Disconcerted by that assurance, Polly lifted her head. Raul held her questioning look with unflinching cool.
‘If you had been the truly honest woman you like to believe you are, you would have told me that you were pregnant then. But, when it suited your purposes to remain silent, you were as neglectful of the truth as I was about my real identity. I think we’re about equal on the score of disappointing each other,’ Raul completed drily.
A slow, painful pink had surged into Polly’s cheeks. It shook her to be faced with the fact that she had also made mistakes—not least by ignoring reality when it seemed to be within her own interests to do so. She had never come close to telling Raul that she was a surrogate mum-to-be, had been too frightened he would reject her in disgust. How ironic it was that he had known all along, and even judged her on that cowardly silence!
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she contrived to force out rather hoarsely.
‘As for last night, and your conviction that I only returned to have sex with you—do you really think I am so immature or so desperate for sexual release?’ At that searing demand, Polly twisted her head away, no longer caring how he translated such a reaction. ‘I’m here now because I accepted that I shouldn’t have left you in the first place, and that such behaviour would only reinforce your fears about our future.’
Polly linked her fingers fiercely tight together. All rage put behind him, Raul’s ice-cool and rational rebuttal of her angry accusations was a cruelly effective weapon of humiliation. ‘OK,’ she got out, when she couldn’t bear his expectant silence any longer.
‘And do you really think that threatening to leave me in five months’ time is likely to add to the stability of our marriage?’
Polly flinched as if he had cracked a whip over her. She felt like a child being told off for bad behaviour.
‘Now I think you’re going to sulk,’ Raul forecast, with an even more lowering air of adult restraint.
Polly struggled, and finally managed to swallow the enormous lump in her throat. ‘I think you’re probably right.’
CHAPTER NINE
RAUL’S equestrian centre was a vastly impressive installation set about a mile from the ranch. Polly settled Luis into his stroller and wandered down the asphalt lane in the sweltering heat, striving not to look like a woman out in search of her husband. But the truth was she was getting desperate, for she had seen virtually nothing of Raul over the past few days.
Indeed, after those twin earth-shattering scenes at dawn, she had initially expected to find Raul a good thousand miles away on business by the time he appeared the following day. Why? Because he was thoroughly fed up with her! Fed up with the virtual minefield she had already made of their marriage of convenience and fed up with her overemotional reactions. What had happened to patience? Calm? Reasoned restraint?
But in the cruellest possible way she had Raul trapped. He might not be able to respond to emotional demands, but, challenged with an accusation of cowardice, sheer horror that she might be right would keep him on the spot. Only ‘on the spot’ at the ranch unfortunately seemed to mean that he could avoid her just as effectively.
He had a suite of rooms he used as offices on the ground floor, and staff who flew in and out as if helicopters were buses. He rose at dawn and went riding every morning and never returned to the ranch for breakfast. Either he was engaged in business the rest of the day or down at the equestrian centre. But every evening they dined together in the stifling formality of the dining room.
And, terrifyingly, it was as if that confrontation several days earlier had never happened—only now there was a divide the width of the Atlantic ocean between them. Raul didn’t need to walk away to hold her at a distance. He could make civil conversation, express a courteous desire to know what she had done with her day, discuss Luis and generally treat her like an honoured house guest with whom, regrettably, he didn’t have very much time to spend. Oh, yes, and leave her to sleep in a guest room bed without a visible ounce of regret.
So now, when Polly espied Raul chatting to a fair-haired man in front of the state-of-the-art stables, she attempted to appear slightly surprised to run into him. She wanted to behave normally, but without giving him the impression she had deliberately sought him out.
Embarrassingly sexual butterflies erupted in her tummy as she watched him lithely straighten from his elegant lounging position against the rail. As always, he looked stupendous, black hair flopping over his bronzed brow, dark. deep-set eyes narrowed, wide shoulders outlined by a black
polo shirt, lean hips and long powerful thighs sheathed in skintight jodhpurs, polished boots gleaming in the sunshine.
‘Fancy seeing you here’ might well be interpreted as sarcasm, so she gave Raul a purposely casual smile. Her heartbeat thundered with suppressed excitement against her breastbone, ensuring that she swiftly removed her attention from him again. ‘Luis and I are just out for a walk,’ she announced, and then wanted to bite her tongue out because she sounded positively fatuous.
‘This is Patrick Gorman, Polly.’ Raul introduced the slim, fair-haired younger man already extending his hand to her. ‘He runs the breeding programme for the polo ponies.’
‘Delighted to meet you, Mrs Zaforteza.’
‘You’re English!’ Polly registered with surprise and pleasure. ‘And I think I recognise that accent. Newcastle?’
‘Spot on!’
Polly laughed. ‘I was born in Blyth, but my parents moved south when I was six.’
‘That’s why you don’t have a hint of a Geordie accent.’ Giving her an appreciative grin, Patrick bent over the stroller. ‘I’m crazy about babies!’ he exclaimed, squatting down to get a closer look at Luis, where he was contentedly drowsing under the parasol. ‘He’s incredibly little, isn’t he?’
‘He’s actually quite big for his age,’ Polly asserted proudly, thinking how wonderfully well this supposedly accidental meeting with Raul was going, because Patrick was the chatty type which naturally helped to break the ice.
‘My niece is a year old, and quite a handful last time I saw her,’ Patrick told her cheerfully.
‘Luis doesn’t do much more than eat and sleep at the minute.’
‘You have a lot of fun ahead of you,’ Patrick Gorman smiled. ‘Since Raul has some calls to make, would you like me to show you around this operation?’