Net of Lies (22 page)

She turned to go, ignoring Sonia’s hand that tried to
grab her shoulder and stop her. Her soft voice speaking again stopped Kate dead in her tracks, freezing her in the doorway.

‘Kate, he only married me because I was pregnant with his cousin’s child
.’ Sonia’s lovely eyes spilled over with tears. ‘He… ran away with another woman, leaving me alone, just a few weeks before our wedding. I… was utterly devastated.’

Kate turned back. She was telling the truth
; she knew it. Sonia had no reason to lie, none whatsoever.

‘I don’t understand…’
Kate said, her voice alien and hoarse, as the new information started to sink in. ‘Why would he marry you if he wasn’t the father of the baby?’

‘You don’t know my family
.’ Sonia smiled a mirthless smile, her lovely features twisting with some emotion that couldn’t be happy. ‘They would have destroyed me, Kate. I had already compromised our honor by conceiving the baby before the wedding. This alone was a disaster that threatened to split my family. My father… he is obsessed with our family and the way we should live up to our name in the eyes of the world. He is very dominant, and my mother and sisters can’t really go against his wishes. If I’d remained single and had this baby, he would have made sure that I would never so much as see any of them ever again. I… was horrified and even thought about suicide.’

She sobb
ed softly, her slim shoulders shaking as she continued, her visible pain holding Kate spellbound. She reached out, putting an arm around the other woman’s shoulders. The simple gesture of comfort was enough to calm her down enough to continue.

‘I thought about killing myself because there was no point
in living anymore. My family was furious, my fiancé had left me, and there was no one to make me want to live. But as it happened, Raoul came over to talk to me and caught me trying to take the sleeping pills. He… dragged me to the washroom and made me throw up, and then he listened to my sobbing and wailing as I told him how desperate I really was. How I feared that my father might do something to punish me for my trespasses. Because he can get really
loco
, Kate. He really does.’ She looked up, her smudged eyes sad and still scared. ‘He told me he’d rather see me dead than embarrassing our good name like that.’

‘Was that what made him marry you?’
She didn’t really need to ask, but something stirred in her heart. It was regret for having acted so impulsively and throwing away her own happiness without ever finding out what was going on.

‘Yes.’ Sonia nodded
. Making an effort to sound stronger, she continued, ‘I didn’t even want to hear about it, but he insisted. He said it was his fault because he had introduced us to each other in the first place and that it was his duty to fix whatever his cousin had done wrong. In some ways, he is as old-fashioned as my family, Kate.’ She grinned, her eyes lighter. ‘He has this damned Spanish idea of honor and responsibility in his blood, making him do things he doesn’t really want to do. So he had this plan for us to get married as soon as possible, before people started talking about my growing belly… He knew my family would welcome this plan with open arms, grateful for his intervention. I would be forgiven and all would be good…’

Kate
must have looked unconvinced, because Sonia smiled at her sadly. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, in the twenty-first century, anyway. But Kate, you must understand, he did it only for me, nothing else. He told me about you and his plans to ask you to marry him as soon as possible. He said you would understand and forgive him because you were the most wonderful person in the world, and he would make sure you knew the truth.’

Kate
was speechless. Of all the things she had expected to hear, this one was the last. It sounded like some gruesome story from the Middle Ages. Raoul was acting like some brave and righteous knight protecting the weak and needy. He’d abandoned his personal well-being in favor of doing the right thing.

‘But… you disappeared
.’ Sonia spoke quickly, as if she were eager to get it off her chest before Kate had a chance to interrupt her. ‘He was absolutely devastated, even though he tried to keep it from me. He knew I would blame myself for it, and he didn’t want me to get upset. And then he talked to his father, the fact that you were offered money and had taken it shaking him even more.’

‘But I didn’t!’ Kate shouted
, past caring if anyone could overhear them. ‘I didn’t take a penny of his money. I swear. I told him to go to hell and tore up his check. You have to believe me, Sonia.’

‘I know
.’ Sonia nodded, her eyes grave. ‘Raoul found out the truth, too. Initially, he didn’t want to even try looking into it. Whatever evidence his father had was enough to keep him believing his side of the story. I think that he preferred to believe you did it and be able to be mad at you than live with his overpowering guilt. But he had never forgiven his father for what he did, cutting his contact to the bare minimum. His father suffered a heart attack just a short time ago, and it prompted him to come clean. He… is a very proud man and does not easily admit his wrongdoings. Raoul finally visited him last night, I think.’

Without remembering when they had done so
, Kate realized they were sitting down, both of them too engrossed in the conversation to notice the movement at the door.

‘I don’t know exactly what
he told him,’ Sonia said softly, her eyes pleading, ‘but it was enough to make him see that you weren’t the opportunistic gold digger they were so intent on making you out to be.’

‘It didn’t matter
, anyway.’ A voice, masculine and beautiful beyond compare, startled them both, drawing their eyes to the doorway. His olive skin ashen, Raoul was standing there, his tall frame filling the opening and casting a shadow across the floor. His dark eyes burned with an internal fire, the intensity of the heat sending a frisson of fear down Kate’s back. She had no idea how long he had been there or how much of their conversation he had overheard. A ring of iron closed around her chest as she listened to his voice.

It didn’t matter?
Was there a clearer way to make her see that he really didn’t care for her in the least? Could he have found a simpler way to say that he was way over the fact that she might have taken his money because he was indifferent to everything that was connected to her?

‘I will leave you two alone now
.’ Before Kate could stop her, Sonia rose to her feet and started to leave.

‘No, wait
.’ Kate didn’t want her to go, not when she had a pretty good idea what her conversation with Raoul would look like. He would be polite, but no matter what, it would still mean the end of something that she wasn’t even sure he had considered ever having existed in the first place. A sudden question popped into her head. ‘The baby, Sonia? What is it? A boy or a girl?’

It was the wrong thing to ask, she realized, the moment Sonia’s face fell
. ‘It was a boy,’ she whispered. She gulped and shook her head, visibly fighting to remain calm. ‘I lost him at six months, though. I was told that if my pregnancy had been just one week more advanced, I might have been able to keep him. As it was, it was over before it even started.’ She touched Kate’s arm lightly and added, her lovely eyes warm and persuasive, ‘Life can be unpredictable, Kate. And that’s why it is so crucial to hold on to what is really important, no matter what.’ She walked to the door, turning to Raoul with an impish smile. ‘I will tell Aunt Rosa not to hold up the dinner for you two, though. Take all the time you need,
querido
.’

S
onia left, closing the door with a click, leaving them alone, with the silence stretching between them like an invisible band. Afraid of bursting into tears at any moment, Kate couldn’t look at him. She had destroyed her chance of happiness when she’d run off, leaving everything and opening a window for Raoul’s father’s manipulative ways, which had made sure that he would never so much as try to find her again. If not for the unbelievable twist of fate that had brought them together through Marc and his gallery, she doubted she ever would have seen him again.

‘Don’t you want to know why I said it didn’t matter, Kate?’
His voice reached into her unhappy thoughts, and she looked up. He was watching her carefully, his face less pale.

He’s probably
relieved that the whole ordeal is reaching its end,
she thought, imagining that the few minutes he still planned to spend with her were not that threatening anymore. She shook her head in refusal as the lump in her throat rose again.

‘No?’
There was a hint of smile in his voice, and he came closer, then sat next to her. The loveseat was not very big, and she found it unnervingly intimate to have him so close, his legs against hers. ‘What I meant was, it didn’t matter what you did, for one and only one reason.’ He was talking in a patient voice that had a calming effect on her frazzled nerves.

S
he found herself listening to his words against her better judgment.

‘If you
had taken the money as I was made to believe, it was in the past, and I couldn’t change it anymore. I did find out, though, that you hadn’t, so you don’t need to yell it at me again. I visited my dad last night, something that I haven’t felt like doing in the longest time. He confessed his lies and admitted to not only making up your having accepting the check, but also following up and setting up the false trail. He knew I would need to know for sure.’

This can’t be happening,
she thought dazedly, unable to do anything but stare at him open mouthed.
He couldn’t have meant it, could he?
He waited for her to speak, but she remained silent.

Then h
e smiled, wiping all the hardness off his magnificent features. ‘I didn’t really plan on baring it all like this, Kate.’ His voice was anxious, matching the whirlwind of emotions inside her. ‘It was supposed to be gradual and careful, as to not scare you off me once again. God knows I messed up that part just yesterday with my total lack of control.’

‘It wasn’t your fault
,’ she corrected him automatically, her honesty not allowing her to hide behind his chivalrous offer to carry the blame for what had happened. ‘I was absolutely out of my mind and made you do… things…’ she faltered, her cheeks warming in reminiscence of their hot, steamy lovemaking.

‘We
’ll split the fault for what happened between us, I think.’ He laughed openly, and she forgot how to breathe for a second.

‘Why?’ she asked, cursing her inability to form a coherent sentence in his presence, when he looked at her like that. ‘Why would you suddenly change your mind? You
were mad at me for not talking to you two years ago, Raoul. Mad enough to try punishing me with this operation, anyway. You’ve barely spoken to me, unless it was needed for the plan. If anything, I can only think that by now, you must be relieved to have arrived at the end of this farce. If you feel that you have to make it all better and send me off believing that I meant something to you, don’t. I might be a fool in love, but I don’t need your charity.’

She didn’t get any f
urther, because suddenly, she found herself in his arms, his mouth only inches away from hers. She struggled to free herself, but the cradle of his powerful arms tightened as he looked down into her eyes.

‘
Querida
, for an intelligent person, you have the horrid ability to misread my intentions so completely that I don’t know where to start putting them back on the right track.’

This
is wrong
. She avoided looking at his face, which was close enough for her to see the golden specks in his dark eyes. She had to get moving, to escape from the hopes his words were stirring inside her heart—especially after she had found out what had really torn them apart. Without the anger and resentment she felt when thinking of his two-faced charade, she didn’t have much to help her stand her ground against the onslaught of undeniable feelings.

‘We should go, Raoul
,’ she tried, praying that he would cooperate. ‘Everyone will be wondering where we are, don’t you think?’

‘Well
, then let them wonder as much as they like.’ His carefree response didn’t bode well with her wish to put some distance between them. ‘Aunt Rosa won’t worry about it, for sure. I would risk saying that she’s actually hoping for us to stay in here longer. For now, I want to elaborate on something else, though.’ Refusing to be side tracked, he traced the lines of her cheek, starting at her temple and reaching all the way down to the curve where her jaw met her neck. Warm and reassuring, he stroked her skin as if she were a wild animal that needed to be tamed. ‘You said something I really liked, Kate.’

‘And what would that be?’
She had to force herself to speak coolly, though his touch sent her senses into overdrive.

‘The part about being a fool in love, of course
.’ His silky answer left her tongue-tied. She hadn’t expected him to pick those precise words out of the lot.

‘Did you really mean it, Kate?
’ He was smiling, but his gaze was incredibly intense and serious, powerful enough to make her forget all the excuses she was trying to come up with.

‘Yes, of course I did…’
she whispered quietly, hoping he wouldn’t hear. She looked at his neck, unwilling to risk raising her eyes farther than his jawline. She didn’t dare to look into his eyes, because the thought of seeing pity in the depth of his gaze was unbearable.