The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife (9 page)

‘How could I ever let another man have you…?’

The words slashed into the golden haze that filled Estrella’s mind, tearing away the protection of the sensual warmth that his kiss had stirred in her. She had welcomed that warmth. She had needed it, longed for it. Prayed it was still there.

But now here was this sudden change. This new note in Ramón’s voice. The dangerous tone of ruthless possession that lurked in the dark undertow of his words.

‘How could I ever let another man have you…?’

‘There—there’s no one…’

‘No one?’

Ramón’s laughter was harsh, bitter, and totally without warmth.

‘What about suitor number eleven? What about him and his so-respectable name?’

‘Please!’ She shuddered at the thought. ‘You couldn’t wish that on me.’

‘But your father would have.’

Was that his only reason? She couldn’t help asking herself. Had he come just to take possession of her as if she were some slave, some precious item he could buy for himself if the price was right? Something he hadn’t really valued until the thought that perhaps some other man might want it—that some other man might have a chance of possessing it—had made him realise how much he actually desired it for himself?

‘And I would have said no. You know that. You have to know it. You are the only one…’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Ramón finished for her when the words deserted her suddenly. ‘You’re hot for me.’

For one dreadful moment she thought that he was having second thoughts. She knew that his mind had flown back to the moment in his apartment when she had flung those words at him.

‘You were hot for me,’ he muttered again in a savage undertone.

But then, just as she thought that she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, when her sharp white teeth were mangling her bottom lip as she chewed at it in nervous dread,
he suddenly looked down into her face again. To her astonishment his ruthlessly guarded face suddenly broke into a brilliant, flashing, devastating smile.

‘And I for you, my star. I’m more than hot—I want you so much that I can’t function. I can’t work, I can’t sleep. You’ve taken over my life and I won’t be myself again until I have you in my bed. And if marriage is what it takes to get me there—then we’ll marry.’

Was she really going to do this? Estrella asked herself. Was she really going through with this crazy idea of marrying someone who didn’t love her—someone who only wanted her? But she had thought—had let herself believe— that Carlos had loved her. And everything he’d said had been a lie from start to finish.

Ramón at least was brutally honest with her. He wanted her—and she wanted him. Oh, how she wanted him! Even now, just standing beside him, every sense in her body was wildly alert, aching with need. Her father and his parade of suitors, the misery of her life in the castle, the gossip, all faded into insignificance beside the fulfilment she had found in Ramón’s bed, the ecstasy she had known.

‘We’ll marry,’ she echoed, her voice low, but firm.

‘Soon,’ Ramón put in sharply, and she could only nod her head in silent agreement.

A thought occurred to her, and she suddenly looked up into his taut, controlled face, seeing the glaze of desire in his eyes, the faint wash of colour along the carved cheekbones.

‘This marriage…’ she managed hesitantly, not really daring to ask herself why she said it. ‘Just how long will it last?’

He didn’t respond at once and she could almost see his thoughts turn inward as he considered the question, debating with himself. As she waited she fought a sharp and uncom
fortable battle with her own need to know the answer, for reasons that she didn’t dare to take out and look at in the cold light of day.

‘Until we all get what we want,’ Ramón said at last, turning steely eyes on her pale, drawn face.

‘And that is?’

In her own mind, her voice gave away the sudden new importance that the question had taken on. But Ramón didn’t seem to notice. Or, if he did, then nothing changed in his expression; there was no flicker of reaction in his eyes.

‘You want your freedom from being assessed and examined like a prize mare at a stud farm. Your father wants a grandson to inherit the title—the Medrano land. And I…’

His voice faded, died as he looked into her face, his grey-eyed gaze centring on the curve of her mouth, the soft lips slightly parted in apprehensive uncertainty.

‘And I want this…’ he muttered, his tone suddenly thickening, roughening at the edges.

His dark head lowered, fast and unavoidable. His mouth closed over hers, hard, passionate and strong, his lips taking hers in a bruising kiss that had nothing of gentleness in it, but only fierce, male passion and hungry, almost savage demand.

Wordlessly, mindlessly, Estrella responded. She could do nothing else. Her body was no longer in the control of her mind; it was totally his to do as he willed with it. And what he wanted was what she wanted too.

It was a long, long time before either of them could even come apart to snatch in a much needed breath, and when they did her heart was racing so hard that her head was swimming, her eyes dazed and unfocused.

‘As long as this lasts, darling,’ Ramón managed, raw and uneven as her own feelings.

He kissed her again, even more passionately this time.

‘As long as this lasts, we’ll stay together.’

‘T
HERE
!’

Mercedes threaded the last of the orange blossoms into the ornate style of Estrella’s black hair and stood back to admire the effect.

‘I think it looks wonderful—though I say so myself. But it would help a lot if I knew just what your dress looked like.’

The look she directed at Estrella through the mirror was one of wide-eyed pleading, hoping to persuade her soon-to-be sister-in-law to let her in on the secret.

But Estrella shook her head firmly, remaining impervious to all Mercedes’ wiles.

‘That’s my secret and mine alone. Remember, I never expected all this fuss and ceremony.’

‘What?’ Mercedes stared at her in frank disbelief. ‘You surely never expected that Ramón would only offer you some second-rate secret marriage—or a simple, quiet event? This is my brother we’re talking about. Ramón Dario—soon to be second in the media mogul stakes only to my
papá.
’

That was exactly what Estrella had expected, if she was honest. But it was not what Ramón had wanted, it seemed. In fact so much of what Ramón wanted was the exact opposite of what she had anticipated that she was beginning to wonder whether the man she had agreed to marry was even the same one she’d met on that first day when he’d come to the castle to negotiate the purchase of the television company.

For a start there had been the engagement ring.

Knowing that their marriage was just to be a business arrangement, with nothing of any real feeling in it, apart from the blazing passion that Ramón had so openly admitted had driven him to propose, she had expected that they would go through the motions, nothing more. Her father would expect her to wear a ring; Ramón would provide one. That was all.

It was not all.

Not only had Ramón organised a very special ring for her he had organised an equally special event at which to give it to her. A party to which he had invited all his family, his friends, and everyone from Estrella’s own family too.

‘But why?’ she asked him one evening in his apartment when he raised the idea of the party, and asked whom she wanted to invite. ‘Why go to all this trouble for what is, after all, just an arranged marriage?’

Ramón looked at her, strangely cold, unemotional silvery eyes narrowed in sharp assessment.

‘No one arranged this for me,’ he returned, his tone sharp-edged. ‘I proposed to you of my own choice—it was my decision and mine alone.’

‘But—but…’

Estrella didn’t know what to say. There were words inside her head, but they weren’t words she felt safe or happy sharing.

No one had arranged their marriage—but they might have done. There was no emotion in their union, no form of feeling. Only lust and a need for a name—and, of course, the financial deal that Ramón wanted from her father. It was not a love match—and as such not a proper marriage. The bitterness that slashed at her soul with that thought made her bite her tongue sharply, preferring to suffer the small, self-inflicted pain, rather than let the truth come out.

‘But what?’ Ramón questioned savagely.

‘Do—do you want to go to all this trouble for something that isn’t a real marriage?’

‘But it is a real marriage—as real a marriage as I’m ever going to have. Tell me something,’ he snapped suddenly. ‘Are you ashamed of this engagement?’

‘Ashamed?’ Estrella echoed, astounded that he should even think so. ‘No—not at all, why should I be?’

‘Well, we’ve already acknowledged the fact that I was not exactly number one on your list of would-be suitors…’

So that still rankled. Somehow Estrella suppressed the faint, ambiguous smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Ramón Dario was a proud, proud man. He hated the fact that he had come tenth on that infamous list.

‘On my father’s list,’ she put in, but Ramón ignored her interjection.

‘And I’m not a pure-bred Catalan—not pure-bred anything, if it comes to that.’

‘Esteban Ramirez is pure-bred Catalan,’ Estrella reminded him. ‘And I dread to think how my life would have been if I’d ended up with him. My father may obsess about blood lines and ancestry, but I certainly don’t. I wouldn’t have ended up with—’

Suddenly horrified by the way that her tongue had almost run away with her, she slapped a hand across her mouth to silence herself, big dark eyes widening in shock above her concealing fingers.

‘With Carlos,’ Ramón finished for her. His use of the other man’s name was flat and unrevealing, giving nothing away.

But suddenly Estrella’s conscience stabbed at her savagely, telling her that she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. That she had to tell him. She could face her father with defiance, tough it out in front of the gossips, pretend she didn’t hear the whispers behind her back.

But not with Ramón.

There was something about this man that demanded openness and the truth—nothing less. She couldn’t lie to him, couldn’t conceal her feelings as she had learned to do with everyone else. When she was with him, it was as if he had ripped off the carefully concealing mask that she had struggled to fasten over her own features, scraping away the thin veneer of calm control and exposing the raw and vulnerable woman, the real Estrella, beneath.

‘I didn’t know Carlos was married,’ she said suddenly, blurting out the words before she had a chance for any second thoughts that might destroy the tattered remnants of courage she had gathered round her.

The look Ramón turned on her was speculative rather than sceptical, but it still caught on her nerves that seemed to be missing a much-needed, protective layer of skin, leaving her raw and intensely vulnerable to what she saw as his disapproval.

‘I didn’t!’ she reiterated. ‘He told me he wasn’t!’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Yes.’

It was just a whisper, but perhaps not for the reason he might think. The real shock that resounded in her mind, in her heart, was the realisation that something had changed.

The betrayal, the pain that Carlos had inflicted on her was still there. But somehow now she was seeing it differently. In a weird way, in her mind, it was as if she were viewing the past through the wrong end of a telescope, so that instead of seeming so much nearer, it looked as if it had gone further away. And because of the distance, her hurt was so much less.

It had been happening ever since Ramón had come into her life. At first, he had distracted her, giving her something else to think about. Then he had driven her to distraction
with the way that she couldn’t get him out of her mind. She had hoped that by going to his home that night she might have driven the troubling thoughts of him away, but in fact the opposite had happened. Ramón filled her mind so much that nothing else could make an impact on her feelings. He was an obsession—the first thought that slid into her mind on waking; the last thing to leave it at night.

‘Yes, I believed him.’

And now she expected him to believe her too, Ramón told himself, wishing he didn’t have to. She couldn’t see that he’d been prepared to forget about the past, that what mattered was what they had between them. Instead, she’d made up this ridiculous story—this lie. Because it had to be a lie.

Of course she had known that Perea had been married. How could she not have done? Everyone had known. Even here, in Barcelona, the story had seeped out, the scandal and the way that Alfredo’s fierce Catalan pride had been dragged in the dust by his wayward daughter.

The wayward daughter who was now going to be his wayward wife.

The wife who couldn’t even honour him with the truth, but slanted the story so that she appeared in the best possible light. She was still lying, still using him…

But right now he didn’t care. He wanted this woman in his bed, and if marrying her was the only way he was going to get her there, then marriage it would be.

‘Oh, hell.’

Ramón reached out and roughly pulled her towards him, enclosing her in a bear hug that drove all the breath from her lungs. While she was still struggling to breathe normally, he put a hand under her chin and forced her face up to his, his proud head coming down, his hard mouth taking hers in a crushing, driven kiss.

‘I’ll make you forget him!’ he muttered harshly against her lips. ‘I’ll wipe his image from your mind, all thought of him from your soul. You’ll never think of him again— never—ever!’

‘I…’ Estrella tried, but any attempt to speak was cut off, crushed back down her throat by the force of another of those powerful, almost cruel kisses.

‘You’re mine, Doña Estrella—mine and no one else’s. For as long as my ring is on your finger, you have my name, share my home, then you are mine and mine alone. Mine.’

He punctuated the word with another brutally demanding kiss that made her feel as if she were some slave of old, branded with her owner’s mark, made permanently, ineradicably his.

‘Mine—mine!’

It was all she wanted, Estrella acknowledged, deep inside. The dark, primitively carnal response that boiled up inside her at his touch was all that she could handle—all she needed right now. It had a savage force that took possession of her, drove all other thoughts from her mind, left her incapable of anything. It reduced her to a trembling, shaking wreck, to someone without a thought in her head, except for one.

And that was that she wanted this man.

Dear Lord, how she wanted him.

He only had to appear in sight and her blood heated in her veins. Only had to look at her and she was lost—to touch her and she went up in flames. She lived her life in a state of permanent meltdown.

It should have been scary. A year—a couple of months ago—she would have sworn that it would have terrified her. But now it didn’t.

It was wonderful. It was exciting, exhilarating. It was like flying high up in a cloudless sky, with the warm sun on her
face. It was being alive. She hadn’t felt that way in a long, long time, even before she had met Carlos. And being with Carlos had never made her feel this way.

‘I’m yours,’ she told him, her mouth softening under his, returning the kiss, with interest.

Within seconds, as always happened, the kiss turned to need, the need to passion. The meal they had been planning was discarded, forgotten in the flaring heat of a very different sort of hunger, and they stumbled up the stairs, still kissing, snatching at each other’s clothes until they tumbled onto the bed, mindless and heedless in the control of the insatiable hunger that simply being with each other could spark off between them.

Estrella’s skin still flamed at just the memory now as she looked down at the ring that Ramón had placed on her hand at the party a couple of nights later. Softly she touched it, smoothing her fingertips over the beautiful, brilliant diamonds set in the shape of a star, a deliberate play on the meaning of her name. She had never expected anything like it. Never dreamed that he would come up with something so spectacular and stunning.

‘I—I don’t know how to thank you…’ she stammered when the congratulations died down, the handshakes and the slaps on the back that Ramón received eased and they were at last able to snatch a few moments on their own in a quiet corner of the huge room in his father’s house.

But Ramón dismissed her thanks with an arrogant wave of one strong hand, his eyes hooded, his expression strangely distant and unreadable.

‘You’re my fiancée. Naturally I would give you a ring. After all, we don’t want anyone thinking that this engagement isn’t real. Certainly not your father.’

But the mention of her father made Estrella flinch inside. She didn’t want to think of the reason why Don Medrano
had suddenly taken to smiling. Why he had even turned a couple of positively benign looks on his disappointing daughter—and even more approving ones on his soon-to-be son-in-law.

‘My father’s just grateful that he’s getting rid of his shameful daughter. And he thinks you’re wonderful because you’re taking me off his hands in spite of my reputation as a scarlet woman.’

The sudden frown that drew Ramón’s black brows sharply together was like a stab from the point of a painfully sharp knife. She knew that her voice had sounded petulant, even aggressive, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. She knew all about the hours that Ramón had spent closeted in the library with Alfredo and his lawyer, the secret negotiations that had gone on there to decide her fate. Ramón had given her no details, but her father had. She knew all about the bargain that Alfredo had offered as his share of the deal that they had all made between them. So she was sure that Ramón had emerged from the room as the new owner of the television company that he had wanted so much—at half the price he had planned to buy it in the first place.

‘Perhaps I’m taking you because you are a scarlet woman,’ Ramón drawled mockingly, his eyes gleaming silver as they slid down over the slender shape of her body in the clinging black and gold dress she wore tonight. ‘Certainly, the scarlet woman is the one I like having in my life—the one I most enjoy taking to bed.’

The smile that lingered at the corners of his mouth as the words died away told her that he was thinking of the times she had visited his apartment, the heated way those evenings had been spent—and more often than not the mornings and the afternoons too.

‘No matter how many times we come together, I still can never get enough of you.’

To prove his point he drew her towards him, his arms coming tight around her, pressing her close against the hard, strong length of his body. So close that she couldn’t be unaware of the swollen, burning evidence of just how fiercely, potently aroused he was even now.

Instantly her own body responded, the biting hunger that was always with her whenever he touched, whenever she even thought of him, uncoiling in the pit of her stomach and sending shock waves of need radiating out along the line of each nerve, each cell. Every inch of her throbbed into heated demand, making her want to forget all her concerns, push them aside, hide them under the rush of sensuality that he could awaken so easily in her. But still with that secret business meeting in the forefront of her mind, Estrella found that, no matter how much she might want to, she still couldn’t bite back the bitter response that rose to her lips.