A Spanish Marriage (13 page)

Taking Zoe's untouched glass from her suddenly limp and unresisting fingers, he placed it on the tray. Smoke-grey eyes held hers with stark intent. ‘Shall we?'

A rhetorical question, Zoe recognised, panic setting in because quite obviously he and Glenda were going to present a united front when he admitted they were still lovers, and spelled out that, now it was out in the
open, there was no point in continuing to stay in this misbegotten marriage, not even for a further year.

As his guiding hand cupped her elbow Zoe wanted to leap up, fasten her own hands around his throat and strangle him. For taking the initiative—she had wanted to be the one to confront him, demand a divorce with her new-found icy cool, sweep out leaving him looking and feeling small! For his effortless ability to steal her heart—and keep it—damn him!

Tears weren't far away as they reached the pavement outside the house. His car was parked on the other side of the smart new cul-de-sac. Was he intending to say his piece here then whisk his gloating mistress away, leaving her standing alone, humiliated and hurting?

Zoe's small chin came up, her spine stiffening, bracing herself for what was to come, and for the first time she let her eyes rest on Glenda for longer than the split second it had initially taken her to register the other woman's presence beside Javier.

It was almost dusk now but still easy to see that the other woman's smooth confidence had deserted her. Her shoulders slumped and her mouth drooped. Was her conscience pricking? Was that what was making her look so miserable? Whatever, Zoe didn't want her pity.

Dragging her arm from Javier's restraining hand, Zoe reminded herself of how very much she should violently hate him and lashed out through clenched teeth, ‘I don't know what the two of you think you're going to achieve by muscling in on my evening with friends.'

‘You will,' he came back grimly, his hand capturing her wrist now in a vice-like grip. ‘Tell her, Glenda. Or I stop that cheque.'

‘I…I…' Baby-blue eyes were fastened on the pavement. She pulled in a shaky huff of breath and muttered, ‘I lied.'

‘And—?' Javier prompted with a bite.

Glenda's cheeks turned a dull red as she turned a look of loathing on Zoe. ‘Javier and I were finished well before he married you,' she pushed out quickly, her voice low and sulky.

Zoe's heart jumped like a landed fish. She wanted to believe what she was hearing but didn't dare to. The other woman was putting on a convincing performance. But then the portrayal of mistress in residence back at the apartment had been spot on, too. They'd had a good three days to decide how to play this.

‘How do I know you're telling the truth now? Did he put you up to this because he wants to keep me sweet? You did suggest it?' Zoe reminded tersely, not knowing what to think or believe any more. ‘A way to keep my future wealth wedded to his.'

She felt Javier stiffen. She'd pricked that monumental pride of his. He'd hate to see his murky motives displayed. She should be experiencing triumph, vindication. So why did she want to cry?

‘Tell her what you were doing in our apartment,' Javier demanded, contempt in his voice. Contempt for her or for Glenda, Zoe had no way of knowing.

Glenda shot him a look full of fury. ‘That's between you and me. It's none of her business!'

‘When you lied to my wife you made it her business.'

‘You were going to give me money!' Glenda spat, hectic spots of colour high on her cheeks. ‘I was broke and homeless, I had no one else to turn to. Then that overgrown schoolgirl who calls herself your wife walked in and threw a tantrum! I would make you a far better wife!'

‘In your dreams,' Javier stated with contempt. ‘So, broke and homeless, thrown out by your married French lover, you grabbed the opportunity to lie your head off, break up my marriage, then hang around long enough to console me for my wife's desertion,' Javier completed. ‘I want to hear you admit it.'

Silence. Javier released Zoe's wrist and lifted his arm to lay it around her shoulders. Her legs felt hollow and she leant against him, grateful for the support. Had she misjudged him so badly?

‘Well?' he pressed darkly, tacking on for good measure, ‘Do I have to remind you of that cheque?'

Glenda gave him a look of sullen rage then spat out, ‘OK, I admit it! Satisfied?' She stumped off towards his waiting car. ‘Take me to that damned hotel—I've had enough of this!'

Five minutes later, Glenda and her suitcase deposited in the foyer of a country hotel, Javier turned a brief glance on Zoe as he returned to the driver's seat. ‘Home now.'

The classic lines of his profile were grim. Her stomach flipped. She might have been naive in misjudging him, in accepting everything Glenda had said as the truth, but there were too many things left un
spoken, so much she didn't know, the foremost amongst them being the way he saw their relationship.

And he was saying nothing, just firing the ignition. She felt light-headed with stress and said in a breathy little voice she barely recognised as her own, ‘Take me back to Jenny's to pick up my car.'

Javier's hands tightened on the wheel as the Jaguar smoothly exited the hotel car park. ‘We'll collect it in the morning. Until then I'm not letting you out of my sight. It's time the real truth came out,' he added grimly.

Having no idea what he meant by that, unless it had something to do with his relationship with the hateful Glenda, reminded her of something. ‘Why did it take you from Monday to Thursday to decide to haul that woman here to make her confession?'

His long mouth tightened. They'd passed through the village and he was taking the lanes out to Wakeham at speed. ‘It took me approximately three hours, not three days,' he gave back on an exasperated snap, slowing right down to take a particularly tight bend then powering on. ‘Leave it for now.'

Good advice, Zoe had to admit, fiddling edgily with the strap of her seat belt. Clearly she was angering him, but never one to take orders easily she had to ask, ‘Was Glenda with you in Cannes?'

‘I met up with her there,' was the rawly given admission as he turned into Wakeham's long driveway, shocking Zoe back into silent misery, struggling to discover where the truth lay in all this mess.

Keeping her silent, a hand pressed in the small of
her back, he urged her past Joe who was doing the evening rounds and checking the windows were closed, ignoring the older man's stunned expression, marching her to the master suite.

‘Right,' he gritted as he closed the door behind them. ‘I'm sick of playing games with our marriage.' Tension pulled his bronzed skin tight over his impressive features, his narrowed eyes almost black, glittering with what she had to translate as rage.

‘Sick of pretending I had to work away from home just to move out of temptation's way. Sick of acting like a real nice considerate guy when all I wanted to do was rip your clothes off and make love to you. Sick of suffering agonies of guilt because I might have made you pregnant, beating myself up,' he emphasised with a savage bite. ‘So I'm telling you here and now that I love you. I want to make this marriage work, I want to give you children. I want to tie you so closely to me you'll never escape!'

Zoe flopped down on the bed, her mouth dropping open. As a declaration of love it wouldn't win any awards in the sensitivity and hearts-and-flowers stakes but it was all she needed—everything she needed.

Tears of sheer happiness sprang to her eyes as he stalked to where she was sitting, thrusting his rigid face in front of hers, impatience with her poleaxed silence etched on every dominant feature. ‘Well?'

She took his face between her hands and kissed him. At that precise moment it was the only answer she could give him. When his mouth returned the pressure of her lips with driven passion she knew her response to his question had been the right one. As
he tumbled her back on the bed she felt the tremors that shook him as her arms closed around him, the heat of his virile body sending her flying on a giant wave of sensual excitement.

‘I've always loved you,' Zoe managed at last to murmur against his erotically probing mouth. ‘Since I was little,' she explained raggedly as he slowly lifted his head. ‘Then the feeling changed,' she told his questing smoky eyes. ‘I loved you as a woman. I fell fathoms-deep in love with you. I told you, remember, and embarrassed us both.'

Moving her hand from where it lay tucked against his thundering heartbeat, she lovingly traced the line of his hard, sensual mouth with the tips of her fingers. ‘You probably thought it was a teenage infatuation. It wasn't,' she confirmed softly. ‘It just grew and grew. Why else did you imagine I would ever agree to the sort of marriage you proposed? Kiss me again.'

With a low groan Javier obeyed the best order he'd ever been given, fingers tangling in her bright hair, disposing of the pins that held it in driven haste, one hand rucking up the skirt of her dress to press her hips against the hard evidence of his arousal, and it was a long time before either of them had the breath to spare for speech.

A long time before the break of the early summer dawn, long hours of mindblowing pleasure, of immeasurable ecstasy. And the words were drowsy when they came, Javier's hand lovingly stroking her tumbled hair from her damp forehead as he murmured, ‘We need breakfast. Got to keep our strength up.' Smoky eyes glinted an explicit message that
needed no verbal translation and Zoe ran her hands over the impressive breadth of his satin-skinned power-packed shoulders, dizzy with love for him, silently vowing to make him happy for the rest of his life.

‘Patience,' he adjured softly, swinging his long legs off the bed, allowing her to just adore the smooth length of his bronzed back. ‘I'll forage before Ethel surfaces.'

And then he was gone, leaving her to wonder how she could ever have doubted him, how she could ever have believed Glenda's vicious lies, knowing she was far too happy to eat anything, ever again!

 

But the combined aromas of fresh coffee and hot buttered toast swiftly changed her mind, and having him taste her warm buttery lips with his own was something out of this world and definitely to be repeated every time they breakfasted together.

Which reminded her. ‘May I take it that you won't be dashing away all over the world on business without me in future?'

‘You may.' His charismatic grin flooded her with warmth. ‘I admit to poking my unnecessary nose into far-flung projects because every time I looked at you I wanted to make wild love to you, and our stupid marriage wasn't about that. I thought I was doing the honourable thing. And while we're on the subject of mixed-up wiring—where did you get the crazy idea that I'd proposed to you to—what did you call it? Get wedded to your future fortune?'

Finishing the last of her coffee, Zoe dismissed her
folly as lightly as possible. ‘Something Glenda said.' She wasn't about to drag his mother into this; she would hate to cause any ill feeling.

Javier took the empty cup from her hand and leaned over to put it on the tray at the bedside, his voice gruff as he eased himself closer to the sinful temptation of her beautiful body. ‘Didn't you stop to think? If I'd wanted to marry your money, scatterbrain, I would never have proposed a two-year paper marriage in the first place. And as for the other charge you threw at me, Glenda and I didn't sit around for half a week deciding whether or not she should face you with what she'd done.'

He hoisted himself up on one elbow, the better to devour her lovely face with his greedy eyes. ‘Though, thinking about it, I can't blame you. Something that did require the presence of my poking nose did crop up the day after I got back to the apartment after leaving you with your grandmother. A suspension-bridge project on the outskirts of Milan.

‘I phoned through to warn you I'd be out of the country until Thursday—yesterday. You were with Alice and her GP. I asked Miss Pilkington to pass on the message. She forgot to, as I discovered when I phoned to let you know I was back yesterday mid-morning. When she told me you'd left for the London apartment on the previous Monday I went cold all over and guessed you'd walked in and found Glenda. It only needed the threat to stop the cheque I'd given her to get her to confess to what had happened.'

He moved closer, stroking a hand over her swollen, sensitised breasts, a hard thigh insinuating itself be
tween the limpid length of hers. ‘I think I have my strength back, my darling.'

Stifling a moan of need, Zoe wriggled away. ‘There are a couple of things I need to know,' she stated emphatically, then gasped with helpless excitement as he hauled her back again. ‘What was that woman doing in our apartment and why did you give her money?' she got out in breathy stabs as his roving hands found the hot, melting core of her.

‘Oh, that.' He, too, was having difficulty in the breathing department. She was so sweet, so soft, so ready, so adored—

‘Yes. That.' Her futile attempt to push him away turned into an eager exploration of her own.

Calling on his last remnants of self-control, Javier got out, ‘Just after I called you from the hotel reception area in Cannes—I was waiting for the site manager—a working dinner—who should swan up but that wretched woman on the arm of her French lover. Then, when we were in Spain, Mama told me she'd been trying to get in touch with me. I thought nothing more of it until that first day back at the apartment I found a message from her on the phone. She sounded pretty desperate so I returned the call. She was almost incoherent. She'd been dumped, ejected from the flat the French guy had installed her in. Was homeless, fast running out of money, would I advance her a loan until she got back on her feet.'

His mouth hardened. With hindsight he should have told her to get lost. But he'd been sympathetic.