He stepped out, holding a hand to keep the doors open, his eyes watching her with lazy cynicism.
“Well?”
“I’m not coming with you,” she said, shaking her head.
He waited, without speaking.
“You can stand there all night, it won’t change my mind.”
And a muscle ticked in his jaw as he shrugged, and for a brief moment, she thought she’d won. She thought he’d simply accepted her decree and would disappear from her life once more – back to his perfect wife and perfect life, his money and career and doting parents.
Only Xavier Salbatore never gave up, ever. The accident he’d been in should have killed him; it was only through sheer stubborn determination that he’d managed to fight his way back to life.
He stepped back into the lift and without a single hint of what he intended, scooped down and picked her up around the waist, hoisting her over his shoulder with as little ceremony as if she were a sack of potatoes.
“Hey!” She shouted. “Put me down, you… you…”
“All the name calling in the world will not make any difference.” His accent was thicker when he was driven by emotion, and in that moment, it was heavy, coating each word in a Spanish summer. Oranges, jasmine, cloves and spices. She wanted to ignore it, she wanted to resist the tug on her senses, but he was drugging her, just as he had then.
No! Not just as he had then! She’d been younger, ignorant and so stupidly trusting. She’d been a fool then.
Now? She was a mother and a damned good one at that! She was strong and resilient – she’d had to be, and mostly because of this lying, cheating bastard.
“I will scream,” she said, kicking her legs and connecting with his torso. It was hard, like granite. Visions of his abdominal muscles danced in her head.
“Then I will find a way to silence you.” The threat was far less menacing than perhaps he intended, because it set off a reaction of awareness, cascading through her, so she was barely able to breathe when they entered his hotel suite and he slid her down his body and placed her feet on the floor.
Awareness zapped at her senses; to cover how easily he could affect her, she shoved at his chest, rewarded by the feeling of connecting with his body. Of pushing him. Of hurting him. Except she was no match for him physically; her violent action had barely shifted his body an inch.
“What is your name?”
“Of course you don’t remember,” she muttered, no longer pretending that they were strangers. What was the point? He mightn’t remember the specifics of their time together, but he clearly remembered something about her.
“I know you.” And he sounded relieved, but she was simply offended. Offended beyond belief.
“Yes, you could say that.” She pulled away from him, walking deeper into the penthouse suite.
“How?”
She stared out at London, unseeing. She’d wondered about him often since she’d walked away from him. She’d wondered if he thought of her. If he wished things had been different. She wondered if he felt guilty for sleeping with her when he was engaged to another woman.
“We met at the theatre,” she said, indignation showing in her voice, that he’d forgotten their weekend together.
“When?” He was across the room. She heard the telltale clinking of glasses followed by the spilling of liquor.
The sense of insult grew. “A long time ago.”
“When?” He was closer now. She braced for the moment when he would come to stand beside her, but it was of little use. The second he was there, she felt him like a tidal wave. There was no bracing for his nearness. He handed her a drink and she took it, arranging her fingers to avoid any accidental contact with his.
“Years.”
He nodded, as though that made sense. “How many years? You can’t be more than twenty two. It can’t have been that long ago…” Was that unease in his voice?
“I’m twenty four,” she corrected.
He looked relieved.
“And did we …date?”
She snorted again, and took a sip of the drink. It burned her like the fires of hell. She spluttered then coughed, handing him the glass with a mutinous expression before crossing to the kitchen and pulling a bottle of water from the fridge. She cracked it open and drained half of it before she felt like she could respond.
“No, Xavier. We didn’t date.”
His eyes widened and she knew why. Fool! He had always loved the sound of his name on her lips.
You say it as though it is sex. You make my name sound like a seduction.
And it had been. She’d called it over and over and over, an incantation and an invitation; a plea.
“So what happened between us then?”
She put the water bottle down heavily on the table, her eyes full of barbed accusation. She thought of Joshua and it was the only thing that saved her from raining all her anger down on this man. She had to be careful. She had to be smart.
She looked away, focusing her mind on their son, focusing her thoughts on what mattered most.
“It was a long time ago. Nothing good can come from dredging up the past.”
“Damn it, I don’t even know your name, and yet I have the strangest sense that you were… important to me at one time.”
It was too much for her heart to bear. “Important? I was never anything to you. I was nothing, except a quick lay.”
His eyes narrowed but he didn’t otherwise react.
“Sex,” she continued, wanting to shock him, wanting to shock herself back to common sense. “A distraction. That’s all.”
“I see,” he nodded, apparently accepting her version of events.
But fire was spreading through her now; a fire that he had lit, and flamed with the gasoline of his enquiry. “God knows how many women like me there were, if you can’t even remember my name.”
He prowled towards her, and she instinctively stepped backwards, but her expression was defiant, her body stiff, poised, ready to fight.
“I have no idea,” he said, apparently uncaring for how callous the words were.
“Well, why don’t you ask your wife?” She hissed, and now he reacted, his expression shifting, his skin paling.
“My wife? Why do you say that?”
“Because you were engaged to her when we slept together,” Ellie threw at him. “And you didn’t even have the decency to tell me.”
And they’d married. Six months after the accident, when Ellie’s stomach was rounded with his child, he’d married someone else. She’d allowed herself the macabre indulgence of googling him only for so long as the internet confirmed he’d taken that step, and then? No more. He was married and despite the fact she was pregnant with his baby, he ceased to exist for her.
How could it be otherwise? Xavier’s own mother had made Ellie see what she needed to do – forget about Xavier and move on with her life. He sure as hell had.
She didn’t see the look of utter confusion that moved over his face. She was too angry, and too relieved – relieved to finally be able to throw the charges, that had been festering for four long years, at his feet.
“You didn’t stop to think about whether I would want to do that to another woman? Well, let me tell you, Xavier. The answer is no. If I’d known you were engaged, about to be married, I would never have slept with you. I would never have even looked at you. God, what an idiot I was! You were so charming, so skilled. Far too good at seduction to have not done it an awful lot. But I didn’t see that at the time. I just saw… you. And I was so captivated. How could I not be?”
The question hung between them.
“I was a stupid kid,” she said after a heavy beat of silence had throbbed between them. “And now, I’m anything but.” She squared her shoulders and turned towards the door. “You’ve got the answers you were after. I’m going home.”
2
Four years earlier
“OH GOD, OH GOD,” she murmured over and over, waiting for the lift to
reach the floor of the hospital, her body in agony just imagining the state he would be in. The picture on the news had shown only a mangled car – that sleek, black sports car with the beige interior. Beautiful and fast, and now, crumpled like a tin can, after a petrol tanker had crossed to the wrong side of the M1 and collected Xavier in its path.
How he’d even survived was beyond Ellie.
But he had.
And he was going to be just fine, she told herself, ignoring the pessimistic tone of the newsreader’s report.
Billionaire CEO and heir to the Salbatore Industries fortune, Xavier Salbatore was involved in a high-speed, head-on collision earlier today. The driver of a petrol tanker lost control of his vehicle and careened into oncoming traffic. The truck driver died at the scene and Mr Salbatore is in hospital in a critical condition that some have reported as worsening. We’ll have more through the night.
Ellie didn’t want to think about the word ‘worsening’.
She wanted only to focus on Xavier. He’d left London early in the morning, just as the sun had lifted, coating the city in glitter and warmth. Or perhaps that was just the way it felt to Elizabeth, who had been swept up in Xavier’s unique brand of magic and would never be the same again.
How was it possible that forty-something hours could wreak such havoc? How was it possible that she could have become a different person altogether to the woman she had once been?
Xavier.
He’d reached inside her and fundamentally changed who she was.
And now, he needed her.
She stepped off the lift, the bright electric lights of the ward making her squint a little.
The car had crashed early that morning, and it was now almost midnight. She hadn’t seen the bulletin until ten o’clock, when she’d been ready for bed.
And she’d been waiting for him to call or text, or something – while his body was weakening, leaking life from wounds that she could only imagine. She gasped, pushing the thoughts from her mind.
She was here now, and she wasn’t going anywhere again.
“Xavier Salbatore,” she said breathlessly, when she approached the counter. “Which room is he in?”
The nurse, a short and squat woman with bright blonde hair, ran an acrylic fingertip across a piece of paper then looked up, her sea-green eyes pinning Ellie with sympathy. “It’s outside visiting hours, miss.”
“Oh, I know. I just heard. How is he?”
The nurse grimaced. “Are you family?”
“A very close friend,” Ellie said, with a meaningful look, her heart twisting with pain at how impossible it was to define what they were. They’d known each other such a short space of time and yet Ellie couldn’t imagine her life without Xavier in it.
“You can’t see him til morning, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, no,” Ellie shook her head, instantly rejecting the idea of having to wait even longer. “I have to see him. Please, please. Just quickly.”
She needed to tell him he was going to be okay. She had to at least tell him she was there for him. She’d heard, somewhere along the way, that people in comas were cognizant of their surroundings. So? Whatever state he was in, she would let him know she was by his side.
“I’m sorry, miss. On any other ward, I’d sneak you in, but this is ICU and Mr Salbatore isn’t in a good way.”
“Oh, God.” Ellie gripped the counter for strength, panic fluttering inside her.
“I’m sorry.”
But what could Ellie say? The woman was just doing her job; Ellie had to respect that. “Is there somewhere I can sit?”
“Until morning?” The nurse asked, her expression one of surprise.
“Until Christmas, if necessary,” Ellie said, her face pale, her eyes huge.
The nurse stood, a look of consternation on her face. “I’m a soft touch,” she grumbled, more to herself than Ellie. “If anyone asks, you found him yerself. Got it?”
Ellie held her breath, walking behind the nurse and her rounded bottom as she led Ellie down the brightly lit corridor. She stopped outside a door – there was a glass panel beside it but Ellie didn’t look in. For a few moments longer, she needed to brace herself. The nurse pushed the door inwards.
“Here. There’s a comfortable chair in the corner. I’ll bring you a tea, shall I?”
Ellie could have wept with gratitude, but a moment later, her eyes landed on Xavier, and it was all she could do to stop buckling to her knees.
The man who had overtaken her life with his virility and strength was lying on the bed, wrapped in bandages, with cables and cords protruding from his limbs, his head bandaged, his eyes swept shut. But even then, she could see how bruised he was. How broken. Strength had bent to weakness, virility to decline.
“What’s happened?” She crossed the distance to his bedside and reached for him, needing to touch some part of him, so that he would know she was there. Needing to feel his beautiful heart beating, his heart pumping blood through his warm, capable body. She sobbed softly.
There was nowhere to touch that wasn’t impeded by cords, cables and bandages. She reached backwards for the chair, pulling it closer to the bed.
And she sank into it with a sense of utter desolation.
The nurse brought a tea at some point, and Ellie drank it, but she didn’t move. She didn’t sleep. She watched Xavier, telling herself it was a good thing that his chest was rising and falling. Telling herself he would be fine – she would make sure of it. Whatever happened, she would move heaven and earth to help him back to strength and wellness.
If it was possible.
And if it weren’t, she’d be with him regardless. If he couldn’t see, she’d be his eyes. If he couldn’t walk, she’d be his legs. Whatever he needed, she would offer.
Unless all hope was lost.
She sobbed again, the possibility that he would die one she refused to acknowledge.
Doctors came throughout the night, and nurses too, checking on him. She didn’t ask questions, and explanations weren’t offered. But the grim expressions on their faces spoke volumes.
Morning broke. There was a small window, high up in his room, and the light gradually shifted.
Eleanor stood, stretching, and for the first time all night, contemplated leaving him. Just for a moment. There were restrooms at the entrance to the ward and she was in dire need of freshening up.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t you go anywhere,” she murmured. And for one second, she thought she saw something. It was impossible to quantify, impossible to explain, but the parts of his face that were visible beneath his bandages shifted, almost as though he recognized her voice.
“Did you hear me?” She asked, moving back to the bed, putting a hand on the small part of his chest that was exposed.
Nothing. No response. With a heavy sigh, she slipped out of the room and made her way to the facilities.
The same nurse was on duty, but her hair was up now. “You’re still here?” The nurse asked.
Ellie nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“The rest of the family’s just arrived,” the nurse said. “And the doctor’ll be along to explain things to them soon.”
Xavier’s family was here? Her heart ratcheted up a notch. How could she explain her being there to them?
“His family,” she murmured.
The nurse’s expression flashed with a look that was close to sympathetic. “His parents and his fiancé.” The nurse looked down at her paper, giving Ellie a moment to absorb this information in relative privacy.
“His…” Everything shook, like the earth beneath her was rumbling. She dug her feet into the floor but her body was like a feather in the breeze.
“Yes. His fiancé,” the nurse said gently. “I presume you know her?”
For the second time in twenty four hours, Ellie gripped the counter top, her expression deathly white. “I…”
The nurse stood, alarm on her features. “You’re not going to pass out, are you?”
Ellie shook her head and straightened. There had to be some mistake. Xavier wasn’t engaged. He couldn’t be!
“No. I’m…” she couldn’t finish the sentence. She wasn’t fine. She was so far from it.
Her legs were wobbling but she forced them into action, walking down the hallway, towards the room she’d been in all night. She didn’t go in though. She stood outside the window, staring in, her heart racing and then abruptly coming to a stop at the sight before her.
Two parents. A mother. A father – so like Xavier! And a woman. A beautiful woman who was everything Ellie wasn’t. Curvaceous and blonde, and so very expensive, dripping in designer clothes and jewels. She had a hand on Xavier’s chest, just as Ellie’s had been, a moment earlier, and the most enormous diamond ring sparkled in the bright light of his room.
There was only one thing the two women had in common: their hearts were breaking.
The other woman – Xavier’s fiancé – sobbed over his broken body, just as Ellie had.
Ellie gasped, she couldn’t help it, and the nurse was there, an arm around her shoulders, comforting.
“You didn’t know?”
Ellie sucked in a breath; it hardly reached her lungs. “It can’t be true.”
But the ring, the woman’s inclusion with his family. Even as she uttered the denial, she knew she was wrong. This woman was engaged to marry Xavier.
“Come on, dear. Come and have a seat out here.”
Ellie nodded, completely numb, in absolute shock. And a primal need to stay with Xavier tore through her. She didn’t care about these other people! She, Elizabeth Jones, was the one who would make him better! She was who he needed at his bedside!
Only it wasn’t. His parents and fiancé were with him now. His family. She moved down the corridor, her life seeming like shards of glass, broken and sharp, too difficult to contemplate.
“Excuse me, miss?”
The voice from behind was husky and accented. Elizabeth spun around to see Xavier’s mother, her face lined, the worry there obvious.
Claiming his Secret Baby & Blackmailed by the Spaniard (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 4) Page 2