A Spanish Affair: Naive Bride, Defiant Wife / Flora's Defiance. LYNNE GRAHAM
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such an idiot!’ she suddenly exclaimed, unable to hold back her seething emotions and keep her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth any longer. ‘Somehow I thought it would be different…that you’d make more of an effort to make this work this time—’
‘What are you talking about?’ Alejandro demanded in the act of shedding the shirt to reveal a superb bronzed muscular chest sprinkled with dark curling hair and a hard, flat stomach that easily met the attributes of the proverbial six-pack.
Jemima spun back to face him. A pulse was beating so fast at the foot of her throat that it was a challenge to find her voice. With every fibre in her body she was blocking out and refusing to respond to his mesmeric physical appeal. ‘I arrived here a couple of hours ago. What did you think it would be like for me to be confronted with your mother before I even saw you again? Obviously it didn’t occur to you that for once in your life you should have been here for me!’
‘I left a message with my mother for you. Are you saying that you didn’t receive it?’ Alejandro prompted in a tone of hauteur that only set her teeth on edge more.
‘Your mother hates me like poison. Are you still so naïve that you think she would take the trouble to pass on a message to me?’ Jemima fired back at him.
‘If you didn’t get the message, I can only apologise for the oversight,’ Alejandro drawled smooth as glass, casting off the remainder of his clothes with incredible cool and strolling into the bathroom as lithe and strikingly naked as a sleek bronzed god.
That non-committal and reserved response made Jemima so mad, she was vaguely surprised that the top of her head didn’t blow off. ‘Don’t pull that aristocratic indifference act on me to try and embarrass me into silence!’ she hissed, stalking after him into the bathroom.
‘Since when has it been possible to embarrass you into silence?’ And with that cutting comeback Alejandro switched on the shower and forced her to swallow back her ire as she assumed that he could no longer hear her above the noise of the water beating down on the tiles.
But Jemima was so irate she still couldn’t shut up. The suave assurance with which Alejandro had stripped off in front of her and calmly entered the shower had acted like an electric shock on an already raw temper. ‘I hate you when you treat me like this!’ she yelled.
While Alejandro showered, Jemima paced in the doorway, all recollection of her past unhappiness as his wife returning then and there to haunt her. Not for anyone would she go through that experience again! And yet hadn’t she just signed up again for a rerun on Alfie’s behalf? How could it benefit Alfie that she wanted to kill his father in cold blood?
The water switched off and the fleecy white towel on the tiled wall was snatched off the rail. Jemima was trembling and she wrapped her arms round herself. Alejandro reappeared with the towel knotted round his narrow hips, his damp black hair slicked back from his brow and his big powerful body still beaded with drops of moisture. He surveyed her with infuriating, deeply offensive assurance.
‘You don’t hate me. Of course you don’t,’ he told her drily.
‘And how do you make that out? By the time that I walked out on our marriage, I couldn’t stand you!’
Alejandro moved towards her and she backed into the bedroom. ‘But why?’ he queried in the most reasonable of voices. ‘Because I had realised what you were up to with Marco? Because I asked you to explain what happened to all that money? Any man would have demanded answers from you.’
‘First and foremost I left you because you wouldn’t believe a word I said, but I did have lots of other good reasons,’ Jemima flung, her eyes bright as violet stars below her fine brows as she challenged him.
Alejandro frowned darkly. ‘I’m hungry. I want to get dressed and eat. I don’t want to get into a big scene right now.’
Such a surge of rage shot through Jemima’s tiny frame that she genuinely felt as though she had grown physically taller. ‘Alejandro…there’s never a right time with you. But I suggest that for once you look at what you did to contribute to the breakdown of our marriage and stop blaming me for everything that went wrong—’
‘Leave the past behind us.’
‘Don’t you dare say that to me when you continually throw everything I did back at me!’ Jemima hissed.
Alejandro groaned out loud. ‘So, say what you have to say in as few words as you can manage.’
‘You forced me to live under the same roof as your mother—’
‘The castle is very large. Such living arrangements are common in Spain—’
‘It was never that simple. Doña Hortencia loathes me and she made my life a misery the last time I was here. What did you ever do to stop her?’ she condemned fiercely.
‘You always exaggerate. How was your life made a misery?’ Alejandro countered in a discouraging tone of disbelief.
‘If I asked any of the staff to do anything they had to run it by your mother first because she insisted that she was still the mistress of this household. Usually, whatever I wanted I didn’t get and I found that humiliating. She criticised everything I did, refused to speak to me at mealtimes when you weren’t there and insulted me to my face in front of visitors. Ask your sister. Beatriz avoids trouble like the plague but she won’t tell you any lies if you ask the right questions.’
Alejandro had screened his brilliant gaze and his wide sensual mouth was compressed by the time she had finished speaking. ‘I’ll check it out.’
Jemima knotted her hands into fists. ‘So, you can’t take my word on that either?’
‘Since it looks as though I am destined to go hungry tonight, what else do I stand accused of?’ Alejandro enquired with sardonic bite.
His derisive intonation made Jemima’s teeth grind together. She was shivering with temper and her gaze locked accusingly to his. ‘It’s your fault that I fell pregnant with Alfie!’
Alejandro studied her in obvious bewilderment. ‘You love our son. You can scarcely hold his conception against me.’
‘I did when I first discovered that I was pregnant. You chose to be careless with contraception but I paid the price for it,’ she challenged, flushing as she recalled the passionate bout of lovemaking in the shower that had led to her unplanned pregnancy. ‘We had only been married a few months and I was still quite young for motherhood. I didn’t feel ready for a baby and being so sick while I was carrying him didn’t help. It made me feel more trapped than ever here but you didn’t understand how I felt, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t, but then you didn’t tell me at the time,’ Alejandro countered levelly. ‘Naturally I realised that you were unhappy but I assumed that was because you were unwell. I would’ve thought that by now you would have put any bitterness behind you on that score.’
Jemima regarded him with seething resentment. ‘So you get a clean slate while I get reminded of my every mistake?’
‘Alfie is not a mistake, Jemima. He is most probably the best thing that ever happened to either of us,’ Alejandro proclaimed in an undertone of driven emotion that was rare for him, his stunning golden eyes unusually eloquent.
Her eyes suddenly stung with prickling tears. ‘I didn’t mean that he was a mistake…’
‘Then what did you mean?’
‘You see, there you go again…thinking the very worst of me!’ Jemima launched accusingly, the swimming moisture in her eyes overflowing.
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