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‘Since very soon after I met you, only I didn’t want to admit it even to myself because it made me feel so powerless, querida,’ he confided heavily.
‘But you never told me that you loved me then.’
‘I was stingy with the words,’ Alejandro admitted ruefully. ‘But why do you think I married you? We were dynamite in bed together, but I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t felt a great deal more for you. I was crushed when you walked out on our marriage.’
‘Maybe it was for the best.’ Jemima sighed, her violet eyes pools of deep reflective emotion. ‘I needed to grow up a lot. I was too immature for you.’
‘I knew you were too young to get married, but I couldn’t face waiting any longer for you. I wouldn’t even wait long enough for my stepmother to organise a wedding for us,’ he pointed out.
‘I didn’t even know that that was ever an option.’
‘It wasn’t once I realised how long the arrangements would take. I was counting the days until I could bring you back to Spain. That’s why I opted for a quick ceremony in England.’
For the first time she began believing in what he was telling her and a wondering smile lit up her face. ‘We rushed into getting married…’
‘But with the very best of intentions,’ he traded. ‘Don’t ever walk out on me again.’
‘I won’t.’ Jemima hesitated as a long-suppressed thought occurred to her and then spoke up. ‘After I left were there other women…affairs?’
‘No. I told myself I would wait until I was divorced,’ Alejandro extended. ‘But I didn’t want anyone else. I still wanted you.’
‘There wasn’t anyone else for me either,’ Jemima volunteered.
He framed her cheekbones with long brown fingers and regarded her intently. ‘Don’t ever leave me again.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she declared, and then she blushed. ‘Apart from, well, if you should feel like it, our bedroom.’
It took a moment for Alejandro to grasp that invitation and then he wasted no time in vaulting upright and grasping her hand. ‘Shouldn’t I take you to a doctor to get that bruise on your head checked?’
‘It’s a bump and I saw stars for an instant, that’s all. What I really want…’
‘I’m more than ready to give you, preciosa mia,’ Alejandro intoned with raging enthusiasm, pausing only to bundle her into his arms and mount the stairs with her clasped to his chest like a valued gift.
But Jessica had yet to forgive him for those nights she had lain awake wondering. ‘I was worried that, maybe, as far as you were concerned, the passion had gone off the boil…’
‘I’m on the boil round the clock!’ Alejandro contradicted with a feeling groan, shouldering open the bedroom door and tumbling her down on the bed with an impressive amount of energy. ‘I always want you.’
And he discarded her clothes and his in an untidy heap while he stole hot, hungry kisses from her willing mouth. His hands found her swollen breasts, the tender peaks and the moist heat between her legs. Seconds later he plunged into her and the intensity of her response hit fever pitch. Her orgasm roared up through her like an unstoppable fountain of burning sparks. She came apart in his arms, crying out her wild hot pleasure.
‘Is this the optimum moment to tell you that I forgot to use a condom, mi corazón?’ Alejandro drawled, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to catch his breath in the aftermath.
Jemima froze, thought about the possible consequences and then gave him a great big sunny smile because he had called her, ‘my heart’. ‘I suppose it must be because I forgot as well.’
‘I would love to have another baby with you,’ Alejandro husked, his dark golden eyes full of tenderness as he kissed her and held her close with possessive arms. ‘I would like it very much indeed.’
‘We could always try.’
Alejandro lifted his dark head and looked down at her with a heart stopping grin that made her feel all warm and squashy inside. ‘I would like trying to get you pregnant very much as well, preciosa mia.’
And if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,’ Jemima reminded him with dancing eyes of amusement.
‘That strikes me as the perfect blueprint for a second honeymoon. We’ll go to the coast—Alfie will love the beach,’ Alejandro forecast with satisfaction.
‘I love you, Alejandro Navarro Vasquez,’ Jemima told him, hugging him tightly to her.
‘But not as much as I love you, mi vide,’ Alejandro countered. ‘You and Alfie are my whole world. Without you I would have nothing.’
Afloat on a wonderful cloud of happy contentment with all her worries and fears laid to rest, Jemima kissed him with tender loving appreciation.
A year later, Jemima gave birth to her daughter, Candice, a blue-eyed, black-haired little darling, who charmed both her parents and her big brother long before she gave them her first smile.
Jemima had sold her florist’s shop in the village of Charlbury St Helens and had decided against opening a similar business in Spain because to make it a viable full-time enterprise she would have had to base it in Seville. Besides, decorating houses with flowers was less of a tradition in her adopted country. She did act as a floral consultant for several smart weddings and events in the extended family circle and once she learned that she was carrying her second child she was no longer concerned about how she would fill her time. Her fear that her pregnancy would be as difficult as the first proved unfounded and she suffered very little sickness and, when the time came, enjoyed a straightforward delivery. Raising her children, acting as Alejandro’s hostess when they entertained at the castle, and continuing to take a strong interest in the charity that supported the women’s shelter and enshrined the cause of battered women kept Jemima more than sufficiently busy.
Flora flew out every three months or so for a visit. Beatriz met an architect at a family christening and was married to him within six months. Currently expecting her first child, Beatriz was a good deal more confident than she had once been and remained Jemima’s closest friend in Spain. Of all of them, Doña Hortencia had changed the least. Although Marco still visited his mother, relations were often strained between them because it remained a challenge for her to accept him as he was. On the other hand, her strong desire to retain her ties with the castle had ensured that the older woman had become much more polite to Jemima.
Alejandro and Marco had repaired their brotherly bond to some extent but past history ensured that Alejandro remained wary. Marco, however, was flourishing at the art gallery in New York and, having found his true metier, was steadily climbing the career ladder. In the field of business, the brothers shared a very strong bond indeed.
Alfie was thriving and had recently started preschool, which was improving his grasp of Spanish by leaps and bounds. Stephen Grey had sold a story about his wea
lthy daughter and son-in-law to a downmarket British tabloid but the article hadn’t amounted to much and had attracted little attention. Since then Jemima had heard nothing from her father, although Alejandro had established that the older man had recently lost his freedom, having been returned to jail for committing an offence.
Jemima remained exuberantly happy with her life and never allowed herself to forget how close she had come to losing Alejandro and the marriage that had become the centre of her world. She told him just about everything and hid almost nothing from him and, in turn, he tried to talk more to her and share his deeper concerns. If he was working very long hours, Jemima stayed in Seville so that they saw more of each other. With a little compromise and mutual respect on both sides, they had ensured that they were closer than ever by the time that they celebrated the first anniversary of their reconciliation with a holiday in England.
Three months on from that, Jemima was in the Seville apartment, awaiting the sound of Alejandro’s key in the lock on the front door. When she heard it, she flew out of bed and raced out to the hall, a slight figure in a black silk nightdress.
Alejandro leant back against the door to shut it, all the while studying her with appreciative dark golden eyes and a charismatic smile that made her tummy flip. ‘You make coming home such an event, esposa mia,’ he told her huskily.
‘You’ve already eaten, haven’t you?’ she checked, moving forward to trail his jacket off his shoulders and lock flirtatious fingers round his tie to ease it slowly out from below his collar.
‘I ordered in food once I knew that the talks would run late.’ Keen to be of help, Alejandro jerked his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and kicked off his shoes. He knew their housekeeper would find a trail of clothes leading down to the bedroom in the morning but he didn’t care. He was delighted when his wife pounced on him. His shirt drifted down to the floor.
