‘The usual Thursday afternoon meeting,’ she told him dully. He’d been instrumental in getting her on the committee of a charity working with the homeless, and she’d found the work challenging, absorbing and deeply rewarding, but the enthusiasm was missing from her voice today as she enlightened him. ‘We’re in the throes of organising a late autumn fund-raising thrash; you’ll have to dragoon your wealthy friends into buying tickets. They’ll cost an arm and a leg.’
Acid in her voice there? Probably.
During the first months of their paper marriage she’d been introduced to his circle of high-flying friends. Sophisticated dinner parties mostly, the spiky chatter way over her head, an odd overheard remark about child brides and the common sense of marrying for money even if one did already have simply oodles of one’s own, dahling.
She’d been put under the microscope and had endured it with outward serenity to please Javier. She hadn’t gone off on one—
‘I thought I’d be able to make it back in time to go to Wakeham as usual on Saturday morning.’ She tuned in to what he was saying.
She could hear voices in the background, the husky sound of female laughter. He was entertaining. People he’d met while checking up on progress at the site? Or was the husky woman his regular travelling companion? she wondered on a sickening surge of jealousy.
‘But something’s come up, so I’m afraid I’ll be stuck here in Cannes until some time next week. So,’ he came out with the next stock question, ‘what are you doing this evening?’
As if he cared! She swallowed hard on the rising bubble of rage. Stuck in Cannes—oh, what a terrible shame! Throwing a party in his hotel suite—oh, how absolutely dreadful for him! No doubt being hit on by some fascinating full-blown woman—oh, she could weep for him, poor darling!
Zoe bit back the sarcastic comments and instead of telling the boring truth—ironing, reading or watching something on TV; what else was she to do?—she fibbed tightly, ‘I’m going out. Hitting the town and seeing what turns up. See you next week, then.’ And cut the connection and burst into tears.
By the time she’d used the last tissue in the box Zoe was struggling to pull herself together. She had to get right down to face a few unpleasant facts. Such as it was time she started living in the real world and stopped inhabiting a dream that had no chance of coming true.
For the last eleven months she’d been sweetness and light, never complaining, not even when he’d grown more and more remote, his eyes turning to brooding charcoal whenever he happened to look at her, regularly jetting off to sites all over the world. Leaving her to—
Miss him so badly she ached all over.
Instead of getting despondent over the way things were turning out, she’d gritted her teeth and clung onto her new maturity, thrown herself into her charity work, planned the welcome-home dinner she’d cook, stored up amusing anecdotes to entertain him with, shopped for the restrained and classy clothes she knew he preferred his women to wear…
His women!
He was a highly sexed male animal. Sophie—or had it been Glenda?—had actually and hatefully boasted of that fact during a session of babysitting holiday duties. She hadn’t wanted to hear that, she remembered, had been physically sick with jealousy.
Had he found a new woman to satisfy his needs? That would explain his increasing absences, wouldn’t it? The woman whose husky laughter she’d heard in the background only minutes ago! While his wife sat meekly at home, untouched, pure and properly behaved!
Well, not any more! It was time she cut free, saved herself a load of heartache. Acknowledged finally that what she had hoped for would never happen. Javier would never see her as a real woman, a woman he could fall in love with. To him she would always remain in permanent childhood, a self-inflicted duty. Something he would put up with until she came into her inheritance and could be trusted to behave sensibly!
Her golden eyes sparking rebelliously, her stomach churning sickly with a horrible mixture of jealousy and hopelessness, she punched in the Wakeham Lodge number and when it was picked up launched straight in.
‘Ethel, I’ll be driving down tomorrow. No, Javier won’t be with me, he’s working in France. I’m going to a local wedding on Saturday —you remember Guy and Jenny? And I’ll probably stay at Wakeham until the middle of next week.’
And Javier, returning to an empty apartment, could make what he liked of that. As for her, she was going out. This sham of a marriage was over.
Nearly midnight, and the wedding party was still going full blast. Lights strobed, moody blues and purples, couples dancing to the frenetic music. There were mostly young people left, the older guests having called it a night a couple of hours ago, the newlyweds having left for their honeymoon well before that.
Jenny had looked fantastic in her beautiful wedding gown. The adoration between the couple as they’d exchanged their marriage vows had been real enough to reach out and touch.
So different from her own wedding, almost a year ago. Zoe’s eyes misted as her throat tightened. She swallowed hard. She wouldn’t look back to the futile, juvenile hopes she’d harboured at that time. She would not! It was time to move on. Tonight was the start of the process.
And she’d been having fun, hadn’t she? Of course she had!
In the early evening, after the wedding breakfast, she’d changed here at the White Boar hotel from the summery suit she’d worn to the church service into a flirty scarlet chiffon dress with a dipping halter neckline, a narrow waist and a short flared skirt that made dancing a pleasure, freeing her movements. And it had been great to catch up with friends she hadn’t seen for a year.
Pleading aching feet, she’d rid herself of the latest batch of would-be partners, excused herself when they’d shown the inclination to linger. She’d had fun but it was time to get back to Wakeham and spend the next few days considering her future, walking the dog and generally chilling out.
Placing her glass of iced water on one of the small tables that bordered the banquet hall, she felt hard fingers bite into her wrist.
‘Been avoiding me, Zo? Given hubby the slip?’
Oliver. As the answer to both questions was obvious and affirmative she didn’t bother to answer. Just, ‘Let go of me, please.’
He didn’t. Simply tugged her closer. He was sweating. He looked drunk. It had been over twelve months since she’d last seen him. In that time his pretty-boy features had grown blurred, his waistline hinting at an incipient paunch. Shock stilled her tongue; in any case it was pointless to tear him off a strip for that vile message he’d sent with those horrible flowers. It all seemed part of a different life…
‘Nothing to say to an old mucker?’ Whisky fumes soured his breath. ‘Ever wondered what you’d missed when you turned me down?’
‘Never!’ The more she tried to pull free, the harder his fingers gripped. And no one was taking any notice. Dim lighting and everyone absorbed in dancing to something slow and smoochy now, locked together, clinging, totally oblivious.
‘Then what say I show you?’ His free hand dived beneath her halter top, hot and sweaty, squeezing, hurting. Her raised knee didn’t have time to connect in self-defence before he had her off balance, thrust back against the wall, a heavy thigh pushed between her shaking legs, his hands all over her, making her want to retch.
And then, like a miracle, she was free, Oliver hurtling backwards, falling against one of the tables. She was panting, her breath coming in shallow frightened gasps. Her eyes felt so dazed she could scarcely see. She forced them wide. Was she facing a knight in shining armour or an even greater threat?
Javier!
Big, dark and coldly furious.
Relief washed through her in huge convulsive waves. Levering herself away from the wall, she laved her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and shakily blurted the first thing that came into her head. ‘I thought you said you wouldn’t be back for days.’
‘Obviously.’ His voice was dryer than a Saharan win
d. The background music picked up in tempo. Oliver, she noted, had scuttled away. Javier said, ‘Out!’ and jerked his head in the direction of the doorway.
Glad to, Zoe headed for the exit to the hotel foyer, her scarlet skirts swaying around her long legs, aware of his eyes pinned on her. She had never been so happy to see anyone in her life, and as soon as they reached the well-lit foyer, the relative silence, she turned to him, the colour she’d lost starting to steal back into her face. ‘Thanks. I’ll just fetch my things.’
She sounded breathless, she knew she did; she had hardly been able to get those few words out. Her whole body was shaking with reaction. She turned jerkily towards the lift that would take her to the room she had changed in after the wedding breakfast, unprepared for his, ‘Not now. I want you out of here.’
His words felt like bullets in his throat. Anger and hostility burned in his brain. He had never lifted a finger against a woman in his life, never wanted to. But now he wanted to turn her over his knee and paddle her delightful backside! But he would never betray his honour by doing any such thing.
An insistent hand on the small of her back was sufficient to guide her unresistant body out through the main doors, into the quiet night. There was nothing quiet about his thoughts. How long had Sherman and his wife been mauling each other, propped up against that wall? How long before the two of them would have sneaked away to somewhere more private?
‘Get in.’ He opened the passenger door of his Jaguar. Zoe lifted her head to look into his face. All hard angles and sharp planes, his eyes like lasers. She had never faced such savage anger before. Her throat went dry. No knight to the rescue. More like an avenging angel.
She shivered as the night air cooled her overheated skin, pulling herself together, remembering that he was no longer part of her life. ‘I’ve got my own car.’ The Lotus, parked right beside his, he couldn’t have failed to see it. ‘The keys are in my hotel room. I’m going back to get them and check out. You can’t tell me what to do, not any more. The stupid farce of our marriage is over.’
Javier ignored that. He picked up on the damning evidence, and his voice pulsed with outrage. ‘Then it’s a pity you and Sherman didn’t use the room you’d booked instead of having sex in full view of half the county.’ He dragged in a tight breath. ‘Get in.’
In this mood there was no talking to him, Zoe recognised, her heart sinking. Just for a moment she’d had the fleeting thought that, not believing he was rescuing her from a hateful, scary situation, he’d actually been jealous. Not the case. Hadn’t she learned enough during the last eleven months to stop herself hoping for the impossible? The primary source of his anger stemmed from what people might say about his wife’s behaviour, making him look like a cuckolded fool! How he would loathe that!
Wordlessly, she folded herself into the seat, shuddered as he slammed the door closed and hated him for the power he had to hurt her time after time. Then as he took his seat behind the steering wheel she asked in a viciously tight voice, ‘So what brought you back from the delights of Cannes?’
‘Your stated intent to go out on the prowl,’ he shot back tersely as he fired the powerful engine.
Recalling the rebellious lie didn’t make her feel guilty. Quite the opposite. Folding her arms across her chest as he pulled out of the hotel car park, she fumed, ‘It’s all right for you to do as you please, go where you like, hang out with other people—women, as far as I know. But I must sit in an empty apartment twiddling my thumbs, is that it?’
Accelerating, he growled, ‘Grow up, Zoe!’
‘I am,’ Zoe shot at him through gritted teeth. ‘I’m taking charge of my own life from now on. I’m not a child, in case you hadn’t noticed! And I won’t be treated like one.’
It wasn’t the way she’d wanted to end it. Not in an undignified spat with him losing all patience with her. She’d intended to tell him of her decision to end the sham of their marriage before schedule coolly and civilly, explain that he had no need to worry about her, thanks to him she was on track. But what he’d walked in on had put paid to that.
Subsiding into miserable silence as the explosive tension coming from him in almost tangible waves made her bones shake, made her remember the times his patience had seemed inexhaustible.
Learning to drive in London when they’d first been married. Apart from sessions with qualified instructors Javier had taken her out time after time to practise the dreaded parallel parking. Calm, good-humoured and above all patient when she’d repeatedly, session after session, got it all wrong. Spending what must have been hours with her until she’d eventually got the hang of the manoeuvre.
To celebrate passing her driving test at the first attempt he’d bought her what she’d privately called a granny-going-shopping car, sedate and sensible. Not like the Lotus.
Thinking of those happier times, innocent and improbably naive times, when she’d hoped that their marriage would turn into a real one, made her want to cry.
So she injected steel into her spine when the short journey was completed and she exited the car and found to her shame that her legs would barely hold her upright.
As the security lights came on Zoe leant against the side of the car for much-needed support and watched Javier unlock the front door. She was shaking again, but with rage this time. How dared he think she’d arranged to spend the night with Oliver Sherman?
To immediately leap to that conclusion—not even bothering to ask for her side of the sordid story—had to mean that his opinion of her morals was solid rock-bottom!
Had he always thought she was a slag?
Her head high, she walked into the house, passing him without so much as a glance, and on up the stairs, her soft mouth tightly compressed to hold back the scalding words of self-defence that were blistering her tongue. Throw them at him and it would all come out—the stark truth that she had never slept with Oliver Sherman, or any other man. The pathetic fact that he, Javier, was the only man she’d ever wanted.
A savage thrust of anger made Javier’s heart thump against his chest as his narrowed eyes followed her progress. The scarlet dress was a come-on if ever he’d seen one, making the most of her glorious man-teaser body, emphasising the sexy curve of her hips and the length of her shapely legs.
Had the minx bought it especially for her assignation with Sherman? And how many times, during his absences, had the two of them been together? His teeth grated, tightening his rock-hard jaw. He shouldn’t have left her to her own devices, her own inclinations. Once again he’d solved the problem he’d faced by withdrawing. This time not to allow his absence to cool her ardour, but his own!
He took the stairs two at a time. To hell with cool, gentlemanly withdrawal—that solution had been born of his pragmatic English genes. The Spaniard in him demanded confrontation, the airing of the emotions that were turning his insides to fire.
Her bedroom was empty, just the teasing subtle ghost of the perfume she wore and the muted sound of the shower. His hands stuffed in the pockets of his tailored trousers, he paced the floor, feeling the tiger inside his chest try to claw its way out.
Her statement that she was about to go out on the town had rung alarm bells loud and clear. He’d packed four days’ worth of meetings into two and flown back to London. And waited. Her car hadn’t been in the underground parking area and the wedding invitation had told him where she’d be.
He should have known the new butter-wouldn’t-melt persona was just an act!
The cool blue pristine bedroom, the ornate bed with its smooth cream cover, mocked him. She was a normal healthy young adult. She had a sex drive like anyone else. A frustrated sex drive. Despite her volunteer charity work, to which he had to admit she’d willingly and enthusiastically given large chunks of her time, she’d been bored within the sterile bounds of their marriage and had taken up the invitation her former lover had issued.
With hot enthusiasm?
A groan vented through his clenched teeth. She was his wife,
dammit!
As if on cue the object of his fevered thoughts exited the bathroom. Water darkened her hair, slicked her silky skin; the towel around her body was tiny. Golden eyes widened with shock, lush lips parting. Her breathing accelerated, exposing the tops of her full breasts as they thrust against the towelling barrier.
The thought of Sherman luxuriating in that sensational body filled him with blistering anger. Sherman had entered that heaven on earth while he had behaved like the perfect gentleman, putting on that cool façade while every move the little witch made him want her more, absenting himself, putting temptation behind him. What kind of man did that make him?
‘You dishonour me!’ His Spanish genes came to the fore as he spoke with savage contempt. ‘My wife making a cuckold of me in front of an audience! Are you always so indiscreet? Or were you both too drunk to care? His breath would have made a distillery smell like fresh sea air!’
Eyes darkening to pitch castigated her. Zoe threw sparks of loathing back at him. How dared he?
And perhaps the most crushing thing to come out of this was the painfully obvious fact that his gripe had little to do with his premise that she and Oliver had been having sex, but a lot to do with their lack of discretion!
Reining back the wild-cat impulse to slap those strong dark features cost more in self-control than he would ever know. Hitching the towel more securely around her tense body, she came back with a cool that took a huge mental effort to achieve. ‘If that’s what you think of me then you’ll be happy to know that I won’t dishonour your name any longer than it takes to get an annulment. And I have never been your true wife!’
Smouldering charcoal clashed with molten gold. In his anger he was dangerously exciting. Despite all her best intentions her body thrummed with it, betraying her. Her throat felt thick. She tried to swallow and couldn’t.
Electrifying tension pulsed in the air, thickening it, making it difficult to breathe. Zoe’s fingers tightened on the slipping towel. Her long-standing relationship with this hard-angled man now seemed completely unstable. Every muscle of his powerful lean body was rigid with the internal battle she sensed within him.
A Spanish Marriage Page 7