He stood lithely from the bed and looked down at her, totally at ease in his nakedness.
Rowan frowned and looked up, feeling very much at a disadvantage. His absolute distance precluded any notion she might have had of telling him exactly what that scar was, what it meant.
‘Sandro … about what just—’
‘Firstly, don’t call me Sandro. I don’t like it.’
‘But I thought you liked it when we were—’
He laughed harshly. ‘Before you deserted this marriage? Before you walked away from Zac? Well, that was then—this is now.’
Familiar pain lashed her inwardly. ‘But what about … what about what just happened …?’ She hated the uncertainty in her voice, and scrabbled to find covers to pull around her in protection.
Isandro started to walk away, his tall, lean and powerful body a vision of perfection. Gleaming golden skin stretched over hard muscles. He turned at the door.
‘That’s the second thing. We just slept together, that’s all. It means nothing. And Rowan?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘This time I’ll expect you to be willing when I want you, for however long I want you. Perhaps you’ll be a better mistress than you were a wife.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ISANDRO stood under the punishingly hot spray of the shower. His whole body was tense, his belly knotted with extreme self-reproach, self-recrimination, self-disgust. He had just given in to the weakest of urges—although it hadn’t felt weak at the time. It had felt like a force field sweeping him in one direction only: to possess Rowan.
Savage hands spiked through his wet hair as he stood under the intense needles of spray.
Sandro. She’d called him Sandro. The only one who had ever shortened his name. She’d let it slip one day early in their marriage. He could still remember the colour that had turned her cheeks rosy at his expression. And then he had drawled laconically, ‘It’s fine. I like it.’ And the thing was, he had liked it. Had thought it had meant something.
But to hear it again now was a shock. It had felt so right. A lot like how it had felt to kiss her and take her to bed. And he was sure she knew. Had expected to use it as some kind of trigger.
And how could he have slept with her? Not once, he had to remind himself, but twice. In quick succession. She was the worst of the worst. She had walked out on her baby. On him. Had spent the latter months of her pregnancy freezing him out. Isandro turned the shower to cold for a second, and welcomed the icy clarity the brief pain brought.
She owed him. He’d had no intention of prolonging her stay—he’d already planned on suggesting that she move either into Osuna or Seville—but now. Now … he might keep her a while. Let this irritating passion for her burn its course. Then he’d let her go and say good riddance. Once the divorce was through, custody agreed in his favour, he would make sure he had as little to do with her as possible. Intermediaries could deal with the moments when she would take Zac, or he would be taken to her.
But with that thought came an image of Zac being shuttled from one place to the next. Isandro dismissed its poignancy immediately. It was no less than what millions of children across the globe had to deal with, and they survived. But his child shouldn’t have to just survive …
Isandro stepped out of the shower. He told himself that his thoughts were clear. As icy as the water that had just hit his skin. But his belly was still tight, still full of something. It was indefinable and uncomfortable. He looked through his bathroom door at the rumpled sheets on his bed. As if to mock him, the tantalising smell of their sex, their bodies, seemed to curl around his senses, and to his dismay the recent cold punishment was forgotten and his body started to react again.
Holding onto the clarity of thought, crushing down the hard feeling in his chest and belly, Isandro strode to the adjoining door and stepped back into Rowan’s room. This was all the clarity he needed—the physical kind. After all, she was just his mistress now …
‘Gracias, Ana-Lucía.’
Rowan took Zac from his new nanny to bring him outside. She snuggled close and buried her face in his neck, making loud kissing noises, listening to his giggles and feeling pure joy at the sound. When they got outside he started squirming, struggling to be down and running. She welcomed the distraction. Any distraction was welcome from what had happened the other night—and every night since then. Her body was tender all over, aching in secret places.
Her mind still couldn’t fully cope with what was happening, what had happened. At the way she’d been so forward, so wanton that night. She’d literally begged Isandro to make love to her, when evidently he’d wanted her to leave.
And yet now he wanted her as his mistress.
And why didn’t that thought fill her with the indignant horror it should? Why did it fill her with molten heat? Each night since then, when they went to bed, Isandro would either carry her from her bed to his, or come to her bed. But either way he would leave her alone afterwards. After taking her to paradise and back. Over and over again. It enflamed her, and yet made her very scared of what the fallout might be.
She put Zac down and watched him toddle off at great speed. He’d discovered the art of gardening. The art of pulling up great handfuls of earth and replanting them somewhere else—usually his clothes. She smiled and followed dutifully, but for once her son couldn’t make her block everything out. Much as she tried to let him. Erotic images, wanton images, flashed through her mind with disconcerting ease and frequency.
Absently she accepted the wriggling worm that Zac proudly held out. Clearly Isandro meant to take her as he would a mistress as a form of punishment, for whatever time was left of their marriage …
She grimaced. Isandro’s frequent absences during their marriage had left enough time for her to be alone and doubt everything she thought … and felt. Yet when they had spent time together those doubts had fled easily, and she’d found herself falling more and more into an abyss of vulnerable feelings. It had been so seductive. To come from the emotional wasteland her parents had offered her to being with a man as dynamic as Isandro, who’d seemed to truly care for her. Desire her. Especially as her pregnancy had progressed. But she’d been wrong. Perhaps not about the passion, evidently that was still there, but about everything else …
She looked at Zac helplessly. On that fateful day when she was seven months pregnant she’d found out so much …
‘Papá!’
Rowan froze. How had she not sensed him arrive? And yet wasn’t he in her brain all the time? With her at every moment?
She looked around to see Zac throw himself at Isandro’s legs. Isandro was looking down, smiling, oblivious to the two huge mucky handprints that now adorned his pristine suit. Rowan’s heart beat rapidly. He cast her a quick cool look.
‘I thought I’d come home early to take Zac riding …’
Rowan stood up awkwardly and brushed off her own filthy jeans. She felt mussed and inadequate. ‘Oh … okay.’ Once Ana-Lucía had taken over from María, Rowan had assumed Isandro would expect her to follow the original routine. Today her time with Zac wasn’t up yet, and she felt a dart of pain that Isandro could so easily wield this control.
He started to move away, with Zac, chattering nonsensically, held high in his arms. Ridiculously tears pricked her eyes, as if her heart was being wrenched from her chest just at watching them walk away.
Before they reached the house Isandro turned around, a mild look of impatience crossing his unbearably handsome features. ‘Well? Aren’t you coming too?’
For a stunned moment Rowan just stood there, and then stammered out, ‘Well. I thought. I mean, yes … yes, I will—if that’s okay?’
He gave a curt nod, and Rowan followed them jerkily as they disappeared into the house. The sensation of being on a string was vivid and unsettling. She had to learn to control herself. Her emotions. But just for now she felt joy zinging through her at Isandro’s easy invitation.
That night, as the tremors in Rowan’s body star
ted to recede and her heart resumed a normal rhythm, she prayed silently that Isandro wouldn’t leave her bed just yet. Pain made her insides clench. Was this how his mistresses felt? Or was he different with them? More tender? As tender as he’d once been with her … before she’d heard his poisonous words. It was too painful to go there. She couldn’t allow herself to think about that. He was here now, with her. This time was finite.
He’d pulled away to lie on his side and, craving to touch him, to stay connected, Rowan pressed her front against his back, bringing her legs up to cup his bottom, her arm around his chest. She felt him tense for a second and her mind balked. He was going to get up and go—again.
But after a long moment she felt him relax, and rejoiced inwardly. She heard his breaths deepen and lengthen. She felt a huge surge of emotion and pressed her lips to his broad back, as if to stifle words that threatened to spill out. She had no idea what she wanted to say, no idea what the feeling was. And then, as sleep started to claim her body and mind, she knew. She was sorry. Sorry for leaving, sorry for walking away, for not having the courage yet to explain.
Without even realising what she was doing, she pressed another kiss to his cooling skin, higher, closer to his neck, and whispered, ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry …’ again and again, as she kissed him softly.
Then the world was up-ended, and Isandro was out of the bed, looking down at her with scorn written all over his face before she knew which way was up.
He’d been awake …
Rowan came up on one arm and pulled the sheet around her, her heart thumping painfully as she watched Isandro reach for his trousers and pull them on.
‘Sorry?’ He laughed harshly. ‘Sorry for what, Rowan?’
Rowan felt jittery, shaky and in shock. She had to tell him. Now. She reached for the lamp beside her bed and switched it on. Shadows danced, and the sculpted plains of Isandro’s body and face were thrown into sharp relief.
But before she could get a word out Isandro was already walking away, back towards his own bedroom.
She put out a hand. ‘Wait!’
He didn’t stop. He ignored her and kept walking.
Rowan refused to be dissuaded and got off the bed, pulling the sheet around her and following him into his room.
He heard her and turned around, saying coldly, ‘I’ve had enough for tonight. Please leave.’
Rowan did her best to ignore the shaft of pure ice and pain. ‘Please, I need to tell you … to explain—’
He advanced, and she backed away despite her intentions. He was just too big, too intimidating and too male. Her body throbbed as if on cue.
‘Explanations are not something I’m interested in, Rowan. Explanations are for people who are interested in hearing what the other has to say. My interest where you’re concerned is confined to the bedroom and to how I’m going to make sure you don’t get a minute’s access to Zac that isn’t approved by me.’
He took her in: flushed, tousled, sexy. His face tightened. He made a split-second knee-jerk reaction decision. He knew he was doing it, and his weakness made his voice unbearably harsh. ‘In fact, I’ve been thinking. The divorce is underway, and I think you’ve spent enough time here. I’ve been more than generous where Zac is concerned, but the time has come for you to leave.’
Rowan’s head reeled. They seemed to have gone from zero to a thousand in emotional voltage in a nanosecond.
‘Isandro—’
‘I see Sandro has gone out of the window.’ He mimicked her voice in a cruel parody of passion. ‘“Sandro, I want you so much. Sandro I need you—”’
‘Stop it!’ Rowan cried out, with such vehemence that he did. He was flaying her heart with a whip, shredding it to pieces, and it was in that moment that she knew for certain that she’d fallen for him all over again—had never really stopped loving him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have the power to hurt her so deeply.
‘All I want is to tell you where I’ve been since that day, Isandro. It’s not easy for me to tell you—’ Especially when you’re like this …
‘And I know why.’ His arms were crossed, a sneer on his face.
‘Why?’ she asked, as if she couldn’t already guess the answer.
‘Because you’ve had to try and figure out how to make yourself look as sympathetic as possible.’
He started to walk around her then, making her dizzy, but he wouldn’t stop, so she gritted her teeth and stood still.
‘Do you need me to show you the note again, Rowan? I still have it downstairs.’
She hid a shudder. She could still remember writing it, the bile that had been in her throat as she did, the unbelievable pain in her heart.
She shook her head, feeling sick. ‘No … I don’t need to see it.’
‘Because you were very clear. “I’m not ready to be a wife and mother. I have things I want to do, things I want to see …” Is that about right? Forgive me, I might have forgotten the actual wording.’
She turned to try and face him, but he eluded her efforts.
‘Isandro, I know how the note looked. But believe me—I only wrote it because I never expected to see you or Zac again.’
He stopped and turned to face her, and she took a step back. He was livid. She heard her words reverberate and winced. They had come out all wrong. Well, right and wrong.
‘No—wait. It’s not like that—’
‘No, I’m sure it’s not. But your inheritance running out and you not finding another willing sucker drove you back here to a cushy prenup, using Zac, the convenient ace up your sleeve, along the way to curry favour.’
Rowan opened her mouth but nothing came out, and in any case Isandro wasn’t finished.
He came and stood right in front of her. Worse than anything, he just looked emotionless now. ‘You’ve been dead to me since you left, Rowan, dead to Zac. And in many ways I think it might have been preferable if you had died, or at least stayed away.’
He couldn’t know what he was saying. He couldn’t possibly have any clue as to how cruelly close to home those words were. Rowan comforted herself with that as she stood there and felt ice trickle into her blood and her heart freezing. There was so much meaning, so much hate in those words that she had to get away from him. Before he could reduce her completely. She had thought she’d been to hell and back already, but this was coming a close second.
She looked somewhere in his vague direction. ‘I agree with you about moving out. I had already thought of perhaps renting somewhere in Osuna. I’ll get on to it tomorrow.’
And then she turned and went back into her room, shutting the door softly behind her. In a moment of black parody her sheet caught in the door and she couldn’t move forward. Loath to open the door again, to face Isandro’s wrath and very evident self-disgust, she dropped the sheet and went straight to her bathroom. She pulled on a robe and locked the door, then sank to the floor in the dark and dropped her head to her knees, wanting to curl up into as small a ball as possible. No matter how much she tried she couldn’t stop Isandro’s words going round and round. And with them was another word: fool … fool …
CHAPTER NINE
ISANDRO looked at the piece of sheet caught under the door and waited impatiently for Rowan to open the door again and take it out. But she didn’t. What was she doing? Just standing there? His irritation and anger levels had been finally cooling somewhat, but threatened to spike again now. He went and opened the door, only to find the crumpled sheet on the floor and the room bathed in soft light which jarred with his nerves.
The bed was empty. Where had she gone? He trod softly to the bathroom door and was about to knock, not even sure why he had felt compelled to come into the room at all, when he heard a soft noise. A keening sound like he’d never heard in his life. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, his blood run cold.
His hand was still raised to knock on the door. His mouth opened but he couldn’t articulate her name. A louder sound came now, and it was so primal, so private,
that Isandro backed away, his hand dropping slowly. An image came into his head of her face when he had told her that she should have stayed away … and the other thing he’d said, about her dying.
He’d heard the words come out of his mouth and had wanted to swallow them back. But it had been too late, and before he’d been able to assess the consequences of them, of how he might have revealed himself, he’d been diverted by her reaction. She’d gone stony silent, pale as the sheet around her, her eyes dimming. She’d retreated back into the cool shell he remembered so well. It was as if what he’d said had really hurt her. And yet if she was nothing but a scheming, gold-digging heiress, looking to cash in on her marriage, wouldn’t she have just tried to cajole him back into bed? She could have done it easily.
He couldn’t disguise his shaming attraction. It burned like nothing he’d ever experienced, and surpassed even what had left him a little shell shocked after the explosive revelation of their wedding night.
But she wasn’t cajoling him back into bed. She was in her dark bathroom, making the kind of sound that Isandro knew he’d never forget. But he couldn’t go in there. He knew instinctively that she believed she was without witnesses, and to intrude would be unthinkable. So he left, his mind racing as to what she was up to now, what this might mean. Everything was up-ended all over again—that clarity as laughably elusive as ever.
For a couple of days Rowan studiously avoided Isandro, still raw and hurting after their row. He made no attempt to take her to bed again, or to come to her bed. He hadn’t mentioned her moving out again but Rowan had made contact with an agent in Osuna and it hung in the air around them ominously. But that evening at dinner, after a painfully stilted conversation, she was surprised when he said that she and Zac should go to Seville the following day for a visit. For the first time in two days Rowan felt a spark within her erupt. She said yes, not knowing if his offer was as benign as it sounded. When he asked Rowan to come into his study after dinner she followed warily, keeping her eyes averted from the sheer force of his physique in worn jeans and a light sweater.
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