that day too, had taken his car for a drive, not knowing where he was going and somehow ending up in Valencia. Before he’d known it, he’d been at the street listed on the divorce papers.
The fog had lifted and he’d slammed on his brakes before he could seek her house out, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin.
He was certain the tyre marks at the entrance of her street had been made by him when he’d spun the Lotus round and screeched away.
Thinking about how she’d played him sent another spike of fury through him. He tempered it by the skin of his teeth.
‘It was hard for me,’ she said quietly, leaning against the wall by the door and folding her arms across her chest. ‘I was desperate to impress you.’
‘What for? You were my wife. I wouldn’t have married you if I wasn’t already impressed by you.’
‘You were impressed with my body,’ she answered with a hard laugh.
‘It was more than that and you know it,’ he cut in. ‘I admired your spirit.’ Something which, he had to admit now he thought of it, had disappeared during the latter years of their marriage.
How had he not noticed?
Seeing that spirit return now, that zinging feistiness, sent the most peculiar feeling of déjà vu tearing through him.
‘I wanted you to be impressed with my mind and my abilities,’ she said, a rueful twinge to her voice. ‘But it was so much harder than I thought it would be. Call me naïve but I wanted to do things my own way, to prove I could do it, but I put so much pressure on myself that I crumbled. It didn’t help that I didn’t speak the language.’
‘You’ve mastered it well enough since we separated.’ He’d employed a tutor to help her with Spanish but after a few months she’d put a stop to the lessons, saying they were too hard. Like driving a car, she’d mastered Spanish after she’d left him and without his help. ‘I suppose reading Marta’s books helped.’
‘Not much. It was working at Poco Rio that really did it. The kids hardly speak Spanish never mind English so I had to learn fast if I wanted them to understand me.’
Raul didn’t answer, his teeth clenching together as they always did whenever he thought of her surrounded by small children on a daily basis.
Charley loved children.
But not as much as she loved money...
Was that really true? All the evidence pointed to her leading a frugal existence without him. And she hadn’t asked for any money for herself...
She’d lapsed into silence, her head bowed. Then suddenly she lifted her chin and stared at him with enough force to keep his focus on her and not the coffee machine.
‘Marrying you was all wrong,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘You were the shining star turning the family business from silver into gold—everything you touched turned into gold. Everything I touched turned into rust. I couldn’t compete.’
‘Our marriage wasn’t a competition.’
‘I know, but for me...’
‘For you, what?’ he asked, when her words tailed off.
‘I wasn’t equipped to deal with any of it. I tried, really, I did, but I knew you wanted perfection. Never mind learning Spanish, you wanted me to speak proper English, to wear the right clothes, to be a wife you could be proud to have on your arm...’
‘That was not how it was,’ he retorted, irked she could twist things round to make herself seem like some kind of victim. ‘I was trying to help you fit in with my world.’
‘I wanted to fit in too and it took me a long time to realise that I couldn’t because I don’t belong. The world I come from is just too different. You make everything you touch turn into pure gold, but all you could do with me was add gold-plating—underneath I was still Charley, not the Charlotte you tried to create.’
‘That’s a good story you’ve spun there but my memory tells it differently. In all the time we were together not once did you say you were unhappy. Not once.’
‘That’s because I was terrified that if I said how I felt, you would agree with me. I spent most of our time together waiting for the day you realised I wasn’t up to scratch and replaced me with a better model.’
She looked and sounded so sincere he almost believed her. ‘Answer me this. In all the time we were together did I ever give you cause to think I would cheat on you?’
She shook her head. ‘I always knew you’d never cheat, you’re too honourable. But,’ she added, before he could retaliate, ‘you spend a huge amount of your time in hotels and on cruise liners surrounded by beautiful, well-bred women throwing themselves at you. Knowing you wouldn’t cheat didn’t mean I was stupid enough to believe someone else wouldn’t catch your eye and you’d want to get to know them better. I knew I was disposable, just as Jessica was disposable when I came back on the scene.’
Dios, she could not be serious.
‘Why would you even think such a thing?’ he demanded to know, not giving her time to answer before adding, ‘I never once looked at another woman in the whole time we were married.’
Doubt reverberated through her curvaceous frame.
The incongruity was laughable. Charley had been the one to walk out. She’d left him. Their marriage vows had clearly meant a damn sight more to him than they had to her.
‘Why would I have looked at another woman when I had you to come home to?’ he said, striding over to her and pressing a hand against the wall by her head. ‘You, cariño, are all woman.’
She tensed, her jaw becoming rigid as she swallowed. ‘You’ve just proven everything I’ve said. You really do think I’m only good for one thing.’
‘And that, I can assure you, you are superb at.’
She grabbed his wrist and tried to yank it down, but he twisted his hand and caught her own wrist, pinning her without any effort, then snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her flush to him.
Her head tilted back, her green eyes staring at him with the strangest mixture of contempt and desire. ‘When did you become so cruel?’
‘When I realised the woman I adored was playing me for a fool.’ And with that, he brought his mouth down to hers, drowning out the voices in his head clamouring to argue with this assessment of her.
Charley tried to resist. She closed her mouth as tightly as she could, tried to shut her senses off, but it was like fighting the tide.
His heat, his scent, filled her, creeping through the pores of her skin and down into her blood.
She could push him away. All it would take was one hard shove and she’d be free. Raul might be many things but he would never use his physical strength to force her to do anything she didn’t want.
But they had a deal. She was here for his pleasure and no other reason.
