AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My life was like that, too,” she whispered. “Only I—I didn’t have a child to love.”
He nodded. “Susu’s made all the difference for me. Sometimes I think how ironic it is that something so wonderful could have come out of a marriage as bad as mine and Alexandra’s.”
“But you loved her, didn’t you? Alexandra, I mean.”
“I suppose I did. Hell, I thought I did. But that was a long time ago.”
Jennifer turned toward him.
“I thought, from what Constancia said, that you and she—that you and Alexandra still had something between you.”
“We do. We have an on-again, off-again battle over Susanna.”
“You mean—your wife…”
“My ex-wife,” he said. “Don’t ever forget the ex.”
“She wants custody?”
Roarke brushed his lips over Jennifer’s. Then he got to his feet and walked slowly to the balcony railing.
“Alexandra never wants the same thing two weeks running,” he said, tucking his hands in his pants pockets as he stared out over the dark sea. “It charmed me at first, that will-o’-the-wisp quality, but I learned fast that’s not what it really is. She’s like a greedy child. Something interests her one moment and the next, she couldn’t care less.”
“Constancia told me that she was—that she is very beautiful.”
“You know that old saw about beauty being skin deep? That’s Alexandra.” He sighed. “Actually, what she is is amazingly calculating. She came after me like a house afire—Christ, that sounds cold-blooded, but it’s the truth. She’d always had a little money of her own, but never enough to keep her happy. And there I was, weary of playing the field, ready to settle down. So she lied.”
Jennifer swung her feet to the floor. A coldness was seeping into her bones. She lied. His ex had lied…
“She said she wanted to settle down too. That she wanted to make a home with the right man, that she wanted children, a family…” His tone hardened. “Before I knew it, we were married.”
“But she didn’t want those things after all,” Jennifer whispered.
Roarke gave a harsh laugh.
“That’s the understatement of the year. Within a couple of months, she dropped the pretense. She wanted to party every weekend, to fly to wherever the action was. And I’d had my fill of all that. What I wanted was peace and quiet.”
“Was that when you bought Isla de la Pantera?”
“No. I’d bought the island just before I met Alexandra and I’d started building a house right away. In fact, we spent a couple of weekends there. She said she loved it… But she’d lied about that too. Once we moved in, she told me the truth, that she hated the house, the island, hated everything about the place.” He turned and looked at Jennifer. “The marriage was a disaster by then anyway. Still, I offered to make a last stab at pulling things together. I said we’d move off the island, try living in San Juan for a while.”
“And?”
Roarke was silent while the minutes dragged by. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
“I came home from work one night and she was gone. No note, no message, just a whirlwind of whispers left in her wake.” His mouth twisted; he gave a bitter laugh. “She’d run away with her tennis pro. A classic, right?”
Jennifer stood up. “But how could she? How could she have done such a thing to you? To Susanna?”
“We hadn’t had Susanna yet. Besides, if you knew Alexandra, you wouldn’t ask the question. Alexandra never gives a thought to anyone but herself.” Roarke turned, leaned his arms on the balcony railing and gazed out across the water again. “She took her lover with her to Paris. Then I cut her off from my checking account, from all my assets, and he left her. She took up with somebody else, some guy with a title from a place nobody every heard of. Apparently, that didn’t last either. A couple of months later, he left her flat.”
“It must have been awful for you,” Jennifer said quietly.
“To be honest, once I got over the shock, I was happy to be rid of her. I divorced her as quickly as I could. When she received the papers, she phoned me. She begged me to take her back. She cried—she was always very good at that—and she asked me if there wasn’t anything in the world that would make me change my mind. I said no. I even managed to wish her well—and I hung up the phone and tried to get on with my life.” He paused. “And then,” he said, his voice roughening, “the doorbell rang one night. And there she was. Alexandra.”
“And you took her back.”
Roarke sighed. “Yes. Hell, what else could I do?”
