean.'

  He turned a smile of singular charm on her. 'To hear you laughing. I thought you were going to dissolve into tears in the Customs hall.'

  `Really?' She was rather appalled and gave a little shiver. `How embarrassing for you! I'm sorry.'

  He was switching on the engine but gave her a quick look at that. 'You don't have to apologise. In fact if apologies are due they should probably come from me for keeping you waiting so long that you overtired yourself.'

  Intrigued by this lopsided reasoning, Olivia said, 'But if I'm tired it's hardly anyone's fault but my own. You weren't to know.'

  `Ah, but I did know. I had been specifically told that yours was a delicate constitution,' his primmed mouth invited her to laugh with him at the pompous phrase which could only have originated with Aunt Betty.

  She was torn between loyalty to her aunt and a strong inclination to laugh.

  `My aunt has always had a tendency to take a rather extreme view of my health,' she said carefully.

  The car began to ease forward in expensive silence. Startled into a new train of thought, Olivia said, 'Haven't you switched the engine on?'

  `Yes, of course.'

  They were coming out of the 'airport gates and he negotiated the press of taxis and minibuses in silence. Olivia, feeling snubbed, subsided into the depths of her seat, pulling her coat collar round her ears.

  `Cold?' he asked, noticing the movement. He found a switch and a blast of warm air hit the interior so that Olivia gasped. He chuckled. 'I must say you're a very flattering passenger.'

  `This is a very impressive car,' she returned, letting her collar fall and taking off her gloves. 'I've never met one like it. I can't hear the engine, I get a blast of Caribbean air when I say I'm cold and it goes faster than anything I've travelled in on the ground before.'

  `Very flattering,' he said in amusement. 'Do you like cars?' Olivia was disconcerted. 'I don't know. I suppose I must do. I've never thought about it.'

  `No?' He took them neatly into a slipway and on to a six-lane highway with the minimum fuss and maximum acceleration. 'What do you have at home?'

  `I'm not at all sure. I know that either,' said Olivia in a bewildered voice. 'I mean, there are always cars in the garage, but as neither Aunt Betty nor I drive, I've never asked what they're called.'

  `You don't drive?' he said in a voice of amazement.

  `No.' She was ever so slightly defensive. 'After I was ill my father didn't want me to learn. And then—when he died—there seemed so much else to do . . .' she bit her lip, recalling how little in fact she had done. Aunt Betty had seen to everything. Olivia had had almost nothing to do but sign a few papers and mourn.

  `So you've never even learned,' he said as if storing up the information for use in some future project. 'You ought to take the opportunity to learn while you're here. The roads

  are empty enough and Don Octavio has plenty of cars for you to borrow.'

  Olivia looked at the traffic past which they were gliding, averted her eyes to the tall illuminated signs ahead of them, and shuddered.

  'I couldn't possibly,' she said with exceptional firmness. 'I'd be terrified.'

  'Of course you would,' he agreed. 'Everyone i
s terrified to begin with. But you'd soon overcome it.'

  'And drive like those people out there?' she asked with great irony.

  He chuckled. 'Eventually, perhaps.' A lorry pulled out in front of them. He neither braked nor lifted his foot from the accelerator, contenting himself with flashing his lights at the offender until, at the moment when Olivia had decided that disaster was inescapable and was bracing herself for impact, the lorry pulled reluctantly over to his right, and they shot past unimpeded.

  She let out her breath very slowly. 'Never,' she said with conviction.

  'Oh, but you're so wrong. It would take about six months, perhaps. But in the end you'd adapt to the customs of the country. And here driving is the last great adventure.'

  'I'm not in the least adventurous,' Olivia told him hastily.

  'You'll have to be to survive,' he informed her. Another of those glancing sideways looks that said the world was mad and she might just as well laugh at it with him.

  'There is of course also the possibility that I just might not survive,' she pointed out.

  'I doubt it,' he said drily, 'the will to survive is fairly strong in most of us. You'd be surprised.'

  Detecting censure in his tone, Olivia looked at him curiously. She was not unused to disapproval. Aunt Betty frequently pointed out that Olivia was selfish, spiritless and totally incompetent and Olivia herself had never challenged that judgment. Her father's advisers, lawyers, accountants and their kind, treated her with a mixture of condescension and impatience that made only the barest concession to courtesy. So Olivia was not really surprised that this

  obviously efficient man should despise her. It merely occurred to her that he had summed up 'her character with depressing rapidity.

  She sighed, unconsciously clasping her hands together, a trick she had never lost from childhood when feeling herself under attack. After her mother's death her father had frequently expressed his dissatisfaction with his daughter. Quiet, timid and thoughtful, she was the antithesis of her mother. That lady's energy had been as phenomenal as her beauty, as Olivia had been ceaselessly reminded. Even her unknown Mexican uncle, on the one occasion he had visited England, had remarked how unlike Carmen her daughter was.