The Mélendez Forgotten Marriage (4 page)

When the car purred through a set of huge wrought iron gates, Emelia felt her breath hitch in her throat. The villa that came into view as they traversed the tree-lined
driveway was nothing if not breathtaking. Built on four levels with expansive gardens all around, it truly was everything a rich man's castle should be: private, imposing, luxurious and no expense spared on keeping it that way. Even from the car, Emelia could see a team of gardeners at work in the grounds and, as soon as the driver opened the car door for her and Javier, the massive front doors of the villa opened and a woman dressed in a black and white uniform waited at the top of the steps to greet them.

‘Bienvenido a casa, señor.'
The woman turned and gave Emelia a haughty look, acknowledging her through tight lips.
‘Señora. Bienvenido a casa.'

‘Thank you,' Emelia said with a strained smile. ‘It is nice to be…er…home.'

‘Querida.'
Javier put his hand in the small of Emelia's back. ‘This is Aldana,' he said. ‘She keeps the villa running smoothly for us. Don't worry. I have explained to all of the staff that you will not remember any of them.'

‘I'm so sorry,' Emelia said to Aldana. ‘I hope you are not offended.'

Aldana folded her arms across her generous bosom, her dark sparrow-like eyes assessing Emelia in one sweeping up and down look. ‘It is no matter,' she said.

‘I will take Emelia upstairs, Aldana,' Javier said and, switching to Spanish, asked, ‘Did you do as I asked when I phoned?'

Aldana gave a nod. ‘
Sí
,
señor
. All is back where you wanted it.'

Emelia continued to pretend she hadn't understood what was being said but she couldn't help wondering what exactly Javier had asked the housekeeper to do.

Her lower back was still burning where his hand was resting. She could feel each and every long finger against her flesh; even the barrier of her lightweight clothes was unable to dull the electric sensation of his touch. Her body tingled from head to foot every time she thought of those hands moving over her, stroking her, caressing her, touching her as any normal loving husband touched a wife he loved and desired.

When he led her towards the sweeping grand staircase she felt the wings of panic start to flap inside her with each step that took her upwards with him.

Even though he was nothing but a stranger to her would he expect her to share his bedroom?

His bathroom?

Or, even more terrifying…his bed?

‘T
RY
not to be too upset by Aldana's coldness,' Javier said as they came to the first landing. ‘It means nothing. She will get over it in a day or so. She was like that the first time I brought you home with me after we were married. She thought I was making the biggest mistake of my life, not just by marrying a foreigner, but by marrying within weeks of meeting you.'

Emelia suppressed a frown as she continued with him up the stairs. She had seen undiluted hatred in the housekeeper's eyes. How long had that been going on? Surely not for the whole time they had been married? How had she coped with such hostility? It surely wouldn't have made for a very happy home with a household of staff sending dagger looks at every opportunity.

She put her hand on the banister to steady herself after the climb. Her legs felt weak and her chest tight, as if she had run a marathon at high altitude.

‘Are you all right?' he asked, taking her free hand in his.

She gave him a weak smile. ‘Just a little light-headed… It'll pass in a moment.'

Emelia felt his fingers tighten momentarily on hers, the itchy little tingles his touch evoked making her feel even more dazed than the effort of climbing the staircase. His eyes were locked on hers, penetrating, searing, all-seeing, but showing nothing in return. ‘Did your housekeeper eventually come to approve of your choice of wife?' she asked.

He released her hand, his eyes moving away from hers. ‘I do not need the approval of my housekeeper, Emelia,' he said. ‘We are married and that is that. It is no one's business but our own.'

Emelia's teeth sank into her bottom lip as she trudged up the rest of the stairs. She looked for signs of her previous life in the villa but there was nothing to show her she had lived here for close to two years. The walls were hung with priceless works of art; as far as she could see, there were no photographs of their life together. The décor was formal, not relaxed and welcoming. It spoke of wealth and prestige, not family life and friendliness. She could see nothing of herself in the villa, no expression of her personality and taste, and wondered why.

Javier opened a door further along the hall that led into a master bedroom of massive proportions. ‘This was our room,' he said.

Emelia wasn't sure if he spoke in the past tense to communicate he would no longer be sharing it with her and she was too embarrassed to ask him to clarify. ‘It's very big…'

‘Do you recognise anything?' he asked as he followed her into the suite.

Emelia looked at the huge bed and tried to imagine herself lying there with Javier's long strong body beside
her. Her stomach did a little flip-flop movement and she shifted her gaze to the bedside tables instead. On one side there was a wedding photograph and she walked over and slowly picked it up, holding her breath as she looked at the picture of herself smiling with Javier standing by her side.

She wrinkled her brow in concentration. Surely there was somewhere in her mind where she could locate that memory. The dress she was wearing was a dream of a wedding gown, voluminous and delicately sequinned all over with crystals. She could only imagine how much it must have cost. The veil was at least five metres long and had a tiara headpiece, making her look like a princess. The bouquet of orange blossom she carried and the perfection of her hair and make-up spoke of a wedding day that had been meticulously planned. It looked like some of the society weddings she had been forced to attend back at home with her father. All show and fuss to impress others, crowds of people who in a year or so would not even remember the bride's and groom's names. She loathed that sort of scene and had always sworn she would not be a part of it when or if she married. But, as far as she could tell from the photograph in her hands, she had gone for shallow and showy after all.

She shifted her concentration to Javier's image. He was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt and silver and black striped tie that highlighted his colouring and his tall commanding air. His smile was not as wide as Emelia's; it seemed a little forced, in fact. She wondered if she had noticed it on the day and been worried about it or whether she had been too caught up in being the centre of attention.

Emelia looked up from the photograph she was holding to see Javier's watchful gaze centred on her. ‘I'm sorry…' She placed it back on the bedside table with a hand that was not quite steady. ‘I can't remember anything. It's as if it happened to someone else.'

His dark gaze dropped to the image of them in their wedding finery. ‘Sometimes when I look at that photograph, I think the very same thing,' he said, the slant of his mouth cryptic.

Emelia studied him for a moment in silence. Was he implying he had come to regret their hasty marriage? What had led him to offer her marriage in the first place? So many men these days shied away from the formal tie of matrimony, choosing the less binding arrangement of living together or, even more casually, moving between two separate abodes, thus maintaining a higher level of independence.

Had those first two years of marriage taken the shine off the passion that had apparently brought them together? Relationships required a lot of hard work; she knew that from watching her father ruin one relationship after another with no attempt on his part to learn from his previous mistakes. Had Javier fallen out of love with her? He certainly didn't look like a man in love. She had seen desire in his eyes, but as for the warmth of lifelong love…well, would she recognise it even if she saw it?

Javier caught her staring at him and raised one brow. ‘Is something wrong, Emelia?'

She moistened her lips, trying not to be put off by the dark intensity of his gaze as it held hers. ‘Um…I was wondering why you wanted to get married so quickly. Most of the men I know would have taken years to
propose marriage. Why did you decide we should get married so quickly?'

There was a movement deep within his eyes, like a rapid-fire shuffle of a deck of cards. ‘Why do you think?' he said evenly. ‘Do you think you were not in the least agreeable to being married to me? I can assure you I did not have to resort to force. You accepted my proposal quite willingly.'

Emelia gave a little shrug, trying not to be put off by the black marble of his gaze as it held hers. ‘I don't know…I guess it's just that I don't remember being on the hunt for a husband or anything. I'm only twenty-five—'

‘Twenty-seven,' he corrected her.

Emelia chewed at her lip. ‘Ri-ght…twenty-seven…' She lowered her gaze and frowned.

He tipped up her face with one finger beneath her chin. ‘I wanted you from the moment I saw you sitting at that piano,' he said. ‘It was an instant attraction. You felt it too. There seemed no point in delaying what we both wanted.'

Emelia looked into the blackness of his eyes and felt the tug of attraction deep and low in her body. Was this how it had been? The magnetic pull of desire, an unstoppable force that consumed every bit of common sense she possessed? She felt the burn of his touch; the nerve endings beneath her skin were jumping and dancing where his fingertip rested. ‘How soon did we—' she swallowed tightly ‘—sleep together?'

He brushed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. ‘How soon do you think?' he asked in a low, smoky tone.

Emelia felt the deep thud of her heart as his strong
thighs brushed against hers. ‘I…I'm not the type to jump into bed with someone on the first date.'

His dark eyes glinted. ‘You sound rather certain about that.'

Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Surely I didn't…?'

He dropped his hand from her face. ‘No, you didn't,' he said. ‘I was impressed by your standards, actually. You were the first woman I had ever dated who said no.'

Emelia gave herself a mental pat on the back. He would be a hard one to say no to, she imagined. ‘Did that make me a challenge you wanted to conquer?' she asked.

He gave her an enigmatic smile. ‘Not for the reasons you think.'

Her gaze went to the wedding photograph again. ‘I don't suppose we waited until the wedding night.'

‘No.'

Emelia wondered how one short word could have such a powerful effect on her. Her skin lifted all over at the thought of him possessing her. Her breasts prickled with sensation, her belly flapped like washing on a line in a hurricane and her heart raced. But all she had was her imagination. Her mind was empty, a total blank. She felt cheated. She felt lost and afraid she might never be able to reclaim what should have been some of the most memorable days of her life. She gave a little sigh and faced him again. ‘The funny thing is there are some people—like my father, for instance—who would give anything to forget their wedding days. But I can't recall a thing…n-not a thing…' Her voice cracked and she placed her head in her hands, embarrassed at losing control of her emotions in front of him.

He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Don't cry,
querida
,' he said.

His low soothing tone was her undoing. She choked on another sob and stumbled forward into the rock-hard wall of his chest. Her arms automatically wound around his lean waist, her face pressing into his shirt front, breathing in his warm male scent. Her body seemed to fit against him as if fashioned exactly to his specifications. She felt the strong cradle of his pelvis supporting hers, his muscled thighs holding her trembling ones steady. Her body tingled with awareness as she felt the swelling of his groin against her. How many times had he held her like this? She felt the flutter of her pulse in response, the tight ache between her thighs that felt both strange and familiar.

One of his hands went to the back of her head and began stroking her in a gentle, rhythmic motion, his voice when he spoke reverberating against her ear, reminding her of the deep bass of organ pipes being softly played in a cavernous cathedral. ‘Shh,
mi amor
. Do not upset yourself. Do not cry. It can't change anything.'

Emelia tried to control her trembling bottom lip as she eased back to look up at him. ‘I want to remember. I want to remember everything. What girl can't remember her wedding day? How can I live my life with whole chunks of it missing?'

Javier brushed her hair back from her face, his dark steady eyes holding her tear-washed ones. ‘There are no doubt other things you have forgotten that are worth forgetting. What about that, eh? That is a positive,
sí
?'

He took out a handkerchief and used a folded corner of it to mop up the tears that had trailed down her cheeks. Emelia found it a tender gesture that seemed at odds with his earlier aloofness. Was he finally coming to terms with her inability to remember him?

‘What things would I want to forget?' she asked with a puzzled frown.

His eyes shifted away from hers. He refolded the handkerchief and put it in his trouser pocket. ‘No marriage is perfect,' he said, ‘especially a relatively new one. We had the occasional argument, some of them rather heated at times. Perhaps it is a good thing you can't remember them.'

Emelia tried to read his expression but, apart from a small rueful grimace about his mouth, there was little she could go on. ‘What sort of things did we argue about?' she asked.

He gave a one shoulder shrug. ‘The usual things. Most of the time little things that got blown all out of proportion.'

She angled her head at him questioningly. ‘Who was the first to say sorry?'

There was a slight pause before he answered. ‘I am not good at admitting it when I am in the wrong. I guess I take after my father more than I would like in that regard.'

‘We all have our pride,' Emelia conceded.

‘Yes.' He gave her another brief rueful twist of his mouth. ‘Indeed.'

He moved over to a large walk-in wardrobe and opened the sliding doors. ‘Your things are in here. You might feel more at home once you are surrounded by your own possessions. The travelling bag you had with you in London was destroyed in the accident.'

Emelia looked at the rows and rows of elegant clothes and shelves of shoes and matching bags. Again, it was like looking into someone else's life. Did
she
wear all these close-fitting designer dresses and sky-
high heels? Her eyes went to the other side of the wardrobe where the racks and shelves were empty. She turned and looked at Javier. ‘Where are your things?' she asked.

His eyes became shuttered. ‘I had Aldana move them into one of the spare rooms for the time being.'

Emelia felt a confusing mixture of relief and disappointment. The relief she could easily explain. The disappointment was a complete mystery to her. ‘So—' she quickly ran her tongue over her lips ‘—so you're not expecting me to…to sleep with you…um…like right away?'

He hooked one dark brow upwards. ‘I thought you said you don't usually sleep with perfect strangers?'

She frowned at his tone, not sure if he was teasing her. ‘Technically, you're not a stranger, though, are you?' she said. ‘I might not remember you, but there's enough evidence around to confirm we are married.'

A glint appeared in his dark-as-night gaze as it held hers. ‘Are you inviting me to sleep with you, Emelia?'

Emelia felt her belly fold over itself. ‘Er…no…not yet…I mean…no. No. It wouldn't be right for me or even fair to you.'

He came up close, lifting a portion of her hair, slowly twirling it around his finger until she felt the subtle tension on her scalp as he tethered her to him. ‘We could do it to see if it unlocks your memory,' he said in a voice that sounded rough and sexy. ‘How about it,
querida
? Who knows? Perhaps it is just your mind that has forgotten me. Maybe your body will remember everything.'

Emelia could barely breathe. His chest was brushing against her breasts; she could feel the friction of his shirt
through her clothes. Her nipples had sprung to attention, aching and tight, looking for more erotic stimulation. A warm sensation was pooling between her thighs, a pulsing feeling that was part ache, part pleasure, making her want to move forwards to press herself against the hardness she knew instinctively would be there. Her mouth was dry and she sent the point of her tongue out to moisten it, her heart slipping sideways when she saw the way his eyes dropped to follow its passage across her lips.