by Lynne Graham
‘I didn’t tell the paps that we were getting back together,’ Jemima declared loudly.
‘Someone did.’ Unimpressed dark golden eyes clashed with hers, his strong jaw line at an aggressive angle.
‘You know, I didn’t appreciate you taking on a nanny without discussing it with me first,’ she confided abruptly, deciding that she might as well confront that issue.
‘We can discuss that tomorrow,’ Alejandro fielded impatiently and a moment later he was gone, leaving her still seated with her dessert sitting untouched in front of her.
Minutes later, the maid arrived with a trolley to clear the table and Jemima went to check on her son, finding him sound asleep in his cot. For a moment she envied the contentment etched in Alfie’s peaceful little face. A strange cot in an unfamiliar room and new faces all around him? No problem. Alejandro’s son had rolled with the punches and he saw no reason to stay awake and on guard. And why shouldn’t her son feel that way? There could be no comparison between his childhood and the one his mother had endured, which had marked her all her life with fear and anxiety. Alfie’s world had always been safe and his needs had always been met. He had never been denied love. He had never known violence or malice. And Jemima was quietly proud of the fact that she had done much more for him than her parents had ever done for her.
Back in the bedroom she slid into bed and put on the television, finally tuning into a music channel before resting back against the pillows.
She had no idea what time it was when a sound wakened her and she half sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes and blinking as Alejandro flicked the remote control at the television to switch it off. The bedside lamp was still lit. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep,’ she mumbled drowsily, wondering if the noise from the set had disturbed him, for he was barefoot and wearing only his jeans with the top button undone. A silky black furrow of hair ran down over his stomach and disappeared below the waistband. Suddenly she felt hot.
Alejandro sent her a brooding look from glittering dark eyes. ‘I’m sleeping here tonight,’ he informed her with a hostile stare-you-down cool stamped on his lean dark features as though he expected her to argue with him.
Jemima was startled by that announcement. After all, it was already three in the morning according to the digital display on the clock by the bed. Lips parting slowly in surprise, Jemima watched as he shed his jeans. A lean, powerfully muscular silhouette—he was wearing, it transpired, not a stitch below the denim and he was…well, he was sporting a rampant erection. There was really no avoiding that fact. Hot colour washed her face and a melted-honey sensation curled low in her pelvis. She was his object of desire and he couldn’t hide it and she liked that. The separate-bedroom concept had bitten the dust at remarkable speed.
‘I should be too tired for this, querida,’ Alejandro growled as he came down on the bed beside her, his every fluid movement full of virile masculine promise. ‘But I can’t sleep for wanting you.’
Jemima lay back like Cleopatra reclining on a ceremonial barge, ever ready to be admired. She gazed up at him in sultry invitation and with hot golden eyes he crushed her soft full mouth under his with an erotic savagery that sent desire lancing through her slim length in an arrow of fire. She closed her hand round him and he shifted against her with a guttural sound while she teased the silky sleek heat of his sex over its iron-hard core. With an eagerness that thrilled her, he wrenched her free of the nightdress, his hands finding the white globes of her breasts and then the swollen damp flesh between her thighs. Every sense on high alert, her body went wild as the pounding throb of heat and hunger pulsed through her tender body, racking her with a stark storm of need.
‘Por Dios, I can’t wait,’ Alejandro framed hungrily through a welter of passionate and devouring kisses that only left her gasping for more.
And dimly Jemima wondered what was happening to her because, somehow, even though she had been satiated he had set her alight again and the balance of power was no longer hers. Alejandro had never felt more necessary to her as he turned her on her side and plunged into her tight hot core, stretching her, filling her with a sweet, dominant force she could not resist. Delirious excitement powered through her quivering body in wave after wave when he rubbed her swollen nipples and teased the tiny bud of pleasure below her mound. He pounded into her at an enthralling pace until the ache and the burn combined into a fiery explosion. She reached a shattering release, convulsive spasms of delight roaring through her sobbing, shaking length until at last she lay still in his arms, weak and utterly spent.
Alejandro turned her round and pressed a kiss to her cheek before stretching up to douse the lights. ‘Nobody but you has ever given me pleasure like that.’
And in receipt of that accolade, Jemima went from warm and reassured into a place of wounding self-doubt. Nothing had changed. It was always all about sex as far as Alejandro was concerned. He had never loved her yet, even though she had never believed she was the wife he really wanted, he had still married her. That had never made sense to her. But even so, Jemima was all too used to not making the grade with those she loved. Her mother would have loved and valued her daughter more had Jemima been the baby boy she had wanted to please her husband. Her father had never loved her, nor had he ever pretended to. There had been boyfriends but no one serious before Alejandro and she had fallen so hard for him that the sheer pain of having once loved and lost him still had the power to wound her.
She lay awake in the darkness, reassured by his continuing presence. It might only be sex that kept him there but that was better than nothing, wasn’t it? She could walk away from him again without getting hurt, she told herself soothingly. She didn’t love him any more; she had got over that nonsense. Once she had believed that Marco’s obvious pleasure in her company might magically make his big brother view his wife with newly appreciative eyes. Instead Alejandro had simply assumed that her close friendship with Marco was based on sex. When that was the only tie he himself acknowledged with her, how could he have understood that she and Marco had bonded on quite another level?
Suppressing a regretful sigh over her tangled and unhappy past, Jemima finally drifted off to sleep…
Chapter Seven
JEMIMA only awoke when china rattled on a tray and the curtains were trailed noisily back. Sunlight drenched the bed in a shower of warm golden brilliance and she sat up with a sleepy sigh. She was immediately conscious of the stiffness of her limbs and the intimate ache at the heart of her. X-rated memories of how she had celebrated the breaking of the dawn assailed her. It was little wonder she had slept like a log afterwards, not even stirring when Alejandro got up.
She stared in disbelief at her watch, for the day was in full swing and it was comfortably past noon. The maid set down the tray on a side table and settled Jemima’s wrap down on the bed for her use while asking her whether she wanted to eat in the room next door or outside on the roof terrace. Self-conscious at being naked, with her nightdress lying in a heap in the middle of the floor where Alejandro had hurled it, Jemima fought her way into the wrap while contriving to stay mostly covered by the sheet.
‘Thanks. I’ll eat outside,’ she said, sliding out of bed and pushing her feet into mules to follow the maid through the door and up the little narrow curving staircase in the corner and out onto the roof terrace of the tower. Once it had been her favourite place in the castle, safe from all intruders and prying eyes. Warm, all-encompassing heat curled round her lightly clad frame when she stepped out into the fresh air to enjoy the magnificent view she remembered. It stretched as far as the eye could see right up to the snow-capped Sierra Mountains that girded the valley.
Far below in the gardens she heard a child’s laughter and she stood at the battlements from where she espied Alfie, who was playing ball on an immaculate green lawn with a small figure she assumed to be Placida. Some mother she had proved to be since her arrival at the castle, she reflected ruefully. Resolving to spend the rest of the day with him, Jemima s
at down at the shaded table and quickly embarked on the delicious lunch on the tray. She was really hungry and ate with appetite before taking the tray back downstairs, laying out white cropped knee-length trousers and a green T-shirt from her own store to wear and heading straight for the shower.
Her hair in damp ringlets, she was coming down the main staircase when she heard a female voice raised in shrill argument. Indeed the voice might almost have been described as being at screaming pitch and it was matched by the deep bass notes of a clipped male voice. The racket was emanating from the imposing salon on the ground floor. In the main hall two of the domestic staff were stationed outside the service door to the kitchens and clearly engaged in eavesdropping. Her face flushed and miserable, Beatriz emerged abruptly from the room and the staff slipped hurriedly through the service door and out of sight.
‘What’s going on?’ Jemima asked baldly.
‘Mamá is very offended with Alejandro,’ Beatriz told her uncomfortably.
‘Oh…’ Stifling her curiosity because she thought it wiser not to get involved in a family matter, Jemima walked right past the door of the salon. ‘I’m going out to the garden to join Alfie and Placida.’
Alejandro’s sister accompanied her, clearly keen to escape the bad feeling on the domestic front. ‘Alejandro has asked Doña Hortencia to move into a house on the estate,’ she revealed.
Startled by that news, Jemima turned to look at her companion with wide eyes of enquiry. ‘My goodness, that’s very sudden!’
‘Her belongings are already being packed,’ Beatriz declared in a dazed undertone. ‘Mamá is very shocked. I have never seen Alejandro so angry or so resolute. She is to move into a hotel until the house is fully prepared for her.’
‘That must have been some argument.’ Jemima did not have the hypocrisy to pretend regret at the prospect of Doña Hortencia moving out of the castle, but she was very much surprised by the development.
‘I will miss my nephew,’ Alejandro’s sister admitted heavily.
‘But surely you’re not moving out as well?’ Jemima exclaimed.
‘Mamá will expect me to accompany her.’
‘But I don’t and I’m sure Alejandro won’t either,’ Jemima stated, because she knew that Alejandro was very fond of his sister and troubled by the restricted life she led with their mother. ‘This has always been your home, Beatriz.’
The tall, full-figured brunette lifted worried eyes to hers. ‘Are you sure that you and Alejandro wouldn’t mind if I stayed on?’
‘Of course, we wouldn’t. I would be glad of your company, particularly when Alejandro is away on business.’
‘My stepmother would never forgive me for deserting her…’ Beatriz looked shocked at the concept of the new way of life she was clearly envisaging. ‘I’m not sure I could go against her wishes and do it—’
Her brow pleating, Jemima had come to a sudden halt. ‘Did you just refer to Doña Hortencia as your “stepmother”? Or did I get that wrong?’
In her turn, Beatriz frowned uncertainly at the smaller blonde woman. ‘Didn’t you know?’ she queried somewhat abstractedly, her mind clearly still focused on her future living arrangements. ‘Of course we have always had to call her Mamá. I was only three years old and Alejandro a newborn baby when our own mother died.’
Jemima stifled the curious questions ready to spring to her lips. It was typical that Alejandro had not chosen to enlighten her as to that salient fact. It did at least explain why Doña Hortencia had always seemed very cold towards her elder son while seeming almost dotingly fond of his younger brother, Marco. ‘But Marco is?’
‘Marco was born four years after Doña Hortencia married our father,’ Beatriz confirmed quietly. ‘Mamá was very upset when she realised that Marco could not inherit a larger portion of what our father left in his will because it would have meant splitting up and selling the estate.’
Alfie ran across the lawn to throw himself at his mother when he saw her approaching. Laughing and cuddling his solid little body, Jemima hugged her son close and urged his nanny to take a break. Beatriz played ball with her nephew and Jemima found herself hoping that her sister-in-law would have the courage to break free of her stepmother’s suffocating control and stay on at the castle.
Almost an hour later, Alejandro strolled out to join them. Sheathed in lightweight khaki chinos with the sleek lines of a designer fit and a short-sleeved shirt, he looked gorgeous. When his spectacular black spiky-lashed golden gaze sought hers, Jemima went pink as she recalled the intimacies they had shared so freely during the night hours. Alfie beamed at his father and gave him the ball while Beatriz excused herself, saying that she ought to go and see if she could assist Doña Hortencia.
Jemima stood by containing her intense curiosity while Alejandro and Alfie fooled about with the ball. When they had both had enough, Alejandro suggested taking Alfie down to the lake and loaded them into an estate vehicle.
‘I didn’t realise until Beatriz mentioned it that Doña Hortencia was actually your stepmother.’
Alejandro compressed his lips. ‘She’s the only mother I can remember. My own died from eclampsia within hours of my birth.’
‘That was a tragic loss for all of you,’ Jemima remarked.
‘My father remarried months after her death. Hortencia, not my mother, was the true love of his life,’ Alejandro explained flatly. ‘He worshipped the ground she walked on and he came close to bankrupting the estate in his determination to give her the very best of everything.’
Jemima was suddenly beginning to revise her once sunny assumptions about Alejandro’s childhood. ‘Was it a happy marriage?’
‘He was happy, but I don’t think she has ever been satisfied in her life with what she had. When my father was dying, however, he became very concerned about Hortencia’s future—I believe she had shared her fears with him—and he begged me to always treat her as though she was my birth mother. It was his last wish. I gave my word and I have respected it ever since. Until today it did not occur to me that in tolerating her excesses I had been unfair to you.’
‘Why?’ Jemima questioned. ‘What happened today?’
‘Had you let me know how my stepmother was treating you when we were first married I would have stopped it then. You should have been honest with me,’ Alejandro murmured in a tone of reproach rather than censure, his striking eyes troubled. ‘This was your home and as my wife it is your right to take charge of the castle and the staff—’
‘I’m not sure I could have coped with the responsibility in those days,’ Jemima cut in lightly, realising that for some inexplicable reason all she wanted to do at that moment was make him feel better rather than add another weight to his conscience.
His lean, strong face clenched hard. ‘But you never had the opportunity to try. Had you not been hampered by Hortencia’s spite you would have managed perfectly well. You are a capable young woman.’
‘Did your sister say that she was spiteful?’ Jemima prompted in surprise, for Beatriz virtually never had a bad word to say about anyone. They were walking down towards the lake that gleamed through a grove of silvery olive trees like a reflective mirror on the valley floor.
A brooding expression darkened Alejandro’s features. ‘There was no need for her to do so. The manner in which my stepmother spoke of you today was sufficient for me to appreciate the level of malice which I was dealing with. The only possible solution was for her to move out—’
‘Do you regret that?’
‘How could I?’ Alejandro confided with a harsh laugh that acknowledged the older woman’s challenging temperament. ‘Although Beatriz and I had no choice but to treat her as our mother, she had no maternal love to give us. She sent both of us off to boarding school as soon as she could. And after Marco was born, she resented my position as the eldest son and ensured that I had little contact with my father.’
‘Then you were kinder to her than she deserved,’ Jemima pronounced feelingly.
&nbs
p; ‘But I can’t forgive myself for not appreciating how she was treating you when I first made this your home.’ Alejandro stared down at her with intent eyes and reached for her hand in a warm gesture of encouragement that took her by surprise. ‘I hope you can move past that bad beginning now and learn to love this place and its people as I do, querida.’
That he wanted things to change for her benefit and that he had already made a bold first move towards that end pleased Jemima a great deal. But it was the eloquent expression in those beautiful eyes the colour of rich malt whisky in sunlight that affected her the most. He really did want their marriage to work this time around and, even though that might be primarily because they now had a child to consider, his determination and his caring about what it would take to make her happy in Spain impressed her. It was a beginning, and a better beginning than they had made together when they first married…
A slight figure in an emerald-green silk skirt suit that was bright against her fair complexion and wealth of strawberry-blonde hair, Jemima stepped up to the podium with a heart beating as fast as a drum. She set her little prompt card down where it could catch her eye if she forgot what she had to say. As this was her first ever public speech, she had kept it short and succinct and had rehearsed it thoroughly with Beatriz beforehand.
In spite of those precautions, though, perspiration still dampened her short upper lip and her nerves were bouncing about like jumping beans. At a nod of readiness from the charity director, Jemima began to speak about the need for the sanctuary for female victims of domestic violence being provided by the shelter. The fund-raising benefit was aimed at providing new purpose-built premises where women and children could stay in safety and begin to rebuild their lives.