by Maggie Cox
You could say you refuse to leave me this way! You could say you’ve changed your mind. Do you think I wouldn’t forgive you?
‘Of course.’ She made herself walk across the carpet and out through the door ahead of him. But she felt like an automaton because her senses were so numbed by grief.
Pausing by the chestnut bureau in the hall that accommodated the telephone and the reservations book, she glanced up at Rodrigo with a frown.
‘What am I doing? I said I wouldn’t charge you. You don’t have to pay anything.’
‘And I told you how I felt about that.’ He proffered a gold Mastercard.
Staring at it dumbly for a few seconds, she registered the reminder that he owned a multi-million-pound business.
‘Just because you’ve got money it doesn’t mean you should always pay. You looked after me when I was sick and I’m very grateful. This is my way of saying thank you.’
‘I’ve had shelter here too, as well as eaten your food!’ His velvet-dark gaze flashed unrestrained impatience.
Distress welling up inside her at his antagonistic tone, Jenny smoothed a shaky hand across her ponytail. ‘I don’t want to argue about this. Please…just accept your stay here as a gift. I’m sure you’re impatient to be on your way and get back to work. Here’s a map of the area in case you need it.’ She returned the credit card, along with a slim folded map. ‘Where will you go after your meeting here?’
‘Back to Barcelona.’
After shoving both items she’d given him carelessly into his coat pocket, to Jenny’s surprise he captured her hand. Her heart began to race wildly.
‘It’s been incredible, seeing you again. I’ll never forget it. Looking after you…being in this peaceful place…It provided a rest I badly needed—even though there were a couple of nights when I must have aged about a hundred years because your fever was bad. I know I said that I only stayed because of my attraction for you, Jenny, but I promise you…there was not one second when I wished I was somewhere else.’
Her long-lashed summer-blue eyes regarded him gravely. ‘At one point you told me your body, heart and soul were lost to me. I know you only said it in the throes of passion, so was that a lie too?’
It took Rodrigo a couple of moments to field the anguish that deluged him and regain his composure. ‘It was no lie. When I said it, I meant it. I’ve never said such things to any other woman before or since you. I also meant our wedding vows when I made them, and truly regret that I couldn’t keep them.’
‘And yet now you can leave so easily? Without even the merest suggestion that we might see each other again?’
‘I would willingly see you again, but whether it would be a good idea or not is debatable. My schedule is so crazy, and you know how much I have to travel. I wouldn’t want to make you any promises I couldn’t keep. I wouldn’t want to let you down a second time.’
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s okay. We had a nice time together, even though I was ill, and we’ll part as friends…Is that what you want to hear?’
In answer, Rodrigo pressed a light kiss to her scented cheek and let go of her hand. He stooped to pick up his laptop case and slipped the leather strap over his shoulder. ‘I hope you won’t stay angry with me for ever. I hope one day you can forgive me. Don’t overdo things. Please take my advice and get some more rest. Adios, my beautiful Jenny Wren.’
He hardly knew where he was driving—just followed the instructions to take him to Penzance from the now functioning satellite navigation system which had gone askew in the storm. It was as if he was on automatic pilot.
Verdant fields, hills, quaint Cornish villages and breathtaking beaches that were a Mecca for devoted surfers passed him by in a barely registered blur. In his mind all Rodrigo saw was Jenny’s dazzling tear-washed blue gaze and the slight rosy flush to her cheeks that her illness had left behind. She was the most incredible woman…too incredible for a lost cause like him to even imagine having a meaningful relationship with. He could see her again, yes, and for a few short weeks, months—even a year—things might go well. But sooner or later Rodrigo’s addiction to his work plus his insatiable desire for greater and greater success would bear down on him and Jenny, and then she would despair of him, start to mistrust him, and finally declare she had had enough and leave.
Slamming the heel of his hand against the steering wheel, he spared himself nothing with his vehement curse. Then, blinking dazedly at the map flashing on the sat nav, he saw that it showed he was now entering Penzance.
Chapter Nine
JENNY bade an affectionate goodbye to her rejuvenated friend Lily, then returned to London and unexpected good news. There was a cheque in the post from the insurers in answer to her claim for her house.
Having waited a long time for the situation to be resolved, she now found the amount exceeded all her hopes. It meant she had a real chance to start again—to maybe buy another property, expand her business, or do whatever she wanted for a while without stressing about income.
However, nothing could make up for Rodrigo walking away. She knew that. Not when every morning she woke to the stark possibility that she might never see him again. Just the thought was like a dagger in her breast. Her senses had been in a state of frozen animation since he’d left. Before when she’d been with him she’d felt everything so intensely. Now she felt nothing.
The one small light on the horizon was that the money she’d received would give her some much-needed options to help improve her future. She still refused to consider spending any of the settlement Rodrigo had given her, and one day if she had the chance she would see that he got back every penny. But now that she was home again her three months in Cornwall seemed like a distant dream…especially the part where on a stormy October night Rodrigo had appeared.
Suddenly her small rented flat, with its impersonal air and lack of love, seemed too small to contain her increasing restlessness, and it was in this agitated state of mind that one dismal rainy evening she did a pregnancy test because her period was overdue. When the result showed positive Jenny dropped down onto the edge of the bath in stupefied shock. Staring down at the test, she finally registered the enormity of what she was seeing. She was carrying Rodrigo’s baby inside her. The one event she’d believed would never happen had astoundingly occurred. But what was she going to do about it? Of course he would have to know—even if he decided absolutely he wanted nothing further to do with her or the child. She prayed that wouldn’t be so. Hadn’t he more than amply demonstrated that he wasn’t exactly immune to her when they were together in Cornwall?
The following afternoon she took a break from work to visit a travel agent’s. With thumping heart and a dry mouth she booked flights and hotel accommodation for Barcelona. What was to stop her? she argued silently as she handed over her credit card. Thanks to her claim, she had the funds. Only yesterday she’d wrapped up the job she’d been working on so she was perfectly free to go. And her reasons were perfectly legitimate. Not only would she benefit from the warmer climate, but she would be able to see Rodrigo again and break the news that she scarcely believed was true herself.
He was going to be a father. Their re-ignited passion in Cornwall had made a baby…
‘Buenos dias, senñorita…What can I get you?’
‘Just a glass of orange juice please…gràciis.’
When the smiling young waiter disappeared back inside the busy café, with its hypnotic salsa music drifting out onto the Moorish-style terrace, Jenny leaned back in her chair and flipped through her Catalan phrasebook, vowing to familiarise herself with the language she had started to learn when she was last there. But then a trickle of perspiration slid down her back inside her cotton sleeveless shirt and she shut her eyes to bask in the idyllic aromatic sunshine as the ebb and flow of other diners’ conversations sounded on the air around her.
‘Excuse me…but aren’t you staying at our hotel?’
Jenny’s eyes opened with a start at the sound of the
unfamiliar American voice. A beaming masculine face with a row of impossibly white teeth beneath a neatly trimmed greying moustache loomed back at her. An enthusiastic hand was stuck out to shake hers.
‘I’m Dean Lovitch and this is my wife Margaret. We arrived three days ago, same as you. We saw you at Reception but you looked a little distracted, if you don’t mind me saying, and it didn’t seem right to bother you just then. We’ve just been to visit the Sagrada Familia. Have you seen it yet?’
‘You mean the unfinished cathedral? I visited it once two years ago, when I was last here, but I fully intend to go again. I’ve been mainly taking it easy for the past few days rather than visit the tourist spots, to tell you the truth. I was rather under the weather before I came out here.’
‘I’m real sorry to hear that. But it seems like a good place to come to if you’re in need of a pick-me-up, don’t you think? Mind if we join you? All the other tables seem to be taken.’
‘Go ahead. I’m Jenny Renfrew, by the way.’
‘It’s good to meet you, Jenny.’
The couple sat themselves down opposite her—the tall, spaghetti-thin husband and his plump, diminutive sandy-haired wife. Straightening in her chair, Jenny vowed to be sociable. She was here for a fortnight, after all. No doubt there would be plenty of other warm sunny afternoons in which to ponder her life over a cool drink on a terrace somewhere. Besides…Dean and Margaret had the kind of faces that immediately instilled trust, she decided. Their manner was warmly considerate, and she wasn’t surprised to learn that they had three grown-up children who had all ‘fled the nest’—which was why they’d decided a long overdue holiday in Europe was called for to help them adjust.
‘Are you here all by yourself, Jenny?’ Margaret softly enquired as the waiter placed the glass of juice she’d ordered in front of her.
‘I am.’
‘You seem so young. Isn’t there someone special who could have come with you?’
‘You mean like a boyfriend?’ Fielding the arresting vision of Rodrigo that swarmed into her mind, making her tummy flip over, Jenny wrapped her hands tightly round her glass. ‘There’s no one special in my life, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, there seems to be no shortage of goodlooking boys around, that’s for sure.’ Dean grinned. ‘It’s a wonder a pretty English Rose like you hasn’t got at least a dozen of them lining up to ask you for a date. Perhaps you do, but you’re just not telling? I’m sure your parents told you that you gotta be careful. I’m glad that I’ve got sons, quite frankly. I would have been prematurely grey if I’d had a daughter! Especially one that looked like you.’
‘Dean, you’re embarrassing Jenny.’
‘Sorry, sweetheart.’ He instantly apologized. ‘Hey, I’ve just had a great idea. We were going to check out this supposedly incredible spa hotel this afternoon. Margaret thought she might book herself a massage, and I hear the grounds are spectacular. Want to come with us?’
‘A spa hotel you said?’ Inside her chest, Jenny’s heart seemed to ricochet against her ribs.
‘Yeah…It’s owned by some local billionaire, so we hear, and just a few streets over. How do you feel about seeing how the other half lives for a while, Jenny?’
In the end she couldn’t resist accompanying the sociable Americans. Despite choosing her accommodation because of its proximity to his star hotel, she’d put off confronting Rodrigo with her news for three days now, while she nervously rehearsed how to tell him about it in her head, but sooner or later she would have to see him.
But as soon as Jenny stepped out of the sultry heat into the air-conditioned foyer of the dazzling chrome and glass hotel and onto the sleek marble floor, with its chic contemporary furniture and coolly stylish décor, her heart started to thump and her legs turned to marshmallow.
Rodrigo was the owner of all this, she reminded herself.
Faced with the reality of his wealth again after two long years, she found it was almost too much to take in. The man who had sat by her sickbed on a hard rattan chair without so much as even one small complaint, the man who had made himself so at home in Lily’s humble, quaint guesthouse was the owner of this incredibly chic, ultra-modern luxurious hotel and several others like it. It was indeed a sobering thought.
‘Shall we have the grand tour?’ Dean smiled, already walking towards a formidably smart receptionist who looked more like a catwalk model for some elite designer label than a hotel employee.
‘You’re very quiet, Jenny,’ the diminutive Margaret whispered to the younger woman as they followed another stylishly uniformed receptionist up the sweeping marble staircase to the first floor, the soothing sound of water spilling gently into an indoor fountain accompanying them. ‘I think I can guess how you feel…The scent of money is practically oozing out of the walls. It’s a little bit overwhelming, isn’t it?’
Her gaze on the modern sculpture and eye-catching art, Jenny was still struggling to articulate something conversational when she noticed twin doors opening at the end of the walkway they were traveling down. A tall, dark-haired, designer-suited male figure emerged ahead of a group of similarly attired people. Rodrigo! She would recognise him in a veritable sea of strangers.
Suddenly there was no audible sound at all apart from the loud roaring of blood rushing at a hundred miles an hour through Jenny’s head. Oh, God…don’t let him see me…Please don’t let him see me. What was he going to think if he should catch sight of her? That she’d deliberately tracked him down, expecting something from him? She’d die if he thought that—even though she was expecting his baby.
He was holding open the door for his board members, or whoever they were. She saw that now. Seeing him glance casually towards their little group, she momentarily froze. In the same instant a sickening sense of nausea gripped her insides. What a moment for morning sickness to hit! Her intention had been to walk swiftly back down the marble staircase, hopefully unseen, and try to meet Rodrigo at some later date. But now, disconcerted by the nausea, she turned on her heel too quickly and a searing pain shot through her ankle. It made her stumble awkwardly and, unable to right herself, she completely lost her balance.
‘Oh, God.’ Suddenly she was in a humiliating heap on the floor, with every pair of eyes in the vicinity on her.
‘Are you okay, honey? Are you hurt?’ Margaret’s American husband dropped to his haunches, his avuncular features genuinely concerned as he put a comforting arm round Jenny’s shoulders.
‘I think I’ve twisted my ankle. I turned on it too suddenly…That’s just typical of me, I’m afraid.’
On the periphery of her consciousness she saw a striking-looking dark-suited male issue an urgent command and, glancing up, watched an almost choreographed seam appear down the middle of the small group of people that had quickly gathered round her, allowing the man to step to the front.
He stared down at Jenny with utter disbelief in his ebony dark gaze. ‘Is it really you?’ he husked.
‘Yes, Rodrigo.’ She sighed heavily, pushing a swathe of tumbling blonde hair out of her eyes, her humiliation and embarrassment total. ‘It’s me.’
‘What have you done to yourself?’
‘It’s unbelievable, I know, but I think I’ve twisted my ankle.’
‘Does it hurt?’ He crouched to gently circle the slim joint with his hand.
Jenny immediately flinched at the dizzying sensation of pain, though she was not unaware of the intoxicating warmth emanating from his large smooth palm either.
‘Yes, it hurts.’ She despaired of the quaver in her voice—was terrified Rodrigo might judge her as feeble and clumsy. To be frank, she’d have quite liked a handy magic spell to make her disappear.
But now the handsome Spaniard was at ground level too, and Dean Lovitch was assessing him with definite suspicion in his eyes.
‘Do you know this lady?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, I do. And you are?’
As if sensing the other man’s authority, Dean slowly withdrew his
arm from round Jenny’s shoulders. ‘I’m Dean Lovitch. My wife and I are staying at the same hotel as Jenny and we all came here together.’
‘She will be all right now, Señor Lovitch. I will take care of her.’
‘And your name is?’
‘Rodrigo Martinez. This is my hotel.’
‘Oh.’ Getting swiftly to his feet, his face a little red, Dean placed his arm round his wife’s shoulders, as if needing to bolster himself after the shock of learning Rodrigo’s identity.
‘Please…’ Jenny whispered, her blue eyes imploring as she glanced into the hypnotic beam of Rodrigo’s. ‘Don’t be concerned about me. I’ll be okay in a minute. My friends will help me…As Mr Lovitch told you, I’m staying at the same hotel as them. Go back to your meeting, or whatever it is you were doing, Rodrigo. I’ll catch up with you at a more convenient time.’
‘You’re in no position to tell me to do anything, Jenny. Not when you have been injured in my own hotel and I don’t even know what you are doing here. I have a personal suite in the building. I’ll take you there and then call our resident doctor to take a look at your ankle.’
Just as he’d done at Lily’s, Rodrigo slid his arm beneath Jenny to lift her bodily against him. Registering a mixture of surprise and respect in the interested glances watching them so avidly, she tried to rouse herself to protest. But it wasn’t easy when the sensation of being held once more in front of Rodrigo’s wonderful chest, along with the warmth of his hard body, was besieging her without mercy.
‘You shouldn’t be taking me anywhere! Put me down, Rodrigo…please.’
‘Not on your life, querida. Stop fighting me and just relax.’
‘Want us to wait for you, Jenny?’ Dean asked anxiously.
