‘Remember what I said about your stubbornness and inability to take no for an answer?’ But as they walked towards the car she had to smile to herself.
‘Believe me, you’re only now discovering just how stubborn I can be.’ Already Cesar was thinking about the situation and coming up with a fresh strategy. She wasn’t prepared to marry him…yet…but he would still need to be around. He wasn’t going to settle for doing a vanishing act until he got a phone call at three in the morning telling him that he was a father.
Besides…and in the darkness of the car, his eyes slid over to her neat profile…it had been disconcertingly easy to take this bombshell in his stride. Of course, he was a man capable of dealing with pretty much anything that life had to throw at him because, with the exception of health problems, there was nothing that could not be sorted out with a cool head, but he found himself a lot less disturbed by the notion of parenthood than he might have expected.
‘Okay—’ Cesar raised his shoulders in a gesture that indicated magnanimity in defeat ‘—for the moment I will accept that you have reservations about my offer. Although,’ he couldn’t help adding, ‘I don’t understand why, but I don’t want to argue with you. Now is not a time for arguing.’
‘No, it’s not.’ After all the tension of the past couple of days and the past couple of hours, Jude gave in to a moment of wickedness. ‘After all, I am pregnant, and pregnant women shouldn’t argue. Something about stress being bad for the baby…’
Cesar swerved the car over to the pavement and stopped. ‘Is that what the doctor told you?’
‘Why have you stopped?’
‘Because I won’t be accused of doing anything that might jeopardise this pregnancy.’
‘Cesar, I was joking!’ She looked at him, surprised at his reaction. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re glad that I’m pregnant?’
‘I’m trying to tell you that…you shouldn’t stress…’ Put on the spot, Cesar was not going to commit himself to saying anything that might be misconstrued. Glad was a pretty big word. ‘I’m here and I can take anything in my stride.’
‘Oh.’ Jude couldn’t hide her disappointment. He had taken all this a lot better than she had expected, but then he had been put in an unenviable position and maybe, having resigned himself to the inevitable, he was now getting used to the idea of having a child. Maybe, just maybe, even liking it. But that didn’t mean that he was pleased that she happened to be the mother. Like he said, he was just taking it all in his stride.
‘But if I can take this in my stride and accommodate it into my life, then I feel that you should be prepared to meet me halfway.’ That little word glad was still niggling somewhere at the back of his brain, in the same place, in fact, where he had stored away the explosive notion that he had been missing something in his life. It was just an unsettling feeling he had had seeing his brother, Imogen and their baby and, unused to dealing with anything less than complete satisfaction with the path he had chosen for himself, he had opted to shelve the feeling rather than deal with it. ‘And I mean literally halfway.’
‘Is this suggestion going to stress me out?’ Jude asked lightly.
‘No. In fact…’ Cesar looked at her with a certain amount of self-satisfaction ‘…the opposite. It’s going to make your life a lot easier and it’ll give me peace of mind.’ He started the engine and pulled away from the kerb, back on course to her hotel. ‘I want you closer to me,’ he said. It felt strange to say something like that to a woman but he let it go. These were exceptional circumstances. ‘I’m a traditionalist. You know that and you’re just going to have to run with it.’
Jude sighed, indulging his arrogance, which was so much part and parcel of the person he was.
‘The mother of my child can’t be allowed to run wild in the back of beyond, refusing all offers of help from me through sheer pride.’
Given such an array of misconceptions, Jude struggled to find one in particular on which she could latch. ‘Run wild?’
‘I can see you know where I’m coming from.’ Up ahead was her hotel, which wasn’t the run-down one-star Cesar had imagined. In fact, he had to admit that it looked perfectly all right, although nowhere near the standard he was used to. Next to him, Jude seemed to be struggling to say something.
‘Back of beyond?’
‘I give you snowbound.’
‘Sheer pride?’
‘You said it. I see we’re on the same wavelength here, which is a good thing because…’ you’re going to move. Cesar nearly said it but remembered in time that that phraseology would be like waving a red rag to a bull and right now tact was called for. ‘…I think it would be an immensely good idea if you move a bit closer to me. I’m not saying central London. I realise you have your work out there, but correct me if I am wrong—you freelance, so you could work from anywhere, right?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Thought so. You could easily rent your cottage. Holiday let of some sort. People are always wanting to have weekend breaks in the middle of nowhere, for reasons I, personally, have never understood. So you let your cottage and I’ll buy you somewhere a bit closer, somewhere I can actually get to quickly without having to use the company helicopter. There are some extremely pleasant areas around London that boast accessible road and rail links.’
Jude opened her mouth to inform him of the ease of transport from her cottage in most weather conditions, that she had furnished that cottage from scratch and it was her pride and joy and that he could take a running jump if he thought that he could manoeuvre her into his point of view just because he happened to be something of a dinosaur when it came to this unique situation. Instead, she said faintly, ‘You can’t just buy me a house.’
‘Why not?’ They were at the hotel and he parked his Bentley and turned toward her.
‘Because people don’t do stuff like that.’
‘I thought we’d already established that I’m not like other people. Anyway, you are entitled. What do you look for in a house?’
Jude, who had no intention of accepting any such thing, was nevertheless distracted by the thought of his house—all modern flooring, expensive rugs and uncomfortable leather furniture that was designed to be displayed rather than sat on.
‘Certainly not anything like yours,’ she said and he gave her a disarming grin that sent her pulse racing.
‘What’s wrong with my apartment?’
‘I hate leather furniture. It’s too cold in winter and sticks to your legs in summer. And wooden flooring should be authentic. And paintings of lines and circles don’t make any sense.’
‘Anything else?’
‘And don’t you miss having a garden? Some small square patch of lawn? Somewhere you can sit in summer with a glass of wine?’
‘No. What else do you hate about my apartment?’
‘Sorry.’ Too late now for an apology, she supposed, but while he seemed so open to criticism, she couldn’t help adding, ‘It doesn’t look lived in.’ She wondered what his house with his wife had looked like. Had it had a woman’s touch? Flowers in vases? Recipe books bought with optimism but destined to sit on shelves in the kitchen unopened? Pictures of family members in frames? ‘What was your house like in Spain when you were married?’
Cesar frowned. He hadn’t really thought of that before. He had thought about Marisol, had put her in a safe keeping place in his mind, but the house? When he thought of a house, he thought of Jude’s house—its casual warmth, the cosy clutter, the log fire burning in the sitting room.
‘Big, as a matter of fact.’ He should really let her go now, into her hotel, but it was comfortable being in the dark car with her. He rationalised that this was all part of the process of establishing an easier relationship with her. She was no longer just a woman with whom he had had a brief fling and who had caused him to lose a bit of sleep by bruising his ego. She was much more important than that now. He had a duty to sit here with her, to talk, to watch those fascinating express
ions flit across her face, ambushing all her hopes of ever being mysterious and unreadable.
‘I can’t remember how many bedrooms…or sitting rooms, for that matter. Lots of marble.’
‘Wow. Very grand.’ Of course that would be his preferred taste in houses.
‘Very grand,’ Cesar agreed. ‘A present from her parents.’
‘Useful parents.’ Jude laughed ruefully. ‘Although I think I rather like the thought of small and cosy.’
‘I know.’
‘Anyway,’ she said briskly, before his fond trip down memory lane had her bursting into tears, ‘I’ll be gone now. I feel exhausted.’ She yawned as tiredness threatened to overwhelm her. She remembered what he had said about wanting her closer to him but suddenly she felt too weary to reopen the debate. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to have just one night to indulge her romantic notions and wallow in the warmth of him telling her that he wanted to marry her, wanted her as his wife, that, failing that, he wanted her close to him. She would leave reality out of it and just pick the bits and pieces of his conversation that she wanted to hear. What was the harm in that? She would call him in the morning and tell him that having a house bought for her was entirely out of the question and he would have to play by her rules.
* * *
Three days later and Jude was still trying to get through to Cesar, who was, according to his secretary, out of the office closing a deal. Nor was he attainable on his mobile, which really brought home to her once and for all that her fragile, spun glass, you’re-the-mother-of-my-child status was a figment of her imagination. All that mattered to Cesar was his work. It took priority over everything. As she was sitting in front of her bowl of cereal, idly thinking about what she had to do but mostly rehearsing what she would say to Cesar when she finally managed to get hold of him, she was jolted out of her thoughts by the sharp sound of her doorbell.
She opened the door with her cup of tea in her hand and there he was, materialising yet again out of thin air and making her wonder whether it was physically possible to summon someone up just by thinking very hard about them.
Jude’s treacherous heart skipped a beat. At seven-thirty in the morning he looked gut-wrenchingly handsome and she scowled, remembering her frustrated efforts to get through to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you!’
‘Is that all you ever wear?’ Cesar eyed the shapeless dungarees with gleaming eyes.
‘Where were you?’ Jude repeated in a shrill voice.
‘Important stuff. You’ll have to go and get changed into something more…less utilitarian.’
‘Why? I’m not going anywhere with you!’
‘And forget about being stubborn. There’s something you need to see.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘IS THIS THE deal I was told you were working on?’
They had just finished walking around the house which Cesar had threatened to buy and which Jude had spent the past three days deciding against, with her refusal becoming more eloquent in her head the longer she had tried to reach him by phone and failed.
It had taken them less than an hour to make it to the small hamlet on the outskirts of London, during which time he had pointedly refused to tell her the reason for his sudden urgency to take her out, instead keeping the conversation light. Every time she had tried to bring the subject back to the speech she had rehearsed, he had danced round her remarks and told her that he would talk seriously once they were out of the car and he could concentrate fully on what she was saying. As if he ever had the slightest difficulty in multi-tasking.
And now here they were.
He had clearly paid a great deal of attention to every word she had said about his apartment because there was an ostensible absence of anything modern in the house, although Jude could tell at a glance that everything was of a superbly high standard. The country-style kitchen with its small green Aga and the four-poster bed with its patchwork quilt—exquisite and no expense spared.
‘This is the deal I was working on,’ Cesar agreed, his dark eyes raking intently over her face. He had had to move at the speed of light but, with a bottomless pit of money at his disposal, Cesar had had no trouble in locating the ideal house in the ideal village which was within ideal driving distance of both his work and his apartment.
‘Just look around before you say anything,’ he had told her the minute he had seen the protestations rising to her lips. ‘If you don’t like the idea then I’ll respect your decision.’ He had banked on the house doing his work for him by wooing her and, although he wasn’t certain of success, he was sure he had a better chance of her agreeing to this concession than he had three days ago when she had turned down his marriage proposal flat.
She had made all the right noises at the small, attractive mature garden with its own little orchard with apple and plum trees, had paused to admire the rough old beams in the house, the open fireplace with the date engraved on the mantelpiece and its border of original Victorian tiles, had run her hands over the Aga, which kept the place beautifully warm, and had admitted to him in the bedroom that she had always wanted a four-poster bed.
Cesar could feel triumph vibrating in the air between them. ‘Well,’ he asked pleasantly, ‘what do you think of it? Do you like it?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
They had retired to the kitchen and were now facing one another across the pine table, in the centre of which was a vase of wild flowers.
‘It’s the right distance from central London,’ Cesar said, working his sales pitch carefully because experience had taught him that one errant word would have her scuttling into defence mode. He still couldn’t quite grasp why and how she could have seen his marriage proposal as some sort of insult. He had offered her the highest prize and she had rejected it but there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on that. ‘And it’s a commutable distance from where you are now. You could easily make it back if you need to for work purposes, or to visit friends…’
Temptation dangled in front of her eyes. Cesar didn’t love her but he was driven to take care of her because she was carrying his baby. Of course, she would never, ever marry him for all the reasons she had told herself over and over again, but it was kind of comforting to know that he could be right there should she ever have the need to call on him and right there when their child was born and he wanted to visit.
‘I could buy the house today,’ he said, his dark velvety voice seducing her. ‘The owners have moved to the Far East and they’re willing to sell the furniture or what bits of it you might want… You could move in by the end of next week…’ He allowed that cosy image to form in her head.
‘We haven’t even discussed this!’ Jude objected. ‘It’s crazy for you to think that you can just go and find me somewhere else to live because it suits you, without even bothering to consult me!’
‘Would you have agreed to go on a house hunt with me?’
‘Maybe not but that’s not the point.’
‘Of course it’s the point. You would keep putting obstacles in the way and making life as difficult as you possibly could for me. I made a managerial decision and chose the option that would suit us both.’
‘I’m not one of your employees, Cesar! Someone you can boss around and give orders to!’
‘I wouldn’t consider buying a house for any of my employees. Now you’ve seen this place, tell me what you don’t like about it.’
‘It’s not about the house. Of course I like the house! I’ve already told you so. It’s about the presumption.’
‘You mean the presumption that I might want a situation that works in some small measure for me as well as for you. So you like the house, it’s in a brilliant location. So your real objection is that you wanted to have the opportunity to dig your heels in and exercise your right of refusal. You are carrying my baby and now that you have that leverage to blackmail, you intend to use it to the fullest. Is that it?’
‘Of course it isn’t.’ Jude gave him a sulky look because, put like that, he somehow made her sound petty.
‘And I don’t dig my heels in,’ she continued and Cesar raised his eyebrows in blatant incredulity. ‘There’s a difference between digging your heels in and having an opinion,’ she carried on, her mouth downturned.
‘Give me a concrete objection, Jude, and spare me the postulating.’
‘I have heaps of stuff in my cottage…’
‘Transporting whatever you wanted to bring could be done in the snap of a finger…’
‘But moving house is a really big deal. Anyway, I can’t let you buy this for me…’
‘Could you let me buy it for my child?’ Cesar shrugged because the whole matter of finance was immaterial to him. The cost of the house was an infinitesimal drop in the ocean for him. ‘If you like, the house can remain in my name, held in trust for our child. These small concerns barely matter.’
Jude heard the sound of arguments forming in her head and being washed away by the ebb and flow of Cesar’s logic and determination.
And her own clawing love for him was undermining all her objections. She liked the sound of his familiar drawl, thrilled to the prospect of knowing that he was within easy reach, was guiltily aware that she really craved the thought of being the sole focus of his attentiveness at least for a few months, even though the short-term fix would probably do even more long-term damage to her mental state.
‘Well…’ She drew the syllable out and Cesar knew that he had won. She would move in. He was surprised at how relieved he felt at that thought.
‘I still don’t much like the idea of accepting this…’ Jude felt obliged to point out because she wasn’t about to be browbeaten on all fronts ‘…but I guess I can compromise and then, when the baby’s born, we can take it from there…’
‘Whatever you say.’
* * *
In actual fact, it was a little over a fortnight later when Jude moved her final set of project designs into the house and during that time she had found it hard to cling onto her picture of Cesar as the arrogant man who only wanted her because of an accident of circumstance, a man who would just as soon set her up as his wife as he would leave her to her own devices the minute he got bored of her appeal.
The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress Page 30