The Alvares Bride

by Sandra Marton

  Deus, would a man ever understand women?

  What had happened, in the last two minutes? For that matter, what had happened since the last time they’d made love?

  Love, he thought, and the cup shook a little in his hand. It was true, though. There was a difference between making love and having sex. What he’d felt, with her, had been…It had been different.

  Stay with me, she’d whispered, that last time, stay inside me, Rafe.

  He had. He’d wanted to stay inside her, forever. In her arms, in her heart.

  The cup clattered against the saucer. Carefully, he put it down, then rose to his feet. “Well,” he said briskly, “I think I’ll shower.”

  Carin looked up and nodded. “I’ll get dressed.”

  “Good.” He cleared his throat. “And, uh, and then I’ll, uh, I’ll be riding out with some of my men.”

  She nodded again. “Of course.”

  “Yes.” He walked slowly across the room, paused and turned to her. “There’ve been puma tracks near the south pasture. The question is, can I chase the cat off or will he have to be…”

  “Rafe,” she whispered, and the way she said his name told him everything he wanted to know.

  “Querida,” he said, and opened his arms.

  She flew into them, he gathered her to his heart, and in that moment, he knew that his life had changed, forever.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CARIN sat cross-legged on a blanket spread over the grass. Amy lay beside her, her little arms and legs pumping as she stared, wide-eyed, at the sky.

  “You see?” Rafe said proudly. “She is watching the clouds. Such concentration on that beautiful little face, querida. I can only wonder what she must be thinking.”

  His shadow fell over them both. Carin looked up and, as always, her heart gave a little leap at the sight of her husband, who’d been working with his horses. Wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and well-worn work boots, he was big, rugged and gorgeous.

  “Hello,” she said, and smiled.

  Rafe smiled back at her. “Hello, querida.” He bent down, brushed his mouth over hers. She raised her hand, curled it into his shirt and drew him closer for a longer, deeper kiss. “I need a shower,” he whispered, against her mouth. “I am sweaty.”

  “Mmm.” Carin smiled, pulled him towards her again for another kiss. “You are sexy, is what you are.” She bit teasingly into his bottom lip. “I missed you.”

  Rafe grinned, folded his legs and sat down beside her. He took her hand, kissed the palm, then folded her fingers over the kiss.

  “Of course, you missed me. I’ve been away from you for almost two hours.”

  “Such self-assurance, senhor.”

  He chuckled, cupped her chin in his hand and kissed her again, a long, lingering kiss that left her sighing.

  “Suppose I told you that I know you missed me because I missed you?” he said softly, leaning his forehead against hers.

  Carin smiled. “Are you telling me that?”

  “You know that I am, amada. I missed you very much. In fact, I have strict orders from my men, that I’m not to come back to work this afternoon. They find it amusing that I don’t seem able to keep my mind on my work.”

  “Strict orders from your men, huh?”

  “Exactly.” Rafe gave her a last, quick kiss, then turned to his daughter. “And how is our little girl today?” He lifted Amy from the blanket. A loopy smile spread over the baby’s mouth. “Do you see that, querida? She knows her papai already. Just look at that big grin!”

  Carin didn’t have the heart to tell him that their baby’s “grin” was probably her reaction to all the milk that had gone into her tummy half an hour before. On second thought, Rafe could be right.

  What female wouldn’t be happy, if he held her in his arms?

  Such opposites, she thought, her smile softening as she watched him with his daughter. Rafe, so big and rugged; Amy, so tiny and delicate. And yet, already, you could tell she was his.

  The baby’s hair was black and silky, like her father’s. Her eyes were changing from newborn navy blue to Rafe’s soft gray.

  Daddy’s girl, Carin thought.

  Sometimes, she shuddered when she realized how painfully close she’d come to keeping them apart, her daughter and her husband…and how terrifyingly close she’d come to not having him in her own life.

  It was hard to believe how much things had changed in just a couple of months.

  Her days were long, and happy. Rafe worked at his office in the mornings while she spent time with Amy or leaned over Elena’s shoulder, in the kitchen, learning the delicious secrets of Brazilian cooking.

  In the afternoons, Rafe took her riding and showed her all his favorite places: the small, forested glade where sunlight glittered like wildfire on the leaves; the narrow valley where, he said, he had once been almost certain he’d seen a jaguar; the emerald-green pool where they’d swum, naked, and made love on the grassy banks.

  Sometimes, he’d tell her, apologetically, that he had to work.

  “You work every morning,” she’d said the first time, “in your office.”

  Yes, he’d replied, but, well, this was a different sort of work. There were water pumps to mend, horses to gentle, an outbuilding that needed a new roof.

  Carin had assumed he meant to had to oversee the work but when she wandered down to the stables, it was Rafe she saw in the smallest paddock, holding his hand out to a horse that was blowing through its nostrils and tossing its head, just as it was Rafe she saw a day later, straddling the top beam on a windmill derrick to fix the pump mechanism.

  When she asked him about it, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  “Honest work is good for a man, querida,” he’d said. “It quiets the mind, lightens the spirit and eases the soul.”

  It also made magnificent muscles, she’d thought that night, as she watched her husband get ready for bed. And when, a long while later, he’d kissed her, drawn her against him so her head lay on his shoulder and her hand lay, spread, across his chest, she’d wondered how she’d ever fallen asleep any other way than this.

  Watching him now as he held their baby, looking up occasionally to flash a smile at her, she suddenly thought, I’m happy.

  It was true. She was happier than she’d been in her entire life, happy and content and—and deeply, heart-and-soul, in love.

  There was no point in pretending, not to herself. She loved Rafe, had loved him for a long time, maybe since that first night, when he’d rescued her from herself.

  It didn’t matter when it had happened. It was enough that it had, that the life she’d envisioned as a lonely penalty inflicted upon her by an arrogant stranger had become, instead, a life bright with joy.

  Even the moments that might have once been tarnished, were bright.

  Claudia had taken to dropping by. Rafe had kept his word; he’d told her to find a new financial advisor, but still, she came to see him. For coffee, she said; for a bit of advice not about money but about which new car to buy; for all kinds of different things. Rafe was invariably polite, though each time she left, he’d sigh and say he was going to tell her—

  Tell her what? Carin would ask him, as she went into his arms. That she could no longer discuss problems with him?

  “She doesn’t bother me,” she’d tell Rafe, and it was true, she didn’t, because Rafe would make a point of keeping his arm around her while Claudia visited, of kissing her gently on the mouth so that even when he took Claudia into his office, Carin felt as if he were still with her, holding her close and making it clear that she was the only woman he wanted.

  The only thing that could possibly have made her happier would have been if Rafe fell in love with her.

  Sometimes—sometimes, she almost imagined that he had. There was something in the way he turned to her, when he wanted her, something in the way he looked at her…

  “Querida?”

  Carin looked up. Rafe had risen to his feet, holding Amy i
n the curve of his arm. He smiled, held out his hand and Carin took it and stood beside him.

  “Shall we go inside?”

  She nodded, and a feeling of such happiness swept through her that she felt her eyes fill.

  “Carin?” Rafe pulled her close against him. “What’s wrong, amada?”

  I love you, she thought, I love you, and I’m happy…

  “Nothing,” she said, and smiled. “Nothing’s wrong. I just—I think I must have gotten something in my eye.”

  “Ah. I’ll bet I have a cure for that,” he said, and kissed her. Together, with Amy gurgling softly in musical accompaniment, they strolled up the hill, to the house.

  * * *

  He said he would shower, as soon as they gave Amy to her nanny.

  He would, but not alone.

  “It seems such a waste of water,” he murmured, once he and Carin were alone in their bedroom. Smiling, he reached for the hem of her T-shirt, drew it up over her head and tossed it aside. “Don’t you agree, querida?”

  Carin caught her breath as her husband ran his hands down her arms, then over her lace-covered breasts.

  “Yes,” she said softly, “I do.”

  His smile tilted. ‘You see?’ He undid the front clasp of her bra, his eyes darkening when her breasts tumbled free. ‘I’m glad you’re aware of such things.’ He bent to her, took the tip of one breast into his mouth as he caressed the other.

  She trembled as he undid her jeans, slid them down her legs, then slipped her shoes from her feet.

  “I can never get enough of you, querida.” He rose, held her at arm’s length, let his eyes move slowly over her until she felt the heat of his gaze burning her skin. “And I still can’t believe you belong to me.”

  “Such a sexist thing to say, senhor,” she whispered.

  His smile was all male. ‘But you are happy to belong to me, senhora, are you not? To be my wife?’

  “Yes.” She smiled, too, and wondered if her heart were in her eyes when she looked at him. “Oh, yes, I am. Except…”

  Rafe’s smile tilted. “Except?”

  “Except, you still have your clothes on.”

  He laughed softly. “As do you.”

  “I don’t.” She blushed, even though it was silly. “I’m still wearing my panties.”

  “Mmm. You are a delectable sight, in that scrap of lace.”

  “Well, I want you to be equally delectable,” she said, and, her eyes locked to his, she put her hand on his fly, closed it over the hard, aroused flesh pulsing beneath the denim.

  Rafe caught his breath, caught her hand, brought it to his lips. “Be careful,” he growled, “or you’ll have to pay the price.”

  Carin moved towards him, pressed her body against his and wrapped one arm around his neck.

  “Make me pay,” she whispered, and he swept her up into his arms.

  He made love to her there, on the bed, his clothes scattered on the floor wherever they’d landed. He was right; he was sweaty, and she loved it. The male scent of him, mingled with the earthy scents of leather and grass, was like an aphrodisiac. She clasped his face with her hands, put her legs around his hips, took him as deep into her body as she could and when she came, seconds before he did, she cried out his name.

  Afterwards, when he tried to roll off her, she wouldn’t let him go.

  “I am too heavy for you, amada,” he said, but she shook her head.

  “Stay here,” she said softly, loving the feel of him, the weight of him, and wondering how, and when, to tell him that she loved him.

  Did a woman wait for a man to say the words first? Maybe not in today’s world, where the rules had all changed, but Rafe’s world was different. He treated her as an equal, yet with a tender arrogance that made it clear he was male and she was female.

  And she loved that arrogance, that—that macho. It was part of what made Rafe the man he was, part of what made her husband special…

  Her husband.

  Surely, that tilted the balance. A wife could turn to her husband, smile and say, “I thought you might like to know that I’ve fallen in love with you,” and then he would say—he would say—

  “Come and shower with me, querida.”

  Carin closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Only if you’ll promise to wash my back,” she said, and felt his body shake with laughter, because washing her back had gotten them into trouble in the shower many times before.

  * * *

  An hour later, they lay in bed again, hair still wet from the water.

  Rafe put his arm around Carin and gathered her close.

  “You grow more beautiful each day, esposa.”

  She smiled. “It’s our baby who grows more beautiful each day.”

  Rafe pressed a kiss into her hair.

  “Sim. She does. Our little girl is going to be as beautiful as her mother.” He gave a dramatic sigh. “This means trouble for me.”

  “Trouble, for you?”

  “Of course.” He lifted his head from the pillow and kissed her. She felt his mouth curve into a smile against hers. “I suspect I will be the kind of father who subjects every boy she dates to interrogation. What are his intentions? What kind of car does he drive? Has he had any speeding tickets? Does he drink? Where is he taking my daughter? When will he bring her home?”

  Carin laughed. “I’ve heard about fathers like you.”

  “Well, wasn’t your father that way, when you began dating?”

  “He wasn’t there.” Carin sighed and laid her hand over her husband’s heart. “My parents had split up by then.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Mmm. Well, we’ve never really talked much, about how we grew up”

  “No,” he said, after a second, “no, we haven’t. I’m surprised, Carin. Your parents were divorced, you were raised without a father…Surely, that should have made you more…”

  His voice trailed away.

  “Made me more what?” Carin propped her head on her hand and looked down at him.

  “Amenable to marrying me.”

  “Amenable to being commanded to marry you, you mean.”

  She said it lightly, even meant it lightly, because how she’d come to marry him no longer mattered, but she felt Rafe stiffen.

  “I had no choice.”

  A tiny bit of the happiness inside her began to drain away. “I know that’s what you thought, at the time, but—”

  “It is what I knew, what I still know.” Rafe drew his arm out from under her. He sat up and swung his legs to the carpet. “How could a woman who grew up without a father have wished that same fate for her child?”

  Carin sat up, too. She drew the sheet over her breasts. His voice had become cool and accusatory. Amazing, how vulnerable you could feel, if you were naked.

  “It would have been a mistake for my parents to have stayed together.”

  “That’s a very modern attitude and commendable, I am sure, in North American circles, but—”

  “In North American circles?” Carin reached for the silk robe that lay across the foot of the bed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Does it really need interpretation?” Rafe stood up, went to the dressing room and pulled on a pair of white silk boxer shorts. “It takes two people to make a child, and two people to raise it.”

  “Not always. If the parents don’t love each other—”

  “Love is not necessary in a marriage,” he said coolly. “If people are adults, they can reach an accommodation.”

  Love is not necessary. The words rang in her head. She felt as if she were shaking, deep inside.

  “As we have, you mean.”

  Her voice was flat. Rafe could feel her eyes, boring into his back. She was angry, but why? He was the one who had the right to be angry. She’d grown up fatherless, as he had. She should have understood the immorality of trying to keep him from their child. Instead, she’d put up barriers against him, made him into a villain, a man who’d had to f
orce her into doing the right thing.

  Still, all of that was behind them. They were married. They were, much to his surprise, happy together. They liked the same things, enjoyed each other’s company, enjoyed each other in bed. What more was required, save for his mother’s blind certainty that love should have been everything?

  It wasn’t. His marriage was proof. Couldn’t Carin see that for herself?

  He took a breath, turned and faced her. She was pale, though her eyes glittered dangerously; he realized she was hurt, not angry, but why would she be hurt by anything he’d said, when she knew it was all the truth?

  “Yes,” he said. “As we have reached one. Our marriage is a success, isn’t it?”

  Carin didn’t answer. He cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps I should tell you that I grew up without a father, too.”

  “Did you.”

  Still, that flatness in her voice. Rafe pulled on a pair of jeans, drew a T-shirt over his head.

  “Yes,” he said, and ran his hands through his hair. “Perhaps we should discuss this.”

  “This?”

  “You know. Our childhoods.”

  Carin folded her arms. “If you like.”

  Deus, what was he doing? He sounded like a robot, but he felt like a man who’d stepped onto a frozen pond only to discover the ice was far thinner than he’d thought. Be quiet, he told himself fiercely…but he couldn’t seem to shut up.

  “It might help you understand why it is so important to me that Amalia—that Amy—grow up with a father.” He slid open the glass door that led to the terrace and stepped outside. Carin hesitated, then followed him. “I think of her that way, sometimes. As Amalia.”

  “My. You really do believe in running things.” Carin smiled tightly. “You mentioned that before, but I didn’t give my daughter a Brazilian name.”

  “It isn’t Brazilian.” He looked at her, then out across the ranch. “It’s Italian. And you did give it to her.”

  “I named my baby ‘Amy.’”

  “Our baby. And it was a fortuitous choice, because my mother’s name was Amalia.”