Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2019 Books 1-4 - Мишель Смарт, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 19

THEY FLEW TO France the very next morning, to Alej’s apartment in the eighth arrondissement—a sprawling affair at the top of an historic building, situated on a famous street, opposite an equally famous hotel. In the distance the River Seine glinted in the sunshine, and nearby the trees in the Tuileries Garden provided a leafy canopy for wandering young lovers.

But not for her and Alej, Emily reflected a couple of days later, as she looked around at the lavish but unlived-in surroundings of her husband’s Parisian home. They might have been photographed together walking around the city’s famously romantic spots, but it had all been for show. A sham. Just like their marriage.

It made her shudder to think she’d been naively wondering if maybe they could make a go of their marriage, but never again would she be guilty of allowing herself to believe in such an illusion. Why would she when, in Alej’s eyes, she had committed the cardinal sin of lying and he could not—or would not—forgive her for the transgression she had owned up to on the first night of their honeymoon. The memory of it still jarred. It sat like a black cloud on her horizon. He’d accused her of being a liar and she had no defence against his words because they had been true. She had pretended not to care for him and to want other men. But when she’d tried to explain her reasons—maybe even to express all the love and fear which had motivated her actions—his clipped command had cut her short.

‘A lie is just that, Emily,’ he had drawled. ‘There can be no justification. And women lie as easily as breathing. Fact.’

She tried not to care and to throw herself into the role she was being paid for, because surely that should now be her priority. She liaised with his assistant about their travel plans and arranged an in-depth interview with one of France’s most respected journals, in which Alejandro talked with passion about polo. About how the sport had rescued him from poverty and that he wanted more children to benefit from similar opportunities.

Sitting in on the interview, Emily had been confused about why he wasn’t promoting his burgeoning political career, but didn’t dare butt in and prompt him, though she might have done if it had been anyone else. And when the interviewer suddenly asked whether he planned on having children himself now that he was married, Alej had glanced up at Emily, his gaze hard and impenetrable.

‘No plans at present,’ he had replied smoothly.

And Emily had despaired at the stab of pain which shafted through her as she’d heard those words, as once again she’d found herself longing to hold a baby against her breast and to suckle the child of Alej Sabato. Dragging her thoughts back to the present, she turned away from the window, away from the glitter of the upmarket shops and the silver gleam of the river. What a hopeless fool she was.

Only at night did her new husband let his guard down, when an unspoken truce left no room for anything other than mutual delight under cover of darkness. But even then Emily wasn’t safe from her own stupid, see-sawing emotions. Because when they were naked and he was kissing her and moaning out his pleasure, it was all too easy to get carried away. To imagine he felt something other than carnal desire for her. But he didn’t. He couldn’t have made that plainer. She was his temporary wife who served a dual purpose in life. Who provided him with respectability and sex. And wouldn’t she have been a hypocrite if she had refused the latter through some kind of warped principle, when she enjoyed it just as much as he did?

They spent several days in the city, trawling through his personal effects while Alej selected items he wished to keep, but there were surprisingly few. A scale model of one of his racing cars. A bronze sculpture of his first polo pony and a framed paparazzi photo of the US president sipping from a can of MiMaté. Everything else—the contemporary furniture, the stunning artwork and a small library of rare edition books—he had dismissed with a careless flick of his fingers.

‘Get rid of them. I don’t want them.’

‘Is there anything of Colette’s here, which she might have forgotten to take?’ She cleared her throat and forged on. ‘Perhaps she...she might want to come and pick something up?’

His smile was knowing, as if he was perfectly aware that her question was a thinly disguised method of gathering information. For a moment she wondered if he was about to withhold it, but, with a look of mockery, he supplied it.

‘Colette never actually lived here, even though she liked to make out she did. There’s nothing of hers here and little else that interests me. So auction it all off. The money raised can go to my charitable foundation.’

Emily supposed it was an admirable way to dispose of his past, if a little cold-blooded.

‘And in case you’re wondering,’ he continued silkily, ‘Colette now lives in New York, so it’s unlikely you’re going to run into her along the Avenue Montaigne.’

Emily found herself expelling a huge sigh of relief because she’d actually been dreading bumping into the glamorous supermodel. Was it that or the fact that their time in Paris was drawing to a close which made her suddenly dare to try to open up some further lines of communication between them? Or because they’d gone to bed soon after lunch and his defences were down? He had seemed very much like the Alej of old as he had explored her body and lazily kissed every inch of her skin and she had found herself revelling in their old familiarity and wishing she could deepen it.

She could hear the sound of the shower being turned off and minutes later he walked into the bedroom, a white towel wrapped around his narrow hips and tiny droplets of water highlighting the honed perfection of his olive skin. She watched his reflection in the mirror. The liquorice-black tendrils of his hair were damp, his buttocks were paler than the dark skin above and below—and wasn’t it predictable that she could feel her body instantly respond, despite the fact that they’d been having non-stop sex all afternoon?

He opened the wardrobe door, giving her a perfect view of that livid scar on his back—a scar he now seemed comfortable about letting her see, though there had still been no explanation about how he’d acquired it. But everyone had scars, Emily realised suddenly. Just not all of them were visible.

In a couple of hours’ time they were meeting a friend of his from way back, an Italian businessman named Salvatore di Luca who was bringing along his latest girlfriend—a neuroscientist who happened to look like an underwear model—which was probably why Emily had allowed Alej to buy her a dress from the Chanel shop, which was situated just along the street from his apartment. She was wearing it now and the deceptively simple cut of the fine black silk was ridiculously flattering, as were the killer heels which were sitting beside the door to be put on at the last possible moment. But her appearance was the last thing on her mind. Suddenly she knew that she wasn’t prepared to be fobbed off with throwaway answers any more. She didn’t care if this relationship of theirs wasn’t destined to last—why shouldn’t she learn as much as she could about the man with whom she was temporarily spending her life?

She waited until he was almost dressed, because his nakedness was distracting, and then she turned from where she’d been seated at the dressing table, applying a light slick of lipstick.

‘Are you ever going to tell me how you got that scar?’ she questioned.

He shrugged as he tugged up the zip on his suit trousers. ‘I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘I know you did. But I do.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

‘Because we’re about to have dinner with one of your oldest friends and, unless you want him to guess this is a sham marriage, it might be better if you didn’t come over as a complete stranger to me.’

‘And telling you how I got this thing will help?’

‘I think so. It might help explain some of a past which you seem determined to keep hidden.’

He turned around, the movement seeming slow, his green eyes hard and flinty as they surveyed her.

‘Please, Alej,’ she added quietly.

There was a pause. A long pause. And then he gave a long and ragged sigh. ‘I was attacked,’ he said finally. ‘By a man with a razor. Or, to be more accurate—by several men.’

He saw her flinch, as if a steel blade had penetrated her tender flesh. Her fingers flew up to her lips in shock and she looked about eighteen again.

‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed. ‘What happened?’

He wondered afterwards what made him continue with his story because he’d never told anyone else. Was it the afterglow of the delicious sex they’d recently shared? Or because living with someone was way more intimate than he’d anticipated, with the inevitable erosion of all the barriers you tried to erect around yourself?

Or maybe it was simply because it was Emily and she had always been the one to burrow beneath his skin.

And suddenly he was right back there. A different time and a different place. And a very different man. He unlocked the memory and it floated free.

‘I’d been playing in Argentina and my team had won the last match of the season, as we were expected to do,’ he began slowly. ‘I even scored the winning goal.’

‘That must have been a good feeling,’ she said.

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not really. I’d been approached to fix that match, but, like every other time it had happened, I’d refused.’ There was a pause as he looked at her. ‘But the offer still left a bad taste in my mouth and it added to my growing disenchantment with some aspects of the sport.’

She nodded, but she didn’t speak. She was an astute woman, he acknowledged—one who had learned to use silence to her own advantage. Because he could have stopped the story there. Told her he’d had a few drinks and got into a fight but didn’t bother reporting it because he didn’t want the negative press of some barroom brawl. Explained how he’d found a backstreet medic to suture it for him on the quiet—hence the resulting scar. All these things were true, and Alej was a man with a powerful aversion to lies. But there had been other reasons for him not wanting the truth behind the brawl to emerge, hadn’t there? He wondered if it was the soft expression in Emily’s deep blue eyes which made him want to confide in her, or the sudden realisation that some secrets were so dark that they had the power to eat away at your very soul, if you let them.

‘I was in a bar,’ he continued. ‘A rough, simple kind of place not far from where I’d grown up, where a man can go unbothered and drink his beer in peace.’ But it hadn’t been like that. Word had got out that he was there and someone had come to find him. The oily thug in the cheap suit Alej had recognised instantly. His face had been ugly with anger, his words uglier still. ‘I was approached by a man,’ he said, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Emily’s face. ‘The same guy who’d tried to get me to fix the match. He blamed me for refusing and for all the money he’d lost as a result. And then he told me that my mother was nothing but a cheap hooker and that he’d “had” her.’

She flinched again, but this time a dull red flush stained her cheeks and he saw the way she clenched her hands into tiny fists. ‘How dare he say that?’

He almost smiled at the fervour of her instant denial because hadn’t he felt exactly the same, when for a few foolish and naïve moments he’d thought the man was lying? ‘He even tried to explain how and where, in very graphic detail, and that’s when I hit him.’

‘Good! I’m glad you hit him. He deserved it!’

Another sigh left Alej’s lungs. The crack of bone and the pliant dip of giving flesh had satisfied him, but only for a moment. Nothing ever lasted for longer than a moment, he reflected bitterly. ‘And that’s when two of his gorillas came charging in, picked me up and carried me out of there and nobody tried to stop them. And behind that bar, in a dark and stinking alley, they each took turns to trace patterns on my back with a rusty blade, so I would never forget them.’

‘Oh, Alej.’ She jumped to her feet and scooted towards him, the earnestness on her face seeming at odds with the unusual glamour of her new black dress as she put her arms around him. ‘Get off,’ he bit out from between gritted teeth as he tried to shake her away.

But still she held him, rubbing at his shoulders as if he had just come in, frozen from the snow. ‘No, I won’t get off,’ she said fiercely. ‘You let me touch you whenever we’re having sex—well, maybe I want to touch you now, when you need my sympathy.’

‘I don’t need your damned sympathy,’ he growled, dislodging himself from her grip at last, despite her objections.

‘I’ll be the judge of that. Please, Alej. Tell me what happened.’

He walked over to the window and watched as an enormous vintage Rolls-Royce pulled up outside the Ritz hotel opposite. ‘I left polo the very next day.’

‘Why?’ she questioned quietly.

He didn’t answer for a moment and when he did his words sounded as if they’d been dipped in some corrosive liquid. ‘Like I said, I’d been growing disenchanted for some time and the blade attack was the last straw. The cuts those men inflicted on me took a long time to heal—which meant it would be even longer before I could get back to match fitness. And I’d had a severe life shock in learning that my mother was a prostitute. I needed something different to think about. A new direction. And so I left the sport which had devoured my every waking thought for as long as I could remember and went into business instead.’

‘And no one stopped to question why?’

She was a public relations officer, Alej reminded himself—of course that would be the first thing she thought of. He turned away from the window and stared at her. ‘No. There were no more matches and it was nearly Christmas. I took myself off to the Caribbean to recover and people just thought I was recuperating. It was while I was there that I got an email from the guy who had come up with the idea of the MiMaté drink, asking if I wanted to invest some money in his venture, and, seamlessly, my business career was born.’ His mouth twisted. ‘And ironically I discovered that fame—or notoriety—still had me in its clutches. That making vast amounts of money breeds its own kind of celebrity.’

‘And that was the end of it?’ she persisted. ‘You weren’t scared of being attacked again?’

He shook his head. ‘I took courses in martial arts. I learned how to protect myself. Put it this way—I never went into a backstreet bar ever again.’

‘And did you talk to your mother?’ she questioned slowly. ‘About the accusations?’

She was looking puzzled and Alej wondered if she guessed he was holding something back or whether he was crediting her with more astuteness than she actually possessed. But even though he was still questioning his sanity in having started all this, he knew he was going to complete the story. Because wasn’t it a relief to let it out at last—like a bitter and poisonous mix which had been living inside him for too long, before finally bubbling to the surface?

‘No. It isn’t an easy subject to bring up, when you stop to think about it. So I just buried it. Deep.’ His voice was rough as he pushed out the words from lungs which suddenly felt dry. ‘You see, after my mother was sacked by your stepfather, she never worked again. I’d bought her a little house in the country and she grew vegetables and for a while she seemed almost happy. But then she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had a full-time carer living with her, and I used to visit her regularly.’ He paused and then nodded. ‘And even though I’d told myself countless times it couldn’t possibly be true, I couldn’t shake off the look on that man’s face when he told me about her. I kept telling myself it was none of my business. That how she had lived her life was nothing to do with me. I planned to say nothing and then, the day before she died, she turned to me and said, “You know, don’t you?”’

He saw incomprehension and then shock on Emily’s face. ‘She guessed?’

He nodded.

‘What did you say?’ she breathed.

‘I asked her what she meant.’

You know what I mean, son. Her failing voice had come out as a reedy rasp. I’ve seen the empty expression in your eyes whenever you look at me that was never there before. Did you find out that I worked the streets when you were a little boy?

‘And?’

He’d almost forgotten Emily was there. Alej’s vision cleared as he met her sapphire gaze. ‘What could I say? What could I tell her, other than the truth, when the truth was the only thing I could hold onto? And then she told me everything.’ His lips hardened as he spoke and suddenly he got an acrid taste in his mouth. He walked from the bedroom into the dining room, aware of Emily following him, before going over to the antique cabinet which would shortly be sold at auction and pouring two fingers of whisky into a crystal tumbler. He swallowed a fiery mouthful before holding his glass aloft. ‘Want one?’

She shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I want you to carry on with your story.’

He gave a bitter smile as he put the glass down on the gleaming wood. ‘Hers was a not unusual tale and in many ways, I wasn’t making a moral judgement. You don’t have to stand on a street corner to sell sex for money—I know women who would promise pretty much anything if they thought they were going to get a diamond necklace out of it. But this was a very different version of reality from the one I’d been given when I was growing up.’

Her voice was tentative. ‘Surely you wouldn’t have expected her to tell you the truth when you were a little boy?’

‘Of course not. I could understand why she would keep her prostitution a secret. She wasn’t the first young woman who would use her body to pay the bills and she certainly won’t be the last,’ he bit out. ‘But not why she felt the need to lie about the circumstances of my conception and about my father. When we moved from the favela and she found a job as housekeeper to your stepfather, she told me we wouldn’t be there long. She explained that my father was a rich and powerful man and one day he would return and rescue us and take us away from a life of servitude and we would live together happily on the acres of the pampas he called home.’

‘And you believed her?’

‘Of course I did! Children tend to believe what their mothers tell them. And we both know what good liars women can be, don’t we, Emily?’ There was a pause as he flicked her a cynical look. ‘But she saved the best for last. The dramatic deathbed declaration which can never be challenged once the final breath has been taken. There was no rich and powerful papa. No father at all, as it happened—just a former client of hers, an itinerant rogue who used to beat her up.’ He swallowed. ‘But still she let him keep coming back for more. He was nothing but a thief and a con man who spent most of his time in prison and was killed by wrapping his motorbike round a tree—but not before making her pregnant with another child.’

‘Oh, Alej. That’s terrible,’ said Emily dazedly, blinking her eyelids rapidly as if she was trying to hold back tears. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He gave another bitter smile. ‘Funny, isn’t it? I always regretted being an only child, except then I discovered I wasn’t. That I have a younger brother. A child she had no hope of supporting, so she did what any self-respecting mother would do and sold him.’

‘What was that you said?’ Her voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way away as she stared at him in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me your mother had another baby and she sold it?’

His jaw firmed. ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’

‘Oh, Alej—’

‘No,’ he said bitterly. ‘Please spare me the kindness and compassion—the trembling lips and big, wet eyes. That’s not why I told you. And that’s it. That’s the story. There is no more.’

‘There must be.’ She walked over to the drinks cabinet and stood next to him, the delicate silk of her black dress making a soft, whispering sound and the faint scent of summer flowers drifting in the air as she reached him. ‘You have a brother, Alej. It may not be the ideal scenario—but that’s a wonderful thing, surely? You’ve got a sibling—which is more than I do. Someone whose gene pool you share. Someone you can have a unique relationship with. Have you managed to find him?’

‘No.’ Even Alej could hear how cold his voice sounded as he answered her question, but it wasn’t nearly as cold as his heart. ‘I haven’t found him because I haven’t bothered looking for him. He was sold to a woman in America and that’s all I know.’

‘But surely you—’

‘There is no “surely” about it,’ he ground out. ‘I’m too old to believe in fairy stories, Emily. Do you really think I would track him down, so that we could have some great big family reunion? Do you honestly think he knows the background of the woman who gave birth to him? Even if he does, do you imagine that’s something he’s ever going to want to celebrate?’

Emily didn’t answer. Not straight away. Her head was too busy buzzing with the emotional repercussions of his shocking revelation. But one thing quickly became apparent—like the agitated and muddy water of a pond which finally grew still, so you were able to see the stones on the bottom. No wonder Alej was so cold and mistrusting. No wonder he thought all women lied. Because in his experience, they did. She’d told him lies herself, hadn’t she? Big, powerful lies. She’d told him she didn’t want him. That she’d wanted other men. She’d said that because she was scared—scared of her own feelings and her mother’s unpredictable behaviour. Scared of being hurt and scared of the future.

Even now, she’d only given him half the truth, hadn’t she? She had been too much of a coward to take that final step and to tell him what was deep in her heart. And didn’t he need to hear that, now, when he was at his most vulnerable? When he must be aching and hurting deep inside, despite the proud expression on his face.

‘I also need to tell you something, Alej.’

He withered her with a sardonic look. ‘Don’t tell me your mother was a hooker, too?’

She didn’t respond to the jibe. ‘When I told you on our wedding day there had been no other man—’

‘It had conveniently slipped your mind that you might have forgotten to mention one or two?’ he suggested.

She blanked his harsh sarcasm, because of course he would lash out at her—wouldn’t anyone have lashed out in the circumstances? But he hadn’t yet made sense of his past, she realised—and maybe in a way, she had been guilty of the same. ‘No. There has been no other man because...’ she swallowed ‘...because nobody ever came close to you. And what I felt for you, I’ve...I’ve never felt for anyone else.’

She didn’t know what kind of reaction she had been expecting from this tentative revelation but it certainly wasn’t the one she got. All his icy composure had vanished and his face now blazed with sudden fury. ‘Is this pity you dole out to me now, Emily?’ he demanded savagely, angry green fire spitting from the depths of his eyes. ‘You think that because I have revealed my shameful parentage to you, I will grab at any crumb of affection which comes my way? That the illegitimate son of a hooker and a thief will be grateful for anything he can get?’

She saw his pain and his anger and thanked whichever self-protective instinct had stopped her from coming right out and telling him she loved him. And wouldn’t logic rather than emotion serve her better than anything else right now? ‘I don’t care about your past!’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t care who your father was or what your mother did.’

His face was a mask. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted your affirmation,’ he said coolly. ‘I only told you because you asked.’