One Night in Buenos Aires: The Vásquez Mistress

‘That isn’t true. I know you can be ruthless in business, but you’re not cruel, I know you’re not.’ The threat of tears was back with a vengeance and she blinked rapidly to clear her vision. ‘Up until our wedding day you were—’

‘What?’ He turned, his dark eyes glinting hard. ‘I was what? A complete fool? A trusting idiot?’

‘I don’t think it’s foolish to trust the person you—’ She just stopped herself saying the word ‘love’ because she knew now that he’d never loved her. ‘Marry,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s not foolish to trust the person you marry.’

‘Oh really?’ His tone was heavy with sarcasm. ‘Perhaps that depends on the reason for the marriage. In our case it was based on deceit. Hardly a firm foundation for trust.’

‘I did not deceive you! And I don’t even understand why you would think that. Is this because of your money? Is this some sort of billionaire thing? What, Raul? You have so much money and you’re such a fabulous catch that women are going to go to any lengths to trap you? Is that what this is about?’

Raul ran a hand over his face. ‘We will leave this subject aside for now.’ His voice shook with emotion. ‘You’re not up to discussing it and frankly I’m not sure I am either.’ It was a measure of his focus and determination that he was capable of moving on from a subject that was burning both of them up inside. ‘You could have been killed.’

‘And that would have solved your problem, Raul.’

‘Dios mío, that comment is totally unjustified.’ His tone was savage and loaded with contempt. ‘Never at any point in this whole miserable mess have I wished you dead.’

Her head throbbed and her mouth was dry as a desert. Seeking any excuse to look away from him, Faith reached for the lemonade again but her hand was shaking so much that half of it slopped over her dress.

Raul stood still, exasperation flickering across his handsome face as he watched her efforts. Then he gave a soft curse and took the glass from her hand, his mouth compressed into a thin line as he held the glass to her lips. ‘Drink.’ His sharp command made her flinch but although there was no sympathy in his tone, he held the glass carefully, allowing her to take small sips before placing the glass back on the table.

But his attentiveness, albeit reluctantly given, simply made things worse.

He was so close to her and she breathed in his clean, male scent and felt her insides stir. It was as if her body recognised him and despite the heat, her shivering intensified.

Why couldn’t he be less of a man?

Maybe then her brain and body would have worked in harmony instead of battling like opposing forces.

‘Stop shivering.’ Raul delivered the order in a driven tone but when his demand had no effect he reached for his phone. ‘I will get the doctor back up here.’

‘No.’ Her teeth chattering, Faith shrank away from him, exhausted and wishing that he was easier to understand. He’d made it obvious that he bitterly regretted their wedding and yet he’d sought her out and brought her back to Argentina. ‘Why did you bring me back here, Raul? Why?’

‘You’re my wife. You belong by my side and in my bed.’

That simple statement encompassed everything it meant to be married to an Argentine male and she closed her eyes briefly. So it was all about possession. There was no love there at all.

‘I didn’t want this to happen to us—’

‘Yes, you did.’ His words and his tone were brutal, leaving her no escape. ‘You made this decision. You rolled the dice and you gambled. At least have the courage to face what you did to our relationship.’

The sick throbbing in her head intensified. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And that from a woman? Talking is what women are supposed to do best, isn’t it, Faith? You think that every problem can be solved if it’s talked through.’

Not every problem.

‘I have nothing more to say to you, Raul. You’re angry and bitter and I just don’t know you any more.’

Something flickered across his dark, handsome face—dangerous shadows, a suggestion of something ugly lurking deep, deep inside.

‘I can’t be married to a man who doesn’t love me,’ Faith whispered. ‘I want a divorce. Give me whatever you need me to sign and I’ll sign it.’

Her flat statement drew no response from him and in the end she looked back at him, only to find that he’d walked towards the pool and was standing with his back to her.

Faith stared at him helplessly. Even from the back he was spectacular. His shoulders were wide and powerful, his legs strong and well-muscled. He carried himself with confidence, the astonishing success he’d made of his life evident in every aspect of his demeanour and behaviour.

Once, she’d believed he was hers.

She’d truly believed that they shared something special and the knowledge that for him their relationship had been empty hurt more than any of the wounds she’d incurred in the accident.

He turned suddenly, feeling her gaze on him with that instinctive awareness that had always bound them together. ‘You went to all those elaborate lengths to get me to the altar and now you want a divorce?’ His mouth twisted into a mocking smile. ‘You’re giving up extraordinarily easily. Take some advice—if something is worth fighting for, it’s worth fighting to the death.’

It was a remark so typical of him that in the old days—the days before marriage—she would have smiled and teased him unmercifully. She would have told him to chill out and not be so driven. ‘I never saw our relationship as a war, Raul.’

‘You started the war. You manipulated me into marrying you,’ he said coldly. ‘So it seems absurd for you to abandon your goal so easily.’ His supreme self-confidence and the chill in his tone simply added to her pain.

‘I didn’t have a goal, Raul!’ Feeling at an even greater disadvantage lying down, Faith sat up. ‘I’m not one of your companies!! I don’t have a mission statement or a five-year plan! I did not manipulate you!’

‘No? So who’s fault is it that we are in this position? Marriage was not part of my plan. I was clear about that from the beginning.’ He stepped forward, his voice throbbing with emotion. ‘No marriage. No babies. You entered into our relationship with your eyes wide open.’

His words were so uncompromisingly harsh that for a moment she had trouble breathing.

They were so different. How could she ever have thought that their feelings for one another would be enough to bridge the gulf between them?

‘It wasn’t like that. We were just having fun, Raul. I wasn’t even thinking about marriage.’ Faith sank back against the sun-lounger. ‘I thought we shared something special.’

‘We did. But it wasn’t enough for you, was it? Like a typical woman, you wanted more and more.’ His tone was an angry growl, his words so heavily loaded with accusation that she shrank. ‘You thought that you knew what I wanted better than I did. Well, you were wrong cariño. I knew exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t this.’

Every word he spoke was designed to destroy any last tender shoots of hope that might have survived the initial blast of his anger.

‘You’re still talking as if I had some sort of master plan. I didn’t create this situation, Raul. I didn’t lie to you.’

‘You truly expect me to believe that it was an accident? Contraception is not a hit-and-miss affair.’ He spelled it out with brutal lucidity and Faith felt her heart suddenly bump erratically.

He stood there like a mythical god—lean, arrogant and impossibly handsome, seeing everything from one point of view only.

His own.

‘One day you’ll learn that you can’t control everything in life, Raul. Accidents do happen,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I am living proof of that, but it doesn’t matter any more, does it?’

He drew breath, ready to challenge that remark as he automatically challenged everything and she lifted a hand in a defensive gesture.

‘No!’ She cut him off before he spoke. ‘Just don’t say what’s on your mind, Raul, because frankly I don’t think I can sit through another session of your thoughts on the subject.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘Oh yes I do. It would have been something along the lines of “if you hadn’t got pregnant we wouldn’t be married now” or “it’s lucky for both of us that you lost the baby.”’ She’d been trying so hard not to think about the baby, but now there was no escaping it and her eyes filled with the tears that she’d been choking on for the past couple of weeks. ‘Well, do you know what? I don’t feel lucky. I know it wasn’t what you wanted and to be honest, I was surprised myself—but I don’t feel lucky, Raul. I minded that I lost the baby.’

He was so tense that every muscle in his powerful frame throbbed with it. ‘I know.’