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He’d reel her in gently. Make sure she didn’t want to live without him.
Leaning back in his chair, he relaxed utterly. He felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He always got what he wanted in the end. He made it happen. His mouth curved in a dazzling smile.
As always Zoe drowned in the smile that had been absent for far too long, her body filling with primal need as the fluid grace with which he leaned back in his chair reinforced the myriad reasons she loved this man. And when he turned the shameless magic of his grin on her again and told her, ‘We fly out to Spain next week for a belated honeymoon,’ her wits scattered to the four corners of the room and she could only stare back at him, her cheeks reddening with pleasure, her mind in a muddle because she would never understand what was going on in his head from one minute to the next.
But trying to find out would be exciting!
CHAPTER SIX
THE Spanish sun blazed down and the aquamarine sea glittered back at it with improbable intensity. The leaves of the overhanging eucalyptus tree moved with silvery languour in the slight, soft breeze.
Zoe turned from staring down unseeingly at the tranquil view of the deserted sandy beach beyond the manicured gardens. Her lush mouth compressed into a tight line, she leant back against the ornate stone balustrade that surrounded the terrace that ran round three sides of the white-walled Moorish-style villa, her heart jumping beneath her breastbone as Javier emerged through an archway, a tray of cold drinks in his strong hands.
He’d changed from the clothes he’d travelled in. Just looking at him made her feel light-headed. Her wretched mouth began to wobble again as her eyes drank in his spectacular male body clad now in casual shorts that hung low on his lean hips, and a white T-shirt that did wonders for his sleek olive-toned skin and lovingly clung to his impressive torso.
The muscles guarding her sex quivered and her breath locked tight in her lungs. They were here together in this beautiful, romantic spot but they might as well be on different planets. Utterly disorientated because of his unfathomable attitude towards her since the night they’d made love, Zoe didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or to cry. It would be far too easy to do both at once.
Biting down on her soft lower lip to stop herself doing either, or more probably both, she forced herself to walk slowly down the length of the long terrace to the table in the shade of a vine where he was placing what appeared to be a frosted jug of juice and two tall glasses.
Everything had happened so quickly and that was part of the trouble, she thought edgily. When Javier decided on a course of action he didn’t hang about.
Initially, she’d thought his mention of a honeymoon meant that they were to embark on a real and lasting marriage, cancelling out her earlier fear that he would be sticking to his original time-span of their empty marriage, making sure the mistake of the night before was never repeated.
Provided, of course, that she wasn’t pregnant.
If she was then, being an honourable man, he would bite the bullet and resign himself to his fate. An impossible scenario. It made her feel physically ill just to think about it.
So the way he’d smiled at her and mentioned a belated honeymoon had made her deliriously happy, confident that after the magic of what had happened between them the night before he wanted her permanently in his life, was already halfway to falling in love with her. But that state of euphoria had lasted for a couple of hours only.
Because now she wasn’t so sure.
She wasn’t sure at all.
‘I wondered where you had got to.’ He looked at her and smiled that bone-weakening smile of his. A lock of his soft dark hair had fallen over his forehead. Her fingers itched to run through it, push it back into place.
She sat down instead, watched him take the chair opposite and shrugged lightly. ‘I wanted to get my bearings.’ Wanted to snatch a slice of time by herself would be nearer the truth, to try to figure out what was going on inside that clever head of his, what he truly wanted of her, of their marriage.
That other morning at breakfast, two minutes after telling her they would be heading for a belated honeymoon at his parents’ winter home in Spain, he’d shut himself in the technological wonder that was his Wakeham Lodge study, emerging a couple of hours later to drive himself back to London, only sparing her the time to impart in the clinical tone she dreaded, ‘I’ll be back to collect you in a couple of days. I’ll pick up our passports from the apartment and pack for us both.’ Not even a goodbye kiss. Hardly lover-like behaviour. Right then all her hopeful happiness had taken a sharp nosedive.
‘You’ve been here before, remember?’ he reminded as he set a glass of juice down in front of her.
There was a knowing light in those smoky, heavily fringed eyes. Was he laughing at her? Mocking?
Of course she remembered! How could she forget the way she’d humiliated herself? That passionate declaration of love—he hadn’t wanted her love then and it looked as if he didn’t want it now.
She offered a languid shrug. Two could be cool and uninterested. ‘So? It’s been, what, three years? A long time, anyway. Things change.’
But she hadn’t changed. She still loved him to absolute distraction. And he hadn’t, either. He still saw her as a tiresome responsibility, especially after the night he obviously preferred to forget and wholeheartedly wished had never happened.
Zoe’s fingers closed round the ice-cold surface of the glass. When he’d collected her from Wakeham Lodge early this morning he’d been back to being polite but distant. And flying over on the company jet she had spikily wondered if there were any other couple in the history of the world, embarking on their honeymoon who weren’t at least holding hands!
And every time she’d tried to talk about what was really important, such as how he saw their future, he’d smoothly changed the subject and stuck his nose back into the file of documents that had been waiting for him when they’d boarded. So she’d given up.
But now: ‘How long will we be here?’ Zoe connected with his stunning eyes, held his smoky gaze and tried to look as if her question weren’t all that important, just idle conversation. But it was something that had been really muddling her. From his attitude—back to the status quo—she was growing surer with each hour that passed that the no-divorce thing he’d insisted on applied only to the next year.
He stuck like a limpet to what he saw as his duty. Over the years she had learned that it was an intrinsic part of his strong, macho character. So why bother to bring her out here to Almeria, to this isolated spot a few kilometres from the tiny unspoiled village of La Isleta del Moro? From her perspective it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Not to make mad passionate love to her, really cement their marriage, that was for sure. He hadn’t so much as touched her in passing since that night.
And not to broaden her horizons, either, although in the back of the chauffeur-driven car that had met them at the airport he had, very politely, given her the tourist spiel: the rugged province of Almeria was the hottest and driest in Spain, the mild winter temperatures made it ideal for his parents when the winter closed in over the mountains. The spaghetti westerns had been filmed here—on and on until, frustrated and heart-wrenchingly miserable over the complete lack of anything remotely personal coming from his direction, she’d wanted to smack his face.
Now, looking into that same breathtakingly handsome face, she waited, more wired-up with each passing second. He had some explaining to do!
‘As long as it takes,’ Javier unthinkingly answered, watching the tiny pulse beat at the base of her long, elegant neck, following the tense line of her delicate collar-bones, and down to the warm honey skin revealed by the open-necked silk shirt she was wearing.
She was tense, wary, taut as a bowstring, the light in those magnificent golden eyes partly suspicion, partly defiance. The urge to take her in his arms and hold her tight was hard to resist.
Javier smothered a sigh. He had to be patient, tread very carefully. He knew the way her mind worked. One hint of pressure and she’d be off at the speed of light. Three days ago she’d been ready to run. She would have had her reasons. He doubted that one night of sex would have changed them. But she was his and he was determined to keep her. So play it cool and play it slow, take as much time as needed to bind her to him for all time—
‘As long as it takes to find out if you’ve got me pregnant!’ she flashed out as she scrambled to her feet. She had the answer to her question now and she didn’t like it one little bit! She slapped away the outstretched hand that would have stayed her, and her long legs took her flying for the sanctuary of the villa.
She had suspected as much, hadn’t she? So why did it hurt so much? Why should she feel traumatised and shocked when he came out with the truth?
The cool ambience of the villa’s interior, all white marble floors, watery green colour-washed walls, elegant classic furnishings, did nothing to soothe her tumultuous emotions.
Had he reverted to the part of a polite stranger to hide the fact that he was sick to his stomach thinking about what—honour-bound—he’d have to do if she proved to be carrying his child? Stick by her for the rest of his life, give up the bachelor freedom he relished and had still felt free to follow during the latter part of their paper marriage?
‘You’ll want to freshen up after the journey. I’ll show you to our room.’
Zoe all but leapt out of her skin. She hadn’t heard him follow her inside. Heart thumping wildly, she decided she hated him. Really and utterly!
‘Don’t bother.’ Her voice was nicely chilling she noted with empty satisfaction. ‘Teresa can show me where I’m to sleep.’
She perfectly remembered the round, smiley señora from her previous stay here. Full-time housekeeper when Javier’s parents or guests were in residence. She wished Teresa would appear right now, or her husband, Manuel, who seemed to have disappeared entirely since he’d delivered them here from the airport.
Someone—anyone—to act as a buffer between her and Javier, the husband who didn’t want her, who almost certainly regarded what had happened between them as a deeply regrettable one-night stand and shuddered every time he thought about it.
But his firm hand beneath her elbow was guiding her to the foot of the sweeping marble staircase with its delicate iron-work bannisters and he was telling her, ‘On my instructions Teresa’s gone back to her home in the village. Manuel, too. Honeymooning couples need to be alone, wouldn’t you say?’
Zoe tripped over her own feet as the breath whooshed out of her lungs at that cynical statement. This honeymooning couple needed to be alone so that the hired staff wouldn’t be tempted to gossip about how unloverlike they actually were!
Misery and shame overwhelmed her. If she hadn’t enthusiastically encouraged him to bed her they wouldn’t be in this weird situation! And she wouldn’t have to be pretending that she could take it in her stride when in reality she felt as if her heart were shattering.
Suddenly, the elegant staircase looked like a sheer cliff face. Zoe’s buckled knees began to shake. Shooting her an amused look from heavily veiled smoky eyes, Javier swept her up into his arms before she could fully collect herself and carried her up the stairs with no effort at all, tutting mildly when she squirmed and huffed, ‘Put me down!’ as they approached the open arched doorway of the magnificent master bedroom.
‘It’s tradition. The groom carries his bride over the threshold.’
Desperately trying not to let her body’s instinctive response to his reveal itself as he slowly slid her down his impressive length and settled her prone upon the bed, she immediately came back with a raspingly breathless, ‘There’s no one around to applaud your performance, so you needn’t have risked a hernia!’
She was wallowing in the fallout of her own shame. That night had been so special to her, just a horrendous mistake as far as he was concerned. And as if to emphasise that embarrassing fact he stepped smartly back from the bed as if he didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
Scrambling into a sitting position—no way was she just going to lie where he’d put her, like an invitation he would never dream of accepting, ever again—she pouted. ‘In case you’d forgotten, we’ve been married for almost a year, so I’m hardly a “bride”. So all that carrying over the threshold is just a sick joke. You never carried me over anything before.’
A sick, hurtful joke, a mockery of everything she’d hoped this marriage would be. Tears stung at the backs of her eyes. She willed them not to fall and swallowed convulsively, her head downbent, her fingers knotted together, her poor heart getting another mangling when Javier mused softly, ‘I remember what must have been the last time I carried you. You were ten years old and had spent an entire Sunday racing around the zoo, trying to see everything at once. You were too tired to make it back to the car. You fell instantly asleep in my arms. It was as if someone had switched you off. I remember thinking what a cute scrap you were, in spite of those long, gawky legs and dirty little face!’
He backed off doorwards, clipped practicality to the fore, as if he was wondering where that soppy memory had come from. ‘Have a shower and a nap. Teresa unpacked for you so you’ll find your gear in the dressing room. We’ll have a late supper.’ Leaving her to remember how the seeds for an adult love had been sown in the child she had been in the days when he had been like a big brother, caring and kind, the nicest, most wonderful person she knew.
Slotting the arched wood into the doorframe with exaggerated care, Javier gritted his teeth and pulled a long hiss of breath into his lungs. It had been a close-run thing. He only had to look at her to want her, his body threatening to take control and blow his cerebral plans to smithereens.
When he’d made love to her from the starting point of the possessive anger he’d not known he was remotely capable of he’d experienced the most mind-blowing event of his life. She’d been spectacular, a fast and eager learner. He knew he would only have to go back into that room and take her in his arms, kiss her, to instigate the repeat performance his whole body was aching for.
Even now the temptation to stride straight back into the bedroom was eating into his brain like acid, slyly telling him that she was his wife, that they’d already made love, that she’d proved beyond all possible doubt that she was highly sexed and passionate, and that denying himself another slice of that heaven was a ridiculous sacrifice.
But something else had happened that night, hadn’t it? He stalked towards the stairs, through the house, out to the swimming pool, dragging his T-shirt over his head as he went.
Love had happened. It might have slammed into his brain like a sledgehammer at the time but with sober hindsight he recognised that it had been growing for over a year.
Shedding his shorts, he dived into the cool green waters, his lean, powerful muscles taut with frustration. Throughout the long years he had known Zoe she had engendered every emotion known to man. Delight, exasperation, compassion, caring, anger, possessive jealousy. And now love, the mother and father of all emotions. Love, deep, passionate and unblinkered. He knew her faults—that she could be headstrong and stubborn—and he knew her strong points, her liveliness and generosity of spirit. The way she walked, the way she smiled—he adored everything about her. For the first time in his life he was totally and irredeemably hooked.
His jawline grim, he powered through the water, burning all that edgy energy, scornful now of his po-faced, blinkered behaviour when he’d so nobly decided to propose an unconsummated marriage to keep her out of the clutches of the likes of Sherman. Not allowing himself to acknowledge that he’d wanted her for himself because he’d been in love with her.
Prat!
Now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Wanting to take that beautiful face between his hands and kiss that lush mouth until she quivered with wanton anticipation, peel the clothes from her lovely body and pleasure her until they were both damn near expiring from sexual overload.
But knowing that he mustn’t. Couldn’t. Shouldn’t. He had never had any trouble getting any woman he wanted—in fact he’d perfected the knack of fighting them off, and that, instead of stoking his ego, had begun to bore him.
Zoe was different. He was diving deeper and deeper in love with her with every passing second. He had to teach her to love him back, to want to spend the rest of her life with him, have his children—
He groaned, increased the pace of his furious strokes, churning the erstwhile placid water. His selfishness appalled him. What he wanted shouldn’t be the main issue here, not while his poor darling was worrying herself silly over the possibility of pregnancy.
She had a whole lot of living to do before she settled down to the responsibility of motherhood and he knew she was troubled and edgily anxious. Hadn’t he witnessed her reaction, the way she’d snapped and brought up the troubled subject when in answer to her question he’d replied, ‘As long as it takes.’ Meaning, of course, that the length of their stay here was dependent on the time it took for him to make her love him just half as much as he adored her.
Trouble was, he conceded heavily, no one could make Zoe do anything she didn’t want to do.
The rock and the hard place expanded to massive proportions.
Edgy, Zoe couldn’t settle. And as for taking a nap as Javier had so coolly suggested, it was completely out of the question.
Opting for the huge sunken bath in the spacious ensuite as likely to be potentially more relaxing than the power shower, she’d lain in the perfumed hot water staring at the creamy marble walls, the glass shelves bearing expensive essences and lotions, the shiny green leaves of the potted plants, for around five minutes until her fraught emotions had driven her right out again.
What was Javier doing?
That he was here, somewhere around, but she couldn’t see or hear him, spooked her. He was a workaholic, she knew that. And she’d seen the bulging briefcase and the laptop, part of the copious luggage he deemed necessary for their stay.
So he was probably in one or other of the air-conditioned sitting rooms, totally absorbed in some structural engineering project, while she was beating herself up over the unresolved situation they found themselves in. Man-like, he would be able to put it out of his mind, not wasting mental energy on a problem that couldn’t be solved until they knew whether or not she was pregnant.
Despising herself for being unable to do likewise, she entered the dressing room to find something to wear. Vast fitted hanging cupboards, two chests of drawers, an antique pier-glass.
Teresa had unpacked for her, so he’d told her. He’d also said ‘our room’, she remembered. The fine line of her arched brows drew together as her heart began a foolish gallop. Was he really expecting them to share a room, a bed?
Get real, she told herself forcefully before she could get too excited by that prospect and what it might mean. Teresa’s unpacking all their gear in the shared room would have been proposed to nip gossip in the bud, as had his decision to tell her and Manuel that their services would not be needed. The true state of their marriage had been kept from his parents, so he would want to guard against the likelihood of Teresa confiding in his mother that her son and daughter-in-law didn’t sleep together.
She dismissed that miserable thought. A rapid inspection revealed that the hanging cupboard on one side of the room contained just about every lightweight garment she owned, and a row of his stuff in the other—ranging from smart-casual right down to knockabout washed-out jeans and cut-offs.
Very His and Hers.
So, OK. He’d use the dressing room. But he would have no desire to share her bed. He’d use one of the others. You bet he would! Hadn’t he demonstrated that he had no wish to get any closer to her than inhabiting the same slab of the planet necessitated?
Snatching a turquoise silk wrap from the depths of the space allotted to her, she thrust her arms into it and savagely tied the sash around her waist. Javier was hateful! She didn’t know why she loved the brute! Didn’t he realise that she had feelings?
The brute who was filling her head to the exclusion of anything else appeared in the dressing-room doorway. Zoe felt his presence, so immediate and compelling, like a blow to her solar plexus and spun round to face him, the fine silk of her wrap clinging to her still-damp body.
Her face flushed feverishly. He was utterly, unfairly gorgeous, wearing just those low-slung shorts, his skin slicked with water, his dark hair clinging to his skull. And just for a moment she saw tension grip that sensational bone structure, his eyes narrowing as if to block out the unwelcome sight of her. And then it was gone, the beginnings of a politely impersonal, meaningless smile starting to deal with the savage line of his mouth.
And before he could come out with an equally meaningless pseudo pleasantry Zoe got a grip, not willing to let him guess how this game of manners was winding her up to the point of explosion. ‘You’ve been swimming,’ she cooed. ‘What a great idea!’ She bounced to the Hers chest of drawers, breathed a short but heartfelt sigh of gratitude as her hand fell on her favourite bikini.
Clutching it to her heaving breasts, she sped from the room at a speed that ensured she was able to keep an empty smile on her face before it could inevitably crumple into stifled sobs as soon as she hit the privacy of the outer corridor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS USUAL Javier woke early, snapping awake as if he’d been plugged into a power circuit. His mind homing straight in on Zoe asleep in the master suite on the other side of the villa.
During the five days they’d been here he’d got exactly nowhere with his too-confident plan to softly persuade her to start believing that they could have a good life together, the best. He’d actually gone backwards, in his puzzled estimation. Of the Zoe he knew and had grown to love—the talkative, perky, sometimes stroppy, always vital, generous, intriguing minx he had known for most of her life—there had been no sign.
His ego-driven decision to make her change her mind about walking away from their marriage—showing her what a real nice guy he was, considerate and caring of her, undemanding and smothering his natural inclination to call all the shots, demonstrating that making love to her wasn’t the first and only thing on his agenda and hopefully rekindling something of her earlier, self-confessed love for him—wasn’t working. So he would have to jettison that approach and go for a more open strategy.
No matter how hard he’d tried to make her time here in Spain with him a truly enjoyable experience he’d come up against a solid brick wall. Every outing or new experience he’d suggested had been met with downswept eyes and a mute shake of her beautiful spun-gold head.
Once he’d made his mind up on a plan of action he always carried it through. This time it had backfired on him big time. She spent most of her waking time in the little summerhouse deep in the garden, her pretty nose buried in a book, and all his attempts to discover what was troubling her—for something obviously was—had been met with a stubborn, ‘Nothing’. He wasn’t used to being thwarted. His dark brows thundered together as he contemplated this new experience.
Under the cold shower, one of the many he’d been forced to take while he’d been pussyfooting around the woman who only had to walk into the room to have his craving body leap to attention, he decided grimly that this unbearable stand-off had to end.
In the past Zoe had always been able to talk to him, about anything and everything, and he remembered with yet another shock that he disliked chattering women but that with Zoe it had always been different. He’d relished every word she’d ever said to him. If it was the last thing he did in this life he would get her confiding in him again, opening up about what was wrong with her.
It came to him as he pulled on a pair of denim cut-offs that she might actually be ill. The thought terrified him into snatching up a sleeveless T-shirt and dragging it over his head at speed.
No one could deny that there were dark shadows around those lovely eyes, a worrying pallor lying over her tense features and her normal healthy appetite had shrunk out of existence.
Javier had never felt distraught in the whole of his life and he was trying to deal with that unwelcome emotion when the thought that the reason for her withdrawal and unwell appearance could be down to worry struck him with the force of a runaway ten-ton truck.
Her fear of possible pregnancy!
His intention to make coffee and take a cup to her room forgotten, he froze on his feet at the foot of the staircase he’d descended at foolhardy speed.
All his fault.
She’d been all set to cut loose—she’d stated that all too clearly—leave him behind while she made her own life, found her own friends, and now she would be afraid that an unwelcome pregnancy would shatter all her plans for single-woman freedom.
