Claiming His Wife

With him keeping an eye on her through Cindy, giving an unseen helping hand. And one day, when the time was right, when he judged she would believe herself to be his equal, he would ask her to come back to him.

But fate, in the shape of her brother's criminal activities, had intervened. And he'd made an unholy mess of it.

One day, though, when their marriage was firm, her love for him as strong and enduring as his was for her, then he would tell her how carefully he'd watched over her well-being. There were to be no secrets between them.

'Drink that. You look as if you need it.' Cindy put a mug of steaming coffee in front of him, breaking into his teeming thoughts. 'You look as if you haven't eaten or slept for weeks.'

It was too near the truth to bother arguing with. He took a gulp of the scalding brew, watching in­tently as she found a piece of paper, her pen flying as she scrawled an address.

'I don't know what went wrong; she didn't tell me. I was really sure the two of you would make a go of it this time, but when she arrived back here she looked as if her world had fallen apart.'

'My fault,' he admitted tightly, his heart beating with sudden hope. If he'd been no more than a stud to her, a way of satisfying her new-found sexuality while she'd been blackmailed into staying with him;_ if she'd been happy to see the back of him—as her headlong flight had suggested—then she wouldn't have appeared to be so shattered, would she?

Cindy pushed the scrap of paper over the desk, her eyes narrowing as she debated the wisdom of telling him or not that his wife was temporarily staying with her brother.

Not, she decided. Roman's pride was legendary. He might turn round and go straight back to Spain if he knew Cassie was sharing a roof with another man.

On the other hand, Roman knew that the three of them had been close friends for practically the whole of their lives. He didn't know Guy was in love with Cass. And Cass wasn't interested; she was still in love with her husband.

Cindy sighed. They would have to sort it out for themselves. By telling him where to find Cass she'd done more than her fair share of meddling. 'It's a ten-minute walk, if that,' she told him. 'But I could call a cab; it's still pouring down outside.'

'I'll walk, if you'll give me directions.' He stood up, impatient to be gone. It would probably take a cab more than ten minutes to turn up here and a drop of rain wouldn't hurt him.

At the door, after giving him the simple directions, Cindy said, almost diffidently, 'I don't know what your plans are, and I know you're great at granting favours but lousy at taking them, but you can stay with us tonight. Fraser and I only have the one bed at the moment, but you could kip on the sofa. Cass has our number—call. One of us can pick you up.'

'So you see this as something of a wild-goose chase?' The forced lightness of his tone hid the sud­den swamping ache that tightened his heart. 'What's to say I won't be spending the night, the rest of my life, with Cass?'

The hope was so great it tore at him savagely. But if it didn't turn out that way—his body went cold, his heart contracting beneath a layer of ice—then company would be the last thing he wanted. He would rather walk the streets, or find an all-night cab company and get himself straight back to the airport.

He gave Cindy a bleak smile and strode out into the rain.

Her hands unsteady, Cassie hastily chopped red pep­pers, sweet onions and celery and dumped them into the bowl of lettuce. She'd make the dressing later.

She had to get dressed before Guy had finished getting showered and changed. Suitably armoured against the hungry look she'd seen in his eyes, she'd be more able to explain that he'd made the wrong assumptions, that she would never see him as any­thing other than a friend.

Explain, perhaps, that she still loved Roman and probably always would, despite what had happened. Not that Guy had any idea, of course. He only knew what she'd told him and Cindy—that the reconcili­ation hadn't worked out. That didn't stop him being anti-Roman. Guy blamed him for everything bad that had happened in her life. And maybe he was right.

But there were good things, too, memories she would always treasure. Memories of a time when she'd believed that their lives would run together, always. Those lazy, languid weeks in Sanlucar. The sun and the teasing wind from the Atlantic. Wandering through the old town together, hand in hand, sipping cafe solos at their favourite cafe, where the taped voices of cante jondo singers came from the dim interior and a fragrant orange tree cast a wel­come shade over their chosen table. And the nights, the long, sultry nights of loving...

The knife she'd been holding slipped from her nerveless fingers, skittering over the tiled floor. Blinking, biting her lip as she came back to stark reality, she muttered under her breath and went down on her knees to fish it out from under the fridge.

And heard the kitchen door open.

Damn!

She'd been day-dreaming, masochistically indulg­ing in memories that only served to heighten her pain, when she should have been starching herself up, dressing in sexless old jeans and a baggy sweater, scraping back her hair.

Now she would really have to scuttle if Guy weren't to get the wrong ideas about her state of undress.

Giving up on the knife that seemed to have got well and truly wedged, she peered through the nearly-dry mane of her hair, her startled eyes fasten­ing on a pair of boots, travelling slowly up long, lithely muscled legs encased in narrow black denim, a black leather jacket spangled with raindrops. Roman!

His black hair was plastered to his skull and there were lines of strain etched deeply at the sides of his mouth, but his eyes glowed with something that made her breath catch in her throat, her heartbeats race, sending her giddy.

'The door was on the latch. I walked straight in.' His voice was like velvet, the voice of the lover who had haunted her dreams. 'You should be more se­curity-conscious, Cass. I worry about you.' A slow, almost tentative smile curved his mouth. 'At least something smells good. You are not neglecting your­self, as I feared.'

The casserole! she thought manically, trying to hold on to the mundane and normal to counteract the shock of his sudden appearance, the crazy hopes that against all common sense were clamouring for rec­ognition in her painfully agitated brain.

It was an effort to scramble to her feet, an effort to make her voice work. 'Why are you here?' It was scarcely more than a whisper. She couldn't tear her eyes from his face. So dear to her, so loved. Yet strangely older, with deeper hollows beneath his slashing cheekbones. Compassion stirred strongly, making her ache. Had he, too, suffered, just as she had?