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As much as Rafael’s entire concentration was focused on Gilly and Ben, Sarah’s was relentlessly bent on him. Somehow she could sense his raw frustration, his uncertainty of what to do next. It was there in the taut lines of his lean, powerful body, in the angle of his arrogant dark head and the silent jut of his jawline. Something poignant and unnameable in his chosen isolation tore at her heart and sent her barriers crashing down, forcing her to rise above the terrible, tortured confusion of her own emotions. Had he intended to come here? Or had he not been able to stay away? His shock over the discovery that he was a father had understandably been replaced by a burning desire for knowledge. Yet had there been any other children of the same age and colouring with the twins he might not have been able to identify them. Pain clenched her stomach muscles as he turned away and began heading for the exit without making any attempt to approach either her or the children.
Without thinking about it, Sarah found herself racing after him. She was within feet of him when he spun round fluidly to face her. The cold anger in his set dark features was a physical entity, powered by the bitter denunciation in his hard stare.
‘Por que?’ he demanded of her and in that single phrase dwelt a wealth of judgement and bitterness. ‘Why?’
Sarah paled. ‘We have to talk.’
‘Talk? Why should I talk to you now?’ he flared. ‘Did you talk to me when you decided you wanted out of our marriage? No. You hid behind your parents. You made your choice, Sarah. Now you have to live with it.’
‘You gave me an ultimatum,’ she reminded him in a hot surge of spirit. ‘How many daughters are willing to cut off their parents and never see them again?’
‘I didn’t ask you to choose. I made the decision,’ Rafael drawled with unflinching clarity. ‘You were my wife. Your loyalty should have been to your husband.’
Angrily she threw her head back and challenged him. ‘You simply expected me to obey you, didn’t you?’
Apparently unaware of any inherent fault in such reasoning, Rafael surveyed her with all the fierce, uncompromising pride that was his strength. ‘What else would I expect?’ he turned the question boldly back on her. ‘I knew what had to be done if our marriage was to survive. I chose the only course.’
‘And you never had any doubt of that, did you?’ Helpless sarcasm thickened her voice.
‘Self-doubt is not a habit of mine. I stand by my decisions,’ he delivered deflatingly.
‘In the same way I suppose it never occurred to you that your responsibilities towards me might extend to more than one fleeting enquiry of my parents as to where I was?’ Sarah retorted sharply.
Dark blood flamed over his high cheekbones, fury in the slashing line of his wide mouth. ‘I believed you were ridding yourself of my child.’
‘You were pretty quick to accept that, weren’t you?’ Her temper was rising steadily. ‘It suited you to believe that. You were having a whale of a time in New York. Your exhibition was a sell-out to rave reviews. Maybe my parents were right about you all along…’ Raggedly she paused for breath.
‘I may thank God that we parted before you hurled lines of that nature,’ Rafael slotted in with biting satire.
‘I expect you do. When you were broke, I was money in the bank. When you weren’t, I was a liability and a pregnant liability at that!’ Sarah condemned in a furious rush of emotion.
‘Eso basta!’ Rafael gritted in an incensed undertone. ‘You think a public park is the place for this?’
Sarah froze, cast a scurrying and anxious glance to either side and established to her own satisfaction that the trees concealed them from general view. ‘If it doesn’t bother me, why should it bother you?’ she slung, growing in stature. ‘You can’t blame me for everything that went wrong!’
His jawline clenched. ‘Can you not speak the truth even now? Why did you marry me?’
‘I…I was unfortunate enough to fall in love with you.’ Cornered into the grudging admission, she felt as though she had lost valuable ground.
‘Whose delusion is that?’ he derided. ‘It has never been mine. Let me refresh your memory. You were desperate to escape your parents but you didn’t have the guts to rebel on your own. You needed me to fight them for you. And when you had made your escape and found the big wide world less to your taste than you had anticipated, you realised that Mama and Papa could be brought to their knees if you hung out long enough. Once you had them there, you graciously agreed to return to the fold…’
‘It wasn’t like that; it was never like that!’
Stinging contempt glittered in his intent gaze. ‘What a shame that you neglected to tell me that I was only a temporary aberration. Then you confused me with your father, es verdad?’
‘My…my father?’ she echoed blankly.
‘That sneaking, carping hypocrite, who has been chasing everything that moves in a skirt since the day you were born!’ he supplied bluntly. ‘That pillar of church and community, that sworn arbiter of other people’s morals with the so-complacent wife. I’ve known about your father’s affairs for years. He’s well known for his…’
‘Stop it!’ she gasped. ‘It’s got nothing to do with us!’
‘Has it not? Were you not hoping for the same set-up when you married me?’ he contradicted roughly.
‘Dear God, no!’ She shuddered, shaken by the secret shame that he had forced out into the open, experiencing afresh the nudges and giggles she had endured from her classmates at school. She was equally shattered by the appalling conclusion he had drawn. ‘I fell in love with you…maybe part of me did want to escape from home but—’
‘Sarah mia,’ he rhymed with burning incredulity. ‘I played a leading role in the spoilt little princess’s drama. I so far misunderstood the rules that I actually dared to get you pregnant. When you realised, you gave me what was undoubtedly the only honest response I ever received from you. You had hysterics and you told me that you’d never forgive me and that you didn’t want my baby!’
What she read in his burnished eyes was hatred. A hatred founded on an anger that had fed on raw bitterness through the intervening years. ‘You never even tried to understand how I felt,’ she gasped strickenly. ‘I was so scared–’
‘Sai. Mama and Papa had not bargained on a baby. Would they consider the little princess sullied beyond repair?’ he scorned.
Sarah shook her head in violent disagreement. ‘I’d never even held a baby before. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to cope. I knew that a baby was usually the last straw in a shaky marriage. I was too young and I felt trapped and that was your fault!’
‘Concerning the past,’ Rafael breathed in blistering response, his dark eyes like hot coals on her over heated skin, ‘I have nothing to say. My behaviour requires no explanation of my conscience.’
‘Like hell it doesn’t! Dammit, don’t you dare walk away from me! You’ve had your say—what about me?’ Trembling, she caught her unruly tongue between her teeth and watched him stride across the road to swing into his powerful car. Once she had done the walking away, the turning aside. Only in her case it had been an attempt to defuse tension and avoid an argument. And nothing, she realised now when it was too late for it to make any difference, could have been guaranteed to infuriate Rafael more. This time she was the one consumed by an angry wave of frustration and it was a new experience for her.
At home again, the twins noisily engrossed in playing in their room, Sarah paced the lounge carpet for over an hour. But it was no use…the memories wouldn’t leave her alone.
At eighteen, her dreams had been of romance and irresponsibility, not of marriage and motherhood. But after one blazing confrontation with her father, Rafael had forced her to make a choice. Either she stayed on in Paris as his wife or she returned home alone. He had not even mentioned the possibility of visiting her in England. No, indeed…Rafael had known exactly how to exert the pressure. And, terrified as she had been of losing him, Sarah had agreed to that recklessly hasty marriage but her first spark of uneasy resentment and apprehension had been born that same day. All her life, her parents had employed pressure of one kind or another to make her conform. Without a second’s hesitation, Rafael had utilised the same weapon.
The wedding in a foreign country, shorn of both frills and family support, had seemed curiously unreal in the aftermath and a disillusioning far cry from her youthful fantasies of the most important day of her life.
‘These things are trivial,’ Rafael had dismissed impatiently, surveying her with brilliant dark eyes already darkening with sensual anticipation.
On their wedding night she had been faced with the reality that Rafael was still virtually a stranger to her. In vain had she suggested that he give her a few days to adjust. His expressive mouth curling with very male amusement, he had ignored the plea, laughing when she struggled awkwardly to explain how she felt. In the bedroom, Rafael had proved to be as unashamedly dominant as he was everywhere else. She had not expected pleasure from sexual intimacy. Her upbringing had been too repressed, inescapably coloured by her mother’s distaste for anything relating to the physical union between a man and a woman.
