AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Guy flicked his eyes from the screen of his laptop to the view of Madrid, chasing the setting sun, trying to see the warmth in its firetail even when he hadn’t felt anything like warmth in the eight weeks since Addie had left Madrid.
He thought of her far too often, despite what he’d promised her. Despite his insistence that he’d forget about her easily, he was finding it harder this second-time around. The anger at her betrayal had helped him, earlier in the year, when he’d first learned of her duplicity.
Anger had turned to passion on the island and he’d found himself so close to giving in to her. To forgiving the past.
Asking her to be his mistress had been a desperate last-ditch bid to keep her in his life on terms that would work for him. And he’d been so close to telling her to forget all about it, on that last day. The day he’d seen her soul seep from her body; the day he’d accepted that, whether he wanted her or not, he’d lost any chance to have her.
He’d been an A-grade bastard. There was no forgiveness for the things he’d said and done.
Which was fine. He didn’t want her forgiveness. He just wanted her out of his damned head.
“If it’s not a good time, I can call back.”
“No,” Guy was curt. “Go ahead.”
He shouldn’t have let her get under his skin. The plan had been simple! To use her to fool his family, yes, but to show her that he was over her. That he could take her or leave her. Instead, he’d become just as obsessed by her as the first time. And he hated that. He hated the power she wielded over him, and he hated that she inspired this caveman response in him.
The man he’d become filled Guillem with a gaping sense of dissatisfaction. No matter what the world thought, he treated women with respect. He wasn’t the man he’d been to Adeline. He told himself she deserved no better; but he knew that wasn’t true. Stooping to her level didn’t make his behavior acceptable.
“I’ve come across a discrepancy with your personal chequebook.”
You might think it would get easier, with each year that passes, but it doesn’t. It’s so much harder. I forget little things about them, things that were so elemental, and sometimes, I can’t even see my brother’s face.
Had she been lying? Had she made the whole thing up? He’d resisted the urge to hire a detective. To investigate her. What was the point? If he learned that she’d been telling the truth, it would still show that he didn’t trust her. That he couldn’t trust her.
Honest or not, she’d been right. He had thought it would get easier, with each day that passed, but the longer he went without seeing her, the more he doubted his conviction. The more he wondered if he was mad to let her go.
Even when he knew it had been for the best.
“Mr Rodriguez?”
Guy drew his attention back to the call. What was the accountant on about? “Yes?” He prompted, absent-mindedly running a finger over the edge of his desk.
“There’s a cheque for seventy-five thousand pounds which hasn’t been banked.”
He sat up straighter. He’d only written one cheque for that precise amount recently. His pulse accelerated and his body tightened. Flashbacks of that morning ran through his mind. The way the sun had glistened behind her, showing her slender figure through the flimsy t-shirt she’d worn, the fact she hadn’t dressed in a bra obvious to his gaze. The way she’d spoken so calmly at the end, even when he could see how he was hurting her.
“It was going to a foreign bank,” he said, relieved the words sounded so measured when his throat was as thick and as dry as desert sand. “It is probably just taking its time to clear.”
“No. That isn’t what I mean. It’s been returned. I have correspondence from the bank.”
“Returned?” His brows knit together. He’d never heard of such a thing. Why in the world would Ava … Adeline, have returned the cheque? She’d been desperate for the money. Desperate enough to agree to masquerade as his girlfriend. To sleep with him.
To let him treat her like a convenient mistress. To let him treat her like a piece of dirt.
He grimaced as the now-familiar sense of shame barreled through him anew.
He had treated her in a way that he would always regret. Whatever her faults were, he should have known better than to sink to her level.
“Did you write it in error?”
“No.” Guy stood, his body taut as he stared out at downtown Madrid, his eyes glinting like the black of the night sky under which they’d made love.
“I’ll look into it. Redraft it.”
“No.” He spoke quickly. “Leave it to me.”
*
