Guy swam deeper into the cave, his arms pulling him away from Addie, away from the scene of their crime, and mentally he wished it were so easy to forget her as it was to remove himself physically from her.
This had been a mistake.
While it had been rewarding to see his grandfather’s relief, Guy wasn’t at all sure it had been worth it. A week with Adeline was nowhere nearly as open and shut as he’d expected. For while he hated and despised her, he could no longer deny that his feelings were anything but clean cut.
Desire, yes. But so what? Sex was sex.
Only it wasn’t.
He’d never shared this with another woman. There was something rare and unique between them. He’d felt it when he was in London, the first time they’d made love. It was like a part of him had been blown wide open, and re-formed itself in a new way, a way that Adeline had given him. He had craved her from that moment on, and he craved her even now, minutes after they’d been together. It was never enough.
He didn’t want to sleep with her hastily, like scratching a mutually-urgent itch. He wanted to chain her to his bed and make her his in every way, to possess her as he’d never done before.
But could he do that and then send Addie packing? Still end this madness when the time came?
Of course he could, because there was no other option. Guy wasn’t the same man he’d been in London, and she sure as hell wasn’t the woman he’d thought he cared for.
He could satisfy their desire, satisfy it completely, without wanting anything more from her.
And that’s just what he planned to do – starting as soon as he could get Santiago off his boat.
10
THE WATER IN THE caves was sublime. Cool and somehow thicker seeming than that of the ocean.
“The tunnels go for almost a mile,” he said, though Addie hadn’t realized he was even aware she was swimming behind him. “Though I’m sure there are more I never got around to discovering.”
The water was becoming shallower, so that her toes could just scrape along the bottom. “How fascinating,” she said, thinking how manifestly insufficient that praise was. “I’d love to map them.” Her hands reached up and ran along the roughened wall as they went.
She didn’t see the way Guy’s lips flickered into a small smile. “I have a very rudimentary map,” he said softly. “Drawn when I was about ten years old.”
“Were you really allowed to explore these caves on your own?”
His laugh was short. “Do you think anyone could have stopped me?” He turned, standing comfortably with his extra height, facing Addie. “I was a ten year old boy, querida, with the whole island to explore.”
Addie’s heart prickled, imagining him as he’d been then. “You came here often?”
“Si.” The word was accompanied by a simple dip of his head and, for some reason, Addie felt a tension in the response. As though he were hiding something from her. Curiosity arrested her.
“In the holidays?”
There was a pull in his eyes, a look of concentration, and then he blinked, clearing it. “School holidays, yes. Sometimes for longer.” He shrugged. “My grandfather employed tutors to maintain my schooling, though I had negligible interest in the curriculum.” His grin was more of a self-disparaging grimace.
“I can’t imagine that,” Addie murmured, swimming closer.
And, as though against his will, Guy’s hands reached for her, pulling her towards him, into the circle of his arms.
“Why?” His eyes scanned her face.
“Because your intellect is ferocious.”
His shoulders lifted. Such broad shoulders, tanned and covered in little water droplets that Addie longed to drop her head forward and run her tongue across.
“I didn’t like the prescriptive nature of school,” he said. “I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, not jump through whichever hoop my teachers deemed important. It felt like a waste of my time – something I had no intention of tolerating.”
Addie’s lips tickled with a smile. It was so like Guy. “And your grandfather didn’t agree?”
“On the contrary, Santiago has always understood. He left school when he was thirteen years old.”
“Really?” Addie’s brows lifted in surprise.
“Really,” Guy nodded, taking a few steps into deeper water, so that they were floating together, his hands running down her back. “The way he tells it, he spent his childhood shadowing his father and grandfather, sharpening pencils during meetings, listening, paying attention. He wanted to be a part of the business.”
“Just like you,” Addie murmured.
“Yes, just like me.”
“And your father?” She prompted.
Out of nowhere, something flew past, low and loud, so that Addie startled, pulling closer to Guy. “What the heck was that?”
“A bat,” he laughed hoarsely. “There are hundreds of them deeper in the caves.”
She shivered, a shiver that passed through her body and into his.
“Legend has it,” he said, his voice low and with a somewhat haunted quality, “that each bat is the spirit of a pirate that died in these caves.”
Addie’s eyes were huge. “You’re not serious?”
“No, querida, I’m not serious.” He laughed, and Addie froze. It was a real laugh. A laugh borne of amusement, like they’d shared all the time, back in London.
She swallowed, the moment touching something deep down inside of her. “But pirates did die in here?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“And that didn’t freak you out?”
He laughed again. “No. It fascinated me.”
A shiver ran down Addie’s spine. “You’re more adventurous than I was as a child. The only adventures I went on were in the pages of books. I loved reading about Middle Earth but I had no desire to leave the safety of my lounge room and find my own quest.”
Guy nodded, but there was something in his expression that spoke of his resentment, that reminded her this truce was very temporary. That they were enemies, locked in a battle she wanted no part of.
She could feel their easy camaraderie slipping and she moved hastily to recapture it. “You didn’t answer me,” the words were husky. “About your father?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw, and she wondered if he was going to ignore her. To refuse to respond, but then, he nodded slowly. “My father never had any interest in the business.”
“No?” Addie smiled, trying to coax him back to a place of confiding. “Isn’t it in your blood?”
Guy’s eyes landed on hers, dark brown clashing with caramel, and Addie’s breath locked in her throat. Her lips parted on a small exhalation.
“In mine, seguro. And Santiago’s. But my father is like my grandmother. Cerebral. Intellectual. Timid.”
“Carlos? Timid?” Addie clarified.
“Not in social situations, but in business. He lacks the instincts that are necessary, perhaps because he wasn’t interested in sharpening them.” Guy shrugged. “The corporation should not be a noose. It is large enough that it can operate with paid executives, outside the family. I work at it because it is my passion; because, as you say, it is in my blood. But my father had every right to choose a different path for himself.”
“Of course he did.” Addie said softly, the water lapping around them in soft, gentle undulations. “What path did he choose?”
“He and my mother are art investors – world renowned. They sponsor several artists, enabling them to work when they otherwise would struggle. They have a galleria in Barcelona and one in Florence.”
“You never mentioned that before,” she said.
“It didn’t come up.” The tightness was back, the remembering of differences, pushing her away, even when their bodies were melded as one. “Put on your swimsuit, Ava. We should get back.”
“Why do you do that?” She asked softly, not moving away from him.
That same muscle jerked in his jaw, and she lifted a
finger to it. His whole body tightened. “Do what?”
“Use that name?”
“It is the name you gave me,” he said with a dark undercurrent. “Why should I not use it?”
“Because I hate it,” she said softly, refusing to avoid his gaze even when the intensity of his probing stare was making her heart wobble. “You don’t know how much I came to loathe hearing it on your lips. How I ached to hear you call me Adeline instead.” Her eyes swept shut and she pulled in a breath. It was tainted by the thickness of the salty cave air. “Please, call me Adeline. Or Addie. Not Ava. Not when we’re alone.”
His smile was tight. Dismissive. And his eyes were ice-cold. “Let’s go.”
“Guy,” it was a softly issued word, but it held a challenge. “You’re pushing me away.”
His expression, if possible, tightened further. “How can I push you away, Ava? You are not close enough to me to require it.”
Her ears hummed the whole way back to the boat, as they swum side by side, her stride every bit a match to his, though she suspected he was swimming slower than usual to allow her to keep up with him. Addie wasn’t going slowly. She was tearing through the water, her mind racing, her heart pounding, her blood gushing hard through her body, tormenting her with its rapid infusion, her memory replaying his constant rejections like explosions of angry confetti, littering her consciousness with a reality she loathed to contemplate.
She’d bargained on Guy remembering all the reasons he had to love her, this week. She’d banked on their desire overcoming all the obstacles he was determined to keep in their way.
She hadn’t bargained on his determination to forget. His determination to keep her at arm’s length in all ways but one.
A white ladder ran down the side of the boat, and as they approached it, Guy reached for the bottom two steps and flicked them, so they fell lower, into the water, then turned to face Addie. “Remember, querida, so far as Santiago knows, there is nothing between us but love.”
Addie nodded, but it was a weary nod. How could she convince him? Remind him of what they’d once been? How could she make him understand?
“Guy,” she curved her fingertips over the lower rung, but hovered there, facing him, watching him thoughtfully. Water had turned her hair into a dark curtain that fell down her back and her eyes were a fierce, burning caramel, spiked by clumped, black lashes. Without makeup, without shields, she was completely herself before him. “Please, let me try to explain to you.”
His expression was an implacable mask; a physical rejection. “Explain then, Ava. Tell me why you spent a month in my bed, claiming to be an actress. Tell me why you lied to me again and again. Packed house tonight! I forgot a line, though.” His eyes narrowed and shame pinkened her cheeks. “You didn’t lie to me once, but again and again and again.”
“Once I’d started, I didn’t know how to stop. I just couldn’t…”
“Of course you could,” he denied firmly. “You could have told me the truth at any time. You let me continue calling you Ava, believing you to be every lie you told me. You say you loved me, but you did not know me. Not really.” His accent was thickened by the intensity of his mood, his Spanish vowels ringing with conviction. “Do I seem like a man who would forgive anyone this? Like a man who will accept such dishonesty and deceit?”
His words did something Addie hadn’t expected. She had been fighting him so hard, and now, something like acceptance began to work its way into her gut. Acceptance of the truth of what he said. How could she expect him to forgive her? Any other man might have been desperate to hear her apology and explanation, to allow her the space to make everything better. But not Guillem Rodriguez. He was as hard-headed as he was ruthless, as dictatorial as he was arrogant. She’d fallen in love with him without realizing that the man she loved would never accept her circumstances.
Wasn’t that why she’d carried on the lie? Once she’d realized who he was, how could she tell him of her financial situation? Of the mother who had gambled away a once-sizeable nest-egg? Of the fact she scrubbed office floors for a living? Her eyes prickled with tears but they were indiscernible amongst the ocean’s spray.
“No,” it was a whisper. “But I am sorry, Guy. And I wish… I wish you would see that I had no choice.”
He brought his face closer to hers then, and his dark eyes bore into her caramel ones. “We all of us have choices, Ava. Every moment of every day.” He lifted a finger to her bikini strap, straightening it but leaving his fingers to linger a moment on her soft, damp flesh. “I choose to enjoy your body, knowing that I will let you walk away at the end of this week with no regrets. I choose to enjoy this – you – sex, without thinking of what we seemed to be, at one time. I have let the past go, Adeline. You should too.”
She bit down on her lip to stop a sob from escaping. Hearing her name on his lips, for the first time, spun her insides around, filling her with a delicious, confusing pain, an ache that trembled low in her gut.
“Remember why you are here. You want money from me, and I want your acting skills to settle my grandfather’s worries with regards to my sex life.” He brought his face closer, so close that she could feel his breath against her cheeks. “End of discussion.”
Addie opened her mouth to say something, though she wasn’t sure exactly what, but Guy didn’t give her the opportunity. “Go on, Ava. Santiago will be wondering where we are.”
With a heart that was sinking, she climbed higher, each step wobbling, her face stricken as she finally reached the deck of the boat.
Santiago hadn’t been wondering where they were, in the end. He’d made himself perfectly comfortable, creating quite the nest for himself – newspapers spread wide, a pot of thick, black coffee to one side and a tray of sweet pastries the other, and he’d removed his shoes, so his bare feet were kicked out into a patch of sunshine on the deck.
“Ah!” He tilted his head when Addie stepped onto the boat, so she had only seconds to rally her face into an expression into what it should have been – that of a woman in love, on a blissful island with the man of her dreams.
“What did you think of the caves?”
Guy was right behind her; she could feel him. Not because he was touching her, but because there was an invisible pull between them, enough to make her insides throb just by being close.
“They were beautiful,” she said with a forced smile. “Enchanting.”
“Enchanting, yes,” Santiago’s eyes lingered on Addie’s face a moment and then he nodded his approval. “Come, eat.”
Addie had been starving only minutes earlier, but now, she couldn’t imagine eating. Her stomach was in knots. Still, she moved towards the table and took the seat opposite Santiago, her back to the island. The sea spread before her, turquoise and accented with gold streaks, formed by the sun’s vibrant reflection.
“Have something,” his invitation encompassed Addie and Guy.
Guy stood beside them, his body glistening with water, his frame bronzed, his muscles taut. Addie couldn’t look at him. Just the sight of him did funny things to her, and memories of how he’d moved inside of her were a torment.
“We should get back,” Guy’s words were clipped and Santiago noticed. He lifted his head to Guy, a small frown on his face.
“Why?”
“Mother will be worrying. You’re due at the theatre tonight.”
Santiago waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Do you know how long it’s been since I was on the water?”
“You can come out anytime,” Guy pointed out. “You just choose not to.”
“Not true,” Santiago said. “And it is only when you are here that I have the option, Guy, and you do not visit often.” His eyes flicked to Addie. Perhaps it was the realization still exploding inside of her, that trying to change Guy’s mind was like trying to pour oil up a hill, but Addie saw something in Santiago’s expression that reminded her of Guy. That made her wonder if they were all playing a part in this scenario.
&nb
sp; “Though perhaps that will change now,” he said thoughtfully. “Ava will make you come.”
Guy shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps.” He smiled at his grandfather. “I’ll take us back now.”
They both watched Guy as he walked down the deck, framed by the brilliant blue of the sky, his powerful body tense.
“He does not come here often,” Santiago said after a while.
“I didn’t realise that. I know he loves the island.”
“Yes, he does. But life, his work,” Santiago shrugged. “It is so important that he settle down, Ava. Don’t you agree?”
Ava’s insides were close to exploding. She nodded slowly, her eyes meeting his.
“I imagine you’ll have a short engagement,” Santiago leaned back in the chair, his eyes resting on the caves he could see over Addie’s shoulder. “You could announce it at the party.”
Addie’s eyes were huge in her pale face. “Engagement?” She stared at him in shock. “What engagement?”
Santiago’s eyes narrowed, and Addie was reminded, once more, of Guy. The older man was, in that moment, every bit as much the dictatorial CEO as his grandson. A shiver ran down her spine and she tried to remember the part she was playing. To remember that a woman in love would be delighted to be discussing the possibility of a permanent relationship.
“You do plan to marry him?”
Addie’s cheeks blushed and there was nothing forced about it. She smiled, but it was lopsided. “I… He hasn’t asked.”
Santiago frowned, his expression shifting. Doubt covered his face. “He hasn’t?”
“We’ve only been seeing one another a few months,” she said.
“Seven months,” Santiago corrected, reaching for a pastry and moving it between his long fingers thoughtfully. “He told me about you, the day after you’d met.” He lifted the pastry to his lips, biting into it so that Addie had to wait for him to finish the sentence. Her heart felt like it was filling up with all the water of the ocean, ripe to burst from her chest.
Claiming his Secret Baby & Blackmailed by the Spaniard (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 4) Page 30
