A Spanish Marriage

Javier knew he should move, shatter this incredible feeling of intimacy. What he had to say to her would banish the bloom from her lovely face, turn the soft light in her eyes to sharp daggers of disgust.

He would deserve it. He disgusted himself!

‘Zoe—’ His fingers tightened around hers. She returned the pressure, her eyes vulnerable with trust. He didn’t deserve her trust! And he was about to shatter it. ‘It was your first time. Forgive me—I was angry—I thought—’

‘I know what you thought.’ One hand was tugged from his grasp, a finger laid across his mouth, effectively stopping his words because his breath went as he fought the temptation to take that soft warm finger into his mouth and start everything all over again. ‘You thought Oliver Sherman and I had been lovers. I can’t blame you,’ she absolved him softly. ‘That note he sent with those flowers,’ she reminded gently. ‘And when you asked me, before we married, if I’d been sleeping with him I refused to give you a straight answer.’

Her eyes glimmered, her thick lashes flickering down as she remembered her bolshie need at that time to pay him back for the double standards that told him it was OK for him to share his bed with the woman of the moment while she was expected to be chaste as a nun.

The frown line between his smoky eyes deepened. Repentant, she released her other hand and stroked it away. The movement brought her body into closer, more intimate contact with his. She felt a long shudder rake through him and told him, ‘Last night wasn’t what you thought it was. Oliver wasn’t at the ceremony, I checked. He turned up at the wedding party late on and seemed to latch onto a group of people I’d never seen before. It was a relief. I didn’t want anything to do with him, not after that note. I was about to leave when he jumped me. He was drunk as a skunk, that’s the only excuse I can think of—’

‘There is no excuse for that kind of behaviour,’ Javier shot in tightly. No excuse for his, either. Feeling worse than bad about himself, he stated heavily, ‘You were a virgin. I was angry, I took advantage, I’m no better than he is. You should have told me.’

Her lips curved in a smile that turned his heart inside out. ‘I could have done, and asked you to be gentle with me—like a properly brought-up virgin should!’ An entrancing dimple told him she was up to her old witchery. ‘But I wanted you to find out for yourself.’

‘Minx!’ He meant it. She wriggled against him. His body wanted to take what she was offering. This woman, this flirt, was twisting him around her little finger.

This woman. His wife!

‘This changes everything.’ His body throbbed with desire, but his mind took charge as he levered himself away from the little witch and swung his legs out of the innocent-seeming, pristine bed that had become a honey-trap.

By making love with her he had changed the rules that had governed their sham marriage. ‘Last night you told me our marriage was over. Now I’m telling you that it isn’t.’ Still sitting, he reached for the shirt so hurriedly discarded the night before, shrugged into it. ‘There’s no question of a divorce.’

Zoe squirmed to her knees. He sounded as if he were handing out a life sentence when he was giving her paradise, everything she’d dreamed of since she was fifteen years old! Her hands slid beneath the hem of his shirt, caressing the firm warm flesh, laying her cheek against the hard span of his shoulder blade as he dragged in a harsh intake of breath.

‘That’s OK,’ she murmured. She loved him so much she felt as if every inch of her were disintegrating, melting into a treacly river

of desire and adoration. Her hands slithered round his taut body. The muscles below his ribcage were rigid, she lovingly discovered. ‘You never know, I might be pregnant,’ she said in a small voice, her vocal cords knotting up, all of her mind wonderingly focussed on the tightness of her breasts, the pulsating heat deep in the place that seemed to have taken centre stage in her being.

Pregnant!

Tension locked Javier’s jaws together. He leapt to his feet, reaching for the remainder of his clothes, getting into them while she just flopped back against the heaped pillows and lay there, butter-wouldn’t-melt, all elegant silky limbs, pale hair fanned out against the pillow, watching him with those come-bed-me eyes.

He hadn’t thought. He hadn’t damn well thought of anything but his driving need to claim what was his by right, the heaven he’d stoically denied himself for so long! The dam had finally burst and he’d tumbled mindlessly with the flow. And if his opinion had been asked at the start of it he’d have probably said that the ‘goer’ had to be well protected.

Having his back to her successfully hid his sharp wince of shattering self-loathing. Irresponsibly, he might have fathered a child. And for all he knew she might not even want to think about motherhood for several years. Was the possibility that he might have selfishly impregnated her the only reason she’d given in and changed her mind about leaving him?

And if the pregnancy scare proved to be unfounded, would she change her mind right back again and walk out on him as last night she’d unequivocally stated that she fully intended to?

Unwilling right now to inspect how he’d feel in that eventuality, Javier tightened his jaw and bit out, ‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’ He reached the door in rapid strides, adding heavily, ‘We need to talk things out fully and clear-headedly—away from your bed. Without sex to muddy the waters.’

His grim tone shook her rigid, closing up her throat. And what he’d said—did he still, in the privacy of his thoughts, name her as a whore by inclination? Her uninhibited behaviour last night, the way she’d given him unlimited access to her body, encouraging him every inch of the way, would have hammered that impression all the way home.

She stared at the door he had just closed behind him, tears welling in her eyes. The glittering prize, her acceptance as his true wife, her place in his life as the mother of the children she desperately hoped to give him turned into a handful of ashes, slipping through her fingers.

She shouldn’t have mentioned the possibility of pregnancy. It had been a flip, thoughtless comment, tossed out to cover the fact that she’d been over the moon and practically speechless with happiness when he’d so strongly vetoed divorce.

He might have lusted after her, enjoyed the sex, but he wasn’t in love with her, not yet, she knew that. And he would hate the responsibility if she’d come out with the truth and confessed that she’d always loved him and always would.

He took his responsibilities seriously, he was that kind of man—as evidenced by the way he’d suggested a paper marriage in the first place—so she couldn’t land that on him, she decided miserably, forcing herself to leave the bed where she’d been so ecstatically happy, so hopeful about the wonderful future she and Javier would have together, so confident that she could in time teach him to love her as much as he’d learned to want her.

Clarity came when she turned off the shower and huddled into a towel. He hadn’t ruled a divorce out of play because he wanted her permanently in his life—he was simply sticking to his original dateline.

Two years. They’d stay married for one more year, until she came into her inheritance and could demonstrate that she was mature enough to handle it. By his own admission he was deeply ashamed of having made love to her. No—having had sex with her—‘muddied the waters’, she corrected dully as she finally exited the en suite. And he’d probably make damn sure it didn’t happen again. He’d go back to what he had been: remote, often absent, impersonally kind. She simply didn’t think she could bear that!

Was she the last woman on earth he would choose to be the mother of his children? Had he seen the steel jaws of a trap close around him when she’d mentioned the word ‘pregnant’?

Her balloon well and truly pricked, Zoe put on the act of her life and went down to breakfast wearing a tiny pair of lemon yellow shorts, a skimpy, silky camisole top in a matching shade and a great big smile.