The Alcolar Family: The Twelve-Month Mistress / The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife / Bound by Blackmail

‘And you don’t want to.’

‘No.’

Damn the woman, what had got into her lately? He never knew which Cassandra would be waiting for him when he got home. Never knew if the Cassandra who had so enchanted and enthralled him from the start would be there, or the difficult, moody, bad-tempered creature who seemed to have taken her place for the past few weeks. The first Cassandra would have understood that this meeting had been set up months ago and even if he wanted to get out of it, there was no way that he could.

This Cassandra didn’t seem to understand very much at all. Let alone the fact that he had been working so hard lately in order to give himself some space, some time to try to get things sorted out in his mind.

‘Look, I know exactly what day it is on Friday—but it’s not as if we have something worth celebrating. If we’d been married it might have been different…’

Her reaction showed how much she disliked his words. Her head went back, her face stiffening. Her eyes seemed darker, sharper, colder, and even the soft fullness of her mouth seemed to have thinned and tightened as if holding back something bitter and harsh that she really wanted to say.

‘Is that it?’ he demanded abruptly. ‘Is that what you want? Is it marriage you’re after?’

If it was possible, she looked even more appalled. Horrified.

‘Marriage I’m… No!’

She shook her head, sending her blonde hair flying as she emphasised the word.

‘No!’ she said again, tossing her brush down onto the rumpled surface of the bed to reinforce the statement. ‘No way! Never! If you’re thinking that I wanted you to go down on one knee and beg me to marry you, then think again.’

So he’d been heading down the wrong road with thoughts like that, Joaquin admitted to himself. He didn’t know whether the feeling that rushed through him was one of relief or savage regret at the thought that he had obviously been so completely wrong. Yesterday he would have said that relief would be uppermost. Today he was not so sure.

‘I told you I don’t do commitment!’ he growled awkwardly.

‘And when did I ever ask you for any such thing?’

‘Then we both understand each other.’

‘Perfectly,’ Cassandra tossed at him, moving to the wardrobe and yanking open the door, staring fixedly inside as she decided what to wear for the day.

‘Bueno!’

‘Yes, bueno!’ she muttered into the wardrobe. ‘We’re both on the same track for once.’

Now relief was very definitely the most forceful feeling he was experiencing. Total, overwhelming, undiluted relief that he hadn’t opened himself up to her.

He couldn’t believe that he had come so close to saying something damned stupid. Something she really didn’t want. Something like. I don’t do commitment, but for you…

For you what?

If he’d started that sentence, then how the hell would he have finished it?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t even have said to himself what he felt—except that right now what he had with this woman was something he wanted to hold onto.

For ever? He didn’t know. He didn’t believe in a forever kind of love. He might have done once—as a child, he would have said that he wanted the sort of marriage that his parents had: perfect, loving faithful. Then, when he was fifteen, he’d found out that that marriage was just an illusion. His father had been unfaithful not once, but twice. And he had a son from each relationship.

Even worse, he had learned that the relationship that had resulted in his own birth and that of his sister had never truly been founded on love, but on duty and expediency, the need to have an heir for the family business, and hard, cold, financial facts.

He had seen his mother’s devastated face, heard her crying in her bed, heard the rows that had raged in the stillness of the night. He had stopped believing in love and commitment and for ever. And nothing that had happened since then had changed his mind.

If anything, his own experience had reinforced the belief he had come to in those long-ago nights. He was his father’s son. Like Juan Alcolar, he wasn’t made for a long-term, exclusive, faithful relationship. No woman he had known had lasted more than a year. He had tired of them and moved on, without even a backward glance, and that had suited him fine.

But he wasn’t tired of this one. No way.

And last night had proved that with a vengeance!

But what about Cassandra? That was a question he had no answer to. Just lately he hadn’t known what her mood would be, couldn’t guess at what she was thinking—feeling. She seemed restless and unsettled. It had crossed his mind more than once that perhaps she was ready to move on.

That perhaps she had already found someone else.

But no—if she had, would last night have been so devastating? So overwhelmingly sensual? Surely if her mind, her heart were already straying, she couldn’t have responded to him in that way?

‘So we are in agreement?’

‘Mmm…’

Cassandra’s head was buried in the wardrobe and as she pulled out a dress whatever she had said in response was hopelessly muffled.

‘Neither of us wants more than we already have?’ Joaquin continued, feeling as if he were inching his way through shark-infested water, not at all sure what he might find. ‘What we agreed on from the start?’

‘No ties, no commitment…’

Cassandra’s attention was on the dress, checking it over with what he privately considered excessive care.

‘Exacto!’

His tone brought her eyes to his face in a rush and just for a moment he wondered… But then she smiled and nodded emphatically.

‘Exactly!’ she confirmed, her voice as firm and unwavering as her wide-eyed gaze. ‘That’s what you offered from the start. You were always straight with me. Have I ever asked for more?’

‘No.’

Joaquin flashed her a quick, wide grin, using it to hide the maelstrom of feeling inside.

‘That’s why we fit together so well—why I’m so comfortable with you. You don’t want any more than I can give.’

‘No,’ Cassandra said, an odd, strangled note in her voice. ‘No, I don’t want anything more than you can give.’

Her eyes moved away from his, glancing at the clock on the bedside table, and when she spoke again that odd, inexplicable note had vanished, so totally that he was forced to wonder if it had ever been there at all. Or if, in fact, he had just imagined it.

‘If you have to go to work, then you’d better get a move on,’ she said unexpectedly casually, her previous annoyance at the prospect seeming to be forgotten. ‘You don’t want to be late.’

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Moving forward, he planted a quick, hard kiss on her lips, putting into it the relief he felt that, perhaps, after all they had moved past this difficult, uncomfortable stage and into clearer waters. To his surprise she didn’t respond as fervently as she usually did, her mouth remaining stiff and unresponsive under his. Perhaps she wasn’t over her annoyance as much as he had thought.

But he didn’t have time to wonder, or to waste in any more argument. He really was going to be late if he didn’t hurry. Tonight they could talk.