Читать книгу Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Passionate Bargains: The Perfect Cazorla Wife / The Russian's Ultimatum / Once a Moretti Wife - Мишель Смарт, Michelle Smart - Страница 11
ОглавлениеTHE COLOUR DRAINED so quickly from Charley’s face that Raul braced himself to steady her should she faint.
Then the colour returned, her cheeks staining a dark, angry red.
‘What do you mean, live as your wife? We’re getting a divorce.’
‘Which we can put on hold.’ Deliberately he drained his wine. ‘If you want this new home for the centre, then that’s the payment I require.’
‘But why? Of all the things you could want, why that? Until Saturday night we hadn’t spoken in almost two years. Our marriage is dead.’
‘Our divorce isn’t finalised.’ He swallowed a plump black olive. ‘We will put it on hiatus until the renovation work is complete and the centre reopened.’
‘I don’t see why that means we have to pretend to be back together.’
‘There won’t be any pretence about it. But to answer your question, I will be donating a considerable amount of money to your project and I want to be there to make sure you don’t give up on it halfway through.’
‘I would never do that.’
‘You founded three different businesses in our time together. They all failed because you lost interest, failed to take the good advice I gave you, and let things slip. I won’t just be backing this project; I’ll be taking control of it.’
She winced at his cold assessment of her failures but understood his meaning immediately. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what the project entails or what’s needed for the renovations.’
‘You will be by my side to assist me. Think of it as a learning curve. Four months to learn how to run a business properly rather than rely upon guesswork. After all,’ he continued, ‘it won’t be my bank balance that suffers if you fail but the children and families you’ve made promises to.’
More angry colour flooded her cheeks. Her green eyes darkened, her fury as easy to read as a book.
He refused to feel any sympathy.
Charley loved children. He’d seen that from the first. They’d discussed starting a family of their own and he’d shown great patience in her request that they wait a few years so she could make something of herself first.
He’d lavished her with everything she desired.
In return she’d denied him what he desired: the baby she’d promised.
Together they would have created the perfect family.
He’d imagined their unborn child a thousand times, imagined how different a parent he would be from his own father. Not for his child the feeling of being worthless. His children’s achievements would be celebrated, their failures whether minor or major understood and forgiven, their opinions valued. He would have shown his father what being a father was really about. It was everything his father hadn’t been.
‘Take control of the project if you must,’ Charley said, a tremor racing through her voice. ‘Be the big alpha man you are and throw your weight and money around as you always do. So long as the centre reopens in four months’ time I don’t care how it’s done, but there is no need to go through a charade of us being back together.’
He clenched his hands into fists, straining not to react to her inflammatory words. Taking control of situations where he was the most suitable person to take charge was not akin to throwing his weight around. She made him sound like a tyrant, which, he was certain, was deliberate. His wife might be uneducated but she was not stupid. Regardless, he would keep his cool even if she couldn’t.
‘I fail to see what your issue is,’ he said, channelling his composure. ‘You were happy to tell your bank manager the barefaced lie that we’re back together when it suited you. This arrangement suits me but in this case it will not be a lie. For four months you will live with me as my wife and then you will be free to resume your life. But this time our marriage will end on my terms.’
Already he could taste the satisfaction that would bring. It might even taste as sweet as having his wife back in his bed.
The wildness he’d sensed in her from that first look had translated into the bedroom. Making love to her had always been out of this world. Whether it was hard and fast or slow and sweet, their passion for each other had been unquantifiable.
‘This is your pride talking, isn’t it? Because I had the nerve to leave you? You want to humiliate me?’
‘Not at all,’ he answered with deliberate smoothness, counteracting the vibrations emanating from her delectable frame. A charge flickered through his loins to see her face become the same colour it rose to when in the throes of passion. ‘You want my help and I’m prepared to give it to you but in return I want payment—and the only form of payment you are in a position to make is with your body.’
She pushed her chair back as if she’d been scalded and got to her feet. ‘You want me to prostitute myself?’
‘I’m merely requesting that you, my wife, return to the marital bed for a fixed period and in that period you make yourself available to me wherever and whenever I require.’
The charge in his loins tightened at the thought of her doing whatever pleased him. All those years when he’d done everything in his power to please her, in bed and out...now the tables had turned and it was her subjugation he required. For a limited time.
Yes, four months should serve him perfectly. During their marriage they’d spent a substantial amount of time apart, the distance always stoking the flames of lust so when they were together they made the most of every minute. This time, he would keep her by his side continuously so the lust they shared would finally be slaked and he could walk away from her without a backwards glance. Just as she had walked away from him.
Charley’s legs felt wobbly. Everything felt wobbly. She hadn’t touched a morsel of food, knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow it past her throat.
‘In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never hated you.’ Her body trembling, she forced her eyes to keep their gaze on his cool, unflinching stare. ‘I hate you right now, more than I thought it was possible to hate another human being.’
He rose and, although he smiled down at her, his eyes were like ice. ‘I don’t care for your hate any more than I care for your love.’ He reached out a hand and slipped it under the open top buttons of her blouse to rest on her collarbone.
She didn’t want to react to the feel of his warm fingers on her skin...
She held her breath, his touch setting off a charge within her, certain he must be able to feel the hammering of her heart.
It was the first time he’d touched her in so, so long.
His voice dropped to a murmur. ‘I am willing to give you what you want. Are you willing to give me what I want? Because, let us speak frankly, it’s the only thing you’re any good at.’
If his thumb hadn’t found the exact spot on her neck that always sent tingles of need and delight rippling through her, Charley might have reacted to his words a little quicker. As it was, it took a few moments for them to sink in and when they did she wrenched his hand away and pushed at his chest.
‘How dare you reduce me to nothing but a plaything? I’m not a sex toy.’
The ice in his eyes melted into a gleam, as if he’d accepted a challenge. He reclosed the gap between them, trapping her against the table. ‘You never had a problem being my sex toy before.’
Heat streamed through her at the feel of him pressed against her, all the memories she’d spent six hundred and thirty-five days trying to forget pouring into her mind.
She had lusted after him from their first conversation.
He’d been like no one she’d met before. Outrageously handsome, ridiculously wealthy...everything a young woman of twenty could wish for in a man. Prince Charming had come to life and it was her slipper he wanted. Was it any wonder her head had been turned?
And the sex... Never had she imagined such carnal responses existed within her, the same responses that were flashing back to life now, at the time when she needed her head clear to deal with what he was demanding of her.
It had been her own misfortune that she’d mistaken lust for love and married him. What they’d shared should never have been more than a summer fling.
As hard as she’d tried to fit in—and she’d tried so hard—she didn’t belong in his world. She was a badly educated south-east London girl; elocution lessons paid for by her husband had knocked most of her mild cockney accent out of her. She’d come from a broken family where finances were erratic. Raul had grown up with wealth and social standing and had all the arrogance such an upbringing instilled.
They couldn’t have been more wrong for each other if they’d got a computer program to determine their worst matches.
But the computer would have got their desire for each other right.
‘That was when I loved you,’ she said hoarsely. For love had grown from the lust, a greater love than she’d ever imagined could exist. Leaving him had been easy. Staying away had been almost unbearable.
And now that love had twisted into hate. But the desire was still there, however deeply she’d thought she’d buried it. ‘If you ever felt anything for me you wouldn’t ask for such a...a despicable thing from me.’
‘Oh, I still feel a great deal for you.’ He swept his fingers up her neck, pressing even closer.
She smothered the gasp that wanted to break out at the feel of his hardness against her.
Take control, Charley. Don’t show your weakness for him.
‘You can’t force me.’ The words she’d intended to come out forcefully were expelled with a whisper. Every inhalation brought him into her tight lungs, that masculine smell that had become as familiar to her as the scent of her home.
Her body remembered. His scent made it sing with delight.
He laughed softly into her ear and traced his fingers up her side. ‘I don’t need to force you.’
As if proving his point, he cupped her breast over her blouse and ran a thumb over a nipple straining against the suddenly restrictive bra she wore. The heat that had pooled low within her deepened, and she pressed her thighs together in denial.
He could demand all he wanted, but she would never give herself to him willingly, not now he was showing his true colours, the colours her love-blinded eyes had forgiven for far too long.
Mortified at her lack of self-control, she tried to wriggle out from beneath him but he was too strong.
‘See, cariño,’ he said, smothering her hands in his own and resting them on the table by her sides, his grip unyielding. ‘The desire between us is as strong as it ever was, however much you try and deny it. When I ask you to open yourself for me, your head might want to say no but your body will be begging for it.’
That his words were true only served to shame her further, which she knew for certain was his intention. She’d humiliated him by leaving him and this was the price he was forcing her to pay.
The worst of it was, her treacherous body was eager to pay the price.
‘I hate you.’
‘I know.’ He dipped his head and nipped her earlobe. ‘Imagine how incredible it will be, all that hate fuelling all that lust.’
Sensation filled her, every crevice of her coming alive at his touch and the whisper of his breath on her skin.
Two years without this...
Somehow she managed to pull her hands free from his grasp, fully intending to use them as weapons to push him off her. Instead, working of their own accord, they hooked around his neck to pull him in for her hungry lips to connect with his. She had no sane comprehension of what she was doing, instinct taking over to seize what her body so desperately wanted.
In that instant, any sort of rationality dissolved from her mind.
In a mesh of lips and tongues, they came together, devouring each other, her fingers digging into his scalp, one of his hands sweeping up her back and nestling into her hair, clasping her head tightly.
His taste filled her, his warm breath merging with her own sending deeper darts of need into her, every part of her aching for his touch, his kiss, his caress...
The hand not cradling her head so possessively swept up her thigh and under her skirt, his mouth still hot on hers, his tongue swirling in her mouth. His finger found the band of her knickers and slid beneath it to feel the heat and dampness at the heart of her.
When he found her, already swollen and aching for him, she gasped...
And then he pulled away, releasing his hold so quickly her legs would have given way if the table hadn’t been there to support her.
There was the tiniest moment when she caught Raul’s own dazed incomprehension before his composure snapped back into place.
He smoothed his shirt down and nodded at the window. ‘The gardener,’ he said tightly.
A rumbling sound played in the distance and through the glass she caught a glimpse of a figure on a ride-on mower just metres from where they were...
It was enough to bring her to her senses.
What on earth had possessed her?
She tugged her skirt back down before straightening.
A taunting smile now played on his lips. ‘See, cariño? I was right. All that hate fuels lust beautifully.’
She wiped her mouth defiantly, loathing herself for being the one to instigate the kiss as much as she loathed him for the mocking tone of his voice and his unscrupulous mind and the power he held over her.
‘It won’t happen again,’ she promised through ragged breaths.
‘I think you’ve told enough lies this past week, don’t you?’
Raul sat back down and reached for a breadstick, waiting for the thunder beneath his ribcage to abate.
How had things got out of hand so quickly?
He’d been taunting her, teasing her, asserting his control, spelling out to her how much he held the upper hand. He’d enjoyed it but had kept his mind firmly on the seduction in hand.
She’d been the one to kiss him, a fact that, from the look on her face, she regretted hugely.
She’d hooked her arm around his neck and his mind had gone blank, desire overshadowing everything else.
The chemistry between them had always been explosive but that...
It had felt as if a coil locked in a too-tight box had finally sprung free.
He’d been seconds away from taking her on the table.
In his haste to free the house for them, he’d forgotten about the ground staff. If he hadn’t heard the sound of the mower, who knew how far they would have taken it?
She still stood by the table, her green eyes firing their hatred at him.
Who did she hate the most? Him for compelling her back into his bed? Or herself for wanting it?
‘So, cariño, do we have a deal?’ He was gratified to hear his voice functioning as normal. He would never allow himself to show weakness in front of her. ‘The day care centre, signed, sealed, delivered and renovated in exchange for four months in my bed?’
Four months. That would surely be enough to get her out of his system once and for all.
Maybe it was fortuitous that she’d walked back into his life at this moment. He needed to move on, not just from the dissolution of their marriage but from the sexual hold she still held over him.
Her chin rose, her pretty nostrils flaring. ‘Yes. I accept your terms but with one condition of my own: I won’t be sharing your bed until the deeds of the building are in my hands.’
‘The building will be in the Cazorla name by the end of the week.’
‘Then you’ll have to wait until then before you can touch me again.’
‘You are not in a position to make any demands, cariño.’
‘Of course I am.’ She swallowed but didn’t waver. ‘You can always go running back to your girlfriend if the frustration of waiting four days gets too much for you.’
‘That relationship is over.’ It hadn’t even started.
Her lips curled into an expression that most closely resembled a sneer, but it was a fleeting look, quickly replaced by the loathing he was becoming familiar with.
Another four days?
He could force the issue if he wanted. It wouldn’t be hard. All he had to do was touch her and she’d be putty in his hands.
Another four days?
The anticipation would be delicious.
He knew his wife and what an earthy, sexual creature she was. The chemistry between them was just as potent—if not more—as it had always been.
After four days of living together, Charley would be begging him to take her.
He’d managed almost two years. Another four days would be nothing.
* * *
‘What time do you finish?’ Raul asked when he pulled the car to a stop outside the building that currently housed the Poco Rio day care centre.
‘Five o’clock,’ she answered shortly. ‘Wait for me to call—I might be late.’
‘I’ll be here at five o’clock and you will be ready.’
Not bothering to argue or say goodbye, she shrugged a shoulder, grabbed her bag and got out, slamming the passenger door behind her. She might not be able to see his face but could easily imagine her handsome husband’s wince at her treatment of his precious Lotus.
When they’d first met, her manners had been somewhat rough around the edges. She’d been taught to say please and thank you, and not speak with her mouth full, but that had been the extent of it and those few manners had been drilled into her by her primary school headmistress, not her parents. Her mum had been too busy holding down two jobs to find the energy while her dad had hardly been there, flitting in and out of their lives as and when it suited him, which had never been enough, not for her.
She’d never lived with her father, had never spent a night under his roof and had lived for the days when he would visit his only daughter.
She remembered once begging her mum to move so they could be closer to him, remembered the anxiety on her mother’s face at this impossibility. Her mum would do anything for her but to move the fifty miles would mean uprooting from the support network of her own loving and hardworking family.
Before they’d married, Raul had employed various people to ‘help’ Charley assimilate into Spanish high society. At the time it had felt as if she were starring in a rags-to-riches film and she’d been happy to embrace the elocution and deportment lessons, the drills on social niceties.
When she was growing up, meals at home had been spent beside her exhausted mum, with trays on their laps in front of the television, the pair of them happily arguing about whatever reality television programme they’d been into at that time. They’d hardly tasted the food. Their one proper meal of the week had come every Sunday when they would go to her grandparents’ for a roast dinner, everyone squashed around the small kitchen table with huge mugs of tea in front of them.
Raul’s world, with meals around a fully laid dining table with jugs of iced water, expensive wine, the savouring of food and the correct order of cutlery...it had been a different world. A fantastical dream come to life. Learning all these new things had been fun! At first.
It had taken a long time for her to realise that Raul had set out from the off to improve her so he could stand beside her without her being an embarrassment to the Cazorla name.
Their whole marriage had been about him moulding her into the sort of woman he believed she should be, the perfect wife he so desired.
She might have missed him terribly these past six hundred and thirty-six days but she had also been able to reclaim herself.
Leaving him had let her breathe again. She didn’t have to introduce herself to people as Charlotte any more. She could simply be who she’d always been: Charley, the name Raul had never once addressed her by.
Whatever happened over these next four months, she would not allow herself to lose sight of who she really was. Charley. Charlotte was merely the name on her birth certificate.
Inside the centre, she was greeted by Karin, a nine-year-old girl who’d been in a car crash as a baby. The crash had killed her father and left her with one functioning lung and severe brain damage. Yet, however locked in her own world Karin seemed, she always appeared to know when Charley was on the rota to work and would hang around the door of the day room until she arrived.
Charley scooped the skinny child up and planted a kiss on her cheek then gently set her back down and took her hand. Karin would be her shadow for the rest of the day, her easy affection something that warmed her heart.
A lump came to her throat as she looked at the dozen children in the day room, many locked in their own worlds, most of them here and alive against all the odds. This was what she was fighting for, these beautiful children. This was what she had to hold onto over the next four months.
For these children she would do anything. Even suffer living with her husband again.
