‘Oh, Max,’ she said and he looked over the lid of the box, wanting to know if his instructions had been followed. ‘It’s lovely.’
She lifted out a black dress.
‘For Angelina’s twenty-first party.’
‘There’s more,’ she gasped as she laid the black dress over the arm of the chair and picked up the green silk dress Lydia had assured him in their phone conversation would be perfect for her. ‘It’s beautiful, but how?’
‘With a little help from my new sister-in-law,’ he jumped in, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with the idea of clothing as gifts. He was far more used to a parting piece of jewellery. ‘Lydia assured me you would look stunning in it on New Year’s Eve.’
‘We may not be together then.’ She dropped the terse statement between them and he clamped his jaw hard together.
‘After last night, I think that particular scenario is unlikely. I’m not letting you go just yet, not when you promised to be mine until New Year’s Eve, which includes the party.’ He kept his voice light, but from the uncertain look on her face he knew he hadn’t fooled her.
‘But what if we don’t work this out?’
‘We can only do that if we give it a chance.’ He turned and picked up one more gift from beneath the tree, wanting to distract her. ‘There is also this.’
She took the present from him slowly; for a moment he’d thought she wasn’t going to take it. Then she opened it. First the ribbon, then the gold paper revealing a dark blue box. Cautiously, she opened it.
* * *
‘This is too much.’ Lisa almost dropped the box as she looked up at him. Why was he giving her such an expensive gift? It should mean that he loved her, but she knew it was far from that.
‘Diamonds,’ he said as she looked back down at the necklace, earrings and ring. ‘To wear with the green dress.’
‘But...’ she said, her voice a hoarse whisper as she touched the coldness of the glittering necklace, lying beautifully against the blue velvet of the box. Her hand was shaking as she slowly moved it away from the dazzling jewels. This was a parting gift. It was the tactic she knew men like Max deployed when they wanted to sweeten a lover and encourage them to move on in life, move on from him.
‘They will look amazing with the green dress,’ he said, standing over her as if he thought she might just throw the box aside and bolt from the room, from the cottage and from him. ‘Or so Lydia informs me.’
Lydia knew about these? Did she know how much trouble their marriage was in? Would Max have confided in Raul that he didn’t want to remain married, much less be a father to a child he didn’t want?
‘She has wonderful taste.’ Lisa’s mouth dried as she looked up at him, seeing the satisfaction on his face. If he thought his plan had worked, he was very soon going to find out how mistaken that was.
‘I wish my wife to be adorned with diamonds that will sparkle brighter than any fireworks on New Year’s Eve.’
Why? To mark her as his or to ensure she quietly slipped away once the show of being together, because of the media interest in them as a couple and Raul and Max as brothers, had died down?
Could she continue with this and act the part of loving wife when his seduction last night had proved she couldn’t resist him at all? He was counting on that, using it as a way of keeping her on display as his wife.
She closed the box and looked up at him. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything, just be at my side when we attend Angelina’s party and again on New Year’s Eve. Show the world we are a couple.’
Lisa tried to read what he was thinking but failed. If she agreed, at least she could move on with her life and know that she’d tried with Max, that she’d be able to look her child in the eyes later on and say with honesty that she’d done just that.
‘In that case I will be at your side and wearing the diamonds as midnight strikes on New Year’s Eve.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS THEY HAD driven the short distance to the hotel, through frost-covered countryside, Lisa had tried to put all they’d just talked about from her mind. At least for now. Despite everything, she wanted to be able to enjoy her time with Max and the Christmas he’d arranged, although the real motives for that were now becoming clearer. It was all a façade, a show of being the man she needed him to be for their child, but why, when she was making it easy for him to walk away as he had done from their marriage?
The hotel was beautifully decorated for Christmas and the food had been amazing. Lisa felt like a small child as she sat on a large sofa in front of the heat of a log fire. All through her meal she’d been thinking about the gifts Max had given her, in particular the diamond jewellery. The diamonds were about not only showing he could, but showing that he held power over her, forcing her to accept his command, his control. It was the last thing she wanted. Power and command did not equal love.
‘You’re lost in thought.’ Max’s voice interrupted the circles her mind was wandering and she looked away from the orange flames of the fire and into his handsome face as he sat at the other end of the sofa. It wasn’t that big, but he felt far away, isolating himself from her as much as he could. His long legs stretched out before him, snagging her attention, and he looked relaxed and at ease, but from the expression on his face she guessed this was not the case as he pulled at the berry-red tie he’d opted for with his almost black suit.
‘I still can’t believe how lovely it has been today. The meal, waking up in the cottage on Christmas morning and the gifts.’ She wanted to ask him outright about the diamonds, ask him what he really hoped to achieve with them, but the day had almost been spoiled once by the conversation that had sprung out of nowhere that morning; she wasn’t going to risk it again.
He put down his after-dinner coffee cup and moved toward her, closing the gap between them as if he’d read her mind. Had her thoughts been so blatantly emblazoned on her face?
She sucked in a deep breath against the tangy aroma of his aftershave, the unique maleness that was Max, shyly looking away, suddenly very self-conscious. Only Max had ever made her feel this way, like a lovesick teenager on a first date. How, after all they’d been through, all they’d learnt about one another, could he still have that effect on her?
His voice was low, deep and very sexy. ‘You are my wife, Lisa, and this is the first time we are celebrating Christmas. I wanted to make it special for you because I remembered that passing remark about Christmas always bringing trouble and upset within your family. How it was never what others seemed to experience.’
She looked at him from beneath her lashes, desperate to hide her feelings and the way hearing that made her feel. She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t quite shake off the idea that he was just trying to disarm her—or the shock that it was working. ‘Well, this is a pretty special place.’
She looked around the hotel lounge, with the small groups of comfortable chairs and sofas where families were now gathered, relaxing after Christmas dinner. The fire was warm and she could feel herself becoming less tense, less on edge, but after last night and then this morning’s discussion, which had felt at the time like an opening of hearts, she was wary.
‘This is my first taste of a British Christmas.’ He smiled at her and her heart flipped over. How could he melt her so easily?
Because you still love him.
‘Where do you normally spend Christmas?’ she asked, before realising that once again she was tempting open the box he had clearly marked do not disturb.
‘In Spain with my mother’s family. We would usually be out walking now. Christmas Day is not such a big day in Spain.’
‘A walk after Christmas dinner is pretty normal here too.’ She laughed and relaxed a little. She’d probably been reading too much into everything, as usual. ‘It would be nice to do that now. Is it too far to walk back to the cottage?’
The idea of being out in the crisp cold air of the afternoon was suddenly very appe
aling. She’d been inside for too long and needed the sense of freedom that came with a walk. It might also shake off some of the notions she was beginning to have that maybe Max did care, that he just wasn’t able to put it into words.
‘Are those boots up to the walk?’ He looked down at the long boots she’d put on with her deep burgundy dress, the only ones she’d packed, not being aware they were going anywhere else after Raul and Lydia’s wedding.
‘Of course they are, unless you aren’t?’ she teased, feeling the tension slip from him as she laughed at him.
‘A walk home it is.’ He took her hand and for a moment sat and looked at her, his dark eyes unreadable. She wanted to ask what he was thinking or, even more importantly, what he was feeling, but before she could form a sensible sentence he spoke again. ‘Shall we?’
* * *
Max could hardly fathom that he found pleasure in the simple action of walking along a country lane with Lisa. As they’d walked down the hotel driveway, enjoying the views, he’d taken her gloved hand, smiling to himself when she hadn’t resisted but had moved closer to him. He’d kept his pace slow as they’d continued the short distance to the cottage, despite the nearness of dusk, worried that anything faster would be too arduous for her in her present condition.
‘I’m pregnant, Max, not ill.’ She laughed at him in answer to his concern as they reached the gate of the cottage but her words took him straight back to the day his stepfather had broken the news that his mother had been told her cancer had returned and this time it was untreatable.
He remembered that day as if it were yesterday, felt the shock that he could lose his mother still icing his body. He’d looked at his stepfather and for the first time since his own father had walked he’d wanted to cry. He’d been barely a teenager and already he’d known the pain of watching his father reject him, reject his mother and walk away and now this.
‘Is she going to die?’ The forthright question had floored his stepfather, but he’d at least been honest in his reply. Too honest.
‘It is not good.’ Remembering the look of grief in his stepfather’s eyes sucked him deeper into the memories of the past. ‘She was diagnosed while she was expecting Angelina and refused any treatment until after she’d been born. She didn’t want to risk your little sister. She wanted her to live.’
‘But I don’t want my mother to die.’ The words had torn from him like the cry of a wolf calling to the moon and his stepfather had wrapped him in his solid embrace, trying to console him, trying to be there for him, but he’d had his own grief to nurse. Max had seen and felt how much love hurt, how much pain it caused when the person you loved left you, and had vowed then to shut that painful emotion out of his life for good.
‘Neither do I,’ his stepfather had said as he’d held him tight, being a better father than his real father had ever been. His mother had paid for the delay in treatment with her life. He wished he’d been told when she’d first found out, wished they’d considered him adult enough to know then. Maybe he could have talked her round, made her change her mind. By the time he’d finally been told the truth he’d formed a strong attachment to his baby sister, Angelina, and as much as he’d wanted to hate her he couldn’t, but he’d pushed her away emotionally. What if something happened to her too just because he’d loved her?
As the English winter winds blew around him, he remembered more, could see himself at sixteen, see the moment he’d stood watching his four-year-old sister hugging a kitten her father had given her.
‘Something for you to love, Lina,’ his stepfather had said as he’d placed the mewling scrap of fur in Angelina’s lap.
Max had looked at the kitten as it tried to nestle down on his sister’s lap and that first wave of bitterness that shaped the man he now was, fuelled by anger, had crashed over him. Love wouldn’t do the kitten any good, just as it wouldn’t do him or his sister any good. Love set you up for disappointment, rejection and worst of all heartache.
He’d loved his father and then had been forced to stand and watch him walk away. He’d called after him as he’d marched to his car, but he hadn’t looked back once. He’d just got in the car and had driven off, tyres spinning as he’d made his escape. Max had waited, hoped he would come back, but as his mother had veered from anger to crying and back to anger he’d accepted he wouldn’t, that he now had to be the man of the house. After all, he loved his mother and she wouldn’t leave him.
Then she had. Snatched in the cruellest way because she’d chosen her unborn baby over herself—over him.
Max shrugged the painful memory away. In rational moments he knew he would never have been able to help her. She’d had to make a terrible decision but done what any mother would and had protected her unborn child, but it still hurt like hell, that she’d risked leaving him—leaving his baby sister. Now here he was, a father-to-be, wanting to do anything that would make life better for his unborn child, including remaining married to a woman he’d once thought could change his life, change him. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t let go of the pain of the past and allow love back into his life.
‘Women have babies every day.’ Lisa’s words hauled him unceremoniously from the past and he blew out a breath into the cold air, seeing it form a cloud before slipping away. If only his childhood pain could evaporate so easily.
‘That may be so, but you must look after yourself.’ It came out as an angry growl as he wrestled with the past, insistently pushing it back where it belonged. He wanted to look after Lisa but was well aware that in doing so it was giving her false hope of a loving marriage. How could he, the son of a man like Maximiliano Valdez, be capable of such things as love and commitment? Hadn’t he already failed at that? He was certain Lisa wouldn’t even be here with him now if she weren’t carrying his child.
He took in a deep breath of cold fresh air and opened the gate, aware that Lisa was looking at him sceptically. Her cheeks were pink from the cold and the collar of her coat was pulled around her tightly, but all he could see was the image of her wrapped in the faux-fur throw as she’d sat on the bed this morning. Then it had slipped making her look so desirable yet so vulnerable and fragile that something had twisted deep inside him, something he’d never felt before. Something he didn’t want to feel.
Now it was happening again. That same twist of pain and pleasure as he looked into her eyes, resisting the urge to pull her against him and kiss her until the pain stopped, until only pleasure existed.
Yet he couldn’t do that. Too much had happened in his life over the last week. First Raul, a brother he’d never known and the unexpected hand of friendship, then the baby. Both life-changing events and highly charged with the kind of emotions he avoided at all costs. It was as if fate was conspiring against him, forcing him to face, head-on, the one emotion he’d never wanted to feel again.
‘I’ve seen my own doctor as well as yours, Max. There is nothing to worry about—unless you don’t trust me to look after our baby.’ Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as if this was the first time she’d had such a thought.
He trusted her, a hell of a lot more than he trusted himself. ‘I’m not questioning that. I’m just worried for you—for our baby.’
‘I’ll be fine and so will the baby,’ she said as she walked up to the wooden front door of the cottage. ‘Now let’s get in out of the cold. I might even need warming up.’
She turned to look at him, mischief on her face, and he knew right there and then he wouldn’t be able to resist her. She’d cast a spell on him from the first day they’d met and it was as strong as ever. She made him believe he was alive, real, but, more than that, she made him feel.
* * *
Lisa’s eyes locked with Max’s as he shut the front door, enclosing them in the warmth of the cottage. The promise of passion blazed in his eyes and as he walked toward her she sucked in a deep and ragged breath. She loved him so very much. If only it were enough.
She pushed the thought aside. Until
the clock struck twelve on New Year’s Eve she was going to enjoy what was happening between them, she was going to allow her love to pour from her, drench him and hope that he’d see just how much she loved him. After all, only true love hurt this much.
In an attempt to delay the moment he took her in his arms, to make it last longer she walked into the living room where the lights of the Christmas tree twinkled in a festive display of colour. She frowned and looked at the roaring log fire. ‘Someone has been in and seen to the fire.’
He’d followed her into the living room and now moved closer to her, the desire evident even as he smiled so very sexily at her. ‘All part of the deal for the cottage.’ His voice was deep and sexy even though he was talking mundane everyday things. She was suddenly and very acutely aware of every move he made. ‘I have very serious plans for that fire this evening.’
Part of her was annoyed. He could buy anything he wanted. From a cottage that was invisibly staffed to her designer dresses and diamonds. The other part of her was overcome with the desire to be just that, to be his, to live in the moment of isolation from reality.
‘And what might they be?’ the teased and moved away from him with a provocative smile to stand on the soft rug in front of the fire, allowing its heat to warm her after their walk home. Not that she really needed it. One passion-filled look from him was enough.
He took off his coat, slinging it carelessly on the chair behind him and, with purposeful intent in every move he made, came to her, taking her hands in his. ‘To take every piece of clothing from your sexy body and lay you down right here, with just the light of the fire, and make love to you.’
‘That sounds like the perfect end to the day,’ she breathed, her stomach flipping over and a shiver of pleasurable anticipation rushing through her. This was more intense, more wildly enticing than the night two months ago when they’d become lovers once again. She hadn’t been able to resist him, had thought then, like now, that she would enjoy the moment.
‘In that case we will start with these.’ He lowered himself to his knees and she looked down on him, wide-eyed as he unzipped one long black boot then lifted her foot, pulling the soft black leather slowly from her. He looked up at her as his hands smoothed upward from her ankle, to her knee. She had to steady herself by reaching out and holding the mantelpiece, but he stopped just at the hemline of her dress and a ragged breath tore from her.
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