The Twelve-Month Mistress (7 page)

That note had taken all his worst possible fear and turned it dark as night.

“‘I’m sorry it had to be this way”,’ he quoted cynically now, “‘but it’s over.” And that was it. Not even a dozen words. Would it have killed you to say why?’

Cassandra flinched. She actually flinched away at his words, the sound of his anger. He couldn’t believe that she was shocked at his vehemence, surprised by his fury.

What the hell else had she expected?

Bitter memories surfaced. Memories of the night before she had left him, the delight he had felt in her then, the passion they had shared.

‘You gave no sign, woman. We slept together that night…’

He knew he didn’t have to say which night. The way her head went back, the brief moment in which she closed her eyes, the way her face whitened, all told him without speaking that his words had hit home.

‘We made love…’

But that brought her eyes open again in a rush, blazing into his in rejection of what he had said.

‘No, we didn’t! We did no such thing! We—we had sex…’

‘Sex—yeah.’

Hearing the way she said it, the use of the basic, blunt term instead of any gentler euphemism, told him just what she had felt about it. All that it had meant to her. The thought burned like acid in his guts.

He knew where Ramón kept the alcohol in his apartment and he headed over to the cupboard, pulling out a bottle of brandy and wrenching open the top of it with a vicious movement. Sloshing an unmeasured amount into a fine crystal glass, he lifted it, tilting it in Cassie’s direction in
a mockery of a toast, before taking a deep swallow of the fiery liquid.

‘Yeah, we had sex,’ he went on savagely. ‘Good sex—the best!’

He turned blazing dark eyes on Cassie’s ashen face, fury etched onto his face.

‘Don’t you dare to try to deny that, my darling!’

‘I—wouldn’t,’ she managed to whisper, raw and husky. ‘I couldn’t…’

‘No, you couldn’t,
mi belleza
,’ he tossed back at her. ‘You most definitely could not. Not unless you are also going to claim to be the greatest actress the world has known. Remember I was there with you every inch of the way that night. I know how you felt; how you responded to me. You were there beneath me; I was with you, holding you,
inside
you! You can’t convince me that you weren’t out of your mind with wanting me—needing me…’

‘Yes—
yes
! I mean no…’

Cassie’s hands flew up and outward in a desperate gesture to cut him off when he would have raged on.

‘No, I can’t pretend I didn’t want you—I never have. I told you at the time that it was mutual.’

‘And yet less than twenty-four hours later, you had packed your bags and moved out—running from me—running here—to—to Ramón.’

In his mind he was seeing the day that Ramón had come to the
finca
, recalling the welcoming smile on her face, the way she had encouraged him into the house. Hell, she had even given him her keys!

The flare of hot jealousy hazed his eyes with red, blinding him as his hand clenched tight on the glass.

‘After what we shared.’

‘I told you at the time that there was more to it than enjoyment—than sex.’

‘And Ramón gives you this more?’

‘Right now, he gives me something that you never did!’

Her voice had lost something of the firmness it had held only moments before. Something he had said had struck home, shaking her conviction, rocking the foundations they were built on. But what? Which particular sentence had hit the target, thudding into the red, if not precisely into the gold?

There was something not quite right about this situation. Something he couldn’t completely work out—but every instinct he possessed told him that something was wrong. Something that raised all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck in warning like the hackles on a wary dog. But the haze of bitterness and shock, the raw agony of disbelief, clouded his brain so that thinking clearly was an impossibility.

Joaquin lifted the brandy bottle again, waving it in Cassie’s direction, lifting one eyebrow questioningly.

‘Join me in a drink?’

‘No—and do you think you should?’

‘Think I should?’ Joaquin echoed cynically. ‘Why not? After all, if my brother can steal my woman from me then surely I am entitled to help myself to some of his brandy in return.’

‘Steal your woman?’ Cassie repeated, actually managing to look convincingly bemused. ‘What are you talking about?’

“‘I’ve moved in with Ramón”,’ Joaquin quoted at her, considering the brandy bottle, then abruptly setting it down again. ‘You’re living with my brother.’

‘You knew that already! I told you…’

The shocking sense of realisation was like a blow to her face, stunning her into silence, shrivelling the words on her tongue.

Too late she realised how he was interpreting her reply. How he was putting far too much into it.

Not ‘you’re living with my brother’, as in you share this
apartment with Ramón, but you’re living
with
Ramón. As she had once lived with Joaquin himself.

‘No,’ she tried but Joaquin wasn’t listening.

‘You said you were fine with what we had—that you didn’t want anything more.’

He slammed his half-empty glass down on the table, heedless of the way that the rich amber brandy slopped over the side.

‘Then Ramón—my brother—crooks his little finger and you’re gone! Without a second thought—leaving me a
note
!’

‘I-I didn’t have any time to say any more!’ Cassie stammered clumsily. ‘I—’

‘No time?’ Joaquin practically spat the words into her pale face. ‘And why was that,
querida
? Was your new lover waiting impatiently for you? Are you so insatiable that you’ve gone from my bed to my brother’s in less than a week? Couldn’t you wait to get to him—to Ramón? To
my brother
?’

‘No! You’ve got it all wrong! I didn’t—’

‘Didn’t what, my darling? Didn’t leave me and come straight here to be with Ramón? Didn’t move in with him without a backward glance—’

‘Yes! I moved in with him!’ she tried again. ‘But not like that! We’re not lovers!’

Blazing black eyes seared over her from head to foot, taking in the short, clinging robe, her bare legs and toes.

‘We’re
not
! When I said he gives me something you never did, I meant…’

Her voice deserted her just when she needed it most. What could she say that Ramón gave her? The mood that Joaquin was in, he would never believe her if she simply used the word friendship. And really, what Joaquin’s brother had offered was more than that. It was an unquestioning, peaceful, brotherly sort of…

But no, she couldn’t use the word
love
.

‘What did you mean, Cassie?’ Joaquin questioned harshly, eyes cold and hard and sharp as lasers as they fixed on her face, watching the emotions that flew across it, one after the other, none of them actually settling. ‘What does my brother give you? What did he offer to entice you away from me?’

‘He didn’t—I…’

But she couldn’t finish because some change in Joaquin’s own expression alerted her to the fact that he had suddenly had a revelation. She could see in his eyes that he had been turning things over in his mind and had come to a conclusion—and something about the way those polished jet eyes suddenly narrowed warned her that the assumption he had made was not one she was going to like.

‘Gives you more…’ he muttered roughly. ‘Something I never did. Don’t tell me the fool offered marriage!’

Cassie knew that she had lost colour. She could almost feel the blood drain from her face so fast that it made her already scrambled brain spin weakly.

‘No—’

She tried for force but it came out as a pathetic croak, one that she could barely hear herself, and which Joaquin, clearly absorbed in his own thoughts, didn’t even register as he came towards her suddenly.

The look on his face frightened her. It was as if the man she had known, her lover, the man she had lived with for the past year, had disappeared and someone else had taken his place. Someone she didn’t know at all.

His face was hard and set, totally ruthless. There was no longer any light in his eyes, so that they were deep, opaque, and totally black.

Nerves dried her mouth and she took a couple of hasty steps backwards, then had to stop as her back came up against the wall. But Joaquin kept coming. Not fast, but his movements measured and determined, his unyielding eyes never even seeming to flicker or blink.

‘Okay,’ he said so casually that it shocked her. ‘I’ll bite.’

‘Bite?’

She had no idea at all what he meant.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Marriage.’

‘M-marriage?’

She really had to be going mad. She was so stressed that she was starting to hear things. Things that were totally impossible. She could have sworn that Joaquin had said…

‘Yeah, marriage.’

He pushed a hand through his hair, flexing his shoulders as if he was trying to ease some ache there, and then looked her straight in the eye.

‘If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you.’

I’ll marry you.

How many times had she dreamed of just this scenario? How many nights, tired and too weak to fight against the foolish need inside her heart, had she let herself think, let herself imagine for just the tiniest, brief moment, that one day Joaquin might ask her to marry him?

And in those dreams she had always, happily, joyfully, rushed in and said yes—yes—
yes!
—even before he had actually finished speaking.

But this time, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t find the strength to speak. Three times she opened her mouth, and on each occasion her voice failed her completely. She couldn’t force her tongue to form any words, felt as if her vocal cords had shrivelled into nothing, and her throat had closed up so tight that it was almost impossible to breathe.

If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you.

He had given her the world with one hand then snatched it back roughly with the other, reducing the gesture to less than nothing, to a lie, a mockery of any sort of real pro
posal. It was more like a slap in the face than any gesture of feeling.

‘Well?’

‘Is—is this meant to be a proposal?’

‘If that’s what you want it to be. What’s the matter,
querida
? Not romantic enough for you?’ Joaquin’s tone was harder, crueller than ever—and this was the man who was suggesting marriage?

Or at least that was what it seemed.

‘Would you prefer it if I went down on one knee? Sorry but I don’t do that sort of romantic gesture.’

‘You don’t do
any
sort of romantic gesture!’

‘Oh, please,
belleza
!’

Joaquin dismissed her protest with an arrogant toss of his head.

‘Don’t try to accuse me of short-changing you on the gestures! I gave you—what…?’

He appeared to consider, to calculate, though Cassie suspected he knew exactly what he was going to say and was only pausing for effect.

‘I gave you thirteen words—two more than you spared me when you were leaving me for good. You were planning on going for good, weren’t you? I mean, you didn’t exactly say.’

‘I…’

Cassie tried once more to answer him, and once more failed miserably. She was fighting a vicious little battle with the stinging tears at the back of her eyes; tears she was determined she would not shed. She wasn’t going to let this sardonic monster that Joaquin had suddenly turned into see just how badly he was upsetting her, how deeply his barbed words had stabbed into her already wounded heart.

‘Yes?’ he faked concern, interest in what she had been trying to say. ‘You what?’

‘If—if you thought I meant to leave then why—why pro
pose? Why ask me to marry you when you believe I wanted to go for good?’

‘Because I don’t want you to go.’

Don’t want…

Cassie felt as if she were swimming through a dark, clouded sea, getting nowhere, or perhaps going round and round in circles. She couldn’t see where she was going and so she couldn’t begin to guess which way was right and which was wrong.

Had she got this all wrong? Was it possible after all that Joaquin had actually meant his proposal of marriage? That he really didn’t want her to go? But if that was the case, then why had he couched it in those appalling terms? There had been no real warmth, no hint of affection or even care in those coldly casual words.

‘I see it as the only way to hold onto you. You claimed you were happy with what we had—but you obviously were not.
I
was content with the way things were—’

‘And that was…?’

Wasn’t it obvious? the scathing glance he turned on her demanded. Did he have to explain?

Well, yes, he did, so she remained stubbornly silent until he was forced to speak again.

‘We had a great thing together—the best. You know what it was like that last night.’

‘The—’

Cassie’s stomach heaved nauseously as she struggled with the word, forcing herself to say it.

‘The sex.’

‘Of course. What else,
amada
?’

His tone turned the last word into something that was exactly the opposite of the ‘beloved’ it actually meant.

‘I wanted you from the start—and you never disappointed me. I still want you. But I want you all to myself. I’m not prepared to share you with any man—even my
brother. If marriage is the price of that, then I’m prepared to pay it.’

‘You’d marry me—even though you believe I’ve been with Ramón all this week?’

Joaquin’s casually dismissive shrug was even more appallingly unfeeling than the callous way he had declared he wanted her sexually and nothing more.

‘It’s only a week. I can forget a momentary aberration if it’s nothing more than a few days. But after this—no more! You will be mine and you will not give Ramón even a second look.’

Cassie knew that she was staring. She even suspected that her mouth was gaping slightly in stunned horror, but she couldn’t shake herself out of the almost catatonic state into which his cold-blooded declaration had thrown her.