She had only gone twenty yards before a neat, dark saloon car pulled in beside her and the driver’s door opened. Then a tall man in a business suit climbed out. ‘Going home?’ Jeremy prompted. ‘Get in. I’ll drop you off.’
‘Thank you, Jeremy, but I’m so close it’s easier just to walk,’ she declared breezily, though all her thoughts were miles away, lodged back on Alejandro and his assurance that he wanted a divorce.
Had he already met someone else? Some well born beauty from a moneyed background, much more suitable than she had been? She wondered how many other women he had been with since she had left him and it made a tiny shudder of agonising emotional pain arrow through her tender heart. She didn’t want Alejandro back, no, she definitely didn’t, but she didn’t want any other woman to have him either. Where he was concerned, she was a real dog in the manger. But it would be foolish to imagine that he might have been celibate since her departure, for that high-voltage libido of his required frequent gratification…or at least it had until he was faced with her enlarged breasts and thickening waistline and it had become painfully, hurtfully obvious that he’d found his pregnant wife’s body about as attractive as a mud bath. So how could she possibly care what he had done and with whom since then?
Jeremy yanked open the passenger door of his car. ‘Get in,’ he urged. ‘You’re both getting soaked.’
Belatedly appreciating that it had started raining while she’d stood there, Jemima scooped up her son and clambered in. Jeremy pulled in just ahead of the sleek sports car already waiting outside her home. He vented a low whistle of appreciation as he studied the opulent model. ‘Who on earth does that beauty belong to?’
‘An old friend of mine,’ she replied as she stepped out of his car. ‘Thanks.’
As she attempted to turn away Jeremy strode round the bonnet to rest a staying hand on her arm. ‘Eat out with me tonight,’ he urged, his blue eyes pinned hopefully to her face. ‘No strings, no big deal, just a couple of friends getting together for a meal.’
Turning pink, Jemima stepped back from his proximity, awesomely conscious that just feet away from them Alejandro was listening to the exchange. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she answered awkwardly.
‘I’ll keep on asking,’ Jeremy warned her.
Jemima almost winced at that unnecessary assurance, as she had already discovered that Jeremy, the local estate agent and a divorcee in his early thirties, had the hide of a rhinoceros when it came to taking a polite hint that a woman wasn’t interested. Since the day she had signed the rental agreement on her cottage, he must have asked her out at least a dozen times.
Aware of the glacial cool of Alejandro’s scrutiny, Jemima hastened to slot her key into the lock on the front door.
‘Why didn’t you just tell him that you were married?’
‘He already knows that. Everybody knows that,’ Jemima fielded irritably, making a point of flexing the finger that bore her wedding ring as she pushed open the door. ‘But he also knows that I’m separated from my husband.’
‘There’s nothing official about our separation,’ Alejandro countered, crowding her with his presence in the tiny hall before he moved on into the small living room. ‘But I am surprised that you’re still wearing the ring.’
Jemima shrugged a slight shoulder and made no reply as she unbuttoned Alfie’s jacket and hung it up beside her fleece.
‘Juice.’ Alfie tugged at her sleeve.
‘Please,’ Jemima reminded him.
‘Peese,’ Alfie said obediently.
‘Do you want coffee?’ Jemima asked Alejandro grudgingly. He had taken up a stance by the window and his height and wide shoulders were blocking out a good deal of the light.
‘Sí,’ Alejandro confirmed.
‘Peese,’ Alfie told him helpfully. ‘Say peese.’
‘Gracias,’ Alejandro pronounced in his own tongue, stubborn to the last and barely sparing the attentive toddler a glance.
Once again Jemima was taken aback by that pronounced lack of interest in her child. She had expected Alejandro to be stunned by Alfie’s existence and, at the very least, extremely curious. ‘Haven’t you got any questions to ask me about him?’ she enquired, her attention resting pointedly on Alfie’s dark curly head as he crouched down to take his beloved cars out of the toy box and line them up in a row.
Alfie liked things organised and tidy, everything in its place. She had a sudden disconcerting recollection of Alejandro’s immaculately neat desktop at the castle and wondered if there were other similarities that she had simply refused to see.
‘When the family lawyer engages a solicitor here to represent my interests, they can ask the questions,’ Alejandro responded very drily.
‘So, you’re already convinced he’s not yours,’ Jemima breathed in a very quiet tone, her lips sealing over her gritted teeth like a steel trap.
Luxuriant black lashes swept up on Alejandro’s gorgeous dark golden eyes, his handsome mouth taking on a sardonic cast. ‘How could he be?’
Seething frustration filled Jemima. For a crazy instant, she wanted to jump on him and kick him and punch him, batter him into a state where he would be forced to listen to her. But she wasn’t a violent woman and if he didn’t listen to her, or believe in her, or even trust her, and he never had, at this stage of their relationship he probably never would. Wasn’t that another good reason as to why she had walked out on their marriage? The conviction that she was beating her stupid head up against a brick wall? Not to mention the sheer impossibility of staying married to a man who was utterly convinced that she had had an affair with his brother?
While she waited on the kettle in the galley kitchen, she reached a sudden decision and lifted the wall phone to call Flora, asking her friend if it would be possible for her to look after Alfie for an hour. ‘Alejandro is here,’ she explained stiffly.
‘Give me five minutes—I’ll come down and pick Alfie up,’ Flora promised.
Jemima set a china mug of coffee down near Alejandro. She knew what she had to do next but she just didn’t want to. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the scars. Flora arrived very quickly, bridging the awkward silence with her chatter while Jemima fed Alfie into his coat again.
‘Alejandro…Flora,’ Jemima performed the introduction stiffly.
‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Flora said brightly to Jemima’s husband. ‘None of it good.’
Alejandro sent Jemima a censorious look of hauteur and she reddened, wishing that the other woman had kept quiet rather than revealing how much she knew about her friend’s marital problems.
The silence left after Flora’s departure spread like a sheet of black ice waiting to entrap the unwary. Jemima straightened her slight shoulders, her blue eyes so dark with strain they had the glimmer of purple against her skin. ‘I hate that I have to say this again, but you don’t give me much choice—I did not sleep with your brother.’
Alejandro shot her a grim dark-eyed appraisal. ‘At least he had the courage not to deny the charge—’
‘Oh…right,’ Jemima sliced in, rage bubbling and pounding through her like a waterfall that had been dammed up inside her. ‘Marco didn’t deny it, so therefore I have to be lying!’
‘My brother has never lied to me but you have,’ Alejandro pointed out levelly.
Jemima’s hands clenched into fists. ‘What lies? What are you talking about?’
‘You went through thousands and thousands of pounds while we were still living together, yet you had nothing to show for your extravagance and could not even cover your own expenses in spite of the generous allowance I gave you. Somewhere in that financial mess, when I asked you for an explanation, there must have been lies,’ he concluded.
Jemima had turned white as milk, for those were charges she could not deny. She had got through a terrifying amount of money, although she hadn’t spent it on herself. Sadly, she had had nothing to show for it, however, and she had found herself in the embarrassing position of not b
eing able to pay bills during the last weeks of their marriage. All her sins had come home to roost by then, all because of the one seemingly harmless and seemingly even sensible little lie that she had told him when they’d first met.