by Sarah Morgan
‘Dios mío, I am trying to tell you something. Usually you are pushing me and pushing me to talk and talk and suddenly when I am trying to talk, you are stopping me!’ His fierce glare suggested that he was holding her personally responsible for his difficulties in that area and her eyes widened.
‘Because I know you hate talking—’
‘I want to tell you.’
‘Oh.’ Her heart thudding, she looked at him expectantly and his eyes darkened angrily.
‘I have no idea how to say it,’ he snapped at her impatiently. ‘I’m not like you. I can’t just spill out everything I’m feeling. I’ve never actually said this before so I have no idea how to say it.’
Faith waited patiently and he glared at her again.
‘It isn’t that I don’t like children,’ he began, but then he stopped, a frown on his face.
Faith decided that she’d better help him. ‘I understand. You have this great life, Raul.’ She waved an arm in the vague direction of the estancia. ‘You fly off in your private jet at a moment’s notice, you can dine in Paris or New York whenever you like without giving another thought to another person. Why would you want to compromise that lifestyle?’
Raul left a long pause before he answered.
‘It wasn’t Sofia.’
His driven, emotional statement seemed unrelated to the conversation they were having and for a moment she just stared at him, scanning her mental frequencies for clues. ‘What wasn’t?’
‘Sofia wasn’t the reason I’m reluctant to have children,’ Raul confessed with raw emphasis. ‘It happened long before her.’
Faith stood completely still. ‘But it was a woman who hurt you?’
‘Yes, but not in the way you’re imagining.’ He stood for a moment, his breathing slow and steady, as if he were concentrating on that one action. A tiny muscle flickered in his hard jaw and it was several long seconds before he spoke again. ‘She took away everything that mattered to me, everything I loved. She was vicious, selfish and greedy.’
A deafening silence followed his hoarse statement and for a moment Faith was afraid even to move. She felt his agony but she suppressed the natural instinct to offer comfort, sensing that if she said the wrong thing now, he’d retreat. So she stood for a moment with her head full of words but her mouth tightly shut.
He glanced towards her and his eyes locked with hers. ‘I promised myself, never again. Never would that happen to me.’
Faith had to force herself to ask the question. ‘Was she someone that you loved?’
His dark eyes glinted hard and cold and his mouth tightened to a thin line. ‘She was my mother.’
His confession was such a shock that for a moment Faith couldn’t respond.
Of all the scenarios she’d imagined, that hadn’t been one of them.
Clearly he wasn’t surprised by her inability to speak, because he grimaced. ‘Not every woman is maternal. She became pregnant to force my father into marriage. No other reason. They divorced when I was nine and it was extremely acrimonious. She was determined to take my father for every penny he had and I was the tool she used to do it. And once she’d stripped him bare of everything that mattered, she took me, too.’
‘You mean you stayed with your mother?’
His eyes glittered dark and dangerous. ‘I mean that she took me from him. Not because she loved me or wanted me, but because she knew how much my father did. I was her trump card.’
Shocked, Faith shook her head in disbelief. ‘No.’
‘This was my father’s land.’ Raul turned, looking through the windows of the Beach House towards the estancia. ‘He was a horseman. A very skilled horseman. There wasn’t a horse in South America that my father couldn’t work with. He had more patience than any man I’ve ever met.’ He glanced at Faith, his eyes gleaming with self-mockery. ‘Needless to say, I have my mother’s genes. She was volatile and explosive, given to major tantrums.’
‘I didn’t know your father owned the estancia. I thought you bought it.’
‘I did. It was sold after the divorce. My father gave my mother the money because he couldn’t bear to think that I might suffer. Even though this place had been in my family for generations, he sold it.’ Raul was silent for a moment, emotion radiating from every angle of his powerful frame. ‘So that’s what she did. On the other side of the world.’
‘Estancia La Lucia,’ she murmured softly. ‘I never even asked you about the name. I—’
‘Lucia was my great-great-grandmother.’
She’d had no idea. ‘Raul—’
‘This estancia had been our family’s heritage for more than a hundred years. It was in my father’s blood and in my blood.’ Raul’s voice was rough. ‘He taught me to ride before I could walk. We were going to run this place together.’
Faith stood in silence, absorbing his horrible, horrible story, her insides aching as she imagined the pain of that little boy, longing for his father. ‘You couldn’t stay with him?’
‘A child stays with his mother. That’s the tradition isn’t it? She told me we were going on holiday.’ Each word was another beat of agony. ‘It was only when we arrived in Australia that she told me that we wouldn’t be coming back.’
Faith licked dry lips. ‘You must have missed him so much.’ She put her hand on his arm and felt the flex of his strong muscle and the utter chill of his skin.
‘At first I refused to accept it. I ran away. I made it as far as the airport and then they rang my mother.’ He gave a dark, cynical smile that revealed far more about that encounter than any words could have. ‘And she told me to grow up and be a man. And that’s what I did. Every day I was in hell, but I kept that hell to myself and just lived it. I was trapped in an alien country with people who were alien to me. I pined for my father, for Argentina, the estancia, the horses—everything. I hated the life my mother led and the fact that she didn’t even want me. But I learned not to show what I was feeling.’
‘And you still don’t—’
His beautiful mouth twisted. ‘I think I’ve forgotten how.’
‘But you left Australia?’
‘I left as soon as I could and came back here only to find that my father had sold the estancia to pay for my mother’s costs. It was broken up and sold.’ His accent grew more pronounced. ‘He was trying to make sure that I had a good life. That I didn’t suffer. But for me it was never about the money.’
Touched by this surprisingly emotional admission, Faith leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. ‘So you started your own business. What you have achieved is nothing short of amazing.’
‘I vowed to buy it back, piece by piece. And I have.’
‘The land that Pedro owns…’
‘My land now.’ His possessive declaration vibrated around the room. ‘That was the last piece. My father’s estancia is back in the family again.’
‘And your father?’ She felt the muscles in his body tighten and suddenly wished she hadn’t asked the question.
‘After my father sold the estancia, he took a job as a gaucho—a cowboy—working with horses on other ranches. I know, because I followed his trail. He kept moving on, restless.’
‘He didn’t make a home anywhere else?’
‘He never would have done that because his home was here. He died,’ Raul said roughly. ‘He died without knowing that I was back. He died before I made my first million and purchased the first thousand acres of land.’
And he’d died without giving his son the chance to tell him how much he loved him.
‘You say that there is nothing of your father in you, but I don’t think that’s true,’ Faith said softly. ‘You have his strength and his courage, his talent with horses and his love for this land.’
He looked down at her, his eyes fierce. ‘What my mother must have put him through—’he said hoarsely. ‘I swore that no woman would ever be able to do that to me or to any child of mine.’
For a moment Faith couldn’t speak be
cause she couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat. ‘So it isn’t that you don’t like or don’t want,’ she said softly. ‘It’s that you’re afraid of loving and losing. Now I understand why you married me. You were determined to do everything possible to exert your rights over the baby.’
‘Faith—’
‘And I don’t blame you for that. If I’d been through what you have, I’d feel the same way, I’m sure.’ Faith stood still, thinking about what he’d said. ‘I wish you’d told me this, instead of just proposing. I would have understood.’
‘You would have run a mile, taking my baby with you.’ It was the most painfully honest conversation they’d ever had. ‘And you did run, Faith. Just hours after you married me, you ran. That’s what women do when things go wrong. That’s what my mother did.’
She bit her lip, understanding why her actions had triggered such a depth of emotion in him. ‘That’s true,’ she admitted, ‘I did. But you have to look at it from my point of view. When I told you I lost the baby you were relieved.’
‘I hadn’t expected to have to confront the issue of pregnancy at all. For me it was simpler if it just wasn’t there.’
‘I see that now, Raul, but at the time you hadn’t shared any of this with me. All I saw was a man who was so fixated on his own desire to stay single that he didn’t care about my feelings. You thought I’d become pregnant on purpose.’
‘Which was exactly what my mother did. And I wasn’t thinking about your feelings. I was thinking about mine,’ he grated. ‘Panicking. I know I hurt you and I regret that more than you know. I was a total bastard, but it wasn’t anything to do with you—I was protecting myself.’
‘Because you thought I’d hurt you?’
‘You have to understand that none of my relationships up until now have ever been based on anything other than sex,’ he confessed and she looked up at him, her heart executing a dangerously fast rhythm.
‘And now?’
‘You really need to ask that? It’s true that I’m totally out of control when I’m with you, cariño, but believe me when I tell you it isn’t just about the sex. I love the fact that you’re so bright and clever, I love the fact that everything in your head comes out of your mouth because it makes you so easy to understand.’
Faith was astonished. ‘You hate the fact that I want to talk!’
‘Not true,’ he asserted, bending his head and stealing a quick kiss. ‘In fact since you stopped talking, it’s driven me mad because I’m wasting so much time guessing what’s in your head.’
Her legs wobbling, Faith sank down onto the nearest sofa. ‘This is—’ She broke off and breathed in and out. ‘This isn’t the way I thought this conversation would go. When you walked away from me—I assumed you were horrified that I was still pregnant.’
‘I went to talk to the doctor. I’d managed to convince myself that there was something really wrong with you. You were so pale and tired—I wanted to make sure he’d taken a really good look at you,’ Raul confessed. ‘I’m not great at trusting other people with important issues. I virtually pinned him to the wall and made him recite everything he’d told you.’
Knowing Raul as she did, Faith had no problems imagining it. ‘And how did he respond to that?’
‘He wasn’t that impressed,’ Raul admitted wryly. ‘But he told me he was making allowances for a guy who was seriously in love.’
His words drove the air from her lungs. ‘He did? And did you tell him you don’t believe in love?’
‘No, because that wouldn’t have been true.’ He reached for her hands and pulled her back to her feet. ‘I didn’t believe in love, until I met you. And even then I didn’t recognise it. But apparently the signs are all over the place if you know what you’re looking for.’
Her heart pounding, Faith looked up at him. ‘Is that right?’
‘Of course.’ His usual confidence apparently restored, Raul curved his arms around her in an unmistakably possessive gesture. ‘I can’t let you out of my sight, I worry if you’re even half a shade paler than you usually are and when you stop wanting to talk about everything I get really, really worried.’
‘You hate talking.’
‘Given a choice between conversation and sex, I’m going to pick sex every time,’ Raul admitted, with typical male frankness. ‘But I’m prepared to concede that a certain degree of emotional honesty has its place.’
‘Does it?’
‘Yes.’ He smoothed her hair away from her face. ‘I should have talked to you sooner, but you have to understand that I’ve never talked to anyone about this. I don’t even let myself think about it.’
‘I don’t blame you, but I’m glad I know because now I can understand why you feel the way you do. And I have something to say that’s important.’ Faith took a deep breath. ‘You don’t have to stay with me just because you’re afraid of losing your child, Raul. I would never take your child from you, ever. If you’re saying this because of the baby, then we can work something out. You own ten-thousand acres—you can build me a house to live in.’
‘I am not building you a house to live in. The only place you’re living is here with me,’ he growled and Faith bit her lip.
‘I’m worried, Raul,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m worried that you’re only saying this because of the baby. I mean, it’s not as if you had a choice about this.’
‘Come with me!’ Having delivered that command, he took her hand and led her up the staircase to the upper floor.
‘Where are we going? We never come up here—’ Exasperated, she tugged at his hand. ‘Raul, we were talking—’
‘And talking is fine,’ he purred, turning to her with his most charismatic smile. ‘But there are times when actions speak louder than words, cariño.’
Mesmerised by that incredibly sexy smile, Faith felt her insides tumble and flip and gave a moan of disbelief. No, no, no! She wasn’t going to respond like this, not now! They were discussing an important issue. Surely he wasn’t going to try and solve this problem with sex? Not after the discussion they’d just had. ‘Raul, this just isn’t—’
‘Trust me.’ With his usual confidence, he threw open a door and stepped aside for her to pass him. ‘Go in. Tell me what you see.’
Puzzled, Faith stepped inside the room and her heart tumbled over in her chest.
It was a nursery.
A beautifully decorated, sunny nursery complete with an old-fashioned rocking chair, an antique cot and pretty curtains.
For a moment Faith couldn’t speak at all and then when she finally tried to say something, nothing came out of her mouth.
His hands curved over her shoulders. ‘What do you see?’
‘I see—’ Her voice cracked. ‘I see a nursery.’
‘No.’ He gently turned her and cupped her face in his hands. ‘You see a man in love.’
‘But—’
Raul was watching her reaction with a self-satisfied smile on his handsome face. ‘Now try telling me I’m insensitive,’ he drawled softly, pulling her against him and bringing his mouth down on hers. ‘I had this decorated when we were on our honeymoon.’
‘Our honeymoon?’
‘That was when I realised that I couldn’t imagine a life without you in it. I didn’t know you were still pregnant, Faith. But this was how I saw our future. As a family.’
She felt tears prick her eyes. ‘You—you’d already done this?’
His eyes gleamed with sardonic humour. ‘You think I shot up here with a paint brush five minutes after the doctor left?’
‘No. Yes.’ Tears filled her eyes and his smile faded.
‘Don’t cry. Te amo, cariño. I love you. Do you understand me?’ He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently. ‘Do you? Answer me, because if you don’t then I will have to solve the problem the way you suspected I was going to solve it.’
She sniffed and made a sound that was half sob, half laugh. ‘I thought—’
‘I know what you thought
and perhaps that would have been a better option.’ He frowned. ‘Given that talking just seems to make you cry.’
‘I thought I was going to lose you. I know you only married me because I was pregnant.’
‘I married you because you were pregnant,’ Raul agreed in a husky tone. ‘But I’m staying married to you because I love you.’
She squeezed her eyes shut but the tears fell anyway because she just adored him so much and suddenly everything had gone from being wrong to being very, very right. ‘I love you, too. So much. You have no idea.’
‘I think I have.’ His voice was soft and he brushed the tears away from her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I behaved so badly to you. I was cruel and thoughtless and yet you are still here. You have to be in love to have put up with me. Stop crying!’
‘I can’t,’ she croaked. ‘And it’s your fault. It’s all the things you’re saying.’
‘Which just goes to prove that talking has its limitations,’ he drawled, a dangerous gleam in his eyes as he lowered his head to hers. ‘So now it’s time to solve this problem in a very different way. Do you agree?’
‘Yes,’ Faith whispered against his mouth. ‘Oh yes.’
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3121-8
THE VÁSQUEZ BABY
First North American Publication 2009.
Previously published in the U.K. as THE VÁSQUEZ MISTRESS.
Copyright © 2008 by Sarah Morgan.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.