Helen was in such a state of shock that she couldn’t think anything for a few moments and couldn’t find her voice before he continued.
“Listen, I have no doubt I’m the father of this child.” He paused and exhaled silently as she shook her head. “So we need to deal with all this sensibly.”
Helen slumped down onto a bale of hay, her legs weak and shaky. Sensible, yes, she needed to be sensible. Sensible was good.
“I can help you clean up, Helen, before it’s too late. We can make a go of this, fix everything.”
“Clean up?” Helen frowned with annoyance. “Are you trying to be funny? I live on a farm for goodness sake. Besides, look at you!”
“Don’t be difficult, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve already booked a suite in one of the best Swiss clinics. It will work out just fine, I know it.”
“Ricardo, have you gone quite mad?”
“The drugs, Helen, all the stuff that used to go on in here.” He gestured around them with both arms, his movements jerky. It wasn’t like him. She’d never seen him on the verge of losing control. “You’ll have the best specialists, nobody need ever know.”
“This is ridiculous. The only drug I’ve ever used is Acetaminon…” She leant back against a wall of rough straw and raised her eyes to the spidery rafters, she suddenly felt very tired. “I’ve never moved in your sort of circles, Ricardo. It’s not my world. The first champagne I ever tasted was with you. Why on earth do you think I’m a user?”
“Kat Humby told me you were.”
“I should have guessed. So you took her word for it? Thanks a lot! You really are a stupid—”
“I tried talking to you about it, that last night in Menorca. You didn’t deny it so what was I supposed to think? And you were behaving irrationally, you said some hurtful things.”
“You hurt me too… and I’d drunk too much on an empty stomach.”
“I didn’t want to believe what she’d told me, found it hard to, but the facts were being thrown in my face and it all started to make sense.”
“It did? Care to share these ‘facts’? This I have got to hear!”
“Very well. First there’s the money. Drugs would be a reason why you needed so much, so quickly and why you wouldn’t elaborate on what your ‘bills’ were.”
“It’s still none of your business, but I’m telling you now it wasn’t drug money!”
“I know where it went now, Helen. Your mum told me everything, about how you paid off all their debts.” His expression was pained. “You could have told me, I wouldn’t have judged.”
“Oh Mother!” Helen was totally exasperated with the pair of them now. “So much for discretion! Dad’s such a proud, private man, I don’t think he could stand it if—”
“He knows that I know.”
“Did you tell them how I got all that money as well?” Unable to look him in the face she saw him nod from the corner of her eye. “Oh God, they’ll be so ashamed.”
Ricardo touched her lightly on the elbow, just enough to reassure her and then let his hand drop. “They’re humbled, proud that you’d marry someone you didn’t love just to help them. They love you in spite of and because of that. But getting back to the ‘facts’, our last evening together—”
“Do we have to?” She was beginning to feel shivery.
“Yes, we do. You were behaving as if you were coming down off a high, as if you needed a fix but couldn’t get one, which made sense because you were out of touch with your dodgy Ibiza friends, your supply.”
“Oh, not Bjorn again! You’re obsessed with the poor man. Being gay wasn’t enough to get the poor guy off the hook. You had to make him my imaginary dealer! Bjorn’s body is a temple to all things organic and vegetarian, darling, he doesn’t even smoke!”
“I admit I don’t like him, he makes me feel… jealous.”
Helen couldn’t help letting out a small laugh. “Mad dog Almanza.”
“And then you got really agitated about losing your handbag.” He gestured behind him to a brown heap in the corner. “I suddenly realized that you took it everywhere with you, even to the fire at Tino’s, and when I offered to replace it and its contents you didn’t want to. Why is that, Helen? What do you keep in there that’s so crucial? What’s in there that my money can’t, or won’t, buy if it’s not illegal drugs?”
Helen stood up and stared at the handbag on the floor. She’d heard it drop to the floor before she’d realized he was there. “You found it.”
“I went looking for it after we argued. I had to take Antonella back to Mahon. The last thing I wanted was for her to make matters even worse by her hanging around, and then I searched until it got dark. I used the torch I keep in the car until I found it. By the time I returned you were gone. I waited for you, stayed awake all night, but you never came back.”
“You’d said it was over between us. I assumed I wasn’t going to see you again anyway.” She shrugged, still staring at the bag. “What was the point in me hanging on? I caught the next flight home.”
“I had to phone your parents in the end just to make sure you were safe, and not in a ditch somewhere. They wanted to know what had happened, of course, so I told them.”
Helen solemnly looked at the feet. “So what did you think once you’d gone through my handbag?”
“I’ve never opened it.”
“Then there’s no time like the present.” She marched over to the bundle of brown leather and thrust it under his nose. “Go on, open it!”
“No, it makes no difference to how I feel about you.”
“Then I’ll do it!” She ripped open the zip and tipped the entire contents on the ground. Lipstick, sunglasses and mints fell with a clatter, tampons rolled, tissues and assorted bits of paper floated after them. “There you go! Satisfied now?”
Ricardo stooped to pick up two L-shaped plastic containers, one brown, one blue. “I had no idea.”
“I didn’t want you to know.”
“But why not? You should have told me in case—”
“My asthma’s perfectly well controlled as long as I take the brown inhaler twice a day and have the blue one with me at all times in case I have an attack. The pollen on the hill was bad that day, and the pines were in flower and Lucia’s cat had been on our bed again.”
“And those things set it off?”
“I’m allergic to them, so yes, but I was also very angry and emotional. I was going to need the blue one soon, I could just tell. That’s why I was so anxious and irritable. And wheezy. Bloody marvelous state of affairs for a farmer’s daughter, isn’t it?”
“For God’s sake, why the big secret? There must be millions of asthmatics in the world.”
“I hate being labeled, really hate it. I don’t want people to think I want their sympathy, I don’t. I’m fine most of the time, so nobody needs to know, nobody has a reason to bully me either.”
“Let me guess, Kat Humby bullied you because of this?”
“And her gang of posh friends. They had a lovely time, because I wore National Health free glasses until I was sixteen too. And braces on my teeth.”
“You’d never guess to look at you now.”
“Nope, my teeth are straight and I saved up for eye surgery to fix them. Unfortunately, all the money in the world can’t buy me better lungs.”
He pushed a hand deep into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry for accusing you of using drugs. It was stupid of me to come to such a wild conclusion based on, based on nothing more than me being irrational. And believing a mad woman’s poisonous lies.”
Helen straightened her shoulders. She had the upper hand now. “So you might be able to get this farm from us with all your millions and your gang of lawyers, but you’re not going to paint me as an addict to take the baby you think I’m carrying.”
Ricardo’s eyes opened wide and his mouth fell open. “You think I’m
capable of that?”
“Yes, Ricardo. Yes I do and why shouldn’t I after everything you’ve done so far? You and your sneaky subsidiaries have cut quite a swathe through the landscape here. We both know Primrose Farm is the last property left on the peninsula that you’ve not gotten your hands on and that we can’t fight you much longer.” She threw her arms in the air with desperation. “I wish you’d deny it all, Ricardo. I wish you could say that all this buying of land isn’t down to Lidia Skiptree and you.”
“I’ve only ever known her as Humby, Kat Humby. I didn’t realize she’d changed her name and that she’d bought a stake in Fothergill Enterprises.” His expression darkened. “So, I had no idea my company was involved with hers, either, until I started investigating this marina project while I was in London this week.”
Helen didn’t try to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Really?”
“Really! She pulled the wool over a lot of people’s eyes trying to get close to me again, but she’s out of a job now and the police will be knocking on her door very soon. So not only is she a bully, Helen, she’s also a stalker.”
“Bloody hell…”
“It’s true. She tried to seduce me into having sex with her at a property conference in London a few years back. It wasn’t hard turning her down, believe me, there are limits even when it is being handed to you on a plate. But she couldn’t let it go.”
“So you and her never…”
“No! Only in her warped fantasies, and then when she saw our wedding pictures it must have sent her right over the top. She lost it completely.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “But, even though she’s out of the picture now, I have to tell you that the recent property acquisitions you mentioned are all down to me personally.”
“I knew it.” Helen slumped down onto the bale of hay with the cat box on it and put her head in her hands.
“I’ve bought all fifty square miles of the estuary land, except Primrose Farm.”
She felt sick. “And you plan on getting it any way you can presumably?”
“No.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I don’t want your farm, I never have, and I’ll do everything to make sure that it will be here forever, for all future Marshall generations.”
“You’re confusing me now. Is this some sort of warped bargain? Stay out of my life, keep your mouth shut, and I won’t take your home away from you?”
He suddenly had a look of total desperation about him. “Please believe me. I had no idea about the extent of the marina development because it was a subsidiary project. I can’t sign every document personally, and it appears I was deliberately not informed about this proposal. Skiptree and her cronies were handling all the UK deals as subcontractors. As I’ve said, I’ve made sure heads will roll because of it. If I’d known, I’d have vetoed the whole idea. I really like your parents, and I’d never destroy all this.”
Helen felt a sad smile forming and she gestured to the rust and cobwebs and general mess that was most definitely not in the style of the house of Almanza. “All this, you say? This tumbledown little old farm? I wish I could believe it was true, Ricardo, I really do.”
“I’m not lying!”
Helen felt very weary. “So the fifty square feet. What are you going to do with all that? Are you planning on a constructing a new town or something? You could call it Almanzaville and surround Primrose Farm with skyscrapers if the planners let you. And they would let you, because you have plenty of money to grease the right palms.”
“I heard this morning that I’ve secured permission to create a wildlife sanctuary with supporting infrastructure. No yachts, but a few canoes. No jets, but a lot of bird boxes. And places for children to play and families to spend time together. No casinos, nightclubs, or bars.”
“Why?”
“Because I want us to stay as man and wife.”
“But you don’t believe in marriage.”
“I didn’t.”
“So what’s changed?”
“I’ve changed. You’ve made it happen, turned my world upside down and inside out and then kicked it in the balls.” He thrust his hand underneath his armpits as if he was shivering with cold. “I thought I had my life all sorted, all tidied away in neat little boxes and then you happened. I’ve changed my mind. I think being married to you is wonderful and I don’t want it to end. I want it to get better and better. I know it will. I want us to grow old together and be happy, be happy like your parents are.”
Helen’s head was beginning to spin, so much was happening. Her brain couldn’t process it all. “You said you were bringing the divorce forward the last time we were together!”
“I was angry and hurt! You were shunning me, and my plans to ask you to marry me properly were all over the place. You were being impossible and I wasn’t able to control the situation. I couldn’t get you to do what I wanted you to without… telling you how I felt. I wasn’t brave enough to risk everything, by opening myself up completely.”
Helen heard a strange noise come out of her mouth, half whisper, half sob. She felt as if she was being sucked down a plughole, helpless, disorientated. Her world was at a tipping point. She could cling on, but she had to do the right thing. “I’m not pregnant, Ricardo. There’s no baby, you don’t have to say these things. You don’t need to pretend. We can get divorced just like you’d always planned.”
“Not pregnant?” His eyes seemed to grow darker against his paling skin. “I’m confused.”
“No pregnancy, no baby, no need to be nice about this anymore.”
“But why?”
“But why did my mum tell you I was?” She let out a sad laugh. “I’m not really sure. Wishful thinking, perhaps? Trying to get us back together the only way she could think of?”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry you had to come all this way to hear the truth.” She shrugged and watched herself push some damp hay around with the toe of her boot. “And that you got a good soaking in the process.”
She saw his hand reach out to her from the corner of her eye and then she felt him gently grip her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered.
Holding back the tears was becoming painful. She needed to get away from him before she dissolved. “I’ll go fetch you a dry towel and a hot drink before you go.”
“It doesn’t matter about the baby.” His hand went to her chin and lifted her face to look at him. “It’s you I want. A baby would be amazing, and I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed, but I’d have come to fetch you soon anyway.”
“Honestly?”
“I love you, Helen. That’s what it all boils down to. I love you and I was too scared to say it in Spain, but now I have to if I stand any chance of getting you back, of persuading you to stay married to me. I don’t want anything to come between us ever again.” His voice grew hoarse as his hands dropped to his side and he took a step closer. “I want to help make your dreams come true.”
Helen’s head was spinning. “I don’t know what to say.”
Ricardo’s breath was visible in the cold damp air, little clouds of hope and despair. “You left these behind,” he said unfolding his long fingers to reveal two rings. “Will you put them on again? Will you be my wife? Properly this time? We can have a proper church blessing if you like with confetti, cameras, a thousand guests.”
“You just said you loved me.”
“I did. I do. I love you.”
Helen’s shoulders began to shake with emotion. “That’s bloody amazing!”
“It’s scaring the hell out of me.”
“Why?”
His fingers closed around the rings and formed a tight fist. “Because I don’t know how I’m going to make you love me back. I don’t think even another million euros is going to make that happen. I’m scared I can never be enough for you.”
She let out a ragged breath and grabbed the collar of his leather jacket. “Save your pennies, banker boy.”
She’
d never seen him look so completely shocked. His voice was low and serious. “What do you mean?”
Helen touched her fingers to his mouth and pulled him closer. “I love you too, you rich sod.” She took his empty hand, unfurled his fingers and then threaded them through hers. “And all I want is you and our future together. It’s all I’ll ever want.”
Ricardo untangled their fingers and slid the rings back on to her left hand. “So it’s official now. You’re my wife to have and to hold forever.”
“Do the lawyers need to draw up another addendum to cover this unusual and unexpected turn of events? Like how many sons I have to provide you with?”
He laughed and raindrops fell from his hair onto her nose. “No more bloody lawyers. Ever. And daughters will be fine.”
“What if we can’t… you know?”
“Then we’ll have a lot of fun trying.” He pulled her closer to him. “There’s nothing wrong with just you and me, Helen. I’ll do everything I can to make things perfect for you. Whatever you want, I’ll try to give you, I promise.”
Helen looked down at her left hand, still held in his and she believed him. “The rings are tighter than they were. All that gorgeous food and wine you stuffed me with in Spain. No wonder Mum convinced herself I was pregnant. I’ve come back at least half a stone heavier.”
“And you look all the more gorgeous for it.” He rubbed the back of his hand over her tummy and grinned. He brushed the water from her face and kissed her on the nose. “We’ll have the rings altered. You can have a new set every year if you like. Or month or week, just so long as you say you’ll stay my wife. I love you, and I can hardly dare to believe that this time it’s for real.”
“It always was real for me, the way I feel about you. I think I fell in love with you the first time I looked into your eyes and thought I was about to die. In a sort of way I did, because I’m in heaven now.”
“Yes,” he lowered his mouth to brush hers. “Amen to that.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks go to …
Colin for being my rock, tolerating my obsessions and pairing up the socks.
Rebecca for teaching herself to cook, making sure I shut the front door and being so beautiful.
The Spanish Billionaire's Hired Bride Page 18