Naive Bride , Defiant Wife

‘But in those days I think you had much more in common with my fun-loving brother,’ Alejandro murmured with a derisive edge to his dark deep drawl.

‘I wasn’t that shallow.’ Although she was back in control of her emotions and composed again, Jemima’s fingers still bit into the damp tissue clutched between her fingers. She had really, really loved him two years earlier and she wished he could at least accept that the love had been genuine and real, even if it hadn’t proved strong enough to withstand the misfortunes that had engulfed them both. ‘But you didn’t give me the chance to be anything else.’

Casting a last lingering look at his breathtakingly handsome features from below damp feathery lashes, Jemima walked back up to bed without another word. Her mobile phone was flashing on the dressing table and she lifted it. She had missed one phone call and there were two text messages. One was from Beatriz, saying that she hoped that Jemima didn’t mind her having given her brother her phone number. The second text and the missed call were from Marco and she jerked in shock when she realised that he had actually dared to get in touch with her again.

Must see you to talk. Urgent, ran his message.

Jemima deleted the text with stabbing fingers and tossed the phone down again. Marco had to be joking. In the current climate she was not prepared to take the risk of seeing him again even if she did have questions of her own to ask. My goodness, wouldn’t Alejandro just love that? The last thing her marriage needed was more fuel for the same fire.

The door opened, startling her. She froze when she saw Alejandro and then she slid out of bed like an eel and sped over to him, wrapping her arms round his neck and letting her head fall back as he meshed one strong hand into the depths of her pale hair and kissed her breathless.

‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ she confided, heart thrumming like a plucked string on a violin, the full effect pulsing through her entire body along with her intense relief that he had not stayed away from her.

‘Dios mio! Living apart won’t help us. Been there, done that, querida,’ he reminded her darkly. ‘We might as well have been living in different houses while you were pregnant with Alfie. It made everything worse.’

Her generous mouth swollen from the onslaught of his, Jemima got back into bed. His arrival had already made her feel two hundred per cent happier. ‘Well, that was your choice, not mine,’ she traded cheekily.

His ebony brows pleated as he shed his suit. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s choice, it was a necessity.’

‘How was it a necessity?’ she questioned once he had emerged from the bathroom and joined her in bed.

‘Right from the start, Dr Santos was afraid you would miscarry. He was quite frank with me. You are very small and slightly built and it was obvious early on that what we thought was one baby was going to be big. I didn’t stay happy that you were pregnant for very long,’ Alejandro admitted heavily, his arm tightening round her to pull her closer. ‘I felt hugely guilty for putting you at risk.’

‘I wasn’t at risk.’

‘I felt that you were and with my own mother having died from complications in childbirth it was not a matter I could ever take lightly.’

Jemima mulled that over, registering that her obstetrician had been more honest with her husband than he had been with her. Or had he been? Her Spanish had been less fluent in those days and it was perfectly possible that she had misunderstood some of what he told her, picking up only the gist rather than the full meaning of his advice. That he had shared his apprehension with Alejandro, however, was news to her and that Alejandro had been seriously worried about her was also a surprise. Suddenly she frowned as she made another deduction.

‘Are you saying that you stopped making love to me because Dr Santos warned you off?’

‘Why else would I have stopped?’ Alejandro growled soft and low in her ear, tugging her back into the heat of his long, hard body. Her nostrils flared on the husky scent of his skin and she quivered with awareness. ‘I used another bedroom, not only because I was keeping late hours and didn’t want to waken you but also because I didn’t trust myself in the same bed with you any more.’

‘You should’ve explained—I had no idea.’

‘I was present when the doctor warned you that you would have to be very careful indeed if you wanted the pregnancy to go to term. You had already had some bleeding,’ he reminded her grimly. ‘I know I didn’t discuss it with you but what was there to say? We didn’t have a choice.’

She pressed her mouth in silent apology against a bare bronzed shoulder. Consternation had a strong grip on her. She was shaken by how badly she had misjudged his past behaviour. She had viewed everything through the distorting prism of her unhappiness and insecurity and two and two had seemed to make four but she had added up the facts incorrectly. Alejandro had not been bored with her. He had not deliberately neglected her either. At a difficult time he had simply done the best that he could for the two of them, while her behaviour had only added to their problems. That acknowledgement shamed her and made her appreciate just how much she had grown up since then.

‘Let’s make an agreement,’ Alejandro breathed in a measured undertone above her head. ‘You stay away from Marco. You don’t speak to him, you don’t see him. That will keep the peace.’

Jemima had stiffened, taken aback by that proposition coming at her out of the blue. She drew in a quivering breath. ‘All right…if that’s what you want.’

‘That’s how it has to be,’ Alejandro countered in a tone of finality.

‘I’m not arguing. I couldn’t care less. It’s not a problem,’ she muttered in a small voice.

The tension in his big powerful frame eased and he smoothed a soothing hand over her hair. ‘Go to sleep,’ he intoned huskily. ‘If you don’t, you’ll be too tired to join me for breakfast in the morning. I’m leaving early for a board meeting in Seville.’

That he was already planning breakfast in her company made her smile. She was remembering the hot sexual passion of the afternoon in the hotel room, but lying in his arms there in their own bed felt so much more intimate and significant. Even after news that neither one of them had wanted to hear, they were still together. The agreement Alejandro had demanded warned her that she would be walking a knife edge if she defied him, but she had no such intention. Marco might be home, but she was not prepared to allow him to damage her marriage a second time.

The following morning, Alejandro left her enjoying her coffee on the roof and Alfie went downstairs with Placida so that their son could watch his father’s helicopter take off from the front lawn. Jemima was still sitting outsi

de, lightly clad in a cotton sundress, when Beatriz came up to join her. Her sister-in-law looked strained.

‘Was I wrong to give Marco your cell-phone number last night?’ the brunette prompted anxiously. ‘He was so eager for the chance to speak to you that when he pressed me, I didn’t know what to do for best.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t want to speak to him,’ Jemima admitted quietly.

‘But if you and Marco talked and then you talked to Alejandro, maybe all this bad feeling could be put away,’ Beatriz suggested with unconcealed hope. ‘The way things are now is very awkward for all of us and it’s only going to get more difficult once word gets out that Marco is home again. Our relatives and neighbours will soon start including him in their invitations. Nobody outside these walls is aware that my brothers are at odds with each other—’

‘How can that be? I assumed your stepmother would have told tales about me everywhere after I left Spain to go home,’ Jemima admitted with an expressive shudder.

‘Not when she believed her son might have been involved with you. Doña Hortencia is very proud of the family name and her goal was to protect Marco’s reputation, rather than yours,’ Beatriz told her ruefully. ‘She’s hoping that now he’s home he’ll find a girl to marry.’

Jemima stiffened at that comment. ‘Your stepmother might have quite a long wait.’

Was that an answering glint of amusement in her sister-in-law’s dark eyes? It was there and then it was gone and Jemima wondered if she had imagined it. Not for the first time Jemima wondered just how much Beatriz might know about her younger brother’s life. The habit of silence, however, kept her quiet for she could not credit that Beatriz might know what Alejandro did not even appear to suspect. It was never easy to tell with Beatriz, though, because the brunette was always very discreet and cautious even with her own family. Beatriz liked to mind her own business and steer clear of trouble, but lately it had come to light that she could also stand up for herself when she had to. She had helped her stepmother move into her very comfortable house on the estate and had withstood the storm of being accused of ingratitude and selfishness when she’d revealed that she was planning to stay on below her brother’s roof. Jemima valued the other woman’s friendship and wished that she could have confided in her. She missed Flora’s company and chatter, she acknowledged ruefully, and wondered if her friend would be able to come out to Spain for a visit any time soon.