She knew Max wasn’t going to change. He didn’t have any feelings for her. Never had. That was why their marriage had failed. He couldn’t give her his love so would he be able to love his child? She really hoped he could after he’d given her a small hope that they could be the perfect family she’d yearned for since she’d seen how families really lived, and loved, when she’d gone to stay with her best friend at school.
Memories of Max’s words, just six months ago, took her back to the day those dreams had crashed around her. It had been at a glamorous summer party in the grounds of a sumptuous house and they had been talking with friends. Friends who had casually dropped into conversation the question of children. As they’d walked away she’d turned and smiled up at him, but the dark look on his face had halted any words.
He’d stood there, with clenched hands and glittering dark eyes. ‘I can’t give you what you want, Lisa.’
‘What is it I want?’ Instinct of self-preservation had as usual kicked in and she’d instantly hidden away behind her defence wall.
‘Love and happy ever after.’ The words were forced out between gritted teeth. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is.’ That had been her response then and it was still the same now.
‘I want love, Max, and a happy ever after, which now includes children, and it seems that you are not the man to live this dream with.’ A spike of hurt charged through her, but she kept her righteous stance. ‘You were right. We should not have married.’
Fog clouded over the memories of the day her world had fallen apart and, fed up with resting, Lisa got up from the chair and picked up the scan image that Max had barely looked at before leaving it on the coffee table. That cursory glance had been as hurtful as his cold and unyielding face the moment the image of their child had appeared on the screen at the private clinic he’d insisted she went to.
What was she going to do? How could she have allowed herself to be talked into this charade, this pretence that everything was going to be just fine? As the questions flowed through her mind in a turbulent rush the nausea returned, bringing with it this time sheer panic.
‘You should be resting.’ Max’s accented voice cut through her thoughts and she looked up at him, the image he created as he dominated the entire room, and as usual made her heart skip a beat. She didn’t want to feel anything for him. That would only lead to more disappointment and pain. For her and her baby.
‘I can’t do this any more, Max.’ The words rushed out, desperate to be heard, believed.
‘I’m not having this discussion now. You need to rest.’ The tension in his body was palpable, but she didn’t heed its warning.
He’d confessed that love and happiness were not on his radar, so what else could be making him so cold and distant? News of his brother? Her conscience reminded her that the very same day, even the very same moment she’d told him he was to be a father, he’d seen the true extent of his father’s treachery emblazoned across the headlines. Wouldn’t that be enough to make any man fear the idea of fatherhood? Well, there was no way she was going to give him the satisfaction of beating down her dreams, of accusing her of things she didn’t do—would never do.
‘I’m pregnant, not ill.’ The fierceness of her voice surprised her as much as it did Max if the quick rise of his brows was anything to go by. ‘I should be at work.’
The distance between them seemed to open up and the luxury of his living room became a vast ocean. One she no longer wanted to cross, not when she had no idea what waited for her on the other side. He was the one holding out on her, holding back his emotions. If he forced her to stay she’d keep up the pretence of cold indifference, guard her heart well, until New Year’s Eve and then she would leave. At least she could never be accused of not trying to involve him in his son or daughter’s life.
‘No, Lisa, you should not. If you return to work, it will not be until after New Year and only when I am satisfied you are perfectly well.’ The command and control in his voice were clear and she tried hard to fight the need to rebel, the need to revert once again to the capricious teenager she’d hidden behind.
‘I can’t stay here like a pampered princess. That’s not me, Max. I need to be out doing something.’ She swung round and glared at him, instantly regretting the fast movement as her head spun. ‘Like buying a Christmas tree.’
‘A Christmas tree?’ He looked perplexed and if she weren’t feeling so headstrong she might have laughed at him then kissed him. But that was before she’d discovered who he really was. Actions such as those belonged to the short and very false marriage they’d shared.
‘Of course, a Christmas tree. It’s only a matter of days until Christmas and there isn’t one bit of sparkle and cheer in this apartment.’
‘I don’t do Christmas.’ He glowered at her.
‘Too emotional for you?’ She prodded him, like the mouse that just couldn’t leave the sleeping cat alone. ‘What about visiting family? Do you indulge in that?’
The thought of staying here locked away in an apartment that didn’t have any hint of Christmas in it was too much. She loved Christmas. It was the one time of year she felt hope, felt that dreams could come true. She loved the magic of the season even though it had never reached inside her childhood home. Now she was trapped here with a man who didn’t believe in love or the festive season. How had she ever fallen for a man so opposite to her?
Because he never revealed his true self.
‘Visit family?’ He crossed the room toward her and even though they were physically closer the distance between them seemed as vast as it had when he’d walked into the room. ‘Do you need to visit your family?’
Shock hit her like icy water. Visit her family? She wished now they had talked more before their short marriage, wished that she’d confided in him about her past, one she’d always strived to hide. But she hadn’t been able to tell him how much she resented her mother for the unsettled childhood she and her older stepbrother had experienced. How she now blamed her mother for all the trouble he had got into? She hadn’t wanted to taint what she and Max had found by sharing the darkness of her childhood with him. Better it stayed hidden away.
‘No, I do not.’ She snapped the words out as emotions cascaded over her. Whatever was the matter with her? Was it simply pregnancy hormones that made her so sensitive, so very emotional, or was it being forced into close proximity with the man she’d once loved with abandon, hoping it would be enough, that one day he would love her too?
She moved to the window and focused her attention on the view of London beyond the apartment, thinking of her mother and older stepbrother that’d made up the mainstay of the dysfunctional family she was part of. The constant visits by the police looking for her brother and the ever-changing partners in her mother’s life were exactly what she’d hoped to escape when she’d married Max. How very wrong she’d been. Now her child seemed doomed to be part of a family where broken promises and part-time fathers were normal. It was the last thing she’d ever wanted and not at all what she would have chosen.
‘Then I want you to rest as the doctor suggested—especially as we will be travelling to Madrid tomorrow.’ Max’s words snapped her back into the moment, but the fizz of anger didn’t abate.
She turned to look at him, frowning in confusion. ‘Madrid?’
‘Sí, Madrid. Raul and Lydia are getting married.’ There wasn’t a drop of emotion, good or bad in his words. Did he still resent his brother?
She kept her thoughts to herself. Safer to stay on the topic of discussion. ‘On Christmas Eve?’
‘Sí, on Christmas Eve.’ He crossed the room and joined her at the window. His profile was stern as he looked absently out over London. ‘And I have promised we will be there. He is my family.’
The pointed remark to their discussion of moments ago wasn’t lost on her. Did he really consider Raul Valdez as family? She wasn’t entirely convinced a man who rebuffed emotions as if he
had a bat in his hand could suddenly become sentimental over a brother.
* * *
Max glared at the skyline of London and tried to push down the annoyance of what he’d learnt of his brother’s impending nuptials. He felt a failure in the shadow of the love Raul had admitted he had for Lydia, the woman who’d been at their first meeting for a short while. As he stared unseeingly at London, beneath a winter-grey sky, he became acutely aware of Lisa’s questions as if she’d spoken the words aloud. Was Raul his family? Did he belong or deserve to be named as such when the only other person he thought of like that was the mother he’d lost when he was fourteen and his little sister, now almost twenty-one and living her own life.
‘It was obvious there was something between them from the very first moment I saw them, but I did not expect this.’ He tried to divert the attention from himself, from what was happening here between him and Lisa. As his wife, wasn’t she his family too?
‘Didn’t you expect it, Max? Do you think all men should be so against committing themselves emotionally—for life?’
Her green eyes fired her anger at him, anger he knew would take a long time to cool, unless his rapidly forming plans would salve it. He had no intention of pretending that all was okay. He knew she still wanted that happy-ever-after nonsense and that his mixed messages, thanks to his wildly changing emotions, were making her colder toward him. Angry, even, and he had no intention of arriving in Spain with a wife that was obviously angry at him. He didn’t want Raul to think he had triumphed where his new older brother was failing—completely and utterly failing.
‘I didn’t expect Raul to rush into marriage, not when they were so obviously poles apart the day I met him.’
‘Some couples fall out and make up, Max,’ Lisa insisted, with a jaunty rise of her brow, just as she had done that night when a business dinner had become a night of explosive sex. ‘It’s part of the fun of being a couple, being in love.’
‘That’s not love, that’s just sex.’ The words were out before he could stop them, the anger in them clear.
Lisa looked at him, not saying a word, and the tension in the room became unbearable until she moved away from him, giving him some sort of relief from having her so close. So entwined in his life when he’d already proved and she’d admitted that he wasn’t the man she needed, the man who could love her unconditionally.
‘Maybe it’s something you should attend on your own.’ Her words were soft, almost wistful, but beneath that he could detect the steely hardness she used to deflect the world and anyone who threatened to hurt her. He’d never found out why, content that she wanted to keep the secrets of the past as much as he did. It suited him well, as did the hot passion they’d shared. But things had suddenly changed—too much.
‘Oh, no, Lisa, that is not about to happen. You and I will go together—as husband and wife.’ He moved toward her, saw the surge of defiance in her eyes, which sparked angrily at him, a stark contrast to her pale face. He would have to calm his anger. He might not have wanted to create a child, but he had and he wouldn’t now do anything to jeopardise his baby or Lisa.
He hadn’t decided if taking Lisa to Madrid was an excuse to keep her close or the competition of being the better brother, but all he knew was that she had to be there with him. He needed to see for himself that she rested, that she was taking care of herself as the doctor had instructed. Just as his mother should have done. He was adamant that they would remain married and very sure that he would do anything necessary to make her want to stay with him beyond New Year’s Eve. He wanted to be the father he’d never had. He just wasn’t sure if he could.
‘What, to show we are so happily married?’ The accusation was stinging—and true as her words flew at him, dragging him back from thoughts that would only lead to the past, to the pain of losing his mother so soon after his baby sister was born. He might only have been a teenager then, but he wasn’t about to take any chances with his unborn child. At least not until he was sure everything was as it should be.
‘Happily or not, we are married, Lisa, and expecting our first child. That at least you cannot deny.’
Her anger sparked across the room like lightning and he pushed down the irrational guilt. He wasn’t the only one who’d walked out on this marriage. Lisa had done the same the morning after the night that had changed their lives. Had she come to find him, tell him about the baby because she’d already known his world was falling apart around him?
It wasn’t the first time such a mutinous thought had occurred to him. He knew that Lisa had married him because she’d loved him. She’d told him often enough, but his constant silence had not been what she’d been looking for, what she’d wanted to hear. He didn’t tell lies, he’d had enough of those in his childhood to know how destructive they could be, but his reluctance to say those three words she most wanted to hear had finally made staying with her impossible. Walking out had been the only option, before he hurt her any more than he already had done. Was this all about revenge, about making him feel the same pain?
‘No, I can’t, but I wish I could walk away from you, this time for ever. I know what it’s like to have a part-time father, then stepfathers drifting in and out of my life when it suited them—or my mother.’
An unwanted wave of sympathy washed over him after his angry thoughts about her motives and he moved toward her, wanting to offer comfort, reassurance—anything to make her feel better. This was the first time she’d allowed him to see into the window of her childhood and he guessed it wasn’t the happy picture she’d always tried to portray or hide behind.
‘So, it seems we both have our own motives for remaining married.’ He locked away his emotions, becoming the cold, detached businessman he’d been since a car accident had halted his footballing career five years ago.
‘It looks that way. When do we leave for Madrid?’ She was as cold as he was, proving, if nothing else, that any of those softer and sentimental emotions she’d once had for him had well and truly been buried—and it suited him perfectly. Emotions complicated things. Emotions only led to pain.
‘I have chartered a private jet to ensure your comfort. We leave tomorrow morning.’
Initially, he thought she was going to challenge him, but after a moment of those green eyes scrutinising him, she nodded. ‘When do we return?’
‘As soon as the wedding celebrations are over. I have plans here in England for the festive season.’
Now he felt the full force of her suspicion. ‘What plans?’
He wasn’t about to reveal anything yet, but her talk of wanting a Christmas tree reminded him of the one occasion they’d talked about anything to do with their past. She’d told him how her family had never had time or the inclination for festive celebrations, that Christmas was something she’d missed out on as a child. He might not be able to feel love, but he wanted to make her happy, prove he could enter into the façade of family life being forced on him, even though he had no intention of engaging his emotions. With this in mind, he’d put in motion arrangements for the kind of festivities his mother had loved—the kind he’d never had since her death.
‘Plans that will prove to you we can bring our child up together. Offer it all neither of us had. You gave me until New Year’s Eve to prove that our child will be better off brought up by married parents and not divorced parents and that is precisely what I will do.’
* * *
Lisa swallowed down the bitterness of the truth of what he’d said. Max was right. They needed to find common ground, find a way to remain married and bring up their child, but the little girl who’d watched her own father leave, only to see her mother replace him with a new one, then others as the years went by, didn’t want to muddle through her marriage and parenthood. She wanted to be a happy, loving parent with Max, create the solid foundations for the kind of life she’d never had. The other option was to raise her child alone—completely—unlike her mother who even now couldn’t face life alone, const
antly searching for the next man to live with for a year or so.
As far as she was concerned, Max would either be a full-time father or a permanently absent one. For her there were no halfway measures, not when she knew the effects of being brought up like that. She knew only too well what it was like to be that child, to blame yourself for your father leaving, to wonder what you’d done, never thinking it had been something totally unconnected with her. She also knew what it was like to have a stepfather who bullied her into submission. Not that he’d ever laid a hand on her, but there was more than one way to bully someone.
‘Can you do that, Max?’ she challenged him, all thought of Christmas and New Year evaporating. ‘Can you be in your child’s life all the time when, judging by your reaction to the news, fatherhood is not something you want?’
He came toward her and she looked at him, her challenge still lingering in the air. ‘My reaction, as you so nicely put it, was due not only to being told you were pregnant, but to the headlines about me and my brother—and, if I am honest, the initial thought that you had known about that and hadn’t told me.’
‘But you still wouldn’t have been overjoyed.’ Lisa ignored the reference to that moment when she’d realised they had been talking at cross purposes, determined to keep the focus on what was important. The baby. After several meetings over the last few days he’d sorted things with Raul and now it was time to sort things with her. Deep inside her, she hankered after the man who’d melted her with just one kiss, the man who’d loved her physically with a passion so intense it still burned in her memory. She wanted that man now, but each time the baby was mentioned the chances of that seemed to slip further and further away.
‘No, I would not.’ The truth lashed at her like icy rain and she steeled herself against it, but the onslaught continued. ‘Our marriage broke up because we are too different. You wanted love from me and children too. The truth is, the only thing that ever existed between us was passion. It’s what brought us together and ultimately what pushed us apart.’
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