The following week, Jemima spent some time reorganising rooms with the housekeeper, Maria. She was keeping busy because Alejandro had spent several days working in Seville. A room was being set up for use as a smaller, cosier dining room in place of the huge banqueting space and even vaster pieces of antique furniture, which Doña Hortencia had considered necessary to her dignity. Jemima wondered if she should have discussed the change with Alejandro first, and then wrinkled her nose and decided to follow her own preferences. When she mentioned anything to do with the interior workings of the household Alejandro generally looked blank and hastened to disclaim either interest or authority. When Maria spoke to someone behind her, she was fixing some flowers for the table in an effort to give the room a touch of the feudal magnificence that the Vasquez family pretty much took for granted in their daily life.
‘Jemima…’
Violet eyes wide, Jemima flipped round and focused on the tall broad-shouldered male in the doorway. She paled. With his coal black curls he was a very good-looking, younger version of his big brother, although he was not so tall nor so powerfully built. He was also so well dressed that he closely resembled a model who had stepped out of a glossy magazine.
‘Marco?’ she whispered in dismay. ‘I didn’t want to see you.’
‘That’s not very friendly, is it?’ Marco said in reproach. ‘We are family, after all.’
Chapter Nine
JEMIMA reached a sudden decision and told Maria that she would finish the room on her own. As the housekeeper departed Jemima closed the door behind her, leant back against it and focused on Marco.
‘I can’t believe you’ve got the nerve to come anywhere near me,’ she admitted, her bright eyes sparkling with angry hostility.
Marco frowned. ‘I don’t understand why you are so angry with me.’
Registering that Alejandro’s brother had decided to act as if he were ignorant of what he had done, Jemima tensed up like a racehorse at the start line. ‘You’re not stupid. You know very well why I’m angry. How could you allow Alejandro to believe that we had had an affair?’
‘You had already left the country. Your marriage was over. What difference did it make to you what he thought?’ he questioned, treating her to a level look that implied that he still had no real grasp of what the problem was.
‘Doesn’t it make a difference to you? It should do. Don’t you have any affection for your brother that you could let him believe such a thing of us both?’ Jemima slung back at him furiously.
Marco breathed in deep. ‘All right, I’ll try to be honest with you. I didn’t really care what anyone thought if it gave me a good reason to leave home and move to New York. Dario and I needed the privacy to lead our own lives. As I honestly believed that you and Alejandro were all washed up as a couple, I didn’t think it mattered.’
‘You’re not that innocent,’ Jemima countered between compressed lips, any patience she had left fast shredding in the face of Marco’s brazen refusal to express an ounce of regret, particularly when he was tossing his own relationship in her teeth and pointing out that he had wanted and needed it to prosper. ‘You could have gone to New York with Dario and without hurting and humiliating your brother with that filthy lie!’
His smooth brow furrowed. ‘I didn’t actually tell any lies,’ he retorted with an infuriating air of condescension. ‘I didn’t have to. Alejandro was convinced that you and I had had an affair and I didn’t deny it. As far as I was concerned, if he wanted to believe something so ridiculous, that was his business and nothing to do with me—’
‘It had everything to do with you!’ Jemima yelled back at him. ‘You didn’t care who got hurt. You used our supposed relationship as an excuse—’
‘Your marriage was over,’ Marco reminded her afresh. ‘I didn’t know you were still pregnant—’
‘I didn’t know either at the time I left Spain,’ Jemima conceded unwillingly.
‘Naturally if I had known there was going to be a child it would have made a difference to what I allowed my brother to believe,’ Marco argued. ‘But I had no idea.’
‘Well, you know now and I’m back with Alejandro and we’re trying to make a go of our marriage again,’ Jemima pointed out. ‘Only that’s not very easy when he still thinks that I slept with you…’
‘My brother has always had an easy ride through life. Everything always fell perfectly into place for him, at school, in business, with women,’ Marco enumerated with a bitter resentment that he could not hide. ‘A little bit of suffering over you and his marriage probably did wonders for his character.’
At that unfeeling crack, Jemima had to struggle to hang onto her temper because she had already decided that telling Marco exactly what she thought of him would be a counterproductive rather than positive act when she needed him to redress the wrong that he had done. Now she marvelled that she had not previously appreciated just how much Marco envied his brother’s success in every field. Had she known what was really in Marco’s heart she would never have made him her confidant or trusted him as much as she had. Just how much had his unrelenting negativity about her marriage influenced her when it came to making the decision to leave her husband? She did not want to think about that.
‘You have to tell Alejandro the truth.’
Marco shook his handsome head, his eyes guarded. ‘No can do.’
‘Well, that’s your decision,’ Jemima said tightly in the tense silence, her teeth gritting on an urge to be a good deal more aggressive. ‘But you can’t expect me to stay quiet. If you won’t tell Alejandro the truth, I will.’
Apprehension now tightening his boyish features, Marco strode forward. ‘But you promised to keep my secret.’
Jemima lifted her chin, the anger in her clear gaze an open challenge. ‘I didn’t know then how much damage keeping your secret was likely to do to my marriage. Surely you can be honest now with your family?’ she said forcefully. ‘It may not be what they want for you, or expect, but families have got over worse revelations.’
‘As far as my mother is concerned, there could be no worse revelation than the news that the love of my life is a boy and not a girl,’ Marco declared in scornful disagreement. ‘Have you ever heard her talking about gay people?’
Jemima grimaced and nodded confirmation. ‘She is prejudiced but that could well change if you talked to her and gave her the chance to understand who you really are.’
‘You’ve got to be joking!’ Marco snapped back at her, angry colour edging his cheekbones. ‘She’d throw me out of the house and cut off my allowance!’
Jemima’s brows knitted and she studied him with narrowed eyes. ‘I wasn’t aware that you received an allowance from your mother.’
Marco released his breath in a weary groan. ‘Do you really think that I could afford to live as comfortably as I do on an employee’s salary?’
Stepping away from the door, Jemima stiffened. ‘Your financial arrangements are none of my business, Marco. Whether you tell your mother or not is nothing to do with me either. But Alejandro is my business and I do expect you to tell him that you’re gay so that he, at least, can appreciate that we did not have an affair.’
Marco sent her a furious look of umbrage. ‘I’m certainly not telling Alejandro. He sacked the only gay man on his staff—did he tell you that?’
‘Yes, but I believe the guy in question was also a bully and had had several warnings about the way he’d treated other staff before he was fired. I have never seen or heard Alejandro do or say anything which would lead me to believe that he has homophobic views. He doesn’t share your mother’s religious outlook on the issue either,’ Jemima reasoned levelly. ‘I’m not asking you to do this, Marco, I’m telling you that if you don’t tell your brother, I will do it for you. I don’t have to keep your secret when it’s threatening to wreck my happiness and my child’s.’
‘You’re blackmailing me,’ Marco accused her angrily.
‘I don’t owe you any explanations or a
pologies after what you did to Alejandro,’ Jemima contended, lifting her chin in challenge. ‘I don’t owe you anything.’
Registering that she was serious and not about to back down, Marco lost his temper. Throwing her a furious look of hostility, he swore at her. Then he yanked open the door with an impatient hand, stalked past the astonished housekeeper in the hall and straight back out of the castle. Jemima breathed in deep and slow and returned to the flower arrangement she had been doing. Beatriz joined her and admired the room, remarking that its more comfortable proportions would be a great deal warmer and more pleasant during the cooler months of the year when the fires were lit. For just a few minutes in the other woman’s soothing company, it seemed to Jemima that the raw, distressing little scene with Marco had only taken place within her own imagination.
She couldn’t help but think back to their former friendship. She had also just learned something from Marco that shed a rather different light on the past. Marco was financially dependent on his mother’s continuing goodwill and, if Doña Hortencia’s past pronouncements were anything to go by, it was very possible that Marco’s admission that he was gay would lead to the kind of ructions that might well hit him hard in the pocket. Was that why Marco had always gone to such lengths to conceal his sexuality? Had money always been the primary reason for his silence on that issue? It occurred to Jemima that she had once been incredibly naïve and trusting when it came to Marco.
Retaining her brother-in-law’s friendship, she acknowledged sadly, had come at a high cost, for she had been forced to conceal more and more from her husband. Marco had used her as an alibi and a front when he went places where he preferred not to be seen without female company. His Italian boyfriend, Dario, had often accompanied them on those nights out. What had happened to the open and honest nature that she had once prided herself on having? Almost from the start of her marriage she had begun to keep secrets from Alejandro.
That thought made her heart sink and her mind return to a place she didn’t want to revisit. The past was best left untouched, she reckoned uneasily. There would be no advantage to digging everything up. Alejandro would be grateful for all of five minutes when she told him the truth of what she had done with the large sums of money that she had taken from their joint account over two years earlier. But five minutes after that he would wish she had kept quiet and he would see her in yet another unflattering light. Once again she would be shown up as his less than perfect match. She didn’t think their marriage could withstand a second blow of that type.
‘Marco can be very volatile,’ his sister, Beatriz, remarked gingerly, her attention locked to Jemima’s troubled and expressive face.
‘Yes,’ Jemima agreed.
‘But if you ignore his moods, I’ve found that he soon gets over them,’ Beatriz added comfortably. ‘Doña Hortencia indulged him too much when he was a child.’
The housekeeper came to the door to pass on a message from Alejandro. He had phoned to say that he would be spending the night at the family apartment in Seville. Jemima’s slim shoulders sagged. Only when she learned that he wasn’t coming back did she realise how much she had been looking forward to seeing him that evening. In addition she was a little hurt that he had not thought to speak to her personally about his change of plan.
‘Jemima…go to Seville and be with my brother,’ Beatriz urged, causing Jemima’s violet eyes to fly to her in shock. ‘You want to be with Alejandro and why shouldn’t you be? I’ll ensure that Alfie has his bath and his bedtime story. In fact if you wouldn’t mind I’m planning to visit my friend, Serafina, this afternoon and I’d like to take Alfie with me. Serafina has a toddler as well.’
All concerns laid to rest by Beatriz’s willingness to entertain her nephew, Jemima went upstairs to change. She was delighted by the idea of surprising Alejandro, for she had never done anything like that before, indeed had always shrunk from putting her feelings for him on the line, but the connection they had formed since her return to Spain really did feel much deeper and stronger. There was nothing wrong with being confident and optimistic, she told herself urgently. Once Marco did what he had to do the dark shadow that her brother-in-law had cast over her marriage would soon disappear.
She was in her bedroom when the phone call came. Engaged in checking her reflection in a raspberry-coloured dress with a draped neckline that clung to the curve of her breasts, outlined her tiny waist and bared a good deal of her legs, she snatched up the receiver by the bed to answer it.
‘Jem…is that you?’ a rough-edged male voice demanded. ‘The woman said she’d put me straight through to you.’
Jemima froze, the animated colour in her face fading fast to leave her white as milk. Her heart sank to the soles of her feet and she almost tottered back against the bed for support on legs that felt too woolly to keep her standing upright. She had hoped never, ever to hear that voice again but fate, it seemed, was too cruel to grant her that escape from the memory of past connections and mistakes. Too late did she remember the phone calls from the unnamed male that Maria had mentioned that she had missed.
‘How did you know where to find me?’ she asked tautly
‘Your cousin, Ellie, saw a picture of you in a magazine and showed it to me. My little Jem in an evening dress mixing with all the toffs like she’s one of them!’ the older man jeered. ‘So you went back to live with that high and mighty Spanish count of yours and you never even got in touch to tell me.’
‘Why would I have?’ Jemima asked her father sickly.
‘The magazine mentioned that you have a kiddy as well now—my grandson and I’ve not even seen him,’ Stephen Grey complained. ‘Maybe I should pay you a visit. If I was to come out of the woodwork now and embarrass you, you’d have a lot to lose, Jem.’
‘I haven’t got any money…I’m not giving you anything,’ Jemima protested feverishly. ‘You can’t threaten me any more. Just leave me alone!’
Without waiting for a response, Jemima cut off the call and stood there clutching the receiver so hard in her hand that it hurt her fingers. She wouldn’t let it start up again. She wouldn’t be a pushover this time around. She would stand up for herself and refuse to be alarmed and intimidated by his threats. But in the back of her mind she was already wondering how much of the money in her bank account it would take to keep her father quiet.
He was an evil, frightening man, who had abused both his wife and his daughter with his nasty tongue and his brutal fists, finally throwing Jemima out onto the street as a teenager and washing his hands of responsibility for her. She had made her own way in life no thanks to Stephen Grey. He had no right to demand money from her, no right to terrorize her. He would phone back, she knew he would phone back, or worse…come and pay her a visit as he had once before. She had paid him to keep his distance and keep his mouth shut two years ago and his hopes would be riding high that she would crumble and make the same mistake again.
And she was in this position all because early on in her relationship with Alejandro she had told a little white lie that had seemed harmless, she thought in anguish. In fact at the time it had felt like simple common sense to conceal the ugly truth. Conscious that Alejandro came from a much more privileged and respectable background than she did, she had seen no reason to trail out all the dirty washing that accompanied her own more humble beginnings. Indeed she had cringed from the prospect of telling Alejandro that her father had been imprisoned repeatedly, never mind broaching the reality that he’d also regularly beaten up her mother. She had lived a sad, grubby life as a child with a mother who drank herself into a stupor daily to escape the world and the husband she couldn’t cope with.
In Seville, Jemima parked below the large office building that housed Alejandro’s headquarters. When she arrived on the top floor she learned that he was in a meeting and thought that perhaps it had been a bad idea to spring a surprise on him when he was clearly so busy. She was just getting comfortable in Reception when two of Alejandro’s executives pass
ed by and, recognising her, stopped to chat.
A very profitable contract renegotiated and agreed, Alejandro saw his business colleagues and their lawyers off the premises before he discovered his wife surrounded by a little ring of admiring men in Reception. She was like a small but very powerful magnet, he conceded bleakly, watching her violet eyes sparkle with natural enticement as she laughed. Her jacket was hanging open, her slender but curvy little body on display. His handsome mouth compressed into a hard, ruthless line.
Jemima’s gaze fell on Alejandro and she scrambled upright with a sunny smile to greet him. He looked outrageously handsome although even at a glance she recognised his leashed tension and assumed he was tired after a stressful day. Are you too busy for me?’ she asked.
‘I doubt if there is a man in the building who would be too busy for you, querida,’ he murmured, nodding as his executives acknowledged him and went on about their business. ‘You look irresistible in that dress.’
But Jemima noticed that his brilliant answering smile didn’t reach the cool darkness of his eyes and an odd little stab of alarm ran through her. As he guided her towards the lift with a firm hand at her spine that made her nerve-endings tingle she shot a glance at his hard bronzed profile. The dense screen of his black lashes cloaked his gaze even as an electrifying surge of awareness shimmied through her slender length. Within a heartbeat she was recalling the way his lean, powerful body had shuddered over hers in release around dawn and the all-consuming love that had overwhelmed her in his arms. She had never been a morning person but Alejandro had changed that. There was something intensely sexy about waking up next to his hot, hungry body. The merest touch made her ready for him and the reflection plunged her into a cascade of erotic imagery. By the time she emerged from that colourful daydream she was trembling and conscious that he had yet to break the heavy silence.