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‘If it hadn’t been for that kiss I witnessed, I wouldn’t have been so easily convinced,’ Duarte argued. ‘But, at the time, as far as I was concerned, Bliss had no axe to grind and every reason to avoid referring to the fact that her cousin had seduced my wife!’
‘You should have had more faith in me—’
‘After Izabel, trust was a problem for me. As for having more faith,’ Duarte continued, deftly closing his hands to her waist and lifting her off her feet to deposit her down on the bed. He followed her down with easy grace and studied her. ‘I still haven’t heard an explanation of why you asked me the day I found you and Jamie if I was intending to have other women again?’
‘Oh…that!’ Her own ire doused by a dose of the same medicine, it was Emily’s turn to look uncomfortable. ‘Bliss never once said that you had other women but she used to sort of hint that she suspected that you strayed when you were away on business—’
‘Never once,’ Duarte delivered. ‘I always valued our marriage. I would not have risked it—’
‘Even when the bedroom door was locked?’
‘I put that down to your being pregnant…just not being in the mood,’ Duarte confided huskily. ‘But when I saw you with Toby, I put a very different construction on that locked door.’
Raising a newly confident hand, Emily let her fingertips stroke down over one hard sculpted cheekbone in a loving caress. ‘I love you loads and loads and loads but please don’t ask me why it took me so long to decide I wanted a divorce.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Duarte groaned, the last of his tension dissipating as he heard those words and studied her hectically flushed face with intensely appreciative eyes of gold. ‘Every time you mentioned divorce, I went into panic mode. I thought I was going to lose you again. When we were flying into London and I was facing the fact that Bliss was lying and I had got everything wrong, I felt like I was fighting for my life—’
‘So that was why you were behaving that way. Sort of desperate…’ Emily recalled with a heady sensation of having more power than she had ever dared to hope over the male she loved.
‘And you were so convinced that my sole objective was hanging on to Jamie, I saw that if I told you I loved you then, there was no way on earth you were likely to believe me,’ Duarte confessed with a ragged edge roughening his dark deep drawl.
‘You’re probably right. On the other h-hand,’ Emily stammered slightly as a lean hand glided in a possessive sweep from her waist to her breast.
‘You were saying, minha jóia?’
‘I forget…’ And she looked up at him, her fingers lacing into the thick black hair she loved to touch, her aquamarine eyes shimmering over him with wondering satisfaction while he slowly lowered her down on to the pillows.
Duarte frowned and abandoned her with startling abruptness. ‘That reminds me.’
Emily sat up in shock and watched him stride through to his dressing room. ‘Reminds you of what? Where are you going?’
Duarte emerged again with a large parcel which he balanced on the foot of the bed while he ripped off the packaging.
As Emily focused on the painting of herself which she had last seen at Toby’s studio, her soft mouth opened in considerable shock.
‘You were right. Toby is one hell of an artist. I took the painting from him because I felt that he had no right to keep an image of my wife,’ Duarte informed her loftily, a possessive glow in his gaze as he surveyed her. ‘I intended to destroy it but, when I looked at the canvas, I could not bring myself to commit such an act of destruction.’
Emily’s eyes stung. ‘Now I truly believe that you love me—’
‘Never doubt it, minha esposa. I will never stop loving you,’ Duarte swore, abandoning the canvas to gather her back into his strong arms and claim her mouth with hot and wholly appreciative fervour.
Eighteen months later, Emily tucked Jamie into his bed. Their son had learned to walk early and at supersonic speed he’d demonstrated extraordinary persistence at escaping from his cot. A little bed shaped like the toy cars he adored had seemed a safer option for their miniature mountaineer.
Smoothing his tumbled black hair from his brow, she watched him slide into the sleep of exhaustion, contentedly clutching his faded blue teddy and looking impossibly angelic. Throughout the day Jamie ran on pure livewire energy and Emily was very grateful to have not only the assistance of a nanny but also of Victorine, who had become one of Jamie’s most devoted slaves. Emily adored her son too but she was already recognising many of Duarte’s traits in their son. The try, try again determination, the bone-deep stubbornness and the hot temper—and she was equally grateful that Jamie had a father willing to exert loving but firm control.
