A Spanish Affair: Naive Bride, Defiant Wife / Flora's Defiance

Long before Alejandro had shocked her with his proposal of marriage, he had put her through months of dating hell by not phoning when he said he would, by cancelling meetings last minute and by seeing other women and getting photographed with them. Even before she’d married him he had battered her heart and trodden her pride deep in the dirt. But she had understood even then why he was giving her the runaround. He was, after all, a Spanish count, while she worked for peanuts at a little hotel that he considered to be a dump. He had known she was not his equal on any level and the disparity had bothered him deeply from the outset of their acquaintance. Six months after that first encounter, however, Alejandro had seemed to shed that attitude…

‘Sol y sombre…sun and shade, querida mia,’ Alejandro had murmured then as he compared the pale skin of her slender arm to the bronzed vibrancy of his darker colouring. ‘You cannot have one without the other—we belong together.’

But they had mingled as badly as oil and water, Jemima conceded with the dulled pain of acceptance that she had learned she had to live with, and she finally dropped off to sleep around two in the morning by dint of trying to forget the delivery she had to get up for the next morning.

There was hardly any floor space left in the shop once she had loaded the fresh blooms into the waiting containers. Her fingers numbed by the brisk spring morning temperature and too much contact with wet stems and water, Jemima rubbed her hands over her slim jeans-clad hips and tried not to shiver, because she knew that one shiver would only lead to another half-dozen and that in the end she would only feel colder. After all, winter or summer, the shop was always cool. It was an old building with poor insulation and she was always quick to remind herself that too much heat would only damage her stock. She went into the back room and dragged a black fleece jacket off the hook in the wall and put it on. Alfie was out in the little backyard playing on his trike while making loud motoring noises and she smiled at the sight of his innocent enjoyment, which took no account of the early hour he had been dug out of his cosy bed or the chilly air.

‘Jemima…’

It was a voice she had hoped never to hear again: rich, melodic, dark and deep, and so full of accented earthy male sexiness it sent little quivers down her sensitive spine. She shut her eyes tight, refusing to turn round, telling herself wildly that her mind had somehow slipped dangerously back into the past and that she was imagining things…

Imagining waking up in bed with Alejandro, all tousled black hair, stubble and raw male sensual appeal…Alejandro, who could ignite her hunger with one indolent glance from his stunning black-fringed dark-as-the-night-sky eyes and seal it by simply saying her name…But even as a steamy burst of imagery momentarily clouded her brain and interfered with her breathing, she was instead recalling the emptiness of her bed once she had fallen pregnant and the wounding anguish of that physical lack of interest in her rapidly swelling body. As a chill slid through her slender length she spun round.

And there he was, Alejandro Navarro Vasquez, her husband, who had taught her to love him, taught her to need him and who had then proceeded to torture her with deprivation for her weakness. She was shocked, deeply, horribly shocked, her dazed violet-blue eyes widening to roam slowly over him as if she could not credit what she was seeing. Thick blue-black hair swept back from his brow, a fitting overture to the splendour of high patrician cheekbones bisected by a strong arrogant nose and punctuated by a sensually shaped and perfect masculine mouth. He was a staggeringly handsome man and fabulously well turned out in a dark business suit of faultless cut and polished handmade shoes. He always looked immaculate…except in bed, she recalled dully, when her hands had disarranged his hair and her nails had inflicted scratch marks down the long golden expanse of his flawless back. And she wanted to scream against the recollections that would not leave her alone, that were uniting with her sense of panic to destabilise her even more.

‘What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed breathlessly…

CHAPTER TWO

‘WE HAVE UNFINISHED business,’ Alejandro intoned softly, his keen gaze wandering slowly over her small figure.

And Jemima went from cold to hot as if he had turned a blowtorch on her. She flushed because she knew she looked less than her best with her hair loose round her to keep her ears warm and only a touch of mascara and lip gloss on her face, not to mention the worn jeans, fleece jacket and shabby low-heeled boots that completed her practical outfit. And even though it was bloody-minded—for she wanted nothing between them to be as it had once been, when she’d had no control over her responses—she deeply resented his cool stare and businesslike tone: it was the ultimate rejection. She leant against the door frame, her slender spine taking on an arch that enhanced the small firm curves below the neat fit of wool and denim, her head lifting so that the pale foaming ringlets of her eye-catching strawberry-blonde hair rippled back across her shoulders.

An almost infinitesimal tightening hardened Alejandro’s darkly handsome features, his sculpted jaw line clenching, his brilliant gaze narrowing and brightening. Then Jemima knew he had felt the challenge from her as stridently and clearly as though she had used a loud hailer. Suddenly the atmosphere was seething with tension. At that point, she suffered a dismaying reduction in courage and veiled her gaze, drawing back a step while being terrifyingly aware of the swelling tightness of her nipples inside her bra and the twisting slide of sexual awareness low in her pelvis. It shocked her that a man she now hated as much as she had once loved him could still have such a powerful effect on her body.

‘Always the temptress,’ Alejandro drawled with a roughened edge to his dark deep voice that vibrated through her like a jamming wireless signal and made her rigidity give way to a trembling vulnerability. ‘Do I really look that desperate?’

The fierce chill of his rejection might have cut her like a knife had she not been more aware of the way his strikingly beautiful eyes lingered on her. As she tore her attention from the lean, strong face that haunted her dreams and her gaze dropped she could not help noticing the distinctive masculine bulge that had disturbed the perfect fit of his trousers. Her cheeks flamed as hot as a kettle on the boil as she was both mollified by that reaction and burned by it at the same time.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded for the second time.

‘I want a divorce. I need an address for you to obtain it,’ Alejandro spelt out in a driven undertone. ‘Or didn’t that occur to you? Your staging a vanishing act was selfish and immature.’

That fast Jemima wanted to lift one of the buckets of flowers and upend it over him. ‘You forced me to behave like that,’ she told him heatedly.

‘How?’ Alejandro growled, striding forward to brace his lean, well-shaped hands on the counter, clearly more than ready for an argument.

‘You wouldn’t listen to a word I said. We had reached stalemate and there was nothing more I could do.’

‘I told you that we would work it out,’ Alejandro reminded her in a tone of galling condescension.

‘But in the whole of our marriage you never did work anything out with me. How could you when you wouldn’t talk to me? When I told you how unhappy I was what did you ever do to make anything better?’ Jemima demanded, her violet eyes shimmering with pain and condemnation as she remembered the lavish gifts he had given her instead of more concrete and meaningful things like his time and his attention.

Straight away, anger flared in Alejandro, his stunning eyes flaming bright gold with heat just as the bell on the shop door rang to herald the arrival of Jemima’s assistant, Sandy. The silence inside the shop was so deep and so tense it could have filled a bank vault and as she came in the dark-haired, neatly dressed older woman shot Jemima a look of dismay. ‘Am I late? Were you expecting me to start early today?’

‘No, no,’ Jemima hastened to reassure her employee. ‘But I’m afraid I have to go back home for an hour, so you’ll be in charge.’

Without even looking in Alejandro’s direction, Jemima went out to the backyard to retrieve Alfie, hoisting him into her arms and hurrying back indoors to say in a frazzled aside to Alejandro, ‘I live a hundred yards down the road at number forty-two.’

But before she could reach the door a broad-shouldered young man with cropped fair hair strolled through it brandishing a bag. ‘Fresh out of the bakery oven, Jemima!’ he exclaimed with satisfaction. ‘Cherry scones for our elevenses…’

‘Oh, Charlie, I totally forgot you were coming today!’ Jemima gasped in dismay. She had made the arrangement the previous week when she’d last seen Charlie at choir practice. ‘Look, I have to go out for a little while, but first I’d better show you that electrical socket that’s not working.’

Anchoring Alfie more firmly to her hip, Jemima dived back behind the counter with Charlie close behind her and pointed out the socket that had failed the previous week.

Full of cheerful chatter, Charlie rested appreciative eyes on her delicate profile. ‘If it would suit you better I can come back tomorrow when you’re here.’

‘No, that’s fine, Charlie. Today is perfect,’ Jemima insisted, turning back to head for the door where Alejandro waited in silence, his shrewd gaze pinned to the hovering electrician, who was making no attempt to hide his disappointment that she was leaving. ‘Sandy will look after you.’

Jemima stepped out into the fresh air, hugely conscious of Alejandro’s presence by her side but also perplexed, because if he had even looked at Alfie for ten seconds he had contrived to hide the fact from her. ‘I’ll see you at the house,’ she said flatly, setting Alfie down and grasping his hand because he was too heavy for her to carry any further.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Alejandro drawled.

‘No, thanks.’ Without any further ado, Jemima crossed the road and began to walk away fast with Alfie tottering along beside her. Outside working hours she used the van to get around, but when the shop was open it was needed to deliver orders.

She had only gone twenty yards before a neat, dark saloon car pulled in beside her and the driver’s door opened. Then a tall man in a business suit climbed out. ‘Going home?’ Jeremy prompted. ‘Get in. I’ll drop you off.’

‘Thank you, Jeremy, but I’m so close it’s easier just to walk,’ she declared breezily, though all her thoughts were miles away, lodged back on Alejandro and his assurance that he wanted a divorce.

Had he already met someone else? Some well born beauty from a moneyed background, much more suitable than she had been? She wondered how many other women he had been with since she had left him and it made a tiny shudder of agonising emotional pain arrow through her tender heart. She didn’t want Alejandro back, no, she definitely didn’t, but she didn’t want any other woman to have him either. Where he was concerned, she was a real dog in the manger. But it would be foolish to imagine that he might have been celibate since her departure, for that high-voltage libido of his required frequent gratification…or at least it had until he was faced with her enlarged breasts and thickening waistline and it had become painfully, hurtfully obvious that he’d found his pregnant wife’s body about as attractive as a mud bath. So how could she possibly care what he had done and with whom since then?

Jeremy yanked open the passenger door of his car. ‘Get in,’ he urged. ‘You’re both getting soaked.’

Belatedly appreciating that it had started raining while she’d stood there, Jemima scooped up her son and clambered in. Jeremy pulled in just ahead of the sleek sports car already waiting outside her home. He vented a low whistle of appreciation as he studied the opulent model. ‘Who on earth does that beauty belong to?’

‘An old friend of mine,’ she replied as she stepped out of his car. ‘Thanks.’

As she attempted to turn away Jeremy strode round the bonnet to rest a staying hand on her arm. ‘Eat out with me tonight,’ he urged, his blue eyes pinned hopefully to her face. ‘No strings, no big deal, just a couple of friends getting together for a meal.’

Turning pink, Jemima stepped back from his proximity, awesomely conscious that just feet away from them Alejandro was listening to the exchange. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she answered awkwardly.

‘I’ll keep on asking,’ Jeremy warned her.

Jemima almost winced at that unnecessary assurance, as she had already discovered that Jeremy, the local estate agent and a divorcee in his early thirties, had the hide of a rhinoceros when it came to taking a polite hint that a woman wasn’t interested. Since the day she had signed the rental agreement on her cottage, he must have asked her out at least a dozen times.

Aware of the glacial cool of Alejandro’s scrutiny, Jemima hastened to slot her key into the lock on the front door.

‘Why didn’t you just tell him that you were married?’

‘He already knows that. Everybody knows that,’ Jemima fielded irritably, making a point of flexing the finger that bore her wedding ring as she pushed open the door. ‘But he also knows that I’m separated from my husband.’

‘There’s nothing official about our separation,’ Alejandro countered, crowding her with his presence in the tiny hall before he moved on into the small living room. ‘But I am surprised that you’re still wearing the ring.’

Jemima shrugged a slight shoulder and made no reply as she unbuttoned Alfie’s jacket and hung it up beside her fleece.

‘Juice.’ Alfie tugged at her sleeve.

‘Please,’ Jemima reminded him.