Bridal Bargains

‘Be quiet!’ his mother responded. ‘You’re a man,’ she said in disgust. ‘You do not fade like an ageing rose, you improve year by year! Your father did this! He improved and improved in his physical stature and he admired these younger women while assuring me I looked nice. Have you any conception at all how badly nice can hurt?’ She swung on Nell again. ‘If my son ever uses that word on you, cara, then take my lead and find yourself another man, preferably one a lot younger than he is—’

‘You’re careering from the point,’ Xander incised.

‘Feeling the vulnerability of your age difference to Helen’s, caro?’ Gabriela incised back. ‘When you hit your fifties she will still be in her thirties—the absolute prime of a woman’s life!’

‘Get to the point!’ The tension in him was close to snapping. Nell blinked at the sight of darkness scoring the rigid line of his cheeks.

‘At least you chose the child for your wife, not your mistress,’ his mother continued with the same cutting scorn. ‘I am the same age as your father. I felt it deeply when his interest began to stray. You are built in his image—a true Pascalis male who will not lose his good looks and his sex appeal as he grows older.’

‘So you jumped on the first man that showed you some admiration.’

‘I did not jump, I dived,’ his mother declared without conscience. ‘I lost myself completely in the glorious flood!’

‘You have no shame.’

Nell stood up. ‘I think I should leave you two to finish this on your—’

‘Sit down again!’ Xander thundered.

Her chin came up. ‘Don’t speak to me like that.’

With a flare of rage he stepped up to her and forcibly made her sit. She’d never seen him like this, so controlled by his emotions that he was almost fizzing. She opened her mouth to protest. He covered it—hard. Yet even though it began as an angry way to subdue her, the kiss did not conclude that way and she could feel the effort it took for him to drag his mouth from hers.

‘Listen to what she has yet to say—please,’ he begged, and when she could only nod, he claimed her mouth again, soft with gratitude—then moved away.

Having watched the little interplay with interest, oddly, Gabriela went quite pale. ‘My son loves you—’

‘The point, Madre,’ Xander curtly prompted.

‘He made me come here because he said you would not believe a word he says about this—thing with Vanessa DeFriess.’

‘Liars lose the right to be believed,’ Xander inserted.

‘I still don’t understand why you felt you needed to lie!’ his mother cried. ‘What man with a beautiful wife to love would want to lay claim to that—puttana? Unless, of course, you were … Ah,’ she said when he all but threw himself over to the window.

‘Stop trying to outguess me and spit it out,’ Xander gritted.

‘Well, he was lying.’ She turned back to Nell again, and then took in a deep breath. ‘It was my husband who had the affair with Vanessa,’ she spelled it out at last. ‘Demitri took that woman to his bed to get his revenge on me. When the madness was over for both of us and we decided we could not live without each other, we made a promise that neither affair would ever be spoken about again.’ She paused to take in a breath. ‘All was well for several months. Indeed, we enjoyed the bliss of a second honeymoon.’ Her beautiful dark eyes took on a wistful glaze. ‘Then Vanessa came to Demitri and told him she was pregnant with his child. Everything fell apart in that moment. After Alexander was born and I discovered I was unable have more children Demitri had assured me that it did not matter …’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Xander murmured gruffly.

‘No.’ His mother looked at him. ‘You believed I was a fashion plate with a thin figure to protect. And you are now thinking of your own lonely childhood when I was not a very good mother to the one child I did have,’ she tagged on to his hard expression. ‘Which I suppose does give you every right to look upon me with such cynicism. I admit that I am not the maternal kind.’

It was like listening to some bizarre rehash of her and Marcel’s story, Nell thought as she listened, while her mind stung her with disbelief. Coincidences like this just didn’t happen. It was reality gone berserk. She looked up at Xander to find his fierce gaze was fixed on her.

‘I know,’ he said tensely, reading what she was thinking. ‘This is why I knew you would not believe me if I told you this myself.’

His mother looked from one to the other. ‘What are you talking about?’ She frowned.

‘Nothing,’ Xander said. ‘Please continue.’

‘Continue.’ Gabriela laughed stiffly. ‘What is there left to say? There was your father, about to become a father again and he could not disguise his delight. I was going to lose him again and I was so terrified I—took an overdose and had to be flown to hospital. By the time I was out of danger Demitri was a different man. I begged him to never see Vanessa and her baby and, to his word, they were never mentioned again.’

‘How much more proof could he offer that he loved you?’ her son put in. ‘He handed responsibility for Vanessa and his unborn child to me with the instruction that I never speak of them because he would not have you distressed like that again.’

‘And you never forgave me for being so spineless.’

‘The child has rights,’ Xander said. ‘You gave him none. The mother had the right to be treated with respect if nothing else. You denied her that right. She was gagged so quickly by my father’s lawyers that she was left without a single leg to stand upon.’