He didn’t love her. A man could only have one love in his life and he had had his, he reminded himself bleakly, yet the tenderness, the fierce, inexplicable protectiveness, the constant nagging ache of desire in his loins… How could he analyse his feelings for this woman? His thoughts were interrupted by a constant static buzz of emotional interference.
Nell regarded him with cold contempt and warned, ‘If you try to take my baby you’ll have a fight on your hands. I don’t care if you have all the money in the world!’
The determination in her voice made Luiz want to applaud. This woman was irrational, totally unreasonable, but she was a fighter.
He spread his hands in a pacifying gesture. ‘I am a lover, not a fighter, querida.’
‘Yes, I’m sure Sarah would agree.’
‘You’re jealous.’
The accusation brought an angry flush to her cheeks. It was a nasty taunt made totally unforgivable because it was true.
‘Not of Sarah!’ She saw the flicker of puzzlement in his eyes and rushed on before he could ask for an explanation. ‘Could you be more smug and self-satisfied if you tried? Or is this you trying? I’m not going to cry, if that’s what you want.’
Luiz stiffened, a look of frigid affront spreading across his face as he inhaled through flared nostrils. ‘You really think I am that sick and sadistic.’
She suddenly saw that the best way to get him to leave was to offend him, hit him directly on his male pride. God knew nothing else was working and there was only so long she could maintain her shaky pose of indifference before her real feelings came tumbling out.
‘The fact is what happened was a mistake and I wish I could just have a shower and wash you off my skin and forget about you…’
The expression on his face made her voice fade but she took a deep breath, fixed her eyes on a point over his left shoulder and plunged on, finishing in a rapid, slightly defensive tone.
‘I wish I could, but because of the baby I can’t. Obviously you can have access to the baby, but I’m not about to make a stupid mistake worse by marrying you.’
‘You think us sleeping together was a mistake.’
His outrage struck her as slightly hypocritical.
‘Well, if it wasn’t a mistake, Luiz, what was it? In my book there is only one reason to get married and that is love.’ Short of begging him to say it she couldn’t make her request any more obvious and from the flicker in his eyes she knew that he was aware of what she wanted to hear.
Overcome with mortification, she walked over to the door and held it open for him. Please do not go through, do not leave, love me…
‘I think you should leave.’
He picked up his jacket and coat, slung them over his shoulder.
At the door he turned his head. ‘You are being totally irrational.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not negotiable. As far as I’m concerned the only reason to get married is love, not duty or financial security.’
He dashed a hand across his face, the gesture intensely weary. ‘We will speak when you are being more realistic.’
‘I don’t want your kind of realism, Luiz.’ I want love—your love. ‘You married for love once—why shouldn’t I have the same thing?’
In the act of shrugging on his damp jacket he stopped. ‘I will not speak of Rosa with you.’
‘What makes you think I want to?’ she exclaimed as her feelings burst through her barrier of outward indifference with a rush. ‘Your perfect paradise marriage…who could compete? Polish your memories and take them to bed with you. I hope they keep you warm, because I won’t! What makes you think any woman wants the man she is in bed with, the man she has just given…’ Her voice broke and she took a step back, fending off the hand he extended to her with an angry shake of her head. ‘I really don’t want to marry a man who reaches for me in the night and calls me by his dead wife’s name.’
A look of stark shock froze on Luiz’s face. ‘I did that?’
‘You did.’
‘That’s why you left without a word?’
‘I don’t much warm to the idea of a man making love to me while he’s thinking of someone else. You would grow to resent this baby.’ She pressed a hand to her stomach and ignored his harsh protest. ‘Because he’ll never be Rosa’s baby any more than I’ll ever be Rosa.’
‘That would never happen, Nell. It has never happened. When I am with you I can think of nothing else but you. When I am not with you,’ he added with a hard laugh, ‘the world seems empty. You are under my skin, in my blood—you are so enmeshed with me nothing short of surgery could remove you. And the baby I will love for himself.’