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His silence drew her gaze, but he was still focused on her hand—or so it seemed. Until the slightest of shakes of his head told her that his mother had done absolutely nothing. Her heart turned and she realised that she was not surprised, only more curious about Renata Casas than she had been before.
What she knew of his mother was arrogance, selfishness and disdain. But she had always presumed that came from a place of maternal snobbery—that Emily hadn’t been good enough for her son. But now she was beginning to wonder if it was something else.
She was about to ask, when he turned off the tap and wrapped her hand in a clean tea towel.
‘I’ll get the arnica.’
She reached for him as he turned. ‘Javier—’
‘I mean it,mi amore,’ he warned, his dark eyes glowing with intent. ‘We will not divorce.’
And what rocked Emily more was the way her heart soared at his declaration. He returned before she could gather herself and pulled out a chair for her to take. After he sat, he reached for her hand and gently rubbed the soothing cream into her skin.
The circles his thumb made across her hand calmed her against her will. She wanted to stay angry at him. Needed to, but the care he was giving her was undermining her intent with the same intensity as the next words that came out of his mouth.
‘I meant my vows.’
‘So did I.’ She’d expected her words to sound defensive and was surprised when they fell between them with a sadness that was painful to her own ears.
The flex of muscle at Javier’s jaw told her he’d felt it too. ‘What did you mean? About me leaving?’ he clarified before she could ask.
He really didn’t know.Emily didn’t know whether that made it better or worse.
‘You were never here, Javi,’ she said, pulling her hand from the warm embrace of his fingers.
He frowned. ‘I was working for us—to secure our future.’
‘Our futurewassecure,’ she insisted gently. ‘We were together.’ It was all she had needed. All she hadwanted. ‘We didn’t need anything else.’
She almost read the thought in his eyes.I did.That was what he’d intended to say. And while they couldn’t, wouldn’t, say these things to each other, they didn’t have a future.
‘We needed money,mi vida.’
‘We already had so much. More than I could even have imagined,’ she reminded him.
‘We needed security, Emily. My mother will never relinquish control over Casas Textiles. My uncle had given me a small start-up business but...’ he looked away as if finding it difficult to discuss these things ‘...but I needed to make my own way. And then when Santi was looking for investors in his film... No one would fund him. He was going to have to drop it and I couldn’t let that happen. So I took a risk. I invested heavily—tooheavily. My uncle, if he’d known, would have taken back his business, thinking me reckless. But he’d have been wrong. Ipreparedfor a significant financial loss. So I worked three times as hard, all the hours I could to counter any possible loss, all in order to have something of our own.’
‘Javier...’ She hadn’t known anything of this. Only now was she beginning to realise just how much he had kept her truly on the outside of their marriage.
‘It was okay ultimately, of course,’ he said, but she knew that he must have been talking about money in the millions, not thousands. The pressure and the stress must have been...had beenconsiderable.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Because it wasmyresponsibility,’ he said, bumping the flat edge of his fist against his chest. ‘It had been my choice, my decision to invest in such a risky proposition, and for me to fix.’
‘But as your wife, I wanted to share that burden.’
‘No. As your husband, I wanted to protect you from such things.’
She tried to stop herself from growling. ‘Andthatis why I felt alone in this marriage. Because you didn’t include me. You didn’t share things with me—and you were so focused on money and the future that you forgot me and the present.’
‘No! Everything was for you, Emily, don’t you see that? I didn’t forget you ever.’
‘No? What about Francesca’s party? What about leaving me on a private plane on the runway for three hours?’
Javier looked at her, his face a mask of confusion. ‘I don’t... I—’
Emily huffed out a bitter laugh. ‘You didn’t remember then. I don’t know why I’d think you’d remember now.’
