The Vasquez Baby

Faith stared at him helplessly. Even from the back he was spectacular. His shoulders were wide and powerful, his legs strong and well-muscled. He carried himself with confidence, the astonishing success he’d made of his life evident in every aspect of his demeanour and behaviour.

Once, she’d believed he was hers.

She’d truly believed that they shared something special and the knowledge that for him their relationship had been empty hurt more than any of the wounds she’d incurred in the accident.

He turned suddenly, feeling her gaze on him with that instinctive awareness that had always bound them together. ‘You went to all those elaborate lengths to get me to the altar and now you want a divorce?’ His mouth twisted into a mocking smile. ‘You’re giving up extraordinarily easily. Take some advice—if something is worth fighting for, it’s worth fighting to the death.’

It was a remark so typical of him that in the old days—the days before marriage—she would have smiled and teased him unmercifully. She would have told him to chill out and not be so driven. ‘I never saw our relationship as a war, Raul.’

‘You started the war. You manipulated me into marrying you,’ he said coldly. ‘So it seems absurd for you to abandon your goal so easily.’ His supreme self-confidence and the chill in his tone simply added to her pain.

‘I didn’t have a goal, Raul!’ Feeling at an even greater disadvantage lying down, Faith sat up. ‘I’m not one of your companies!! I don’t have a mission statement or a five-year plan! I did not manipulate you!’

‘No? So who’s fault is it that we are in this position? Marriage was not part of my plan. I was clear about that from the beginning.’ He stepped forward, his voice throbbing with emotion. ‘No marriage. No babies. You entered into our relationship with your eyes wide open.’

His words were so uncompromisingly harsh that for a moment she had trouble breathing.

They were so different. How could she ever have thought that their feelings for one another would be enough to bridge the gulf between them?

‘It wasn’t like that. We were just having fun, Raul. I wasn’t even thinking about marriage.’ Faith sank back against the sun-lounger. ‘I thought we shared something special.’

‘We did. But it wasn’t enough for you, was it? Like a typical woman, you wanted more and more.’ His tone was an angry growl, his words so heavily loaded with accusation that she shrank. ‘You thought that you knew what I wanted better than I did. Well, you were wrong cariño. I knew exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t this.’

Every word he spoke was designed to destroy any last tender shoots of hope that might have survived the initial blast of his anger.

‘You’re still talking as if I had some sort of master plan. I didn’t create this situation, Raul. I didn’t lie to you.’

‘You truly expect me to believe that it was an accident? Contraception is not a hit-and-miss affair.’ He spelled it out with brutal lucidity and Faith felt her heart suddenly bump erratically.

He stood there like a mythical god—lean, arrogant and impossibly handsome, seeing everything from one point of view only.

His own.

‘One day you’ll learn that you can’t control everything in life, Raul. Accidents do happen,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I am living proof of that, but it doesn’t matter any more, does it?’

He drew breath, ready to challenge that remark as he automatically challenged everything and she lifted a hand in a defensive gesture.

‘No!’ She cut him off before he spoke. ‘Just don’t say what’s on your mind, Raul, because frankly I don’t think I can sit through another session of your thoughts on the subject.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘Oh yes I do. It would have been something along the lines of “if you hadn’t got pregnant we wouldn’t be married now” or “it’s lucky for both of us that you lost the baby.’” She’d been trying so hard not to think about the baby, but now there was no escaping it and her eyes filled with the tears that she’d been choking on for the past couple of weeks. ‘Well, do you know what? I don’t feel lucky. I know it wasn’t what you wanted and to be honest, I was surprised myself—but I don’t feel lucky, Raul. I minded that I lost the baby.’

He was so tense that every muscle in his powerful frame throbbed with it. ‘I know.’

‘You do not know! How could you know? I protected you from it. You were in New York on business. I was devastated but I kept it to myself because you were tied up with that meeting, takeover—’

‘It was a merger.’

‘I don’t care what it was! I just knew it was important to you and I didn’t want to cause you extra stress. But I shot myself in the foot, because you decided that the reason I didn’t tell you about my miscarriage was because I was afraid you might call off the wedding.’

‘It was a natural assumption.’

‘Only for a man like you, Raul. Any other person would have thanked me for being so thoughtful and selfless.’ She turned her head, her voice a whisper. ‘Go away. Just go away. Why are we even talking about this, anyway?’

‘Because we are married,’ he bit out harshly. ‘And we have to sort this out.’

‘Some things just aren’t fixable. And this is one of them. Do you realise that you haven’t once thought about my feelings? All you’ve thought about is yourself. You think I trapped you. Well, do you know what?’ Her voice rose. ‘I wish you had ditched me at the altar. You would have been doing us both a favour.’