The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife (12 page)

It would be their own personal, sensual sort of foreplay. Already her mouth was dry, her body taut and thrumming with excitement, just thinking of it.

She couldn’t wait any longer. A quick spritz of her favourite perfume scented the spots behind her ears, the pulse at the base of her neck, her cleavage. Then, snatching up her neat patent leather envelope-shaped bag, she headed out of the door and back down the stairs to the ballroom again, still singing.

She had just reached the curve on the staircase, the small half-landing where she could see the crowded room, but no one there could see her, when the sound of a door opening on the right drew her attention. What she saw froze her into stillness, her heart suddenly leaping up high in her throat.

Ramón.

Ramón and her father were just coming out of a side room. Together.

And that could only mean one thing.

It was like the afternoon they had spent closeted in the library together just a few weeks before. When they had…

No—she didn’t want to think about it. She wished she hadn’t seen.

But she had seen. And all the wishing in the world couldn’t take her back a couple of minutes, back to the room, making her pause to adjust her jacket once more, or add another coating of mascara to her lashes, winding back time so that she left the bedroom, headed for the stairs just a moment or two later, and so hadn’t seen.

Hadn’t seen Ramón stalking out ahead of her father, still pushing a long, white envelope into the inside pocket of his elegant jacket. Hadn’t seen her father clicking closed the
fine gold pen in his hand before returning it to the breast pocket of his.

The wedding was over. The vows had been made. She and Ramón were man and wife—and so the legal details of the business deal had to be dealt with, the documents signed, contracts exchanged. He hadn’t even bothered to wait until their wedding day was finished before he had insisted on the reward he had wanted for taking her on, saving her reputation. He might just as well have produced the financial contract in the church, to be signed in the first second after he had put his name to the marriage certificate.

There was a sensation like the stab of a dagger formed from pure ice right in the centre of her heart, so savage that she almost cried out in agony at it. But somehow, with a supreme effort, she managed to control it, biting down on her bottom lip so sharply that she felt the sudden, rusty taste of blood in her mouth.

‘So you’ll make him love you, will you, you little fool?’ she whispered to herself, admitting that she’d let herself forget harsh reality while she’d been dreaming upstairs, building castles in the air. ‘You’re only deceiving yourself. You always knew what he wanted—and love doesn’t come into it.’

Luckily, no one had seen her. She was hidden where she was and as long as she didn’t move, no one would realise she was here.

So she stayed there, watching through a stinging veil of tears. Tears that she fought against hard, determined to hold them back, refusing to let them fall, no matter what the cost.

She would count to thirty and then she would go down, she told herself. Thirty seconds should be long enough.

‘One…two…’

It was strange, she couldn’t help reflecting, but, considering this had to be his moment of triumph, the time when
he had won everything he’d wanted, everything he had married her for, Ramón didn’t look the least bit exultant. Quite the opposite. A black frown, dark as a storm cloud seemed to have settled on his stunning features, drawing his strong, straight brows together, tightening the muscles in his mouth and jaw, until he looked as dangerous as a bomb primed to go off at any moment. It seemed that someone—her father, perhaps—had lit the blue touch-paper and stood well back, out of the range of the imminent explosion.

‘Fourteen…’

Or was it twenty?

She had completely lost count. Didn’t know what she was doing, or where she was. Perhaps she should start from the beginning again. Or—

‘Estrella!’

There was no mistaking that voice or the ferocious impatience in it. Belatedly she realised that Ramón had moved to the foot of the stairs and was looking up at her. From here he could see her only too clearly—and he obviously wanted to know just what she was doing hovering at the top of the stairs, looking as if she had forgotten how to get down into the ballroom.

‘Estrella!’

It was quieter this time, but no less forceful, the note he used making it plain that he was not prepared to hang around waiting for her while she dithered in indecision.

As she blinked away the blur that shock and confusion had filmed over her eyes she saw him move to the centre of the bottom step—no higher—and hold out his hand in a lordly, arrogant motion, summoning her to his side. He was not going to come up and fetch her, that gesture said. Her place was here, at his side, and she had better hurry up and join him.

Knowing only too well that hesitation would be inter
preted as defiance, and that defiance was clearly something that would not be tolerated, Estrella hurried down the steps as quickly as the ridiculously high heels on her shoes would let her.

She had barely reached his side before his hand came out and clamped around hers, the powerful grip crushing the bones of her hand so that she winced in discomfort.

‘Ready?’ Ramón asked and his tone was so very, very different from the way that he had used it in the church— was it only five hours before?

‘Y-yes.’

It was all she could manage. As he marched her across the room, almost dragging her in the wake of his long, angry strides, her thoughts were spinning, struggling to find some reason for this change of mind, not wanting to come up with the obvious.

But the obvious was all that sprang to mind.

Ramón had married her to acquire the television station he wanted. That and the aristocratic inheritance for any children perhaps. Now that he had what he wanted, then all pretence of caring for her in the least was off. It had to have been a pretence. Otherwise why would he look the way he did, with that cold fury turning his eyes molten, tightening his lips to just a thin, hard line?

Unless, of course, her father had pulled some underhand trick, perhaps going back on the deal he had promised.

But if he had, then what did that augur for the future of their marriage—if they had a marriage at all?

She didn’t know, and Ramón was clearly in no mood to tell her. And now she was supposed to go away with this icily furious man. She was supposed to spend a honeymoon, more than two weeks alone, with this darkly dangerous stranger. Only a few minutes before she had viewed the prospect with delight and excited anticipation. Now all that
excitement had fled from her like air from a punctured balloon, leaving her feeling limp and sick with dread.

Somehow she managed to make it to the door, though her legs were unsteady with apprehension beneath her. Somehow she managed to smile and hug and kiss and thank all the right people, though she could never have said exactly whom. Somehow she managed to get into the waiting limousine without stumbling or cracking her head on the roof.

Then, before she had time to settle either physically or emotionally, before she was in the slightest bit comfortable, Ramón slid onto the soft leather seat beside her, and rapped on the glass panel between them and the chauffeur.

‘Okay,’ was all he said.

And as Paco switched on the engine, put the car into gear, he slammed the door shut, shutting them together in the confined enclosed space.

‘I
S SOMETHING
wrong?’

It was the second time that Estrella had asked the question, the first being as the sleek, powerful car had headed out of the city and onto the road heading north. Then Ramón hadn’t been able to answer her. He still didn’t want to. He was finding it difficult to speak, even to look at her.

‘Don’t talk, Estrella,’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t feel like it.’

‘Too much to drink?’

Her voice had a strangely jerky laugh in it, one that made the words come and go as if transmitted by a badly tuned radio.

‘Too much something, that’s for sure,’ he muttered, leaning back in his seat and letting his head fall onto the rest, closing his eyes to shut out the world he no longer wanted to see.

Too many plans and schemes. Too many maybes that had turned into nevers. Too many—well, yes, admit it—too many hopes, coming close to dreams, that had turned to ash in his hands.

One too many disillusionments, one more than he could take.

He didn’t know which was worse. The rage that pounded at his temples, making it impossible to think straight, or the feeling of having been taken for a fool and used cold-bloodedly.

‘Too many people—and all of them we had to smile at,
whether we wanted to or not,’ Estrella went on, still in that infuriatingly uneven voice.

He couldn’t tell what was putting that note into her words. Was it excitement—a sense of triumph at having got exactly what she wanted? Or was it perhaps uncertainty—that she was trying to find out just what he had discussed with her father? Could she really not know?

He doubted it was any real sense of nervousness at the prospect of the future. She had that all worked out—and had from the start.

‘I know how that feels.’

‘Yes.’ Ramón couldn’t keep the cynicism out of his voice. Because one of those people she’d had to force herself to smile at had been him. ‘I’m sure you do.’

Did she also know how it felt to come to the realisation that you had been played like a fish? Hooked, reeled in, and flung into the net—a net he had only just realised had trapped him?

He’d actually started to think that she was different—that she wasn’t as rumour and her reputation had painted her— and he’d been wrong.

Totally bloody wrong.

So wrong that it had shown him at last just what sort of a fool he had been. The sort of blind, besotted, demented fool who forgot all the lessons he had ever learned about looking before he leapt, and jumped right in with both feet, eyes firmly closed.

Damn Alfredo Medrano for not being able to wait to get his hands on the money so that he had moved in for the kill at just the most vulnerable moment. Damn himself for letting down his guard, for making himself vulnerable, just when he should have been gathering his defences up close around him, making sure that nothing got past his guard.
And damn, damn, damn Estrella for having found the chink in what he thought was his impregnable armour.

She must have spotted that weak point right from the start. Seen it and worked on it, playing him like an expert until he had taken the bait, and then she had reeled him in, slowly, oh, so slowly, so that he had never once suspected what was happening to him.

Damn her to hell!

With a furious sigh, he rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead, wishing that he could erase the dark, unwanted thoughts that lingered there, then froze as he felt the soft touch on his other hand, the one that rested on his thigh.

‘Don’t!’

It was dragged from him as his body responded instantly to just the feel of her fingers on his. He would have thought that the rage that was boiling inside him would have burned away all trace of sensuality, destroying any hint of pleasure at any contact, but instead it was exactly the opposite. Somehow the way he was feeling made him shockingly more sensitive, hunger roaring into existence between one breath and another.

‘Don’t,’ he said again, on a very different note this time, almost pleading so that he winced inwardly to hear it.

‘Ramón, what’s wrong?’

She actually sounded concerned, so much so that it twisted his gut into knots of disgust and rejection. Perhaps it still suited her to play things that way.

The scent of her perfume was stronger now, coiling round him, making him feel angry and nauseous where only this morning he had loved the subtle mixture of flowers and spices. Now he knew he would hate that smell for ever, always linking it to this moment and the bitter sense of betrayal in his thoughts.

‘I knew she’d see sense in the end…’

Alfredo’s voice sounded in his thoughts, making his stomach come close to heaving.

‘It was a close run thing. But when it came to the prospect of losing everything… She knew I meant it. That if she didn’t make a decent marriage for herself she’d get nothing—not a peseta. She soon shaped up after that.’

Estrella had never mentioned the threat to disinherit her. Somehow he’d managed to control his own reactions, refusing to let the old man needle him, to let him see that his words had hit home.

‘Well, you got what you wanted out of this,’ he’d managed stiffly. ‘Your daughter is a married woman now.’

Alfredo had nodded his grey head, his smile one of gloating triumph.

‘And she got what she wanted too. No one walks out on Estrella the way you did. I knew she’d make you pay for that. And she has.’

The words struck a sour note in Ramón’s thoughts.

‘I’m not paying for anything! I chose to marry Estrella.’

‘You think you did, but in the end you had no choice. She went after you just the way she went after Perea. “It’ll be Ramón Dario, or no one,” she said. And now she’s got you on a string, dancing to her tune, just like she had that other poor fool.’

‘Ramón?’

To his horror, Estrella sounded even closer than before.

His eyes snapped open, clouded grey staring straight into troubled ebony, a faint frown pulling her fine brows together.

You knew that your father planned to disinherit you.

The accusation burned on his tongue so that he almost spat it out, right in her face.

All this talk of freedom, of wanting me, was a lie. In the
end all that mattered was the money. You married me, used me to get the money.

If he had known from the start, then it might not have been so bad. If she’d been open, honest, he might have handled it. Might even have been able to go along with it. But she hadn’t told him the truth. Not once. Instead she had lied and manipulated him, made him feel sorry for her, then used him as just another conquest, in the same way that she had used Carlos.

‘Do you have a headache?’

There it was again, that touch of her fingertips on his skin once more, this time smoothing out the deep crease of a frown between his brows. A crease he didn’t even know was there.

She was leaning over him, the warmth of her skin reaching him, the scent of her body tantalising his nostrils. Her mouth was just inches from his own, slightly parted, her white teeth showing in the space between her lips. The smooth, pale lines of her neck in the gathering shadows of the night were a temptation he had to struggle to resist, the need to press his mouth against her, feel her warmth, taste her, almost overwhelming him.

At the base of her throat the sparkling diamond lay against her skin, lifting gently with each indrawn breath, catching the light of the headlights as other vehicles passed them. If he let his gaze drop lower, to the low-cut neckline of the fine black top she wore, he could see the smooth curve where her breasts pushed against the clinging material, the shadowed valley between them…

He had dreamed of putting his head there tonight. Of burying his face between the warm softness of her breasts, pressing his mouth to the satiny flesh, kissing his way…

‘No! Yes,’ he amended hastily when he saw her faint
recoil and knew that she had taken his protest as denying the headache she had queried.

He was going to have this out with her; he had to. But not now. Not with Paco in the driving seat, a stolid, diplomatically silent presence, but there none the less. He wanted to tear into her, verbally at least, but it would have to wait until they reached the villa and were truly on their own.

‘Estrella—leave it,’ he muttered. ‘I’m tired. It’s been a long day.

A long day, and it wasn’t going to have the ending he’d anticipated.

Every time he’d looked up and seen Estrella, his thoughts had gone to the time when they would leave the reception. To the moments when, alone at last, they could truly be together. When he could take her in his arms and kiss her until they were both senseless with longing, until their minds were blown, incapable of thought, and the only thing they wanted was to lose themselves in the hungry demands of their flesh.

But that had been when he had thought of her in a very different way. When she had seemed like someone else. Someone he wanted…

‘All right!’

She clearly wasn’t pleased, her tone and a flash of something in her eyes told him that, but she did as she was asked, moving away, throwing herself back in her seat, folding her arms and sitting stiffly with almost the rest of the back seat separating them.

Immediately, and perversely, he regretted his behaviour. He wanted her close. Wanted to feel her body against his, have his arms around her. Not in the way that he had thought it would happen, of course. He no longer trusted her, and the anger at the way that she had used him still seethed in his soul, filling his mouth with the taste of acid.

But still he wanted her. Fool that he was, all the anger and the distrust and the disillusionment couldn’t stop that. He knew what she was on the inside, but it didn’t stop him from hankering after the outside. That was still beautiful, still sexy—so desirable.

And she was his wife.

‘Come here.’

‘What?’

Estrella couldn’t believe she had heard right. One moment Ramón had been telling her to go away—to go to hell, his voice and his expression said. She had tried everything she could think of to make him tell her what was wrong, but he had pushed her away, mentally, if not physically. His eyes were cold and distant as Arctic ice floes and nothing seemed to reach him.

Then, just as she had given up, suddenly he had changed his mind.

‘Come here,’ he’d said, and he’d held up a hand crooking an arrogant finger, summoning her to his side.

She thought of rebelling. Actually considered refusing, but the moment of revolt didn’t last long. How could it, when he was her husband and she loved him? Besides, if she was to put into action the plan she had formed to win him over, hold him for ever, then this was the only way she could do it. She had to make him desire her in order to make him want to keep her, and she couldn’t do that with the space of the empty seat between them.

‘Estrella…’

It was a note of warning, a warning she knew she should heed or risk ruining the night once and for all. So she moved to his side, felt his arms close around her, and melted into the heat and strength of him. And knew in the space of a heartbeat just why she could never really fight this man, never truly rebel against him.

Heat sizzled along her nerves, her blood thundered at her temples and the racing of her heart made it difficult to breathe. Everything tightened, tensed, a restless ache beginning to throb low down, at the most female centre of her body. He hadn’t even had to kiss her and she was lost.

But she wanted him to kiss her. And so she lifted her face, with her dark head resting against the equally dark cloth of his elegant jacket, turned her mouth to his…

She didn’t have to ask. Didn’t have to say a word. He knew what she wanted, and he responded with a speed that made her heart lift, her blood sing. If his kiss was rough rather than gentle, almost cruel instead of enticing, she genuinely didn’t mind. This Ramón, this man who was her husband, was someone new, someone dark and disturbing, someone she didn’t understand. But she knew one way to reach him. The way she had always reached him.

She was reaching him now, and that was all that mattered. His uncontrolled response, the way he hauled her up close to him, the crush of his mouth on hers, all told her that without any need of words. He used the sway of the car as it rounded the bends in the road, letting it throw her up against him, landing almost in his lap in spite of the restraint of the seat belts.

And all the time he kissed her.

The hard, almost brutal kiss changed abruptly, became deeply sensual, enticing, provoking. It drew her soul out of her body, made her head spin. Strong, urgent hands pushed the sides of her jacket apart, sliding in under the satin lining, smoothing over the clinging material of her top, finding the tiny gap between it and the cream coloured trousers.

The faint burn of his fingertips tracing the exposed line of her skin made her gasp into his mouth and strain closer, the movement opening the gap even wider.

Ramón took advantage of the easier access to her body,
tracing burning, erotic patterns over the exposed flesh, inching higher, higher with every stroke of his hands, so that she writhed in a mixture of delight and impatience.

Ramón’s laughter against her mouth was a sound of both triumph and a wordless agreement, his caressing hands trailing still higher, dancing along the swell of the underside of her breasts, skimming the sensitive skin until she moaned aloud in protest.

‘Ramón!’

He knew exactly what she meant, what she needed, but he still played his tormenting, tantalising game for a few moments more, dragging it out until she was whimpering in protest. Only then did he slide his knowing fingers round to her narrow back, unclipping her bra with the ease of experience.

The full experience of his touch on her aroused flesh was almost like an explosion in Estrella’s mind. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, had lost all awareness of where she was. She could do nothing but give herself up to this man, to the dark sensuality his touch, his kisses woke in her, every part of her being centred on the stinging pleasure of his fingers playing with her breasts, stroking, teasing, tugging at the swollen nipples. Tormenting her with the need for more.