Master of Her Innocence (Bought by the Brazilian) by Chantelle Shaw

seemed to be unhurt, and in fact looked as beautiful and elegant as she always did, despite having been held captive for a week.
    Compared to Becky, Clare knew she must look like a grubby urchin from a Dickensian novel in her crumpled, mud-stained clothes. She realised that her sister was staring at her veil.
    ‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Becky pulled the veil from Clare’s head and watched her hair tumble around her shoulders. ‘Thank goodness you haven’t cut your hair short. It’s your best feature.’
    ‘It was a disguise. I was helped by some nuns in Manaus and the Mother Superior suggested that I should wear a habit and veil as protection from the criminals in Torrente who are apparently God-fearing, although they don’t fear the police.’
    Becky gave a shaky laugh. ‘I thought for a minute you had actually joined the church. Wearing the veil makes you look like a very realistic nun.’ She glanced across the sitting room to a door which led into an adjoining room. ‘Don’t you think so, Diego?’
    Shock robbed Clare of the ability to speak as she spun round and stared at Diego leaning against the door frame, his arms folded across his broad chest and his lips curved into a familiar cynical smile that was not reflected in his hard as steel eyes. ‘You certainly convinced me, Sister Clare,’ he drawled.

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘I WAS GOING to tell you, but I didn’t get an opportunity to explain,’ Clare muttered. She and Diego were walking along a corridor, following the gang member Enzo, who had ordered them to go with him. Clare hadn’t had a chance to replace her veil, and she felt vulnerable now that her guise of a nun had been blown. The way Enzo’s eyes had insolently roamed over her made her skin crawl.
    She wondered if the person called Rigo, who they were being taken to, was the leader of the kidnappers. She was worried that she’d had to leave Becky in the room where they had briefly been reunited. But hopefully this Rigo would accept the ransom money and allow her and Becky, and Diego, to go free, she told herself.
    Diego shot her a scathing glance. ‘We had sex, and it wasn’t a quickie, over in a couple of minutes. How much more of an opportunity did you need to mention that you were only pretending to be a nun?’
    He swore with muted savagery, aware that their captor walking just ahead of them could overhear. ‘Do you know what a bad time my conscience gave me when I discovered you were...a virgin?’ he said harshly.
    He was furious with her for making him feel a fool, although her air of innocence hadn’t all been an act, he brooded, remembering how she had gasped at the moment of penetration, making him realise, too late, that it was her first time.
    ‘Is that why you had disappeared when I woke up this morning? You felt guilty, so you cleared off.’ Clare’s initial feeling of relief that Diego had gone from the cave when the kidnappers arrived had gradually turned to anger that he hadn’t even woken her to say thanks for their one-night stand, which, of course, was all he had wanted from her.
    ‘I didn’t clear off. I was on my way to the waterfall to take a shower when I was ambushed and knocked unconscious.’ Diego removed his hat that he’d been wearing with the brim pulled low over his eyes, and Clare made a choked sound when she saw a purple lump on his temple.
    ‘I’m sorry you’ve been involved. A week ago my sister was snatched while she was on a modelling assignment in Rio, and the kidnappers demanded a ransom for her release. I was instructed to take the money to a cave by a waterfall near to Torrente and was warned that if I went to the police or asked anyone for help Becky would be killed.’
    ‘You should have told me what you were doing.’
    ‘I didn’t know if I could trust you.’
    ‘If you didn’t trust me, why did you give yourself to me?’
    Clare told herself she had imagined a faint note of hurt in Diego’s voice. ‘It was just sex. It