The Mélendez Forgotten Marriage

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  The phone rang a little later in the morning and Aldana came out to the pool where Emelia was doing some laps and handed her the cordless receiver. ‘It is the doctor,’ she said, leaving the receiver on the table next to the sun lounger.

  Emelia got out of the pool and quickly dried her hands on her towel before she picked up the phone. ‘Hello? This is Emelia Mélendez speaking.’

  ‘Señora Mélendez, I have some results for you from the blood tests I took,’ Eva Garcia said.

  Emelia felt her stomach shuffle like the rapidly thumbed pages of a book. ‘Y-yes?’

  ‘You are pregnant.’

  Emelia’s fingers clenched the phone in her hand until her knuckles became white, her heart thumping like a swinging hammer against her breastbone. ‘I…I am?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Garcia said. ‘Of course I am not sure how far along. It can’t be too many weeks, otherwise I am sure the doctors who examined you after your accident would have noticed. You had an abdominal CT scan at some stage, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, still reeling from the shock announcement. ‘It was done to check for internal bleeding but it was all clear. But how can I be pregnant? I was taking the Pill, or at least I assume I was. I don’t really remember that clearly.’

  ‘Perhaps you missed a dose here and there,’ Dr Garcia suggested. ‘It is very easy to forget and with these low dose brands it can create a small window of fertility. If you can remember when your last menstrual period was, I can calculate how far along you might be.’

  Emelia thought for a moment. ‘I think it might have been about three or four weeks before the accident. I remember I got a stomach virus right after. I couldn’t keep anything down for forty-eight hours.’

  ‘That would have been enough to render the Pill ineffective,’ Dr Garcia said. ‘But if, as you say, your last period was well over a month ago, you had probably fallen pregnant before you went to London. It is still very early days, but that doesn’t mean you are not having all the symptoms. Some women are more sensitive to the hormonal changes than others.’

  Emelia wondered how much her headaches and nausea were the result of the accident or of the early stages of pregnancy. She wondered too if her decision to leave Javier had been an irrational one brought on by the surge of hormones in her body. She could recall being more emotional than usual, her frustration at his absence escalating to blowout point when he’d come back just as the newspaper article had appeared, showing him with the nightclub singer. She was almost thankful she couldn’t remember that ‘ugly scene’ as he called it. She was almost certain she would have been as wanton and needy as ever. It would not have helped her cause, saying with one breath she wanted out and begging him to pleasure her with the next.

  ‘Well, then,’ the doctor continued in a businesslike manner, ‘I’d like you to start some pregnancy vitamins and we can make an appointment now if you like so we can organise that ultrasound.’

  Emelia ended the call a minute or two later, her head spinning so much she had to sit down on the sun lounger.

  Pregnant.

  She placed a hand on her smooth flat abdomen. It seemed impossible to think a tiny life was growing inside there. What would Javier say? she wondered sickly. Would he think she had ‘accidentally’ fallen pregnant? He was so cynical, she couldn’t see how else he would react. But she didn’t for a moment believe she had done it on purpose. Yes, she had become increasingly unhappy about taking the Pill, but she would not have deliberately missed a dose. She had wanted Javier to commit to bringing a child into their relationship. Foisting one on him was not something she had thought fair. It was a joint decision that she had longed he would one day be ready to make, but now it seemed neither of them had made the decision—fate, chance or destiny had made it for them.

  She spent the rest of the day in an emotional turmoil as she prepared herself for facing Javier. She would have to tell him. She couldn’t possibly keep it from him. He had a right to know he was to become a father, even if it was the last thing he wanted to be.

  She heard him arrive at eight in the evening. Each of his footfalls felt like hammer blows to her heart as he made his way into la sala where she was waiting. She stood as he came in, her hands in a tight knot in front of her stomach.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, coming over to her. He brushed his knuckles down the curve of her cheek. ‘You look pale, querida. You haven’t been overdoing it, I hope.’

  She gave him a nervous movement of her lips that sufficed for a smile. ‘No, I spent most of the day by the pool. It was hot again today.’

  He pressed a soft kiss to her bare shoulder. ‘Mmm, you are a little pink here and there.’ He met her eyes again. ‘You shouldn’t lie out there without protection. Did you put on sunscreen?’

  Emelia lowered her gaze from his. ‘I did have some on but it must have worn off while I was in the water.’

  He tipped up her face, studying her with increasing intensity. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked. ‘You seem a little on edge.’

  She took a breath but it caught on something in her chest. ‘Javier…I have something to tell you…’

  A frown pulled at his brow. ‘You’ve remembered something else?’

  She bit the inside of her mouth. ‘No, it’s not that. I…I got a call from the doctor.’

  His eyes narrowed slightly and his voice sounded strangely hollow. ‘There’s nothing seriously wrong, is there?’

  Emelia gave him a strained look. ‘I guess it depends on how you look at it.’

  ‘Whatever it is, we will deal with it,’ he said. ‘We’ll get the best doctors and specialists. They can do just about anything these days with conditions that had no cure in the past.’

  She couldn’t quite remove the wryness from her tone. ‘This isn’t a condition you can exactly cure, or at least not for a few months.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me or am I supposed to guess?’ he asked after a slight pause.

  Emelia could feel his suspicion growing. She could see it in his dark eyes, the way they had narrowed even further, his frown deepening. She took another uneven breath. ‘Javier, I’m pregnant.’

  The words fell into the silence like a grenade in a glasshouse.

  She saw the flash of shock in his face. His eyes flared and he even seemed to jolt backwards as if the words had almost rocked him off his feet.

  ‘Pregnant?’ His voice came out hoarsely. ‘How can you possibly be pregnant? You’ve been on the Pill for the whole time we’ve been together.’ He cocked his head accusingly. ‘Haven’t you?’

  Emelia wrung her hands, deciding there was no point in pretending she was invincible any longer. ‘I was sick about a month or so ago. I didn’t tell you. I had some sort of stomach upset. I think that would have been enough to cancel out the Pill.’

  His rough expletive made Emelia flinch. He turned away from her and rubbed a hand over his face. Then he paced the floor a couple of times, back and forth like a caged lion, his jaw pushed all the way forward with tension.

  ‘Don’t dare to mention a termination,’ she said. ‘I won’t agree to it and you can’t force me.’

  He stopped pacing to look at her. ‘I do have some measure of humanity about me, Emelia. This is not the child’s fault.’

  She gave him an accusing glare. ‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’

  He raked his hair with his fingers. ‘You should have told me you weren’t well. What were you thinking?’

  ‘Being sick doesn’t come with the job description of corporate trophy wife,’ she threw back. ‘I’m supposed to be glamorous and perfectly groomed and ready for you at the click of your fingers, remember?’

  He stood staring at her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You think that is what I always expected of you?’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ she asked with an embittered look.

  He swallowed tightly and sent his hand back through his hair. ‘You have it so wrong, Emelia.’

  ‘I know you prob
ably won’t believe me, but this is not something I planned,’ she said. ‘Not like this. I wanted to have a baby but I wanted us to both want it.’

  He was so silent she started to feel uncomfortable, wondering if his mind was taking him back to what the press had speciously claimed about her relationship with Peter Marshall.

  ‘This baby is yours, Javier,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘You have to believe me on this. There has been no one but you.’

  ‘No one else is going to believe that,’ he said, pacing again.

  Emelia flattened her mouth. ‘So that’s what’s important to you, is it? What other people think? You didn’t seem to mind what people thought when that nightclub singer draped herself all over you.’

  He frowned darkly as he turned back to face her. ‘Emelia, this is not helping. We have to deal with this.’

  ‘You have to deal with it,’ she said. ‘I have already dealt with it. I want this baby more than anything. It’s a miracle to me that it’s happened.’

  ‘How many weeks are you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘The doctor thinks only a month, if that.’

  He gave a humourless laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Dios mio, what a mess.’

  ‘This is a child we are talking about,’ Emelia said, feeling a little too close to tears than she would have liked. ‘I don’t consider him or her to be a mess or a problem that has to be solved. I want this baby. I will love it, no matter how or why or when it was conceived.’

  Javier saw the shimmering moisture in her eyes and felt a hand grab at his insides. Her hormones were no doubt all over the place and he wasn’t helping things by reacting on impulse instead of thinking before he spoke. No wonder she had been so het up about his regular trips to Moscow, especially when that ridiculous article came out on his return. ‘Emelia, we’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘I will support you. You have no need to worry about that. You and the baby will want for nothing.’

  She looked at him with wariness in her grey-blue gaze. ‘I’m not sure I want my child to grow up with a parental relationship that is not loving and secure.’

  He came over and unpeeled her hands from around her body, holding them in the firm grasp of his. ‘There are not many things you can bank on in life, Emelia. But I can guarantee you this—whatever happens between us will not affect our child. I won’t allow it. We will have to put our issues aside. They can never have priority over the well-being of our child.’

  Her expression was still guarded. ‘You’re not ruling out divorce at some stage, though, are you?’

  He drew in a breath, holding it for a beat or two before releasing it. ‘There is no reason why a divorce cannot be an amicable arrangement,’ he said. ‘If we feel the attraction that brought us together is over, I see no reason not to move on with our lives as long as it doesn’t cause upset to our child.’

  She pulled out of his hold and hugged herself again. ‘We clearly don’t share the same views on marriage,’ she said. ‘I’ve always believed it should be for life. I know things can go wrong but that’s true of every relationship, not just a marital one. Surely two sensible adults who respect each other can work their way through a rough patch instead of bailing out in defeat.’

  ‘I find it intriguing that you are suddenly an expert on marriage when you were the one to leave the marital home, not me,’ Javier said. ‘You pulled the plug, remember?’

  Her mouth was pulled so tight it went white at the edges. ‘That is so like you, to put the blame back on my shoulders, absolving yourself of any culpability. You drove me from you, Javier. You had no time for me. I was just a toy you picked up and put down at your leisure. I had no assurances from you. I didn’t know from one day to the next whether you would be called away on business. Business always came first with you. I gave up everything to be with you, and yet you didn’t give me anything in return.’

  ‘I beg to differ, cariño,’ he said. ‘I spent a fortune on clothes and jewellery for you. Every trip I returned from, I gave you a present of some sort. I know many women who would give anything to be in your position.’

  She glared at him hotly. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? I don’t want expensive jewellery and designer clothes. I hate those clothes and ridiculous shoes upstairs. They make me feel like a tart. I’ve never wanted any of that from you.’

  ‘Then, for God’s sake, what do you want?’ he asked, goaded into raising his voice.

  She looked at him bleakly. ‘I just want to be loved,’ she said so softly he had to strain his ears to hear it. ‘I have dreamed of it for so long. My father couldn’t do it without conditions. I thought when I met you it would be different, but it wasn’t. You want something I can’t give you, Javier. I can’t be a trophy wife. I can’t be a shell of a person. I have to love with my whole being. I gave you my heart and soul and you’ve crushed it beneath the heel of your cynicism.’

  Javier watched as she turned and left the room. She didn’t slam the door, as many women would have done. She closed it with a soft little click that ricocheted through him like a gunshot.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALMOST a week went past and Emelia saw very little of Javier over that time. He hadn’t even come to bed each night until the early hours of the morning, which made her wonder if he was avoiding talking to her. He seemed to be throwing himself into his work until he fell into bed exhausted. Even in sleep she could see the lines of strain around his mouth, and on the rare occasions when his eyes met hers during waking hours they had a haunted shadowed look.

  Aldana had come across Emelia being sick a couple of mornings ago as she’d come into the master suite to change the bedlinen. The housekeeper’s dark gaze seemed to put two and two together for she said, ‘Is that why you came back to Señor Mélendez—because you need a father for your bastard child?’

  Emelia straightened her shoulders and met the housekeeper’s derisive gaze head on. ‘I have tried my best to get on with you. I know you don’t think I am good enough for Javier. But if you wish to keep your job, Aldana, I think you should in future keep your opinions to yourself.’

  Aldana mumbled something under her breath as she bundled the rest of the linen in her arms on her way out of the bedroom.

  Emelia had put the incident out of her mind but when Javier came home from a trip to Cadiz on Friday evening she could tell something was wrong. She came into the sitting room to see him with a glass of spirits in his hand and it apparently wasn’t his first. His mouth was drawn and his eyes were even more shadowed than days before. She could see the tension in his body, his shoulders were slightly hunched and his tie was askew and his shirt crumpled.

  ‘Did you have a hard day?’ she asked.

  ‘You could say that.’ He took another deep swallow of his drink. ‘How about you?’

  She sat on the edge of one of the sofas. ‘It was OK, I guess. I went for a long ride on Callida.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ he asked, frowning at her. ‘What if you fell off?’

  ‘I didn’t fall off and I will only ride until the doctor says it’s time to stop.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Is something wrong, Javier?’ she asked.

  He gave her a brooding look. ‘Have you spoken to anyone about your pregnancy? I mean outside the villa. A friend or acquaintance or anyone?’

  She frowned at him. ‘No, of course not. Who would I speak to? I’ve been stuck here for days on end with nothing better to do than lounge about the pool or ride around in circles while you’re off doing God knows what without telling me when you’ll be back.’

  He moved across to the coffee table and picked up a collection of newspapers. He spread them out before her, his expression dark with fury. ‘Have a look at these,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to read them all. Each one of them says the same. Mélendez Reunion—Love-Child Scandal.’

  Emelia felt her heart slip sideways in her chest. She clutched at her throat as she looked down at the damning words. ‘I don’
t…I don’t understand…’ She looked up at him in bewilderment. ‘How would anyone find out I was pregnant? The doctor wouldn’t have said anything. It would be a breach of patient confidentiality.’

  In one sweep of his hand he shoved the papers off onto the floor. ‘This is exactly what I wanted to avoid,’ he said, scowling in anger.

  Emelia moistened her bone-dry lips. ‘I exchanged a few words with Aldana the other day,’ she said. ‘I was going to mention it to you but you were late getting back.’

  His gaze cut to hers. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It was more what she said to me,’ she said. ‘She was in our room changing the bed when she heard me being sick. When I came out she accused me of only coming back to you because…because I needed a father for my child.’

  His brow was like a map of lines. ‘What did you say to her in response?’

  Emelia elevated her chin. ‘I told her she should keep her opinions to herself if she wanted to continue working here.’

  A dark cloud drifted over his features. ‘I see.’

  ‘She’s never liked me, Javier,’ she said. ‘You know yourself she’s never really accepted me as your wife. She won’t let me do anything or touch anything or bring anything into this stupid over-decorated, too formal mausoleum. I’ve tried to be polite to her but I can’t allow her to say such an insulting thing to me.’

  ‘I understand completely,’ he said. ‘I will have a word with her.’

  ‘You don’t have to fire her on my account,’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘It might not have been her, in any case…I mean, leaking the news of my pregnancy to the press.’

  Javier came over to her and placed one of his hands on her shoulder. ‘You are prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt when everything points to her being guilty?’

  She looked up at him. ‘But of course. She’s never spoken to the press before. She loves working for you. It’s her whole life, managing the villa. I don’t think she would deliberately jeopardise that.’