The Consequence He Must Claim

by Dani Collins

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t want to hear how many lovers you’ve had. This conversation ends here.”

  She blinked at him. “You,” she said, “don’t want to know how many lovers I have had. When you’ve had—”

  “Not talking about it,” he said, flat and decisive. “We’re married now and exclusive to each other.”

  “Really,” she said, heart fluttering with hope. “Mr. Variety Pack is willing to be abstinent for six weeks then restrict himself to me for the rest of his life.”

  He looked about to say something then changed his mind, saying after a pause, “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No,” she said, but her voice wavered. In theory it was exactly what she wanted. In reality, she doubted it would happen.

  He narrowed his eyes. “That didn’t sound very convincing. Do you have a problem with limiting yourself to me, Sorcha?”

  That was his what-do-you-mean-it-didn’t-arrive-and-we’re-on-the-hook-for-millions-if-we-miss-this-deadline? voice.

  She set her jaw, found her spine and looked him right in the eye. “What makes you think I’ll hold your interest forever?”

  “What makes you think you won’t?” he growled.

  “You left.”

  The aggression that had been bunching his muscles eased back a notch and his scowl went from challenge to caution. “What do you mean?”

  “After we made love that day. You left.” She flung a hand in the air, trying not to grow strident, but she was hurt, damn it. Scorned. “You didn’t wake me. You texted me that you were seeing the woman you were supposed to marry. According to her, you said you were ashamed that you’d touched me. I can’t assume you enjoyed yourself, can I? More like you couldn’t wait to get away.”

  And now her eyes were growing damp. Damn it.

  She looked to the curtained window. Swallowed hard. “Forget it. You’re right. Let’s not talk about this.”

  “Sorcha, I don’t remember—”

  “It doesn’t change the fact that you did it,” she said, managing to make it a steady, firm statement, but her fist knocked into the side of her thigh. “So go ahead and hate me for hiding your son, but you made me feel—”

  No. She wasn’t doing this.

  Snatching up her flannel pants and shirt, she started for the bathroom.

  “Sorcha.” His voice was a whip that made her flinch and flex her back.

  She stopped with her hand on the door latch.

  “Look at me.”

  No. She kept her hand on the latch, her back to him.

  He waited.

  “What?” she prompted, refusing to turn.

  “For what it’s worth, I haven’t slept with Diega.”

  Did that mean... She turned and tried to read beyond his begrudging expression.

  “Really.” She tucked the folded clothes under her elbow as she crossed her arms again. “You told me that day you wouldn’t cheat on her—”

  “I haven’t,” he groaned. “I haven’t been with anyone. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Since me?” That couldn’t be right. She was standing on solid wood flooring, but it felt like a bouncy castle.

  “Since you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are you being straight with me? She must have thought that was weird.”

  “She asked if everything was in working order. It is,” he assured her, tone pithy. “I’ve checked.”

  For some reason she wanted to laugh. She ducked her head and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

  He scooped up the peignoir in one motion, the silk so fine his fist easily closed over the bunched fabric. He brought it to her like a handful of Christmas tinsel. “I would prefer you wore this. If I wanted to sleep with a farm boy, I would have married one.”

  * * *

  Cesar had expected to wake exhausted and stiff on his first morning of marriage, but had imagined it would have been from another cause, not walking a baby half the night.

  Sorcha wore a wan expression as she bustled around in her efficient way, moving well enough, but she had to be just as tired.

  He gave himself a mental kick, dismayed that he wasn’t giving her more time to recover, but he wanted to get them to Spain. He had planned to be on his honeymoon with Diega right now, so work shouldn’t be an issue, but it was. A lot of wheels had been in motion and now needed braking and reversing.

  His father was refusing to step in and help him “incinerate a lifetime of planning out of sentiment” and Cesar didn’t want him to. He was going to dig deep and prove this was merely a detour, not a disaster.

  Still, it was his honeymoon and he was so sexually frustrated he could barely speak. For three long years, he’d ignored the pull Sorcha had on him. Waking to her back and butt curled into his chest and lap hadn’t alleviated the ache at all. Her legs had followed the bend of his knees and the bottoms of her feet had rested on his toes, while her hair had tickled under his jaw.

  She’d been cold when she’d come back after feeding Enrique so he’d pulled her into his front to warm her. He’d woken hotter than a stuffed pepper, not just from their combined body heat, but from desire.

  Need.

  What she’d said last night about his leaving after he’d made love to her in his office... He couldn’t believe things between them had been anything less than spectacular. He hated himself for damaging her self-esteem. Men had egos in bed, but women were sensitive and physically vulnerable. As a man who had always been up-front about his inability to commit, he’d nevertheless tried to ensure his lovers felt wanted and appreciated. It didn’t make sense that he would have discarded Sorcha so callously.

  This damned broken brain of his.

  “I’ll do it,” he muttered, brushing her aside as she closed her suitcase and tried to heft it off the bed.

  She flashed him a look and took the baby from him to put him in his carrier.

  Had he planned to return to her with news of calling off his marriage? Delaying it? He eyed her as if she somehow knew any better than he did what had been in his mind. But despite his reluctance to marry last year, he’d always been resigned to making his life with Diega. Calling things off because he’d discovered he had a son had been difficult enough. He couldn’t imagine he’d intended to break things off just because he’d had sex with Sorcha.

  Diega’s version, that he’d had his fill of Sorcha from one tumble in his office, didn’t ring true, either. How many times had he fantasized about making love to his PA? He’d been so peeved when he woke in the hospital “engaged,” and believed that he’d missed his chance with Sorcha altogether, he’d behaved like a passive-aggressive ass.

  He hadn’t wanted to admit last night how long he’d gone without sex. Not for any macho reasons, either. No, it just seemed too revelatory.

  What he hadn’t said was that Diega had made advances and he’d kissed her, but hadn’t wanted to bed her. He’d been punishing her in a very puerile way for being an obstacle between him and the woman he’d still wanted, even though Sorcha had disappeared from his life.

  “You don’t have to get that,” he told Sorcha as she picked up the envelope that had been slipped under the door in the night, thinking she shouldn’t be bending like that.

  “It’s fine,” she muttered, hair falling around her flushed face, but her expression was tight.

  The F word. He narrowed his eyes, but the bellman had arrived to collect their cases and they went downstairs.

  While he went to the exit, Sorcha crossed to the front desk.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Checking out.” She opened her handbag.

  “They have my credit card on file.” He held the door and jerked his head at where their car had been pulled up. He wanted
her off her feet.

  Sorcha wavered briefly, glancing at the woman behind the desk as though confirming everything was in order.

  The woman gave Sorcha a brow raise and a smile that was more of a sneer. “Thank you for your patronage,” she said with snide sweetness. Her disparaging gaze flicked from Sorcha to the baby carrier and finally up to him.

  He met the woman’s cynical look and stared her down, waiting until he was behind the wheel and pulling away to ask, “What the hell was that?”

  * * *

  “What was what?” Sorcha was realizing rather belatedly that her entire life had been overturned not by one male, but two. She had had months to mentally prepare for Enrique, though. She’d watched her sister adapt to motherhood and had had an idea what she would be up against.

  Now she had Cesar dominating her life all over again and she wasn’t sure how to handle it.

  “At the desk,” he elaborated.

  “I thought you wanted me to pay. I always used to check us out. You paid for everything else on this trip. I thought I should pick up the room cost.”

  He glanced at her. “Are you serious?”

  She let out her frustration in a long breath. “I don’t know what you’re thinking! You’ve been glaring at me all morning, like I wasn’t moving fast enough. I feel like I’m back in my first week of work, when I couldn’t make a move without getting yelled at.”

  A beat of silence, then he asked, “When have I ever raised my voice at you?”

  “Okay, I’m afraid of hearing that tone. The one that suggests I’m the stupidest person who ever breathed. I don’t work for you anymore, you know. I work for him.” She thumbed to where Enrique’s seat was strapped in behind them.

  His hands massaged the wheel.

  “I didn’t realize that’s why you were running around like it was a fire drill. I was thinking about other things, not impatient with you. I know you don’t work for me. Believe me, I know. If you could come into the office and turn the new PA into half what you were, I might still have hair when I’m forty.”

  Sorcha looked at her nails, shaped and polished by her sister for her wedding, trying not to be smug that she was missed.

  She sighed. “I liked being your assistant. You were a bear sometimes, but I knew who I was. My role was clearly defined and I had independence away from you.” She lifted her gaze to the gloomy gray sky. “I realized this morning that everything is blurred now. All the decisions I make now have to be sifted through their effect on you and Enrique. Our relationship has to be reconfigured and I don’t know what that will look like. It’s bothering me.”

  “It is strange,” he agreed. “I keep thinking I’m supposed to avoid touching you, because you’re my employee. Then I remind myself you’re my wife, but you’re still off-limits. My libido is very confused, guapa.”

  “Being ninety percent libido, I can only assume you’re extremely confused.”

  “There’s the woman I thought twice about hiring,” he said drily. “Listen. Two things. You’re my wife. I will always pay and you will always expect me to.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Always. We’re not negotiating. Anything I’m not present to pay for will go on the cards waiting for you in Spain.”

  “And if I want to earn my own money and spend it?” she challenged. Her mother’s fatal error had been trusting her husband to leave her something. According to the prenup Sorcha had signed, Cesar had already arranged an income for her, but...

  “We’ll discuss your working when the time comes,” he said in a tone that promised he would object and win. “My mother is a busy woman, Sorcha. Don’t underestimate the demands of being a society wife. It is a job in itself.”

  She pursed her lips, agreeing that there wasn’t much use arguing this issue before its time, but she had always enjoyed working. On the other hand, his mother did seem to keep busy, always organizing some charity function or other. As long as she felt as if she was making a contribution, she might be okay with letting him support her.

  “You said two things,” she prompted.

  “Last night you said you don’t want a nanny, but I want you to rethink it. I’ll try to work from home while you’re recovering, but I’ll have to go into the office at least once a week. We’ll have invitations as word gets out that I’m married—”

  “Your role hasn’t changed then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought marrying Diega was a condition to being put in charge of the family holdings. I’ve been worrying that marrying me had, um, impacted that?” She knotted her hands in her lap.

  “My father tried that,” he said dismissively. “I pointed out that whether he left me in the role of president or not—and whether my brother marries Diega or not—I still inherit the title and the family home. He’s practical enough to see more work in changing course than staying it. Rico prefers research anyway and doesn’t want to lead the charge. My mother sees the scandal of disinheriting an errant son greater than his marrying against her wishes, so she’s resigned herself.”

  “That’s comforting,” Sorcha snorted.

  He shrugged. “My father’s handoff of the corporation was set back half a year by my crash so I still have a lot of work in the next two years on that. It will include some travel. If nothing else, I want you to have someone in during the day for the next few weeks so you can rest if you need to.”

  “I don’t want our son raised by a stranger,” she said, repeating what she’d told him when the topic had come up over dinner. She was heartened by his getting up with Enrique last night and his talk of working from home. Surely they could manage.

  “If we lived near your mother,” he said, his expression reflecting zero emotion, “and I knew you were able to leave him for an hour to get some rest, that would be different. My mother is never going to offer that sort of respite.”

  She supposed she ought to feel scorned, but she just felt sorry for Cesar and his siblings.

  “I’ll think about it,” she murmured. Then she said absently, “Octavia has one.” And Octavia was every bit as devoted to Lorenzo as Sorcha felt to Enrique, so maybe she shouldn’t worry that hiring a nanny would break the mother-baby attachment. “I’ll ask her for the name of the agency they used.”

  “Octavia?” Cesar prompted.

  “The mother of the other boy at the hospital.” Sorcha had texted her friend a selfie in her wedding dress saying, I’m getting married.

  Octavia had responded with I’m going to marry my nanny. She’s listening for L while I have a bath.

  “Another reason for a nanny,” Cesar said darkly. “We’ll be in legal meetings a dozen times over the next few years.”

  They were quiet a few minutes, then he said, “I meant why was that woman at the hotel so nasty?”

  Her heart tripped. “Pardon?”

  “When we left the hotel, the woman behind the desk was very snotty. Do you know her?”

  “Kind of.” She probably should have been more up-front about how the Kellys were viewed by the village, but she preferred him to believe he’d married his working class secretary, not the bastard of a whore—which was what people had called her more than once.

  It was so painful she hated to even reference it obliquely, but he was waiting.

  “I told you how my father had a legitimate family in England?” She scratched her eyebrow. “We were quite notorious after he died. Treated like... Well, people felt Mum got what she deserved, carrying on with a married man. We were all punished. I went to school with that woman and she was letting me know she hadn’t forgotten where I came from.”

  Sorcha looked out the window onto her beautiful country, but felt sick. With one snarky look and a handful of words, she’d been reminded what a pretender she was.

  “Your mothe
r is a very warm person. If that’s where you came from, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  She smiled, touched that he would say something so nice about her mum, but he was missing the point. “Maybe I didn’t get pregnant on purpose, and maybe the father married me, but I still got my husband ‘that way.’”

  He sent her a blistering look. “I’ll cancel payment.”

  “Please don’t. It would start something that Mum would have to finish. I’ll pay it if you don’t want to. It was enough for me to stand there and let her know I had the means, to be honest.”

  His mouth twitched and he growled, “Leave it. If you want it paid, I’ll pay it, but that won’t happen again.”

  They didn’t talk any more until they were on the plane.

  “Go have a proper sleep in the cabin,” Cesar told her once they’d been cleared to move around. “I’ll let you know if he needs you.” He nodded at Enrique.

  And there it was again: evidence of how things had changed. Sleep in my bed.

  By the time they landed, the question of where their bed would be located arose.

  “Does he know where we’re going?” Sorcha asked, still befuddled by her heavy nap, but certain the driver had turned the wrong direction from the airport.

  “We’re running up the coast to look at a house. We’ll stay in a hotel overnight if we decide we like it, and sign the papers in the morning.”

  “Out of the city?” Her heart sank. She would have preferred to stay in Ireland if he wanted her out of the way.

  “Do you mind? Diega had the same reaction, but I’ve always wanted a vineyard and this place just came on the market.”

  She swung her head around. “A vineyard? Really?”

  He shrugged, showing a hint of self-consciousness. “I grew up spending time with my father’s vintner. It’s a fascinating process. Probably the reason I went into chemistry. Jorge wasn’t book-educated, so he couldn’t tell me why certain reactions happened, but he was an artist for getting the results he wanted. He let me experiment. I had some successes. A few disasters,” he said wryly. “I enjoyed it. Enrique might, too, when he’s old enough to get his hands dirty.”