A Deal Before the Altar

Again she was right, and he gritted his teeth angrily. Talking to Carlo hadn’t been an option before, but he could put that right. With an exasperated sigh he thrust himself away from the desk and strode towards the windows. Raindrops ran down them, diluting the view of London.

‘Don’t hide from it, Santos. You used me to score points on your own brother.’

The accusation flew at him but he kept his back resolutely to her. She made him feel exposed, vulnerable. Damn it, she made him feel emotions he didn’t want—emotions he didn’t need.

He turned to face her, and despite the hardness of her expression he saw the pain on her face, felt it radiating out.

‘I was caught up in battle started by my mother. On her deathbed she made me promise never to let go of what was rightfully mine. When you so calmly offered marriage I never meant it to go any further.’

She made a sound that was a mixture of a gasp and a whimper—a sound full of pain. ‘So seducing me, getting me into your bed, was a mistake too?’

He watched the rapid rise and fall of her chest and realised she wasn’t nearly as rational as she wanted him to believe. ‘No, Georgina,’ he said as he moved towards her, his tone lower and huskier just from his memories of that night. ‘I wanted you then as much as you wanted me.’

She blushed, and it shocked him to realise how he’d missed that innocent blush.

‘I hate you for that.’

She hated him.

The venom in her voice left him in no doubt that she meant it and something changed inside him—as if somewhere a key had turned, unlocking something, some sort of emotion he wasn’t yet ready for.

‘Don’t play the wounded party with me when you already have one very convenient marriage behind you.’ Anger was the best line of defence. It would supress whatever it was she’d unlocked, because right now was not the time to analyse it.

‘Richard never forced me into his bed. He didn’t seduce me and I love him for that.’

Her words rang loud and clear in his head, as if she were at the top of a bell tower.

Santos gritted his teeth against those words. She’d loved Richard. It was as if he’d stepped back a few decades—as if he was witnessing the love his father and stepmother had shared, a love that had excluded him. But that exclusion hadn’t made him feel raw with the pain he now felt.

‘So you openly admit you married him for money?’ He maintained his angry defence—anything other than accept what the raging pain inside him might mean.

‘Yes, I did!’ She flung the words at him. ‘He asked me, he saw I needed help and offered it, but I had no idea then just how ill he was. That’s why he insisted I marry him—because he knew it was the only way to be sure he could provide for me into the future.’

He didn’t want to hear it, yet at the same time he did.

Her face softened. ‘He loved me, and for the chance he gave me I loved him.’

Santos was consumed with jealousy. He couldn’t hear anything else other than that she’d loved Richard.

* * *

Georgina watched as Santos’s face hardened. He couldn’t even stand to hear the word love—couldn’t contemplate such an emotion existed. He’d been denied it as a child and now, as an adult, he was determined to continue to deny himself.

She knew she was taunting him, using that word again, but she pressed on, hoping he’d see how she felt. ‘I loved him in a compassionate way. There wasn’t even a flicker of a spark of passion. It was a comfortable love. A safe love. Not the way I love you.’

Silence stretched between them. She remained tall and straight, even though she wanted to crumple on the floor right in front of him. The silence lengthened.

She shouldn’t have said anything—shouldn’t have opened her heart to his ridicule. Not when she knew how he scorned love. A lump gathered in her throat, almost choking her. This was no different from watching her father walk away. No different from having to say goodbye to Richard. As if her love had made them leave. She knew it wasn’t true, but the pain of it had made it feel that way.

Fear of going through that again was what drove her now. It was why she’d come here—why she was exposing herself so utterly to Santos’s contempt. If she was yet again to lose a man she loved, she was going to make her feelings clear.

‘Do you really expect me to believe that when these last weeks have been nothing but a big lie, an act for you?’ His words were sharp, heightening the tension between them.

‘It wasn’t a lie. There were times...’ She paused, feeling heat spread across her cheeks as she remembered their wedding night, the passion they’d shared. That night there hadn’t been any pretence, any acting on her part. She swallowed hard and continued. ‘There were times when it was real.’