At the back of function room, she was conscious of Alejandro watching her. Beatriz was by her brother’s side and smiling encouragement, but it was less easy to tell what Alejandro was thinking. She was pleased enough that he had rescheduled a business trip so that he could accompany her to the evening event. Jemima returned to their table, quietly content that she had contrived to control her nerves. It was thanks to Beatriz, who had long had an interest in the charity, that Jemima had got involved. Although it was not a fact that she would have shared with her husband, she had felt a great sense of empathy with the frightened women and children she had met and talked to at the shelter.
‘You were terrific, esposa mia.’ Alejandro regarded her with frank approbation and she reached for his hand to squeeze it. He had just called her his wife in a tone of pride and affection that went a long way towards healing the still raw wounds inflicted in the past.
But then, over the past couple of months Jemima had seen a different side to Alejandro’s brooding temperament. As he turned his handsome head and stood up to politely acknowledge the greeting of a local businessman she was wearing a warm smile. Somehow they had put the past away, although sometimes she feared that putting those troubles untouched into a locked box was more of a shortcut than a long term solution. Marco was never, ever mentioned and neither, fortunately, she felt, was the disturbing question of all the money she had once contrived to run through.
On the other hand, she and Alejandro were enjoying an accord that they had never had in the past when he worked such long hours that she was constantly left to her own devices and deprived of a social life. It was that isolation that had made her so grateful for Marco’s friendliness. But over two years on Alejandro had learned how to make time for her and Alfie and he had made the effort to introduce them to his world. He had taken them over every inch of the valley, showing them over his various businesses and introducing them to the tenants and the employees, so that for the first time Jemima felt as though the estate and the castle were her home as well.
An opening day for the public to view the castle had given Jemima the excuse to do several floral arrangements. Family, friends and relations, who had attended a dinner party that same evening, had been hugely impressed and Jemima had already received several requests to act as a floral consultant at local events. Having acted as an advisor at a couple now, she wasn’t yet sure that she wanted to embark on what promised to be another business. No longer subject to Doña Hortencia’s withering asides and cutting put-downs, Jemima was comfortable entertaining guests at the castle and had discovered that just being herself was sufficient.
Day by day, Alfie was blossoming; his days were much more active and varied than they had been in Charlbury St Helens and there were far more people around to give him attention. In fact, for a while, all that admiring attention had rather gone to Alfie’s head and he had become too demanding; a solid week of toddler tantrums had ensued whenever he’d been subjected to the word no. Jemima had been amused by the discovery that Alejandro, so tough in other ways, had had to steel himself to be firm with his son when the little boy had thrown himself on the ground and sobbed with a drama that she was convinced came from his father’s side of the family. It was a new relationship for Alejandro, who had never been allowed to enjoy the same close ties with his own father as a boy.
And so far Alejandro had shown every sign of being a brilliant dad. He had put a lot of effort into building a good relationship with his little son. Alfie adored him and raced to greet him the minute he heard his footsteps or his voice. Jemima had been impressed by the time and trouble Alejandro had taken to get to know Alfie and find out what he enjoyed. She had only to see father and son together to know that she had made the right decision in coming back to Spain.
Jemima was also happy in a way she had never thought she could be again, although sometimes she felt as if she were floating in a deceptively calm sea while wilfully ignoring the dangerous undertow and the concealed rocks. The next day, Alejandro took her on a long drive through the mountains to a sleepy town with an amazing little restaurant that served astonishingly good food. As they were getting back into the car Alejandro asked without the smallest warning, ‘Did Marco ever bring you up here?’
And caught unawares with her defences down, she felt her face freeze, wasn’t able to help that strong reaction to a name that was never voiced. ‘No, he didn’t. I would have said,’ she murmured stiffly.
Clearly unimpressed by that claim, Alejandro gave her a hard dark appraisal, which warned her that though the body of her supposed infidelity might have been buried it was still at great risk of being disinterred. He hadn’t forgotten or forgiven her imaginary betrayal and, for several taut seconds while she gazed stonily back at him, she bristled with an amount of resentment and rancour that would go a fair way to destroying any marital reconciliation. It was a struggle to keep the lid on her emotions.
‘I shouldn’t have asked,’ Alejandro conceded tautly, the two of them momentarily enclosed by the suffocating sweaty heat of the car before the air conditioning could kick in and cool the interior.
‘I’m surprised you did—Marco has urban tastes. He prefers clubs and culture to the countryside,’ Jemima reminded him, staring fixedly out through the windscreen but seeing nothing, wondering why she had said that, why she had extended the dialogue instead of dropping it cold.
‘And you always did like dancing,’ Alejandro quipped, his intonation stinging like a sharp needle jabbed in the arm.
‘After we were married, when did you ever take me?’ Jemima countered defiantly, ready and looking for a fight now, all patience at an end.
Brilliant dark golden eyes alight with scorching rebuke at that tart gibe, Alejandro closed long brown fingers round her hand to tug her closer and he brought his mouth hotly and hungrily down on hers in retribution. For an instant her hand skimmed down over one high olive cheekbone in an unintended caress and then she dropped her hand and her fingers closed into the front of his jacket and clenched there instead, because the burning stream of desire he had unleashed fired her up as fiercely as her disturbed emotions. Her breasts were taut nubs below her clothing, the tender flesh between her thighs warm and moist and ready. Swearing only half under his breath at the intensity of her response, Alejandro thrust her back from him and started up the car.
‘You shouldn’t begin anything you can’t finish,’ she whispered helplessly, her body stabbing her with jagged regret over the loss of that so necessary physical contact with him.
Without warning Alejandro laughed and shot her a wicked long-lashed glance, his wide sensual mouth curling with amusement. ‘I have every intention of finishing what I began, tesora mia.’
‘It will take us well over an hour just to get home,’ Jemima reminded him.
But only a few minutes later, Alejandro turned his Ferrari off the road and drew up outside a country hotel. She turned startled eyes on him. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Only an acrobat could have good sex in this car,’ Alejandro fielded, vaulting out and striding round the bonnet to open the passenger seat door and extract her.
‘But we’ve got no luggage!’ she protested in a panicked undertone, colouring hotly with self-consciousness when he strode over to the reception desk, his dark head held high, and asked for a room without the smallest hint of discomfiture.
‘Your face is too well known. People will get to know about this,’ she muttered ruefully when the door closed behind the porter and left them alone in a well-appointed room. Yet even as she sounded that note of caution she was excited by his audacity and his single-minded pursuit of satisfaction.
An unholy grin lit Alejandro’s lean, darkly handsome features as he reached for her again. ‘After imbibing a little too freely of the wine we had with lunch I was falling asleep at the wheel and rather than risk continuing our journey I did the sensible thing and took a break,’ he mocked.
‘The famous Spanish siesta, much written about
but more rarely found in practice these days,’ she teased.
‘I promise that you will enjoy every moment of our siesta, querida,’ Alejandro swore with a husky growl of anticipation edging his deep dark drawl.
And then he kissed her, and the heat and the craving gripped her again with even greater power. He stripped off her clothes between passionate breathless kisses and she fought with his shirt buttons and his belt, already wildly, feverishly aware of the rigid fullness of his erection. She sank down on her knees and used her mouth on him until his hands closed tightly into her hair to restrain her and he was trembling against her.
He hauled her back up to him and tumbled her down on the crisp white linen sheets that awaited them. There was no need of further foreplay for either of them. He sank into her long and slow and deep and she quivered on a sexual high of intense response and so it continued until she hit a soul-shattering climax and her body convulsed in sweet spasms of delight around him.
‘You can go to sleep now if you like,’ Jemima whispered generously with a voluptuous stretch in the aftermath.
Laughing, Alejandro cradled her close and claimed another kiss. ‘I have a much better idea.’
Jemima smiled, loving that physical closeness and relaxation and the charismatic smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he gazed down at her. And suddenly new awareness of her emotions struck like an electric shock pulsing through her brain. Her eyes veiled when she registered that she could no longer imagine returning to England to live and work, could not picture herself ever leaving him again, indeed could not face the prospect of such a separation. Yet hadn’t they both agreed to a three-month trial, which would very soon be up?
Although she had only been back in Spain with Alejandro for a brief period it had taken him a remarkably short time to break through her defensive barriers. She had started looking for him whenever he wasn’t there, counting the hours when he was away from her until he was back again and within reach. She was falling for him all over again, she reflected worriedly, falling back in love with a guy who could only be programmed to hurt her for as long as he still believed that she had slept with his kid brother.
‘What’s up?’ Alejandro queried, feeling her tension and lifting his tousled dark head to look down into her face with a frown.
‘Nothing,’ she swore, pushing close again, turning her lips up to his again and offering sex as a means of distraction.
And because Alejandro was and always had been a very passionate man, it worked a treat. There were no more awkward questions and there was an astounding amount of lovemaking until eventually they both drifted off to sleep exhausted. After dining at the hotel, they arrived back at the castle at quite a late hour. Maria, the housekeeper, greeted Jemima with the news that an Englishman had rung twice asking for her but had not left his name for her to call back.
Jemima had no idea who could have been calling her, for virtually all her connections back in England were female. ‘Are you sure it was a man?’ And at Maria’s nod of confirmation, she shrugged and remarked, ‘If it’s important he’ll ring back again.’
While she talked to the older woman, Beatriz had emerged from the salon and was speaking to her brother. Her sister-in-law’s usual ready smile was absent and before Jemima’s eyes Alejandro’s stance transformed from relaxed to tense.
‘Did something happen while we were out?’ Jemima enquired when Beatriz hurried away again.
Alejandro settled his forbidding dark gaze on her, his lean bronzed face all Renaissance Man angles and hollows in the shadows cast by the wall lights, his jaw line as set as though it were carved from stone. ‘Marco’s come home for a visit. He’s staying with his mother.’
And having dropped that bombshell, Alejandro said something flat about having work to do and, before she could part her lips, he was gone and she was standing alone in the echoing stone hall…
Chapter Eight
MARCO was back! It seemed a surprising coincidence that Alejandro’s brother should choose to make his first visit home in years so soon after her own return to Spain. Jemima tossed and turned in her bed, unable to sleep while her thoughts ran on at a mad frantic pitch and refused to give her peace. She wondered too where Alejandro was and if he was really working.
Alejandro was less than pleased by news of his brother’s arrival. Guilt squirmed through Jemima as she could remember when Alejandro was very fond of his younger brother and, whether she liked it or not, she had played an unwitting part in their estrangement. With hindsight, however, she recognised that Marco’s feelings for his elder brother had always been less clear-cut. Idolised and spoiled by both parents as the baby of the family, Marco had nonetheless competed all his life within Alejandro’s shadow and had never equalled or surpassed his sibling’s achievements. Athletically gifted and academically brilliant, Alejandro had outshone Marco without effort and had set a bar that Marco could not reach. Even in business, Alejandro had triumphed while Marco had failed as an independent businessman and had eventually settled for a tailor-made position running one of the art galleries in his brother’s empire.
But, those facts notwithstanding, Jemima had got on like a house on fire with Marco from the moment she had met him. Not that back then Marco had had much competition, since although Alejandro had been a brand-new husband at the time he had also been a workaholic and Jemima had been lonely, bored and unhappy. In the stiflingly formal household that Doña Hortencia had insisted on then, Marco had seemed like a breath of fresh air and Jemima had quickly warmed to her brother-in-law’s light-hearted charm. In those days she had been blind to the reality that Marco might have a darker side to his nature than he had ever shown her.
How else could Marco have sacrificed a friendship with Jemima that he had once sworn meant a great deal to him? How else could he have allowed Alejandro to go on believing that his wife had slept with his brother? Why on earth had Marco done that? How could he have been so cruel and callous towards his brother and his former friend? She still didn’t understand and needed to know the answer to those questions. What she did know was that Marco had gone to New York and embarked on a new life there, seemingly indifferent to the chaos and unhappiness he had left in his wake.
But while Jemima lay there ruminating on the past anger began to smoulder deep down inside her. Why was she feeling guilty about someone else’s lies and another person’s refusal to believe in her word? Marco was the one who had lied, at the very least by omission, and as a result Alejandro was convinced that his wife had been unfaithful. Alejandro had disbelieved and rejected Jemima’s pleas of innocence. So why did she still feel as though she had done something she shouldn’t have done? Why was she shouldering the blame when she was the victim of Marco’s lies and her husband’s distrust?
In a sudden movement, Jemima scrambled out of bed and at the speed of light she pulled on her long silky aquamarine wrap before heading downstairs in search of Alejandro. Acting like the guilty party would win her no prizes and, recalling Alejandro’s coldness earlier in the day just saying his brother’s name, she knew that forgiveness wasn’t even on the cards.
Alejandro wasn’t at work in his study. He was outside on the terrace, his classic profile hard as iron as he leant up against a stone pillar and stared out at a midnight-blue night sky studded with twinkling stars. Jemima came to an uncertain halt in the doorway, the electric light framing her curling mane of silvery pale hair to give it rosy highlights while darkening the violet hue of her eyes and accentuating the soft vulnerable pink of her mouth.
‘I thought you would be asleep by now,’ Alejandro confessed, awarding her a single studied glance that was cool and unreadable.
‘I’m not quite that thick-skinned,’ she fenced back. ‘I don’t like being made to feel bad when I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Let’s not go digging, mi dulzura.’
‘Marco’s pulled quite some number on you,’ she condemned, her slight shoulders rigid with resentment, her spine ramrod
straight. ‘In choosing to believe your brother rather than your wife you’ve given him the power to torment you—’
Alejandro spun round in a fast fluid motion that took her by surprise. His lean, strong face was taut with suppressed emotion but his eyes were as golden, dazzling and aggressive in their fiery heat as the sun. ‘Porque Demonios! Nobody torments me,’ he declared, his lean, powerful body poised like a panther’s, about to leap on its prey.
‘All right—I’m being tormented by this!’ Jemima proclaimed, willing to bend the point and take the hit if it persuaded him to listen to her. She took a hurried step out into the warm night air. ‘It’s like a big chasm is opening up between us again.’
A sardonic ebony brow quirked. ‘And you’re surprised?’
Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. She felt angry and bitter, hurt and fearful, all at one and the same time. It was not a good recipe for tact. Her temper on a razor edge, she resisted a needling, worrying urge to move closer to him because for the first time since she had returned to Spain she was afraid of rejection. ‘Don’t do this to us,’ she muttered in urgent appeal.
His attention lingered on her, sliding from the full pout of her lips down to her slender, elegant throat and the dim white sloping valley of her breasts interrupted by the ribboned edge of her nightgown. ‘Go back to bed before we say things that we won’t be able to forget,’ Alejandro urged with curt emphasis.
Jemima recognised the reserve that restrained him from matching her candour and feared the damage such diffidence might do. In her opinion, bottling things up only made problems fester. ‘I’m not scared. I’m not running away. I want to be with you.’
‘But possibly I don’t want to be with you right now,’ Alejandro murmured smooth as silk.
That admission hit Jemima like a brick and momentarily she felt stunned and reeled dizzily from that rebuff. He had once told her that when she was cornered she reacted like an alley cat, eager to scratch and bite. ‘Only because you won’t let yourself want me,’ she challenged, padding nearer him on bare feet cooled by the worn granite tiling.