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‘You can be such a baby sometimes.’ His beautiful obsidian gaze had a lethal gleam in the moonlight, the anger and rawness tamped down out of her sight, patently too private for her viewing. ‘If I could put it all behind me and no longer think about it, I would have done so by now.’
In comparison, a cascade of happy images gleaned from recent weeks was flooding Jemima’s thoughts. Everything she valued, not just happiness, was at risk and it terrified her. She cursed Marco and wished she had never befriended him and she hovered within reach of Alejandro, wanting to be needed, needing to be wanted if that was all she could have.
‘Come to bed,’ she whispered soft and low, despising herself for sinking low enough to play that card.
‘I’m not up for that either tonight,’ Alejandro asserted with chilling bite.
Talking to him in such a mood was like death by a thousand tiny cuts, Jemima reflected wildly. He was too controlled to shout at her. He wouldn’t tell her what he was thinking, but then he didn’t really need to, did he? Not when his derision could seep through the cracks to show on the surface and burn her like acid sprinkled on tender skin.
‘Why did you ask me to give our marriage another chance if you were planning to behave like this?’ Jemima slung at him accusingly.
‘I never pretended I could give you a clean slate but I believe I’ve done reasonably well in the circumstances—’
‘Well, I disagree!’ Jemima shot at him furiously, temper clawing up through her with such speed and ferocity that the strength of her anger almost took her by surprise. ‘In fact I think you are screwing our relationship up this time just the way you did last time.’
Alejandro viewed her with cold dark eyes that reflected the silvery moonlight. If she was an alley cat in a fight, he was the equivalent of a deadly rapier blade flashing without warning. ‘I screwed it up?’ he traded very drily.
‘When you are finally forced to accept that I never had an affair with your brother, who are you going to blame then?’ Jemima demanded between gritted teeth. ‘But at the rate you’re going now, we won’t last that long. You might not be forgiving, Alejandro, but neither am I and I’m beginning to think that I’ve wasted enough of my youth on a dead relationship—’
His stunning bone structure was now visible below his bronzed skin, his potent tension patent in his set jaw line and the stillness of his tall muscular body. ‘It’s not dead—’
‘Right at this minute it feels like it’s as dead as a dodo,’ Jemima pronounced, spelling out that comparison in defiant disagreement. ‘I shouldn’t be wasting time here on you. I should be getting a divorce and looking for a man who really wants me…not some guy tearing us both apart over an affair that never happened!’
‘I really want you,’ Alejandro bit out in raw dissent. ‘I won’t agree to a divorce.’
‘Can’t live with me, can’t live without me,’ Jemima parried shakily, fighting to get a grip on her flailing emotions. ‘But I can get by without you. I’ve proved it. I had a good life in Charlbury St Helen’s…’
His well-shaped mouth curled into a sardonic smile. ‘But not so good that you weren’t prepared to walk away from all of it to come back to a life of luxury with me!’
Turning pale with rage at that taunt, Jemima trembled. ‘I only came back here to try again for Alfie’s benefit. Don’t you dare try to make out that I’m some sort of gold-digger!’
Silence fell like a blanket and it seemed to use up all the available oxygen as Jemima waited impatiently for him to take back that final taunt. He stared steadily back at her as if she had got what she deserved in that exchange and, in a way, she supposed she had. Her refusal to embrace the role of the disgraced wife caught out in adultery lay between them, an obstacle neither of them could overcome. Alejandro was very proud, but he might have managed to come to terms with what he believed she had done had she enabled him to believe that she was truly sorry. In the absence of that development there was no natural way forward and both of them were stuck in their respective opposite corners.
Her small face stiff, Jemima threw him a look of angry reproach. ‘I never wanted you for your money,’ she told him heatedly. ‘I may have got in a bit of a mess and spent more money than I should have done when we were first married, but it wasn’t done out of greed and there was never any plan to rip you off.’
His brilliant gaze was intent but wary and locked to her every changing expression. ‘I can believe that,’ he said, surprising her with that declaration of faith.
‘I am really sorry about the money—I was stupid,’ Jemima admitted, warming to a topic that she could be honest about on at least one level. She had indeed been stupid: she had thrown away thousands and thousands of pounds and yet she still could not bring herself to tell him what she had done with it.
Alejandro took a jerky step forward. ‘It was a case of bad timing. My business enterprises were over-extended. The winds of recession were howling around us and I was struggling to just hold onto what I had. It was the worst possible moment for you to go mad with money…but then I shouldn’t have left you access to so much of it.’
Jemima was breathing rapidly and by the time he had finished speaking her lower lip had dropped fully away from the upper while she gaped at him in unconcealed astonishment. ‘Are you saying that you had financial problems a couple of years ago when we were still living together?’ she gasped in disbelief. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
Alejandro’s handsome mouth compressed into a wry line. ‘I didn’t want to worry you…’
Her wide eyes prickled with a sudden hot rush of spontaneous tears. ‘But I thought you were so rich,’ she framed before she could think better of using that immature phraseology.
‘I know. I knew you hadn’t a clue there was anything to worry about,’ Alejandro murmured ruefully. ‘But the truth is that my father left so much money to my stepmother and Marco when he died that up until quite recently it was a struggle for me just to keep the estate afloat.’
Jemima was shaking her head slowly back and forth in a negative motion. She could not hide how shocked she was by what he had confessed. ‘I had no idea. You really should have told me, Alejandro. In fact, not only did you not tell me there was a problem, you seemed to go out of your way to throw loads of money and expensive gifts at me,’ she reminded him tautly. ‘Why the heck did you do that?’
‘You wanted the whole fairy tale along with the castle and I very much wanted you to have it as well,’ Alejandro admitted with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘How could I tell you that I was in danger of losing it all?’
‘All the hours you were working, turning night into day…you were never at home,’ she muttered unsteadily, fighting to hold the tears back with all her might. ‘You were trying to keep your businesses afloat?’
‘Yes, and the extra work did pay off in one regard. I secured new contracts and in the end the financial tide turned, but by then it was too late: I had lost my wife,’ Alejandro intoned bleakly.
Her generous mouth wobbled at that reminder. She wanted to hug him, but at the same time she wanted to slap him really hard for keeping secrets from her. He had treated her like a fragile little girl who couldn’t cope with the grown up stuff when, in actuality, she had never been that naïve even as a child. She was appalled to appreciate that he had undertaken such a struggle and worked such long thankless hours while she went out on endless shopping trips and went out at night clubbing with Marco.
‘Alejandro…if you had told me the truth, shared the bad stuff with me instead of leaving me in ignorance, things would have been so very different,’ Jemima breathed unevenly, tears rolling down her cheeks unchecked until she dashed a hand across her face in an embarrassed gesture and sniffed furiously. ‘I would’ve understood. I would have made allowances.’
Alejandro braced a hand to her slender spine and pressed her back indoors where he handed her a tissue. ‘I’m not sure anything would have been different. You were very young and naïve and y
ou were already pregnant and unhappy and at the time I don’t think you could have coped with any more stress.’
He was wrong, but she didn’t argue with him because she was too choked up to do so. She knew that as much as anything else his fierce pride would have prevented him from telling her that he had financial problems. He was an old-fashioned guy and he had always seen it as solely his role to provide for her needs. He had loved to spoil her with unexpected gifts and treats, to give her the frills he knew she had never had before she met him. She could have cried her heart out in that instant for all she had truly wanted from him two years earlier were his precious time and attention, not his wealth or what it could buy her.
‘I didn’t expect you to be my superhero all the time,’ Jemima told him awkwardly, her voice hoarse as she dabbed at her damp cheeks. ‘If you’d confided in me, I would never have spent so much time with your brother. I felt neglected. I thought you regretted marrying me and you were bored and that that’s why you never came home.’
‘It never would have occurred to me that telling you I was on the brink of losing everything, including our home, might save my marriage,’ Alejandro confided, his cynical doubt in that likelihood unconcealed.
‘Well, that just goes to show how very little you know about me. I’m very loyal and I would have stuck by you through thick and thin!’ Jemima claimed proudly.
