by Lynne Graham
‘Raul will come back to me...of course he will. It’s only a matter of time,’ Melina asserted with contemptuous green eyes. ‘If you’re out of your depth with me, how much more out of your depth are you with him? I almost feel sorry for you. When Raul’s bored, he is cruel and critical and callous—’
‘I think it’s time you left,’ Polly interrupted flatly.
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t mention this meeting,’ the blonde murmured sweetly as she strolled to the door. ‘Raul detests jealous scenes. It would be much wiser for you to pretend that this meeting never took place.’
‘Why should you be kind enough to give me that warning? ’
Melina laughed unpleasantly. ‘You already have all the problems you can handle. I shall enjoy watching you struggle to fill my shoes!’
Polly watched the blonde stalk across the hall and up the imposing staircase. She released her breath very slowly but she still felt utterly stunned. Melina D’Agnolo had been a severe shock. Raul’s mistress—proud and unashamed of her position in his life and in no hurry to vacate his bed.
And one look at Melina had been sufficient to tell Polly that her misapprehension about the pretty stewardess on board the jet had been laughable. Melina was much more convincing in the role of mistress. Melina with her exquisite face, fabulous figure and tremendous elegance and poise. Mature, classy and sophisticated. Raul’s kind of woman. And what even the greatest optimist would acknowledge as seriously challenging competition...
No, Polly scolded herself fiercely. She wasn’t going to allow herself to start thinking that way. Raul had said that she was the only woman in his life now, and he had given her no cause to doubt his sincerity. OK, she had just suffered through a horribly embarrassing encounter and been forced to endure the other woman’s spiteful attacks, but Melina would pack and depart and she would never have to see her again. She would put Melina right back out of her mind. Raul’s past was none of her business, she reminded herself staunchly.
Upstairs, Polly wandered across a huge landing and picked a passageway. Finally, after a couple of wrong choices, she peered into a nursery as exquisitely furnished as a room in a glossy magazine. A crowd of smiling, whispering female staff surrounded the imposing antique four-poster cot. Freshly clothed and clearly content, Luis nestled within the cot’s hand-embroidered bedding like a little king, giving an audience and basking in all the attention.
‘It has been so long since there was a child here,’ the housekeeper confided.
‘Was this Raul’s cot?’ Polly asked, smiling.
The older woman looked away uncomfortably. ‘No, señora... but it was his father’s.’
Briefly wondering what she had said to disconcert the woman, Polly was led down a corridor lined with fabulous oil paintings and into a magnificent big bedroom. Realising that it had stopped raining, Polly opened the French windows and stepped out onto the sun-drenched balcony to gaze out appreciatively on the beautifully landscaped gardens. Lush lawns and colourful vegetation were shaded by clumps of graceful mature trees. In the distance an architectural extravaganza of a small building complete with turrets caught her attention.
‘What’s that used for?’ she asked her companion.
The older woman stiffened. ‘It is not used for anything, señora.’
‘What a waste...it’s so pretty.’
‘It is full of ghosts, not a good place.’ The housekeeper retreated back indoors, seemingly unaware that she had said anything that might cause Polly to stare after her in wide-eyed surprise and curiosity. ‘I will fix you some breakfast, señora. You must be hungry.’
That evening, Polly rested back in the huge sunken bath in the en suite bathroom and felt like a queen lying in solitary state. She poked a set of pink toes up through the bubbles covering the surface of the water and sighed.
Melina D’Agnolo had vanished like the bad fairy. Only when she had disappeared had it occurred to Polly to wonder how she had gone, and to where. By car, by plane? The Zaforteza ranch was set in miles and miles of cattle country.
In the afternoon Polly had walked out to the furthest edge of the gardens and seen the plains stretching as far as the eye could reach in every direction, their monotony broken up by occasional clumps of trees, stretches of flood water that glinted in the hot sun and ground that seemed to sweep up and merge with the endless blue sky.
She closed her eyes and let herself think about Raul. Would he phone? Once she had told him not to bother and he hadn’t given her a chance to say no a second time. But how the heck could she possibly measure up to a woman as gorgeous as Melina? The fear crept in and she tried to squash the thought and the feeling simultaneously.
‘Lesson two on being a proper wife...’ a silken drawl imparted lazily from the door. ‘If you have to be in the bath when I come home, make it one I can share. Omit the heavily scented bubbles.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
POLLY’S mouth fell open at the same instant as her eyes shot wide Raul stood in the doorway, a sizzling smile of amusement slashing his mouth as he absorbed her astonishment.
‘But you look kind of cute...’ Raul conceded, brilliant dark eyes roaming with unconcealed interest over the rosetipped breasts pertly breaking through the bubbles for his scrutiny.
Wrenching free of her paralysed stillness, Polly sat up in a frantic rush and hugged her knees to her chest. Raul gave an extravagant wince. ‘Sometimes you act like a ten-yearold, gatita.’
‘Couldn’t you have knocked on the door?’ Polly demanded defensively.
‘The door wasn’t even closed,’ he reminded her drily, and he leant back against the door, slowly pushing it shut, as if he was making some kind of statement.
Sooner than ask him what he was doing, and already having discarded as too dangerously provocative the idea of asking him to step outside while she vacated the bath and covered herself, Polly studied him anxiously from below her dark lashes.
A tide of terrifying longing swept over her in a stormy wave. Her own heartbeat thundered inside her ears, and all the time her eyes were roaming all over him in hungry, helpless little darts. He was so incredibly tall in his light grey suit, his white shirt throwing his bronzed skin into exotic prominence, his luxuriant black hair gleaming under the recessed lights above, eyes glinting wicked gold in that lean, dark, devastating face.
‘You missed me,’ Raul purred, like a jungle cat basking in sunlight, his husky accent thickening and sending a trail of reaction down her taut spinal cord.
‘For heaven’s sake, how could I have missed you? I last saw you in the early hours of this morning!’ Polly snapped, but it was a challenge to snap when it was so outrageously difficult to even breathe normally in his radius.
‘You don’t just need lessons on how to be a proper wife...you need a bloody intensive training course!’ Raul shot back at her with shocking abruptness. ‘What does it take to get a pleasant response from you? Thumbscrews?’
Jolted by that sudden blaze of temper, Polly gazed up at him strickenly. She felt the most awful stinging surge of tears threatening at the back of her eyes. Hurriedly she bent her head. Maybe meeting your gorgeous mistress spoilt my day, she almost slung accusingly, but caution restrained her.
‘Maybe I’m not used to sharing a bathroom,’ she muttered ruefully.
‘Then this is where we will start,’ Raul delivered.
Start what, where? Polly wondered in complete confusion.
‘Dios...I can hardly believe I flew back here just to be with you!’
‘Did you? I thought your urgent business took precedence.’
‘Possibly the prospect of getting my bride horizontal on the marital bed had greater appeal.’
‘Oh...’ Polly said after a startled pause. ‘Do you have to be so crude?’
Without the slightest warning, strong hands curved under her arms and a split second later she was airborne. Raul straightened and held her ruthlessly imprisoned in mid-air as she dripped water and bubbles everywhere, her
shaken face aghast. ‘Not so shrewish now, are you?’ he murmured with unconcealed amusement.
‘Please put me back in the water,’ Polly mumbled pleadingly.
Raul gazed into her shrinking blue eyes and slowly lowered her back into the bath with careful hands. ‘You’re such a baby sometimes...I wasn’t going to hurt you!’ he breathed in stark reproach.
Still trembling, Polly hugged the far side of the bath. ‘I don’t know why I’m so nasty with you,’ she lied—because she knew very well. ‘I’m not usually like this with anybody.’
‘You were so sweet in Vermont. I didn’t even know you had a temper, never mind that viper’s tongue,’ Raul admitted wryly. ‘What went wrong?’
You did At that stupid question Polly was tempted to throw something at him. She had fallen hopelessly in love, more deeply in love than she had ever believed possible, and nothing had ever been the same since. He didn’t love her, he didn’t believe in love, and she couldn’t risk letting him find out how she really felt about him. Given an ounce of such ego-boosting encouragement, he would walk all over her and take her for granted the way he had in Vermont.
The female sex had spoilt Raul. For minimum input he had always received maximum benefit—everything on his terms, everything the way he wanted it. And their marriage still felt like a deadweight threatening ball and chain to him. He didn’t have to tell her that. She knew it. She marvelled that he should believe that taking her to bed would miraculously change anything, particularly when he had already spelt out the fact that he didn’t rate sex any higher than an ‘appetite’.
And where did that leave her? The virginal bride with novelty value? A fresh body for his enjoyment?
Raul discarded his jacket on a chair and tossed his tie on top of it. Emerging from her insecure reverie, Polly gaped. Shoes and socks were summarily discarded.
‘What are you doing?’
Raul sent her a gleaming glance of intent. ‘Losing your virginity is not akin to a visit to a sadistic dentist.’
‘What would you know about it?’
A wolfish grin slashed his mobile mouth. ‘I’ll fill you in on my impressions tomorrow morning.’
Off came his shirt, to be carelessly discarded in a heap. Polly’s throat clogged up at sight of that magnificent brown torso and the triangle of all male dark curling hair outlining his powerful pectoral muscles. ‘Is this my anatomy lesson?’ she whispered shakily.
‘You need one?’ As free of inhibition as she was repressed. Raul flicked loose his belt and slid out of his well-cut trousers.
Although Polly wanted to look away, she couldn’t. Her throat thickened, her mouth running dry. Her mesmerised attention locked on to the silky furrow of hair running down over his flat, taut stomach to disappear tantalisingly beneath the band of a pair of black briefs.
‘You’re beginning to embarrass me,’ Raul censured mockingly.
Caught staring, Polly twisted her head away, cheeks flaming. ‘I don’t think anything embarrasses you!’ she condemned unevenly.
‘You really are shy...I thought it was an act in Vermont,’ Raul confessed without warning. ‘You were so open and forthright in every other way—’
‘I don’t put on acts,’ Polly protested feverishly. ‘I can’t help the way I was brought up any more than you can.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Raul breathed with sudden brooding darkness.
Involuntarily she shivered, catching the warning nuances in his accented drawl and spooked by what she could not understand. ‘My father believed girls should be modest and quiet and strait-laced, and my godmother agreed with him—’
‘Whatever happened to the “quiet”?’ Raul cut in with unhesitating humour.
Her momentary ripple of foreboding ebbed, only to be replaced by a more pressing urge to leap out of the bath as Raul stepped in. Arms wrapped tightly round her knees, Polly twisted her head back round and slung him an accusing glance as he settled fluidly down on the other side of the bath and rested his burnished dark head back against the inset cushioning.
‘Look, why can’t we just do it in bed like other people?’ she suddenly launched at him in mortified condemnation. ‘I think you’re going out of your way to make this more difficult for me!’
Dealing her a briefly bemused appraisal, Raul suddenly flung his head back and burst out laughing without restraint. ‘Caramba, cielito—’
‘That is it...that is finally it!’ Polly raked at him, chagrin tipping over into a sudden empowering rage that enabled her to begin rising without any constraining fear of exposing her own body.
Raul leant forward and caught her hand, tipping her sufficiently off-balance to ensure that she was powerless to resist the ease with which he reached up his other hand and tumbled her down on top of him, water splashing everywhere.
Panting furiously for breath, Polly pulled herself back from him. ‘Let go of me!’
Raul regarded her with deceptive languor. ‘I wasn’t actually planning to consummate our marriage here... I just wanted to talk...’
‘T-talk?’ Polly parroted weakly as she subsided back beneath the water to conceal herself, carefully avoiding the slightest contact with his long extended limbs.
‘No need to panic...at least...not yet,’ Raul drawled smoothly, the golden gleam deep in his shimmering dark eyes increasing the colour in her hot face. ‘In my innocence I believed that this was a comparatively mild first step towards greater intimacy.’
‘Do you normally just talk in the bath with your women?’ Polly practically snarled in her discomfiture, knowing that any plea of innocence was not to be trusted in this instance, perfectly well aware that Raul was highly amused by her enervated state.
The golden gleam vanished, leaving her gazing in sudden fear into wintry cool dark eyes. ‘Infierno! You’re obsessed. Jealousy is a very destructive thing. Do you want to destroy us before we even begin with these constant attacks?’
Pale now, Polly just closed her eyes. In the space of a moment she saw a dozen beautiful female faces skim cruelly through her mind’s eye. Only then did she grasp the source of her jealousy, the day when it had been born to increase the bitterness she had experienced after leaving Vermont. To satisfy her driving need to know more about the father of her child, she had gone to the library and scanned through newspaper gossip pages and glossy society magazines...
Time after time she had come on photos of Raul with some gorgeous blonde babe on his arm. And that was the day when she had finally accepted how pitiful her love was, how hopelessly without foundation or any prospect of reciprocation.
Then, months on, to have that impression of Raul as a heartless womaniser reinforced all over again—to watch Raul leave that London clinic to walk into another woman’s arms, to live through that mortifying misunderstanding about the stewardess and then the very same day to be confronted with the horrendous real shock of Melina D’Agnolo. Was it any wonder that she was desperately insecure, afraid to trust Raul and lashing out in an attempt to protect herself from further pain?
‘I won’t live like this with any woman,’ Raul breathed with terrifying quietness. ‘It’s like trying to fight an invisible enemy... Whatever I do you’ll always be suspicious!’
As he pulled himself upright, her lashes lifted. Stepping out of the bath, Raul snatched a fleecy towel from the rail and strode back into the bedroom without a backward glance.
And, just as suddenly, Polly’s defensive attitude fell away. She saw a marriage which hadn’t even begun now going down the drain without fanfare. She saw the chance she had been given thrown away out of proud defiance and a refusal to face her own insecurities and faults.
Raul hadn’t made love to her in Vermont. She had been the one who had misinterpreted his intentions. He had had the right to pursue other relationships. His freedom had been his own and she had had no claim on him. That was the reality which she had failed to accept all these months because she had fallen in love. And what was she doing now but driving
Raul away from her, in spite of the fact that he had given her no cause to distrust him?
In a panic, now that she had seen herself at fault, Polly climbed out of the bath, tugged a black towelling robe off a wall hook and hurriedly dug her arms into the too long sleeves.
‘Raul...I’m sorry!’ she called in advance, afraid he might already have left the bedroom beyond.
‘Forget it... I need some fresh air.’
Rolling up the sleeves of what she now realised had to be his robe, Polly edged apprehensively round the door and peered out. Damp black wildly tousled hair flopping over his bronzed brow, Raul was zipping up a pair of skintight cream jodhpurs.
In silence, she watched him yank highly polished leather boots out of a cupboard and sink down on the chaise longue at the foot of the bed to pull them on. ‘You’re going riding? ’ she muttered uncertainly. ‘But it’s getting dark.’
‘Get back in your bath with your bubbles,’ Raul advised with brooding satire. ‘Immerse that little body you protect so assiduously...and leave me alone.’
‘Look...I said I was sorry.’ Polly lifted her chin. ‘Do I have to crawl?’
Raul lifted his dark head and regarded her directly for the first time since she had entered the room. She was shaken by the black brooding distance etched with clarity in his spectacular dark eyes. ‘How are you on disappearing? ’ he drawled in a tone like a silken whiplash. ‘Because right now, I just don’t want to be around you.’
Polly flinched from that brutal candour, the flush of pink in her cheeks receding to leave her paper-pale. Without warning, Raul was like a dark, intimidating stranger.
‘So go back in the bathroom before I say anything else to hurt your sensitive feelings,’ Raul told her harshly. ‘I’m not in the mood to control my tongue!’
‘I’m not afraid of what you have to say.’
‘Then why the hell are you goading me like this?’ Raul splintered back at her in frustration. ‘I don’t like being needled. I especially don’t like snide comments. If you have something to say to me, have the guts to say it loud and clear, because I have no time for anything else!’