A Spanish Marriage (11 page)

Isabella Maria gave a prolonged screech when the craft landed on the lawn below the terrace. ‘Are we being invaded!'

‘Relax, Mama.' Javier grinned, rising to his feet. ‘Look at the logo. It's one of ours, not the mafia!'

One of the construction company's fleet, Zoe recognised from the world-famous logo, curiosity momentarily ousting the inner tension that had been eating at her since this morning.

A dapper little guy with slicked-back black hair, wearing an immaculate pinstriped suit, emerged from his seat beside the pilot carrying a leather briefcase. Must-do work for Javier's eyes only? Zoe pondered
as he mounted the steps to the terrace, noting the man's obsequious bow in Javier's direction as he laid the case reverentially on the table.

‘Señor Garcia,' Javier introduced, mentioning a renowned Madrid jeweller, taking the proffered key and unlocking the case himself, opening it to display a glittering array of rings on midnight-blue velvet.

‘Fabuloso!'
Isabella Maria squealed, her dark eyes winging from her son's to the jewels and back again.
‘Por qué? Quién?'

Ignoring her, Javier turned the force of his bone-melting smile on Zoe. ‘You never did have an engagement ring. This morning I decided to arrange to correct that omission.'

Her breath went as her heart danced beneath her breasts, her eyes blurring until the display of costly rings became a kaleidoscope of colour and glittering lights. And when Javier came to stand behind her, laying a light hand on her naked shoulder, she quivered, the exquisite sensation of his skin against her skin leaving her feeling light-headed and as weak as a newborn kitten.

‘They are all your ring size—choose whichever you like best,' he murmured as Señor Garcia moved discreetly away.

Lionel announced, ‘Time to go, Izzy. And don't put that look on your face!'

In the flurry of goodbyes—reluctant on Isabella Maria's part, with her pressing invitations to visit with them at their summer home—Zoe was being thoroughly cross with herself for thinking bad things about her gorgeous husband. He hadn't been glued to
the phone for ages murmuring sweet nothings into his ex-mistress's ear—he'd been arranging transport for Garcia and his wildly expensive collection of gems.

Just for her!

He wouldn't have made such an impulsive gesture if he wanted rid of her!

She didn't deserve him she decided, going all misty-eyed, turning to gaze up at him when they were finally alone again. ‘You can be really romantic,' she breathed, her heart swelling with love, wondering if he could read it in her eyes.

But he simply gave her that sizzling smile and a laconic, “‘Romantic” turns you on?' wondering why he hadn't taken that tack much earlier on instead of all that Mr Nice Guy stuff.

‘You turn me on,' Zoe confessed honestly, as just looking at him, tall, dark, spectacularly lean and powerful, sent rivers of sexual anticipation scalding through her bloodstream.

‘So I have noticed,' Javier slotted in with massive male satisfaction, graphically reminding her of the way she had wholeheartedly and very actively encouraged his earlier and never-to-be-forgotten sexual attentions.

Deciding to ignore that rather humiliating observation, she did what his hand gesture commanded and concentrated on the selection of rings.

Impossible to make a choice, they were all so beautiful. Unused to seeing his Zoe in a state of dither, Javier selected an enormous yellow diamond in a sleekly modern gold setting and slid it onto her finger to sit beside her plain gold wedding band.

‘It's too big!' Sunlight caught the facets of the costly stone as Javier held her hand out to assess the way it looked against her long, slender fingers.

‘Unmissable,' he confirmed. ‘Don't you like it?'

‘Love it,' she admitted around the sudden lump in her throat. ‘But it's got to be wickedly expensive.'

‘So?' Javier gave the uninterested shrug of a man to whom money was no object. Then lifted her hand to his lips and slowly kissed the tips of her fingers, noting the rosy flush that spread across her delicate cheekbones, the rapid pulse beat at the base of her long, elegant throat, the peaking of her exquisite breasts beneath the fine fabric that covered them so lovingly; and congratulated himself on getting the hang of ‘romantic'.

Contemplating his next move—after he'd got rid of Garcia and the chopper—involving bed and the extraction of promises never again to even think about walking away from their marriage, he bit back a violent oath when his mobile interrupted his imagery of how he would undress her with much lingering at strategic areas.

His bitten acknowledgement of who was speaking was followed by an immediate descent of arching black brows as he handed the instrument to Zoe. ‘Your grandmother's companion.'

Puzzled, Zoe took it. She'd had no contact with Grandmother Alice since her wedding day except for an unchatty card at Christmas time.

The usually taciturn older woman was alarmingly garrulous, not allowing Zoe to get a word in edge-wise. ‘I'm not supposed to be telling you this but your
grandmother's failing fast. Nothing specific. Just old age and a feeble heart. I know she wants to make her peace with you before anything happens. She's fretting and it isn't good for her. She's got the idea into her head that she didn't treat you as well as she should have done. I did suggest that I might ask you to visit with her but she all but bit my head off. She's adamant that if you wanted to see her you'd come without being asked. Very stubborn, your grandmother. So, if you do come, don't tell her I contacted you. She'd be furious with me and that wouldn't do at all, not in her state of health. It might finish her off.'

Watching the colour leach out of Zoe's face, Javier reached for the phone, gave his name and listened to a repeat of the sorry tale. Eventually he spoke. ‘Zoe will be with you as soon as is humanly possible.' And cut the connection, the strong slant of his cheekbones taut as he turned to her, wanting to take fate by the throat and throttle it for stepping in and ruining his plans for the wooing of his wife, pushing him in a direction he didn't want to travel.

Forcing a deep breath into his lungs, he made himself relax, stop beefing. An old lady was fading; what right had he to get in a selfish strop about it?

He had never approved of the way Alice Rothwell had treated her orphaned granddaughter but if she was regretting it now, then she deserved to know that at the end she was forgiven. And it would help Zoe, too. That was the most important thing, knowing that the cold, outwardly unloving woman did have some affection for her.

His voice cool, carefully unrevealing of his feel
ings, he resigned his definitely hopeful-looking plan of seducing his wife until she was inredeemably hooked on him to the back burner and said, ‘We'd best get a move on,' and punched in the numbers required to put the company jet on standby.

I
T WAS
dark when the sleek company car finally drew up outside her grandmother's house. With a feeling of foreboding Zoe glanced at the neat façade, the scene of so much childhood unhappiness. But if the stern, unloving old lady wanted to clear her conscience then she was prepared to do all she could to facilitate it.

With a terse instruction to the driver to wait, Javier handed Zoe out and extracted her small, hastily packed suitcase from the boot. Two firm strides brought him back to her, and strong yet gentle hands were positioned on either side of her face, tilting her head so that he could look directly into her eyes by the light from the street lamp. ‘Sweetheart, would you like me to stay here with you? I've a feeling this won't be easy.'

Zoe would like nothing better but she smothered the desire to say yes, please. She couldn't be that selfish. There would be no point in him kicking his heels in this gloomy house with two dour old ladies whose idea of a fun evening was criticising the neighbours.

‘No. Honestly, I'll be fine.' She loved the touch of his hands against her skin, adored the way the lamp light threw his strong bone structure into such stunning relief, felt so strengthened and warmed by his
kindness. The inherent kindness she'd instinctively picked up on as a child and had benefited from—admittedly with one or two blips, which had been all her own fault—throughout her time of knowing him.

‘I guess this—whatever this is—is something Grandmother Alice and I have to deal with ourselves. You'd only feel like a spare part.'

Javier's thoughts exactly. Little as he wanted to be separated from her, not even for a night, when things seemed to be going in the direction he wanted them to go, he knew that she and Alice Rothwell needed the space to at least reach some kind of understanding.

‘I'll only stay a week.' Zoe's voice sounded very small as she contemplated that length of separation. But if Grandmother Alice was coming to the end of her life she deserved the relief of getting what she apparently now saw as past wrongs off her chest, to find absolution. After all, the old lady hadn't wanted the responsibility of bringing her up after the untimely and tragic death of her own son and his wife. But she had taken her in when she might have had her put in a children's home.

Javier gritted his teeth and swallowed his stinging objection to what seemed more like a life sentence than a week out of his life. Curving his fingers around her delicate cheekbones, he lowered his head and, unable to stop it happening, captured her lips with raw passion.

Instinctively, desperately, Zoe kissed him back, fiery desire flooding through every inch of her body as she strained against him, tiny tremors racing
through her veins as she clung, fingers lacing into the soft silkiness of his hair, lifting her hips provocatively against the all-male hardness of his. A low moan broke from her throat and then, without warning, he dropped his hands and stepped away from her.

‘I'll see you safely inside,' he virtually grated at her, avoiding the shocked widening of her fantastic golden eyes, just about loathing himself for having started something he couldn't finish.

Lifting the suitcase he'd abandoned on the pavement in one hand, Javier placed the other firmly on the small of her back, urging her into the driveway. His body felt as if it were on fire, burning for her, aching for her. One more second and he knew he'd have lost all hope of control, stripped her beautiful body naked on the pavement and made passionate love to her in full view of his driver and any passer-by. No other woman had ever brought him to the teetering brink of losing all control, but, oh, the things his Zoe did to him…!

Glancing up at his tense profile, Zoe felt cold and abandoned, shivering as the sensation of nausea claimed her stomach. Why had he kissed her like that then pushed her away as if he disgusted himself?

Or was her immediate and over-the-top eagerness in the response department what had disgusted him? Did he prefer his women to be more laid-back and coolly sophisticated where his sexual advances were concerned?

His women! The image of Glenda Havers' sultry face pinged into her mind. Was she, Zoe, just another female for him to slake his lust on? Was that all
she meant to him? Was she already beginning to bore him?

He'd certainly pulled out all the stops when it had come to grasping the excuse to get her out of his hair when they'd received the news of Grandmother Alice's frail and fading condition. Hitching a ride in the helicopter, transferring to the company jet in Madrid, the car waiting at the airport to ferry them here—

Oh, put a sock in it!

Zoe gave herself a furious mental kick for her dreadful habit of putting the worst possible interpretation on everything he did. In getting her back to England before she could catch her breath he'd only been doing what he automatically did best—clicking his fingers and making things happen.

And he'd had that fabulous selection of rings flown in for her, hadn't he? How could she possibly forget that? Sometimes she really despised herself!

Another savage mental kick had her deciding she was behaving like a mixed-up brat. Apart from her lost parents, no one had ever loved her, so she'd assumed no one ever would.

Oliver had said he loved her, but she was clued-up enough to know that the only thing he loved was the thought of her future inheritance.

And as for Javier—well, even employing positive thinking she just didn't know! Not beyond a shadow of a doubt. Did he want their marriage to last beyond the two years he'd stipulated, or didn't he?

Her voice driven, she impressed, ‘Javier, we really do have to have that talk.'

‘Of course.' Icy cool. He pressed his finger to the doorbell, his naturally powerful, dominant personality leading him to point out with impersonal factuality, ‘But not here, not now.'

His gut clenched as he recalled the plans he'd made for this night. He wasn't ready to lay his heart on the line for her in case it got trampled on, but he sure as hell had aimed to romance her, seduce her, make endless love to her until she became as addicted to him as he was to her and would forget her former intention to walk out of their marriage. Plans that would have to wait for another week before they could be put into the action he craved.

Dire frustration made his voice curter than was polite when the door swung slowly open to reveal Miss Pilkington—if the housekeeper/companion had a Christian name he had never heard it—who said with horror, ‘You can't come in at this time of night. She'll know it's not a normal visit.'

‘This isn't the time for that kind of game,' he countered immediately. ‘If Alice is fretting as much as you say she is, she'll forget to be annoyed with you when she knows how quickly Zoe responded to your message.'

Urging her over the threshold, impatience etched on every line of his darkly handsome features, he clipped out, ‘I'll be at the London apartment, Zoe. Call me if you need anything at all.'

The hand that lifted to caress the side of her lovely face, touch her soft, warm, silky skin, was quickly stuffed back in the pocket of his well-cut chinos. Touching her at all in the state he was in would be a
bad mistake. His plans were shelved, end of story. Accept it. Why pile on more torment?

With a brusque nod in no particular direction he swung on his heel before he found himself making an utter prat of himself and punching holes in the wall, leaving Zoe to watch his departure with bleak eyes, wondering if she would ever understand him.

 

‘Now are you sure you're all right, Grandmother?' Zoe had armed the old lady out into the sunlit garden and now settled the light woollen rug around her knees. Even under the circumstances of the new rapprochement the use of Granny, or, worse still, Gran would have brought a forbidding frown to those stern features.

‘Perfectly.' Momentarily, those features softened as a gnarled old hand reached out to pat Zoe's, and then, typically, she spoiled the moment by opining, ‘You've turned out to have a cool head on your shoulders. Your upbringing—which you know I've been feeling slightly uncomfortable about—didn't do any damage, quite the contrary.'

Zoe bit back the response that any improvement had been brought about by Javier's taking over the responsibility for her when she'd been sixteen years old and as bolshie as they came.

Let the old lady keep her illusions if they helped her! And the cool head she'd mentioned was a reference to the way her granddaughter had taken over, vetting and hiring a new housekeeper, an energetic widow in her fifties who wanted something to occupy her and was more than happy to live in, enabling her
to sell the marital home and invest the proceeds for her retirement.

That had left the ageing and grudgingly grateful Miss Pilkington to concentrate on the companion side of her duties, and against her grandmother's wishes she'd called in her GP, who had given the old lady a lecture about not consulting him earlier and prescribed essential medication, which already seemed to be working well.

All achieved in five hectic days. Her duty done, Zoe felt free to leave, free to go to Javier earlier than either of them had expected.

Excitement bubbled up inside her. She couldn't wait!

They would have that delayed discussion about the future of their relationship. The suspense of not knowing had been giving her sleepless nights, tying her brain in knots.

Slim fingers automatically touched the yellow diamond ring that had become a talisman of hope. She flashed a smile as her grandmother's companion came out to sit with her charge.

‘I'll make tracks now,' she stated, trying not to look too insultingly over the moon at the prospect. She dropped a light kiss on her grandmother's papery cheek. ‘I'll keep in touch. Take care and don't chicken out of your appointment next week for that thorough hospital check-up.'

She felt so light-hearted she practically skipped over the smoothly manicured lawn to the house where her already-packed suitcase was waiting in the hall.

Javier had proposed an empty marriage out of a
wearisome sense of duty and had shown his complete lack of interest in it by his increasingly regular absences. But something had changed on the night they'd spent making frantic and utterly wonderful love to each other. Something really basic.

He didn't love her, not yet anyway; she knew that and had to be sensible and accept it. But even though it probably went against the grain with him, he did desire her. He wasn't able to hide that. Couple that with his long-standing though sometimes sorely tried affection for her, add in her devoted love for him, and they could make a good, lasting marriage. He might even, given time, change his mind and want her to have his child.

Her car was waiting for her on the driveway. Javier had had it delivered to her the day after he'd deposited her here. The note on the dashboard had stated, ‘I thought you might like to snatch half an hour of freedom now and then—drive carefully!'

His thoughtfulness had warmed her heart to a rosy glow and that evening when she'd phoned the apartment to thank him no one had been home. He hadn't been picking up his mobile, either, so she'd left a message, and in the hustle to get everything arranged here she hadn't tried to contact him again.

Stowing her suitcase on the back seat, she smiled wryly. Trust him to land her back with the granny-going-shopping job instead of the mightily disapproved-of Lotus sports! No matter, she was on her way back to him! She'd make the journey in a milk float, if she had to.

 

Her smile for the janitor was still wreathing her face as Zoe used the security card that activated the lift to the London apartment. It was late afternoon and knowing Javier he wouldn't be sitting home reading a good book. He'd be dishing out orders at Head Office, getting his head down to some hard graft.

Dismissing the very real temptation to call him at his office to let him know she was here and waiting, she decided to surprise him. A long hot bath, lots of care with her make-up before she slipped into something slinky and revealing to remind him that he did find her sexually desirable.

Her cheeks reddening at the thought of setting out to seduce her own husband, she let herself into the spacious apartment and stumbled into a massive cream leather suitcase, the resulting thump bringing forth a trilling, ‘Javier, darling, is that you?'

Every last vestige of colour leached from Zoe's face as a nauseating knot cramped in her stomach. She would know that drawly voice anywhere and her worst nightmare was confirmed when Glenda Havers emerged into the vast sitting room clad in a short black silk robe that clung to her voluptuous curves.

Zoe's heart seemed to be beating at the base of her throat. She couldn't speak for the clenching pain of jealousy and the far deeper one of betrayal. It was Glenda who broke the short stinging silence.

‘Oh, dear!' She raised her baby-blue eyes to the ceiling and sketched a tiny shrug. ‘We didn't expect you for another couple of days.'

Ignoring that painfully obvious statement, Zoe swallowed convulsively and found the scratchy rem
nants of her voice. She knew what was going on but she had to ask, ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Oh, come on!' The cherry-red lips curved in a small pitying smile as the other woman wandered further into the room on clouds of musky perfume. ‘What do you think?' Pushing a languid hand through her tousled mane of rich brown hair, Glenda sank onto a sofa, tucking her legs beneath her, utterly relaxed, quite at home, Zoe thought on a stab of bitterness.

‘Listen, kid, wise up.' Narrowed blue eyes flicked away from Zoe to minutely scrutinise her fingernails, as if she was searching for flaws in the cherry-red varnish. ‘You're due to come into a pretty hefty chunk of the folding stuff—why else did you think Javier married you? The last time I teased him about cradle-snatching—when we were in Cannes, I think it was—he admitted it. Not that his marriage came between us, of course. We've been lovers for years, as you knew. But you weren't supposed to know it was still definitely ongoing; we have been very discreet. But now it's out in the open, you'll have to decide what to do about it.'