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Suddenly she was faced with the acknowledgement that she had carelessly glossed over something huge as if it was no more than a molehill. Behind her the molehill had mushroomed into a volcano. She, who prided herself on her soft heart and her sensitivity, had behaved in the cruellest way imaginable, and as she sat there numbly attempting to justify herself she found that she could not.
There was no excuse for her having allowed Joaquin to spend two entire days believing that Roger was her lover, most particularly not when she was pregnant. Just because she had known it wasn’t true; just because she had been afraid to come clean and admit who she really was there and then. She had hidden behind the defence that she still had to put Cindy first, but that was no defence at all. Yet she had tried to make Joaquin listen and he had refused to listen. He had been in such a temper she had let herself be rebuffed.
When she got back to the townhouse, she was too disturbed by the awareness of her own less than presentable behaviour to be embarrassed by the reality that she was alone. Joaquin was furious with her and she understood why. How could she have treated someone she loved as she had treated him? She knew how volatile he was. Suppose he had just decided right then on the spur of the moment that even for the sake of their child he could not stand to be married to such a selfish, insensitive woman? Recognising what a state she was working herself up into, Lucy stopped pacing the floor and decided that she would be better occupied doing something with herself.
The twelve-foot tree which had been delivered the day before now stood in the hall waiting to be dressed. That evocative pine scent brought back hazy memories of Christmases when Lucy had been a young child. Before her parents had divorced they had always had a real tree, as opposed to an artificial one. Entering into the spirit of the occasion, Joaquin’s urbane manservant had produced boxes and boxes of vintage decorations from the attic where they had lain almost twenty years, since Joaquin’s mother’s death. Apparently Joaquin and his late parents had once spent every Christmas in England.
Reluctant to remove her wedding dress, but determined to keep it clean, Lucy borrowed a large apron, donned it, and began to burrow into the boxes. Her enthusiasm increased with every box she opened, for she found beautiful handmade decorations which had more than stood the test of time. She was standing on a low set of steps fixing an exotic feathered bird to a branch of the tree when the front door opened two hours later and Joaquin reappeared, with a gaily wrapped parcel in his hand. She froze. Three feet into the hall, he froze too. He appeared transfixed by the sight of her.
‘Madre mia!’ Joaquin suddenly exclaimed, and setting aside the parcel in haste, he strode across the hall to close both arms round her. He lifted her down from the steps much as though he was reclaiming her from grievous danger on the edge of a cliff.
‘Are you crazy?’ he demanded tautly. ‘The staff should be doing this.’
Lucy focused on his lean, dark devastatingly handsome face, a tide of sheer heady relief washing over her. ‘I love dressing the tree—’
Joaquin elevated an ebony brow. ‘On your wedding day?’
‘I needed something to do.’ Lucy snatched in a steadying breath. ‘And before you say anything, I’ve got something to say. I wish I could give you some magical explanation of why I let you go that day Roger barged in without making you listen to me, but I can’t! I think I had just got so used to pretending to be Cindy, to being passive on my own account—’
Joaquin reached out and linked his hands with hers in a feeling movement. His brilliant green eyes held hers. ‘I can’t stand passive.’
‘Well, I swear that if you hadn’t come to the church on Cindy’s wedding day I would have come to you to explain!’ Lucy broke in urgently. ‘I was really upset that you should think those things of me.’
Joaquin was now gripping her trembling hands very tightly. Dulled colour marked his proud cheekbones. ‘I shouldn’t have abandoned you in the limo,’ he conceded in a driven undertone. ‘But I was afraid of what else I might say…the damage I would do.’
‘But you were right. I didn’t think of how you might have been feeling.’
‘Por Dios…I felt like I was being ripped apart that day at your sister’s apartment!’ Joaquin admitted grittily. ‘But the crowning nightmare was believing that you were marrying Roger. I came to the church intending to do whatever I had to do to prevent you marrying him but very much afraid that I would be too late.’
‘And instead you found out that I wasn’t even who you thought I was,’ Lucy filled in, shamefaced. ‘Joaquin, I’m so sorry—’
‘No, your concern for your sister was understandable.’ Poised very straight and tall, Joaquin lifted one wide shoulder in an eloquent shrug that dismissed his own previous anger. ‘In the heat of the moment in Guatemala I did make a most dishonourable threat. How were you to know that I would never have carried it out? I am not the kind of man who would sink to the level of carrying disreputable stories about a woman to another man.’
Recognising the distaste stamped in his lean strong face, Lucy sighed. ‘I should have known that too.’
His beautiful mouth compressed. ‘How could you have? From the instant I laid eyes on you I was strongly attracted to you. That angered me, and in an effort to remind myself of who and what I believed you to be I made several offensive remarks. I cannot excuse myself for having said such things to a woman.’
‘I was shocked,’ Lucy recalled ruefully.
‘Sí…I saw that too, and marvelled at it. Then, when you condemned my lack of courtesy, I was outraged—but you were right to reproach me.’
It was balm to Lucy’s ragged nerves to learn that Joaquin had been strongly drawn to her from the moment he met her, and she looked up at him and gave him a rather tremulous smile, for the extent of her relief had brought her emotions very close to the surface. ‘I’m just glad you’re home now. I was scared you were halfway back to Guatemala!’
‘I can be hot-headed, gatita mia,’ Joaquin conceded, his full attention pinned to her lovely smiling face with an intensity that made her incredibly aware of his powerful masculinity. ‘But I assure you that even in the grip of all my stubborn pride and fury, I could not be that big a fool!’
‘I was worried…’ Belatedly becoming aware of the ludicrous apron she was wearing, she tugged her hands from his, only to find herself looking in dismay at her grimy hands. ‘My goodness, I need to wash…I seem to have got more dust on me than the duster!’
Turning away in some chagrin at how she must look clad in her silly apron and with her childishly grubby hands, Lucy started up the stairs.
‘For causing you concern—I apologise…’ Having tracked her up to the landing, Joaquin caught one of the hands she was keeping well away from her gown in his, to plant a kiss almost defiantly into the centre of her palm.
Her knees went wobbly as she collided in shock with his shimmering crystalline gaze. ‘I love your eyes,’ she heard herself mumble.
‘So you told me many times when you were ill…’ His wolfish grin flashed out with charismatic brilliance.
Dredging her attention from him again with the greatest of difficulty, Lucy sped down the bedroom corridor, only to find herself forestalled by Joaquin, saying very decisively when she headed for the guest room she had been using, ‘Wrong door.’
Feeling ridiculously self-conscious over that reminder that they would now be sharing the same bedroom, Lucy hurried further down the passageway and across his bedroom, straight into the en suite bathroom to wash her hands.
‘You are still so shy, querida,’ Joaquin murmured with a rueful amusement that made her cheeks burn as he came to halt in the doorway. ‘Only now do I recognise what a lousy actress you were in Guatemala. I told myself that the innocence I kept on sensing was a good act. I could not bear to want you so much and believe that you were out of reach. For of course, had I known the truth, it would have been dishonourable for me to take advantage of you.’
‘You didn’t do that.?
? Grabbing up a towel, Lucy hastily dried her hands.
‘I did. Don’t you know it’s asking for trouble to go to bed with a man who tells you not to fantasise about a future? It was a line and you swallowed it,’ Joaquin imparted in a seriously pained tone. ‘You should have told me to get lost.’
‘But I didn’t want you to get lost,’ Lucy answered truthfully.
‘You were a virgin…’
Looking anywhere but at him, Lucy nodded her head in embarrassed confirmation.
Joaquin groaned out loud. ‘All that nonsense you spouted to conceal that reality! I would have waited for our wedding night—’
‘Joaquin…this is one of those subjects when cultivating a short memory would be the very nicest thing you could do for me.’ Now frantically engaged in a struggle to untie the knot of the apron strings, so that she could shed the wretched garment and once more look like a normal bride, Lucy found herself receiving help. Joaquin edged her backwards out of the bathroom, spun her gently around and had her out of the apron in two seconds flat.
‘The fault was mine. I was too proud to accept that I could be so much in love with a woman who seemed to be the total opposite of my every ideal,’ Joaquin breathed ruefully.
‘So much in love…?’ That was all Lucy heard, and that confession just pinned her to the spot with a dry mouth and a madly racing heartbeat.
