Claiming His Wife

She watched him, her eyes willing him to come back to her. After listening in silence he gave a brief response in Spanish and replaced the receiver. Turning, he hitched his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, his dark features as rigid as stone, his eyes slightly hooded, impaling her as he let the shirt drop to the floor.

Her heart leapt.

Whatever the call had been about, it hadn't spoiled things. He was coming back to her. He was! Smiling softly, her heart in her eyes, she held out loving arms to him as he reached for the buckle of his belt.

'Teresa tells me my mother has just arrived. She is to lunch with us. Go down to her while I shower and change,' he instructed flatly. 'Tell her I will be ten minutes, no more.'

Her heart sank.

Dona Elvira couldn't have arrived at a worse mo­ment, Cassie thought wretchedly as she watched him turn and walk to the bathroom. Naked now, the lines of his body long and fluid. Perfect. There was a lump in her throat. No word of regret, no soft apology. Nothing. Just a flatly delivered instruction, a long level look that withered her soul.

Was that his way of showing her that he was a mere man after all, pushed by his hormones into ac­cepting what had been so flagrantly offered—despite his reservations?

No. She wouldn't let herself believe that.

There was more than mere lust between them; she knew there was. Briskly, hanging on to that thought, she refastened the lacy bra and swung off the rum­pled bed. Their five-week-long idyll told her there was more, much more. Hadn't she got to know the more relaxed side of the man she'd married—the side that was funny, deeply charming, sexy yet tender, sometimes impossibly arrogant but always endlessly endearing?

He was suffering from the effects of plain, old-fashioned sexual frustration. Just as she was. It was perfectly simple, she told herself firmly.

The filmy, flirty, ultra-feminine dress wasn't some­thing she would have normally chosen to wear for lunch with her starchy, ultra-conservative mother-in-law, she thought light-headedly as she slipped it over her head and pulled up the fine side zipper. But these days she dressed to please Roman—she didn't stick to things she hoped her in-laws would deem suitable. And because she knew her husband's eyes would openly admire the way the narrow seam at the top of the bodice left her lightly tanned arms and most of her shoulders bare, the neckline dipping into a tantalising V, the soft gauzy fabric moulding her breasts and nipping in at her waist to fall with a floaty fullness to just below her knees, the dress pleased her, too.

As usual, Dona Elvira was dressed in black, re­lieved slightly by just a touch of white silk at her throat. Cassie found her in the small sala, where Teresa had set the circular table with the very best china, glass and heavy antique silver.

Meeting the steady, cool assessment of a pair of dark eyes, Cassie gave a small smile and said, 'How nice to see you,' and knew she didn't mean it at all. She hoped this was to be a flying visit only, but she couldn't ask and appear impossibly rude.

'Roman apologises,' Cassie added lightly. 'He's only just back from some business or other in Seville. He'll be a few more minutes and then Teresa will give us lunch.'

'Sanlucar suits you,' the older woman announced from the seat in the window that overlooked the sun­baked terrace, the great Guadalquivir river and the vast Coto Doiiana nature reserve. 'I find you—' a pale, long-fingered hand moved questingly '—much improved.'

Coming from queen of her severest critics, Cassie had to take that as a compliment. She spread her hands, 'I find the town, this house, quite beautiful. Who could not be happy here?' 'You were not. Before.'

The words dropped like heavy stones into a deep, dark pool and Cassie knew why the older woman had come here. Curiosity. Uneasy suspicions. She wanted to judge for herself whether the supposed rec­onciliation was real or just a blind to stop her and her sisters pressing Roman to go ahead with the di­vorce and marry someone they found acceptable— with Delfina being the obvious and prime candidate. What would be the other woman's reaction if Cassie told her she was already expecting her son's child?

Suddenly, a wave of compassionate understanding engulfed her. Already she felt fiercely protective of the tiny new life she was carrying inside her. Of course Dona Elvira wanted the best for her son. What mother wouldn't? And three years ago Cassie hadn't been the best.

But she had changed, become more self-confident, able to physically express her love for her husband. This time, if Roman wanted it, the marriage would work.

So she said, gently reassuring, 'No, back then there were problems, mainly of my own making.'

'And they've been resolved?' The tone, as always, was carefully polite, but the cool dark eyes had nar­rowed watchfully. 'I want only happiness for my son, you understand?'

'I believe so. I believe I could make him happy,' Cassie said, with a sudden and unwelcome hollow feeling inside her.

Some problems had been swept away but others had crowded in to take their place. But it was up to her to resolve that, wasn't it?

She forced herself into a more optimistic frame of mind but couldn't stop her nerves from jangling when Roman said from behind her, 'So what brings you here, Madrei. So far as I know, you haven't set foot inside this house for fifteen years. Has Cassandra given you something to drink? No? Then let me re­pair the omission.'

Cool, urbane, totally controlled—who would have thought that ten minutes ago he had succumbed to the wild call of the flesh, against all his obvious men­tal reservations, had been on the point of making wild, passionate love to her? Cassie thought as she sank on to the padded seat in the deep window em­brasure.

Watching him as he poured pale Manzanilla into three tulip glasses, her heart twisted over with regret. Wearing white—beautifully tailored narrow trousers and a silk shirt that fell in long graceful folds from his impressive shoulders—he looked as gorgeous and as remote as a man could get.

Why hadn't she said those things she'd been men­tally rehearsing over the last two days the moment he'd walked into the bedroom they shared—instead of flinging herself at him like the sex-mad creature he believed her to have become?

Because she loved him so much, had missed him so badly, she answered herself as he handed her a glass, looking carefully at some point over her left shoulder yet somehow avoiding any contact of their fingers. Her instincts had taken over and her instincts had been wrong. Far better that their short time alone had been occupied in putting him straight.

But she hadn't known that her mother-in-law was about to descend on them, and that lady was saying, her cool features warm now as she spoke to her son, 'True, I haven't been here since your father died. I prefer to keep my memories intact. Remember the summers we spent here—you, your father and I? The horse races on the river beach you both took part in? With me shouting your names and urging you on as loudly as any farmhand? The picnics, the long treks through the Coto Dofiana? How happy we were in those days! After he died it could never be the same.' Her smile faded. She took a sip of her Manzanilla and set the glass down on the small table at her side. 'Perhaps when you give me grandchildren I will be able to spend more happy summers here.'

Here we go again, Cassie thought as she surrep­titiously emptied her own drink into the nearest pot plant. Emotional blackmail. She wasn't the only one who'd been subjected to it. Roman obviously had, ever since he'd reached marriageable age.