Читать книгу The Alcolar Family: The Twelve-Month Mistress / The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife / Bound by Blackmail - Kate Walker - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

COULD any week have lasted as long as this one? Cassie asked herself on a deep, despondent sigh as she poured herself a glass of cool, sparkling water, listening to the ice crackle as the liquid landed on top of it. Each day since she had left Joaquin and moved in to Ramón’s apartment had felt as if it had lasted a lifetime.

A long, lonely, dreary, dragging lifetime. One that didn’t seem to get any better, no matter how many times she tried to convince herself that it would.

And she had tried.

Every single night, as the darkness fell and she lay awake in the big comfortable bed she had told herself that tomorrow was another day. That tomorrow would be better. That it had to be better. How could it be any worse?

But each morning had dawned with the same dreary sense of dread, the same fearful anticipation of the long, weary hours that had to be got through until she could seek sanctuary in the darkness and the stillness once again. And each night she had lain awake again, staring blankly in front of her for yet more long, lonely hours, wishing with all her heart that she were back with Joaquin. That she had never left him.

When she slept, for the few hours she managed to sleep at all, she dreamed she was back there with him, back in the big house on the hill above the vineyard. Back in the room she and Joaquin had shared, in the bed where they had slept together. She would dream that he was with her, that she was curled tight against the hard power of his body, held comfortingly in the strength of his arms. And her dreams were so real, so vivid, so intense that she would wake believing it was real, with every nerve awake to the closeness of the man she loved, her whole body on fire with a hunger and a need of him that came from some deep, primitive part of her soul.

She would sigh, stretch, reach out for him…

And of course he wasn’t there.

With the terrible, jolting sense of awareness of the truth would come a devastating sense of loss and shock. She would lie there, aching and empty, hungry and yearning so desperately for him that she would curl up on herself with a moan of pain. The tears would slide from her eyes, impossible to hold back, and seep into the pillow so that every morning the wet patches were silent testimony to the misery of the night.

The sound of a car pulling up outside gave her despondent spirits a tiny, feeble lift.

Ramón was home. That at least meant that she would have someone else to talk to, someone to distract her. Someone to help her stay put right here and withstand the temptation to turn round and head back to the house she had shared with Joaquin.

At least once every day, and frequently more often, she had found the temptation to head for the door and drive out to the big white house by the vineyard almost irresistible.

What harm could it do? a persistent little voice inside her head kept asking.

She knew only too well what harm would result. She had said goodbye to Joaquin, in her mind, if not in her heart, and if she was to see him again then she would lose all the strength that she had gained from the week she had spent away from him.

Like an addict faced with the prospect of a free fix, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from reaching out and taking it, and the result would be destruction to her hopes of eventually gaining some sort of peace of mind. If she saw Joaquin, she would end up going back to him. It was as inevitable as the sun rising over Spain tomorrow morning. And if she went back to him, she was only storing up the prospect of bitter pain at some point in the probably not too distant future. Joaquin had made it plain that he was not looking for anything permanent with her, or for any form of commitment. Going back to him wouldn’t change that. It would only delay, not prevent, the inevitable.

The sound of the bell ringing pierced her unhappy thoughts, bringing her head up sharply. When it was followed by a persistent thumping on the thick wooden door to Ramón’s apartment, she smiled, shaking her head in disbelief at Ramón’s impatience.

‘Typical Alcolar!’ she laughed. ‘Can’t wait for anything!’

So like his brother. The unwanted reminder slipped into her mind, sobering her immediately. But then as the thumping sounded again she tightened the belt on the robe she had slipped into for comfort after taking a long shower to wash off the heat of the day, and headed out into the shadowy hallway.

‘What happened, Ramón?’ she asked, slipping the catch and pulling the big, heavy door open. ‘Did you forget your key, love?’

‘Ramón, you have to tell me if you know where the hell she is…’

The words, raw, harsh and strongly accented, spoken in a very masculine voice, clashed with her own as her eyes fell on the man who stood outside the apartment. The one man she most wanted to see and yet had prayed she would never, ever encounter again because it would destroy her.

Joaquin Alcolar in the devastatingly attractive flesh. And just one swift glance at his dark, stunning features undid all the hard work of the week as she had known it would do, leaving her hopelessly weak and totally vulnerable, a prey to all the uncontrollable, utterly irrepressible emotions that rose up from deep inside her heart.

‘I’ve tried every damn place I can think of to look and…’

Belatedly becoming aware of her dazed silence, Joaquin stopped dead too, his black eyes going to her shocked face, and narrowing in swift, stunned response.

‘You!’ he muttered, the single word sounding as if it had been forced from a painfully dry throat.

‘No!’

Cassie’s reaction was swift, purely instinctive. Acting through fear, totally beyond thought, she moved immediately to close the door, wanting to slam it shut in his face before he could have any further effect on her. Before Joaquin could realise just what effect his appearance had already had.

But she never managed to complete the action.

Fast as a striking snake, Joaquin’s hand came out, slamming hard against the wood of the door and stopping it in mid-curve. For a couple of silent, awkward seconds the two of them faced each other, Cassie struggling to complete the closing of the door and Joaquin determined to prevent her. At first it seemed as if they were almost equally matched, but then Joaquin exerted just a little more pressure, used a little more strength, and Cassie gave way, falling back with a small cry of despair and panic as the big, dark, threatening figure of the man moved inexorably into the room.

‘Go away!’

It was all she could manage and she knew it was hopeless and totally ineffectual even before he turned on her a blazing look that was so filled with arrogance and scorn that it dismissed her feeble attempt at protest with as much ease as he might flick away a fly that had landed on his arm.

‘No chance! I’m not leaving till I find out just what is going on.’

‘But—wha-what are you doing here? Why—?’

‘Oh, no, querida,’ Joaquin cut in brutally. ‘That is my question.’

Kicking the door to behind him with a slam that made her wince in nervous distress, he raked burning eyes from the top of her loose blonde hair, over the pale green silky robe, and down to where her narrow, bare feet rested on the polished wooden floor, toes curled slightly, apparently poised, ready to run if necessary.

‘I have to ask you what the hell you are doing here, in my brother’s apartment—and dressed like that.’

Cassie knew that the robe was fastened firmly across her breasts, but still, when subjected to the cruel scrutiny of those molten eyes, she felt as if the flimsy protection of the delicate material had been torn away from her, leaving her dangerously exposed and vulnerable.

‘I—I live here now…’ she managed shakily, pulling the front of the garment even tighter across her chest, and undoing and then retying the belt in a jerky, nervous movement, more for something to do rather than because it actually needed adjusting.

‘Oh, do you?’

The question scorched across her already sensitised nerves, making her shiver inwardly at the ominous undercurrents that lurked in the depths of his tone, totally at odds with the simple words. They made her think of rocks with jagged edges and unwary boats, torn to pieces, sinking under the weight of water that poured in through holes ripped in their sides.

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

This time she dragged up a touch of defiance from somewhere, injecting it into her tone with an effort. But all the rebellion drained right out of her again as a cynical dark eyebrow lifted, expressing deep contempt without a word needing to be spoken.

‘I’ve moved in with Ramón,’ she declared, pushing the words between them like a shield against him—or against her own most foolish impulses.

It was impossible to think clearly—to think at all. She only wanted him to turn and walk out of here, to go, before she did something really stupid, like fling herself into his arms, telling him that she loved him and if he would only take her back…

I’ve moved in with Ramón.

The words flared behind Joaquin’s eyelids, searing themselves into his brain, blinding him, destroying all hope of thinking rationally.

I’ve moved in with Ramón.

Did she mean—she couldn’t mean what he thought! She didn’t…

But then he remembered the time, just over a week ago. The time when he had arrived home unexpectedly.

Cassandra had been in a strange mood that day. Jittery as a cat on hot bricks and obviously on edge.

And then Ramón had turned up, using her key, obviously expected—and she had smiled, her whole face lighting up…

Ramón, who had a habit of turning up out of the blue. He had done that years before and claimed to be—had been proved to be—his father’s son by another woman. The woman Juan Alcolar had said that he loved, while his legitimate son’s mother had been just a marriage of duty, of convenience. That revelation had destroyed Joaquin’s own belief in love and honesty and fidelity.

In any sort of happy ever after.

And now Cassandra. His Cassandra. His woman.

I’ve moved in with Ramón.

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t! But why else would she say it? Why else would she be here, in that flimsy slip of a robe, obviously waiting for, expecting Ramón?

When she moved it was blatantly evident that underneath the robe she was wearing nothing at all. Her breasts swung softly, unfettered by any bra, and the smooth line of her hips…

He clenched his teeth together savagely, biting back the vicious outburst he wanted to fling in her face. His breath hissed between them as he struggled to get the worst of his black rage under control enough to speak.

‘You are living here—with my brother? You have been here all this time? While I was looking for you?’

She swallowed hard, seemed unable to speak, but there was no doubting the firmness of her nod of affirmation, the way those blue eyes clashed with his as she destroyed any remaining hope with a single gesture.

‘I see…’

Oh, he saw all right. And what he saw burned in his soul like acid, eating away at him deep inside.

‘So tell me, when did this happen?’

He was proud of that tone. It sounded almost cool, calm, in contrast to the lava-like fury that was boiling up inside him.

‘It’s obviously a very sudden thing.’

‘Not really—it’s been coming for a while.’

‘And you didn’t think to say anything?’

How the hell had he not noticed?

But of course he had. He had seen that something was wrong. It had been obvious that she’d been uneasy, edgy with him, never quite herself. But he had never imagined this.

And what the hell was herself? What was the real Cassandra? The true woman? The woman he’d known—thought he’d known…

‘I did try—but…’

‘You tried!’

The disgust he felt rang in his voice.

‘Oh, yes, lady, you tried. You tried so hard. You complained that I was going to work. Said that you didn’t want to act as my interpreter on Friday—well, you sure as hell got out of that one! By Friday you had disappeared from my life and I had no idea where on earth you were! You’d gone and all you left was that bloody note!’

He swung away from her, pacing the length of the room and back again, his eyes glazed, blurring his vision as he relived the night, a week before, when he had returned home to the empty room. An empty room in a still, silent, empty house.

He had called her name, thinking that she was perhaps by the pool or out in the garden. But there had been no answer. And so he had waited. He had set some wine to chill and he had sprawled on a lounger by the pool—the lounger on which they had made love the night before—and he had waited.

And waited.

And waited.

He had spent a long time thinking over the events of the previous night. Reviewing the things they had said to each other that morning. He had faced the fact that he was, after all, in deeper than he’d thought. Far deeper than he had ever believed was possible. That he had finally met the woman he couldn’t walk away from.

He’d looked at the decision he’d made during the day and known it was the only way open to him. He still hadn’t known if he believed in for ever, only that for this woman he had to give it a try. He’d taken out the ring that he’d bought, spending hours at a jeweller’s when he should have been at meetings. And he had struggled with a sensation that he had experienced only rarely in his life before.

Fear.

The fear that Cassandra might not feel the same way. That her change of mood, her strange behaviour over the past weeks had meant that she was the one who was preparing to turn her back on him. That she was the one who was about to walk. And as the time had dragged on and she hadn’t appeared, that fear had grown worse and worse.

It was when he had come inside again that he had found the note, tucked between two photograph frames on the mantelpiece, in a way that was such a cliché it would have been blackly humorous if it hadn’t been for what it had contained.

That note had taken all his worst possible fear and turned it dark as night.

“‘I’m sorry it had to be this way”,’ he quoted cynically now, “‘but it’s over.” And that was it. Not even a dozen words. Would it have killed you to say why?’

Cassandra flinched. She actually flinched away at his words, the sound of his anger. He couldn’t believe that she was shocked at his vehemence, surprised by his fury.

What the hell else had she expected?

Bitter memories surfaced. Memories of the night before she had left him, the delight he had felt in her then, the passion they had shared.

‘You gave no sign, woman. We slept together that night…’

He knew he didn’t have to say which night. The way her head went back, the brief moment in which she closed her eyes, the way her face whitened, all told him without speaking that his words had hit home.

‘We made love…’

But that brought her eyes open again in a rush, blazing into his in rejection of what he had said.

‘No, we didn’t! We did no such thing! We—we had sex…’

‘Sex—yeah.’

Hearing the way she said it, the use of the basic, blunt term instead of any gentler euphemism, told him just what she had felt about it. All that it had meant to her. The thought burned like acid in his guts.

He knew where Ramón kept the alcohol in his apartment and he headed over to the cupboard, pulling out a bottle of brandy and wrenching open the top of it with a vicious movement. Sloshing an unmeasured amount into a fine crystal glass, he lifted it, tilting it in Cassie’s direction in a mockery of a toast, before taking a deep swallow of the fiery liquid.

‘Yeah, we had sex,’ he went on savagely. ‘Good sex—the best!’

He turned blazing dark eyes on Cassie’s ashen face, fury etched onto his face.

‘Don’t you dare to try to deny that, my darling!’

‘I—wouldn’t,’ she managed to whisper, raw and husky. ‘I couldn’t…’

‘No, you couldn’t, mi belleza,’ he tossed back at her. ‘You most definitely could not. Not unless you are also going to claim to be the greatest actress the world has known. Remember I was there with you every inch of the way that night. I know how you felt; how you responded to me. You were there beneath me; I was with you, holding you, inside you! You can’t convince me that you weren’t out of your mind with wanting me—needing me…’

‘Yes—yes! I mean no…’

Cassie’s hands flew up and outward in a desperate gesture to cut him off when he would have raged on.

‘No, I can’t pretend I didn’t want you—I never have. I told you at the time that it was mutual.’

‘And yet less than twenty-four hours later, you had packed your bags and moved out—running from me—running here—to—to Ramón.’

In his mind he was seeing the day that Ramón had come to the finca, recalling the welcoming smile on her face, the way she had encouraged him into the house. Hell, she had even given him her keys!

The flare of hot jealousy hazed his eyes with red, blinding him as his hand clenched tight on the glass.

‘After what we shared.’

‘I told you at the time that there was more to it than enjoyment—than sex.’

‘And Ramón gives you this more?’

‘Right now, he gives me something that you never did!’

Her voice had lost something of the firmness it had held only moments before. Something he had said had struck home, shaking her conviction, rocking the foundations they were built on. But what? Which particular sentence had hit the target, thudding into the red, if not precisely into the gold?

There was something not quite right about this situation. Something he couldn’t completely work out—but every instinct he possessed told him that something was wrong. Something that raised all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck in warning like the hackles on a wary dog. But the haze of bitterness and shock, the raw agony of disbelief, clouded his brain so that thinking clearly was an impossibility.

Joaquin lifted the brandy bottle again, waving it in Cassie’s direction, lifting one eyebrow questioningly.

‘Join me in a drink?’

‘No—and do you think you should?’

‘Think I should?’ Joaquin echoed cynically. ‘Why not? After all, if my brother can steal my woman from me then surely I am entitled to help myself to some of his brandy in return.’

‘Steal your woman?’ Cassie repeated, actually managing to look convincingly bemused. ‘What are you talking about?’

“‘I’ve moved in with Ramón”,’ Joaquin quoted at her, considering the brandy bottle, then abruptly setting it down again. ‘You’re living with my brother.’

‘You knew that already! I told you…’

The shocking sense of realisation was like a blow to her face, stunning her into silence, shrivelling the words on her tongue.

Too late she realised how he was interpreting her reply. How he was putting far too much into it.

Not ‘you’re living with my brother’, as in you share this apartment with Ramón, but you’re living with Ramón. As she had once lived with Joaquin himself.

‘No,’ she tried but Joaquin wasn’t listening.

‘You said you were fine with what we had—that you didn’t want anything more.’

He slammed his half-empty glass down on the table, heedless of the way that the rich amber brandy slopped over the side.

‘Then Ramón—my brother—crooks his little finger and you’re gone! Without a second thought—leaving me a note!’

‘I-I didn’t have any time to say any more!’ Cassie stammered clumsily. ‘I—’

‘No time?’ Joaquin practically spat the words into her pale face. ‘And why was that, querida? Was your new lover waiting impatiently for you? Are you so insatiable that you’ve gone from my bed to my brother’s in less than a week? Couldn’t you wait to get to him—to Ramón? To my brother?’

‘No! You’ve got it all wrong! I didn’t—’

‘Didn’t what, my darling? Didn’t leave me and come straight here to be with Ramón? Didn’t move in with him without a backward glance—’

‘Yes! I moved in with him!’ she tried again. ‘But not like that! We’re not lovers!’

Blazing black eyes seared over her from head to foot, taking in the short, clinging robe, her bare legs and toes.

‘We’re not! When I said he gives me something you never did, I meant…’

Her voice deserted her just when she needed it most. What could she say that Ramón gave her? The mood that Joaquin was in, he would never believe her if she simply used the word friendship. And really, what Joaquin’s brother had offered was more than that. It was an unquestioning, peaceful, brotherly sort of…

But no, she couldn’t use the word love.

‘What did you mean, Cassie?’ Joaquin questioned harshly, eyes cold and hard and sharp as lasers as they fixed on her face, watching the emotions that flew across it, one after the other, none of them actually settling. ‘What does my brother give you? What did he offer to entice you away from me?’

‘He didn’t—I…’

But she couldn’t finish because some change in Joaquin’s own expression alerted her to the fact that he had suddenly had a revelation. She could see in his eyes that he had been turning things over in his mind and had come to a conclusion—and something about the way those polished jet eyes suddenly narrowed warned her that the assumption he had made was not one she was going to like.

‘Gives you more…’ he muttered roughly. ‘Something I never did. Don’t tell me the fool offered marriage!’

Cassie knew that she had lost colour. She could almost feel the blood drain from her face so fast that it made her already scrambled brain spin weakly.

‘No—’

She tried for force but it came out as a pathetic croak, one that she could barely hear herself, and which Joaquin, clearly absorbed in his own thoughts, didn’t even register as he came towards her suddenly.

The look on his face frightened her. It was as if the man she had known, her lover, the man she had lived with for the past year, had disappeared and someone else had taken his place. Someone she didn’t know at all.

His face was hard and set, totally ruthless. There was no longer any light in his eyes, so that they were deep, opaque, and totally black.

Nerves dried her mouth and she took a couple of hasty steps backwards, then had to stop as her back came up against the wall. But Joaquin kept coming. Not fast, but his movements measured and determined, his unyielding eyes never even seeming to flicker or blink.

‘Okay,’ he said so casually that it shocked her. ‘I’ll bite.’

‘Bite?’

She had no idea at all what he meant.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Marriage.’

‘M-marriage?’

She really had to be going mad. She was so stressed that she was starting to hear things. Things that were totally impossible. She could have sworn that Joaquin had said…

‘Yeah, marriage.’

He pushed a hand through his hair, flexing his shoulders as if he was trying to ease some ache there, and then looked her straight in the eye.

‘If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you.’

I’ll marry you.

How many times had she dreamed of just this scenario? How many nights, tired and too weak to fight against the foolish need inside her heart, had she let herself think, let herself imagine for just the tiniest, brief moment, that one day Joaquin might ask her to marry him?

And in those dreams she had always, happily, joyfully, rushed in and said yes—yes—yes!—even before he had actually finished speaking.

But this time, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t find the strength to speak. Three times she opened her mouth, and on each occasion her voice failed her completely. She couldn’t force her tongue to form any words, felt as if her vocal cords had shrivelled into nothing, and her throat had closed up so tight that it was almost impossible to breathe.

If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you. He had given her the world with one hand then snatched it back roughly with the other, reducing the gesture to less than nothing, to a lie, a mockery of any sort of real proposal. It was more like a slap in the face than any gesture of feeling.

‘Well?’

‘Is—is this meant to be a proposal?’

‘If that’s what you want it to be. What’s the matter, querida? Not romantic enough for you?’ Joaquin’s tone was harder, crueller than ever—and this was the man who was suggesting marriage?

Or at least that was what it seemed.

‘Would you prefer it if I went down on one knee? Sorry but I don’t do that sort of romantic gesture.’

‘You don’t do any sort of romantic gesture!’

‘Oh, please, belleza!’

Joaquin dismissed her protest with an arrogant toss of his head.

‘Don’t try to accuse me of short-changing you on the gestures! I gave you—what…?’

He appeared to consider, to calculate, though Cassie suspected he knew exactly what he was going to say and was only pausing for effect.

‘I gave you thirteen words—two more than you spared me when you were leaving me for good. You were planning on going for good, weren’t you? I mean, you didn’t exactly say.’

‘I…’

Cassie tried once more to answer him, and once more failed miserably. She was fighting a vicious little battle with the stinging tears at the back of her eyes; tears she was determined she would not shed. She wasn’t going to let this sardonic monster that Joaquin had suddenly turned into see just how badly he was upsetting her, how deeply his barbed words had stabbed into her already wounded heart.

‘Yes?’ he faked concern, interest in what she had been trying to say. ‘You what?’

‘If—if you thought I meant to leave then why—why propose? Why ask me to marry you when you believe I wanted to go for good?’

‘Because I don’t want you to go.’

Don’t want…

Cassie felt as if she were swimming through a dark, clouded sea, getting nowhere, or perhaps going round and round in circles. She couldn’t see where she was going and so she couldn’t begin to guess which way was right and which was wrong.

Had she got this all wrong? Was it possible after all that Joaquin had actually meant his proposal of marriage? That he really didn’t want her to go? But if that was the case, then why had he couched it in those appalling terms? There had been no real warmth, no hint of affection or even care in those coldly casual words.

‘I see it as the only way to hold onto you. You claimed you were happy with what we had—but you obviously were not. I was content with the way things were—’

‘And that was…?’

Wasn’t it obvious? the scathing glance he turned on her demanded. Did he have to explain?

Well, yes, he did, so she remained stubbornly silent until he was forced to speak again.

‘We had a great thing together—the best. You know what it was like that last night.’

‘The—’

Cassie’s stomach heaved nauseously as she struggled with the word, forcing herself to say it.

‘The sex.’

‘Of course. What else, amada?’

His tone turned the last word into something that was exactly the opposite of the ‘beloved’ it actually meant.

‘I wanted you from the start—and you never disappointed me. I still want you. But I want you all to myself. I’m not prepared to share you with any man—even my brother. If marriage is the price of that, then I’m prepared to pay it.’

‘You’d marry me—even though you believe I’ve been with Ramón all this week?’

Joaquin’s casually dismissive shrug was even more appallingly unfeeling than the callous way he had declared he wanted her sexually and nothing more.

‘It’s only a week. I can forget a momentary aberration if it’s nothing more than a few days. But after this—no more! You will be mine and you will not give Ramón even a second look.’

Cassie knew that she was staring. She even suspected that her mouth was gaping slightly in stunned horror, but she couldn’t shake herself out of the almost catatonic state into which his cold-blooded declaration had thrown her.

He couldn’t mean this! He just couldn’t!

He had to be joking—but then, if he was, it was the most dreadful, sick form of black humour imaginable. It was vicious and cruel and totally hateful.

‘So what’s your answer?’

‘My answer!’

Pushed beyond endurance, Cassie felt that her head might explode. But at least his taunting tone drove the tears away, drying them in an instant. She welcomed the tiny flame of rage that lit inside her, fanning it until it flared into a healthy blaze.

‘What do you think my answer is? What would any sane woman answer to such a travesty of a proposal? I don’t know how you even dare to think I might have to consider it.’

Wasn’t that enough for him to get the message? But looking into the bleak darkness of his eyes she saw that no, it wasn’t. He was actually waiting for her response. Waiting for her to say something more—to give him an answer to his hateful suggestion.

‘My answer is no! No! Never! No way! Not in my lifetime! I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man alive on this earth and the future of the human race depended on it.’

Drawing a deep breath, she locked her blazing blue gaze with his cold jet one and repeated, with insulting slowness and clarity, ‘My answer is no—I will not marry you!’

In the deathly silence that fell as her words died away she tensed instinctively, waiting for the explosion that she was sure was to come. An explosion of anger, or protest, or rejection—she wasn’t sure which. But she was positive that there was no way at all that he was just going to take that and leave it, without coming back at her in some way.

So she was stunned when once again he just shrugged his shoulders in nonchalant dismissal.

‘Fine. Okay, if that’s your answer.’

‘It is.’

She sounded as breathless as if she had been running for hours, the words escaping on shaken gasps.

‘Believe me—it is.’

‘Well, in that case, then, I won’t stay around.’ His tone was as stiff as the muscles in his neck and jaw, drawing his mouth tight and hard. ‘I’m sure—just from looking at you—that you’re expecting my brother any moment now, and it would probably be best if I wasn’t here when he arrived. Buenas noches, Cassie.’

This time Cassie knew she was really gaping, but she couldn’t stop herself. She just didn’t believe what she was seeing as he turned on his heel and marched towards the door.

‘Joaquin…’ she managed, not really knowing what she meant to say.

But her voice had no strength and Joaquin didn’t hear her. Or if he did he ignored her and kept on walking, his head arrogantly high, the broad shoulders and stiff, straight back expressing eloquently his total rejection of her without a word needing to be spoken.

He didn’t look back either, but then she had never expected that he would. And she couldn’t move, the aftereffects of shock and the wild emotional storm that had raged through her leaving her shaken and weak, unable even to think.

She let him go. Let him walk through the door, and watched it slam closed behind him, the terrible, unfocused, dreary sense of inevitability swamping her mind so that there was no room for anything else.

It was a dreadfully bitter irony that now, at last, Joaquin had done what she had wanted most in all the world. He had told her that he wanted her; that he didn’t want to lose her. He had even proposed marriage, for heaven’s sake!

But it hadn’t been for heaven, had it? Instead it had produced Cassie’s own personal form of hell. A hell in which by apparently offering her everything she had ever wanted, a future with him, he had shown that the real truth of the way he was feeling was the exact opposite of what she truly needed.

He wanted her. He didn’t want to lose her. He thought of her as ‘his woman’—but he didn’t love her. He would marry her, but only as a way of possessing her. The offer of marriage had been only to ensure that she had no relationship with his brother.

His brother!

‘Ramón!’ Cassie muttered aloud, the name bringing her out of the trancelike shock and into action again.

Joaquin still believed that she was having a relationship with his brother! He thought that he had left her here awaiting the arrival of her lover—of Ramón!

She couldn’t let that continue; couldn’t let him go on believing that his brother had made a move on ‘his woman’ while, ostensibly at least, Joaquin and Cassie had still been together. It was the sort of thing that Joaquin’s pride could never tolerate. The sort of thing that no man with any sense of honour would do to a friend, let alone a member of his own family.

Joaquin would never speak to his brother again if he continued to believe that was what had happened. And Cassie could not be the cause of anger and division between the two brothers. She knew that they had had a difficult enough time getting to be friends in the past. Joaquin had seen his half-brother as evidence of their father’s adultery, his unfaithfulness to his wife, and so had had to struggle to accept both the younger man and then the other, half-English brother Alex who had appeared later. She had to make sure that Joaquin knew the truth. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least try.

‘Joaquin!’

Heedless of the fact that she was still wearing only the flimsy robe and that her feet were bare, Cassie yanked open the door and ran out into the big hallway, the third floor landing in the apartment block.

‘Joaquin!’

Her call echoed round the empty space. Of course. The mood he had been in, Joaquin was clearly in no frame of mind to hang around. But somewhere in the distance, a floor or so away, she caught the faint sound of footsteps on the stairs, going down. Perhaps if she ran, she might just have a chance to catch him.

Bare feet making no sound, her hand clutching the polished wooden banister rail as she swung round the corners, she dashed down the big staircase, her breath catching in her throat at the thought that he might get away before she could speak to him.

‘Joaquin, please wait!’

Had the footsteps below her slowed, maybe even stilled, just for a second? She didn’t know and she couldn’t risk a pause to listen for fear that he might get right away from her. If he went out into the street she would lose him…

‘Oh, please!’

She landed on the marble tiled floor of the main entrance hall with a soft thud, her heart lifting jerkily at the realisation that she could just see Joaquin’s tall, dark figure on the other side of the glass-paned door that was still swinging with the force of his exit through it.

‘Joaquin!’

Somehow she found the strength to wrench it open, fling herself out into the evening air where a sudden rainstorm had soaked the street, the shallow stone steps leading up to the apartment building.

‘Joaquin, oh, please! Please wait! Please listen! I have to talk to you.’

He’d heard her.

She saw him stiffen, hesitate, then whirl round, spinning on his heel.

And as he did so it seemed as if time suddenly slowed, went out of focus and blurred. Even her own breathing suddenly seemed suspended and she watched in a sense of hopeless horror as the scene before her was played out in a sort of dreadful slow motion that she could do nothing to stop.

She saw Joaquin’s swift stride down the steps, the way his foot had gone out to move from one to the next. Then his check as she called his name. The swift, sudden turn, his head coming round to glance at her, that threw him totally off balance. The way that, still moving forward at the same time, he missed his footing, slipped, lost his balance completely.

She thought that she screamed. She knew that she opened her mouth to do so, but no sound came out.

And she could only watch in silent dread as Joaquin pitched forward, fell headlong down the remainder of the steps, landing awkwardly on the rain-soaked pavement below.

Fear froze her with her hands to her mouth as she saw his dark head strike hard against the hard stone of the final step, his long body rolling a couple of inches more then coming to a complete halt, lying dreadfully limp and unmoving on the pavement while the heavy rain lashed down onto his pale, still face.