by Olivia Gates
She couldn’t even gasp. Shock fizzled inside her like a spark in a depleted battery.
“And he did. Using money I gave him to gain his new position, he put himself where he’d have access to you. For the six weeks I stayed away performing one surgery after another, all the time burning for the moment I could come back and search you out, he was pursuing you. The moment you accepted his proposal, he called me to tell me that he was engaged. He left your name out.
“The day I rushed back to the States to find you, he insisted I go see him first, meet his fiancée. I can never describe my horror when I found out it was you.
“I kept telling myself it couldn’t have been intentional, that he wouldn’t be so cruel, that he couldn’t be shoving down my throat the fact that he was the one who’d gotten you. But I remember his glee as he recounted how it had been love at first sight, that you couldn’t get enough of him, and realized he was having a huge laugh at my expense, wallowing in his triumph over me, all the while dangling you in front of me until I was crazed with pain.”
“Was that why…?” She choked off. It was too much.
“Why I behaved as if I hated you? Sí. I hated everything at the time. Mel, myself, you, the world, the very life I woke up to every morning in which you could never be mine.”
“B-but you had so many other lovers.”
“I had nobody. Since I laid eyes on you. Those women were smoke screens so that I wouldn’t sit through our outings like a third-wheel fool, something to distract me so I wouldn’t lose my mind wanting you more with each passing day. But nothing worked. Not my efforts to despise you, not your answering antipathy. So I left, and would have never come back. But he forced me back. He crippled himself, as I and his parents always warned him he one day would.”
A shudder rattled her at the memory. “He said I made him lose his mind, drove him to it…”
He looked beyond horrified. “No. Dios, Cybele…it had nothing to do with you, do you hear? Mel never took responsibility for any problem he created for himself. He always found someone else to accuse, usually me or his parents. Dios-that he turned on you, too, accused you of this!” His face turned a burnt bronze, his lips worked, thinning with the effort to contain his aggression. She had the feeling that if Mel were alive and here, Rodrigo would have dragged him out of his wheelchair and taken him apart.
At last he rasped, “It had to do with his own gambler’s behavior. He always took insane risks, in driving, in sports, in surgeries. One of those insane risks was the gambling that landed him in so much debt. I gave him the money to gamble, too. He told me it was to buy you the things you wanted. But I investigated. He never bought you anything.”
So this was it. The explanation he’d withheld.
“As for the stunt that cost him his life and could have cost yours, it wasn’t his first plane crash but his third. He walked away from so many disasters he caused without a scratch that even the one that cut him in half didn’t convince him that his luck had run out and the next time would probably be fatal. As it was.”
For a long moment, all she heard was her choppy breath, the blood swooshing in her ears, his harsh breathing.
Then he added, “Or maybe he wanted to die.”
“Why would he?” she rasped. “He believed you’d put him back on his feet. He said you were very optimistic.”
He looked as if he’d explode. “Then he lied to you. Again. There was nothing I could do for him. I made it absolutely clear.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “So he was really desperate.”
“I think he was worse than that.” His hiss felt as if it would scrape her flesh from her bone. “I think he’d gone over the edge, wanted to take you with him. So I would never have you.”
She lurched as if under a flesh-gouging lash.
Rodrigo went on, bitterness pouring out of him. “Mel always had a sickness. Me. Since the first day I set foot in the Braddocks’ house, he idolized me and seethed with jealousy of me, alternated between emulating me to the point of impersonation, to doing everything to be my opposite, between loving and hating me.”
It all made so much sense it was horrifying. How she’d found Mel so different at first, how he’d switched to the seamless act of emulating Rodrigo. So it had been Rodrigo she’d fallen in love with all along. It was unbelievable. Yet it was the truth.
And it dictated her next action. The only thing she could do.
She pushed out of his arms, rose to unsteady feet, looked down at him, the man she loved beyond life itself.
And she cut her heart out. “I want a divorce.”
Cybele’s demand fell on Rodrigo like a scythe.
Rage, at himself, hacked him much more viciously.
He’d been so stupid. He’d railed at a dead man, not just the man he’d considered his younger brother, but the man Cybele still loved, evidently more than she could ever love him.
He shot to his feet, desperation the one thing powering him. “Cybele, no. Lo siento, mi amor. I didn’t mean…”
She shut her eyes in rejection, stopping his apology and explanation. “You meant every word. And you had every right. Because you are right. You at last explained my disappointment in Mel, my resentment toward him. You rid me of any guilt I ever felt toward him.”
Rodrigo reeled. “You-you didn’t love Mel?”
She shook her head. Then in a dead monotone, she told him her side of the story.
“Seems I always sensed his manipulations, even if I would have never guessed their reason or extent. My subconscious must have considered it a violation, so it wiped out the traumatic time until I was strong enough. I still woke up with overpowering gut feelings. But without context, they weren’t enough to stop me from tormenting myself when I felt nothing but relief at his death and anger toward him, when I wanted you from the moment I woke up. Now I know. I always wanted you.”
Elation and confusion tore him in two. “You did? Dios-then why are you asking for a divorce?”
“Because I don’t matter. Only my baby does. I would never have married you if I’d realized you would be the worst father for him. Instead of loving his father, you hate Mel with a lifelong passion. And though you have every right to feel that way, I can never subject my child to the life I had. Worse than the life I had. My stepfather didn’t know my father, and he also didn’t consider me the bane of his life. He just cared nothing for me. But it was my mother’s love for him, her love for the children she had with him, that alienated her from me. And she doesn’t love him a fraction of how much I love you.”
He should have realized all that. He knew her scars in detail, knew she was barely coping now, as an adult, with her alienated childhood and current bland family situation. But he got it now. The sheer magnitude of his blunder. It could cost him his life. Her.
“I never hated Mel,” he pleaded. “It was Mel who considered me the usurper of his parents’ respect and affection. I loved him, like brothers love their imperfect siblings. Mel did have a lot to him that I appreciated, and I always hoped he’d believe that, be happy playing on his own strengths and stop competing with me in mine. But I could never convince him, and it ate at him until he lashed out, injured you while trying to get to me, the source of his discontent. It was foolish, tragic, and I do hate his taking you away from me, but I don’t hate him. You have to believe that.”
She clearly didn’t. And she had every reason to distrust his words after that moronic display of bitterness and anger.
She confirmed his worst fears, her voice as inanimate as her face. “I can’t take the chance with my baby’s life.”
Agony bled out of him. “Do you think so little of me, Cybele? You claim to love me, and you still think I’d be so petty, so cruel, as to take whatever I felt for Mel out on an innocent child?”
She stumbled two steps back to escape his pleading hands. “You might not be able to help it. He did injure you, repeatedly, throughout his life. That he’s now dead doesn’t mean that you can f
orget. Or forgive. I wouldn’t blame you if you could do neither.”
“But that baby is yours, Cybele. He could be yours from the very devil and I’d still love and cherish him because he’s yours. Because I love you. I would die for you.”
The stone that seemed to be encasing her cracked, and she came apart, a mass of tremors and tears. “And I would d-die for you. I feel I will die without you. And that only makes me more scared, of what I’d do to please you, to keep your love, if I weaken now, and it turns out, with your best intentions, you’d never be able to love my baby as he deserves to be loved. And I-I can’t risk that. Please, I beg you, don’t make it impossible to leave you. Please…let me go.”
He lunged for her, as if to grab her before she vanished. “I can’t, Cybele.”
She wrenched away, tears splashing over his hands. His arms fell to his sides, empty, pain impaling his heart, despair wrecking his sanity.
Suddenly, realization hit him like a vicious uppercut.
He couldn’t believe it. Dios, he was far worse than a moron.
He did have the solution to everything.
He blocked her path. “Querida, forgive me, I’m such an idiot. I conditioned myself so hard to never let the truth slip, that even after you told me your real feelings for Mel, it took seeing you almost walking out on me to make me realize I don’t have to hide it anymore. It is true I would have loved any baby of yours as mine, no matter what. But I love this baby, I want him and I would die for him, too. Because he is mine. Literally.”
Fourteen
“I am the baby’s father.”
Cybele stared at Rodrigo, comprehension suspended.
“If you don’t believe me, a DNA test will prove it.”
And it ripped through her like a knife in her gut.
One thing was left in her mind, in the world. A question.
She croaked it. “How?”
He looked as if he’d rather she asked him to step in front of a raging bull. Then he exhaled. “A few years back, Mel had a paternity suit. During the tests to prove that he didn’t father the child, he found out that he was infertile. Then he told me that you were demanding proof of his commitment to your marriage, the emotional security of a baby. He said he couldn’t bear to reveal another shortcoming to you, that he couldn’t lose you, that you were what kept him alive. He asked me to donate the sperm. Just imagining you blossoming with my baby, nurturing it, while I could never claim it or you, almost killed me.
“But I believed him when he said he’d die if you left him. And even suspecting how he’d stolen you from me, I would have done anything to save him. And I knew if I said no, he would have gotten any sperm donor sample and passed it as his. I couldn’t have you bear some stranger’s baby. So I agreed.
“But believing you were suffering from psychogenic amnesia so that your mind wouldn’t buckle under the trauma of losing him, I couldn’t let you know you’d lost what you thought remained of him. I wouldn’t cause you further psychological damage. I would have settled for being my baby’s father by adoption when he was mine for real.”
So that was why. His change toward her after the accident, treating her like she was the most precious thing in the world, binding himself to her forever. This explained everything much more convincingly than his claim that he’d loved her all along.
It had all been for his baby.
“Te quiero tanto, Cybele, más que la vida. Usted es mi corazón, mi alma.”
Hearing him say he loved her, more than life, that she was his heart, his soul now that she knew the truth was…unbearable.
Feeling her life had come to an end, she pushed out of his arms and ran.
Rodrigo restrained himself from charging after her and hauling her back and never letting her go ever again with an exertion of will that left him panting.
He had to let her go. She had to have time alone to come to terms with the shocks, to realize that although they’d taken a rough course to reach this point, both Mel and fate had ended up giving them their future and perfect happiness together.
He lasted an hour. Then he went after her. He found her gone.
Consuelo told him Cybele had asked Gustavo to drive her to the city, where he’d dropped her off at a hotel near the center.
He felt as if the world had vanished from around him.
She’d left him. But…why? She’d said she loved him, too.
When his head was almost bursting with confusion and dread, he found a note on their bed.
The lines swam as if under a lens of trembling liquid.
Rodrigo,
You should have told me that my baby was yours from the start. I would have accepted your care for its real reason-a man safeguarding the woman who is carrying his baby. Knowing you and your devotion to family, your need to have your flesh and blood surrounding you, I know you want this baby fiercely, want to give him the most stable family you can, the one neither of us had. Had you told me, I would have done anything to cooperate with you so the baby would have parents who dote on him and who treat each other with utmost affection and respect. I don’t have to be your wife to do that. You can divorce me if you wish, and I’ll still remain your friend and colleague, will live in Spain as long as you do, so you’ll have constant access to your son.
Cybele.
Rodrigo read the note until he felt the words begin to burn a brand into his retinas, his brain.
After all the lies and manipulations she’d been victim to, she had every right to distrust his emotions and motives toward her. From her standpoint, he could be saying and doing whatever it took to get his son.
But he’d prove his sincerity if it was the last thing he did.
If he lost her, it just might be.
Twenty-four hours later, he stood outside her hotel room door, feeling he’d aged twenty-four years.
She opened the door, looking as miserable as he felt.
All he wanted was to take her in his arms, kiss her until she was incoherent with desire, but he knew that might only prove to her that he was manipulating her even worse than Mel had.
He never gambled. But he’d never known true desperation, either. Now a gamble, with potentially catastrophic results, was the last resort he had left.
Without a word, he handed her the divorce papers.
Cybele’s heart stopped, felt it would never beat again.
She’d made a desperate gamble. And lost. She’d owed him the choice, the freedom to have his baby without remaining her husband. She’d prayed he’d choose to be with her anyway.
He hadn’t. He was giving her proof, now that she’d assured him he’d always have his son, that he’d rather be free of her.
Then her eyes fell on the heading of one of the papers.
Before the dread fully formed inside her mind, it spilled from her lips. “You won’t take the baby away, will you? Any court in the world would give you custody, I know, but please don’t-”
He grimaced as if she’d stabbed him. “Cybele, querida, por favor, le pido. I beg you…stop. Do you distrust me that much?”
Mortification swallowed her whole. “No…no-oh, God. But I-I don’t know. Anything. It’s like you’re three people in my mind. The one who seemed to hate me, the one who saved me, took such infinite care of me, who seemed to want me as much as I want you, and the one who always had an agenda, who’s handing me divorce papers. I don’t know who you are, or what to believe anymore.”
“Let me explain.” His hands descended on her shoulders.
“No.” She staggered around before his grip could tighten. She couldn’t hear that he cared, but not enough to remain married to her. She fumbled for a pen by the hotel’s writing pad. The papers slid from her hands, scattered across the desk. Fat tears splashed over the blurring lines that mimicked the chaos inside her. “After I sign these papers, I want a couple of days. I’ll call you when I’m thinking straight again and we can discuss how we handle things from now on.”
His hands clamped
the top of her arms, hauled her back against the living rock of his body. She struggled to escape, couldn’t bear the agony his feel, his touch, had coursing in hers.
He pressed her harder to his length. She felt his hardness digging into her buttocks, couldn’t understand.
He still wanted her? But if he was divorcing her, then all the hunger she’d thought only she could arouse in him had just been the insatiable sexual appetite of the hot-blooded male that he was. And now…what? Her struggles were arousing him?
All thought evaporated as his lips latched onto her neck, drew on her flesh, wrenching her desire, her very life force with openmouthed kisses and suckles. She tried to twist away, but he lifted her off the ground, carried her to the wall, spread her against it and pinned her there with his bulk, his knee driven between her thighs, his erection grinding against her belly.
He caught her lower lip in a growling bite, sucked and pulled on it until she cried out, opened wide for him. Then he plunged, took, gave, tongue and teeth and voracity. Wave after wave of readiness flooded her core. She squirmed against him, everything disintegrating with her need to crawl under his skin, take him into hers. His fingers found her under her panties, probed her to a screeching climax. Then she begged for him.
In a few moments and moves, he gave her more than she could take, all of him, driving inside her drenched, clenching tightness. Pleasure detonated from every inch of flesh that yielded to the invasion of the red-hot satin of his thickness and length. He powered into her, poured driven words in an inextricable mix of English and Catalan, of love and lust and unbearable pleasure into her gasping mouth as his thrusting tongue ravaged her with possession and mindlessness.
Pleasure reverberated inside her with each thrust, each word, each melding kiss, like the rushing and receding of a tide gone mad. It all gathered, towered, held at its zenith like a tidal wave before the devastating crash. Then the blows of release hit like those of a giant hammer, striking her core again and again, expanding shock waves that razed her, wrung her around his girth in contractions so violent they fractured breath and heartbeats. She clung to him in the frenzy, inside and out as if she’d assimilate him, dissolve around him. Then she felt him roar his release as he jammed his erection to her womb, jetting his pleasure to fill it, causing another wave to crash over her, shattering her with the power of the sensations, of wishing that they’d make a baby this way in the future. When they didn’t have one…