Vittore nodded and stretched back up. ‘Her plans are very impressive.’ He turned his attention to her. ‘Be proud. You have done well.’
Charley’s cheeks flushed at the unexpected compliment.
She hadn’t expected that.
She became even more flustered when Vittore carefully refolded her plans along the seams she’d made and tucked them into his large carry-case. ‘Next time, you roll them.’
‘Sorry?’ She didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.
‘Next time you create plans, roll them, don’t fold.’
She bit into her bottom lip to stop the smile that fought to spread over her face. Vittore was a renowned architect with over twenty years’ experience and he was complimenting and advising her as if she were, if not an equal, then a promising student.
So stunned was she that the rest of the conversation passed her by, right until the moment came for them to leave.
While Raul and Vittore headed outside, she gave the place one last look, imagining how bright and fabulous it would be when the renovations and subsequent decoration were complete. Her heart swelled to think of the children’s faces when they saw it for the first time.
The humidity outside hung heavy like a damp cloak and Charley was grateful to get back in the helicopter, where the air conditioning ran at full blast. She caught the tail end of the men’s conversation and Vittore saying he would bring a team over on Monday. He smiled encouragingly at Charley and added to Raul, ‘Your wife’s plans have made our job much easier.’
‘You are going to follow them?’
‘As much as we can. They make a lot of sense.’
Raul’s gaze caught hers. ‘My wife has hidden talents.’
His tone and expression were so inscrutable she didn’t know if he was being serious or mocking her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOON THEY WERE back in Barcelona making the short drive to the villa. Saturdays in the city were always busy, especially in summer, and today was no exception, so, while traffic was calmer during the weekend, the number of pedestrians more than made up for it.
The villa was empty when they got in; the household staff all took weekends off.
During their marriage Charley had lived for the weekends. Sharing a home with staff was something she’d never got used to. One of many things she’d struggled with. Going from a tiny two-bedroom flat in a high-rise block of flats in south-east London to an eight-bedroom villa by the sea would have challenged anyone.
She thought of Raul’s parents’ household with a shudder. They had live-in staff on call seven days a week.
‘Vittore was impressed with your plans,’ Raul commented as he headed into the kitchen and found the capsules to slot into the coffee machine.
She managed a nod, still stunned at the praise she’d received from the architect.
Other than entertain kids, she’d never done anything in her life that warranted praise before. It was a heady feeling to know she didn’t have to fail at everything she set her mind to.
She thought back wistfully to the businesses she’d tried so hard at but for which she’d never been able to find the magic quality Raul possessed with all his businesses. She’d so badly wanted to make him proud and for him to see her as his equal, and all she’d done was mess it up, over and over again. The pressure had been too great to bear.
‘Where did you learn how to do it?’ he asked.
‘I did a search on the Internet on how to create plans. The estate agent did a scale floor plan so I worked from that.’
He pulled two china cups out of the cupboard, placing one in the slot of the machine. ‘I’m sorry I dismissed your plans the other day.’
Her heart jolted at this unexpected apology. She hadn’t thought the word sorry was in his vocabulary.
‘That’s okay,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I’m used to it.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You used to cross-examine me about everything to do with my businesses. I always knew you didn’t take my plans or ideas seriously.’
‘I took them seriously enough to give you a lot of money to pay for them.’
She sighed. ‘But I always knew you were humouring me.’
Raul punched the button on the machine at the same moment a swell of anger cut through him. ‘I was not humouring you. I wanted you to succeed and I believed you could. But, Charlotte, you left school without any qualifications. All I did was give you the benefit of my knowledge and experience. It was when you chose to ignore my advice that your businesses floundered.’
It had been hard for him to watch her throw them all away, discarding them as if they were toys that had lost their sparkle after their first few uses. But he’d kept his patience, as hard as it had been. A part of him had admired her guts in dusting herself off and starting again.
It wasn’t until he’d lost that tolerance and witnessed her immediate horrified refusal to have a child that he’d realised her businesses had failed because she’d treated them like toys. They’d been something for her to play with so she could put off the moment she confessed to not wanting his child that bit longer, enabling her to milk him and their lifestyle for all it was worth.
He’d understood all this the night she’d left him and still he’d asked her to stay.
What sickened him more than anything was knowing he would have taken her back, right up until the divorce papers had landed on his doorstep.
He’d almost lost control of himself that day too, had taken his car for a drive, not knowing where he was going and somehow ending up in Valencia. Before he’d known it, he’d been at the street listed on the divorce papers.
The fog had lifted and he’d slammed on his brakes before he could seek her house out, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin.
He was certain the tyre marks at the entrance of her street had been made by him when he’d spun the Lotus round and screeched away.
Thinking about how she’d played him sent another spike of fury through him. He tempered it by the skin of his teeth.
‘It was hard for me,’ she said quietly, leaning against the wall by the door and folding her arms across her chest. ‘I was desperate to impress you.’
‘What for? You were my wife. I wouldn’t have married you if I wasn’t already impressed by you.’
‘You were impressed with my body,’ she answered with a hard laugh.
‘It was more than that and you know it,’ he cut in. ‘I admired your spirit.’ Something which, he had to admit now he thought of it, had disappeared during the latter years of their marriage.
How had he not noticed?
Seeing that spirit return now, that zinging feistiness, sent the most peculiar feeling of déjà vu tearing through him.
‘I wanted you to be impressed with my mind and my abilities,’ she said, a rueful twinge to her voice. ‘But it was so much harder than I thought it would be. Call me naïve but I wanted to do things my own way, to prove I could do it, but I put so much pressure on myself that I crumbled. It didn’t help that I didn’t speak the language.’
‘You’ve mastered it well enough since we separated.’ He’d employed a tutor to help her with Spanish but after a few months she’d put a stop to the lessons, saying they were too hard. Like driving a car, she’d mastered Spanish after she’d left him and without his help. ‘I suppose reading Marta’s books helped.’
‘Not much. It was working at Poco Rio that really did it. The kids hardly speak Spanish never mind English so I had to learn fast if I wanted them to understand me.’
Raul didn’t answer, his teeth clenching together as they always did whenever he thought of her surrounded by small children on a daily basis.
Charley loved children.
But not as much as she loved money...
Was that really true? All the evidence pointed to her leading a frugal existence without him. And she hadn’t asked for any money for herself...
She’d lapsed into silence, her head bowed. Then suddenly she lifted her chin and stared at him with enough force to keep his focus on her and not the coffee machine.
‘Marrying you was all wrong,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘You were the shining star turning the family business from silver into gold—everything you touched turned into gold. Everything I touched turned into rust. I couldn’t compete.’
‘Our marriage wasn’t a competition.’
‘I know, but for me...’
‘For you, what?’ he asked, when her words tailed off.
‘I wasn’t equipped to deal with any of it. I tried, really, I did, but I knew you wanted perfection. Never mind learning Spanish, you wanted me to speak proper English, to wear the right clothes, to be a wife you could be proud to have on your arm...’
‘That was not how it was,’ he retorted, irked she could twist things round to make herself seem like some kind of victim. ‘I was trying to help you fit in with my world.’
‘I wanted to fit in too and it took me a long time to realise that I couldn’t because I don’t belong. The world I come from is just too different. You make everything you touch turn into pure gold, but all you could do with me was add gold-plating—underneath I was still Charley, not the Charlotte you tried to create.’
‘That’s a good story you’ve spun there but my memory tells it differently. In all the time we were together not once did you say you were unhappy. Not once.’
‘That’s because I was terrified that if I said how I felt, you would agree with me. I spent most of our time together waiting for the day you realised I wasn’t up to scratch and replaced me with a better model.’
She looked and sounded so sincere he almost believed her. ‘Answer me this. In all the time we were together did I ever give you cause to think I would cheat on you?’
She shook her head. ‘I always knew you’d never cheat, you’re too honourable. But,’ she added, before he could retaliate, ‘you spend a huge amount of your time in hotels and on cruise liners surrounded by beautiful, well-bred women throwing themselves at you. Knowing you wouldn’t cheat didn’t mean I was stupid enough to believe someone else wouldn’t catch your eye and you’d want to get to know them better. I knew I was disposable, just as Jessica was disposable when I came back on the scene.’
Dios, she could not be serious.
‘Why would you even think such a thing?’ he demanded to know, not giving her time to answer before adding, ‘I never once looked at another woman in the whole time we were married.’
Doubt reverberated through her curvaceous frame.
The incongruity was laughable. Charley had been the one to walk out. She’d left him. Their marriage vows had clearly meant a damn sight more to him than they had to her.
‘Why would I have looked at another woman when I had you to come home to?’ he said, striding over to her and pressing a hand against the wall by her head. ‘You, cariño, are all woman.’
She tensed, her jaw becoming rigid as she swallowed. ‘You’ve just proven everything I’ve said. You really do think I’m only good for one thing.’
‘And that, I can assure you, you are superb at.’
She grabbed his wrist and tried to yank it down, but he twisted his hand and caught her own wrist, pinning her without any effort, then snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her flush to him.
Her head tilted back, her green eyes staring at him with the strangest mixture of contempt and desire. ‘When did you become so cruel?’
‘When I realised the woman I adored was playing me for a fool.’ And with that, he brought his mouth down to hers, drowning out the voices in his head clamouring to argue with this assessment of her.
Charley tried to resist. She closed her mouth as tightly as she could, tried to shut her senses off, but it was like fighting the tide.
His heat, his scent, filled her, creeping through the pores of her skin and down into her blood.
She could push him away. All it would take was one hard shove and she’d be free. Raul might be many things but he would never use his physical strength to force her to do anything she didn’t want.
But they had a deal. She was here for his pleasure and no other reason.
And, if she was being honest with herself, she was here for her own pleasure too because her husband set her alive in a way she would never have known if they’d never met.
Rationality fighting with her senses, she put a hand to his chest, still uncertain if she was going to push or pull. Her fingers splayed against him and before she knew it she’d gripped his shirt. Her lips softened and parted as she melted into him.
His kiss was hard, demanding, his tongue moving within her, her own dancing against it.
Her grip on his shirt loosened and she wound her arms up and around his neck, her fingers pressing into the back of his head, leaning against his strength as he kissed her so thoroughly she doubted she would have been able to stand if he weren’t there supporting her.
Time became nothing. All she knew and all she cared about was now, this moment, and the heat burning through her.
His kisses deepened, then he broke away long enough to dip his head and nip her neck.
Then his hands clasped her bottom and she was pushed against the wall while simultaneously lifted off the ground.
Wrapping her legs around his waist, she pressed kisses over his face, tasting him, inhaling him, rubbing her nose into the smooth skin of his cheeks that roughened as she nuzzled his jawline.
He held her tightly to him, as if her weight meant nothing, and carried her through the kitchen to the narrow stairs. She had no idea how he managed to make it up the two flights with her in his arms, could only assume the fever burning through them drove him onwards until he kicked open their bedroom door and threw her effortlessly onto the bed. Stepping back, Raul gazed down at her, his handsome features taut, his chest surging. Her heart thrummed painfully, pulses racing through her as she stared right back.
Without a word, his eyes holding hers, he pulled at his belt to undo it then opened the buttons and dropped his trousers.
In reply, she raised herself enough to tug off her top and throw it onto the floor.
Working methodically, Raul undid the buttons of his shirt while Charley fumbled with the zip of her denim shorts before kicking them off and sending them sailing towards the other clothes that were forming a messy pile by his feet. His shirt joined them, leaving him in nothing but boxer shorts that stretched over his snake hips and tight buttocks, the strain of his erection visible through the fabric...
Heat bubbled deep within her, a sweet yet torturous sensation that begged for attention, and she dragged herself to her knees, taking in every part of him from his toes to his cropped dark hair as she unclasped her bra and threw it to one side, not caring where it landed. Then, finally, she pulled her underwear down past her hips, as Raul’s eyes watched every move she made, his strong throat moving as he swallowed.
‘Lie down,’ he instructed, his words guttural.
She did as she was bid and laid back, posing provocatively for him with one arm hooked over her head, a hand clasping a breast that was practically crying for attention, deliberately encircling a hard nipple.
A muted groan came from his throat and he yanked at his boxers and tugged them down past his muscular thighs, freeing his erection.
More moisture filled her, the heated ache in the apex of her thighs now nothing but a mass of sensation begging for his touch.
A warning thought rang out, breaking through the haze.
‘I’m not on the pill any more,’ she managed to gasp, beyond carin
g if this gave away her total lack of sex-life since their parting.
His blue eyes widened a touch before darkening, his desire as easy to read as anything she’d ever seen before.
Wrenching his gaze from her, he took the three steps to his dresser and opened the top shelf, rummaging for a moment before producing a packet of condoms.
She couldn’t deny the relief at seeing the box still in its seal.
Raul used his teeth to rip the clear seal off, then pulled a foil square out of the box and ripped it open.
They hadn’t used condoms since their engagement. Her heart twisted to see him struggle with it, as if he were out of practice...
All thoughts vanished when he turned to her and feasted his eyes on her naked form. ‘Spread your legs.’
Parting her thighs, she exposed herself to him, thrilling in the dilation of his eyes as he drank her in, then strode over to her and climbed on the bed, grabbing her hands and pinning them beside her head, his fingers entwining in hers.
His mouth crashed down on hers, crushing her lips, his tongue sweeping into her mouth while the tip of his erection found the heart of her and, with one long thrust, he pushed into her, filling her whole.
Charley could no more hold back her cry of relief than she could swim to the moon.
Raul’s hold on her hands tightened as he moved within her with no hesitation, no lingering caresses, just pure carnality.
She parted her legs ever wider, her pelvis tilted so they ground together, taking everything he gave and giving it back with sobs of pleasure. Sensation fizzed and built within her, heightening with every stroke.
The feel of him on her and inside her, his powerful thrusts, the way his chest crushed her breasts, everything fused together to form one whole sensitised buzz forming into a tight ball that, with one long final stroke, exploded within her. Raul’s groan of release toppled her over the edge.
She clung to him, her hands, freed from his hold, clasping his head as she buried her face in his neck, whimpering into his skin as pulsations rippled through her.
The Perfect Cazorla Wife Page 9
