“Carrie doesn’t have a taste for wine, Gabriella,” Gael observed with a teasing drawl, as he fell into step behind the two women.
“She will learn, no?” Gabriella responded with a shrug, as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
Carrie’s laugh was like music. “You’re as persuasive as your son, I see.”
“Oh, he learned from the best.” The pride in Gabriella’s voice was obvious. She settled herself on a stool at the bar, and patted the seat beside it. Gael rescued a particularly fine bottle of Tempranillo from his wine storage area and poured out three glasses. He passed one to Carrie, though he knew she wouldn’t do more than taste it.
Carrie was surprised to find herself relaxing in the company of Gael’s mother. In fact, as time ticked forward, she found that she was truly enjoying herself. Gael was quiet, only speaking every now and again, interjecting a statement or issuing a warning to his mother not to be so inquisitive.
“And tell me, Carrie, how is Gael’s father?” Gabriella asked finally, wine glass finished and pushed across the bench.
“Oh.” A crimson flush of guilt stole across Carrie’s cheeks and her blue eyes flew to Gael’s. But Gael simply looked at her, interested to hear how she would respond.
“His health is poor but his spirits are good.”
“I’m glad,” Gabriella said finally. “That his spirits are good, I mean.”
“I know,” Carrie nodded gently.
“How long will you be on the island for? Perhaps we could have lunch tomorrow? I will cook paella.”
Carrie shook her head, on the brink of pointing out that they’d be back in Barcelona by then, when Gael surprised her. “Perhaps, Gabriella. We shall see.”
Carrie’s lips twisted into a quick frown, but she smothered it when Gabriella looked at her happily. “Excellent. You will love it, Carrie.” The word was accented on her lips. Rich and hearty sounding.
Gabriella was walked out by Gael, and Carrie left them to it. No doubt Gabriella would have something to say to her son about the surprise appearance of this woman in his life, and Carrie didn’t need to hear his awkward explanation. While Gabriella might have read wedding bells into the rare turn of events, Carrie knew better, and she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear Gael defuse those maternal expectations.
He wandered back into the kitchen a few moments later, an apologetic expression on his face. “I’m sorry about the intrusion. My mother means well, but she does not always understand boundaries.”
Carrie shook her head. “It’s fine. I enjoyed meeting her. She’s lovely.”
“You’re not upset? You seem…?”
“No, I’m fine.” But something was lodged in her throat. It felt like panic. “Um, what time will we leave? To get back to the mainland?”
His smile was beautiful. And if she weren’t itching to be back in her hotel, she would have found it irresistibly sexy. “I thought we could stay here tonight. I have a special surprise planned.”
“Another one?” She joked lightly, her heart racing at the idea of not getting back to her own things. Valiantly, she searched her mind, seeking an excuse, and finding nothing.
“The best one,” he promised, kissing her forehead.
“The thing is, Gael…”
“What is ‘the thing’, Carrie?” He asked in a lightly mocking tone, trying –and failing – to keep his impatience at bay.
“I just … I didn’t know we would be staying tonight. So I don’t have any of my things. And I really need …”
“What do you need, princesa?”
“Everything! Clothes, my computer, just … stuff.”
He pressed a finger beneath her chin, so that he could stare into her eyes. “No, you need nothing. Your clothes can be washed here, I have a computer you may use to log into your emails.”
But she couldn’t stay here with him! Not without her stuff. Her make up and straightener and perfume and stuff! She felt like she was suffocating; she shook her head from side to side. “That’s a lovely idea,” she said, striving for calm, and knowing she came off as ungrateful. “But I really would prefer to go back now.”
Gael frowned. Confusion mingled with frustration. “What do you need? I can send someone out to buy it.”
“No.” The idea of troubling a servant so that she could have her full array of Estee Lauder cosmetics was wrong. Even she knew how superficial it would seem. “It’s … It’s stupid,” she said quietly.
“Come on, Carrie. Aren’t we beyond this kind of coyness? Tell me the truth. What do you need?”
“I just …” She closed her eyes. Was there really so much wrong with wanting to look her best? Her mother would never have had to explain herself to a man; it would have simply been presumed that she needed time and equipment to maintain the visage of feminine perfection. Carrie’s eyes glinted in her face. “Fine. I would feel disgusting without my makeup and fresh clothes and hair dryer. Okay? I don’t want you to see me like that.”
Gael’s eyes hardened with shock, surprise, and then sadness, as the fear that had been lurking the back of his mind was confirmed.
“Like what?”
“Looking like me,” she snapped. “That’s not who I am.”
“This is not who you are,” he corrected, drawing an imaginary circle around her face. “All this dolly make up. You don’t need it.”
“Oh, whatever,” she groaned with a roll of her big blue eyes. “This is the woman you took to bed before you even knew her name, so don’t act like you’re offended by my appearance now.”
“No,” he grunted. “You always look fine. But you don’t need make up. Not all the time. And not with me.”
Carrie stiffened her spine. “It’s not your place to tell me what I need. I hardly know you.”
“I don’t need to know you to know there’s something wrong with a woman who can’t be in her own skin for even a moment.”
His words cut through her, making her feel inferior and broken in some way. As though she should be ashamed of what she’d become. When she’d fashioned herself into what he, and the world, expected of her. “I am in my own skin,” she defended coldly.
“Are you?” His lips twisted derisively, and he bent down and scooped her up, carrying her over his shoulder back into the hallway.
“What are you doing, Gael?” She asked, her voice showing her emotions. It wavered and cracked.
He didn’t answer. He was fuming mad. He had suspected that she had a strange obsession for vanity, but he had had no idea how deep it went.
At the edge of the pool, he finally came to a stop. Gently, he tossed her towards the centre, watching as, as if in slow motion, her body sailed through the air and crashed into the water. Her eyes caught his from mid-air, and the hurt accusation in them was a look he knew he would never be able to wipe from his mind.
She went under completely, and stayed there for a few seconds, before emerging at the edge of the pool. Her face was soaking wet, her mascara had run, her hair was hanging in dark blonde curtains, plastered to her face. Her dress was stuck to her body.
His voice was sucked from him painfully. “You are beautiful to me, Carrie. All of you, all the time. Don’t you understand that?”
But Gael had dramatically underestimated the level of Carrie’s vanity.
At first he didn’t realise, but when he stopped fuming and actually looked at her, he saw that her face wasn’t simply wet. Tears were gushing out of her eyes, and silent sobs were wracking her body.
“Carrie,” he groaned, walking towards her and crouching down on the side of the pool. “That might have been a bit extreme. I only wanted to show you …”
Still, she cried silently. So silently, and it was worse than if she’d actually bawled and berated him. Her eyes clung to him as she pulled herself out of the water and, drenched to the core, walked back into the house.
She was leaving puddles all over the tiles. She didn’t care. She found a bathroom and locked the door, then str
ipped her clothes off. There wasn’t a lot she could do about them. They were saturated, and wouldn’t dry before she left the island.
And she would leave the island.
She didn’t care how, she would get away from him immediately. She ran the shower, and stepped into it, her chest still wracking with her noiseless tears. She stood under the running water, lathering her whole body, as if she could wash Gael from her. She scrubbed the make up off her face – cosmetic-free was better than looking like a sad clown.
Gael had a meagre assortment of toiletries in a draw – the kind one might find in a plush hotel. She rubbed moisturiser into her face and pinched her cheeks, to return some colour to them.
She towel dried her hair and ran her fingers through it until it hung relatively straight. She wrapped a bath sheet under her arms and pulled the door open.
A small pile of fabric was on the hallway floor. She scooped it up and looked at it dubiously. One of his t-shirts and a pair of shorts. They swam on her, but that barely seemed to matter. She hooked the towel back onto the bathroom door, and made her way through his home. Her sandals were on the grass lawn, where she’d left them earlier. She padded over to them now, and slipped them on her feet.
She felt catatonic with rage; incapable of caring about anything except her hurt and embarrassment.
She looked around to get her bearings, and then began to walk down the driveway.
“Carrie.” His voice was an insistent shout. She didn’t turn around. Was she still crying? She must have been, because her face was wet again. She dashed away the tears and kept walking.
“Hey!” He caught up with her, and when he looked at her face, she could see that he was truly worried. That he had no idea what to do. “Carrie, I apologise. From the bottom of my heart. That was wrong of me. I wanted you to see … to understand … that this is the most beautiful you have ever looked to me. I should never have pushed you like that. Please don’t go.”
She focussed on a point past his shoulder.
When he realised that she wasn’t planning on speaking, he put a hand on her arm. She ripped it away with a ferocity that could have torn it from its socket.
He studied her with a sinking feeling, and then murmured quietly, “I’ll get the boat ready. Just … give me a moment.” He could use the return journey to explain. To atone.
“Did you say you usually take a helicopter?” She enquired coldly, her eyes still not meeting his.
“Yes, but with your fear of flying …”
“There are some things I fear worse,” she promised, her heart aching. “I can’t go back on the boat.”
His gut twisted. “I am so sorry.”
“No.” She held up a hand. “Don’t apologise. Don’t explain. Just … leave it.”
Gael had never, in his entire life, made such a monumental mistake. He’d acted on his first impulse, and it had betrayed him. Badly. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and spoke in Spanish, his dark eyes not leaving her face.
“It’s ready.”
“Car?”
He nodded.
She crossed the lawn, moving quickly, to stay ahead of him. She opened her door before he could reach it, and slid into her seat.
The short drive to the nearby air strip was made in total silence. Carrie stared out of her window, but she didn’t see the scenery. She saw the girl she’d been at seventeen; and that same girl was staring back at her now.
As soon as Gael killed the engine, Carrie stepped out of the car. She felt physically ill.
The saving grace of her present state of emotional turmoil was that she hardly felt a thing as the chopper lifted up into the sky. It sailed over the Balearic sea, showing turquoise waters far into the distance.
Carrie closed her eyes and prayed it would all soon be over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“And then what happened?” Juanita’s face was a study of shocked sympathy. She lifted a tissue from the box and wiped her cheek, amazed at how calm and serene Carrie was in the retelling of things.
“He insisted on taking me to my hotel. He tried to talk more. To explain …” She spat the word derisively.
“As if he could offer any explanation for such a barbaric, rude, chauvinistic act…”
The rules of their friendship had been written in stone a decade earlier. Unwavering support was the first tenet of their sisterhood.
“I know,” Carrie nodded, sipping her tea and clutching the mug to hide the way her fingers were shaking.
“What did you say to him?”
“That it’s over, obviously.” She shrugged. “I left him with my NewNetwork report and contracts and told him he could invest, or not. His decision.”
“Woah.”
“Yeah. Woah.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since?”
Not in a week, Carrie realised with a pang. She’d kept busy. She’d avoided her phone. She’d gone out every night, wearing her make up proudly, dressed to the nines, and taking comfort from the fact that most people saw her slavish devotion to beauty as a positive attribute.
It wasn’t like it was the sum total of who she was. She was a successful professional in her own right. So what if she enjoyed looking her best?
“He’s the ultimate hypocrite,” Carrie muttered, finally showing some of her anger to her best friend.
“Hm, how so?” Juanita pushed aside Carrie’s tea, and replaced it with a champagne. “Don’t think about the calories. Just this once.”
Carrie was inclined to agree. She drank half the glass in two sips. “He only wanted me when he saw me dressed up like that. He goes after women who look like models. But then he wanted me to peel off the mask and be ‘normal’.” She groaned angrily. “He didn’t want me when I was ‘normal’. The very idea disgusted him.”
“Such a bastard,” Juanita agreed.
Carrie drained her champagne flute, much to Juanita’s surprise. She topped it up instantly.
“What are we celebrating?” Carrie asked with a tipsy giggle, as she tasted her second glass.
“Freedom from oppression and tyranny,” Juanita giggled back.
“Hear, hear!” Carrie seconded, clinking her glass to her friend’s.
At the end of her third glass, she looked at Juanita and said quietly: “I think I might have fallen just a tiny bit in love with him, though.”
Juanita shook her hand in the air. “Who wouldn’t have? He’s gorgeous. Total sex on a stick. But he’s still a bastard.”
“Right,” Carrie said with a nod. “A bastard.”
The only thing better than a boozy night in with one’s best friend was the addition of a movie; they loaded up the first Twilight and snuggled into the sofa for a session of vampire romance.
“See? Edward wants what’s best for Bella! He doesn’t care that she’s human and he’s an immortal. He loves her.” Carrie said unsteadily, not entirely sure she was making sense anymore.
“Yeah.” Juanita agreed anyway, her smile firm on her face. Until it slipped off, to be replaced by a thoughtful frown. “Is that your phone?”
Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know where it is.”
Juanita, at that point in time, thought that was about the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She stood up and looked around, following the sound of ringing like a cat might hunt its prey.
“Uh huh!” She slipped it out of Carrie’s handbag, and victoriously held it aloft.
Carrie froze when she saw Gael’s face staring back at her.
“Shit!” She lifted her hands over her eyes, as if that would erase the image of him staring at her.
“Oh. It’s him?” Juanita handed the phone over like a hot potato.
“I’m not going to answer that,” Carrie said angrily, passing the phone back.
“Good for you.”
One hour, another Moët, and seven attempted calls later, Juanita hiccoughed, “I’ll get it. I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”
And Carrie was too delightfully
tipsy to care. “Fine,” she said with a shrug, standing up and moving well away. Even the sound of his disembodied voice, carried from Juanita’s ear to hers, would be too much. So she disappeared upstairs, intent on doing anything but being in the same vicinity as Gael’s sinfully gorgeous words.
“Carrie’s phone,” Juanita said, her tone dripping with ice. At least, she imagined it to be. In truth, after half a dozen glasses of bubbles, she was slightly fuzzy around the edges.
“Is Carrie there?”
“No, Gay-yelllll, she is not. Not for you anyway.”
Gael gripped his phone tightly, the torrent of emotions he’d been navigating for a week making his patience thin like the top of an ice lake on the first day of Spring. “It’s important.”
“Yeah, well, do you know what else is important?” Juanita lifted her champagne and gestured with her hand. “Treating a woman with respect. Accepting her for who she is.”
Gael closed his eyes. “While this is a conversation I’m willing to have with you another time, I called to speak to Carrie on another matter. Would you be so good as to take the phone to her?”
“She doesn’t want to speak to you, okay?” Juanita’s lips curled in response to his silence. “And if you think she’s been here pining over you all week, you’ve got another thing coming. You’re nothing compared to the guy she replaced you with. Yum, yum, yummy.”
There was silence. Several moments of obviously angry silence, before Gael spoke again, “Tell her to pack an overnight bag. I’ll be there within an hour.”
“Oh, crap.” Juanita disconnected the call and stared at the phone, wondering if she could rewind time and take that particularly unwise conversation back.
“Carrie?” She called, walking a little unsteadily up the stairs of her friend’s townhouse. “We have a bit of a, um, problem.”
“No more champagne?” She giggled, pulling her new shoes out of their box and slipping her hands into them. “Look, shoe hands, shoe hands,” she joked, making imaginary footsteps with them through the air.
Seducing the Spaniard: She wanted revenge any way she could get it Page 13