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‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about the night you bought me the sequin dress.’
Javier clenched his teeth, pressing down against a familiar wave of anger. He remembered that nightverywell. It was the night Santi had told him how much the revenue forecast was for the film. It had been beyond their wildest imaginations. The premiere was three days away and he’d bought Emily a dress of shimmering midnight. He wanted her at his side on the red carpet, so that he could show her it had all been worth it. So that he could show her his success. He’d got home later than he’d planned because he’d arranged for the department store to stay open so he could pick it up for her.
‘But what does Francesca have to do with that?’
His wife looked at him with such hurt that an icy sweat frosted his neck.
‘The night you bought me that dress was the night you had agreed to come with me to Francesca’s party. The night we were supposed to fly back to England. The night I waited. And waited.’ Javier’s fists clenched as Emily’s words became thick and her eyes shone unnaturally with unshed tears. ‘I waited for three hours. And when you came home that night, barely minutes after I did, you gave me that dress and invited me to an eventyouwanted me to come to. Something that was important toyou.’
She shook her head at him, sending a waterfall of golden hair shimmering in the late afternoon light, downplaying a hurt that he felt as his own, her pride both powerful and heartbreaking.
He desperately tried to remember it, her asking him to Francesca’s party, but he couldn’t. He knew that he had been drowning in work at that time, but had he made her wait like that?
‘Why was the party so important?’ he asked, hating that he couldn’t remember the straw that had destroyed his marriage.
‘Because I wanted my friends to meet you so that they would stop whispering about us and looking at me with pity as if I’d made a massive mistake.’
Cristo.‘It wasnota mistake, Emily.’
‘No? We were so young, Javi. I was nineteen, you twenty-one. We hadn’t known each other more than three months when we married.’
But I’d known you only two minutes when I knew.
The concrete solid answer stayed in his mind though, that child in him still too hurt and fearful that she would leave again, not ready to say it out loud. He rubbed unconsciously at the pressure in his chest, unaware of how the action drew Emily’s gaze.
‘So instead of coming to the premiere of Santi’s film...’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t put it into words without the howling pain of her abandonment leaching from his voice. But Emily was telling him that he’d done the same to her?
‘I left. I left, hoping that you would finally notice me. I didn’t care about the money, Javier. I didn’t need future security, I cared about us,’ she said, as if she’d sensed his attempts to justify his actions.
His senses went on full alert. ‘Why are you talking in the past tense, Emily?’
‘Because nothing has changed. You are still making decisions based on what you want. Not us. Not me. I can’t live my life as if it is all about you,’ she said, the jagged hitch in her breath so telling of how difficult this conversation was for her.
Ache. That was all he felt in that moment. Radiating out from his chest, everything hurt and from somewhere deep within a panic like nothing he’d ever experienced before was telling him to grab her now before she left him again. Because if she left now, he knew,knew, she would never come back. His pulse raged at his temples, blood pounding his heart in a frantic drumbeat.
How had he got things so wrong? How was he here?
He would fix this. He had to. He wouldn’t,couldn’t, fail this time.
‘I should go,’ Emily said, pushing the chair back from the table.
‘Two weeks.’ The words burst out into the open. ‘Give me two weeks.’
‘Javier...’ His name on her lips was a perverted plea, the sound so wrong, but he wouldn’t bow to it.
‘You owe me that much,’ he said, his voice hardened.
‘And then what? After two weeks, what? You’ll let me go then?’
‘If that is what you want.’ He forced the words from his lips, knowing that it was no risk. Javier Casas never made a deal he didn’t know he could win. He might have underestimated Emily, but he knew his wife, he knew what she liked, what she wanted. All he had to do was give her those things and she’d be back by his side. He would have fixed it. He wouldn’t have failed. The panic began to recede as he clawed back control.
‘You’ll give me a divorce?’
No. ‘If that is what you want,’ he replied again, his hands forming fists beneath the table.It wouldn’t come to that.He would make sure of it.
‘Then I have a condition.’
