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His phone rang just as the car navigated the roundabout and along the narrow cobbled road through the lower part of town. His assistant, aware of the true state of his memory, was convinced that one of Javier’s bank accounts had been hacked.
‘That is impossible,’ he replied firmly, knowing just how much he paid to protect his considerable assets.
‘Sir, no. I don’t think it is, because in the last three days nearly nine thousand euros has been spent.’
‘Three days?’ he repeated, his mind snagging on that rather than the amount of missing money.
‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s not an account that I’ve seen activity on before and because you were in hospital I—’
‘The account number?’
Darien reeled off a series of digits Javier knew by heart. It was an account he co-signed and it hadn’t been touched for years, even in the months before Emily had left Spain. He was about to ask Darien what the purchases were when the car turned down the winding road that led to the house he’d once shared with Emily and he began to suspect he knewexactlywhat the money had been spent on.
Emily bit her lip. Shemighthave gone a little too far with the last of the purchases. She looked around the space she had spent three days and an inconceivable amount of money transforming. She nearly grimaced at the bright pink slash of colour from the two massive canvases she’d installed in the main room. But they weren’t as bad as the five-foot ceramic parrot. Even with memory loss, Emily was sure Javier wouldn’t believe that he’d allowed the monstrosity into the house.
It had been a terrifying waste of money and when she succeeded in getting Javier to admit that he was lying she would pay him back every penny. She might even use some of the things in future projects. The pieces themselves weren’t terrible—parrot aside—just not right for the house at all. She was wondering whether she might be able to use some for the San Antonio project when she heard the crunch of tyres on gravel outside the house and a shiver ran down her spine. She was being silly, she thought as she fanned the sudden rush of heat to her cheeks. But now that he was near, she also felt a thrill of excitement—she was flirting with danger, taunting Javier. And it was the most alive she’d felt in months.
The sound of a car door closing cut through her thoughts as she fussed with the heavily—and quite horribly—laced linen tablecloth she had regrettably covered the beautiful table with. It had been strange to use her skills in interior design to cultivate chaos rather than calm and she blamed the jarring sense of aesthetics for why she jumped when she heard the knock on the door.
She opened the door and all her planned responses burnt to ash in the bright afternoon sun.Thatwas what caused her to squint up at the man who filled the doorway, she told herself. Not the impact of seeing him standing there. Nostalgia, not desire, flooded her veins, bringing a flush to her skin and an extra beat to her heart.
But for just a moment she forgot. Forgot how, after the honeymoon period had worn off, she had spent far too many hours here alone while Javier worked all the hours God sent. Forgot how isolated and lost she had felt here with no friends and no easy way to make them, fearful that she’d become exactly what she had never wanted to become—a woman who lost herself to her husband, who was totally dependent on him, just like her mother had become on her husband.
Dressed in a white shirt and tan trousers, Javier looked nothing like the easy-going, charming boy she’d fallen in love with. There were hints of him, the self-confidence that had always bordered on arrogance, the stubborn determination that had seen him win any argument he’d wanted to...but there was more of the man now. In the breadth of his shoulders, the slight creases around his eyes, bracketing his mouth, even the few—veryfew—silver threads in his hair and stubble that added authority and experience and diminished nothing of the raw power that swept at her like an unending tide.
His thick dark hair was swept back from his forehead and the natural jut of his jaw that made him look almost perpetually defiant was both familiar and heartbreaking and she had the maddening urge to kiss him. To reach for him and pull him across the threshold by his shirt, just as she had done so many times in the first few months of their marriage. A flash of glitter in his eyes, the ever so slight tightening of his jaw, fired warning signals in her brain and with a primal sense of self-preservation she stepped back to let him pass into the house.
‘Welcome home,’ she said, her gaze fastened to his, searching his face for any sign of surprise that might betray him.
What. Had. She. Done?
The words sounded in his head, even as he broadened the smile on his lips purposely to disguise the utter horror that struck him. Hard. In the three seconds he’d allowed himself to take in everything he could see—and he could see alot—he had to work harder than he ever had before to school his features.
‘Well?’ she asked, one foot tucked behind the other, a slight lean to her head that dared him to call her on the changes she’d made to their home.
He frowned, as if a little confused. ‘Have you done something different?’ he asked, looking around as if he meant the house. He turned back to Emily in time to see her leap on his statement, her mouth open and ready to accuse, but he pushed on before she could. ‘It’s your hair. It’s shorter?’
The flash in her cobalt-blue gaze burned like lightning across the Alboran Sea. Fuming. She was fuming and, petty that he was, he kind of enjoyed it. After all,madre de Dios, she’d made their home abhorrent. He fought the urge to wince.
‘Longer, actually,’ she replied with a little growl that nearly made him smile.
He gestured to his head. ‘I’m sorry, this memory thing. It’s got me turned around.’ The lie rolled off his tongue as easily as his wife seemed to have destroyed their home. He stalked over to where she leaned against the wall and his gaze flicked from an ugly linen tablecloth on what was possibly his favourite item of furniture through to the flashes of fuchsia in the living area that, frankly, scared the living daylights out of him.
He turned his attention back to the real threat. Emily looked pretty in a white shirt and denim jeans rolled up from the ankles, but it was the bare feet that poked and prodded at his memories—the way she used to giggle when he captured them in his hands, pressing kisses against the arch of her foot. The memory fired a familiar anger in him. One that cried out loud at her betrayal—at her abandonment. And, bastard that he was, he wanted to push her, taunt her with the only connection he knew still burned bright between them.
He leaned down towards her, crowding her personal space in a way he couldn’t bring himself to feel guilt over. She craned her neck, staring up at him, watchful and wary, eyes becoming larger and larger, her pupils flaring under his attention as he bent towards her, so slowly that she had time to move, but so confident that she wouldn’t. He felt it, the thickening of his blood, the slow burn that had never gone, no matter how long or how far apart they’d been. The warm scent of her skin teased him, pushing and pulling at desires he’d thought he’d long forgotten. As he drew even closer, her lips opened on a little gasp that he felt against his own before, at the last moment, he turned to press a kiss to her cheek.
The roil of his stomach muscles sliced at his ribs and he couldn’t prevent the sharp inhale of pain. Anger turned to worry in the blink of an eye and she placed her hand on his arm, stopping him when he would have turned away.
‘Are you okay?’ Emily asked, genuine concern in her tone.
‘Yes,’ he said, dismissing her question despite the tidal wave of ache that brushed over him again and again, and the exhaustion that threatened to suffocate him. He’d never felt anything like it and he hated it. Hated the weakness in his body.
If he’d hesitated for even just a second he would have seen the hurt shimmering in the blue depths of her gaze as he closed himself off from her, but he didn’t as he pushed himself through his own discomfort.
Awkwardly he made his way through to the living area, squinting to lessen the impact of the bright pink of the paintings Emily had brought into the room. He was sure they’d cost an obscene amount—partly because his wife had always had good taste, even when she was trying to make it bad, but also because he knew how much she’d spent in the last three days.
He sat down gracelessly on the new and deeply uncomfortable banquette seating covering the far wall, undeniably impressed by what Emily had achieved in just three days, but nevertheless ready to pay any financial amount required for the return of his sofa. The firm canvas cushion offered no respite from the tension and ache that was growing closer to pain by the second. When he finally lifted his gaze, he found himself staring down a five-foot white ceramic parrot.
