His Revenge Seduction: The Mélendez Forgotten Marriage / The Konstantos Marriage Demand / For Revenge or Redemption?

Emelia’s hands tightened where they clutched the neckline of her bathrobe. ‘I know what you’re thinking but it’s not true. I don’t remember anything else. I swear to you.’

He gave her a cynical smile that contained no trace of amusement. ‘I met Pedro the stable boy on my way in earlier,’ he said. ‘He was full of excitement over how you remembered your mare’s name without any prompting from him.’

Emelia pressed her lips together. ‘I forgot I remembered…’ It sounded as stupid as she felt and she lowered her gaze from the hard probe of his, hating herself for blushing.

‘He also told me you have finally ridden your horse,’ he said.

‘I can’t explain why I never rode Callida before.’ She looked up at him again. ‘You must have been very annoyed with me after spending so much money on such a beautiful animal.’

He held her gaze for a long moment. ‘It wasn’t the first present you rejected of late,’ he said. ‘It seemed over the last few weeks nothing I did for you or bought for you could please you.’

Emelia wondered if she had been hankering after more from him than what money could buy. It seemed much more in line with her true character. She had been given expensive gifts for most of her life but they hadn’t made her feel any more secure.

Javier used two fingers to lift her chin, searing her gaze with his. ‘I want you to tell me the moment you remember anything else, do you understand? I don’t care what time of day it is or if I am away or here. Just tell me.’

She let out an uneven breath as she stepped out from under his hold. ‘You can’t force me to remember you, Javier. It doesn’t happen like that. I read up about it. Sometimes the memories are blocked because of trauma, either physical or emotional or maybe even both.’

A muscle worked in his jaw, the silence stretching and stretching like a threadbare piece of elastic.

‘So what you are saying is you might be subconsciously blocking all memory of our life together?’ he finally said.

Emelia released her bottom lip from the savaging of her teeth. ‘I’m not sure if that’s what has happened or not,’ she said. ‘Was there something that happened that might have caused me to do that? Something deeply upsetting, I mean.’

The silence stretched again, even further this time.

‘I was away the day you left for London,’ Javier said heavily. He waited a beat before continuing. ‘I had only just come back from Moscow when we had an argument. I flew straight back afterwards.’

Emelia felt a frown tugging at her forehead. ‘What did we argue about?’

His eyes met hers briefly before moving away to focus on a point beyond her left shoulder. ‘The papers had printed some rubbish about me being involved with someone in Russia, a nightclub singer.’

Emelia felt a fist wrap itself around her heart. ‘Was it…was it true?’

His dark eyes flashed with irritation as they came back to hers. ‘Of course it wasn’t true. I have to deal with those rumours all the time. I thought you were OK about it. We’d talked about it early in our marriage. We used to laugh about some of the stuff that was printed.

I warned you what it would be like, that there would be constant rumours, often set off by business rivals.’

He stopped to scrape a hand through his hair. ‘But this time for some reason you refused to accept my explanation. You got it in your head that I was playing up behind your back. It seemed nothing I said would change your mind.’

‘So we had an argument…’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it was a bit of an ugly scene.’

Emelia raised her brows questioningly. ‘How ugly?’

He let out a long tense breath. ‘There was a lot of shouting and name calling. We were both angry and upset. I should have cut the argument short but I was annoyed because you seemed determined to want our marriage to be something it was never intended to be.’

Emelia sent him a let’s-see-if-you-can-deny-this look. ‘So apparently I wasn’t too happy you had married me to gain access to your father’s estate, right?’

His dark gaze turned flinty. ‘That was one of the things we argued about, yes. While I was away, my father’s mistress had rung you and filled your head with that and other such nonsense to get back at me. But the truth is my reasons for marrying you had very little to do with my father’s will.’

She rolled her eyes in disbelief. ‘Oh, come now, Javier. You talk of our marriage as some sort of business proposal, rules and regulations and me suddenly stepping outside of them. What the hell was the point of being married if not because we loved each other?’

‘Love was not part of the deal,’ he said, shocking Emelia into silence. ‘I wanted a wife. Some of the business people I deal with are old-fashioned and conservative in their views. They feel more comfortable dealing with a man in a seemingly stable relationship. I know it sounds a little cold-blooded but you were quite happy to take on the corporate wife role. We were ideally matched physically. It was all I wanted from you and you from me.’

She stood looking at him with her emotions reeling. How could she have agreed to such a marriage? A relationship based on sex and nothing else? Had she turned into a clone of her father’s set, in spite of her determination not to? She had become a trophy wife, an exotic bird in a gilded cage. Indulged and pampered until her mind went numb.

Javier let out another breath and sent his hand through his hair again. ‘Emelia…’ He hesitated for a moment before he continued. ‘You might not remember it but we made love during that last argument.’

Emelia felt her brows lift again but remained silent.

His gaze remained steady on hers. ‘In hindsight, it was perhaps not the best way to leave things between us. There was so much left unresolved. I have had cause to wonder if that is why you rushed off to London the way you did.’

Emelia searched her mind for some trace of that scene but nothing came to her. ‘Did I explain why I left? In a note or something?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Hope flickered in her chest. ‘Can I see it?’

‘I tore it into shreds,’ he said, his mouth tightening at the memory. ‘I got home from Moscow two days after you left. That is another thing I am not particularly proud of. I should have come straight to London as soon as I knew you were there. I was packing a bag when I got the call about the accident.’

‘What did I say in the note?’ Emelia asked.

He looked at her silently for several moments. ‘You said you were leaving me, that you no longer wanted to continue with our marriage. You wanted out.’

Emelia rubbed at her forehead, as if that would unlock the memories stored inside her head. OK, so she had been leaving him. That much was pretty certain. Was it because she had become tired of their shallow relationship, as Izabella had suggested? Emelia knew she must have been very unhappy to have come to that decision. Unhappy or desperate. ‘The rumours…’ she said. ‘You mentioned a few days ago there was some speculation about my relationship with Peter Marshall. Did you afford me the same level of trust you expected of me, in similar if not the same circumstances?’

He visibly tensed; all of his muscles seemed to contract as if sprayed with fast setting glue. ‘I am the first to admit that I was jealous of your relationship with him,’ he said, biting each word out from between his clenched teeth. ‘He seemed at great pains whenever I was around to show me just how close you were. He was always touching you, slinging an arm around your waist or shoulders. It made me want to lash out.’

Emelia frowned at his vehement confession. ‘Peter was a touchy-feely sort of person. It was just his way. I am sure I would have told you that right from the start.’

His eyes flashed with heat. ‘You did, but it still annoyed the hell out of me.’

He was jealous. He hated admitting it, Emelia was sure, but he was positively vibrating with it. She could see it in the way he held himself, his hands clenching and unclenching as if he wanted to hit something.

He paced the room a couple of times before he came back to stand in front of her. ‘If I was wrong about your relationship with Marshall then I am sorry,’ he said. ‘All the evidence pointed to you being guilty of an affair, but in hindsight there are probably numerous explanations for why you were in that car with him.’

Emelia felt a weight come off her shoulders. ‘You truly believe I wasn’t unfaithful?’

He held her look for endless seconds. ‘Let’s just let it go,’ he said on a long breath. ‘I don’t want to be reminded of the mistakes I have made in the past. We have to concentrate on the here and now. I want to see you get well again. I feel it is my fault you were almost killed. I cannot forgive myself for driving you away in such an emotionally charged state. I should have insisted we sit down and sort things out like two rational adults. Instead, I let business take precedence, hoping things would settle down by the time I got back.’

Emelia stood looking at him in silence. His gruff admission of guilt stirred her deep inside. She could tell it was unfamiliar territory for him. He didn’t seem the type to readily admit when he was in the wrong.

She breathed in the clean male scent of him as he stood so broodingly before her. He had showered and changed into a polo shirt and casual trousers. His hair was still damp, ink-black and curling at the ends where it needed a trim. She wanted to run her hands through it the way she used to do…She jolted as if he had struck her, staring up at him, her heart beating like a hyperactive hammer.

‘What’s wrong?’he asked, taking her by the shoulders.

She looked up into his face, frowning as she tried to focus on the sliver of memory that had made its way through. As if by their own volition, her hands went to his hair, her fingers playing with the silky strands in slow, measured strokes. She saw his throat move up and down and, glancing at his mouth, she felt another tiny flicker of recognition. Her right hand went to his lips, her fingers tracing over the tense line, again and again until it finally softened, the slight rasp of his evening shadow as she stroked the leanness of his jaw, the only sound, apart from their breathing, in the silence.