Love is for Ever by Barbara Rowan Read Free Book Online Page A

given away by the fact that you have returned here.”
    “Yes,” she agreed, quietly stirring her tea. ‘‘I always wanted to return—and I had hoped—hoped that it wouldn’t be just a visit this time!”
    “Quite,” he agreed, and offered her a cigarette. “But, nevertheless, you have come back on a visit, and I have been wondering how much you were already enjoying it. ”
    “I haven’t had much time to do that so far, have I?” she asked, with a faint smile. “But the Senora Cortina is a darling, and I know I’m going to enjoy seeing as much of her as I can. And Tia Lola is so kind. And last night I met a Senor Montez and his nephew. They came to dine, and I found him very kind, too.”
    “Senor Montez or his nephew?” with a twinkle in the blue eyes.
    For an instant her grey eyes twinkled back at him. “The nephew,” she confessed, “is very solemn, but Senor Montez has invited me to see all the curios he has collected throughout a number of years, and also his vast collection of books. Apparently my father once helped him to sort and collate them.”
    Dr. Barr nodded.
    “Yes, your father and Senor Montez got on well together. But what about Dominic?” he asked. “Do you find him a very considerate host?”
    “I—I haven’t seen very much of Mr. Errol,” she admitted.
    “Then you haven’t seen much of Martine in that case?” “No.”
    She looked across at him for a moment with rather a curious expression in her eyes. The fact that he had met her yesterday had provided her with a certain amount of puzzlement, in spite of his explanation that he had thought she might be glad to see someone who had known her father fairly intimately waiting for her when the steamer tied up. But more than once, while they were having tea in the garden of the Cortina house, and Martine had been lying languidly in her chair with Dr. Barr in the chair beside her, she had looked up at a moment when his eyes had turned towards the lovely redheaded film actress, and something very revealing in his expression had given her pause. And she had even noticed that Martine herself had smiled at him more than once as if in her opinion he was an extremely personable male.
    There could have been another reason why he met her at the harbor, took it upon himself to dismiss the Cortina car, and transported her himself on the last lap of her journey.
    “Miss Howard is very beautiful,” she said suddenly, as if she expected him to react in some way to the statement, which was no more than the truth.
    But his blue eyes remained smiling and veiled.
    “Yes,” he agreed, "very beautiful."
    “The Senora Cortina is a little afraid that her beauty has had some effect on the Senor Cortina—I find it so difficult to call him Mr. Errol!” she explained. “She is a little afraid that he might decide to marry her.”
    “Oh!” Neville exclaimed, and one of his eyebrows went up, and his voice sounded suddenly dry. “I don’t think the Senora Cortina need really concern herself with the marriage prospects or plans of her grandson. When—and if -—he decides to marry, he will let his decision become known in the forthright manner he has of letting other decisions become known. And as he has a reputation for finding young women with the charms of Miss Howard an irresistible magnet for a short while only, I don’t think the senora has cause to worry overmuch at the present time.”
    “I see,” Jacqueline murmured, and stared hard at the cake she had commenced to nibble, seeing in it curiously enough the challenging blue of Dominic’s eyes, with their sooty eyelashes, and the perfect whiteness of his teeth when he smiled in his crooked fashion.
    Neville let his eyes rest on her thoughtfully. “And whatever you do, my dear, don’t allow yourself to be led astray by any interest he might suddenly display in you,” he warned her. He smiled to soften his words, or perhaps to make light of them. “And as you come into the same category