‘Y-you—’
‘I’ve had it,’ he announced, and launched himself right off the bed.
‘Luis—no!’ she cried. The look he sent her had her scrambling off the bed. ‘You don’t understand!’
‘What’s to understand? I’ve noticed the pattern here. Have you noticed it?’ he rasped. ‘You run; I follow. You take the sex. You run again—or in this case you kick me out.’
‘I don’t mean it to be like that—’
‘No?’ He released a hard laugh, dragged on a pair of pale chinos and zipped them up. ‘I’ve offered to marry you—again,’ he delivered. ‘I’ve offered to save this bloody awful place. I’ve given you the sex! Who is the fool here, do you think? You or me?’
This time she didn’t answer. Reaching out, he picked up a white T-shirt and dragged it on over his head.
‘And of course I must not forget that you have other options now,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Enrique Ramirez has seen to that.’
‘Y-you said—’
‘What did I say?’ he lanced at her, ignoring—refusing—to see the way she was standing there naked, shivering, face as white as the worn sheet on the bed. ‘That I would sell you out to the Alagoas Consortium if you tried to pay me back? Do I really come over to you as the kind of bastard who would do that to you?’
Without wanting a reply, he ripped out a sigh and went hunting for a clean pair of socks in his bag. He came out with another folded white T-shirt and tossed it at her.
‘Cover yourself,’ he said, as if he hated the very sight of her body now—and turned his back on the next pained look that crossed her face and sat down on the bed to pull on his socks. ‘You married a man old enough to be your father to save all of this once. I would love to know why you could not bring yourself to do the same thing with me.’
‘You are not old.’
‘So you’ve come to prefer older men, is that it? Does their lined and sagging flesh turn you on?’
If only you knew, Cristina thought painfully as she pulled on the T-shirt, emerging from its clean white folds to have her breath catch in her throat at the sight of him. Fully dressed now, and standing at the end of the bed grimly stuffing clothes into his bag, his height and the lean muscle power beneath the casual clothes hit her harder than the sight of him in one of his smart business suits had ever done.
‘You look very much the Latino,’ she remarked helplessly.
‘I am English,’ he declared. ‘To the last drop of my blood.’
‘You never used to deny your Brazilian side,’ she whispered. ‘You—’
‘Well, now I do deny it!’ Rocking her back with a fresh blast of his anger, he swung away from her, then violently back again, hard lines suddenly raking his lean face. ‘Six years ago you rejected me because my Englishness did not appeal to you. You didn’t want to move to England and play the banker’s wife. You did not want to rear English children who would have their natural passions bred out of them.’
Like a machine gun he shot her with all the hateful words she had thrown at him six years ago.
‘Finding out that my real father was a Brazilian does not alter the person I am inside, Cristina. I still am an Englishman who thinks like an Englishman.’ Hard fingers made a tight, stabbing gesture at his head. ‘And I promise you that I will go back to England and marry an Englishwoman, remain this English banker who will rear English banker children, while you—’ he made a gesture of derision ‘—get your dearest wish.’
With that he bent to zip his bag up, cursed when he remembered his soap bag, still languishing in the bathroom, and strode that way, leaving Cristina standing there white-faced and shaken, stripped to the very bones by her own cruel lies.
A shudder raked her slender body, a hand jerking up to cover her mouth in guilt-ridden dismay at the cruelty she had used six years ago to make Luis walk away.
She had mocked his English upbringing, his public school accent and his stuffy banker family. She had scorned his offer of marriage and demanded to know where he had got the idea that what they had was anything but a temporary affair. Cringeing inside, she had listened to her own voice demolish everything they’d spent a whole year cherishing.
Then she had just walked away.
This time Luis was going to do it. And she could see in the hard set of his face as he strode back to his bag that this time he would not come back.
He zipped the bag up again, ignoring her as he straightened and turned for the door.
Oh, Meu Dues, she thought. He was going.
It hit like a thunderbolt. ‘No,’ she wrenched out, and moved like lightning, racing past him to stand with her back against the door. ‘I need you to listen while I tell you something.’
His wide shoulders tensed—his back, his whole body. He did not look into her eyes and she knew—knew—he did not want to look at her ever again.
‘Move out of the way, Cristina,’ he instructed grimly.
‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘You must understand before you go why I cannot marry you!’
Fury leapt in his eyes. He took a step towards her. ‘If you say that to me one more time—’
‘I lied to you Luis!’ she cried out. ‘Everything I said to you six years ago was just one big wicked lie! I never, ever wanted to hurt you. I have always loved you more than anything else in this world! But I am not what you need! Your mother said—’
‘My mother?’ he lanced at her. ‘What the hell has she got to do with this?’
‘Nothing.’ She had not meant to say that. ‘Sh-she loves you.’
‘Great,’ he snapped. ‘So everyone loves me.’ The bag dropped to the floor as he threw out his arms in an arc of blistering contempt. ‘So what am I supposed to say to that life-changing statement, Cristina? Oh, that’s okay, then. Now I don’t mind if you walk all over me!’
‘Don’t shout at me!’ she shouted, on a loud, anguished sob. ‘I need to tell you something and it is hard for me!’
‘Tell me what?’ He was not going to make it easy for her. ‘That you treat me like a football for my own good?’
‘I was pregnant with your baby when you left me to go to your papa’s funeral!’
CHAPTER TEN
THE agonising confession left her lips at the same moment that the weather front moved in. Anton just froze where he stood as the sky blackened around him. Nothing moved on his face—nothing!
Christina was suffering from the opposite. She was shaking all over, her arms wrapping tightly around her body as if they were trying to hold it all in.
And she could not look at him. It hurt to look at him. As the first flash of lightning lit the room Luis spoke. ‘Pregnant?’ he repeated hoarsely. ‘You were pregnant with our child and you didn’t tell me?’
‘I did not know then.’ Staring fiercely at her bare feet, Cristina was fighting to hold back the tears now. ‘I f-found out later—af-after you’d gone…’
It had all been so wonderfully perfect to her. She was in love with Luis and carrying his baby, and he was going to come back for her as soon as he could, and then they would—
‘I wanted so much to tell you each time you called me on the telephone. But you were grieving for your papa and busy trying to walk in his shoes, so I decided to wait until you came back to Rio. But…’
The baby had not waited that long.
‘I l-lost it, Before you came back for me…’
‘How did you lose it?’ he questioned huskily.
‘I was working in the café when I got this—pain. The next thing I knew I was rushing to hospital in an ambulance. I was frightened and you were not there—’
Like a man who did not want anyone to see his expression, Anton spun his back to her, eyes closing as he listened to her trembling voice.
‘I was in danger, they told me. The baby was not growing in the right place. And they said—they said that if they did not remove it I would—’
She stopped to swallow. It was too much. Anton spun round and attempt
ed to take her in his arms. But Cristina didn’t want that. She wanted—needed—to stand alone with this, because that was how she had dealt with it then. And it had all been so quick. One minute she was carrying Luis’s beautiful baby, the next thing she knew she was—
She shrugged his hands away. ‘W-when I woke up it was over,’ she continued. ‘They said there had been—complications. They had to remove—too much. There would be no more babies…’
‘Dear God…’ She heard him swallow.
‘My—father arrived at my bedside.’ Still she kept her eyes fixed on her bare feet. ‘S-someone had contacted him when I w-was admitted. He…’
Stood over her like an angel of darkness and poured his shame and contempt over her. Accused her of sullying the Marques name.
‘He w-wanted to know what use I was to him now that there would never be a grandson to inherit Santa Rosa. He…’ She stopped to moisten her dry, trembling lips. ‘He asked what kind of man would want to marry a barren woman.’
‘Dear God,’ Anton breathed. ‘What kind of man was he, to say such a thing to you?’
‘A desperate one,’ Cristina answered. ‘Santa Rosa was deep in debt even then. His only chance of saving it was to marry me off to some man willing to pay him well for the honour. I ran away when he first began parading his suitable candidates in front of me. That’s when I met you, lived with you, became pregnant by you, and…’
She left the rest unsaid. Luis was Brazilian enough to know how things worked in the archaic corners of society. A nice young, protected virgin would win a high price on the marriage market. A spoiled one would earn much less.
A barren one was worth nothing.
The next crack of lightning lit the bedroom. Cristina folded her arms more tightly across her chest. ‘The next time he came to the hospital he brought Vaasco with him,’ she continued. ‘Vaasco was willing to put a large injection of cash into Santa Rosa if I married him.’
‘So you said yes, just like that?’
‘No, I did not!’ For the first time she lifted her eyes to him. He looked pale in the darkness of the room, shocked, appalled—revolted by her now? She looked away again. ‘I s-sent them away,’ she continued quietly. ‘I n-needed time to be on my own, to grieve and to think. I had nowhere else to go so I returned to your apartment. There was a message from you waiting for me on the answering machine, telling me you were on your way to Rio. So I w-waited for you to come…’ One of her hands unclipped itself from her arm and lifted to rub her trembling mouth before it dropped back down again. ‘I was going to tell you what had happened, but we had that big row—’
‘You needed to hurt me as you were hurting.’
‘You were talking about marriage and babies.’ Her voice choked on the memory. ‘How do you think that made me feel, Luis? I was in love with you and I was hurting. I was in shock. Would you have preferred it if I had said yes to your marriage proposal and then said—By the way, Luis, there will be no children because I am barren, you see?’
‘Yes, I would have preferred it,’ he replied. ‘I had a right to know. Do you think I would have walked away from you if you’d told me the truth?’
‘I did not want to give you that choice.’
She heard his breath hiss from between his teeth. ‘You blamed me.’
Cristina stared down at her feet and thought about it. Yes, she concluded, she had blamed him—for not being there when she needed him—but as for the rest…
Luis let out a sigh and moved right away from her. ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it,’ he muttered heavily. ‘Right now I am blaming myself.’
‘No.’ Her head came up. ‘I did not tell you this to make you feel guilty about it!’
‘Then why did you tell me?’
‘To make you see why I cannot marry you!’
‘You married Ordoniz knowing you could not give him children. Why not me?’ he bit out roughly.
‘I did not care about him. I care about you.’
Anton pulled in an unsteady breath. ‘The man was childless, Cristina,’ he delivered painfully. ‘Surely he must have married you so that you could give him a son?’
‘I am not that wicked!’ For the first time since this little scene had begun she let her eyes make contact with his. ‘Why do you always have to look for the bad in me?’
She was right; he did. Hell, I’m losing my head here, Anton thought. And he wanted to—
‘Vaasco could not have children!’ she threw at him. ‘He could not have sex! He—the accident,’ she added on a shivering breath, ‘the horse—it damaged him there. And he did not want me because I was young and for everything else I see twisting around in your head!’ she threw at him. ‘He wanted to punish me because I—I caused his accident, and…’ She paused before asking warily, ‘Has your mother explained what Vaasco was to her?’
‘Oh, yes.’ His mother had been totally honest with him—at last.
‘Vaasco never forgave her,’ Cristina said, then released a sudden cold laugh. ‘He forgave Enrique Ramirez for his part in your mamma’s affair because he was a man, and “a man is allowed to sip the nectar if it is there to sip”—Vaasco’s words exactly,’ she explained. ‘He also knew about you and me—my father had told him. He expected you to come back for me. He wanted to watch me hurt you when you did. He wanted you to be hurt in your mamma’s place, by seeing me married to him. He made me stay in Rio with him for a full year, w-waiting for you to come back.’
But he hadn’t come back.
‘You let him do this to you without putting up a fight?’
Her eyes were cold now. ‘He bought me from my father in the same way that you have been trying to buy me. When you sell yourself you lose the right to think for yourself.’
Anton turned away from that coldly honest statement, a hand with decidedly shaky fingers going up to scrape through his hair, then ending up grabbing the back of his neck.
What now? he asked himself as he stood there trying to numb the shockwaves crashing into him. Cristina was right about him. He did always look for the bad in her. He had done it six years ago, when he had taken what she’d said to him without bothering to question why she was saying it. What kind of man did that make him?
He had even come back here to Brazil bent on seeking his revenge on her for what she’d done. He need not have bothered. Cristina had been punishing herself.
He found he was staring at the bed, with its humble picnic, and suddenly he felt the sting of tears attack the back of his throat as he began to see every single thing she had done since he came back into her life for what it really was.
An act of love for him that was so damn hopeless in her eyes she had to be tough afterwards—or how did she let him go?
He turned to look at Cristina next, standing there in his T-shirt and his bowtie and nothing else. His scent on her body, his kisses on her lips. His love was wrapped all around her if she would dare to let herself to feel it.
‘Let’s go back to bed,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Have you listened to anything I have said to you?’
‘All of it.’ He nodded. ‘It doesn’t change a single thing.’
‘Oh, meu Dues,’ she sighed, as it all flared up again. ‘Luis, I know about Enrique’s last will and testament!’ she cried. ‘I know why you need to marry quickly and produce a child! You have half-brothers you need to—’
‘Don’t talk about them,’ he uttered. They did not belong here—not in this room with this situation and this woman who had sacrificed so much! Well, he was about to learn what it felt like to sacrifice something he wanted badly. Because from this moment on he had no half-brothers. How could he have when—?
God, he did not want to go there right now. He could not allow himself to if he was going to get through the rest of this.
‘We have to talk about them,’ Cristina insisted. ‘The only way you can meet them is by marrying s-some woman who can give you a baby…’
Anton stiffened. She di
dn’t know—not all of it anyway.
‘Well, you cannot do that with me,’ she went on. ‘S-so you can go now and—and marry that h-horrible Kinsella Lane
person,’ she suggested with tremulous bite.
He laughed. It was bad of him to laugh with so much anguish creasing the atmosphere, but that was what he did. Because here stood this beautiful, proud, tragic woman telling him to go—yet she was protecting that damn door as if her life depended on it!
He heeled his shoes off. For a moment he thought she was going to leap on him in a rage. ‘Luis—!’
‘That’s me,’ he acknowledged, and pulled his shirt off over his head.
She stamped a foot. Now, that’s more like it, he thought as he began to undo his trousers.
‘If you don’t stop this I will—!’
He reached her so fast that it was all she could do to gasp out a protest as he clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Now, listen to me…’ he said, bringing his head down so he could look right into those dark pools of tragedy. ‘I am not going to stop loving you because you think that I should, and I am not going to walk away from this. I am going to marry you, whether you like it or not, and I am going to keep on loving you until I draw my last breath—so get used to it.’
After that he straightened up, took his hand from her mouth and lowered it to grasp both her arms, where they still linked defensively across her front. He used them to pull her over to the bed. It took him five seconds to get rid of the tray, another two to grab her again, then stretch out on the bed, pulling her down on top of him so she had no option but to unwrap her arms to support herself.
Her eyes were dark and her mouth small, and as he looked up at her he knew she had not given in to him yet.
‘Sad little thing,’ he murmured, and stroked a gentle finger across an unhappy cheek. ‘Am I such a bad bet?’
She gave a sombre shake of her head, ‘Arido,’ she whispered.
It came then. Six years of grief and misery pouring out of her as she lowered her face to his chest and wept.
Anton said no more. He did not attempt to stem the flow. He just held her. Held her and wished there was something he could do to make it all go away for her—but there wasn’t.
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