A Spanish Marriage (12 page)

The inspection of her nails completed, she raised narrowed, heavily lashed eyes to Zoe's white face. ‘Face the fact that Javier would have turned on the charm to keep you unsuspecting and doting—a wealthy wife is better than a poor one, and all that,' she derided. ‘But my advice, for what it's worth, is cut loose before the sexy bastard breaks your girly little heart.'

‘What time is he expected?' Zoe pushed out be
tween clenched teeth, bitter anger taking over. What she'd first believed was an insane nightmare, something she'd crazily hoped could be explained away, was now cold, hard fact. If he walked in now she would kill him!

Just for a moment the luscious brunette seemed disconcerted but Zoe decided she had to have been imagining it when Glenda managed a tiny shrug and drawled, ‘No idea. Some time tonight. Something needing his urgent attention cropped up in Milan. We decided it wasn't worth my going with him, as usual, so I'm to wait here. So do try to be adult about the situation and either learn to accept it, or, far better from your point of view, cut free.'

Accept it! Never in this life!

Pain throbbed in her temples and sizzling rage tied her insides in crippling knots.

Accepting the sordid situation wasn't an option. And neither was staying to confront him. She'd only end up giving herself away, allowing him to see how thoroughly he'd broken her heart. She wouldn't give the louse the satisfaction!

Which left the other. Zoe turned on her heel and walked out.

H
OW
she'd ever got back to Wakeham Lodge without ending up as an RTA statistic, Zoe would never know. She remembered absolutely nothing of the drive out of London, her tortured mind being completely occupied with the pain and humiliation of what Glenda had made her face.

But she made it in one piece in time to walk into the large homely kitchen just as Ethel was heating the milk for the early bedtime cocoa.

‘Are you all right?' It was Joe who noticed her silent appearance first, rising from the long scrubbed pine table, a look of concern on his weathered face.

So she must look as awful as she felt, Zoe reflected heavily. Sketching what she hoped would pass for a reassuring smile, she offered, ‘I'm fine.'

If you could call feeling dead inside and brutally mangled at one and the same time fine, that was.

Ethel swung round from the vast Aga cooker, taking the pan off the heat. ‘We didn't expect you—you should have phoned to let us know you were coming. Another half an hour and Joe would have bolted the doors for the night! Is Javier here with you?'

‘No.' Zoe pulled out a chair from the table and sat down before her wobbly legs gave way beneath her. Javier would be back in London by now, sure to be. With his mistress. Sick as a parrot because he'd been
found out? Or would he merely shrug those magnificent shoulders of his and write off his losses?

Isabella Maria had openly rejoiced that her son had taken her advice for the first time in his life. Wealth should marry wealth. How she'd scorned that concept back at the villa, ruled it out of play, believing she knew him better than his mother did! She now knew it to be hatefully true.

Two mugs of cocoa appeared on the table. ‘Let me get you something—a little light supper. How about scrambled eggs and bacon? At least a nice cup of tea and a slice of hot buttered toast?' Ethel laid a light hand on her shoulder. ‘You look a bit peaky.'

There was a natural curiosity there as well as concern, Zoe recognised. She tried out a smile. Her mouth felt unnaturally stiff. ‘Thanks, but I've already eaten.'

Not a lie, not exactly. She'd eaten breakfast this morning. It seemed a million light years away. How could a day start with such bright hope and end a few hours later in black misery and complete disillusionment?

‘I've been spending a few days with Grandmother Alice while—Javier's—' her tongue almost refused to form his name ‘—while he's been away on business.'

This time without his precious mistress. Oh, how she hated him!

At the sound of her voice Boysie stirred in his basket at the side of the Aga. One eye opened, his tail gave just one half-hearted thump of recognition before he went right back to sleep again.

Nothing like the usual ecstatic welcome. Her eyes flooded with weak tears, she blinked them back furiously as a lump the size of a house brick lodged in her throat. She felt rejected, a waste of space.

As if tuned in to her feelings, or maybe because he'd noticed her brimming eyes, Joe explained kindly, ‘The little fella's bushed. I practically walked the legs off him this evening.'

‘And spent most of the afternoon throwing his ball for him. Honestly, he's like an overgrown kid with that little dog,' Ethel put in fondly.

Zoe had to be glad that Boysie wasn't pining for her. That was the sensible and adult way of looking at the situation. But right now she felt as she had done when she'd first gone to live with her grandmother. As if she was of no importance to anyone, as if the loss she'd suffered was too great to be borne.

‘I think I'll turn in now, it's been a long day.' A truly dreadful day. A stab at a yawn to indicate tiredness before she said her goodnights. She knew she wouldn't sleep a wink.

Seeking her old room, she collected a glass of Javier's whisky on the way in the hope that it would knock her out, stop her thinking.

It didn't. Tormented emotions kept her staring into the darkness. She'd had a few easily dismissed suspicions in the past, but why hadn't she guessed that the mistress who had lasted far longer than most in his bachelor life was still firmly in it?

She must have been laughably naive to believe for one moment that a man so highly sexed and sophis
ticated would have been content to remain celibate during the first barren year of their marriage.

Instead of her silly schoolgirlish fantasies of teaching him to fall head over heels in love with her, she should have faced the uncomfortable fact that Javier would want a real woman—a woman with Glenda's obvious sexual experience, sultry mouth and voluptuous body—not a green and gangly girl, which she was sure was the way he continued to see her.

In the small hours it came to her that even the last, incredibly slender hope that—overlooking the plain fact that Glenda had been installed in the London apartment—for some warped reason of her own the other woman had been lying through her teeth, was dead in the water.

He'd been expected back from Milan this evening. Hours ago. Glenda had, as he'd instructed, been eagerly waiting for him.

Cat got the cream.

Would the other woman have broken the news that his wife had walked in and discovered her? Of course she would, if only to have warned him.

If Javier had been innocent and he'd arranged for Glenda to meet him at the apartment for some reason or other he would have completed his business with her, got rid of her and phoned her, Zoe, to let her know he was back at the apartment.

Ditching that unlikely scenario, she impressed the other on her overtired mind. Javier guilty, guilty as hell. The luscious Glenda greeting her lover with the news that their ongoing affair had been uncovered. His child bride taking off at speed.

If he'd had any respect for her at all, cared a toss for her well-being, he would have done everything he could to contact her. Not to beg her to go back to him—even he with his massive ego would see that that was impossible—but to make sure she was all right.

In the darkness she dragged the magnificent diamond ring off her finger and hurled it with force into a corner. A bauble to keep her sweet. As Glenda had maliciously pointed out, he'd turn on the charm to keep her unsuspecting and doting.

And he hadn't attempted to touch her, much less make love to her until that night when she'd told him she'd had enough, that as far as she was concerned their paper marriage was over, she reminded herself furiously. He'd seen his callous plan to keep his father's one-time partner's fortune wedded to his own fly out of the window. So he'd gritted his teeth, done his duty.

Her wide gold wedding band followed the diamond.

 

Ethel watched Zoe's descent of the main staircase with anxious eyes. She looked different. Older and harder. Her long blonde hair was piled in an elegant knot on top of her head, her slim body clad in deep turquoise silk that positively shrieked designer chic.

As usual since she'd arrived here out of the blue, alone, her ring finger was bare. Something was wrong with that marriage, very wrong. The past three days she'd been as jumpy as a kitten on a bed of hot coals, leaping out of her skin every time the phone rang,
never leaving the grounds, pacing, always pacing, her straining eyes turned in the direction of the long drive.

This evening there was a marked difference. A difference that left Ethel feeling even more anxious.

‘Don't wait up, Ethel,' Zoe said as soon as her high-heeled mules hit the floor of the hall. ‘I'll take the main door key so ask Joe not to bolt it when he locks up for the night.'

Ethel was well aware that Javier's name hadn't crossed his wife's lips since she'd arrived late on Monday evening. Nevertheless, in case her employer did phone and ask to speak to his wife, she felt it incumbent to ask, ‘Where are you going?'

For long moments Ethel didn't think she was going to get an answer. Zoe turned slowly on her heel, her suddenly and newly imperious eyes conveying the message that a child she was not, and would not be treated like one. Her titular status as mistress of the house had never been more strikingly in evidence.

‘To look in on Jenny and Guy's housewarming party. The invitation was in the post waiting for my attention.' A tiny pause when something of the old impetuous, heartbreakingly needy Zoe looked out from those clear golden eyes, then a frigidly cool, ‘Good night, Ethel.'

The early evening sun warmed Zoe's skin but didn't reach the cold spot inside her as she stood on the drive, stowing the main door key in her purse and searching for her car keys.

It was over. Three whole days of waiting for Javier to try to track her down if only to discuss the ending
of their marriage, never mind one human being's natural concern for another.

He didn't give a damn!

Three endless days and nights of wanting to see him face to face one last time, for the release of telling him exactly what she thought of him, calling him all the bad names she could think of, getting the pain and the poison out of her system.

It wasn't going to happen.

So she had taken a long, hard look at the pathetic creature she had become and taken the decision to put it all behind her. Get on with her life. Forget he'd ever been in it.

As she drove to Jenny's brand-new home, part of an exclusive development on the outskirts of the village, she mentally ticked off her plans for the future.

Start divorce proceedings. Contact her trustees to ask for a release of sufficient funds to buy a small flat close to her place of voluntary work. Take up the Chair's suggestion that she make herself responsible for parting the wealthy from some of their excess funds.

And then—The ‘And then' bit presented itself as a black hole, a yawning, featureless empty space. Zoe firmed her lush mouth and floored the accelerator.

 

‘Sweetie, I'm so glad you could come.' Jenny tucked her arm through Zoe's as she proudly showed her over her new home. ‘I sent the invitation on the off-chance. No one seemed to know where you and Javier were. Why isn't he with you?' She rolled her eyes.
‘That husband of yours would have added a touch of class!'

‘Working.' Zoe wasn't prepared to discuss the ending of her marriage, and she didn't want to talk about him, or even think about him ever again. ‘I love those curtains,' she changed the subject rapidly.

‘Great, aren't they? Look.' Easily diverted, Jenny picked up a remote and the heavy linen drapes swished back and forth. Zoe smiled her dutiful smile until her face ached and quashed the wish that she had never come. She had to learn to make a life of her own. And mixing with the old gang was a beginning.

‘Now you must see the kitchen. It's got every gadget under the sun. Guy went bananas when he saw the size of the bill. Now all I have to do is learn to cook!'

Five minutes later, a glass of white wine in her hands, Zoe joined the other guests outside on the patio where most of the menfolk were gathered around the barbecue, drinking beer from cans, the laughter level rising, multicoloured fairy lights twinkling on the trellis as evening shadows lengthened over the garden, the smell of cooking meat turning her stomach.

Oliver Sherman was chatting up a redhead in a very small black dress. Zoe turned her back on him, joining a group of female acquaintances. Oliver was not one of the old gang she wanted to mix with!

But seconds later a voice at her shoulder told her he had other ideas. ‘Welcome back to the fold. Looking for some fun without that grim husband of yours?'

Zoe swallowed a sigh. Here we go again! she agitated, remembering the horrible scene at Guy and Jenny's wedding reception and the shattering aftermath. She turned slightly, half facing him, and drawled coolly, ‘Oliver, don't be such a bore.'

And then her face flamed with immediate colour, her flesh burning on her bones because Javier had emerged onto the patio with Glenda firmly in tow.

How dared he? How could he? If he wanted to humiliate her, demonstrate that his mistress took precedence in his life, he couldn't have chosen a better method! She wanted to fall into a hole in the ground and never, ever, be seen again!

Blood thundering in her ears, she felt the heightened colour wash out of her face, leaving her ashen and cold. So cold she was shaking.

As usual he looked spectacular: tall, lean, urbane, dressed in beautifully cut pale grey chinos and a black shirt that somehow made the impressive breadth of his shoulders even more intimidating. And the impact of his darkly handsome face, all arrogant angles and brooding smoky eyes, stunned her into the drainingly painful recognition of all she had lost.

She couldn't lose what she had never had was her immediate self-protective counter-thought, and that smack-in-the-eye fact had her entertaining the wild idea of getting up close and intimate with the still-hovering Sherman just to pay her adulterous husband back.

An idea just as swiftly jettisoned. She would hate herself for ever if she stooped that low.

As his eyes found her amongst the guests Zoe knew
she couldn't feel any lower than she did right at this moment, whatever she did.

Even with his mistress glued to his side she only had to see him to be swept by a wave of longing that was frightening in its intensity. How low, how stupid could a girl get?

As he strode towards where she was standing her stomach tied itself in painful knots, her heart started racing as people automatically made way for him, deferring to his dominant personality, female eyes widening with admiration, male glances a mixture of awe and envy.

Helplessly, her own eyes were riveted on that devastatingly lean and handsome face. Was she the only person who came into contact with him able to hold her own? And, far more importantly, could she hold her own now, in this humiliating situation? Or would her battered and bleeding heart betray her?

His features were hard and unyielding as he reached her but there was one of his charismatic smiles for their hostess as she hustled up with a tray of drinks. ‘You have a lovely home, Jenny. I hope you and Guy will be truly happy here. But now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to drag my wife away.'