Читать книгу The Alcolar Family: The Twelve-Month Mistress / The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife / Bound by Blackmail - Kate Walker - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

THE calendar hung in the middle of the wall, right where Cassie couldn’t avoid seeing it.

No matter which way she looked, it was always there, clear and obvious. In fact it almost seemed to be getting bigger, more obvious with each second that passed, the photograph of a fiesta scene instantly attracting attention with its brilliant colours, its vibrant life.

And beneath it, the dates in bold black print.

Particularly the date she didn’t want to see.

Or most longed to see. She didn’t know which way she felt right now.

Because the importance of that date wasn’t in her hands. It was in Joaquin’s control. And only his. She could do nothing about it.

Not if she wanted to avoid pushing things in a direction she didn’t want them to go.

But was it worth staying in a situation that was just not making her happy?

‘Oh, stop it!’ she told herself sharply, pushing back a strand of golden blonde hair that had fallen forward over her face, and tucking it behind her ear. ‘Leave it! You’re just going round in circles!’

As she had been doing for the last three weeks, she admitted, arching brows drawing sharply together over concerned blue eyes. Ever since the calendar had been turned to reveal the month of June and right there, in the middle of the third week, the all-important anniversary.

The anniversary that she had no idea whether Joaquin would remember and, if he did, whether he would mark it in the way that he had done with all his other previous relationships.

By leaving.

Or, rather, telling her to leave, seeing as it was his house that they lived in.

No woman had ever lasted more than twelve months with him. After a year, sometimes even to the day, he said good-bye and walked away without a backwards glance, it seemed. And at the end of this week she would have been living with him for a year.

‘Oh, Joaquin, what are you thinking? What are you feeling?’

Would she ever be more than just a mistress to him, or was she destined to go the same way as all his other women—out of his life for good?

The sound of a key being inserted in a lock downstairs pulled her out of her thoughts and into the present moment again. Somehow she had missed the sound of the car pulling up outside and now here he was, Joaquin himself, unexpectedly early, and she would have to get herself into the right mood to greet him.

‘Cassandra!

The sound of her name, pronounced as only Joaquin could speak it, with the lilting emphasis, the faint roll of the R, floated up the stairs to her waiting ears. Ears that were straining to hear whether there was anything different about the way he used it, anything that would give her a clue as to just what sort of mood he was in. Whether he was feeling as he usually did, or if some unwanted distance, a newfound coldness had crept into his tone.

Anything that might give her warning of what was to come. Anything that would give her a couple of much-needed seconds to adjust her own mood, her own response, prepare herself if necessary.

‘Cassie!’

Oh, there was no mistaking that tone, she told herself wryly.

Even on the single word, the darker emphasis, the undercurrent of impatience was pure Joaquin. And, unlike most people who used the shortened version of her name as a form of affection and warmth, Joaquin Alcolar employed it as a sound of reproof, an indication that she had somehow fallen short of his expectations.

Obviously he had expected that she would have rushed to greet him, to kiss him, as he came through the door. On any other day she would have fulfilled those expectations with alacrity. But today her troubled thoughts had made her unusually slow to react.

‘Cassie! Where are you?’

‘Up here!’

She was moving as she spoke. There had been a note in his voice that had her up and out of her chair before she even had time to think. A note that went beyond his usual, ingrained belief that he had only to speak and he would be obeyed.

He was right, of course. As the eldest son of Juan Ramón Alcolar, the Spanish aristocrat who also owned and ran the Alcolar Corporation, Joaquin had been used to respect and obedience to his command, the fulfilment of every whim, from the day of his birth. And now, as owner and managing director of his own highly successful vineyard, he had increased both his status and his personal fortune two-hundredfold, so demanding even more respect than ever before.

That was why some called him El Lobo, lone wolf, because he had gone his own way in the world, looking to no one for help, not even his family. But there were others who changed one letter of the nickname, making it into El Loco, because they just couldn’t believe that anyone would turn their back on the fortune and the position his father would have given him if he had gone into the family media business instead.

‘I’m coming!’

She wasn’t always so swift to obey him. In the past she had sometimes held out against that note of command in his voice, deliberately defying him just to rile his volatile temper. And she was one of the few, along with his younger sister Mercedes, who could get away with it.

Normally she was more than happy to provoke him if she felt he needed it, determinedly rebelling against that autocratic assumption that he had only to speak to be obeyed. But not today. Not now. Not with that all-important anniversary coming up fast and Joaquin’s mood so uncertain.

‘You’re early! I wasn’t expecting you for an hour or more.’

And she didn’t sound too pleased about it, Joaquin reflected inwardly, knowing that this was one of the reasons that had brought him home so unexpectedly. Cassandra had changed recently. Changed in ways he didn’t understand or like, and he’d hoped that by catching her unawares he might have a chance at finding out just what was going on in her mind.

‘The meeting reached the decision I wanted far sooner than I had anticipated. And I have plenty of work to do on the next project so I decided to take advantage of the fact and come home.’

His concentration had been shot anyway. His mind hadn’t been on the matter in hand and so he’d brought the meeting to an abrupt halt and headed out to his car as soon as he could. He suspected he’d broken a couple of speed limits on his way back too.

‘Why does that surprise you? Do you have a guilty conscience about something?’

‘What? No. Of course not.’

It sounded disturbingly edgy. Her voice rose and fell in an unnatural way, making her sound as if she had something to hide.

‘It’s just that you said you wouldn’t be back until seven.’

‘Because I didn’t expect to be. I also didn’t think that you’d complain.’

‘I’m not complaining.’

She’d been like this for a couple of weeks now, growing sharper and more unpredictable with each day that passed. And nothing made her smile as she had once smiled so readily. Nothing pleased her.

That was, nothing but their time in bed. That at least hadn’t lost its appeal. If anything, his appetite seemed to have grown stronger, more passionate—though there was less of the true lover in Cassandra. A lot less of the seductive, enticing lover, and much more of an urgent demand that shook him with its intensity.

Something had gone out of their relationship and left it all the poorer for its absence.

‘I’m not complaining—it’s just unexpected.’

She had reached the top of the stairs now, looking down at where he stood at the bottom, feet planted firmly on the terracotta tiles of the hall floor, dark head tilted back so that he could look up at her.

Even from this perspective, a position that would have foreshortened and distorted a lesser man, he was imposing and forcefully stunning in a way that rocked her already precarious composure, notching her heartbeat up a pace, making her blood throb in her veins.

Hair as black as a raven’s wing, worn slightly long at the neck, matched exactly the jet darkness of his eyes. His skin was deep olive satin, tanned even more by the burning sun in this part of Jerez. He was unusually tall for a Spaniard, his height revealing his Andalusian ancestry, and the broad chest, narrow waist and long, powerful legs of his strong, lean body were sensuously enhanced by the superb tailoring of his pale grey suit, the white shirt underneath worn with a silvery silk tie.

The tie he had tugged loose at the throat, of course. Joaquin Alcolar might be accustomed to wearing the conventional uniform of the successful businessman when he had to, but as soon as he got home he would abandon the sophisticated veneer. He’d discard the tailored jacket, unfasten the tie and the top couple of buttons of his shirt, and transform himself from the powerful managing director into something much less formal and constrained, appearing so much more rakish, more potently virile.

‘When the meeting finished early I decided that I could get more done at home than I could in the office.’

‘You’ve come home to work, then?’

It shouldn’t hurt. She knew what he was like. But it did sting smartly just the same.

‘I would have thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I am.’

She sounded as if she had forced herself to say it, Joaquin reflected, the uneasy, irritated mood in which he had arrived home growing by the second. And what was she doing hovering up there at the top of the stairs when she should be coming down here, into his arms?

That was what he wanted. But just lately what he wanted and what Cassandra wanted had been totally separate things. The warm spontaneity that had taken him so much by storm had vanished, leaving in its place a cool constraint that jarred unpleasantly.

‘If this is pleased, then I don’t think I’d like to see you disappointed. You look almost as if you have something to hide. What is it, querida? Do you have a lover hidden away upstairs? Someone you don’t want me to see?’

He meant it to be light, joking, but his inner feelings added a darker edge that made it seem more like an attack than he had intended.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’

She was on the step just above him now, looking down into his eyes, and he saw the faintest flicker of something in their depths that made his hackles rise as her blue gaze clashed with his much darker one.

‘Why would I want a lover?’

‘Why indeed? Don’t I keep you busy enough?’

This was her cue to move into his arms, to press the softness of her cheek against the dark-shadowed skin of his, and to wind her own arms around him as she snuggled close.

To distract him from the uneasy, uncomfortable path his thoughts had been following for far too long now.

‘Cassandra?’

There it was again, that sudden unexplained smokiness in the normally brilliant blue eyes, making him want to grab at her arms, shake them, shake her into saying what was wrong. If anything was wrong. Because he was sure there was something.

‘Of course you do.’

Her smile was a disturbing on-off flash, withdrawn and meaningless, no real warmth in it at all.

‘More than busy.’

And at last she bent and kissed him. But it was only the brush of her lips against his cheek. There and then gone—as elusive as her mood had been so often recently.

And there was that damn smile again. A smile that was not a smile. A smile that said that her thoughts were somewhere else entirely. Not with him at all.

He hated the way that made him feel.

The next minute she had come down the final step, gently pushing past him as she moved into the hall, turning towards the kitchen.

‘I was going to make coffee. Do you want some? Or perhaps something cool. It was terribly hot when I was outside this afternoon.’

‘It’s no cooler now.’

What the hell were they doing talking about the weather? He used inane conversations about the climate to while away time with people he didn’t know or like. People he couldn’t get on with. Business contacts, employees—his father!

Not his mistress—the woman he lived with!

‘So not coffee, then?’

‘No!’

It was not the offer of coffee or any other drink he was referring to. He couldn’t stand the way that she was walking away from him. Not looking at him. Not even addressing him face on, but tossing the remarks back over her shoulder as if she didn’t care whether he heard her or not.

‘No!’

He moved after her, anger charging his strides, making them long, swift, furious. His hand came out, clamped over her upper arm, jolting her to a halt, whirling her round.

‘Joaquin!’

But he ignored her protest; heedless of whether he had caused it by the way his hard fingers were digging into the white flesh exposed by the sleeveless turquoise sundress. Burning dark eyes searched her face once more, wanting to probe deep into her mind, her soul, see what was hidden there.

‘No!’ he said again, though even he couldn’t have said with regard to what. He only knew that he didn’t like the way he was feeling. The way he had been feeling for too long.

The way she made him feel.

And the way he had never, ever felt in his life before.

He wanted his old way of life back. Wanted that feeling of being in control, of knowing where he was heading—what he wanted! He hated this sensation of being adrift in a rudderless boat—and all because of this woman.

‘All right, no coffee. Just what is the matter with you today?’

But he wasn’t ready to answer that.

‘Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.’

‘Then stop behaving like a bear with a sore head. I want a drink even if you don’t, so…’

Her gaze dropped to the strong, tanned fingers still clenched around her arm, then back up to his face, the reproach in them so strong that he instinctively released her, taking a step back.

‘Perdón.’

‘Okay.’

She flashed that meaningless smile once again. Dios, but he truly hated the insincerity of it! But then almost immediately her expression changed.

‘No, actually, it’s not okay! Not at all! There’s nothing okay about it. What do you think you’re doing—manhandling me like that?’

‘Manhandling?’

In his indignation, his accent and pronunciation mangled the word so that it was almost incomprehensible.

‘Manhandling? You call that manhandling? What has happened to you, my Cassie? You never used to be like this. You always used to like my touch…’

A rush of cold anger at her rejection, the words she had used, pushed him forward, eyes fixed on her face, noting the suddenly watchful expression, the flicker of something new and uncertain deep in those blue eyes.

‘Loved it…’

‘Well not the way you got hold of me just then! I didn’t like that! And I certainly didn’t love it!’

‘I hurt you? If I did I’m sorry—’

‘You didn’t hurt me! At least, not in the way you think!’

The defiant tilt to her chin was pure provocation; an extra spark in the brilliance of her eyes created an answering fire in the most primitively masculine parts of his body. His heart gave a sharp kick, making his blood pound heavily through his system.

And suddenly he knew that he had to touch her. Really touch her. And not in the way that she had accused him of, manhandling her. He wanted to hold her close, kiss away the blaze of rejection in her eyes…

‘And you can perdón till you’re blue in the face and it won’t do a blind bit of good!’ she flung at him furiously. ‘You’re not going to treat me like this and get away with it!’

The sting of the words made him check himself. Think.

He didn’t like the direction his thoughts led him in.

Joaquin drew his brows together sharply, not knowing in the mixture of disbelief, incomprehension and anger that was suddenly bubbling inside him exactly which emotion was uppermost. His frown revealed them all.

‘Treat you in what way, precisely, querida? Cassandra, you’re really not making sense. And just what brought on this mood in the first place?’

‘You did!’

She was treading on dangerous ground here, Cassie admitted to herself. If she wasn’t prepared to tell him the real truth, then she was taking a risk even hinting at it. She had vowed that until Joaquin himself raised the topic of their year together then she wouldn’t say a word. Wouldn’t even hint at the way it was making her feel.

But an accusation like that last one came too close to what was really tearing her up inside.

‘And you can keep your hands off me!’

‘Oh, no, my lovely…’

He shook his dark head slowly but so emphatically, his voice a predatory purr.

‘That I cannot do. It is impossible. I cannot be with you, near you, and not touch you. I only have to look at you to want you, and you know that. Even now, when you are in this wild, crazy mood, my fingers itch to touch…’

He suited action to the words, reaching out and hooking one hand very gently around the back of her neck, the warmth of his palm along the soft skin of her throat, his thumb brushing her cheek.

‘To caress you.’

That strong, broad thumb moved against her flesh, stroking delicate, erotic circles that woke every nerve, bringing their endings rushing to the surface.

‘To hold you.’

His other hand trailed softly up the right side of her neck, silky touch moving over satin and raising cold prickles of awareness all over her body as it did so, making her shiver in uncontrollable response. A moment later her face was cupped in both his hands, being drawn slowly and irresistibly towards him.

‘Kiss you…’ he murmured, his breath warm against her lips.

No! It was a cry of protest in her mind as panic set in at the thought of just how easily he could do this. How casually, how often he used the fierce, blazing, physical passion between them to avoid anything truly emotional. To dodge talking about anything that mattered.

Like their future. If they had one.

She tried to shake her head, to break away, but he held her too firmly for that.

‘Cassandra, querida, you know what you do to me.’

And what he did to her. And it was happening right now, no matter how hard she struggled against it.

His kiss was pure Joaquin. Pure enticement; pure seduction in a caress. It snatched her thoughts from her brain, reduced what was left to nothing but mush, and left her adrift on a sea of sensation, floating, melting, not knowing where she had been going or why.

‘Joaquin…’

His name was a sigh against his mouth, drawn from her by the pressure of his lips on hers.

‘So now, mi belleza, how am I doing now?’

She could hear the smile in his voice though she couldn’t actually see it on his face.

‘How am I touching you?’

Warm arms slid round her, closing tight across her shoulders, drawing her to him with soft but irresistible strength.

‘How am I holding you? Am I manhandling you now?’

‘N-No…’

‘Should I take my hands off you?’

‘No!’

It was a cry of protest when the pressure of his arms eased slightly, and it seemed he would have drawn away.

‘No—not now…’

In her heart, even that faint lessening of his hold felt like a little death, like the loss of something most precious to her, and something she would do all she could to keep.

But at the same time, unwanted and unwelcome, a tiny, lingering voice of common sense was whispering at the back of what was left of her mind, underneath all the sensual onslaught.

No, no, no, no… it was saying, over and over. And in a very different tone from the one she had used.

It was like being in the middle of an emotional civil war where one part of her yearned to surrender to the sexual appeal of Joaquin’s touch, the heat that his kiss triggered all through her body. But at the same time that warning voice was demanding to know why she was making this so easy for him. Why she was going under without a struggle.

Because she didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to struggle against her own feelings, her own desire to meet his kiss with her kiss, his caress with her own gentle touch. Even after just that one kiss, the feel of his arms around her, her whole body ached with a need that she could hardly control. She yearned to crush herself closer to him, to feel the heat and masculine power of his body against her own.

‘Not now…’ Joaquin echoed.

His mouth was on her throat now, making a slow, seductive journey from her shoulder to her jaw, kissing his way along. And Cassie would never have thought that there could be such variety in the simple sensation of a kiss.

But now it seemed that a kiss could be both hard and soft, light and then forceful against her neck. It could be oh, so tender and enticing, so that she felt she would almost weep at the gentleness of it. And then again it could be sharply, faintly cruel when his teeth grazed her skin, occasionally nipping lightly so that she gasped in shock.

‘Not now,’ he repeated, the words forming against her jaw-line in the warmth of his breath. ‘Now I am not manhandling you, but treating you as a woman should be treated. As a man should touch his woman—as I want to touch my woman.’

My woman.

The words were like a slap in the face, forcing her out of the heated daze into which she had fallen and making her look reality right in the eye.

My woman.

The darkly possessive tone revealed more of Joaquin than anything else could.

‘So, mi belleza, perhaps we should continue this somewhere more comfortable, hmm?’

Mi belleza. My woman.

Always, to Joaquin, it was what he owned, what he controlled, what he had power over that mattered. He ran his life with a ruthless, almost brutal discipline. Everything was as he wanted it and nothing happened without his approval.

It was what had brought him his success and what kept him right where he was. Always at the top of his game, always on the peak of the mountain.

Always having things on his own terms, and only his terms.

She had come into his life on his terms, lived with him on his terms. And would she be expected to leave on his terms too? To walk out the door when he said it was time, whether she wanted to or not?

Was she only ever going to let him dictate things to her?

‘Querida?’

Joaquin had noticed her sudden silence, the withdrawal that had taken her away from him, mentally if not physically.

‘What is it?’

Cassie opened her mouth to reply, found that her throat was too dry and tight to form any words, and had to clear it harshly before she could manage to speak.

‘I thought you came home to work. And I really need that coffee.’

At least her voice was croaky and raw enough to make it believable. She sounded as if she had a ton of sand roughening her throat and she had to lick at her lips nervously to stop them from drying out. The way his eyes followed the betraying movement had a hawklike intensity that made her shiver deep inside.

‘I’m parched.’

His stillness betrayed the way he was feeling, the anger he was holding in check. Joaquin Alcolar wasn’t a man who gave in to rages and blazing tempers. The fury he felt was cold, hard as ice, bitter as a cruel winter wind, but it was no less savage for that.

And it was always preceded by one of these sudden silences. The freezing of his long frame into the total stillness of a hunting predator who had spotted his prey and had every muscle tense and bunched, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

‘You’re thirsty?’

His tone made it plain how ridiculous he thought it. How impossible it seemed to him that anyone could want to choose the simple practical need for a drink over the sensual banquet he had obviously intended enjoying.

‘Yes.’

It was all she could manage. That and the brief, uncomfortable ducking of her head, carefully avoiding his burning gaze. If she looked into his eyes she would see the anger there that wasn’t in his voice and she knew it would destroy her nerve to go on.

‘I said I was thirsty when I came down. I’m still thirsty now. I was on my way to make a coffee…’

‘You’re joking, sὶ?’

He couldn’t believe it, she realised uncomfortably. He really couldn’t believe that she would reject his seductive advances. That she would turn them down—turn him down.

And even worse, he hadn’t ever thought that she could resist him. He had assumed that she would be putty in his hands, easily distracted from her purpose by what he wanted. That she would do as he wished, without any questions. That she would respond to his whim as swiftly and obediently as a trained dog. And that if he told her to jump then she would simply ask how high.

‘Why should I be joking?’

She tried to assume an airy carelessness that she was very far from feeling. The look in those deep-set eyes was dangerous, and the strong body was still too taut, too unmoving for comfort.

‘Cassie…’

Whatever he had been about to say, he didn’t finish. Even as he spoke her name in that harsh way of his, the edge on the word so rough that it scraped its way over her exposed skin, there was the sound of another key being inserted into the lock behind them.

A moment later the door was pushed open, swinging back on its hinges until it slammed against the wall with an ominous-sounding thud. A man, tall, dark, strong like Joaquin, stood in the doorway framed against the still-burning sunlight outside.

‘Cassie?’

Her name was spoken in a voice so very similar to Joaquin’s, the intonation, the accent an almost exact match for his. But where Joaquin’s tone had been so cold and distant, the warmth and welcome in this one were so evident that she turned to him in instinctive relief, her eyes lighting up, her mouth curving into a ready smile.

‘Ramón! Come in!’

‘Ramón.’

Joaquin’s echoing of his half-brother’s name held none of the warmth and welcome that Cassie had shown.

‘What are you doing here? And where the hell did you get the keys to the house?’

‘I was invited,’ Ramón returned casually. ‘And keys—well, Cassie lent hers to me so that I didn’t have to hang about outside. Here, querida…’

He tossed the keys and a smile in Cassie’s direction and as she caught the clinking bundle she saw the brooding look in Joaquin’s dark eyes and was unable to suppress a faint smile herself.

So Joaquin was none too pleased with his brother’s sudden appearance. Perhaps even a little jealous?

Surely that was a hopeful sign? Perhaps even something she could play on to find out the real state of her lover’s feelings?

Taking a couple of quick steps forward, she enfolded Ramón in a warm hug, pressing her cheek to the lean, hard planes of his.

‘Come in, Ramón. Would you like a drink? We were just about to have coffee.’

And the look on Joaquin’s face as she led the way down the hall towards the kitchen gave her a sudden lift to her spirits that made it almost worth the risks she had taken by provoking him in this way.