The Twelve-Month Mistress (14 page)

But that final, single tear hadn’t been like that. It had been a sign of fear, of loss, of despair. A despair so overwhelming that she didn’t even dare to face it in her own thoughts right now, let alone express it to him in any way.

But Joaquin didn’t actually appear to be listening. Instead his attention was fixed on tracing the contours of her face with a long, gentle forefinger, his expression absorbed, his mind preoccupied.

‘We were going to eat,’ he murmured, his tone soft and richly sensual. ‘But we seem to have got—distracted. Perhaps we should think about food now, hmm? Before the night is totally over.’

‘I—I’m not hungry,’ Cassie managed.

She didn’t think she would ever eat again. She wouldn’t need to. Not if they could stay here, like this, in the peaceful, dreamy aftermath of their passion, and never have to move, to think, to explain anything ever again.

But it seemed that Joaquin
was
hungry. Or at least restless. Dropping a slow, lingering kiss on her sleep-softened mouth, he pushed himself up and away from her, getting out of the bed and onto his feet, dark eyes looking round the room, searching for something.

He found it instantly, and with a small sound of satisfaction snatched up the pair of black pyjama bottoms that lay on a chair, pulling them on swiftly and silently.

‘Joaquin?’

Cassie struggled to wake up properly, to pull herself from the drowsy, almost drugged weariness that the tumultuous climax had thrown her into at the end of their
lovemaking. Even her eyes wouldn’t focus fully and the long, lean shape of him was faintly blurred, the expression on his harshly carved face impossible to interpret.

‘What…?’

But he waved an autocratic hand at her in a gesture demanding silence, turning even as he did so and striding swiftly out of the room.

She heard him head for the bedroom in which she had spent the long, lonely nights of the past week, and tensed instinctively, wondering just what he was doing.

How had she left her room? Was everything she had brought back from Ramón’s unpacked and put away, making it look as if it had been there all the time—as if she had never been away? She knew that discovery must inevitably come some time soon, but, please, she begged whatever fate was watching over her, please not just now. Not just yet. If she could have this one special night unspoiled, undamaged by jealousy and suspicion, then it would serve as a memory to cling to when everything else might be destroyed and gone.

She didn’t have time to worry for long. Only a moment or two later, Joaquin was back, and what he held in his hand made her heart lurch in sudden panicked remembrance.

‘Here, put this on.’

He held out the pale green robe, the delicate silk looking impossibly flimsy when hanging from the tanned strength of his long fingers. Did he really not remember the last time he had seen her wearing it, the assumptions he had jumped to that night in Ramón’s apartment?

He might not remember but she could not forget and the appalling accusations he had flung at her still echoed inside her head, etched into her thoughts in horror.

‘Put it on?’ she echoed warily, her thoughts filling with fearful images of him seeing her in the robe for the first time since the night of his accident. Of the sight reviving
memories, of the inevitable explosion that would follow. She shivered convulsively inside. ‘Why?’

But Joaquin ignored her hesitant question, instead reaching for her, lifting one arm and sliding the pale silk along it. He did the same with the other arm, then hoisted her up and out of the bed, pulling the robe around her body, smoothing it down, and then fastening the tie belt securely at her waist. His touch was firm and confident but strangely impersonal, every trace of the blazing sensuality of just moments before vanishing totally, his eyes hooded and dark, hiding the truth of his thoughts from her.

‘There,’ he said on a note of satisfaction. ‘Now come with me.’

‘But…’

Cassie tried a protest then gave it up on a secret shrug of resignation, knowing that to take it any further was to risk arousing his suspicions and making him wonder just why she was so uneasy. There had been no sign of any sort of recognition or remembrance on his handsome face as he had helped her into the robe, no hint that, like her, he was recalling painfully the last time he had seen her wearing it.

‘Are we—do you plan to get something to eat?’

He didn’t reply, but, taking her hand, led her firmly out onto the landing and down the stairs. And this time Cassie went along without any argument. Perhaps it was hunger that had set her stomach lurching queasily, making her feel nauseous and unwell as she had before. It was either that or an uncomfortable conscience combining with fearful apprehension at the thought of Joaquin’s memory coming back.

Either way, she would feel better with some food inside her. Now that she remembered, she hadn’t had anything since breakfast and then she’d only picked at a slice of toast. Not enough to give her the strength to get through to the late evening, which it now was.

But Joaquin didn’t stop in the kitchen as she had ex
pected. Instead, he led her through the quiet darkness of the living room, through the big patio doors, and out onto the terrace where the water of the swimming pool lapped gently against the sides, lit softly by the brightness of the moonlight.

‘Joaquin?’

Her footsteps slowed, she pulled back on his hand, unsure of just what was happening.

‘What is it? Where are we going?’

In her already unsettled state, it seemed as if the strongest shaft of moonlight came straight down onto the far side of the pool, illuminating as if in a spotlight the wooden lounger that stood there.

The wooden lounger on which she and Joaquin had made love the night before she had left him. Or tried to leave him. She had found it so terribly, terribly hard to leave him then, but this time it would cost her heart even more. This time she had known the sensation—or delusion, she didn’t know which it was—of
really
making love with the man she adored. And because of that it was going to tear her heart in two if he ever remembered—and told her to get out of his life as a result.

Joaquin turned his dark head and smiled at her, the darkness of his eyes gleaming eerily in the moonlight.

‘Wait and see,’ he commanded. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

‘But…’

To her horror he was leading her round the edge of the pool, heading—oh, dear heaven, was he heading for that lounger?

‘Joaquin,’ she managed again, struggling to make her voice sound natural. ‘I—I’m not dressed for outdoors—I have hardly any clothes on.’

‘You shouldn’t let that worry you. I like you best with hardly any clothes on. And we’re as private here as in the bedroom.’

Cassie’s heart lurched painfully, thudding against her ribs so that it was difficult to breathe.

Did he know? Had he realised just how closely the words he was using had echoed the words he had used on that night they had been out here together, the night they had made love out in the open?

Or—worse—was it all quite deliberate?

Her legs felt disturbingly unsteady beneath her so that she stumbled on the tiled surround of the pool.

What if Joaquin had actually remembered? What if the lost traces of those few weeks had come back to him in their entirety and he was about to tell her so? And he was using the echoes of that night to give her warning of what was coming?

P
LEASE
, no! It couldn’t be that!

Cassie couldn’t bear it if anguish came so soon after the wonderful way he had just made love to her. If he threw it all in her face and told her that he never wanted to see her again.

She couldn’t go through it.

‘No!’

The way Joaquin whirled round, his movement sharply abrupt, his face set into an expression of shock, told her that she had revealed too much. Her voice had given away all the panic that was building up inside her, and she had alerted him only too clearly to her precarious state of mind.

‘No?’ he questioned sharply, the edge on the single syllable chilling her blood in spite of the warmth of the night. ‘Why no,
querida
? What is wrong?’

‘I—I can’t.’

‘Can’t what?’

‘Can’t—can’t do this.’

His expression had stiffened even more, those dark pools of eyes watching her, suspicion stamped onto every hard line of his face. He still held her hand, but she could feel the difference in his grasp, the tightness that spoke of rigid control, of the determination to impose his will on the situation.

‘Cassie…’

The warning note she dreaded was back, making the pronunciation of her name worryingly ominous.

‘Just what is it that you cannot do? What are you afraid of?’

Oh, how did she answer that? A sudden high-pitched
sound, the flurry of wings, and a swirl of tiny dark forms in the air gave her an answer that she grabbed at desperately.

‘The bats!’

She sounded shaken enough to be genuine and as one of the small night flyers came close she flinched away convincingly.

‘I don’t like the bats—they—’

‘They’re nothing to be afraid of!’ Joaquin put in swiftly and to her relief she realised that the faint shake in his voice was put there by laughter, the anger and impatience receding slightly.

‘Not for you perhaps! But I hate the way they fly around your head—and they squeak!’

‘They squeak!’

Now Joaquin was laughing openly, his head thrown back, his strong features wonderfully relaxed in a way that helped to ease the desperate racing of her heart.

‘And that is what worries you? They will do you no harm,
belleza
. None at all. As a matter of fact when I was a small boy I once tried to capture one to keep as a pet.’

‘You did?’

Intrigued by the image and by the thought of him as a young child, Cassie turned fascinated eyes on his shadowed face.

‘Did you succeed?’

Joaquin nodded briefly, his laughter easing.

‘But I only kept it for a day or so. I had forgotten that bats are nocturnal—Señora did nothing at all in the light, and I was asleep when she wanted to be active.’

‘Señora? Is that what you called it?’

‘Señora Murciélago. Dame Bat, if you like. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even sure if she was a she—but I thought she might be. She was cute. So you see, you have chosen the perfect man.’

‘I have?’

The abrupt transition from laughter to sober-faced gravity was disturbing, making her nerves tighten painfully again.

‘For what?’

To protect you from bats—for the rest of your life if you’ll let me. Cassandra…’

He was even more serious now, his expression sombre and intent, deep-set eyes searching her face.

‘No,’ she said fearfully, sensing what was coming, and dreading it. ‘No, please.’

But Joaquin ignored her, his touch on her hand gentling again as he drew her close, bringing her up against his chest. His hand came under her chin, lifted her face to his, black eyes burning into blue as he looked down at her.

‘Marry me, Cassandra,’ he said softly. ‘Marry me and I promise I’ll keep you safe from all the bats—safe from anything—everything. I promise.’

Safe.
The word seemed to form a tight knot in her throat, closing it off, threatening to choke her.

He would keep her safe from anything—from everything—but he couldn’t keep her safe from himself.

‘But—but you said that you don’t d-do marriage…’

Oh, how she wished he would look away. Wished that that searing dark gaze would look anywhere but into her face where she was sure that all her fears and her doubts, all her secrets, must be openly etched for him to read.

‘You don’t do commitment,’ she whispered, low and desperate. ‘N-no ties.’

‘I said that, but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.’

‘And—and you are now? Thinking straight?’

But of course he couldn’t be. How could he be thinking straight when he didn’t have all the facts at his disposal? How could he know what he felt when he didn’t know what had happened, what he had believed so totally about her? How could he ask her to marry him when he didn’t even really know who she was any more?

‘I think I am.’

He sounded so confident. But he couldn’t be. And she couldn’t trust a word he was saying until the truth was out.

The stunning masculine face before her blurred terribly and the bitter sting of salt was in the tears that were pushing at the back of her eyes. But she couldn’t let them fall, even though she had to bite her lip hard against the need to abandon herself to them, using the small pain to hold back the misery that she felt inside.

‘I believe I’ve never thought straighter in my whole life. That it’s only now that I know what I want—what I truly want.’

‘And—’ She could hardly catch her breath enough to say it. ‘And that is?’

‘Oh, Cassandra,
querida
, you know—what I want is
you
.’

Taking her hand again, he led her to the wooden lounger and sank down onto it, drawing her down after him. Side by side on the padded cushions, he held both her hands in his, once more looking deep and fixedly into her clouded, troubled eyes.

‘Let me tell you something about my family. About my father—and Ramón and Alex.’

Cassie could only nod in silence and wait for him to speak. She had never quite been able to work out the complicated relationships that made up Joaquin’s family tree.

‘You know that both my brothers are really only half-brothers—that we all have the same father, but different mothers? I was just fifteen when I found out about Ramón—when I learned that my father had been unfaithful to my mother. That he had fathered another child with a lover he had been seeing almost from the beginning of his marriage. And then, some years later, Alex too turned up—another son—another woman as his mother. Another infidelity.’

Shaking his dark head, he looked away from her, staring
out at the water in the pool, his eyes seeming glazed and unfocused in the moonlight.

‘I thought they had the perfect marriage. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was just an arranged union—no love, no commitment in it. Nothing but a dynastic arrangement, with a financial bonus thrown in. My father had never meant to stay true to his marriage vows. And I was his son. So like him, everyone said. So very like him.’

‘But not in your career,’ Cassie had to put in. ‘You never wanted to work in the media—you always dreamed of setting up your own vineyard, developing the wines.’

‘El Loco?’

Joaquin’s mouth twisted up slightly at one side in an expression of cynical amusement.

‘And that’s the only way we’re different—but in the way I wanted to be unlike him, I was so damn similar. Like father, like son—and I was his son in every other way, or so I thought. I thought I could never be happy with just one woman. That like him I was meant to play the field, a new relationship every year—a new woman in my bed.’

White teeth digging into her bottom lip again, Cassie ducked her head to hide the sheen of tears that she knew was making her eyes glisten betrayingly. Joaquin was telling her nothing she didn’t already know. And he was explaining it much more gently than he had done before, when he had thrown that ‘no ties, no commitment’ speech right in her face. But, in spite of that gentleness, this time it hurt even worse than before. Because this time she knew that he was telling her nothing but the truth.

‘I understand,’ she sighed and was stunned when he caught at her shoulders, shaking her almost roughly in an attempt to drive his message home to her.

‘No, you don’t,
belleza
—you can’t!’ he told her harshly. ‘You wouldn’t use that tone if you knew what I was really trying to say. What I truly want you to know.’

‘I don’t?’

Cassie’s head came up, blue eyes dazed-looking under the frown of confusion that drew her fair brows together.

‘I can’t—what do you want me to know?’

‘That I’ve realised that I’m not like my father. That I no longer want to drift from woman to woman, from one relationship to another. I’ve changed. I need you to believe that. And I want you to have this…’

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small dark blue box. When he flicked it open the brilliant, perfect solitaire gleamed wonderfully in the light of the moon, and it was so beautiful that Cassie felt as if her heart had stopped simply at the sight of it. And when her pulse started up again, making her breathe once more, it went rocketing along her veins, racing wildly all over her body.

‘Joaquin…’ she croaked, but her voice died on her, leaving her incapable of managing another word.

‘Marry me, Cassandra,’ Joaquin went on, his voice raw and husky in a way she had never heard before. ‘Say you’ll accept my proposal—that you’ll let me be with you for ever. And believe that I mean it.’

‘I believe you.’

The terrifying thing was that she
did
believe him. That there was no room for doubt in her mind when she looked into the sombre cast of his face, into the burning depths of his eyes. Joaquin meant this. He meant every word of it. At least as much of it as he could believe without knowing what had happened between them.

Perhaps if she hadn’t been sitting here, on this lounger where they had been that night, perhaps if she hadn’t been wearing the robe that he had taken as part evidence against her when he had come to Ramón’s flat, then she might have been able to cope with this. Might even have allowed herself to hope. But the terrible, the heart-wrenchingly bitter irony was the fact that now, at last, when the man she loved had finally proposed to her in a way that she could believe, a way that should have made her heart sing with joy, in
stead it dropped her spirits right down to their lowest possible ebb, draining all the life, all the hope of happiness from her.

‘Then say yes,’ Joaquin urged. ‘Say you’ll marry me.’

‘I don’t—I…’

‘You must have known that this was coming. Must have understood that you were different—that you were special to me.’

‘Must I?’

‘But of course!’

Joaquin dismissed the question as if it was the most ridiculous thing imaginable.

‘You know how long we’ve been together—that you’re the only woman I’ve ever stayed with longer than a year.’

Longer than a year!

Cassie almost broke down at the savage pain of it, wanting to wrap her arms around her trembling body to hold herself together, stop herself from falling apart. The nausea that had troubled her before was back in full force and she felt weak and shaken, all her strength seeming to have seeped away in the time they had been outside.

Technically, she supposed it was true. They had been together for more than the year that Joaquin normally allowed his relationships to last. But they had only Joaquin’s loss of memory to thank for that. Without it, they would have separated and gone their different ways more than two weeks ago. And when those missing days resurfaced in Joaquin’s mind, he was going to know that too and deeply regret the impetuous proposal he had just made.

‘So what’s your answer?’

‘I—you see—I—no! No, I can’t! No, I won’t! I won’t marry you. Please don’t ask me! I won’t—Joaquin, the answer is
no
!’

No?

It was the last thing he had been expecting. It exploded
in his face like a land-mine, blasting his thoughts into oblivion, leaving him incapable of focusing on anything.

Anything except that one, appalling, unwanted, hateful word.

‘No?’
he said, his voice not sounding like his own. ‘No! You don’t mean that!’

‘I do,’ Cassie returned, but there was no conviction in her voice, nothing that made him believe her totally. At least not enough to give up.

‘I won’t accept it.’

‘Oh, please! You must! You have to!’

The look on her pale face pleaded with him to believe her, but he was in no mood to take what she was saying.

‘Have to?’ he echoed savagely, hating the phrase. ‘Have to—and tell me,
querida
, why the hell do I
have
to accept this?’

‘Because of your accident—you said you were thinking straight but you can’t possibly be. You can’t really know what you feel. You might regret this when your memory comes back.’

‘Never! I am telling you that I love you. How can I ever regret that? Cassandra, I don’t care about my memory of those four weeks—’

Were those tears in her eyes or just the reflection of the moonlight? Tears were good—if they meant that she was weakening. That she might reconsider. But the next moment took his hopes and dashed them to the ground.

‘But I do. I have to. I can’t marry you. You have to take my answer, Joaquin—it’s the only one I can give you for now.’

For now.

He pounced on the words. ‘For now’ sounded more hopeful. It sounded like a reprieve, holding the door open just a tiny crack.

‘I shall ask you again,’ he told her. ‘Some day my damn
memory must come back, and when it does I’ll ask you again to be my wife.’

It was supposed to make her feel better. To show her that he really was serious about this. That he meant every word he had said. But somehow it seemed to have exactly the opposite effect. If it was possible, her pale skin lost even more colour so that it appeared almost translucent and her eyes seemed dulled and dazed.

‘All right, then,’ she said softly, wearily. ‘I’ll go along with that. When your memory comes back, if you still want to ask me again, then I promise I’ll listen.’