Love In Torment

by Natalie Fox

  ‘He can be a bastard,’ Felipe told her flatly, without looking at her. ‘But he’s wealthy and successful and that usually impresses most women.’

  Was that a dig that she was one of ‘most women’? She let it pass and explored the idea of painting a rich, successful bastard who happened to be her father.

  They were beyond the pool now and heading towards the tiny church close to the villa. Gemma hadn’t noticed before but there was a covered walkway from double doors at the side of the villa to the church. A quick mental calculation worked out that the double doors came from the locked room, Agustªn de Navas’s private study. Was he a religious man? The church was almost on the doorstep.

  ‘This is where you will work—providing, of course, Agustªn approves. The place has been shut up for years.’ Felipe plunged his hand into his pocket for a key.

  Gemma was about to protest that no way was she going to paint a portrait in a house of worship, unless it was of a bishop or the Pope, when Felipe threw open the door.

  He went ahead of her to swing back the drapes at the windows. Gemma took off her sunglasses, dislodged the orchid from behind her ear and it fell to the ground. She stooped to retrieve it and when she straightened up drew in a sharp breath.

  The church wasn’t a church at all but the most beautiful studio she had ever seen. The ceiling was vaulted, giving the impression of the shape of a church from outside. The floor was golden polished pine though dusty and dirty with neglect.

  There were several windows and Felipe was busy casting the dusty drapes aside, filling the spacious room with motes that danced in the sun-streaked air.

  The last window was huge, almost from floor to ceiling, and Felipe released the blind that covered it. Light flooded the room, not bright sunlight because the area outside was shaded by trees, but a diffused light that was just perfect to work by.

  Gemma wandered around in awe, this unexpected bonus for a moment casting away her troubles. There was a small kitchen screened off by an Oriental screen of bamboo and a door to a tiny bathroom with a toilet and shower cubicle. There were several easels leaning against the white walls and there were couches of dusty slubbed silk dotted around. The open shelves on one wall were stocked with jugs of brushes, pots of paint, tins of pastels, pencils, charcoal. Mounted canvases of every shape and size were stacked neatly in one corner.

  ‘None of this has ever been used,’ Gemma said, turning to Felipe, her eyes wide with puzzlement.

  ‘It will be now,’ Felipe told her, his voice echoing slightly in the high ceilinged studio. ‘I’ll get the women in to clean it. It’s about time the place saw the light of day.’

  ‘But what is it here for if no one ever uses it?’

  Felipe didn’t answer straight away, but ran his fingers over the back of a hard-backed chair and examined the dirt on his fingers.

  ‘Felipe?’ Gemma husked.

  His eyes met hers at last, dark and impenetrable. ‘Rumour has it he had it built for a woman, someone he met in Europe, someone he cared deeply for long ago…’

  Gemma felt the floor tilt under her and she grasped the back of one of the couches she was standing by. Oh, God, had Agustªn built this place for her mother?

  ‘Though it’s hard to imagine Agustªn caring deeply for anyone,’ Felipe went on flintily, ‘least of all his long-suffering wife.’

  His wife? There was such bitterness in his tone that it added to Gemma’s sickness. She edged her way round the couch. She had to sit down before she collapsed. So Agustªn was married. She had hoped he wasn’t. A wife was an added complication to her already overloaded emotions.

  ‘His…his wife?’ she breathed.

  ‘She died a few years ago. Blessed release for her, in my opinion. It wasn’t a happy marriage.’

  ‘Why didn’t they divorce?’ Gemma asked heavily.

  ‘Divorce?’ Felipe snapped disdainfully. ‘You forget, this is a Catholic country. Marriage is for life.’

  ‘And you have to make the best of it if it all goes wrong,’ Gemma mused out loud.

  ‘It’s better to be sure you have the right woman in the first place,’ Felipe uttered evenly, as if it were all as simple as that.

  Gemma looked up at him, hoping to read something in that remark, but there was nothing. Marriage had never been spoken of during their affair in London, but how could it have been? A week was nothing in their relationship and yet they had felt so deeply for each other that surely marriage would have been the inevitable conclusion? Perhaps, but then Bianca had come between them.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Felipe leaned across the couch and smoothed her hair from her cheeks. ‘You look pale.’ His voice was almost tender. Gemma was on alert.

  She forced a hesitant smile to her lips. Just the thought of that woman with Felipe drained the blood from her cheeks.

  ‘I’m OK—the heat maybe. It’s so stuffy in here.’ She composed herself, quickly, concentrated her thoughts away from him and Bianca. ‘You…you paint such a black picture of Agustªn.’

  Felipe straightened up. ‘Do I? He’s a complex man. He runs his empire with a rod of iron and doesn’t ease up in his personal life. He’s arrogant, proud and can be abominably objectionable…’

  Sounds just like you, Gemma nearly retorted.

  ‘…and painting his portrait should prove to be a bundle of fun for you.’

  ‘Another form of punishment for me?’ Gemma asked, suddenly feeling thoroughly miserable about everything. She hadn’t wanted a saint as a father, but this man sounded positively hellish.

  Felipe suddenly smiled, the warmth getting as far as his eyes. ‘No, my sweet,’ he said softly. ‘Just an unfortunate truth that has little to do with me this time. Come, let’s get out of here. This place is like a bloody mausoleum!’

  Or more like a shrine, Gemma thought morbidly.

  ‘Could you face a swim before lunch?’ he asked gently.

  Such thoughtfulness. Warily, Gemma turned the power of her thoughts in that direction rather than towards Agustªn, his wife, and her mother. Later, when she was alone, she would spare some thought to Felipe’s revelations but now she needed her wits about her. Felipe was being too nice and an aboutturn was inevitable. She wanted to be alert and ready for it.

  ‘Yes, I’d like that very much,’ she replied.

  After her initial shyness at posing for Gemma, Christina settled and sat very still on a chair by the window. Maria hovered in the background, making out she was baking, but not much was going in or coming out of the oven, Gemma thought with amusement.

  Gemma started work with a very rapid, rough outline in white on one of the smaller canvases she’d taken from the studio, asking Felipe’s permission first. It was going to be easy; Christina had an interesting face. She was beautiful, which helped; but there was more. Christina was in love and it showed. She had a certain serenity that softened her very black eyes, added a sheen to her olive skin and a fullness to her lips.

  Gemma tried not to think of affairs such as love as she worked, but it was as impossible as damming a flood-swollen river.

  Where was the torment Felipe had promised her? She’d seen only a hint of it this day. As they lay sprawled in the sun after their swim she had opened her eyes and caught his eyes on her body. She had covered herself soon after, using the intensity of the sun’s rays as an excuse. Truth was, the look had painfully reminded her of his tireless exploration of her body when they had been in love. Then he had worshipped and cosseted her body, but now he was punishing her and she felt the threat through his ravaging eyes. Bravely she had fought the wave of arousal that came with his perusal. It wouldn’t do to show a sign of weakness to him.

  ‘Rest, Christina,’ Gemma said, cleaning her brush with a rag and stepping back from the easel to study her work. She had explained to Maria that she wouldn’t have time for a full portrait, just a head and shoulders with no background. Now they both crowded round and Gemma laughed at the disappointed expressions on both their faces.
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br />   ‘I know it doesn’t look much now, but I promise you you’ll like it when it’s finished,’ she told them.

  It was a very satisfying afternoon, Gemma had to admit, with the three women laughing and chatting. Gemma forced aside thoughts of Felipe and threw herself into her work. She loved encouraging her subjects to chat as they sat. It relaxed the model and was so important to Gemma to catch just the right character of a person. She remembered Felipe’s commenting on the industrialist she had painted and how boring and pompous he looked. She couldn’t have painted him any other way because that was the man. She couldn’t have spun her thoughts away from Felipe if she tried, either, she had to concede finally. He was there all the time, hovering on the periphery of her sanity, just waiting to tip her over the edge.

  ‘Well, you’ve started, and a much more charming subject than that industrialist,’ Felipe said behind her as she worked, his voice low, intended for her ears only.

  It shocked her that she was thinking of the very same man at that moment. It hurt too. Reminded her of the times when it had happened before. Both spoken of the same subject at the same time and both collapsed with laughter at the coincidence.

  ‘Funny, I was just thinking of the man at that very moment you spoke of him,’ she said quietly, almost remorsefully.

  ‘And were you also thinking of what followed that night?’ he whispered, so derisively that Gemma tensed.

  She recovered quickly. She was forgetting, this was all part of the highs and lows of the torment game.

  ‘That’s enough for today, Christina.’ Ignoring Felipe’s remark, she gathered up her brushes from the table and crossed to the sink to clean them.

  Christina and Maria gathered round the small canvas again and Gemma only half listened to their cries of pleasure. She was swamped with hurt, a hurt she must keep from her tormentor at all costs. He wasn’t going to win.

  He joined her at the sink, stood so close to her his body heat seared her skin.

  ‘That stung, did it?’

  ‘What?’ she said glibly. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d been hurt.

  ‘Don’t act so dumb. You know what I mean.’

  ‘I do,’ she sighed reluctantly, ‘but you’re wasting your time, Felipe. I don’t object to you winding me up, you can’t hurt me any more,’ she lied, ‘but not in front of the staff, eh? That shows your weakness, not mine.’

  ‘The staff know their place, which is more than can be said for you, sweet one. And when it comes down to weakness, we’ll soon see who survives this test.’ He poured two coffees.

  Numbly, Gemma waited till Maria and Christina left the room before challenging him.

  ‘Torment is the test, is it? You’re wasting your time and mine,’ she told him strongly. ‘You make me feel like the week’s washing hurtling through the hot cycle of a washing machine. Cold fill, heat to ninety degrees, swoosh around for half an hour, finish off with a dousing of cold again and a fast spin.’ She shrugged her shoulders and smiled at him. ‘It’s a complete waste of time because next week you’ll have to put me through the whole process again. I’m like a pair of Marks and Spencer’s knickers: I’ll never wear out.’

  ‘Indestructible, are you?’ he smiled cynically, spooning sugar into her cup for her. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Gemma frowned. ‘Why, Felipe? You think you’re hurting me but you’re hurting yourself as much. It’s like some sort of self-abuse. What you’re doing isn’t a characteristic I admire in a man.’

  ‘And cold, calculated rejection isn’t something I admire in a woman,’ he returned bluntly, handing her a cup of coffee.

  Gemma took it and leaned back against the sink to drink it.

  ‘I was under the impression I was the rejected one. All the time you have been plotting this misguided revenge of yours I suppose it never occurred to you that I was the injured party.’

  ‘I expected you to phone me in New York——’

  ‘It was too late then. Seven days too late!’

  ‘Your love wasn’t strong enough to wait a week?’ he challenged sarcastically. ‘What sort of love is that?’

  Gemma gazed at him painfully. This could never be resolved. His humiliation ran so deep it was unfathomable. She drew a deep breath.

  ‘I went to your house the next day,’ she admitted to him in a hoarse whisper. ‘You’d gone and so had Bianca. What was I supposed to think?’

  ‘So you went to my house to check up on me? You mistrusted me then?’ His eyes were loaded with disgust and Gemma turned hers away from him. It hadn’t been like that but convincing him otherwise was a hopeless waste of time.

  ‘I don’t expect to answer to you for every movement I make, then or now,’ he thrust back at her.

  Gemma raised her eyes to his at that. ‘No, I don’t suppose a macho Latin lover does! Get real, Felipe!’

  ‘I am real, sweet one,’ he replied harshly. ‘You’re the one who’s out of line, so damned unreal you live in fantasy land. Do you think I didn’t have reason to do what I did? You think after what we had been to each other I would let it slip from my grasp?’

  Gemma shook her head in dismay. ‘One week, Felipe. We had one week together. Hardly long enough to build any trust…’

  ‘Long enough to fall in love, though,’ he challenged. ‘Or maybe we were both under the same severe misinterpretation of our actions and the thrashing around we did so successfully wasn’t love at all but plain old fornication! And that’s phrasing it politely!’ he added bitterly.

  Pain throbbed in Gemma’s veins. It had come to this, had it? They had loved each other, it had been real, but now all they could do was pour acid abuse on each other’s already smarting emotions. She knew it but couldn’t stop herself adding her own poison.

  ‘And then came Bianca,’ Gemma challenged him slowly.

  She studied his face intently, with eyes as glacial as his own. Weeks she had wrestled with the idea of him and Bianca being lovers. They were cousins but that wasn’t any consolation to Gemma; laws didn’t forbid it everywhere. She had seen the look in Bianca’s eyes for Felipe and could still recall the hostility she had shown to her. Bianca wanted Felipe, Bianca hated Gemma, Bianca had won.

  She felt there was no denial coming, but had she really expected it?

  ‘Yes, and then came Bianca,’ he breathed steadily. ‘Someone who has been a part of my life a helluva lot longer than you have.’

  ‘In other words, “Shove off Gemma, you’ve kept my bed warm long enough——”‘

  His hand shot to her chin and he thumbed her lips punishingly as if scoring her mouth clean. ‘You talk like a fishwife and act like a whore——’

  ‘And you would know just how both act, wouldn’t you?’

  His mouth hard on hers was his answer, proving that the latter part of his insult had something going for it. Her eyes filled with tears beneath her lids. He hated her, could wound her desperately with his insults, but that treacherous desire was already stretching its tentacles to her reasoning. She was a whore if she couldn’t control this rush of need he roused in her with just one impassioned kiss.

  She wrenched her mouth from his, painfully because his teeth grazed her lips.

  ‘Filling your time before Bianca arrives?’ she spiked. ‘Just as you did in London.’

  ‘Right first time,’ he snapped back through bared teeth. ‘But this time you won’t even get a phone call when I’ve finished with you.’

  ‘Your style of phone calls I can live without!’ she jerked back. ‘The last was as cold and as impersonal as you’ve turned out to be.’

  ‘I don’t pour my heart out to a bloody machine,’ he rasped. ‘You weren’t there——’

  Gemma forced a cynical laugh. ‘I’m beginning to see it all now! I wasn’t there, so the spurned hotblooded Latin boiled with misguided hurt. I have a life, Felipe! I work for a living. Is that what got at you, the fact that I’m an independent lady and I wasn’t sitting waiting breathlessl
y for your call? How can you be so damned sexist when you were with Bianca anyway?’ Gemma cried back.

  She wasn’t going to take any more of this. It was all so one-sided.

  Felipe’s eyes blazed like rampant bush fires. ‘Our worlds are poles apart but this could have been resolved if you’d given me the chance. You think you are some sort of liberated lady, yet you act like a Victorian maiden nursing her hurt pride. All you had to do was pick up the phone, but you bloody well didn’t. That said one helluva a lot, sweet one. It spelled out that all you cared about was what you were getting every night and when it dried up you didn’t want to know any more.’

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ she cried, turning away from him to collect up her brushes, her fingers tense and clumsy, her eyes smarting with unspent tears. ‘I don’t want any more of this, your filthy abuse, your tyrannical attitude. I don’t want to paint Agustªn’s portrait. I just want to get back to England and forget your very existence.’

  ‘It’s not that easy, though, is it?’

  ‘I’d say it’s quite simple. My client isn’t here. I can’t waste any more of my valuable time waiting for him.’

  ‘I mean it’s not that simple for us. We can’t forget each other’s existence…’ The change in his tone had her swinging round to face him.

  Her heart tightened at the look in his eyes. For a second the fury had gone, and what took its place was far more terrifying.

  She shook her head, trying to dispel the look that was frozen on her mind and had been all those months since they had loved each other so passionately. It was the look he gave her when he wanted her, wanted to make love to her. Words had never been needed; that languorous look had been enough. She had always gone to him and the feeling was still there. Even now, knowing how he meant to torment her, she still ached for him to take her in his arms. The old Felipe, though, she thought longingly, not this man who hurt her so.

  ‘I want to leave,’ she told him tightly, ‘and I’d appreciate it if you made the arrangements for me.’ Her eyes were wide and almost translucent with the depth of her appeal. He couldn’t refuse her, surely?