A man with a serious problem would keep it inside. A woman would talk and talk. And then, just to be sure, she’d talk some more.
“Talk” was what had been going on in his apartment all week. Not his. Carin’s, and Amanda’s. Endless, nonstop, talk.
They talked in the guest suite. In the kitchen. In the living room. They talked on the terrace, if the day wasn’t too cool and then, for good measure, they talked at night in the library. His wife and his sister-in-law never stopped talking, unless he entered the room. Then they clamped their mouths shut and stared at him until he smiled nervously, muttered an apology, and backed out the door.
“What do you and Carin talk about?” he’d whispered to his wife one night, when they were in bed. He had taken to whispering; it seemed safer that way.
Amanda had shrugged. “This and that.”
“Carin’s unhappy?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“No.”
“There must be something.”
“She says there isn’t.”
“Then—then what do you talk about? What do you say to each other, if she’s not happy but she doesn’t want us to do anything?”
“I told you,” Amanda whispered back. “We talk about this and that.”
“This and what?” he’d finally asked and Amanda had shushed him, put her lips to his ear and said, actually, there was something they could do. Something he could do, anyway.
Carin had a favor to ask him.
Nick finished his drink, checked Rafe’s, and signaled the waiter to bring two more.
Maybe putting a buzz on wasn’t such a bad idea.
The next morning, Carin told him what she wanted. He’d listened. Then he’d listened again, but the Something she wanted done made no more sense the second time around.
“Let me be sure I’ve got this,” he’d said. “You want me to see if you can have Amy’s named changed?”
“Yes.”
“Just her given name, not her surname?” He’d looked helplessly from his sister-in-law to his wife. “Uh, you decided you don’t like the name Amy? I mean, I think it’s a beautiful…”
Carin had choked back a sob and he’d fallen silent under the lash of his wife’s baleful glare.
“Sure,” he’d said quickly, “I’ll ask around, see what it takes.” And then, like an idiot, he’d repeated that Amy was a fine name and he really didn’t understand this…
Carin had burst into tears. His wife shot him an icy look, wrapped an arm around her sister and led her from the room.
Nick stabbed his fork into his salad.
He’d finally made sense out of the Something his sister-in-law wanted him to do. And it was sad, because it told him she didn’t just want out of her marriage, she wanted out of anything to do with Rafe.
Did she really hate him enough to want to rename their child?
Nick looked at Rafe, who’d shoved his salad aside in favor of his drink. In his view, Rafe’s plan—to get drunk—made a lot more sense. He pushed his salad aside, too, lifted his glass and smiled at his old friend. Rafe didn’t smile back but he raised his glass and touched it to Nick’s.
Both men took long, thirsty drinks. Nick put down his glass, took a deep breath, and dove into the silence.
“Okay, I’ve reached a decision.”
Rafe looked at him.
“You can get plastered, if you want. But you can’t murder the waiter. I don’t think my diplomatic immunity would stretch far enough to cover that.”
Rafe’s brows drew together. “I am not in the mood for humor.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing you told me that because up until now, I thought we were in for a couple of hours of laughs.”
Rafe’s brows knotted even more tightly. Then his lips moved in what might have been a smile.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m not very good company.”
“Hey, man, why should you be different? Nobody’s good company these days. Amanda slouches around as if I were the enemy just because I wear pants. And Carin behaves as if…” Hell! “Never mind. It must be the weather. This early fall is…”
“What about Carin?” Rafe was out of his chair, leaning across the table. “Is she ill?”
“No.”
“The baby? Is she—”
“No! I mean, yes, Amy is fine. They’re both fine. I just—I didn’t mean to mention Carin, you know?”
Rafe sat down. “She is my wife,” he said stiffly. “It’s impossible not to mention her.”
“Well, I just didn’t want to—”
“If she were ill, I would want to know it.” He picked up his glass, took a drink, put it down and looked at Nick. “Even if we aren’t living together anymore, I would still want to…”
His voice trailed away. “Rafe?” Nick said softly, and this time, when Rafe looked up, Nick almost groaned. The angry scowl, the cold-eyed glower were gone. What he saw etched into his friend’s face was pain.
“Oh, man,” Nick muttered. He looked around for the waiter, made a scribbling gesture in the air. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, but Rafe was way ahead of him. He’d already tossed a bill on the table, shoved back his chair and headed for the door.
* * *
“I don’t know why she left me.”
Rafe and Nick were sitting on a bench in Central Park, with only a couple of pigeons to keep them company. It was an unseasonably cool, windy day. Nick was freezing but Rafe was talking, and Nick figured not even pneumonia was too big a price to pay for that.
“We were getting along well,” Rafe said. “Not at first, perhaps, but that was to be expected.”
“Well, sure. I mean, you’d only known each other a few months…”
“We knew each other one night.” Rafe cleared his throat. “The story about having been together in New York was a lie.”
“Ah.” Interesting, he thought. Did Amanda know about that? “Why? So Marta wouldn’t be too upset by the elopement?”
“It was no elopement,” Rafe said heavily. “I forced Carin into marriage.”
“You forced her?” Nick thought about the Brewster sisters. It was tough to imagine any man being able to force them into anything. “How?”
“I made threats. I said I’d take our daughter from her…Don’t look at me like that, Nicholas! I did what I believed was right.”
“Well, yeah. Making Amy legitimate was right, but if Carin didn’t want to marry you…”
“It worked out.” Rafe got to his feet. Nick followed, and they began walking towards the street. “Eventually, Carin came to see things my way.”
“How’d you manage that?” Nick smiled. “I adore my wife but getting her to see things my way isn’t always easy.”
Rafe thought back to the night of the dinner party, the night he’d slept with his wife in his arms for the very first time, and how they’d made love the next morning.
“Things just did,” he said stiffly. “And after that—after that, I was happy. I thought Carin was happy, too.” His voice softened. “She seemed happy, I swear it. We laughed. We sat by the fire in the evenings. We went riding, and we watched our little girl grow…”
Nick nodded. “Sounds as if things were fine.”
“Yes. I thought so, too. And then—”
“And then?”
Rafe sighed and tucked his hands into his pockets. “And then we had a quarrel.”
“Rafe, look, people do that. Even Amanda and I have had a couple of arguments. Just last month, she was trying to convince me that we should paint the nursery a color she calls Butter Honey but trust me, man, it’s more like Butter Rancid. I mean—”
“We quarreled, Nick.” Rafe’s voice was low. “It was a bad quarrel, and by the time it was over, I knew the truth.”
“The truth?”
“My wife is still in love with the man who jilted her.”
Nick stopped walking. “Frank?” He laughed. “No way.”
&nbs
p; “It’s true. She loves him.”
“Rafe, she doesn’t. That occurred to me, too, so I asked Amanda.” Nick shook his head emphatically. “Carin’s not pining for Frank.”
“She is.” Rafe turned towards Nick. “She told me so.”
Nick sighed. “Rafe, old buddy,” he said, dropping his hands lightly on the other man’s shoulders, “it’s a hard lesson but if there’s one thing married life has taught me, it’s that what a woman says isn’t always what she means.”
Rafe’s eyes darkened. “Are you calling my wife a liar?”
Hell, Nick thought, and tried again. “I’m calling you naive, if you really think women won’t mislead us, if they think the issue calls for it.”
“Perhaps. But this was different. I saw what I never hoped to see, that my wife…” Rafe drew a shuddering breath. “There’s no point talking about it. Take my word for it. She loves him.”
“So, you quarreled about Frank?”
“No.”
“Well, what was it, then?”
“Nothing. Everything.” Rafe hesitated. “It was confusing. She still loves this man but later, when I thought back on what had gone on…” His eyes met Nick’s. “I think, perhaps, Carin wanted me to tell her that I loved her.”
“That you…” Nick stared at his old friend. “Help me out here, okay? She left you because you didn’t tell her you loved her?”
The men’s eyes met. Rafe’s face took on a ruddiness that had little to do with the chill in the air. He stuck his hands into his pockets and started walking.
“Right. I said it was confusing.”
“Not really. I mean, it sounds simple, to me. Why didn’t you just say it?”
“Because I don’t!” Rafe came to a stop again and swung towards Nick, his eyes almost black with anger. “Carin is a wonderful woman. She’s beautiful and bright. She made me happier than I thought a man could be. Waking in the mornings, with her in my arms. Falling asleep with her curled against me at night. Just being with her…” He swallowed hard. “But love? Love is a nonsense word, used by people who believe in fairy tales. It deludes those who pretend to feel it. I know this, Nick, and yet you think I should have lied to my wife? That I should have said, ‘I love you, querida,’ just to keep her?”
Nick looked at Rafe for a few seconds before he spoke. “You’re going to have to help me with this, Rafe,” he said carefully. “I thought you told me that Carin is still in love with Frank.”
“What if I did?”
“Well, why would she want you to say you love her, if she loves him?”
“I don’t know.”
“And how can you be upset about her being in love with another man if love means nothing to you?”
Rafe’s jaw hardened. “It means something to her.”
Nick whistled softly through his teeth. “It’s an interesting puzzle. And it makes me wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
“If you’d said you loved her, just to make her happy…” He held up his hand before Rafe could speak. “Hear me out, okay? If you’d said you loved her, and if she’d said she loved you, too, you’d have said, what? That she didn’t know what she was talking about?”
“Sim. Yes, that is what I would have said.”
“Or maybe you’d have said she was lying.”
Rafe moved fast, knotted his fingers into Nick’s lapels and dragged him forward. “I told you before. My wife does not lie!”
A muscle knotted in Nick’s jaw. “Take it easy,” he said quietly.
Rafe stared at him. “Santos Deus,” he whispered. He let go of Nick’s jacket and took a step back. “Forgive me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I can’t think straight. I bark at my housekeeper, my secretary…my men go out of their way to avoid me.”
“And you don’t know what’s wrong with you?” Nick smiled. “Rafe, old buddy, you’re in love.”
“No! I told you, I don’t believe in—”
“Neither do a lot of us, until we meet the right woman.”
The men stood looking at each other for a long moment. Finally, Rafe gave an agonized groan.
“All right,” he said, “it’s true. I don’t know how it happened, that I, of all men, should have fallen in love but, Deus, I love Carin. She is my heart, my soul, my life.” He grasped Nick’s arm, this time in desperation. “But what does it matter?” His voice roughened. “She doesn’t love me. She loves this man—”
“Forget that. I told you, what they say isn’t always what they mean.”
“Then…” Rafe cleared his throat. “Then, you think there’s a chance? That I can go to her, take her in my arms, tell her that I have been the worst kind of fool…?” He stared at Nick. “What is it? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Rafe. Dammit, I’m sorry…”
“Tell me what you know, Nicholas.”
“I think it’s too late for a reconciliation. You see, Carin asked me to do a favor for her. To check on something, I supposed you’d call it a legality…” He took a breath. “I guess you chose your baby’s name together, right?”
“For heaven’s sake, what has Amy’s name to do with this?”
“Well, it isn’t Amy. Not anymore. That was the favor Carin wanted, to find out how to go about changing the baby’s name, legally.”
Rafe froze. “She cannot take my name from my daughter. It is on the birth certificate. She is Amy Alvares…”
“The Alvares is still there. It’s the ‘Amy’ part that’s gone.”
“The Amy part?”
“Yeah. Carin changed it. Your little girl isn’t named Amy Brewster Alvares anymore. She’s Amalia…Rafe? Rafe, what the hell are you doing?”
But Rafe had already run across Fifth Avenue, to find his wife and tell her that he loved her.
* * *
It wasn’t quite that easy.
Rafe paced the living room of the al Rashid penthouse, waiting to see if his wife would even agree to see him.
Nick had caught up to him as he’d raced out of Central Park, taken him upstairs, told Carin her husband was here and then he’d hustled a protesting Amanda into her coat and out the door.
“But, but, but,” Amanda kept saying, casting little glances at Rafe that were not friendly, but finally Nick kissed his wife to silence.
“She’ll be down,” he’d hissed at Rafe, just before he’d closed the door.
All Rafe could do now was wait, and hope, and pray.
He paced the room, paced it some more. He went to the wall of glass that overlooked the park, stared at the terrace…
“Hello, Rafe.”
He spun around and felt his heart stutter in his chest.
His wife was standing on the stairs, her hand on the banister. She was wearing jeans and a sweater; her hair was tousled and she had no makeup on her face. She was, in other words, incredibly beautiful…but the look in her eyes was bleak.
He took a couple of steps towards her. “Hello, Carin.”
“Nick said you want to see me.”
“I…Yes. Yes, I do.”
She came down the rest of the steps, wrapped her arms around herself as she had the night they’d quarreled—the night he’d lost the only thing in life that mattered to him.
“I realized you want to see Am—to see the baby, but she’s asleep. If you come back tomorrow morning, say, around nine…”
“Of course, I want to see her. But I came to talk to you.”
Carin unfolded her arms and tucked her hands into her pockets. She swept past him and he caught a whiff of her scent, a soft fragrance that he sometimes half imagined he could still catch, drifting lightly on the air in the bedroom they had shared.
“I told you the rules, Rafe. You’re to call, before you—”
“You renamed our daughter.”
Carin turned and looked at him. A flush rose in her cheeks; her lips trembled, and that was when he knew, when he was certain, she loved only him.
“Nick’s
an idiot,” she said sharply. “Why did he tell you that?”
Rafe smiled as he walked towards her. “He thought it had some meaning, querida, that it meant you would never take me back into your life, and he wanted to warn me not to have hope that you would.”
“Well, he was right. Don’t have hope, Rafe. I’m not—”
“Why did you change it?”
“Why? For—for tradition. For—for respect. For…” She caught her breath as he stroked a hand over her cheek. “Please, don’t do that.”
“What? Don’t do this? Touch you?” He threaded his hands into her hair, those dark, silky locks, cupped her face, lifted it to his. “You used to like me to touch you. To hold you, amada, do you remember?”
“I remember telling you not to come here unannounced.” Her voice wobbled; she tried to pull away from him but he wouldn’t let her. “And I remember telling you not to use words like that when they had no meaning for you.”
“What words?” he whispered, and he bent to her and kissed her mouth.
“You know what words. Querida. Amada. They don’t mean a damn.”
“They mean that you own my heart, Carin.” A smile curved his mouth. “But you have never said them to me. I have never heard you call me querido or amado.”
“Why would I? I don’t love—”
“Yes,” Rafe said gently, “you do. You love me.” He took a deep breath. “And I love you.”
“You’re just saying that, because you—you want me to come back, so our daughter will grow up in your home.”
“Sim. I want that, very much. But what I want the most, querida, is to spend the rest of my life proving my love to you. Carin.” He paused, knowing that all the words he’d ever spoken, the ones that had helped him purchase his ranch, that had helped him leave behind, forever, the little boy from the slums of Rio, were not as important as the ones he would speak now. “Carin, I never understood what love was. I thought it was a dream for the weak, a game for those who played it. But I understand it now, querida. I believe in it because I love you, with everything I am, and if you truly leave me, I will be empty inside, forever.”
The Alvares Bride Page 17