Naive Bride , Defiant Wife

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Long before we were married. That time you decided that if I was seeing other women you would see another man,’ he specified.

  Undaunted by the reminder, Jemima tilted her chin. ‘That was fair enough,’ she commented.

  ‘You were in the street, smiling at him the same way you smiled at me and he was holding your hand,’ Alejandro recalled, his dark eyes brooding with remembered hostility and recoil. ‘I couldn’t stand it. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done to get him out of your life! But that predilection for jealousy stayed with me. It’s in my nature.’

  She remembered how fast their relationship had become exclusive once Alejandro had realised that the agreement had to cut both ways. But it was news to her that his demon jealousy had continued to dog him.

  In the simmering silence, Alejandro clenched his hands into powerful fists. He sent her a burning look of condemnation from below the fringe of his lush black lashes. ‘If you want honesty, I’ll give it to you. I hated you spending so much time with my brother three years ago. I tried very hard to be reasonable about it. I knew I was working too many hours. I knew you were bored and unhappy, but you and Marco got on too well. You seemed so close. Of course it bothered me at a time when our marriage was under strain. I thought I was losing you. Naturally I began to believe that you had more than a platonic friendship going with my brother.’

  ‘Even though I was pregnant with Alfie and was as sick as a dog for weeks on end?’ Jemima pressed, keen to bring him to an awareness of how far-fetched his fears had been in the circumstances.

  ‘Your friendship with Marco started months before that. He was always seeking you out, phoning you, sharing secret jokes with you…’

  ‘I suppose we were too close for comfort. He told me his big secret that he was gay and it made me feel privileged,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘I just didn’t realise that you could be jealous of me because you never let me see it.’

  ‘I was too proud to show you my Achilles’ heel. But the jealousy tortured me and twisted the way I saw everything,’ he revealed in a roughened admission. ‘I thought you were taunting me with your preference for Marco’s company.’

  Jemima swallowed and then spoke up even though she didn’t want to speak up on that angle. ‘There was an element of that in my attitude. I so wanted your attention. I thought that if you saw how much Marco liked being with me it might make you want to spend more time with me,’ she confessed unhappily. T didn’t know that you were working so hard because you were trying to keep your businesses afloat. I thought you were bored with me.’

  ‘I felt many things when we were first married but boredom never featured for even five minutes,’ Alejandro revealed with a look of sardonic amusement marking his lean, darkly handsome features.

  In the moonlight, which silvered his bronzed skin and accentuated the angles and hollows of his sculptured face, his sheer masculine beauty took her breath away. It crossed her mind that she now loved him much more deeply than she had when she first married him. She saw the man and his flaws. He wasn’t perfect but it didn’t matter because neither was she. But all that truly mattered to her just then was that he had never stopped wanting her before or after their marriage. Jealousy, assuming he could keep it within bounds, well, she could live with it by understanding that all that deep dark emotion of his had to occasionally find the wrong outlet.

  ‘Why were you drinking?’ she asked him worriedly.

  Alejandro released a bleak laugh that was like a cold hand trailing down her spine. He settled haunted dark eyes on her, his tension unrelieved by their discussion. ‘I let you down. I let you down in every way that mattered. You were my wife and, instead of supporting you and caring for you, I accused you of sleeping with my brother. Then I drove you away.’

  ‘But now you know the truth.’

  ‘And like many truths, it’s not one I will enjoy living with.’ Lean, powerful face grim, he yanked off his shirt in a physical move that startled her and strode past her, his steps even, his head high as though the very act of having had to talk to her had sobered him up. ‘I need a shower.’

  And Jemima went back to bed and lay awake waiting for him, but wherever he went to wash it wasn’t in the en suite bathroom that adjoined the master bedroom. And wherever he slept it was not with her.

  The next morning, however, it was business as usual for Alejandro. There was not a hint of the night’s excesses visible in his crackling vitality and immaculately dressed appearance or, indeed, in his light and courteous conversation over breakfast. He’d made arrangements for the car she had driven to Seville to be returned to the estate and they left for the airfield and the short flight home. Alfie came running out into the garden to greet his parents and Alejandro snatched his son off his feet and hugged him close with an unashamed affection that touched Jemima’s heart while making her crave the same treatment. Why were pride and perfection so important to Alejandro? Why could she accept his faults and live with them so much more easily than he could hers? She hadn’t expected a perfect man and she hadn’t got one. A more enlightened husband willing to accept that there was a learning curve in their marriage was the very best she could reasonably hope for. The difference between them was that she was already happy with the balance they had achieved now that he knew the truth about her supposed ‘affair’.

  It was the very next day that she received her second phone call from her father. She was with Alejandro when the call arrived and she excused herself to take it.

  ‘It’s normal for a man to expect his daughter to help him out,’ Stephen Grey told her in a self-pitying whine. ‘I’m not long out of prison, times are tough…’

  ‘Have you tried to find work?’ Jemima enquired flatly.

  ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘You’ve never worked, never tried to keep yourself honestly. I’m not giving you any money this time.’

  ‘How can you be so selfish? You’re married to a very rich man. I’ve done my homework on him. You can afford to be generous—’

  ‘I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life being blackmailed by you. I’ve said no. You’re out of luck. I’m not giving you a single euro of my husband’s hard-earned cash. For a start, it’s not mine to give,’ Jemima asserted with cold clarity, and she replaced the phone receiver the instant she heard the warning rumble of her father’s abusive response beginning.

  She felt hot with shame when she recalled how she had first given way to her father’s threats almost three years earlier, recklessly and fearfully handing over cash that she now knew Alejandro had not been able to afford just to keep the older man silent. Now she was calling Stephen Grey’s bluff while dreading the prospect that he might go to the newspapers to reveal their relationship. The sleazy tale of her father’s criminality and her unsavoury background and upbringing could only embarrass Alejandro and his family.

  ‘Who was that on the phone?’ Alejandro asked when she joined him and her son in the swimming pool, her slender body fetchingly clad in a ruffled apricot bikini.

  ‘Oh, just someone from home.’ Jemima struggled to telegraph casualness and lifted and dropped a thin shoulder while feeling the stiff discomfiture of virtually lying to him handicapping her pretence. ‘Nobody important.’

  It seemed to her that Alejandro’s dark golden eyes rested on her a little longer than they need have done but, mercifully, he said nothing and went back to the task of teaching Alfie to swim. Very much a water baby, her son paddled over to her and giggled as he splashed her. The movement of the water was like cool silk lapping against Jemima’s overheated skin. She rested back against the side and took in the sweeping view of the lush valley encircled by the snow-capped peaks. Her marriage had a horizon and a future again. She was not about to let go of that without a fight.

  In the week that followed, Alejandro went out of his way to spend time with her and Alfie but, even though he returned to the marital bed, he didn’t make love to her again. They dined out twice and on the second occ
asion he gave her a fabulous diamond ring just before they went out.

  ‘What is this for?’ she asked helplessly over dinner, watching the light flash blindingly on the glittering jewel and knowing that such magnificence must have cost at least two arms and a leg.

  His ebony brows drew together, his dark golden eyes level. ‘You’re my wife. It’s natural for me to want to give you gifts.’

  ‘As long as it’s not your guilty conscience talking,’ Jemima cut in uncomfortably. ‘You don’t need to buy me, Alejandro. You already have me.’

  ‘Do I? That’s not something I would like to take for granted. You like pretty things,’ he drawled softly. And I like giving them to you. I always did.’

  Jemima turned a guilty pink. ‘I had a fairly dismal childhood and I suppose I’m still making up for what I didn’t get then.’

  ‘You never talk about your childhood.’

  Jemima tensed and shrugged, fixing a bright smile to her full mouth that felt hopelessly false. ‘There’s not much to talk about. We were always short of money and my parents didn’t get on very well. It certainly wasn’t a marriage made in heaven.’

  ‘I seem to recall you telling me that your mother died in a car crash.’

  ‘Yes. It was a sad time,’ she said quickly, striving to steer him away from further discussion in that line because she did not want to be forced to tell him any more untruths. Somehow lies told in the past when they had seemed to have no relevance bothered her less than the prospect of having to tell more in the present.

  After a stressful week, her nerves were still on a cliff edge of doubt, fear and uncertainty with regard to the future. Her father had phoned twice more, one call arriving when she was out and the second proving to be more or less a repeat of the first one she had received, in which he bemoaned his financial state, urged her to be generous and threatened to come and visit her in Spain. The last time Stephen Grey had insisted on being paid in untraceable cash, and although Jemima had sworn she would not pay blackmail money again, she knew to the last pound sterling how much money she had in her bank account, and also had a very good idea of how much of a breathing space it would buy her from her father’s persistent demands.

  ‘I’ve decided to meet up with Marco this weekend,’ Alejandro told her. ‘I don’t think he’s going to speak to me of his own free will, but I did want to give him the opportunity to make the first approach.’

  ‘Give him some more time,’ Jemima suggested.

  ‘I can’t, tesora mia,’ Alejandro countered, his lean, strong face shadowing. ‘I have to deal with him. This feud has gone on long enough, though I can see that it suited Marco to keep us all at a distance. By the way, Beatriz knows.’

  ‘I suspected that she might,’ Jemima confided.

  ‘She knew for a fact that Dario was gay and worked it out from there. But, being Beatriz, she said nothing to anyone for fear of causing offence,’ Alejandro remarked wryly. ‘I could wish she had been less scrupulous. Is it the prospect of my confronting Marco which is making you so jumpy?’

  Jemima tensed, violet eyes veiling. ‘Jumpy?’

  ‘This past week I’ve often had the feeling that you’re worrying about something. I assure you that I have no plans to have a huge messy row with my brother. It’s a little late for that.’

  Taken aback that he had noticed that she was living on her nerves, Jemima nodded and tried to look unconcerned.

  ‘For the sake of the family I’ll keep it under control, but I don’t think I could ever forgive him for what he allowed me to believe,’ he admitted squarely.

  ‘Let it go with Marco. It’s all in the past and over and done with,’ Jemima pointed out just before she climbed out of the car outside the castle.

  Alejandro closed a possessive arm round her on the stairs. The tangy scent of his citrus-based aftershave flared her nostrils and sent a flood of helpless awareness travelling to the more sensitive parts of her body. Unfortunately that was as close as he came to instigating a more intimate connection. Later she lay in bed about a foot away from him and wondered why he was still keeping his distance. Of course she could have bridged the gap, but why risk rocking the boat when she was already so stressed and feeling far from daring? Even during the night hours she was always somehow waiting for another phone call to destroy her peace of mind.

  On the surface, though, most things were now fine in their marriage and she was determined to accept that without looking for pitfalls and pressures that might not exist. After all, her one and only real problem was Stephen Grey and what he might do. She told herself that if she continued to stand up to her father, he would eventually give up and leave her alone.

  So, Alejandro had never said that he loved her and he probably never would, she reflected ruefully. Well, that was life. You couldn’t have everything and what you did get was rarely perfect. He was making a real effort to make her happy and he was also proving to be a terrific father. It didn’t get much better than that, she bargained with herself, determined not to succumb to taking for granted what she did have in favour of craving the one thing she couldn’t have. She had always loved him, had learned to get by without him when their marriage failed, but now she was older and wiser and she knew that no other man could make her feel as good about herself or as happy as Alejandro did without even trying very hard.

  In the week that followed it seemed to Jemima that Alejandro was angling at winning some ‘perfect husband’ award. Even though he disliked nightclubs, he took her out in Seville and they stayed over in the apartment there. They had a picnic down by the castle lake in the shelter of the trees with Alfie on what felt like the hottest day of the year and she paddled at the water’s edge with her son chuckling in her arms. In the cool of the evening they dined out on the terrace, a practice that Dona Hortencia had once dismissed as too common and undignified to even be considered.

  At a family party held at Alejandro’s uncle’s home on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Marco and Dario put in an appearance as a couple and Doña Hortencia claimed that she was ill and left early, while everyone else pretended not to have noticed anything in the least bit unusual. Jemima was asked if she would do the flowers for a cousin’s wedding and Marco let it be known that he and his partner were heading back to New York that weekend. Doña Hortencia was popularly held to be prostrate with relief at the news that the closet door could be closed again. Marco, on the other hand, informed Jemima that his mother had taken the news without comment; she was certainly annoyed with him but was still giving him his allowance. He also confessed that he was surprised by his older brother’s continuing coolness towards him, an admission that made Dario Ortini, who was more sensitive, glance at Jemima in some embarrassment.

  The next morning, Jemima was making some notes of her ideas for the flowers for the family wedding when Maria announced a visitor in an unusually anxious and apologetic tone.

  Even while she was frowning in surprise at the sound of the housekeeper’s strained voice, Jemima was truly appalled to scramble upright and see her father walking into the huge salon as bold as brass. While not tall, he was a broadly built man. With his shaven head and diamond ear studs, not to mention a purple and pink striped sports shirt, Stephen Grey was quite a sight to his daughter’s dismayed eyes.

  ‘This place is in the back of beyond. I had to pay a taxi a fortune to get up here!’ he complained, sweeping the beautifully furnished room with assessing eyes that were striving to tot up the price of everything he could see. ‘I hope you’re planning to make coming out to Spain worth my while!’

  Mastering her consternation at the older man’s appearance, Jemima sucked in a deep steadying breath. She was grateful that Alejandro was out on the estate and unlikely to return before evening. ‘What are you doing here? I asked you to leave me alone.’

  His bloodshot blue eyes hardened. ‘You’ve got no business talking to me like that, Jem!’ he retorted furiously, his voice rising steeply. ‘I brought you into the world a
nd raised you and I expect you to treat me with proper respect.’

  Jemima was very pale but she didn’t back off, even though he was too close and too loud for comfort. ‘After the way you treated me and my mother, I don’t owe you the time of day,’ she argued with an anger she couldn’t hide. ‘You washed your hands of me when I was only a teenager. My son and I have a good life here and I’m not about to let you ruin it for me.’

  ‘Aw…will your fancy-pants Spanish Count be too much of a snob to keep you, once he knows what stock you’re from?’ Stephen Grey sneered, strolling over to the fireplace to lift a miniature portrait off the wall beside it and give the delicate gold and pearl-studded frame an intent scrutiny.

  Alarm ran through Jemima as she watched. ‘Please put that back. It’s very old…’

  The older man sent her a knowing look. ‘It must be worth a packet on the antique market, then. If you can’t help me with some cash like the last time, you can at least close your eyes while I help myself to a few little items that I can sell’

  ‘No!’ Jemima shot back at him, crossing the pastel embroidered rug to stand in front of him. ‘You can’t have it. Give it back to me!’

  The older man slid the portrait into his pocket and studied her with scorn. ‘Mind your own business, why don’t you? Either I take some stuff now or I come back some night with a few mates and we help ourselves to a good deal more.’

  ‘If there’s ever a burglary here, I will tell Alejandro about you.’

  Stephen Grey loosed a derisive laugh. ‘You won’t! You’ll do anything to keep that husband of yours in ignorance. You’re the one who set a price on keeping the truth from him.’

  ‘Yes, and I was very wrong. I understand that now,’ Jemima conceded painfully. ‘Now give me that miniature back before I call the police—’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare call the police!’ he bit out with smug assurance.

  In a complete panic because she was afraid that he might be right on that score and its potential for extreme embarrassment, Jemima tried to slide a hand into his pocket to retrieve the miniature portrait from him. He struck her shoulder with a big clenched fist to push her out of his way and she went flying off her feet and fell backwards across the coffee table. A startled yelp escaped her as she struck her head against a wooden chair leg and she lay in a heap, momentarily in a daze, one hand flying up to the bump at the back of her head.