Naive Bride, Defiant Wife

‘Stop it!’ Jemima launched at him pleadingly, her face hot with mortification at the pungent sexual images he was summoning up. ‘Stop talking like that right now!’

‘Does it strike too closely for you?’ Alejandro hissed fiercely. ‘You got off lightly for being a faithless, lying slut, so stop staring at me with those big shocked eyes. I won’t fall for the little-fragile-girl act this time around—I know you for what you are.’

Disturbed by the implicit threat in those hard words, Jemima spun away and walked past him to the window, fighting to get a grip on the turmoil of her emotions. He had shocked her, he had shocked her very deeply, for it had not until that moment struck her that his belief in her infidelity could have inflicted that much damage. Two years back when he had confronted her about Marco, he had been cold, controlled, behaving almost as though he were indifferent to her. By then she had believed that Alejandro felt very little for her and might even be grateful for a good excuse to end their unhappy alliance. Only now did she recognise that she had been naïve to accept that surface show from a male as deep and emotional as he could be.

‘I’m not a slut because I didn’t have an affair with your brother,’ Jemima muttered heavily, slowly turning back round to face him. ‘And you should know now that my son, Alfie, is your son.’

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’ Alejandro demanded with a look of angry bewilderment. ‘I’m well aware that you suffered a miscarriage before you left Spain.’

‘We assumed I had had a miscarriage,’ Jemima corrected with curt emphasis. ‘But when I finally went to see a doctor here in the UK, I discovered that I was still pregnant. He suggested that I might have initially been carrying twins and lost one of them, or that the bleeding I experienced was merely the threat of a miscarriage rather than an actual one. Whatever,’ she continued doggedly, her slender hands clenching tightly in on themselves beneath his incredulous appraisal, ‘I was still very much pregnant when I arrived in England and Alfie was born just five months later.’

Alejandro dealt her a seething appraisal, his disbelief palpable. ‘That is not possible.’

Jemima yanked open a drawer in the sideboard and leafed through several documents to find Alfie’s birth certificate. In one sense she could not credit what she was doing and yet in another she could not see how she could possibly do anything else. Her son was her husband’s child and that was not something she could lie about or leave in doubt because she had to take into account how Alfie would feel about his parentage in the future. It was a question of telling the truth whether she liked it or not. Emerging with the certificate, she extended it to Alejandro.

‘This has to be nonsense,’ Alejandro asserted, snatching the piece of paper from her fingers with something less than his usual engrained good manners.

‘Well, if you can find some other way of explaining how I managed to give birth to a living child by that date and it not be yours, I’d like to hear it,’ Jemima challenged without hesitation.

Alejandro stared down at the certificate with fulminating force and then glanced up, golden eyes bright as blades and as dangerous. ‘All this proves is that you must still have been pregnant when you walked out on our marriage. It does not automatically follow that the child is mine.’

Jemima shook her fair head and expelled her breath in a slow hiss. ‘I know it doesn’t suit you to hear this news now and I really didn’t want to tell you. Too much water has gone under the bridge since we split up and now we lead separate lives. But the point is, I can’t lie to you about it. Some day Alfie may want to look you up and get acquainted.’

Alejandro studied her with brooding dark ferocity. ‘If what you have just told me is the truth, if that little boy does prove to be mine, it was vindictive and extremely selfish of you to leave me in ignorance!’

Jemima had paled. ‘When I left you I had no idea that I was still pregnant,’ she protested.

‘Two years is a long period of time, yet you made no attempt to inform me that I might be a father,’ he fielded harshly. ‘I will want DNA tests to confirm your claim before I make any decision about what I want to do.’

Jemima compressed her lips hard at the reference to the testing. Once again Alejandro was insulting her with the assumption that she had been an unfaithful wife and that, for that reason, there could be doubt over who had fathered her child. ‘Do as you like,’ she told him curtly. ‘I know who Alfie’s father is and there has never been any doubt of his identity.’

‘I will make arrangements for the tests to be carried out and I will see you again when the result is available,’ Alejandro drawled, with lashings of dark Spanish masculine reserve emanating from his forbidding demeanour and cool taut intonation.

‘I’ll contact a solicitor and start the divorce,’ Jemima proffered in turn, determined not to leave him with the impression that he was the only one of them who could act and make decisions.

Alejandro frowned, dark eyes unlit by gold narrowing in a piercing scrutiny that made her uncomfortable. ‘It would be foolish to do anything before we have that DNA result.’

‘I disagree,’ Jemima flashed back at him angrily. ‘I should have applied for a divorce the minute I left you!’

Cool as ice water, Alejandro quirked an ebony brow. ‘And why didn’t you?’

Jemima dealt him a fulminating glance but said nothing, merely moving past him to yank open her front door in a blunt invitation for him to leave. She was shaken to register that she was trembling with temper. She had forgotten just how angry and frustrated Alejandro could make her feel with his arrogant need to take charge and do exactly what he wanted, regardless of other opinions.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he delivered on the doorstep.

‘I’d appreciate some warning the next time.’ Jemima lifted a business card off the table and gave it to him. ‘Phone and tell me when you’re coming.’

Anger shimmering through her, she slammed the door in his wake and peered out from behind the shelter of the curtains to watch him swing into his fancy car and drive off.

Nothing had changed, she reflected unhappily. Even being in the same room again as Alejandro revived all the doubts, insecurities and regrets she had left behind her when she gave up on being his wife…

Chapter Three

JEMIMA left her teenaged babysitter in charge of the house and closed the front door as quietly as she could behind her. Thursday nights she and Flora went to choir practice and enjoyed a convivial evening in the company of friends. As a rule she looked forward to getting out. But, recently, Jemima had been in a thoroughly bad mood and indeed was still stiff with the angry resentment that she had been struggling to suppress for two long weeks.

‘Cheer up,’ Flora urged as the two women walked in the direction of the quaint little medieval stone church and village green that made Charlbury St Helens so pretty a village. ‘You’re letting this whole DNA-testing business eat you alive and it’s not healthy for you.’

Jemima flung her friend an apologetic glance. ‘I can’t help feeling as though I’ve been publicly humiliated by it,’ she confessed ruefully.

‘Both the notary and the GP are bound by rules of confidentiality,’ Flora reminded her with a reassuring glance. ‘I seriously doubt that either will discuss your private business with anyone, particularly if it may end up in a civil courtroom.’

Unconvinced, but recognising her friend’s generous attempt to offer comfort, Jemima compressed her lips, not wanting to be a bore on the subject, even though the DNA tests had proved to be an exercise in mortification in which she felt that her anonymity and privacy had been destroyed. When such tests were required for a case that might end up in a court they had to be done in a legal and formal manner. A snooty London solicitor acting on Alejandro’s behalf had phoned her to spell out the requirements. Jemima had had to make an affidavit witnessed by a public notary as well as have photos taken to prove her identity before she could have the tests for her and Alfie done by her own GP. The actual tests had been swabs taken from the mouth and completed in seconds, but Jemima had writhed in mortification over the simple fact that both the notary and the doctor were being made aware of the fact that her husband doubted that Alfie was his child. She knew that she would never, ever forgive Alejandro for forcing her to undergo that demeaning process, all because he was convinced that she had broken her marriage vows.

Yet how could she have refused the tests when refusal would have been viewed as a virtual admission of wrongdoing? she asked herself as she moved into the comparative warmth of the church and greeted familiar faces with a wave and a determined smile. Common sense told her that it was essential that Alfie’s father should know the truth; for Alfie’s sake there should be absolutely no doubt on that score in anyone’s mind. Those were the only reasons why she had agreed to the tests being carried out.

The effort of raising her voice in several rousing choruses and then singing a verse solo in her clear sweet soprano took Jemima’s mind off her combative feelings. She was definitely feeling more relaxed by the time she helped to stack the chairs away. Fabian Burrows, one of the local doctors and a very attractive male in his mid-thirties, reached for her jacket before she did and extended it for her to put on.

‘You have a really beautiful voice,’ he told her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, her cheeks warming a little beneath his keen appraisal.

He fell into step beside her and Flora. ‘Are you going for a drink?’ he asked, a supportive hand settling to her spine as she stumbled on the way down the church steps.

‘Yes.’

‘Fancy trying The Red Lion for a change?’ he suggested, coming to a halt by the church gate while other members of the choir crossed the road to the usual hostelry.

‘Thanks, but I’m with Flora,’ Jemima told him lightly.

‘You’re both very welcome to keep me company,’ he imparted while Jemima tried frantically to interpret the frowning meaningful expression on her friend’s face. Did that look mean that Flora wanted to take up the invitation or that she didn’t?

‘I’m afraid this isn’t a good night,’ Flora remarked awkwardly, turning pointedly to look out onto the road.

Jemima saw the sports car parked there a split second before she saw the tall dark male sheathed in a cashmere overcoat leaning up against the bonnet and apparently waiting for her. Dismay gripped her and then temper ripped through her tiny frame like a storm warning. After all, she had specifically asked Alejandro to give her notice of his next intended visit. How dared he just turn up again without giving her proper notice of his plans?

But somehow the instant her attention settled on Alejandro an uninvited surge of heat shimmied over her entire skin surface and sexual awareness taunted her in tender places. His dangerous sensuality threatened her like the piercing tip of a knife. Scorching dark golden eyes set in a lean dark-angel face assailed her and suddenly it was very hard to breathe because, no matter how angry she was with him, Alejandro was still drop-dead gorgeous and sinfully sexy. Even the lean, well-balanced flow of his powerful body against his luxurious car was elegant, stylish and fluid with grace. She wanted to walk past him and act as if he were invisible while the compelling pull of his attraction angered her almost as much as his unexpected appearance.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘The babysitter,’ Alejandro told her softly. ‘My apologies if I’m intruding on your evening.’

‘Who is this?’ Fabian demanded loftily.

‘Oh, I’m just her husband,’ Alejandro drawled in a long-suffering tone that made Jemima’s teeth grind together in disbelief.

The other man stiffened in discomfiture and muttered something about seeing Jemima the following week at practice. Turning to address Flora, who was also hovering, Fabian escorted her away.

‘How dare you say that and embarrass him?’ Jemima hissed like a spitting cat at Alejandro.