by Lynne Graham
‘You can be such a baby sometimes.’ His beautiful obsidian gaze had a lethal gleam in the moonlight, the anger and rawness tamped down out of her sight, patently too private for her viewing. ‘If I could put it all behind me and no longer think about it, I would have done so by now.’
In comparison, a cascade of happy images gleaned from recent weeks was flooding Jemima’s thoughts. Everything she valued, not just happiness, was at risk and it terrified her. She cursed Marco and wished she had never befriended him and she hovered within reach of Alejandro, wanting to be needed, needing to be wanted if that was all she could have.
‘Come to bed,’ she whispered soft and low, despising herself for sinking low enough to play that card.
‘I’m not up for that either tonight,’ Alejandro asserted with chilling bite.
Talking to him in such a mood was like death by a thousand tiny cuts, Jemima reflected wildly. He was too controlled to shout at her. He wouldn’t tell her what he was thinking, but then he didn’t really need to, did he? Not when his derision could seep through the cracks to show on the surface and burn her like acid sprinkled on tender skin.
‘Why did you ask me to give our marriage another chance if you were planning to behave like this?’ Jemima slung at him accusingly.
‘I never pretended I could give you a clean slate but I believe I’ve done reasonably well in the circumstances—’
‘Well, I disagree!’ Jemima shot at him furiously, temper clawing up through her with such speed and ferocity that the strength of her anger almost took her by surprise. ‘In fact I think you are screwing our relationship up this time just the way you did last time.’
Alejandro viewed her with cold dark eyes that reflected the silvery moonlight. If she was an alley cat in a fight, he was the equivalent of a deadly rapier blade flashing without warning. ‘I screwed it up?’ he traded very drily.
‘When you are finally forced to accept that I never had an affair with your brother, who are you going to blame then?’ Jemima demanded between gritted teeth. ‘But at the rate you’re going now, we won’t last that long. You might not be forgiving, Alejandro, but neither am I and I’m beginning to think that I’ve wasted enough of my youth on a dead relationship—’
His stunning bone structure was now visible below his bronzed skin, his potent tension patent in his set jaw line and the stillness of his tall muscular body. ‘It’s not dead—’
‘Right at this minute it feels like it’s as dead as a dodo,’ Jemima pronounced, spelling out that comparison in defiant disagreement. ‘I shouldn’t be wasting time here on you. I should be getting a divorce and looking for a man who really wants me…not some guy tearing us both apart over an affair that never happened!’
‘I really want you,’ Alejandro bit out in raw dissent. ‘I won’t agree to a divorce.’
‘Can’t live with me, can’t live without me,’ Jemima parried shakily, fighting to get a grip on her flailing emotions. ‘But I can get by without you. I’ve proved it. I had a good life in Charlbury St Helen’s…’
His well-shaped mouth curled into a sardonic smile. ‘But not so good that you weren’t prepared to walk away from all of it to come back to a life of luxury with me!’
Turning pale with rage at that taunt, Jemima trembled. ‘I only came back here to try again for Alfie’s benefit. Don’t you dare try to make out that I’m some sort of gold-digger!’
Silence fell like a blanket and it seemed to use up all the available oxygen as Jemima waited impatiently for him to take back that final taunt. He stared steadily back at her as if she had got what she deserved in that exchange and, in a way, she supposed she had. Her refusal to embrace the role of the disgraced wife caught out in adultery lay between them, an obstacle neither of them could overcome. Alejandro was very proud, but he might have managed to come to terms with what he believed she had done had she enabled him to believe that she was truly sorry. In the absence of that development there was no natural way forward and both of them were stuck in their respective opposite corners.
Her small face stiff, Jemima threw him a look of angry reproach. ‘I never wanted you for your money,’ she told him heatedly. ‘I may have got in a bit of a mess and spent more money than I should have done when we were first married, but it wasn’t done out of greed and there was never any plan to rip you off.’
His brilliant gaze was intent but wary and locked to her every changing expression. ‘I can believe that,’ he said, surprising her with that declaration of faith.
‘I am really sorry about the money—I was stupid,’ Jemima admitted, warming to a topic that she could be honest about on at least one level. She had indeed been stupid: she had thrown away thousands and thousands of pounds and yet she still could not bring herself to tell him what she had done with it.
Alejandro took a jerky step forward. ‘It was a case of bad timing. My business enterprises were over-extended. The winds of recession were howling around us and I was struggling to just hold onto what I had. It was the worst possible moment for you to go mad with money…but then I shouldn’t have left you access to so much of it.’
Jemima was breathing rapidly and by the time he had finished speaking her lower lip had dropped fully away from the upper while she gaped at him in unconcealed astonishment. ‘Are you saying that you had financial problems a couple of years ago when we were still living together?’ she gasped in disbelief. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
Alejandro’s handsome mouth compressed into a wry line. ‘I didn’t want to worry you…’
Her wide eyes prickled with a sudden hot rush of spontaneous tears. ‘But I thought you were so rich,’ she framed before she could think better of using that immature phraseology.
‘I know. I knew you hadn’t a clue there was anything to worry about,’ Alejandro murmured ruefully. ‘But the truth is that my father left so much money to my stepmother and Marco when he died that up until quite recently it was a struggle for me just to keep the estate afloat.’
Jemima was shaking her head slowly back and forth in a negative motion. She could not hide how shocked she was by what he had confessed. ‘I had no idea. You really should have told me, Alejandro. In fact, not only did you not tell me there was a problem, you seemed to go out of your way to throw loads of money and expensive gifts at me,’ she reminded him tautly. ‘Why the heck did you do that?’
‘You wanted the whole fairy tale along with the castle and I very much wanted you to have it as well,’ Alejandro admitted with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘How could I tell you that I was in danger of losing it all?’
‘All the hours you were working, turning night into day…you were never at home,’ she muttered unsteadily, fighting to hold the tears back with all her might. ‘You were trying to keep your businesses afloat?’
‘Yes, and the extra work did pay off in one regard. I secured new contracts and in the end the financial tide turned, but by then it was too late: I had lost my wife,’ Alejandro intoned bleakly.
Her generous mouth wobbled at that reminder. She wanted to hug him, but at the same time she wanted to slap him really hard for keeping secrets from her. He had treated her like a fragile little girl who couldn’t cope with the grown up stuff when, in actuality, she had never been that naïve even as a child. She was appalled to appreciate that he had undertaken such a struggle and worked such long thankless hours while she went out on endless shopping trips and went out at night clubbing with Marco.
‘Alejandro…if you had told me the truth, shared the bad stuff with me instead of leaving me in ignorance, things would have been so very different,’ Jemima breathed unevenly, tears rolling down her cheeks unchecked until she dashed a hand across her face in an embarrassed gesture and sniffed furiously. ‘I would’ve understood. I would have made allowances.’
Alejandro braced a hand to her slender spine and pressed her back indoors where he handed her a tissue. ‘I’m not sure anything would have been different. You were very young and naïve and y
ou were already pregnant and unhappy and at the time I don’t think you could have coped with any more stress.’
He was wrong, but she didn’t argue with him because she was too choked up to do so. She knew that as much as anything else his fierce pride would have prevented him from telling her that he had financial problems. He was an old-fashioned guy and he had always seen it as solely his role to provide for her needs. He had loved to spoil her with unexpected gifts and treats, to give her the frills he knew she had never had before she met him. She could have cried her heart out in that instant for all she had truly wanted from him two years earlier were his precious time and attention, not his wealth or what it could buy her.
‘I didn’t expect you to be my superhero all the time,’ Jemima told him awkwardly, her voice hoarse as she dabbed at her damp cheeks. ‘If you’d confided in me, I would never have spent so much time with your brother. I felt neglected. I thought you regretted marrying me and you were bored and that that’s why you never came home.’
‘It never would have occurred to me that telling you I was on the brink of losing everything, including our home, might save my marriage,’ Alejandro confided, his cynical doubt in that likelihood unconcealed.
‘Well, that just goes to show how very little you know about me. I’m very loyal and I would have stuck by you through thick and thin!’ Jemima claimed proudly.
‘But in those days I think you had much more in common with my fun-loving brother,’ Alejandro murmured with a derisive edge to his dark deep drawl.
‘I wasn’t that shallow.’ Although she was back in control of her emotions and composed again, Jemima’s fingers still bit into the damp tissue clutched between her fingers. She had really, really loved him two years earlier and she wished he could at least accept that the love had been genuine and real, even if it hadn’t proved strong enough to withstand the misfortunes that had engulfed them both. ‘But you didn’t give me the chance to be anything else.’
Casting a last lingering look at his breathtakingly handsome features from below damp feathery lashes, Jemima walked back up to bed without another word. Her mobile phone was flashing on the dressing table and she lifted it. She had missed one phone call and there were two text messages. One was from Beatriz, saying that she hoped that Jemima didn’t mind her having given her brother her phone number. The second text and the missed call were from Marco and she jerked in shock when she realised that he had actually dared to get in touch with her again.
Must see you to talk. Urgent, ran his message.
Jemima deleted the text with stabbing fingers and tossed the phone down again. Marco had to be joking. In the current climate she was not prepared to take the risk of seeing him again even if she did have questions of her own to ask. My goodness, wouldn’t Alejandro just love that? The last thing her marriage needed was more fuel for the same fire.
The door opened, startling her. She froze when she saw Alejandro and then she slid out of bed like an eel and sped over to him, wrapping her arms round his neck and letting her head fall back as he meshed one strong hand into the depths of her pale hair and kissed her breathless.
‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ she confided, heart thrumming like a plucked string on a violin, the full effect pulsing through her entire body along with her intense relief that he had not stayed away from her.
‘Dios mio! Living apart won’t help us. Been there, done that, querida,’ he reminded her darkly. ‘We might as well have been living in different houses while you were pregnant with Alfie. It made everything worse.’
Her generous mouth swollen from the onslaught of his, Jemima got back into bed. His arrival had already made her feel two hundred per cent happier. ‘Well, that was your choice, not mine,’ she traded cheekily.
His ebony brows pleated as he shed his suit. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s choice, it was a necessity.’
‘How was it a necessity?’ she questioned once he had emerged from the bathroom and joined her in bed.
‘Right from the start, Dr Santos was afraid you would miscarry. He was quite frank with me. You are very small and slightly built and it was obvious early on that what we thought was one baby was going to be big. I didn’t stay happy that you were pregnant for very long,’ Alejandro admitted heavily, his arm tightening round her to pull her closer. ‘I felt hugely guilty for putting you at risk.’
‘I wasn’t at risk.’
‘I felt that you were and with my own mother having died from complications in childbirth it was not a matter I could ever take lightly.’
Jemima mulled that over, registering that her obstetrician had been more honest with her husband than he had been with her. Or had he been? Her Spanish had been less fluent in those days and it was perfectly possible that she had misunderstood some of what he told her, picking up only the gist rather than the full meaning of his advice. That he had shared his apprehension with Alejandro, however, was news to her and that Alejandro had been seriously worried about her was also a surprise. Suddenly she frowned as she made another deduction.
‘Are you saying that you stopped making love to me because Dr Santos warned you off?’
‘Why else would I have stopped?’ Alejandro growled soft and low in her ear, tugging her back into the heat of his long, hard body. Her nostrils flared on the husky scent of his skin and she quivered with awareness. ‘I used another bedroom, not only because I was keeping late hours and didn’t want to waken you but also because I didn’t trust myself in the same bed with you any more.’
‘You should’ve explained—I had no idea.’
‘I was present when the doctor warned you that you would have to be very careful indeed if you wanted the pregnancy to go to term. You had already had some bleeding,’ he reminded her grimly. ‘I know I didn’t discuss it with you but what was there to say? We didn’t have a choice.’
She pressed her mouth in silent apology against a bare bronzed shoulder. Consternation had a strong grip on her. She was shaken by how badly she had misjudged his past behaviour. She had viewed everything through the distorting prism of her unhappiness and insecurity and two and two had seemed to make four but she had added up the facts incorrectly. Alejandro had not been bored with her. He had not deliberately neglected her either. At a difficult time he had simply done the best that he could for the two of them, while her behaviour had only added to their problems. That acknowledgement shamed her and made her appreciate just how much she had grown up since then.
‘Let’s make an agreement,’ Alejandro breathed in a measured undertone above her head. ‘You stay away from Marco. You don’t speak to him, you don’t see him. That will keep the peace.’
Jemima had stiffened, taken aback by that proposition coming at her out of the blue. She drew in a quivering breath. ‘All right…if that’s what you want.’
‘That’s how it has to be,’ Alejandro countered in a tone of finality.
‘I’m not arguing. I couldn’t care less. It’s not a problem,’ she muttered in a small voice.
The tension in his big powerful frame eased and he smoothed a soothing hand over her hair. ‘Go to sleep,’ he intoned huskily. ‘If you don’t, you’ll be too tired to join me for breakfast in the morning. I’m leaving early for a board meeting in Seville.’
That he was already planning breakfast in her company made her smile. She was remembering the hot sexual passion of the afternoon in the hotel room, but lying in his arms there in their own bed felt so much more intimate and significant. Even after news that neither one of them had wanted to hear, they were still together. The agreement Alejandro had demanded warned her that she would be walking a knife edge if she defied him, but she had no such intention. Marco might be home, but she was not prepared to allow him to damage her marriage a second time.
The following morning, Alejandro left her enjoying her coffee on the roof and Alfie went downstairs with Placida so that their son could watch his father’s helicopter take off from the front lawn. Jemima was still sitting outsi
de, lightly clad in a cotton sundress, when Beatriz came up to join her. Her sister-in-law looked strained.
‘Was I wrong to give Marco your cell-phone number last night?’ the brunette prompted anxiously. ‘He was so eager for the chance to speak to you that when he pressed me, I didn’t know what to do for best.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t want to speak to him,’ Jemima admitted quietly.
‘But if you and Marco talked and then you talked to Alejandro, maybe all this bad feeling could be put away,’ Beatriz suggested with unconcealed hope. ‘The way things are now is very awkward for all of us and it’s only going to get more difficult once word gets out that Marco is home again. Our relatives and neighbours will soon start including him in their invitations. Nobody outside these walls is aware that my brothers are at odds with each other—’
‘How can that be? I assumed your stepmother would have told tales about me everywhere after I left Spain to go home,’ Jemima admitted with an expressive shudder.
‘Not when she believed her son might have been involved with you. Doña Hortencia is very proud of the family name and her goal was to protect Marco’s reputation, rather than yours,’ Beatriz told her ruefully. ‘She’s hoping that now he’s home he’ll find a girl to marry.’
Jemima stiffened at that comment. ‘Your stepmother might have quite a long wait.’
Was that an answering glint of amusement in her sister-in-law’s dark eyes? It was there and then it was gone and Jemima wondered if she had imagined it. Not for the first time Jemima wondered just how much Beatriz might know about her younger brother’s life. The habit of silence, however, kept her quiet for she could not credit that Beatriz might know what Alejandro did not even appear to suspect. It was never easy to tell with Beatriz, though, because the brunette was always very discreet and cautious even with her own family. Beatriz liked to mind her own business and steer clear of trouble, but lately it had come to light that she could also stand up for herself when she had to. She had helped her stepmother move into her very comfortable house on the estate and had withstood the storm of being accused of ingratitude and selfishness when she’d revealed that she was planning to stay on below her brother’s roof. Jemima valued the other woman’s friendship and wished that she could have confided in her. She missed Flora’s company and chatter, she acknowledged ruefully, and wondered if her friend would be able to come out to Spain for a visit any time soon.