by Kim Lawrence
Any personal items his twin might have left in there had been stowed away except for a snapshot of him and his brother tucked into the frame of the full-length mirror. He strode across, focusing on the snapshot rather than his own reflection, and two identical faces stared back at him. He felt something shift in his chest but before he could put a name to the emotion, he looked away quickly, directing his stare at his mirrored reflection.
* * *
Turning away again to avoid the accusation in the bleak dark eyes staring back at him, he retrieved his phone from the pocket where he had shoved it after he’d glanced at the replies to the stream of texts he’d sent once he’d rung ahead to commandeer the jet.
Scan reading was a useful skill but he wanted to be sure he had not missed any detail, though it was the missing details that were harder to deal with, or at least one in particular. It seemed unlikely that there was not a single photo of his son, James Alexander, in the public domain, but the investigative firm he was dealing with had always been efficient in the past.
He scrolled through the email and it didn’t take long—it was short and to the point. The more in-depth report would land in his inbox in the next twenty-four hours as he’d been promised. There were a few extras, like Marisa’s date of birth and her marital status, which he already knew... His thumb paused over the screen, his heart pounding as he discovered a detail he had not picked up first time around. Marisa Rayner was now a widow.
His mouth twisted into a cynical smile. At least his son would not be calling another man Father; other than that the detail was not relevant to him.
His glance returned to the stand-out detail that had drawn a smile of the blackest kind from him. The irony of it was darker than night. Marisa was to be found, with or without his son—that piece of information was apparently not available—in the five-star luxury of the Madrigal Hotel—the very same place where his son had been conceived.
His son!
He made a supreme effort and closed the lid on his rage. He would save it until he could vent it on the appropriate person. He made himself read the limited information once more, slowly and carefully.
No, he had it all memorised now; Marisa was a guest speaker at a fundraising international event being held at the Madrigal.
It didn’t say if she was combining business with pleasure.
Not that he gave a damn who she slept with, he told himself. Marisa was not his business, but his son was.
It was perfectly legitimate for him to feel anger at the prospect of her introducing another man he had not vetted into his child’s life, but she could take who she liked to her bed.
He could not imagine a woman with her sexual appetites being alone for long. Maybe she was a creature of habit and the Madrigal was her hunting ground.
It was a place to which he had never intended to return, as it was the scene of his complete humiliation. For months afterwards, what had happened had played on an unceasing loop in his head.
He remembered every word of his proposal, the ones he had got out anyway. Before he had got halfway through his prepared speech or even opened the box containing the ring he’d so carefully picked out, she’d begged him to stop.
‘Roman, please don’t say anything more. I came here today to tell you I can’t go on seeing you.’
‘You love me.’ He could still hear the certainty in his voice, his utter unshakeable conviction.
The memory of Marisa’s soft husky voice cracking as she had begged him not to say that still had the power to fill him with gut-tightening self-disgust.
‘Please, Roman, don’t do this. I don’t... I can’t...you don’t understand. I can’t marry you because I already have a husband.’
‘That can’t be true!’
Initially he had thought her confession was an invention. The discovery after the first night they’d spent together that she was a virgin had shaken him. Part of him had been angry that she had given him this gift with no warning, but another part of him had been totally aroused that he had been her first lover.
‘It is a marriage of...of convenience. There is no... We are not...’ Crazy, considering what they had shared, she’d blushed before adding with husky self-consciousness ‘...intimate.’
‘Then what the hell are you?’
‘We are just friends,’ she’d said softly. ‘And I respect him more than any other person I know. I owe him so much and I won’t leave him...’
Roman had done a quick translation.
‘You mean you married him for his money! Well, sweetheart, you should have waited, because if that is what attracts you to men, I’ve got a lot more.’
She’d flinched but then continued quietly, ‘I’ve hurt you and I’m so very sorry... I shouldn’t have done any of this. It’s all my fault and I know I wish I could go back and undo it...’
Roman caught another glimpse of his face in the mirror, seeing something in the eyes that looked back at him that he hadn’t seen in a long time. It belonged to the days, weeks and months when he had been chained to the memories of being with her. He had finally escaped those memories, although it had meant reinventing himself, and he would not be going back except to claim his son.
What are you going to do with him when you’ve got him, Roman, or doesn’t it matter so long as she doesn’t have him?
Tuning out the sardonic voice in his head, he lifted a hand to his jaw, grimacing as he dragged it down over the rough three-day growth.
The self-mocking grin that tugged up the corners of his mouth only served to increase the look of bad-boy smouldering menace. It was a look that would open more than a few doors, but it wasn’t bedrooms Roman was interested in right now.
Beneath the thick mat of stubble the slight cleft in his square chin deepened as he imagined the reaction if he strode into the foyer of the hotel where Marisa was staying.
He narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer, touching his hair-roughened cheek and jaw again. The bottom line was, he looked like a hardened bastard with trouble written all over him, which was an effective look most of the time considering the sort of action-man hero with emotional issues that he wrote about.
It was less good when you wanted doors to open in the world in which Marisa moved, when you wanted people to look at you and see responsible good father material.
A good father... Would he be one? Was he capable of it?
His brother had a child and he did not seem to be afraid of fatherhood or of repeating the mistakes of their own father. Then again, his twin was not like their father at all. Not like Roman was.
Had there been a particular moment when he had realised that the things he hated about his father were actually there inside himself? Roman wasn’t sure; he just knew that having a child was a risk he had not been willing to take.
Jaw clenched, he forcibly silenced the voices of doubt in his head that were alien to his nature. True, there were times when he could have reeled off a list of reasons why fatherhood was not a path he intended to take, but he knew that there was no point doing that now. Events had moved on and this was no a longer a choice that was his to make.
Hands flat on the tiled vanity surface, he surveyed his face carefully before reaching into a drawer and pulling out a cellophane-wrapped disposable razor. He needed to get into role because although in a perfect world appearances didn’t count, in the real world they counted big-time.
After viewing his jaw from several angles he set to work. It took two razors but five minutes later he was moderately pleased with the close shave he had achieved. No way was he tackling his own hair; instead he would rely on the products he had no doubt his brother kept on board to tame it after he showered.
He walked through to the bedroom, opening one of the built-in wardrobes, not surprised when he discovered that conveniently his twin was still in the habit of keeping several changes of clothes on board.<
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He ignored the section devoted to casual wear, his long fingers flicking through the suits and shirts section before finally selecting a pale shirt still with the discreet designer tag attached, and a grey suit. He looked at the ties, lifting a hand to his neck with a grimace, imagining the confining tightness.
‘Thank you, brother,’ he said, a grim smile flashing as he threw the selection on the freshly made-up bed. The underwear in the drawers were all still in their wrappings and a moment later boxers and socks joined the suit, shirt and tie.
Compact but luxuriously appointed, the bathroom had a decent-sized shower that ran the entire width of one side of the compartment. Stripping off the clothes he’d been wearing for thirty-six hours straight, he let them fall in a crumpled heap on the floor.
He might not hit the gym the way he used to when he was working in an office, but his life for the past few years had involved enough physical activity to compensate for this lack.
Both brothers had always been competitive but, while Rio used to excel at team sports, Roman, not a natural team player, had gravitated in the direction of solo extreme sports where he was competing against himself, pushing his body to the limit, solo sailing, running, gymnastics and his lasting passion—rock climbing.
He’d discovered that solo climbing complemented his lifestyle as a writer; when his head was crowded with imaginary characters and convoluted plots he found climbing was the perfect way to switch off—and it had the added benefit of keeping him extremely fit too.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later he stood suited and booted before the mirror once again. It was amazing what a shave could achieve, he decided, and the slicked-back hair created a transformation so complete that it would have bewildered even the most sophisticated facial-recognition technology.
The suit, which was probably a perfect fit, felt tight and constricting across his shoulders though it hung perfectly. Roman ignored the feeling, glancing down at the only incongruity—his worn and dusty desert boots. But he wasn’t willing to sacrifice comfort for appearances—his feet were a half-size bigger than his twin’s.
When he eventually emerged from the plane onto the tarmac, nobody was looking at his boots. They were looking at him though. Many eyes followed the tall, dynamic figure with the perfect profile and the powerful aura, yet Roman remained oblivious to them all, his mind set only on his goal.
CHAPTER THREE
‘OH, I’M SO SORRY, sir, but that suite is occupied,’ the person behind the desk at the Madrigal told him.
Before Roman could react to the news that suite number one-four-four was not vacant, and in retrospect he could see there was something quite masochistic in requesting to revisit the scene of his humiliation, the assistant manager appeared at his elbow.
‘Actually it is unexpectedly vacant.’
The suited figure produced a key card from his pocket like a magician and handed it to Roman.
A maid was emerging from the door to the suite as he approached. Roman smiled at her and watched her flush. He had already pulled the key card from his pocket when the thought came to him.
‘Excuse me, miss...?’ The girl swung back, her smile eager. ‘I have a friend staying here, a Marisa Rayner...? I don’t suppose you could tell me her room number.’
Her face fell. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that is not allowed.’
He sighed. ‘I understand; it’s just that it’s her birthday and I wanted to surprise her...’
‘Well, if you don’t tell anyone it was me who told you...?’
‘My lips are sealed,’ he promised.
* * *
The screen went black and Marisa sighed and closed the laptop. She pressed her head back into the cushion, her neck feeling stiff with tension. The only question in her mind was did she take a shower before or after she read through her notes for tomorrow before she fell into bed?
She was definitely not going to think about that room somewhere above her head; she was already ashamed of her meltdown. It wasn’t as if a room could hurt you, after all.
But memories could hurt and they did, even now. As did the sense of shame when she thought of those ten days when she had spent every moment she could in that room, in that bed, with Roman. It still felt like the actions of a stranger; she didn’t know that person who had surrendered without a fight to the raw passion he had awoken inside her.
At least she felt a lot calmer now, especially after her reassuring report from Ashley and her chat with Jamie. Of course she was missing him but he didn’t seem to be missing her at all, which was as it should be.
Her head lifted reluctantly in response to the knock on the door.
She huffed a breath and heaved herself tiredly to her feet. Stepping over her discarded shoes, she smoothed down her hair. If it was another fruit basket or chocolates she had no idea where they’d put it. Perhaps she ought to just tell the hotel staff she wasn’t going to complain or give them any less than a five-star review because they had done nothing wrong.
She opened the door with a smile.
The rushing sensation of the floor coming up to meet her was so strong that she was surprised to find she was still standing upright.
Her skin bleached milk-pale as the electric surge reached her hands and feet and remained there in her tingling extremities. Her brain closed down for a split second, but when it kicked back in she stammered out a shocked but firm, ‘No, this isn’t actually happening.’
Roman would have taken more pleasure from her shocked reaction if he hadn’t been experiencing a similar reaction himself.
He had been channelling pure rage and retribution as he’d waited for the hotel-room door to open, but it wasn’t until it did that he realised it wasn’t pure anything. What was superficially anger was actually far more complicated and multi-layered. When the door opened the combined force of his convoluted emotions hit him with such ferocity that it felled him, not literally, although he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover he was lying at her feet.
He focused on the anger and not the empty ache inside him, though its existence made him mad as hell too, angry that the woman had made a fool of him, yet the sight of her had not just paralyzed him with lust, it had made him conscious of the emptiness inside him that he normally refused to acknowledge.
‘Roman?’
His identity was not in question. What she ought to be asking instead was, Why the hell are you standing outside my door? A tiny choking sound left Marisa’s lips as her eyes moved in a helpless sweep from his feet to the top of his dark head.
The lean, hungry look was more pronounced than it had been five years ago. He was harder; she looked into his eyes and saw blackness and nothing else. He might look the same but he wasn’t, she realised as an icy chill slid down her spine.
‘I am flattered that you remember me.’ The mocking smile faded from his face and his words were terse and to the point. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Really?’ She managed to inject a note of realistic surprise into her voice. ‘Well, as much as I’d love to catch up,’ she added with a smile of dazzling insincerity, ‘right now is really not a good moment. I have a speaking engagement—’ she gestured past him, hoping that he’d get the message she was not still the silly young woman desperately in love with him, so in love that she had sacrificed every principle she had lived by just to be with him ‘—and I need to speak with my PA rather urgently.’
‘I think you want to make time for me.’ There was nothing covert about the threat in his words. ‘Are you alone?’
She stiffened, sure that guilt was written all over her face as an image of her son’s face covered in chocolate cake flashed into her head.
He couldn’t know about him, but then, if he didn’t, why was he here?
‘My speaking engagement—’
‘Your speaking engagement is tomorrow.’
‘I like to be prepared.’ This was something she couldn’t have prepared for if she’d had a year; it was something that was not meant to happen—ever. How could anyone have prepared her for opening the door and finding six feet four inches of Roman Bardales standing there...in this hotel of all places?
Her thoughts continued to race in panicky ever-decreasing circles.
Could this be a coincidence?
Him—here in this place—now?
Or was it something more...? It was just her guilty conscience talking, suggested the voice in her head. She ignored it. Guilt was something she lived with every day; it was the price she’d paid, and it was something you were meant to feel when you made the conscious decision to conceal your child’s existence from his father, irrespective of the reasoning behind that choice.
Seeing Roman again made her certain that, from a purely selfish point of view, she had made the right decision. Having this man dipping in and out of her and Jamie’s lives would have made it impossible for her to build any sort of existence without him—he was such an incredible force of nature.
It was a decision she had made for her unborn child, yet robbing a child of his father was not something you did lightly, and her eventual decision had come with the knowledge that she would never stop feeling guilty. But better surely to have no father than one who rejected you or, at best, acknowledged you with reluctance.
She wasn’t sure which would be worse, but Marisa knew from personal experience that a child who had been deserted by a parent grew up thinking that it was somehow their fault, even when logic and a loving father in her case had told her otherwise. Not that her dad had ever bad-mouthed her mother; he had just said that motherhood was something she was not equipped to cope with.