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“Don’t worry.” Reaching into his pocket, he held up the key. “I have it.”
Pushing open the door to the penthouse apartment, he let Lola enter first, with the baby. As she passed him, Rodrigo’s gaze traced hungrily over the lush curves of his wife’s body.
Her eyes were wide as she looked around the elegant, minimalist apartment with its large windows and view of the park and much of Madrid, beneath the Spanish sky. “This was your childhood home?”
He remembered the screaming, the expensive clutter, the broken glass. “It didn’t always look like this.”
“But still.” The edges of her lips lifted as she turned back to him. “You should have seen the place I grew up.”
“A trailer,” he said. “On the edge of the California desert.”
Lola’s hazel eyes went wide. Her beautiful face turned pale as she breathed, “How do you know that?”
He came closer. “I had to find out what was true.”
“You had me investigated?” He heard cold anger beneath her voice. He shrugged.
“I had to know if I could trust you.”
“And now?”
Reaching out, he pulled her into his arms.
“Now I do,” he whispered, and he lowered his mouth ruthlessly to hers.
CHAPTER SIX
SINCE THEY WERE in Madrid the day before the awards ceremony, Rodrigo decided to visit the set of his company’s new prestige film, a historical drama-romance of the Spanish Civil War currently being shot near the Plaza de Canalejas.
But even there, as he discussed the production’s progress with the film’s director, his eyes rarely strayed from his wife.
He couldn’t look away from her. The way her beautiful face lit up as she chatted with the cast and crew. The warmth of her hazel eyes. The joy of her smile.
Lola was more beautiful than the star of any movie, he thought. Her long, highlighted hair swayed over her shoulders, caressing the tops of her breasts. She was dressed modestly, in her black coat and jeans that showed off her shape. As she pushed the baby stroller, she seemed utterly unaware of the fact that wherever she went, Rodrigo’s eyes followed her.
Every other man’s, too.
As she walked, her curvy body moved so gracefully and sensually, she seemed to be dancing to unheard music. Rodrigo frowned when he saw her speaking earnestly to the star of the film, a famous Spanish actress whom Rodrigo had once known well. Very well.
Ten years before, when Rodrigo was just twenty-seven—in the first flush of success, having expanded the derelict Madrid studio he’d inherited from his father to twenty employees, including Marnie McAdam—he’d been briefly engaged to Pia Ramirez.
He’d fallen in love with Pia before they’d even met, while watching her onscreen, where she’d played a poignant heroine who sacrificed everything for love before she died, nobly and beautifully, at the end of the film. Five years older than Rodrigo, she’d seemed equally lovestruck after their first date. Within two weeks, he’d proposed marriage, and she’d accepted.
A month later, he’d been anonymously sent photos of Pia naked in bed with a man he didn’t recognize. Young and naive as he’d been then, it had nearly killed him.
Little had Rodrigo known that this pattern would be repeated twice more, with two other women. A quick engagement, followed by an equally swift betrayal. With photographs.
But a few months earlier, when the director had wanted to hire Pia for this film, Rodrigo hadn’t tried to stop him. Pia was talented and, at forty-two, still a major draw at the international box office. His other two ex-fiancées also still worked in the movie industry, and he’d never tried to hurt their careers. If you blacklisted everyone who betrayed you in Hollywood, you’d have no one left to work with.
But now, as the director continued to talk anxiously about the film’s dailies and bloating budget, Rodrigo barely listened. His eyes kept falling on his wife talking to his former fiancée. He wondered what the two women could
be talking about so intently. Him? No, surely not. Why would they?
Rodrigo’s gaze dropped to Lola’s backside, her hips. The gentle curve of her waist. She drew him like honey. He could hardly wait to take her home and—
He watched Lola take her phone out of her coat pocket. Looking down at it, she read something and smiled. A warm, intimate smile. As if she had a wicked secret. Still smiling, she tucked the phone back in her pocket.
What message could make her smile like that?
