a puppet. As soon as I wanted to choose my own path, his love was cut off.’
‘That was wrong of him,’ she said. ‘Parents should never withhold their love, not for any reason.’
He made a scoffing sound in his throat. ‘My father loved his wives, all four of them, and they apparently loved him back, but look where that ended—an early death and two, almost three, very expensive divorces.’
Her brow wrinkled with a frown. ‘So what you’re saying is you don’t believe love can ever last?’
‘It’s not a reliable emotion, Emelia. It changes all the time.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re saying in relation to us…’
‘The things that make a relationship work are common ground and chemistry,’ Javier said. ‘A bit of mutual respect doesn’t go amiss either.’
Her expression was crestfallen and he felt every kind of heel as a result. Was he incapable of loving or just resistant to being that vulnerable to another person? He couldn’t answer with any certainty.
‘Don’t push me on this, Emelia,’ he said into the silence. ‘Our relationship has been through so much of late. This is not the time to be saying things neither of us are certain is true.’
‘But I know I love you,’ she said. ‘I know it with absolute certainty. I loved you from the first moment I met you. I didn’t tell you because I knew you didn’t want to hear it. But I need to tell you now. I can’t hold it in any longer.’
He pinned her with his gaze. ‘You speak of loving me and yet you were leaving me, Emelia, or have you not remembered that part? You had given up on our relationship. You wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t been injured and lost your memory. You would be back in Australia. You were in that car with Marshall because he was driving you to the airport.’
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip until it went white.
‘Why don’t we wait until all the pieces are in place before you start planning the future?’ he said when she didn’t speak. ‘Unless we deal with the past, we might not even have a future.’
‘You…you want a divorce?’ Her voice sounded like a wounded child’s.
‘I don’t believe we should stay shackled together if one or both of us is unhappy,’ he said. ‘We’ll give it a month or two and reassess. It is early days. You’ve only just come out of hospital after a near-fatal accident. You’re damned lucky to be alive.’
Her mouth went into a pout. ‘No doubt it would have been much better for you if I had been killed.’
Javier ground his teeth as he thought about that moment when Aldana had informed him there was a call from the police in London. His heart had nearly stopped until he had been assured she hadn’t been fatally wounded. ‘My mother died when she was three years younger than you are,’ he said. ‘She didn’t see my first day at school. She didn’t hear the first words I learned to read. I didn’t get the chance to tell her how much I loved her or if I did I was too young to remember doing it. Don’t you dare tell me I would rather have you dead and buried. No one deserves to have their life cut short through the stupidity of other’s actions.’
She sent him a defiant glare. ‘Maybe it suits you to have me alive so you can pay me back for daring to leave you. I bet I’m the first woman who ever has.’
Javier drew in a sharp breath. ‘You’re the one who moved the goalposts, not me.’
‘I can’t be the sort of wife you want,’ she said, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I can’t do it any more. I’m not that sort of person, Javier. I want more from life than money and sex and endless hours in the gym or the beauty salon. I want to be loved for who I am, not for what I look like.’
He snatched up his trousers and zipped himself into them. ‘I care about you, Emelia. Believe me, you would not be here now if I didn’t.’
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