‘She is a little headstrong at times,’ he admitted. ‘But then she is still young.’
Emelia went to move to the steps leading out of the pool but he placed a hand on her arm, stopping her from moving away from him. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘I’m getting cold,’ she said. ‘I want to have a shower.’
He cupped both of her shoulders with his hands. ‘No kiss for my return?’
Emelia felt her eyes widen and her stomach did another flip turn. ‘It’s not as if things are the same…as before,’ she said. ‘I need more time.’
Something moved at the back of his eyes. ‘I think the sooner we slip back into our previous routine the better,’ he said. ‘I am convinced it will help you remember.’
‘You’re assuming I will remember,’ she said. ‘I had no such assurance from any of the doctors or therapists at the hospital.’
His hands tightened as soon as he felt her try to escape again. ‘It doesn’t matter if you remember or not. It doesn’t change the fact that we are married.’
Emelia straightened her spine in defiance but, by doing so, it brought her pelvis into direct contact with his. The hot hard heat of him was like being zapped with a thousand volts of electricity. She felt the tingles shoot through her from head to foot. His eyes dropped to the startled ‘O’ of her mouth and then, as if in slow motion, gradually lowered his head until his lips sealed hers.
It was a slow burn of a kiss, heating her to her core as each pulsing second passed. His tongue probed the seam of her mouth for entry and she gave it on a whimper of pleasure. The rasp of his tongue as it mated with hers sent a cascading shiver down the backs of her legs and up again, right to the back of her neck. She felt her toes curl on the tiled floor of the pool as his kiss deepened. His arms had gone from the tops of her shoulders down the slim length of her arms to settle about her waist, holding her against his pelvis, leaving her acutely aware of his rock-hard arousal. Her body responded automatically, the ache between her thighs becoming more insistent the firmer he held her against him. She moved against him, a slight nudge at first and then a blatant rub to feel the pleasure his body offered.
He slowly but surely walked her backwards, his thighs brushing hers with each step, his mouth still locked on her mouth, his body jammed tight against her. His hands moved up from her waist to deftly untie the strings of her bikini. It fell away, leaving her breasts free for his touch. She drew in a sharp breath as his hands cupped her, his thumb gently stroking over each nipple, making her flesh cry out for more. His mouth left hers and went on a leisurely mission, exploring every dip and curve on the way down to her breasts: the sensitive pleasure spots behind each of her earlobes, the hollows above her collarbone and the super-reactive skin of her neck. She tilted her head to one side as he nibbled and nipped in turn, her belly turning over in delight as he finally made his way to her breasts. He left her nipples alone this time and concentrated instead on the sensitive under curves of each breast, first with his fingers and then with the heat and fire of his mouth. She arched up against him, wanting more, wanting it all, wanting to feel whatever he had made her feel in the past.
His mouth came back to her searching, hungry one, his hands going to the strings holding her bikini bottom in place. Emelia’s hands moved from around his neck to the small of his back, delighting in the way he groaned deeply as he surged against her. Casting inhibition aside, she peeled away his briefs, freeing him into her hands. She felt a hitch in her breath as she shaped his steely length, the throb of his blood pounding against her fingers. He was so thick with desire it made her own blood race at the thought of him moving inside her.
He tore his mouth off hers, looking down at her with eyes glittering with desire. ‘You have certainly not forgotten how to drive me wild with wanting you,’ he said. ‘How about it, querida? Shall we finish this here and now, or wait for later?’
Emelia felt the cold slap of shock bring her back to reality. What was she doing allowing him such liberties and outside where anyone could see if they put their mind to it? And what was she doing touching him as if she wanted him to finish what he had started? What was wrong with her? Surely she had not become such a slave of the flesh? She had always abhorred such irresponsible behaviour amongst her peers; the casual approach to sex was something she had never gone in for. She put up her chin, working hard to maintain her composure when she was stark naked. ‘What makes you so sure I would give my consent, here or anywhere?’
His smile was on the edge of mocking. ‘Because I know you, Emelia. I know how you respond to me. A couple of minutes more and you would have been begging for it.’
There was nothing figurative about the slap Emelia landed on the side of Javier’s face. It jerked his head back, made his nostrils flare and his mouth tighten to a flat line of tension. ‘You know, you really shouldn’t have done that,’ he said with a coolness she was sure he was nowhere near feeling.
Emelia refused to wilt under his hard black gaze. ‘You insulted me. You practically called me a wanton tramp.’
One of his hands rubbed at the red hand-sized mark on his jaw. ‘So if someone allegedly insults you it’s OK to use violence?’ he asked.
She bit the inside of her mouth, suddenly ashamed of how she had reacted, but there was no way she was going to apologise to him. She turned and searched for her bikini, struggling to put it back on while still in the water. She was conscious of Javier’s eyes following her every movement and her resentment and anger hardened like a golf ball-sized lump in the middle of her chest. Once she was covered, she stomped up the pool steps, snatching up her towel on the way past the sun lounger where she had left it.
The moment Emelia came out of the en suite bathroom after a lengthy shower she knew something was amiss. Her eyes went to the bed where a black leather briefcase was lying at the foot of it. She heard the sound of someone moving about in the walk-in wardrobe and, clutching her bathrobe a little tighter, spun around to find Aldana coming out with some spare coat hangers.
‘What’s going on?’ Emelia asked in Spanish.
The housekeeper gave her a pursed-lipped look. ‘Señor Mélendez instructed me to hang his clothes.’
Emelia’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘What? In…in here?’
Aldana gave a shrug as she walked past. ‘It is none of my business what he wants or why. I just do as I am told. He wanted me to bring his things back in here where they belong.’
The housekeeper left before Emelia could respond and within seconds Javier strode in. She turned on him, her eyes flashing with fury. ‘Qué diablos está pasando?’ she asked. ‘What the hell is going on?’
He stood very still for a moment before responding in Spanish. ‘I could ask you the very same thing. What the hell is going on? Especially as it seems at least some part of your memory has returned without you telling me.’
Emelia felt her cheeks fill with colour. ‘I…I was going to tell you…’
‘When did it happen?’ he asked.
She could barely hold his gaze as she confessed. ‘I found myself understanding it and speaking it from the start. I don’t know why. It was just…there.’
‘How convenient.’
Emelia’s hands tightened where they clutched the neckline of her bathrobe. ‘I know what you’re thinking but it’s not true. I don’t remember anything else. I swear to you.’
He gave her a cynical smile that contained no trace of amusement. ‘I met Pedro the stable boy on my way in earlier,’ he said. ‘He was full of excitement over how you remembered your mare’s name without any prompting from him.’
Emelia pressed her lips together. ‘I forgot I remembered…’ It sounded as stupid as she felt and she lowered her gaze from the hard probe of his, hating herself for blushing.
‘He also told me you have finally ridden your horse,’ he said.
‘I can’t explain why I never rode Callida before.’ She looked up at him again. ‘You must have been very annoyed with me after spending so m
uch money on such a beautiful animal.’
He held her gaze for a long moment. ‘It wasn’t the first present you rejected of late,’ he said. ‘It seemed over the last few weeks nothing I did for you or bought for you could please you.’
Emelia wondered if she had been hankering after more from him than what money could buy. It seemed much more in line with her true character. She had been given expensive gifts for most of her life but they hadn’t made her feel any more secure.
Javier used two fingers to lift her chin, searing her gaze with his. ‘I want you to tell me the moment you remember anything else, do you understand? I don’t care what time of day it is or if I am away or here. Just tell me.’
She let out an uneven breath as she stepped out from under his hold. ‘You can’t force me to remember you, Javier. It doesn’t happen like that. I read up about it. Sometimes the memories are blocked because of trauma, either physical or emotional or maybe even both.’
A muscle worked in his jaw, the silence stretching and stretching like a threadbare piece of elastic.
‘So what you are saying is you might be subconsciously blocking all memory of our life together?’ he finally said.
Emelia released her bottom lip from the savaging of her teeth. ‘I’m not sure if that’s what has happened or not,’ she said. ‘Was there something that happened that might have caused me to do that? Something deeply upsetting, I mean.’
The silence stretched again, even further this time.
‘I was away the day you left for London,’ Javier said heavily. He waited a beat before continuing. ‘I had only just come back from Moscow when we had an argument. I flew straight back afterwards.’
Emelia felt a frown tugging at her forehead. ‘What did we argue about?’
His eyes met hers briefly before moving away to focus on a point beyond her left shoulder. ‘The papers had printed some rubbish about me being involved with someone in Russia, a nightclub singer.’
Emelia felt a fist wrap itself around her heart. ‘Was it…was it true?’
His dark eyes flashed with irritation as they came back to hers. ‘Of course it wasn’t true. I have to deal with those rumours all the time. I thought you were OK about it. We’d talked about it early in our marriage. We used to laugh about some of the stuff that was printed. I warned you what it would be like, that there would be constant rumours, often set off by business rivals.’
He stopped to scrape a hand through his hair. ‘But this time for some reason you refused to accept my explanation. You got it in your head that I was playing up behind your back. It seemed nothing I said would change your mind.’
‘So we had an argument…’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it was a bit of an ugly scene.’
Emelia raised her brows questioningly. ‘How ugly?’
He let out a long tense breath. ‘There was a lot of shouting and name calling. We were both angry and upset. I should have cut the argument short but I was annoyed because you seemed determined to want our marriage to be something it was never intended to be.’
Emelia sent him a let’s-see-if-you-can-deny-this look. ‘So apparently I wasn’t too happy you had married me to gain access to your father’s estate, right?’
His dark gaze turned flinty. ‘That was one of the things we argued about, yes. While I was away, my father’s mistress had rung you and filled your head with that and other such nonsense to get back at me. But the truth is my reasons for marrying you had very little to do with my father’s will.’
She rolled her eyes in disbelief. ‘Oh, come now, Javier. You talk of our marriage as some sort of business proposal, rules and regulations and me suddenly stepping outside of them. What the hell was the point of being married if not because we loved each other?’
‘Love was not part of the deal,’ he said, shocking Emelia into silence. ‘I wanted a wife. Some of the business people I deal with are old-fashioned and conservative in their views. They feel more comfortable dealing with a man in a seemingly stable relationship. I know it sounds a little cold-blooded but you were quite happy to take on the corporate wife role. We were ideally matched physically. It was all I wanted from you and you from me.’
She stood looking at him with her emotions reeling. How could she have agreed to such a marriage? A relationship based on sex and nothing else? Had she turned into a clone of her father’s set, in spite of her determination not to? She had become a trophy wife, an exotic bird in a gilded cage. Indulged and pampered until her mind went numb.
Javier let out another breath and sent his hand through his hair again. ‘Emelia…’ He hesitated for a moment before he continued. ‘You might not remember it but we made love during that last argument.’
Emelia felt her brows lift again but remained silent.
His gaze remained steady on hers. ‘In hindsight, it was perhaps not the best way to leave things between us. There was so much left unresolved. I have had cause to wonder if that is why you rushed off to London the way you did.’
Emelia searched her mind for some trace of that scene but nothing came to her. ‘Did I explain why I left? In a note or something?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Hope flickered in her chest. ‘Can I see it?’
‘I tore it into shreds,’ he said, his mouth tightening at the memory. ‘I got home from Moscow two days after you left. That is another thing I am not particularly proud of. I should have come straight to London as soon as I knew you were there. I was packing a bag when I got the call about the accident.’
‘What did I say in the note?’ Emelia asked.
He looked at her silently for several moments. ‘You said you were leaving me, that you no longer wanted to continue with our marriage. You wanted out.’
Emelia rubbed at her forehead, as if that would unlock the memories stored inside her head. OK, so she had been leaving him. That much was pretty certain. Was it because she had become tired of their shallow relationship, as Izabella had suggested? Emelia knew she must have been very unhappy to have come to that decision. Unhappy or desperate. ‘The rumours…’ she said. ‘You mentioned a few days ago there was some speculation about my relationship with Peter Marshall. Did you afford me the same level of trust you expected of me, in similar if not the same circumstances?’
He visibly tensed; all of his muscles seemed to contract as if sprayed with fast setting glue. ‘I am the first to admit that I was jealous of your relationship with him,’ he said, biting each word out from between his clenched teeth. ‘He seemed at great pains whenever I was around to show me just how close you were. He was always touching you, slinging an arm around your waist or shoulders. It made me want to lash out.’
Emelia frowned at his vehement confession. ‘Peter was a touchy-feely sort of person. It was just his way. I am sure I would have told you that right from the start.’
His eyes flashed with heat. ‘You did, but it still annoyed the hell out of me.’
He was jealous. He hated admitting it, Emelia was sure, but he was positively vibrating with it. She could see it in the way he held himself, his hands clenching and unclenching as if he wanted to hit something.
He paced the room a couple of times before he came back to stand in front of her. ‘If I was wrong about your relationship with Marshall then I am sorry,’ he said. ‘All the evidence pointed to you being guilty of an affair, but in hindsight there are probably numerous explanations for why you were in that car with him.’
Emelia felt a weight come off her shoulders. ‘You truly believe I wasn’t unfaithful?’
He held her look for endless seconds. ‘Let’s just let it go,’ he said on a long breath. ‘I don’t want to be reminded of the mistakes I have made in the past. We have to concentrate on the here and now. I want to see you get well again. I feel it is my fault you were almost killed. I cannot forgive myself for driving you away in such an emotionally charged state. I should have insisted we sit down and sort things out like two rational adults. Ins
tead, I let business take precedence, hoping things would settle down by the time I got back.’
Emelia stood looking at him in silence. His gruff admission of guilt stirred her deep inside. She could tell it was unfamiliar territory for him. He didn’t seem the type to readily admit when he was in the wrong.
She breathed in the clean male scent of him as he stood so broodingly before her. He had showered and changed into a polo shirt and casual trousers. His hair was still damp, ink-black and curling at the ends where it needed a trim. She wanted to run her hands through it the way she used to do… She jolted as if he had struck her, staring up at him, her heart beating like a hyperactive hammer.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, taking her by the shoulders.
She looked up into his face, frowning as she tried to focus on the sliver of memory that had made its way through. As if by their own volition, her hands went to his hair, her fingers playing with the silky strands in slow, measured strokes. She saw his throat move up and down and, glancing at his mouth, she felt another tiny flicker of recognition. Her right hand went to his lips, her fingers tracing over the tense line, again and again until it finally softened, the slight rasp of his evening shadow as she stroked the leanness of his jaw, the only sound, apart from their breathing, in the silence.
‘Emelia—’ his voice was low and deep and scratchy ‘—what have you remembered?’
She looked into his dark eyes. ‘Your hair…I remembered running my fingers through it…lots and lots of times… It’s longer now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’ve been too busy to get it cut.’ His grip on her shoulders tightened and his eyes were intense as they held hers. ‘Can you remember anything else?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure…’ Emelia tried to focus again. ‘It was just a fleeting thing. Like a flashback or something.’
His hands slipped down from her shoulders to encircle her wrists, his thumbs absently stroking her. ‘Don’t force it. It will come when it wants to. We have to be patient.’ He let out a rough sounding sigh and added ruefully, ‘I have to be patient.’
The Mélendez Forgotten Marriage Page 10