The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife (8 page)

But then Rafael returned and behind him strode the tall dark man who had been in almost her every thought, waking and sleeping, since the day he had first appeared in her life.

He was dressed much more casually than she had ever
seen him. A soft blue polo shirt flattered the hard lines of his shoulders and chest while a pair of denim jeans hugged the length of his legs, the narrow hips and lean waist, outlining every muscle with a tightness that made her throat dry.

If he was surprised to find them at dinner—and with Ramirez there as their guest—then he didn’t show it. Those silvery eyes went straight to where she sat at the far side of the table, meeting her own troubled chocolate brown ones in a look that was both recognition and a challenge all in one moment. His gaze swept round the table, resting for a moment on Alfredo, a second longer on Ramirez, and she saw his eyes narrow swiftly before they returned to Estrella’s father.

‘Señor Medrano.’

Ramón’s swift, polite smile looked the epitome of courtesy, faultless in its restraint, the way that it embraced them all. Only someone as supremely sensitive to everything about him as Estrella would have noticed the way that it was not quite natural, the momentary hesitation before he switched it on, the speed with which it faded as soon as he could. Underneath it was a coldly controlled degree of distance that hardened his jaw line, tightened the muscles of his face and turned the stormy eyes to slivers of freezing grey ice.

‘Estrella…’

Ramón worked hard on controlling his voice and his expression though he was having to struggle to squash down the disgust and the anger that rose up inside him as he assessed the situation in the huge, impersonal dining room.

It didn’t take a genius to work out just what was going on. He had taken in the situation in a single, searching glance around the room, and if he’d needed any help then the look on Estrella’s face told its own story to anyone with
eyes to see. Right now, Ramón felt that he could read her like a book.

She was dressed in a simple but elegant deep blue silk dress with a halter neck, and her hair was put up in some complicated, elaborate style that made his fingers itch to pull out the silvery combs that held the black strands in place. Her eyes dominated her face, deep, dark, clouded pools, fringed by impossibly long and dark lashes. But the extra make-up she wore, the careful shading and colouring, couldn’t disguise the shadows that lay just above the high, slanting cheekbones, the lines of stress that tightened the soft, luscious mouth.

She looked stunning, more beautiful than he had ever seen her. But she also looked lost, afraid and intensely, devastatingly vulnerable. And that vulnerability appealed to everything that was male and protective in him.

She would rather be anywhere but here. That much was plain. And the reason for her distress was easy to find. He was the squat, fat, toadlike creature sitting opposite her at the dining table. The one man who wasn’t interested in the interruption to the meal because he was too busy undressing Estrella with his cold, piggy eyes.

Another man her father was trying to sell her to.

Suitor number eleven, unless he was very much mistaken.

But not for long, he promised himself. And the promise was enough to help him rein in the temper that was threatening to erupt inside him, like red hot lava boiling up inside an active volcano.

‘What can we do for you, Señor Dario?’

Her father was making it plain that he was none too happy about being disturbed, though struggling to remember that he needed to keep up a good front before Esteban Ramirez. Clearly he felt that the appearance of an earlier suitor he
had tried to bribe would interfere with his plans for the current one.

‘Forgive me, Señor Medrano,’ Ramón was beautifully cool, immaculately polite. ‘I had no idea that I would be interrupting your meal like this. Estrella?’

To Estrella’s total confusion he turned a reproachful glance on her to match the note of gentle rebuke in his tone.

‘You should have let me know that your father was entertaining a business associate. Then I would have come earlier—or we could have arranged to make our announcement on another occasion.’

Our announcement?

‘I—’

Catching the swift, flashing glare from those grey eyes, Estrella swallowed the exclamation of shocked astonishment that almost escaped her, washing it back down her throat with a hasty gulp of wine. She had no idea just what game Ramón was playing but, until she did, she’d do better to keep quiet and see what he was up to.

‘What announcement?’ Alfredo questioned sharply, his puzzled gaze going from his daughter to the new arrival and back again. ‘Estrella?’

Estrella couldn’t think of a way to answer him. Not having a tiny glimmer of an idea of what Ramón was talking about, she didn’t dare risk opening her mouth. So she just waved her glass at the tall man standing at the other end of the table, indicating that he should be the one to speak. She hoped that doing so wasn’t jumping from the frying-pan right into the heart of a blazing, white-hot fire. She could only keep quiet and pray that she could go along with whatever it was he said.

‘What announcement?’ Alfredo turned his attention back to Ramón. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

‘Forgive me…’

Ramón put on such a good pretence of sounding genuinely apologetic that Estrella shook her head, wondering if she was hearing things—or seeing things—and it really was not Ramón who stood there. But, having blinked hard and looked again, she still saw the darkly devastating man who had stolen some part of her soul away in the moment they had first met and she had never been able to get it back since.

‘I asked your daughter not to say anything until we both had time to tell you together. I had to make her promise— she wanted to say something so much earlier than this.’

Now Alfredo was looking at his daughter in evident confusion. Estrella struggled to make her expression a total blank. But inside her mind was whirling, trying to think what Ramón might be about to say—trying not to think of the things she dreaded it might be.

Recalling how furious they had both been when she had stormed out of his apartment, she shivered inside at the thought of that anger driving him to say something that would really mess up her life. Had he been angry enough for that?

‘But now I see that she’s kept her promise. I’m glad, because that gives me the opportunity to do this correctly. I already have Estrella’s answer, but now I need yours.’

He turned towards Alfredo, suddenly stiffly formal.

‘Señor Medrano, I’ve come here today to seek your permission to ask your daughter to marry me.’

E
STRELLA
felt as if she’d been spun off the edge of the world and into a nightmare where nothing was real, everything was upside down, and she had no idea what was happening.

What was Ramón talking about?

Why was he doing this?

And, most importantly, did he mean it?

She felt as if she had lived through several lifetimes, lifetimes filled with panic and fearful uncertainty, before the world finally slowed and settled back on its axis again. In that time, Esteban Ramirez, who had clearly only been there for one reason, lost his temper and walked out in a ferocious huff, her father fired several sharp, harsh-voiced questions at Ramón—and he answered them coldly and calmly.

At least, Estrella supposed he answered them. The buzzing in her head, like the sound of a thousand alarmed bees, blurred her hearing. She felt giddy and faintly sick and it was a struggle to focus on anything. The words that Ramón had spoken circled over and over in the confusion of her thoughts.

‘I’ve come here today to seek your permission to ask your daughter to marry me.’

He had included Estrella in his declaration, implying that she had been part of it. That she knew all about it. When she didn’t know a thing about what was happening. The last time she had seen Ramón he had made it clear that he never wanted to see her again.

‘Well, I’ll leave you together then…’

Her father’s voice seemed to come from a long, long distance away, at the end of some dark, enclosed tunnel. There was the sound of a door closing firmly and the room was quiet again.

She was alone with the silent, watchful figure of Ramón Dario.

Slowly she surfaced from the crazy nightmare world in which nothing had made sense. Blinking hard to clear her blurred gaze, she looked at the tall, dark man who stood at the bottom of the long, polished wood table, the flare of the candlelight gleaming on his burnished hair, reflected in the glitter of his eyes. She knew that he was waiting for her to speak but she could find nothing at all to say to him.

‘Well, Estrella,
querida.
How does it feel to be engaged?’

‘To—to who?’ she managed to croak.

Her thought processes had blown a fuse, and just for the moment she had no idea at all what had happened during that discussion he had had with her father. Had he truly asked Alfredo if he could marry her?

‘Why, to me, of course.’

There was laughter in his voice, but it was a cold, uncomfortable sort of sound. One that jarred on her senses and set her teeth on edge.

‘Who did you think?’

She couldn’t be engaged to him—it couldn’t have happened, just like that—or could it?

‘But why?’

‘Why?’ Ramón echoed, his tone superficially light but with a dangerous undernote running through it like ink trailing through water. ‘I thought we’d got that perfectly clear. You get that freedom you were looking for and I get what I want.’

It was like a slap in the face.

Of course, he was only marrying her to get his hands on the television company.

It shouldn’t hurt so much—realistically she had always known that. But somehow hearing it like this, spoken in cold blood, it was far more shocking than she had ever anticipated. The realisation that she, as a person, meant nothing at all to him, except as a means to an end, slashed at her soul, leaving her shivering with misery deep inside.

And what did that mean? Had she really wanted more? Had she really hoped for something else? Something with more feeling in it? Something that made this into a real marriage, based on—on…?

Based on love? The word slid into her thoughts, unwelcome and unwanted.

No! With a struggle she pushed it away. She’d thought she was in love with Carlos, and he had claimed to be in love with her. It wasn’t until she had learned the truth that she had seen that there was no love in their relationship at all. He had just wanted her, and had been prepared to lie and cheat and deceive—even commit a crime to get her. Ramón had made no such pretences. He hadn’t lied. In fact, quite the opposite, he had been so bluntly truthful that she could be in no doubt as to what he felt about her.

She had only herself to blame. She had offered herself on a plate to this man, for the price of the TV company, and she had no right to complain if he took up her offer on exactly the terms she had given. He didn’t have more to give; didn’t want more from her.

‘What’s the problem, Estrella?’ Ramón mocked now. ‘Having second thoughts about the bargain you offered? Do you think you’ve sold yourself too cheaply? Or perhaps you want me to get down on one knee and ask you to marry me formally?’

‘No!’

Shock pushed the word from her lips. The image that flew into her brain of this proud, devastating man kneeling at her feet for something that was little more than a lie was too appalling to think of.

‘No, there’ll be no need for that.’

Unease made her voice colder than she had ever intended.

‘But I’m sure that it was what my father had in mind when he left us alone.’

‘Your father’s had more than he deserves out of this already,’ Ramón growled. ‘From now on, it’s just the two of us and no one else.’

‘That suits me.’

She was shocked to think just how much it did suit her. His words had sent a rush of warmth through her body, making it glow with unexpected delight.

‘But I should say of course that my father will expect me to have a ring.’

She was struggling to keep the conversation going. She didn’t want to be here, at the opposite end of the room, sitting in solitary splendour like this. Just the sight of him had revived all the memories of how it had felt to be in his arms and held close, to feel the heat of his body next to hers.

Sitting here, with the space of the huge dining table between them, she felt lost and alone, shiveringly cold in spite of the warmth of the room. But she didn’t know how to bridge the gap that was there between them, the mental separation far more difficult to overcome than the physical. All she had to do was to get up and take a few, just a very few, steps to reach him. But she couldn’t find the mental strength to make herself do it.

‘Of course. We’ll choose one tomorrow—if we are going through with this.’

‘And are we?’

The look he turned on her was a strange blend of cynicism and a lurking, dark thread of humour.

‘Do you think your father would let me back out now that I’ve finally agreed to his terms?’

This had to be the most ridiculous conversation to be having immediately after becoming engaged, Ramón couldn’t help reflecting. She was still sitting at the table at one end of the room, and he was here, miles away, or at least that was how it felt. If this had been anything like a real marriage, she would be in his arms now, held close, and their conversation would be punctuated by kisses, quick, ardent kisses, long, lingering, sensual kisses…

Hell, he wanted her in his arms.

‘So—what made you change your mind?’

How did he answer that?

The truth was that he hadn’t truly known that he’d changed it until he’d found himself on the road here. Even then, he’d told himself that he was just going to see. That he could stop, turn around at any point along the journey.

It hadn’t been until he’d walked into this room and seen her sitting there that he had known. That he had felt the moment of complete, total conviction that he had to have this woman in his life, whatever it took.

‘Coming in here…’

He’d started the sentence before he caught himself up, realising what he had been about to say.

‘Coming in here and seeing the toad you had as your dinner companion. I take it he was suitor number eleven?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes went to the chair in which Esteban Ramirez had been sitting and she gave a delicate little shudder of distaste. ‘Yes, he was.’

‘Then it looks as if I got here just in time. Your father would actually have sold you to him?’

Her smile was bleak, desolate and lost.

‘He had a name to offer me—a respectable, married name.’

Ramón muttered something succinct and very rude and her smile grew just the tiniest bit.

‘Is it really so very different between us? You could say I—s-sold myself to you for the price of the television company.’

‘Hell, no—we have more between us than that!’

‘We do?’

When she turned those big eyes on him, he felt as if his insides were becoming molten; nothing but heat. It was almost as if there were two totally separate Estrellas. The one who looked so fragile that he feared his touch might actually shatter her, and the harder, brittle woman he had first met, the one who had such a reputation locally. The second was the type of female he despised. A female who was so selfish that she stole another woman’s husband.

Which one was the real Estrella? He couldn’t begin to guess.

But in both of those women was a third Estrella. The hot-bloodedly passionate, unbelievably sexy, physically devastating Estrella Medrano whom he had discovered in one blazing night a week ago.

He would do anything to have that woman again. To have her in his arms, in his bed, in his life. That was why he was here and the damn TV company was a long, long way second.

‘Like what?’

Ramón laughed again, this time with a touch of genuine warmth. He knew that that warmth must show on his face, lighting in his eyes, in his smile. He could see the response, mirrored faintly in Estrella’s own face.

‘Do you really have to ask me that?’

He held out his hand, long fingers beckoning slightly.

‘Come here to me, Estrella. Come to me and let me show you. Let me remind you just what there is between us.’

She made a move as if to do as he said and come to him, then froze stiffly in her seat. Her eyes were huge and dark as polished ebony, fixed on his face, with a strange uncertainty taking all the colour from her cheeks.

‘Estrella…’ Ramón murmured huskily. ‘Come.’

Still she lingered, tensed as if to move, but not moving.

With a faint frown that was more confused than angry he let his hand drop to his side again and he took several swift strides to where she sat. Those deep, dark eyes watched him come, seeming to grower wider, darker, with every second.

When he stopped by her chair, her face lifted so that her upward gaze was caught and held by his glinting silvery one, and he heard her faintly indrawn gasp of breath as he closed his hands around the tops of her arms, not hard, but holding her firmly and securely.

‘You’re not afraid of me?’

He couldn’t iron out the faint unevenness that the question put into his voice.

‘Not the Estrella who came to my apartment—who—proposed…’ he let his tongue linger over the word, turning it into an almost sensual sound ‘…so wonderfully the other night. That Estrella was afraid of no one.’

He felt the tremor that ran through the fine bones of her body and looked down into her face even more sharply.

‘That was just one night…’ she managed huskily. ‘Marriage is for—for—’

She swallowed down the word as if she suddenly feared expressing it.

‘Marriage is different.’

‘Not that different.’

Slowly he lifted her, drawing her out of her seat and
pulling her up the length of his body. The rich blue silk of her dress whispered against him and her perfume reached out to enclose him. Had she worn this for the toad—or to give herself some much-needed courage to face yet another suitor?

‘You know what that one night was like…’

His voice was low and husky, rough-edged and raw.

‘Imagine a lifetime of such nights—each one better than the last.’

He saw her throat move as she swallowed hard, the way a pink tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips.

‘Marriage is more than just nights.’

‘But these won’t be
just
nights. They will amazing, spectacular nights. Nights you will never forget. Nights you will spend your days longing for, your sleep dreaming of.’

Still she didn’t look convinced. What had happened to the bold, the forward, the seductive Estrella, who had enticed his soul out of his body with just one kiss?

‘And will that be enough?’

‘It will be enough for me. Do you want proof? I can give you this…’

Bending his head, he took the softness of her lips in an equally soft and gentle kiss. It was a kiss that drew a sigh from her, a faint, lingering sound of pure delight. Even the very gentleness of it clutched at his senses, making his body clench in sharp demand.

‘And this…’

Still gently, he deepened the kiss, easing her mouth open. Letting his tongue dance with hers. The taste of her intoxicated, the warmth of her body whispered to his, the feel of her satin skin against his cheek was pure enticement in a touch.

The heavy, honeyed throb of desire through his veins was so different from before. This time there was no harsh, hun
gry edge to it, no screaming demand. Only heat and sweetness and longing that made him wish they were anywhere but here, in this cold and stiffly furnished, old-fashioned room with the heavy dark furniture, the tapestried walls, the stone-edged windows.

What this feeling needed was the warmest, softest bed available. The smoothest sheets in the finest Egyptian cotton, the crackle and glow of a fire in the hearth… And a long, long night ahead of them.

‘Won’t this be enough for anyone?’ he whispered against her cheek.

‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, yes…’

Her eyelids seemed heavy, hard to lift, as if she were waking from a drugged sleep, but as they fluttered open and he looked deep into the dazed brown of her eyes he knew that she was his. Her slender body swayed towards him, seeming to have no will of her own to hold it upright, and her mouth sought his again, seeking, tasting, enticing.

She was as lost in desire as he was, and right now he asked for nothing more.

‘You’re mine,’ it was a raw edged sound of triumph. ‘Mine and only mine.’

The memory of the toad, of Esteban Ramirez sitting opposite her, his hooded eyes fixed on her lovely face, slid into his mind, making acid rise in his throat. Just the thought of him touching her, of his hands on Estrella’s soft body, made him grit his teeth against the rising savagery of his anger.