Kitabı oku: «His Revenge Seduction», sayfa 3

Chapter Three

‘TRY not to be too upset by Aldana’s coldness,’ Javier said as they came to the first landing. ‘It means nothing. She will get over it in a day or so. She was like that the first time I brought you home with me after we were married. She thought I was making the biggest mistake of my life, not just by marrying a foreigner, but by marrying within weeks of meeting you.’

Emelia suppressed a frown as she continued with him up the stairs. She had seen undiluted hatred in the housekeeper’s eyes. How long had that been going on? Surely not for the whole time they had been married? How had she coped with such hostility? It surely wouldn’t have made for a very happy home with a household of staff sending dagger looks at every opportunity.

She put her hand on the banister to steady herself after the climb. Her legs felt weak and her chest tight, as if she had run a marathon at high altitude.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, taking her free hand in his.

She gave him a weak smile. ‘Just a little lightheaded…It’ll pass in a moment.’

Emelia felt his fingers tighten momentarily on hers, the itchy little tingles his touch evoked making her feel even more dazed than the effort of climbing the staircase. His eyes were locked on hers, penetrating, searing, all-seeing, but showing nothing in return. ‘Did your housekeeper eventually come to approve of your choice of wife?’ she asked.

He released her hand, his eyes moving away from hers. ‘I do not need the approval of my housekeeper, Emelia,’ he said. ‘We are married and that is that. It is no one’s business but our own.’

Emelia’s teeth sank into her bottom lip as she trudged up the rest of the stairs. She looked for signs of her previous life in the villa but there was nothing to show her she had lived here for close to two years. The walls were hung with priceless works of art; as far as she could see, there were no photographs of their life together. The décor was formal, not relaxed and welcoming. It spoke of wealth and prestige, not family life and friendliness. She could see nothing of herself in the villa, no expression of her personality and taste, and wondered why.

Javier opened a door further along the hall that led into a master bedroom of massive proportions. ‘This was our room,’ he said.

Emelia wasn’t sure if he spoke in the past tense to communicate he would no longer be sharing it with her and she was too embarrassed to ask him to clarify. ‘It’s very big…’

‘Do you recognise anything?’ he asked as he followed her into the suite.

Emelia looked at the huge bed and tried to imagine herself lying there with Javier’s long strong body beside her. Her stomach did a little flip-flop movement and she shifted her gaze to the bedside tables instead. On one side there was a wedding photograph and she walked over and slowly picked it up, holding her breath as she looked at the picture of herself smiling with Javier standing by her side.

She wrinkled her brow in concentration. Surely there was somewhere in her mind where she could locate that memory. The dress she was wearing was a dream of a wedding gown, voluminous and delicately sequinned all over with crystals. She could only imagine how much it must have cost. The veil was at least five metres long and had a tiara headpiece, making her look like a princess. The bouquet of orange blossom she carried and the perfection of her hair and make-up spoke of a wedding day that had been meticulously planned. It looked like some of the society weddings she had been forced to attend back at home with her father. All show and fuss to impress others, crowds of people who in a year or so would not even remember the bride’s and groom’s names. She loathed that sort of scene and had always sworn she would not be a part of it when or if she married. But, as far as she could tell from the photograph in her hands, she had gone for shallow and showy after all.

She shifted her concentration to Javier’s image. He was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt and silver and black striped tie that highlighted his colouring and his tall commanding air. His smile was not as wide as Emelia’s; it seemed a little forced, in fact. She wondered if she had noticed it on the day and been worried about it or whether she had been too caught up in being the centre of attention.

Emelia looked up from the photograph she was holding to see Javier’s watchful gaze centred on her. ‘I’m sorry…’ She placed it back on the bedside table with a hand that was not quite steady. ‘I can’t remember anything. It’s as if it happened to someone else.’

His dark gaze dropped to the image of them in their wedding finery. ‘Sometimes when I look at that photograph, I think the very same thing,’ he said, the slant of his mouth cryptic.

Emelia studied him for a moment in silence. Was he implying he had come to regret their hasty marriage? What had led him to offer her marriage in the first place? So many men these days shied away from the formal tie of matrimony, choosing the less binding arrangement of living together or, even more casually, moving between two separate abodes, thus maintaining a higher level of independence.

Had those first two years of marriage taken the shine off the passion that had apparently brought them together? Relationships required a lot of hard work; she knew that from watching her father ruin one relationship after another with no attempt on his part to learn from his previous mistakes. Had Javier fallen out of love with her? He certainly didn’t look like a man in love. She had seen desire in his eyes, but as for the warmth of lifelong love…well, would she recognise it even if she saw it?

Javier caught her staring at him and raised one brow. ‘Is something wrong, Emelia?’

She moistened her lips, trying not to be put off by the dark intensity of his gaze as it held hers. ‘Um…I was wondering why you wanted to get married so quickly. Most of the men I know would have taken years to propose marriage. Why did you decide we should get married so quickly?’

There was a movement deep within his eyes, like a rapid-fire shuffle of a deck of cards. ‘Why do you think?’ he said evenly. ‘Do you think you were not in the least agreeable to being married to me? I can assure you I did not have to resort to force. You accepted my proposal quite willingly.’

Emelia gave a little shrug, trying not to be put off by the black marble of his gaze as it held hers. ‘I don’t know…I guess it’s just that I don’t remember being on the hunt for a husband or anything. I’m only twentyfive—’

‘Twenty-seven,’ he corrected her.

Emelia chewed at her lip. ‘Ri-ght…twenty-seven…’ She lowered her gaze and frowned.

He tipped up her face with one finger beneath her chin. ‘I wanted you from the moment I saw you sitting at that piano,’ he said. ‘It was an instant attraction. You felt it too. There seemed no point in delaying what we both wanted.’

Emelia looked into the blackness of his eyes and felt the tug of attraction deep and low in her body. Was this how it had been? The magnetic pull of desire, an unstoppable force that consumed every bit of common sense she possessed? She felt the burn of his touch; the nerve endings beneath her skin were jumping and dancing where his fingertip rested. ‘How soon did we—’ she swallowed tightly ‘—sleep together?’

He brushed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. ‘How soon do you think?’ he asked in a low, smoky tone.

Emelia felt the deep thud of her heart as his strong thighs brushed against hers. ‘I…I’m not the type to jump into bed with someone on the first date.’

His dark eyes glinted. ‘You sound rather certain about that.’

Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Surely I didn’t…?’

He dropped his hand from her face. ‘No, you didn’t,’ he said. ‘I was impressed by your standards, actually. You were the first woman I had ever dated who said no.’

Emelia gave herself a mental pat on the back. He would be a hard one to say no to, she imagined. ‘Did that make me a challenge you wanted to conquer?’ she asked.

He gave her an enigmatic smile. ‘Not for the reasons you think.’

Her gaze went to the wedding photograph again. ‘I don’t suppose we waited until the wedding night.’

‘No.’

Emelia wondered how one short word could have such a powerful effect on her. Her skin lifted all over at the thought of him possessing her. Her breasts prickled with sensation, her belly flapped like washing on a line in a hurricane and her heart raced. But all she had was her imagination. Her mind was empty, a total blank. She felt cheated. She felt lost and afraid she might never be able to reclaim what should have been some of the most memorable days of her life. She gave a little sigh and faced him again. ‘The funny thing is there are some people—like my father, for instance—who would give anything to forget their wedding days. But I can’t recall a thing…n-not a thing…’ Her voice cracked and she placed her head in her hands, embarrassed at losing control of her emotions in front of him.

He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t cry, querida,’ he said.

His low soothing tone was her undoing. She choked on another sob and stumbled forward into the rock-hard wall of his chest. Her arms automatically wound around his lean waist, her face pressing into his shirt front, breathing in his warm male scent. Her body seemed to fit against him as if fashioned exactly to his specifications. She felt the strong cradle of his pelvis supporting hers, his muscled thighs holding her trembling ones steady. Her body tingled with awareness as she felt the swelling of his groin against her. How many times had he held her like this? She felt the flutter of her pulse in response, the tight ache between her thighs that felt both strange and familiar.

One of his hands went to the back of her head and began stroking her in a gentle, rhythmic motion, his voice when he spoke reverberating against her ear, reminding her of the deep bass of organ pipes being softly played in a cavernous cathedral. ‘Shh, mi amor. Do not upset yourself. Do not cry. It can’t change anything.’

Emelia tried to control her trembling bottom lip as she eased back to look up at him. ‘I want to remember. I want to remember everything. What girl can’t remember her wedding day? How can I live my life with whole chunks of it missing?’

Javier brushed her hair back from her face, his dark steady eyes holding her tear-washed ones. ‘There are no doubt other things you have forgotten that are worth forgetting. What about that, eh? That is a positive, sí?’

He took out a handkerchief and used a folded corner of it to mop up the tears that had trailed down her cheeks. Emelia found it a tender gesture that seemed at odds with his earlier aloofness. Was he finally coming to terms with her inability to remember him?

‘What things would I want to forget?’ she asked with a puzzled frown.

His eyes shifted away from hers. He refolded the handkerchief and put it in his trouser pocket. ‘No marriage is perfect,’ he said, ‘especially a relatively new one. We had the occasional argument, some of them rather heated at times. Perhaps it is a good thing you can’t remember them.’

Emelia tried to read his expression but, apart from a small rueful grimace about his mouth, there was little she could go on. ‘What sort of things did we argue about?’ she asked.

He gave a one shoulder shrug. ‘The usual things. Most of the time little things that got blown all out of proportion.’

She angled her head at him questioningly. ‘Who was the first to say sorry?’

There was a slight pause before he answered. ‘I am not good at admitting it when I am in the wrong. I guess I take after my father more than I would like in that regard.’

‘We all have our pride,’ Emelia conceded.

‘Yes.’ He gave her another brief rueful twist of his mouth. ‘Indeed.’

He moved over to a large walk-in wardrobe and opened the sliding doors. ‘Your things are in here. You might feel more at home once you are surrounded by your own possessions. The travelling bag you had with you in London was destroyed in the accident.’

Emelia looked at the rows and rows of elegant clothes and shelves of shoes and matching bags. Again, it was like looking into someone else’s life. Did she wear all these close-fitting designer dresses and skyhigh heels? Her eyes went to the other side of the wardrobe where the racks and shelves were empty. She turned and looked at Javier. ‘Where are your things?’ she asked.

His eyes became shuttered. ‘I had Aldana move them into one of the spare rooms for the time being.’

Emelia felt a confusing mixture of relief and disappointment. The relief she could easily explain. The disappointment was a complete mystery to her. ‘So—’ she quickly ran her tongue over her lips ‘—so you’re not expecting me to…to sleep with you…um…like right away?’

He hooked one dark brow upwards. ‘I thought you said you don’t usually sleep with perfect strangers?’

She frowned at his tone, not sure if he was teasing her. ‘Technically, you’re not a stranger, though, are you?’ she said. ‘I might not remember you, but there’s enough evidence around to confirm we are married.’

A glint appeared in his dark-as-night gaze as it held hers. ‘Are you inviting me to sleep with you, Emelia?’

Emelia felt her belly fold over itself. ‘Er…no…not yet…I mean…no. No. It wouldn’t be right for me or even fair to you.’

He came up close, lifting a portion of her hair, slowly twirling it around his finger until she felt the subtle tension on her scalp as he tethered her to him. ‘We could do it to see if it unlocks your memory,’ he said in a voice that sounded rough and sexy. ‘How about it, querida? Who knows? Perhaps it is just your mind that has forgotten me. Maybe your body will remember everything.’

Emelia could barely breathe. His chest was brushing against her breasts; she could feel the friction of his shirt through her clothes. Her nipples had sprung to attention, aching and tight, looking for more erotic stimulation. A warm sensation was pooling between her thighs, a pulsing feeling that was part ache, part pleasure, making her want to move forwards to press herself against the hardness she knew instinctively would be there. Her mouth was dry and she sent the point of her tongue out to moisten it, her heart slipping sideways when she saw the way his eyes dropped to follow its passage across her lips.

The pad of his thumb pressed against her bottom lip, setting off livewires of feeling beneath her sensitive skin. ‘Such a beautiful mouth,’ he said in that low sexy baritone. ‘How many times have I kissed it, hmm? How many times has it kissed me?’ He pressed himself just that little bit closer, pelvis to pelvis, the swell of his maleness heating her like a hot probe. ‘What a pity you can’t remember all the delicious things that soft full mouth of yours has done to me in the past.’

Emelia swallowed tightly, the sensation between her thighs turning red hot. She could imagine what she had done; she could see it in his eyes. The erotic pleasure he had experienced with her seemed to be gleaming there to taunt her into recalling every shockingly intimate moment.

His thumb caressed her bottom lip again, pushing against it, watching as it bounced back to fullness as it refilled with blood.

Emelia couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth; the enigmatic tilt of it fascinated her. The way he half-smiled, as if he was enjoying the edge he had over her in knowing every sensual pleasure they had shared while she remained in ignorance. Her spine loosened with each stroke of his thumb, the tingling sensation travelling from her lips to every secret place.

‘Do you want me to tell you some of the things you did with me, Emelia?’ he asked in a gravel-rough tone that made the hairs on the back of her neck lift one by one.

She stood silently staring up at him, like a small nocturnal animal caught in the high beam of headlights: exposed, vulnerable, blinded by feelings she wasn’t sure belonged to her. ‘I…I’m not sure it would be a good idea to force me to…to remember…’ she faltered.

He smiled a lazy smile that made her spine loosen even further. His palm cupped her cheek, holding it gently, each long finger imprinted on her flesh. ‘You were shy to begin with, cariño,’ he said. ‘But then perhaps you were shy with your other lovers, sí?’

Emelia frowned. ‘But I have only had one lover. I must have told you about it, surely? It happened when I was singing in a band in Melbourne. I was too young and didn’t realise what I was getting into with someone so much older and experienced. I should have known better, but I was in that rebellious stage a lot of teenagers go through.’

His hand moved from her cheek to rest on her shoulder, his eyes still holding hers like a searchlight. ‘You told me some things about it, yes,’ he said. ‘But then perhaps there are other things you didn’t tell me. Things you preferred to keep a secret from me even during our marriage.’

Her frown deepened across her forehead. ‘Like what?’

He gave her an inscrutable look and dropped his hand from her shoulder. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘You can’t remember, or so you say.’

The ensuing silence seemed to ring with the suspicion of his statement.

Emelia sat on the bed in case her legs gave way. ‘You think I’m pretending?’ she asked in an incredulous choked whisper. ‘Is that what you think? That I’m making my memory loss up?’

His eyes bored into hers, his mouth pulled tight until his lips were almost flattened. ‘You remember nothing of me and yet you grieve like a heartbroken widow over the loss of Marshall.’

She pushed herself upright with her arms. ‘Have I not got the right to grieve the loss of a beloved friend?’

His jaw tightened as he held her stare for stare. ‘I am your husband, Emelia,’ he bit out. ‘Your life is with me, not with a dead man.’

She glared back at him furiously. ‘You can’t force me to stay with you. I might never remember you. What will you do then?’

‘Oh, you will remember, Emelia,’ he said through clenched teeth, each bitten out word highlighting his accent. ‘Make no mistake. You will remember everything.’

Emelia felt a rumble of fear deep and low in her belly. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t even know myself, or at least that’s what it feels like it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who I’ve become over the past two years. Do you have any idea what it’s like for me to step back into the life that was supposedly mine when I don’t recognise a thing about it or me?’

He let out a harsh breath. ‘Leave it. This is not the time to discuss it.’

‘No I can’t leave it,’ she said. ‘You don’t seem to trust me. What sort of marriage did we have?’

His eyes were fathomless black pools as they held hers. ‘I said I don’t wish to discuss this,’ he said. ‘You need to rest. You are pale and look as if a breath of wind would knock you down.’

‘What would you care?’ she asked with a churlish look.

‘I am not going to continue with this conversation,’ he said with an implacable set to his mouth. ‘I will leave you to rest. Dinner will be served at eight-thirty. I would suggest you stay close to the villa until you become more familiar with your surroundings. You could easily get lost.’

Emelia sank back down on the mattress once the door had closed on his exit. She put a shaky hand up to her temple, wishing she could unlock the vault of memories that held the secrets of the past two years. What sort of wife was she that her husband didn’t seem to trust her? And why did he look at her as if he was torn between pulling her into his arms and showing her the door?

After changing into riding gear, Javier strode down to the stables and, politely declining the offer from his stable-hand, Pedro, quickly saddled his Andalusian stallion, Gitano, and rode out of the villa courtyard. The horse’s hooves rattled against the cobblestones but, once the stallion was on the grass of the fields leading to the woods, Javier let him have his head. The feel of the powerful muscles of his horse beneath him was just the shot of adrenalin he needed to distract himself from being with Emelia again.

Holding her in his arms when she had cried had been like torture. He couldn’t remember a time when she had shown such emotion before. She was usually so cool and in control of herself. It had stirred things in him to fever pitch to have her so close. Her body had felt so warm and soft against his, so achingly familiar. He could so easily have pushed her down on the bed and reclaimed her as his. His body had throbbed to possess her. It disgusted him that he was so weak. Had he learned nothing? Women were not to be trusted, especially women like his runaway wife.

He had noted every nuance of her face on the journey home to Spain. If she truly had forgotten how wealthy he was, she was in no doubt of it now. Even if she did recall what a sham their marriage had become, she was unlikely to admit it now. Why would she? He could give her everything money could buy. Her lover was dead. She had no one else to turn to, nowhere else to go. She was back in his life due to a quirk of fate. There was no way now that he could toss her out as he had sworn he would do when he’d found out about her affair. The public would not look upon him kindly for divorcing his amnesiac wife. But there could be benefits in keeping her close to his side, he conceded. He still wanted her. That much had not changed, even though it annoyed him that he could not dismiss his attraction for her as easily as he wanted to. It had been there right from the beginning; the electric pulse of wanting that fizzled between them whenever they were within touching distance. She might not recognise him mentally but he felt sure her body was responding to him the way it always had. It would not take him long to have her writhing and twisting beneath him; all memory of her lover would be replaced with new memories of him and him alone.

He would cut her from his life when he was sure she was back on her feet. Their marriage would have fulfilled its purpose by then, in any case. Their divorce would be swift and final. All contact with her would cease from that point. He had no intention of keeping her with him indefinitely, not after the scandal she had caused him. The public would forget in time as new scandals were uncovered, but he could not.

He would not.

The horse’s hooves thundered over the fields, the wind rushing through Javier’s hair as he rode at breakneck speed. He pulled the stallion to a halt at the top of the hill, surveying the expanse of his estate below. The grey-green of the olive groves and the fertile fields of citrus and almonds reminded him of all he had worked so hard and long for. For all the sacrifices he had made to keep this property within his hands. His father’s gambling and risky business deals had cost Javier dearly. He’d had to compromise himself in ways he had never dreamed possible. But what was done was done and it could not be undone. It eased his conscience only slightly that he hadn’t done it for himself. Izabella had a right to her inheritance, and he had made sure it was not going to be whittled away by his father’s homewrecking widow.

The stallion tossed his head and snorted, his hooves drumming in the dust with impatience. Javier stroked the stallion’s silky powerful neck, speaking low and soothingly in Spanish. The horse rose on his hindquarters, his front hooves pawing at the air. Javier laughed as he thought of his wayward wife and how fate had handed her back to him to do with her as he wished. He turned the horse and galloped him back down through the forest to the plains below, the thrill of the ride nothing to what waited for him at the end of it.

Emelia ignored the comfort of the big bed and, after a refreshing shower and change of clothes, went on a solitary tour of the villa in the hope of triggering something in her brain. Most of the rooms were too formal for her taste. They were almost austere, with their priceless works of art and uncomfortable-looking antiquated furniture. She couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t gone about redecorating the place. Money was certainly no object, but perhaps she’d felt intimidated by the age and history of the villa. It was certainly very old. Every wall of the place seemed to have a portrait of an ancestor on it, each pair of eyes following her in what she felt to be an accusatory silence. She found it hard to imagine a small child feeling at home here. Was this the place where Javier had grown up? There was so much she didn’t know about him, or at least no longer knew.

She breathed out a sigh as she opened yet another door. This one led into a library-cum-study. Three walls of floor to ceiling bookshelves and a leather-topped desk dominated the space, but she could see a collection of photo frames beside the laptop computer on the desk, which drew her like a magnet. The floorboards creaked beneath the old rugs as she walked to the desk, the hairs on the back of her neck lifting like antennae.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she scolded herself. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’ But, even so, when she looked at the photographs she felt as if she were encountering something supernatural—the ghost of who she had been for the past two years.

She picked up the first frame and studied it for a moment. It was a photo of her lying on a blanket in an olive grove, the sun coming down at an angle, highlighting her honey-blonde hair and grey-blue eyes. She was smiling coquettishly at the camera, flirting with whoever was behind the camera lens.

She put the frame down and picked up the next one, her heart giving a little skip when she saw Javier with his arms wrapped around her from behind, his tall frame slightly stooped as his chin rested on the top of her head, his smile wide and proud as he faced the camera. She could almost feel his hard body pressing into her back, the swell of his arousal, the pulse and thrum of his blood…

The door of the study suddenly opened and Emelia dropped the frame, the glass shattering on the floor at her feet. She stood frozen for a moment as Javier stepped into the room, closing the door with a click that sounded like a prison cell being locked.

‘Don’t touch it,’ he commanded when she began to bend at the knees. ‘You might cut yourself.’

‘I’m sorry…’ Emelia said, glancing down at the floor before meeting his gaze. ‘You frightened me.’

His black eyes didn’t waver as they held hers. ‘I can assure you that was not my intention.’

Emelia swallowed as he approached the desk. He was wearing a white casual polo shirt and beige jodhpurs and long black leather riding boots, looking every inch the brooding hero of a Regency novel. He smelt of the outdoors with a hint of horse and hay and something that was essentially male, essentially him. He filled her nostrils with it, making her feel as if she was being cast under an intoxicating spell. His tall authoritarian presence, that aura of command he wore like an extra layer of skin, that air of arrogance and assuredness that was so at odds with her insecurities and doubts and memory blanks. ‘I…I was trying to see if anything in here jogged my memory,’ she tried her best to explain.

He hooked a brow upwards. ‘And did it?’

She bit her lower lip, glancing at the shattered glass on the floor, which seemed to sever them as a couple. Was it symbolic in some way? A shard of glass was lying across their smiling faces, almost cutting them in two. She brought her gaze back to his. ‘No…’ She let out a sigh. ‘I don’t remember when that photo was taken or where.’

He bent down and carefully removed the remaining pieces of glass from the photo frame before placing it back on the desk. ‘It was taken a few days after we got home from our honeymoon. I took you for a picnic to one of the olive groves on the estate. The other photo with us together was taken in Rome.’

Emelia ran her tongue over her dry lips before asking, ‘Where did we go for our honeymoon?’

He was standing close, too close. She felt the alarm bells of her senses start to ring when he stepped even closer. The wall of bookshelves was at her back, each ancient tome threatening to come down and smother her. His dark eyes meshed with hers, holding them entranced. She felt her heart give a knock against her breastbone in anticipation of that sensuous mouth coming down to hers. She suddenly realised how much she wanted that mouth to soften against hers, to kiss her tenderly, lingeringly, to explore every corner of her mouth in intimate detail.