Some things had the power to change the course of a person’s life and his brief and disastrous marriage had been one of those things. He’d been a fool, had been sucked in by a gold-digger and had managed to get out of it in one piece. End of story. Being called upon to revisit that intensely disillusioning and personal slice of his past evoked a primitive, negative response and a searing resentment that the matter had been raised at all. Gut reaction bypassed common sense.
‘What do you want me to say, Sofia? It was something that happened. That was then and this is now and I don’t see the relevance of digging into the past.’
‘You don’t see the relevance of digging into the past?’ Sofia exploded, storming towards him, every nerve in her body reacting with rage at his casual dismissal of something she considered perfectly reasonable. She had had a couple of hours to think the thing through and there was now a seething mass of hurt and pain roiling inside her. Casual dismissal of what she was feeling just wasn’t going to cut it.
‘We’re sleeping together, Rafael! I think a certain amount of meaningful conversation is to be expected!’
Rafael clenched his fists, fighting down the urge to reach out, pull her towards him and sort things out the most effective way he knew how. Face to face, naked body pressed against naked body, his mouth on hers, silencing all those intrusive questions he was not inclined to answer.
For a few seconds, something rushed through him, a hesitation that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was unsettling, disconcerting. Why, he wondered, was he so anchored in a desire for privacy? She was making a simple enough request that required a simple enough answer. Where was the harm in relenting? He remembered Gemma and the unravelling of juvenile dreams—remembered what it felt like to know that someone was using you. He’d made sure to protect himself from ever going down that road again. He’d made himself invulnerable. As far as he was concerned, confession was never good for the soul.
Never. Age-old defences and behaviour patterns killed all uncomfortable hesitation stone-dead.
‘There’s nothing to tell, Sofia. It happened and I just don’t see the value in dredging it up. Things didn’t work out between us. I was young, too young to see the pitfalls. Unfortunately.’
‘That’s it?’
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned, incredulous that another onslaught might be in the making.
One sentence! The briefest of explanations! Plus it had been like drawing blood from a stone.
It didn’t matter whether he found it hard to discuss feelings or whether he’d put the past to bed and wasn’t interested in resurrecting it. The fact was that she was owed more than this. Furthermore, if she accepted this and overlooked it, she would set a precedent that could never be broken—a precedent of always having to keep quiet about anything troublesome he might not be interested in hearing.
Even if he yielded sufficiently to want longer together, even if he admitted that there was more to their relationship than convenience and sex, was this the sort relationship she was after? For herself? Long-term?
‘Nothing. I don’t mean anything.’ She swerved away and clattered around for a few seconds, getting her thoughts together. Calm was settling over her.
She wasn’t going to rant and rave. She heated the food in silence and was dimly aware of him sitting at the table, watching her, dark eyes alert, speculative. But notably he wasn’t going near any more thorny issues. It seemed that awkward silence was a lot more comfortable than questions he didn’t want to answer.
‘You’re not eating.’ He stated the obvious when there was a plate of food in front of him. ‘Are you sulking?’ He pushed the plate away from him and sat back, hands linked on his chest, watching her in a way that could still set her pulses racing even though she couldn’t have been angrier or more miserable than she was just at the moment.
Sofia thought it typical of Rafael to reduce her very valid concerns to a simple case of sulking.
‘Sofia.’ He raked his hands through his hair and vaulted upright, prowling towards her so that she backed away until she was pressed up against the counter, at which point she resolutely folded her arms, forming a barrier between them, and stared at him. His eyes were a hot spot so she looked a bit lower, only to realise that his mouth was also a hot spot. She gazed past his shoulder and tried to remain neutral and stony-faced.
‘You haven’t eaten,’ was all Rafael could find to say.
‘I’ve lost my appetite. Rafael, I think I need to take time out on...on us. On this.’
‘What?’
His expression would have been comical if she had been in the mood for laughing.
‘I’m going to go upstairs.’ Stunned silence. ‘To pack.’
‘Sofia, is all this about me not wanting to wallow in long explanations about a relationship I had a lifetime ago? Jesus, this is ridiculous!’
‘I don’t want to listen to this. You don’t have to talk about your past, Rafael, but likewise I don’t have to put up with your silence on the subject.’
‘You’re being illogical!’
Sofia swerved past him, out of reach, and walked quickly towards the door. When she glanced back, it was to find him staring at her as though she had taken leave of her senses.
There was so much she wanted to say to him that she wouldn’t have known where to begin. If she started, she would never stop. There was an angry, hurting roar inside her that had to be contained because she didn’t want to descend into being the sort of shrieking, hysterical woman she was so close to being.
‘This marriage has done what it was supposed to do,’ she said neutrally.
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘I mean, Rafael, that I’ve built a bridge with my father. We no longer need you as an intermediary. And as for Freddy? I’m pretty sure you’ll sort that business out because if my suspicions about him are correct, and I’m pretty sure they are, you’ll have a powerful incentive for him to listen to what you have to say. Weren’t those the reasons behind this convenient marriage?’
Their eyes met and she didn’t look away.
He was so spectacular on so many fronts, she thought weakly. How had she ever been so stupid as to think that she could protect herself against the sheer force of his dangerous, vital charisma? He was a stalking panther to her inexperienced gazelle.
‘My aunt and Miguel have moved closer to the hospital where he’s having his treatments,’ she intoned, ‘and their house is more than big enough for me for a while. And after that I have options, Rafael. I’ll work out what to do next. But I won’t be doing it as your wife.’
CHAPTER TEN
OPTIONS? OPTIONS? WHAT options was she going to consider? Rafael stared at the empty space she’d left behind her and tried to marshal his thoughts.
She was his wife and she was walking out on their marriage! That was the first furious thought that sprang into his head but immediately he had to concede that she had a point because this hadn’t started life as any sort of marriage anyone would call conventional. Unfortunately, her brutal assessment of it as a business arrangement jarred. He should have been the first to agree with the description, but the fact that it jarred did all sorts of things to his peace of mind.
What was going on?
They’d made love! Fantastic, mind-blowing, amazing love, so why was he sitting here alone in this kitchen wondering what the hell was going on?
He pushed the plate of food further away, determined that he wasn’t going to do the unthinkable and follow her up the stairs. If she wanted to walk out, then that was fine. Nothing he could do about it. This was never meant to be have been a permanent state of affairs anyway!
More to the point, he had no time for the sort of ridiculous behaviour she had just displayed. God knew, what did it matter whether he’d been married for five minutes a hundred years ago? Why couldn’t she se
e that? Why were women so incomprehensible? It was particularly disappointing with her because she knew him so well! Better than any woman had ever known him! Indeed, no one had ever come close. They might have started off facing each other from opposite sides of the ring but they had gradually closed the distance, become a team.
She had cornered him and then she had decided to stand her ground, and what that amounted to was some kind of ultimatum and he’d never been one to do ultimatums.
Unnerved by thoughts and feelings that were alien to him, Rafael leapt to his feet, walked jerkily towards the kitchen window to stare outside.
Had she finished her packing? There wasn’t much to pack. He knew that because her clothes were laid out alongside his in the same wardrobe, same shelves, same drawers. He couldn’t care less what got flung behind doors, but she was as neat as a pin, and was forever folding his clothes into submission. Black T-shirts in tidy stacks, boxers rolled, socks in a drawer of their own.
When had she started organising him and how was it that he was only now noticing?
He rarely ate dinner without her. Business dos...yes, there had been a few. But he had bailed on a lot more than usual because he preferred her company. He liked hearing about her days. She made him laugh. She’d made friends with some of the women in the village. There was always gossip. She had a way of telling him what was going on that never failed to make him smile. His custom of always working if he happened to be in in the evenings had long been abandoned. There were now better things to do with his time. All those things, he now realised, involved her and not all of them had to do with sex.
Agitated, Rafael half-wished he could shut the box that had suddenly been opened—hold back the river of thoughts pouring through his head, undammed for the first time.
What the hell were those so-called options she was going to consider? Argentina was waiting for her. Her aunt and cousin were in a luxurious place just outside Buenos Aires. He had seen some photos on her phone only a couple of weeks ago. And then what? Divorce? Was that one of the options she had mentioned? And thereafter the unknown opened up, gaping like a dark void waiting to be filled. Frankly, the world would be her oyster, because she had more money than she could shake a stick at.
Unbelievably wealthy, unbelievably sexy and unbelievably single...
Rafael’s blood ran cold when he thought of where that lethal combination would lead.
He didn’t stop to think himself out of anything. He slammed out of the kitchen, bolted up the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door before his usual stubborn pride could begin telling him what he should or shouldn’t do.
* * *
In the act of dumping the last of her things into one of the three cases she had fetched from where they had been languishing in one of the spare rooms, Sofia had zero expectations that Rafael would try and talk her out of her decision to leave him.
If she knew anything about him by now, it was that he never pursued. She had dumped him and there was no way that he was going to try and talk her out of it.
And there was certainly no way that she could turn the clock back and pretend that words spoken had not been aired.
She’d made her bed and now she was going to have to lie on it, and it was looking pretty grim. Beyond grim. Unbearable. Of course, she knew that this was where she was meant to be—and she didn’t regret starting the conversation that had brought her here because she’d needed honesty—but the proverbial bed was still looking terrifying, cold and empty.
She stared down at the suitcase, startled to see that her usual orderly packing had given way to a free-for-all of clothes hurled indiscriminately into the case. Her head was so full of riotous thoughts that she couldn’t seem to separate them, couldn’t deal with them one at a time. Maybe if she could she wouldn’t be standing here feeling sick and dizzy.
She’d just said goodbye to the only guy she would ever love. He didn’t even know how she felt. He just knew that she had turned into a demanding shrew and, that being the case, he had slammed down the shutters, stuck up the ‘No Trespass’ sign, and bolted the front door.
Try as she might to tell herself that that was fine, because loving a man who couldn’t even be bothered to share his past with you was a recipe for disaster, she still felt sick to the stomach.
No more Rafael. No more of those dark, dark eyes teasing her, caressing her, understanding her. She was on her own now and she was as adrift as a castaway at sea.
She jerked up at the sound of the door being pushed open, slamming against the wall, and then gaped as he stood there staring at her.
Every single self-defence mechanism she possessed slammed into place. Had a sense of pity got the better of him? Had he decided that she might deserve some kind of bracing pep talk now that she was on her way? After all, she had been instrumental in David getting back on his feet and finding things to look forward to, not to mention sorting out the whole troublesome business of Freddy. Had he decided that she was due something a bit more than a flat refusal to indulge her perfectly normal curiosity?
‘What do you want?’ she asked, breaking eye contact and turning away to begin the process of flinging underwear into her suitcase.
‘Sofia...’
‘What?’ She clicked her tongue impatiently and spun around to stare at him, hands on her hips.
‘You asked a question back there in the kitchen,’ Rafael said roughly, ‘and I should have answered it.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, clearly it does, considering you’re packing to leave me because you didn’t get the answer you wanted.’
‘There was no answer I wanted! No right or wrong way of responding! Just something more than you waving your hand and swatting me away! So don’t you dare try and lay the blame for this at my door, Rafael.’
‘I wasn’t aware that I was doing that.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and walked into the bedroom to drag the chair by the dressing table across to the window and there he proceeded to watch her as she continued her packing. He didn’t sit still for long. He stood up and walked to the dressing table, picking up random stuff and repositioning them. Her hairbrush. A magnifying mirror. A lipstick. It was disconcerting and she found that she couldn’t carry on doing what she was doing while he was behaving so...weirdly.
‘Anyway,’ she muttered, ‘It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have asked.’ Her mouth twisted in a semblance of a sarcastic smile. ‘It was way beyond my brief to ever think that you might have seen fit to share something as huge about your past as a marriage. What a fool I was, forgetting that I was just your business partner!’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Be sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, I’d better listen and obey that command. Except...why should I? I’m leaving you so I don’t actually have to listen or obey anything you say.’
‘You never have.’ Rafael perched against the dressing table and folded his arms but his usual air of self-assured cool was missing.
He looked...rattled.
Before she could start analysing what that meant, she flung open the wardrobe doors and stared down at an array of shoes befitting the woman she had become but certainly not the woman she had once been.
For some reason, the sight brought tears to her eyes and she remained very still for a few seconds, eyes downcast, before gathering herself and sifting through the shoes to remove a pair of trainers and a pair of walking boots. She didn’t think she’d be needing stilettoes or designer slip-ons again. Her next step forward was back to Argentina, back to where she belonged, where she would take stock, and then maybe see a bit of the world. Travel was good for the soul, and although she wouldn’t be travelling like a princess, with a trunk of fancy shoes and fancy ball gowns, neither would she be heading forth without knowing where she would be sleeping when nightf
all rolled around.
‘It’s what I’ve always liked about you.’
His deep voice was so close behind her that she actually jumped and then spun around to find that he had managed to creep up on her without making a sound. How could a big guy move so silently? She inched back and he made no move to close the tiny gap between them. He just stared down at her with an expression that she couldn’t begin to read but which was as unnerving as his lack of cool.
‘Yes, I was once married. I was young...’
‘You don’t have to.’ She looked away, red-faced, heart beating like a sledgehammer. ‘In a fake marriage no one has a right to confidences and, if I chose to confide in you, then you didn’t ask for any of it.’
‘You have a right,’ Rafael said seriously. ‘To know.’
‘I have no idea what you’re trying to say, Rafael, and I can’t deal with riddles. Not right now.’
‘I’m being straight with you.’ There was the ghost of a tremor in his voice and she pretended not to notice, because she knew that to notice would just open the door to all those stupid questions in her head, and she knew from bitter experience that those questions never led anywhere she wanted to go.
‘Not only do you have every right to be curious about my past but I have absolutely no right to deny you whatever answers you want. In fact, I should have told you about my marriage. God knows, there were enough opportunities, because what we had, the relationship that unfolded between us, stopped being about a business arrangement a long time ago.’ He cupped the side of her face with his hand and she didn’t jerk back. ‘You confided in me and it should have been natural for me to return the favour.’
‘You were never going to do that, Rafael,’ she said brusquely. ‘You have always made it very clear that you don’t do the touchy-feely stuff.’
Shock Marriage For The Powerful Spaniard (Mills & Boon Modern) (Passion in Paradise, Book 5) Page 15
