Читать книгу The Gold Collection - Ким Лоренс, Maggie Cox - Страница 32

LAUREN was furious with Ramon, and avoided him for the rest of the party. By the time the last guests had departed she had a splitting headache, and was grateful when Cathy offered to give Matty his bath.

‘Go and lie down in the quiet for a while. I always find that’s the best remedy for a headache,’ the nanny said kindly.

But when Lauren walked into the bedroom and found Ramon packing a suitcase her heart slammed against her ribs.

‘You’re going away?’ she queried sharply.

‘Something has come up at the Madrid office which needs my urgent attention.’ Ramon glanced at her tense face and his jaw hardened.

He still felt bitterly angry with her, but seeing her looking so dejected made him want to pull her into his arms and make love to her. There were never any misunderstandings between them in bed. It was the once place they communicated perfectly.

‘We’ll talk when I get back,’ he told her grimly.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she said flatly. ‘I didn’t take that job. I tried to tell you earlier, but you wouldn’t listen.’

‘But you were tempted to take it.’

‘Yes, I was tempted.’ She wasn’t going to deny it. ‘I worked for Pearson’s before I went to PGH. I kept in contact with the MD there, and he emailed me out of the blue with an offer of some consultancy work. I let James Pearson know I was interested, but when he sent me more details and I realised I would have to be away from Matty I turned the offer down.’

Ramon slammed the lid of his suitcase shut. ‘I don’t know why you want to go back to work,’ he said, his frustration tangible. ‘I give you everything.’

Not the one thing she really wanted from him, Lauren thought dully. She had felt they were growing closer, but this argument proved that on an emotional level they were miles apart. She crossed her arms defensively in front of her. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Then make me understand.’ He caught hold of her shoulder and spun her round to face him. ‘If our marriage is going to work, you have to trust me, Lauren.’

‘It’s not easy to trust when your trust has been broken,’ she muttered. And yet if her relationship with Ramon was ever going to develop didn’t she have to try?

‘What happened?’ he asked grimly. ‘Did some guy let you down?’ He raked his hand through his hair until it stood on end. ‘I need some help here, because I can’t work you out.’

‘I told you my parents are divorced,’ she said abruptly. ‘They split up when I was fifteen—after my father left my mother for a twenty-year-old exotic dancer and disappeared to Brazil with her. He cut off all contact with me, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.’

Ramon heard the bitterness in her voice. Fifteen was such an impressionable age, and he sensed that she had been deeply hurt by her father’s actions. ‘That must have been tough,’ he murmured. ‘Did you have a good relationship with him before he left?’

‘I adored him, and I thought he loved me—but presumably I meant nothing to him.’ Lauren swallowed.

Even after all this time her father’s desertion still hurt, and her sense of abandonment was as strong now as when she had been a teenager.

‘The day he left was the worst day of my life,’ she said bleakly. ‘Dad was a barrister, and he worked long hours, but he always made time for me, and I was closer to him than to my mother. He taught me to play chess, pretended to like the music I liked, and most weekends he would drive me to gymkhanas so that I could compete on my pony.’

She stared down at her hands, ferociously blinking back her tears. ‘He was my world, and I still can’t believe he went away and left me. I’ve never even received a birthday card from him. It’s as if I never existed to him—but I don’t understand why. Even if he didn’t want to be with Mum any more, why did he reject me?’ She swallowed. ‘I guess the truth is that he just didn’t love me enough to want to keep in contact.’

‘Did you have any idea that there were problems in your parents’ marriage?’ Ramon asked gently.

‘No—they seemed perfectly happy to me. Mum was always busy with the WI and her bridge club—and, as I said, my father spent a lot of time at work. But they used to hold dinner parties and things, and people used to comment on what a strong marriage they had. I found out afterwards that it was all a façade,’ she said heavily. ‘Apparently Dad had been unfaithful for years, and had had dozens of affairs before he went off with his Brazilian pole-dancer. My mother put up with his infidelity because she was terrified that if she objected Dad would divorce her, and she would lose the house and the wealthy lifestyle she was used to. In the end that’s what happened anyway. Unbeknownst to Mum, Dad had remortgaged the house, and he took all the money from their joint bank accounts before he jetted off to South America.’

‘It must have been hard for your mother to suddenly become a single parent and have to support a teenage daughter. How did she manage?’

‘She didn’t.’ Lauren sighed. ‘The truth is Mum had some sort of breakdown. She had never had a job or earned her own money, you see. Her parents had been well-off, and she’d married my father straight after she left finishing school. But with no income to pay the mortgage the house had to be sold, and I had to leave my private school and transfer to the local comprehensive. Most of Mum’s friends from the bridge club didn’t want to know her any more, and she took to drowning her unhappiness in gin and tonic.’

‘Dios!’ Ramon frowned. He had always assumed that Lauren had enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing, but the truth was clearly very different. ‘What happened to you? You were little more than a child.’

‘I had to get a job—well, three jobs actually—that fitted around going to school. I worked in a shop and did cleaning—anything to earn a bit of money to pay the rent on our flat and buy food. Luckily I was able to keep up with my school work, and I managed to get to university. I was determined to have a good career. You wonder why I want to retain some measure of independence?’ she said fiercely. ‘Well, the reason is that after what happened to my mother I vowed that I would never be reliant on another person, as Mum was on my father. When Dad left I was forced to grow up fast. I learned to get on with things, and now when problems occur I prefer to manage on my own rather than seek help from anyone.’

‘Including bringing up your child on your own,’ Ramon said slowly.

He had never really understood why Lauren had kept Mateo’s birth a secret from him. It seemed such a cruel and vindictive thing to do, and that had puzzled him, because he knew she was not a cruel person. Her words gave him a sudden insight into why she had behaved as she had.

‘Is that the reason you did not tell me you were pregnant?’ he demanded.

She nodded. ‘You regarded me only as your mistress, and I honestly believed you would not want our baby. But I was afraid you would feel an obligation towards your child, and I couldn’t bear the thought of Matty growing up wondering why you did not love him, as I have wondered all these years why my father did not love me. I was scared at the prospect of being a single mother,’ she admitted, looking away from him so that she missed the flare of anger in his eyes. ‘But I had a good job, I knew I could cope, and so I decided to just get on with it.’

‘You should not have had to cope alone,’ Ramon said roughly, but his anger was directed solely at himself.

If he had been more open with Lauren during their affair, instead of allowing her to believe in his playboy reputation, she might have turned to him for help when she had needed it most, and he would not have lost the first precious months of his son’s life.

From Ramon’s tone it was clear that he had not been able to forgive her for keeping Matty from him, Lauren thought bleakly. She saw every day how deeply he loved his son, and she bitterly regretted the decision she had made when she had discovered that she was pregnant. But she couldn’t change the past. It still hung between her and Ramon, and with a flash of despair she realised that it would always define their relationship.

‘I thought that if you didn’t know about Matty you would be free to choose a bride better suited to being a duquesa.’ She hesitated. ‘Someone like Pilar. Juanita told me that everyone expected you to marry her,’ she muttered when Ramon frowned.

‘My sister has always allowed her tongue to run away with her,’ he said tersely.

But, like a dog with a bone, Lauren found that she could not drop the subject. ‘You can’t deny that with her aristocratic background Pilar would have been an ideal wife and an ideal duquesa.’

Ramon shrugged. ‘Perhaps so. But I didn’t marry Pilar. I married you.’

He did not sound overjoyed by that fact, and Lauren was unaware that his mind was reeling as he tried to assimilate all that she had told him.

His jaw was tense when he picked up the suitcase and strode over to the door. ‘To quote the words you used earlier—we just have to get on with it. I’ll be back in a couple of days,’ he told her curtly, and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

He phoned several times while he was away, but their conversations were stilted and entirely about Mateo.

‘He’s fearless,’ Ramon said, laughing, when Lauren recounted one day how she had caught their daredevil son trying to climb out of his cot.

The mixture of pride and love in Ramon’s voice tugged on her heart, and she felt a wistful longing that he would love her even half as much as he loved Matty.

He had said he would be home the following day, but when at midnight he hadn’t arrived, or even called her, Lauren went to bed, made a half-hearted attempt to read a book, and finally buried her face in the pillows and wept silent tears.

He wasn’t worth crying over, she told herself angrily, when she sat up to blow her nose. Her mother had cried constantly after her father had left, and she had vowed then that she would never allow any man to mean that much to her. But she had underestimated the power of love, she acknowledged wearily. She did not want to love Ramon, but her heart had a will of its own and it seemed hell-bent on self-destruction.

She was about to switch off the bedside lamp when the door suddenly opened and he walked in. Lauren’s eyes flew to his face, and then to the bouquet of red roses he was holding. Her heart skittered in her chest.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, when he silently handed the flowers to her. She buried her face in the velvety blooms and inhaled their exquisite fragrance. ‘They’re beautiful.’

She wished he would stop looking at her with that curious, unfathomable expression in his eyes and say something. But when he did finally speak his words evoked a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach.

‘I need to discuss something with you.’

‘I see.’ She had hoped the roses were a peace offering, but maybe they were a prelude to him announcing that he was no longer prepared to try and make their marriage work.

He sat down on the bed, and her senses instantly flared when she breathed in the evocative scent of his cologne.

‘I’ve been to Bilbao.’

She frowned. ‘I thought you went to Madrid?’

‘I did. I flew up to Bilbao this afternoon, instead of coming straight home.’ Ramon suddenly smiled, the golden warmth of his sherry-brown eyes easing a little of Lauren’s tension. ‘I have some information that I think you’ll find interesting.’ He opened his briefcase and took out a booklet. ‘This is the prospectus for the university in Bilbao. As I understand it you studied a different system of law to the system we have in Spain?’

Lauren nodded, confused as to where their conversation was leading. ‘The UK follows the case law system, while Spain and most other European countries follow the continental system. The two are significantly different.’

‘But you could study for a Spanish law degree at the university—perhaps on a part-time basis while Mateo is a baby. Once you qualify and he starts school I thought you could join the legal department of Velaquez Conglomerates, or look for a position with a Spanish law firm—whatever you prefer,’ he said quietly, when Lauren stared at him in stunned silence.

‘I don’t understand. You were so against me going back to work,’ she said faintly, trying to suppress a little spurt of excitement as she flicked through the university brochure.

‘I want you to be happy,’ Ramon said simply. It had taken two miserable days and nights away from her to acknowledge that Lauren’s happiness was important to him.

Lauren bit her lip. ‘It’s a wonderful idea, and when Matty is a bit older I’ll certainly consider it. But even studying part-time would mean leaving him for two or three days a week, and although Cathy is a great nanny—

‘He won’t be with Cathy,’ Ramon interrupted her. ‘I will look after him on the days that you are at university. I’ve already arranged for chief executives to take over many of my responsibilities at Velaquez Conglomerates. I’ve decided to take a back seat role in the company while Mateo is young. I will need to continue with my duties in running the estate, but I can arrange my work around your studies.’

He paused, his brows drawing together when he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes. ‘What’s the matter, querida? I thought a modern-thinking woman like you would welcome the idea of sharing the care of our child equally?’

‘I do,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just that you’ve taken me by surprise. I didn’t expect you to understand how I felt,’ she added huskily.

Her smile tugged on Ramon’s insides. ‘You should expect it,’ he said seriously. ‘You are my wife, and it is my duty to try and make you happy.’

Lauren’s heart sank a little at the word duty. She didn’t want to be another of his responsibilities. It would be so much nicer if he wanted to make her happy because she was important to him, she thought, unaware of the faintly wistful expression in her eyes.

Ramon began to undo his shirt buttons, revealing his muscular chest, the golden satiny skin covered with a mass of fine dark hairs that arrowed down over his flat abdomen. Lauren’s heart-rate quickened when he leaned close to her and slid his hand beneath her chin.

‘I want our marriage to work, querida.’ He paused for a heartbeat, and then added deeply, ‘Not only for Mateo’s sake. And to that end I am prepared to do whatever it takes.’

The first brush of his mouth over hers was nectar after two days without him, and she responded eagerly—like someone who had been lost in the desert and had suddenly discovered an oasis. She sighed with pleasure when he wrapped his arms around her and deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth and exploring her with a sensual mastery that made her tremble.

He grinned as he stood up and removed the rest of his clothes with flattering speed. ‘Anyway, I rather like the prospect of being a house-husband.’

Lauren’s lips twitched at the idea of her macho husband transformed into a tamed pussy-cat. Her heart lifted. He might not love her, but he cared about her enough to want her to be happy, and that was more than she had ever dared hope for.

‘You know that housewives are meant to be domestic goddesses in the kitchen and temptresses in the bedroom?’ she murmured as she pulled him down on top of her. ‘How does that work for house-husbands?’

‘I’ve never been near a kitchen in my life,’ Ramon confessed shamelessly, drawing the straps of her nightgown down her arms until her breasts spilled into his hands. ‘But I’m a god in the bedroom, querida,’ he promised, and proceeded to live up to his claim.

Was it tempting fate to think that life couldn’t get more perfect? Lauren wondered a few weeks later, as she carried Matty up the steps of the swimming pool and wrapped a towel around his wet, wriggling body. Not that he needed a towel in the glorious Spanish sunshine that shone every day from a cloudless blue sky. But he did need sunscreen and a hat, she told him as she set him on his feet. He immediately toddled off across the grass, laughing gleefully when she gave chase.

The pool was set amid beautiful gardens, where the scent of jasmine and bougainvillaea filled the air. All around the castle stood the peaks of the Cantabrian Mountains, lush and green at their base, rising to silvery-grey bare rock towards the summits. Ramon was a keen hiker—yet another facet about him that Lauren had recently discovered—and with Matty secured in a baby carrier on his father’s shoulders they went walking in the picturesque countryside most weekends.

Lauren was making the most of the summer, and treasured spending every day with Matty, but she was looking forward to starting her studies for a Spanish law degree in September. Ramon had driven her to Bilbao for her interview at the university, and afterwards they had spent a magical afternoon at the Guggenheim, world-famous for its collection of contemporary art. Then he had taken her to an exclusive five-star hotel, where they had enjoyed an even more magical night.

It was becoming harder and harder to hide her feelings for Ramon, she mused as she carried Matty back into the castle for his afternoon nap. ‘At least I can tell you how much I love you,’ she murmured to the tired little boy. He gave her a cheeky grin that as ever stole her heart, and she dropped a kiss on his cheek before tiptoeing out of the nursery.

The sound of Ramon’s mobile phone greeted her when she walked into their bedroom. She frowned, realising that he must have left it behind, and after a moment’s hesitation answered it. She explained to his PA that he was out in the vineyards and would not be back until early evening.

‘I’ll drive out to find him and give him his phone,’ she assured Maria, when the PA went into a lengthy explanation about an urgent matter that required his immediate attention.

The Velaquez estate was huge, with miles of vineyards, but she guessed that Ramon would be at his estate manager’s cottage. It was too far to walk in the hot afternoon sunshine, and so she slid behind the wheel of the sports car that was his latest gift to her, lowered the roof, and was soon speeding along the dusty tracks, with the warm breeze blowing through her hair.

It was a glorious feeling, and she couldn’t help smiling. She hadn’t thanked him properly for her car yet, but tonight she planned to wear a new sexy black negligee and show her appreciation by seducing him.

There was no sign of Ramon’s Jeep outside the cottage. So he could be anywhere on the estate, she thought with a frown, as she brought her car to a halt and stared along the endless rows of vines. She sat for a few moments, wondering what to do, and was relieved when one of the estate workers ambled up the track.

‘The boss not here,’ the man told her in answer to her query. ‘He used to come Fridays, but not now.’

Do you know where he spends every Friday afternoon?

Pilar Fernandez’s curious question on the day of Valentina’s twins’ christening stole into Lauren’s mind, and despite the hot sun beating down on her shoulderblades ice trickled down her spine.

There would be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to Ramon’s whereabouts, she told herself firmly. She smiled at the worker. ‘Do you know where el Duque is?

The man shrugged. ‘Sometimes I see him drive along this track.’

‘And the track leads where?’ Lauren queried patiently.

‘To Casa Madalena.’

All the joy went out of the day, and all the heat drained out of the sun. Lauren shivered and hugged her arms around herself, nausea churning in her stomach. So Ramon spent every Friday afternoon at the home of Pilar Fernandez, and had apparently done so for weeks—despite the fact that he had told her he visited the vineyards on Fridays. Why had he lied? she wondered, and gave a bitter laugh. It could only be because he did not want her to know about his regular visits to Pilar.

Her mother had told her that her father had pretended for years that he played squash at his sports club every Friday evening, when in fact he had been having an affair with his secretary.

Oh, God! Pain ripped through her, and she sagged against the car. She had been such a fool. When she had first met him Ramon had been a playboy who had never been faithful to any of his numerous mistresses for more than five minutes. He had married her because he wanted his son, and had bluntly admitted that she was not his ideal wife. But he had said that he wanted their marriage to work, and she had been so blinded by her love for him that she had seized on the nice things he had done for her as a sign that he was beginning to care for her.

Maybe he had encouraged her to accept a place at university in Bilbao so that she would be out of the way for a couple of days a week? Maybe he intended to invite Pilar to the castle, so that she could get to know Matty before he divorced her and married the aristocratic Spanish beauty who would make him a much more suitable bride?

Her overwrought imagination battled with her common sense. Ramon would have to be Superman to have the energy for an affair when he made love to her every night. But he had never given any indication that the wild passion they shared was anything more to him than simply good sex. He liked variety, she thought bleakly, remembering his reputation when she had first met him in London.

She climbed back into the car and stared along the track in the direction of the Fernandez home. She could go back to the castle and pretend that she did not know where Ramon really went on Fridays. Her mother had silently accepted her father’s affairs for most of their marriage, and for the first time Lauren truly appreciated how much Frances must have loved her husband to have tolerated a situation that was both humiliating and heartbreaking.

The worst thing was that she was actually tempted to do as her mother had done, she realised, wiping away her tears with shaking fingers. She loved Ramon so much that the thought of losing him lacerated her heart. But she could not live a lie. She had to know the truth.

So, heart pounding, she swung the car towards Casa Madalena.