by Lynne Graham
There was a loud noise as the door burst open and then an outburst of strident Spanish. An instant later, Alejandro was lifting Jemima bodily up off the floor, settling her down with care on a sofa and demanding to know how she had got hurt.
‘He’s my father and he’s threatening me,’ Jemima whispered dizzily, way beyond trying to cover up the sordid scene and present it other than how it was. ‘He has one of the portrait miniatures in his pocket and he hit me when I tried to get it back off him.’
‘Now you listen ‘ere,’ her parent began loudly.
‘The portrait first,’ Alejandro murmured flatly, extending an authoritative hand.
Scowling, the older man dug the item out and passed it over. Blinking, her head pounding less from the blow she had sustained than from the thud of the unbearable tension, Jemima watched her husband return it to the wall. She saw her father lean close and say something to Alejandro and a split second later, and to her intense shock, Alejandro swung round and punched her father hard. The older man reeled back with a gasp of pain while Alejandro flung open the door and told him to get out before he brought the police in. Two vineyard workers were waiting outside and, at a word from Alejandro, they marched in and propelled Stephen Grey, struggling and vociferously complaining, out of the room.
‘How on earth did you know what was happening in here?’ Jemima demanded shakily.
‘He frightened Maria by forcing his way in to see you. She didn’t like the look of him or the way he spoke to her. I was at the vineyard and she phoned me immediately to warn me that there might be trouble.’
‘I suppose you’ll never forgive me now for not telling you the truth,’ Jemima mumbled shakily as Alejandro sank down beside her to turn her head and gently examine the slight swelling at the back of her head. ‘But when we first met I no longer had any contact with my father and I pretended he was dead rather than tell you about his history.’
Alejandro released his breath on a slow hiss. T think I can understand why.’
‘He has a criminal record as long as your arm,’ Jemima confided. And then she stopped trying to pick her words and the whole sorry story of her childhood came tumbling out: her father’s violence and long stays in prison, her mother’s alcoholism and the toxic atmosphere in their home.
‘That you had found a decent job for yourself and were fully independent when we first met says much more about your character than the accident of birth that gave you your parents,’ Alejandro told her with quiet confidence. ‘I’m not stupid. I always knew that there were things you were choosing not to talk about and I wish I had dug deeper but it never seemed important enough to me. I wanted you as my wife whoever you were and regardless of what background you came from…’
Jemima looked at him through tear-filled eyes, her emotions swelling and overflowing in the aftermath of that nasty, distressing confrontation with her father. ‘Honestly?’
‘Walking away was never an option for me. I met you and that was that—it was a done deal. Do you remember the weekends we spent together at the house I rented near the hotel where you worked?’ Alejandro queried, dark eyes intent on her troubled face as she nodded uncertainly. ‘Those weekends were some of the happiest of my life and I could never have let you go after that.’
‘But when we were first seeing each other you kept on breaking dates or not phoning when you said you would.’
Alejandro groaned. ‘I regret the way I behaved but, right from the start, I was fighting what I felt for you. It was unnerving to want you so much. I wasn’t ready to settle down. After what I’d suffered through my father’s obsession with his second wife, I was determined not to fall in love either.’
‘The differences between us bothered you.’
‘Until I began to see that those differences meant that we complemented each other. After that month when we were broken up, when we were first dating, I knew just how necessary you were to my peace of mind,’ Alejandro admitted tautly, his lean, strong face grave. ‘You were like no other woman I had ever met and I was fascinated.’
‘I thought…’ Jemima breathed in deep and went ahead and said it anyway. ‘I thought that for you it was just sex.’
‘Just sex would have been easier to deal with,’ Alejandro quipped. ‘I didn’t know at the time that you were my soul mate, I only knew that I wanted you in my life every day and not just on the weekends I could travel to England. When I was away from you I missed you so much that the only option left was to make you my wife.’
‘It didn’t seem like that then. You never mentioned needing me that much.’
‘Of course, I didn’t, preciosa mia. I was trying to play it cool and I never will be into sharing my every waking thought,’ he pointed out wryly. ‘But the point is that I stopped seeing other women so that I could have you all to myself, and the more I saw of you, the more I wanted you to be mine. It’s my fault that you didn’t feel you could tell me about your background—obviously I didn’t make you feel secure enough.’
‘Even before I met you I was telling people when they asked that both my parents were dead—it was easier than telling the truth,’ she admitted. ‘That’s where some of the money I ran through went two years ago. Dad was threatening to go to the newspapers and tell all to embarrass you.’
‘It won’t embarrass me. Let him do his worst if he must,’ Alejandro responded with immense assurance. And don’t be upset if he carries out his threats. Most people will only have a passing interest in the fact that your father is a jailbird. So, you allowed him to blackmail you when we were first married?’
‘Yes. I thought you’d be ashamed of me if you found out the truth of the kind of home I was from. You’d have to go back a generation to find any respectable relatives.’
Alejandro closed two hands over hers and held her fast. ‘I just wish that you’d told me that you were being threatened and that you’d given me the chance to sort him out for you. Your father is like most bullies—once he saw that I wasn’t afraid of him or what he might do, he was weak.’
‘You must hate me, though, for giving all that money to him and wasting it,’ Jemima reasoned, pale with shame and discomfiture.
‘You were foolish. You could have trusted me even then.’ Alejandro gazed down at her with dark eyes filled with regret. ‘But I do appreciate that I wasn’t a good enough husband in those days to inspire you with that trust. Without it, you were lost and your father got a stranglehold on you instead.’
‘He’s the other reason why I walked out then,’ Jemima confided abruptly. ‘It wasn’t just your suspicions about my relationship with Marco, it was the fact that I also couldn’t see an end to my father’s demands for money. I just felt our marriage was cursed and that the best thing I could do was walk away from it.’
‘The best thing you could have done was confide in me. I wouldn’t let anyone harm you ever again,’ Alejandro swore with conviction. ‘But I made too much of a habit of feeling and thinking things that I didn’t then share with you and that’s one very good reason why our marriage broke down.’
Jemima looked up into his somber, darkly handsome face and stretched up to kiss him. For an instant he stiffened and then he kissed her back with such passionate fervour that she gasped beneath the onslaught. Her heart thumping like a piston, she pressed her hot face against his shoulder and struggled to catch her breath again. ‘I was starting to think that you were never going to kiss me again.’
‘I was playing safe by making no demands.’
Jemima looked blank. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Our agreement that we give our marriage a three-month trial,’ Alejandro reminded her grimly. ‘The three months were up this week and there you were acting strangely. Naturally, I thought that you were on edge because you were thinking of leaving me again and were worrying about how to go about it and retain custody of Alfie.’
Jemima was frowning. ‘My word, I totally forgot about the three-month thing!’
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�You forgot?’ Alejandro exclaimed with incredulous emphasis. ‘How could you forget an agreement like that? It’s been haunting me ever since I was stupid enough to say yes to it.’
‘Oh, so that’s why you took me dancing,’ Jemima guessed with a sudden giggle of appreciation.
‘I got so much wrong in my relationship with you I had to make an effort to get some things right,’ Alejandro pointed out darkly, his dignity clearly under threat from her growing amusement. ‘I was scared that you had decided to return to England.’
Jemima rested a hand on his shirtfront, spreading her fingers to feel the solid pound of his heart and the heat of his muscular torso through the fine cotton. ‘I want you for ever,’ she told him without hesitation.
His hand covered hers. ‘For ever?’ he questioned with a frown.
‘Like the castle in the fairy tale. For ever and ever…I’m greedy, I want it all.’
‘All I want is you,’ Alejandro confided in a roughened undertone. ‘All I’ve ever wanted is you. I love you very much.’
Her heart leapt but so did her eyebrows. ‘Since when?’ she asked, initially suspicious of the claim.
‘Since very soon after I met you, only I didn’t want to admit it even to myself because it made me feel so powerless, querida,’ he confided heavily.
‘But you never told me that you loved me then.’
‘I was stingy with the words,’ Alejandro admitted ruefully. ‘But why do you think I married you? We were dynamite in bed together, but I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t felt a great deal more for you. I was crushed when you walked out on our marriage.’
‘Maybe it was for the best.’ Jemima sighed, her violet eyes pools of deep reflective emotion. ‘I needed to grow up a lot. I was too immature for you.’
‘I knew you were too young to get married, but I couldn’t face waiting any longer for you. I wouldn’t even wait long enough for my stepmother to organise a wedding for us,’ he pointed out.
‘I didn’t even know that that was ever an option.’
‘It wasn’t once I realised how long the arrangements would take. I was counting the days until I could bring you back to Spain. That’s why I opted for a quick ceremony in England.’
For the first time she began believing in what he was telling her and a wondering smile lit up her face. ‘We rushed into getting married…’
‘But with the very best of intentions,’ he traded. ‘Don’t ever walk out on me again.’
‘I won’t.’ Jemima hesitated as a long-suppressed thought occurred to her and then spoke up. ‘After I left were there other women…affairs?’
‘No. I told myself I would wait until I was divorced,’ Alejandro extended. ‘But I didn’t want anyone else. I still wanted you.’
‘There wasn’t anyone else for me either,’ Jemima volunteered.
He framed her cheekbones with long brown fingers and regarded her intently. ‘Don’t ever leave me again.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she declared, and then she blushed. ‘Apart from, well, if you should feel like it, our bedroom.’
It took a moment for Alejandro to grasp that invitation and then he wasted no time in vaulting upright and grasping her hand. ‘Shouldn’t I take you to a doctor to get that bruise on your head checked?’
‘It’s a bump and I saw stars for an instant, that’s all. What I really want…’
‘I’m more than ready to give you, preciosa mia,’ Alejandro intoned with raging enthusiasm, pausing only to bundle her into his arms and mount the stairs with her clasped to his chest like a valued gift.
But Jessica had yet to forgive him for those nights she had lain awake wondering. ‘I was worried that, maybe, as far as you were concerned, the passion had gone off the boil…’
‘I’m on the boil round the clock!’ Alejandro contradicted with a feeling groan, shouldering open the bedroom door and tumbling her down on the bed with an impressive amount of energy. ‘I always want you.’
And he discarded her clothes and his in an untidy heap while he stole hot, hungry kisses from her willing mouth. His hands found her swollen breasts, the tender peaks and the moist heat between her legs. Seconds later he plunged into her and the intensity of her response hit fever pitch. Her orgasm roared up through her like an unstoppable fountain of burning sparks. She came apart in his arms, crying out her wild hot pleasure.
‘Is this the optimum moment to tell you that I forgot to use a condom, mi corazón?’ Alejandro drawled, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to catch his breath in the aftermath.
Jemima froze, thought about the possible consequences and then gave him a great big sunny smile because he had called her, ‘my heart’. ‘I suppose it must be because I forgot as well.’
‘I would love to have another baby with you,’ Alejandro husked, his dark golden eyes full of tenderness as he kissed her and held her close with possessive arms. ‘I would like it very much indeed.’
‘We could always try.’
Alejandro lifted his dark head and looked down at her with a heart stopping grin that made her feel all warm and squashy inside. ‘I would like trying to get you pregnant very much as well, preciosa mia.’
And if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,’ Jemima reminded him with dancing eyes of amusement.
‘That strikes me as the perfect blueprint for a second honeymoon. We’ll go to the coast—Alfie will love the beach,’ Alejandro forecast with satisfaction.
‘I love you, Alejandro Navarro Vasquez,’ Jemima told him, hugging him tightly to her.
‘But not as much as I love you, mi vide,’ Alejandro countered. ‘You and Alfie are my whole world. Without you I would have nothing.’
Afloat on a wonderful cloud of happy contentment with all her worries and fears laid to rest, Jemima kissed him with tender loving appreciation.
A year later, Jemima gave birth to her daughter, Candice, a blue-eyed, black-haired little darling, who charmed both her parents and her big brother long before she gave them her first smile.
Jemima had sold her florist’s shop in the village of Charlbury St Helens and had decided against opening a similar business in Spain because to make it a viable full-time enterprise she would have had to base it in Seville. Besides, decorating houses with flowers was less of a tradition in her adopted country. She did act as a floral consultant for several smart weddings and events in the extended family circle and once she learned that she was carrying her second child she was no longer concerned about how she would fill her time. Her fear that her pregnancy would be as difficult as the first proved unfounded and she suffered very little sickness and, when the time came, enjoyed a straightforward delivery. Raising her children, acting as Alejandro’s hostess when they entertained at the castle, and continuing to take a strong interest in the charity that supported the women’s shelter and enshrined the cause of battered women kept Jemima more than sufficiently busy.
Flora flew out every three months or so for a visit. Beatriz met an architect at a family christening and was married to him within six months. Currently expecting her first child, Beatriz was a good deal more confident than she had once been and remained Jemima’s closest friend in Spain. Of all of them, Doña Hortencia had changed the least. Although Marco still visited his mother, relations were often strained between them because it remained a challenge for her to accept him as he was. On the other hand, her strong desire to retain her ties with the castle had ensured that the older woman had become much more polite to Jemima.
Alejandro and Marco had repaired their brotherly bond to some extent but past history ensured that Alejandro remained wary. Marco, however, was flourishing at the art gallery in New York and, having found his true metier, was steadily climbing the career ladder. In the field of business, the brothers shared a very strong bond indeed.
Alfie was thriving and had recently started preschool, which was improving his grasp of Spanish by leaps and bounds. Stephen Grey had sold a story about his wea
lthy daughter and son-in-law to a downmarket British tabloid but the article hadn’t amounted to much and had attracted little attention. Since then Jemima had heard nothing from her father, although Alejandro had established that the older man had recently lost his freedom, having been returned to jail for committing an offence.
Jemima remained exuberantly happy with her life and never allowed herself to forget how close she had come to losing Alejandro and the marriage that had become the centre of her world. She told him just about everything and hid almost nothing from him and, in turn, he tried to talk more to her and share his deeper concerns. If he was working very long hours, Jemima stayed in Seville so that they saw more of each other. With a little compromise and mutual respect on both sides, they had ensured that they were closer than ever by the time that they celebrated the first anniversary of their reconciliation with a holiday in England.
Three months on from that, Jemima was in the Seville apartment, awaiting the sound of Alejandro’s key in the lock on the front door. When she heard it, she flew out of bed and raced out to the hall, a slight figure in a black silk nightdress.
Alejandro leant back against the door to shut it, all the while studying her with appreciative dark golden eyes and a charismatic smile that made her tummy flip. ‘You make coming home such an event, esposa mia,’ he told her huskily.
‘You’ve already eaten, haven’t you?’ she checked, moving forward to trail his jacket off his shoulders and lock flirtatious fingers round his tie to ease it slowly out from below his collar.
‘I ordered in food once I knew that the talks would run late.’ Keen to be of help, Alejandro jerked his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and kicked off his shoes. He knew their housekeeper would find a trail of clothes leading down to the bedroom in the morning but he didn’t care. He was delighted when his wife pounced on him. His shirt drifted down to the floor.