The Consequence He Must Claim (10 page)

“At the desk,” he elaborated.

“I thought you wanted me to pay. I always used to check us out. You paid for everything else on this trip. I thought I should pick up the room cost.”

He glanced at her. “Are you serious?”

She let out her frustration in a long breath. “I don’t know what you’re thinking! You’ve been glaring at me all morning, like I wasn’t moving fast enough. I feel like I’m back in my first week of work, when I couldn’t make a move without getting yelled at.”

A beat of silence, then he asked, “When have I ever raised my voice at you?”

“Okay, I’m afraid of hearing
that
tone. The one that suggests I’m the stupidest person who ever breathed. I don’t work for you anymore, you know. I work for him.” She thumbed to where Enrique’s seat was strapped in behind them.

His hands massaged the wheel.

“I didn’t realize that’s why you were running around like it was a fire drill. I was thinking about other things, not impatient with you. I know you don’t work for me. Believe me, I know. If you could come into the office and turn the new PA into half what you were, I might still have hair when I’m forty.”

Sorcha looked at her nails, shaped and polished by her sister for her wedding, trying not to be smug that she was missed.

She sighed. “I liked being your assistant. You were a bear sometimes, but I knew who I was. My role was clearly defined and I had independence away from you.” She lifted her gaze to the gloomy gray sky. “I realized this morning that everything is blurred now. All the decisions I make now have to be sifted through their effect on you
and
Enrique. Our relationship has to be reconfigured and I don’t know what that will look like. It’s bothering me.”

“It is strange,” he agreed. “I keep thinking I’m supposed to avoid touching you, because you’re my employee. Then I remind myself you’re my wife, but you’re still off-limits. My libido is very confused,
guapa
.”

“Being ninety percent libido, I can only assume you’re extremely confused.”

“There’s the woman I thought twice about hiring,” he said drily. “Listen. Two things. You’re my wife. I will always pay and you will always expect me to.”

“That’s not—”

“Always. We’re not negotiating. Anything I’m not present to pay for will go on the cards waiting for you in Spain.”

“And if I want to earn my own money and spend it?” she challenged. Her mother’s fatal error had been trusting her husband to leave her something. According to the prenup Sorcha had signed, Cesar had already arranged an income for her, but...

“We’ll discuss your working when the time comes,” he said in a tone that promised he would object and win. “My mother is a busy woman, Sorcha. Don’t underestimate the demands of being a society wife. It is a job in itself.”

She pursed her lips, agreeing that there wasn’t much use arguing this issue before its time, but she had always enjoyed working. On the other hand, his mother did seem to keep busy, always organizing some charity function or other. As long as she felt as if she was making a contribution, she might be okay with letting him support her.

“You said two things,” she prompted.

“Last night you said you don’t want a nanny, but I want you to rethink it. I’ll try to work from home while you’re recovering, but I’ll have to go into the office at least once a week. We’ll have invitations as word gets out that I’m married—”

“Your role hasn’t changed then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought marrying Diega was a condition to being put in charge of the family holdings. I’ve been worrying that marrying me had, um, impacted that?” She knotted her hands in her lap.

“My father tried that,” he said dismissively. “I pointed out that whether he left me in the role of president or not—and whether my brother marries Diega or not—I still inherit the title and the family home. He’s practical enough to see more work in changing course than staying it. Rico prefers research anyway and doesn’t want to lead the charge. My mother sees the scandal of disinheriting an errant son greater than his marrying against her wishes, so she’s resigned herself.”

“That’s comforting,” Sorcha snorted.

He shrugged. “My father’s handoff of the corporation was set back half a year by my crash so I still have a lot of work in the next two years on that. It will include some travel. If nothing else, I want you to have someone in during the day for the next few weeks so you can rest if you need to.”

“I don’t want our son raised by a stranger,” she said, repeating what she’d told him when the topic had come up over dinner. She was heartened by his getting up with Enrique last night and his talk of working from home. Surely they could manage.

“If we lived near your mother,” he said, his expression reflecting zero emotion, “and I knew you were able to leave him for an hour to get some rest, that would be different. My mother is never going to offer that sort of respite.”

She supposed she ought to feel scorned, but she just felt sorry for Cesar and his siblings.

“I’ll think about it,” she murmured. Then she said absently, “Octavia has one.” And Octavia was every bit as devoted to Lorenzo as Sorcha felt to Enrique, so maybe she shouldn’t worry that hiring a nanny would break the mother-baby attachment. “I’ll ask her for the name of the agency they used.”

“Octavia?” Cesar prompted.

“The mother of the other boy at the hospital.” Sorcha had texted her friend a selfie in her wedding dress saying,
I’m getting married.

Octavia had responded with
I’m going to marry my nanny. She’s listening for L while I have a bath.

“Another reason for a nanny,” Cesar said darkly. “We’ll be in legal meetings a dozen times over the next few years.”

They were quiet a few minutes, then he said, “I meant why was that woman at the hotel so nasty?”

Her heart tripped. “Pardon?”

“When we left the hotel, the woman behind the desk was very snotty. Do you know her?”

“Kind of.” She probably should have been more up-front about how the Kellys were viewed by the village, but she preferred him to believe he’d married his working class secretary, not the bastard of a whore—which was what people had called her more than once.

It was so painful she hated to even reference it obliquely, but he was waiting.

“I told you how my father had a legitimate family in England?” She scratched her eyebrow. “We were quite notorious after he died. Treated like... Well, people felt Mum got what she deserved, carrying on with a married man. We were all punished. I went to school with that woman and she was letting me know she hadn’t forgotten where I came from.”

Sorcha looked out the window onto her beautiful country, but felt sick. With one snarky look and a handful of words, she’d been reminded what a pretender she was.

“Your mother is a very warm person. If that’s where you came from, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

She smiled, touched that he would say something so nice about her mum, but he was missing the point. “Maybe I didn’t get pregnant on purpose, and maybe the father married me, but I still got my husband ‘that way.’”

He sent her a blistering look. “I’ll cancel payment.”

“Please don’t. It would start something that Mum would have to finish. I’ll pay it if you don’t want to. It was enough for me to stand there and let her know I had the means, to be honest.”

His mouth twitched and he growled, “Leave it. If you want it paid, I’ll pay it, but that won’t happen again.”

They didn’t talk any more until they were on the plane.

“Go have a proper sleep in the cabin,” Cesar told her once they’d been cleared to move around. “I’ll let you know if he needs you.” He nodded at Enrique.

And there it was again: evidence of how things had changed.
Sleep in my bed
.

By the time they landed, the question of where their bed would be located arose.

“Does he know where we’re going?” Sorcha asked, still befuddled by her heavy nap, but certain the driver had turned the wrong direction from the airport.

“We’re running up the coast to look at a house. We’ll stay in a hotel overnight if we decide we like it, and sign the papers in the morning.”

“Out of the city?” Her heart sank. She would have preferred to stay in Ireland if he wanted her out of the way.

“Do you mind? Diega had the same reaction, but I’ve always wanted a vineyard and this place just came on the market.”

She swung her head around. “A vineyard? Really?”

He shrugged, showing a hint of self-consciousness. “I grew up spending time with my father’s vintner. It’s a fascinating process. Probably the reason I went into chemistry. Jorge wasn’t book-educated, so he couldn’t tell me why certain reactions happened, but he was an artist for getting the results he wanted. He let me experiment. I had some successes. A few disasters,” he said wryly. “I enjoyed it. Enrique might, too, when he’s old enough to get his hands dirty.”

She almost left it at that. If he’d still been her boss, she would have, but they were married. She took a risk. “Was? He’s no longer alive? It sounds like you would steal him from your father if you could.”

“He passed away four years ago. My parents didn’t tell me or I would have gone to his funeral.” Cesar turned his head to look out his side window, but she saw his hand close into a fist on his thigh.

Oh, Cesar
. She reached to cover his hand.

He looked down at her small hand over his for a long moment, then removed his own from under it. He gave her a faintly disdainful smile. “It’s fine.”

She swallowed, looking out her own window, stung. Apparently it didn’t matter if she was his wife. There were still lines she wasn’t allowed to cross.

The villa was stunning, sprawled across a hillside with an infinity pool that overlooked the lower bench of the vineyard and the blue-green horizon of the Mediterranean.

The interior was absent of furniture and Sorcha wasn’t sure about the chartreuse in the dining room—a space that could easily seat thirty—but as they moved through the arched doorways from room to room, she mostly goggled. Ten bedrooms? Six with their own sitting rooms and baths?
Plus
a nursery with a nanny suite?

This was not her life. She subtly pinched herself as she stood in the huge master suite, slowly pivoting to take in the three walls of windows, plus the terrace overlooking the pool and sea. It didn’t matter how big a bed they put in here, there would still be room to play tennis. The tub in the attached bathroom was its own lap pool.

Apparently the owners had run out of money after choosing to build a new villa rather than renovating the one that had been here for a century.

“What do you think?” Cesar asked when they returned downstairs and stood in the
third
lounge, this one an indoor-outdoor space with removable walls, a fireplace and a wet bar. “It only has a six-car garage and I don’t see a space to expand it. The beach is quite a hike, but at least it’s private.”

Only six cars. Forty stairs to the
private
beach. Such hardship.

“Do you realize what it will take to furnish this place?” she murmured as the agent gave them a moment of privacy. Sorcha was talking about the cost, but Cesar gave her a sharp look, taking Enrique from her as she shifted the baby to her other shoulder. Their son was growing every minute and surprisingly heavy.

“I don’t expect you to source everything yourself,” Cesar said. “Hire a decorator so you just have to make the decisions. Paint first. That green in the dining room is hideous.”

That streak of artistry in him always surprised her. He was such a man of logic and facts, but aesthetics were as important to him as function. He would have made a terrific architect.

They signed the papers the next day. Sorcha’s hand trembled as she wrote her name. How did she own half of such a property? The prenup gave her their principal residence, but she felt like the biggest fraudster alive putting her name to a house like that.

Fortunately, babies had a way of narrowing one’s focus down to the most immediate priorities and she didn’t have time to worry about it. The next few weeks passed in a blur of meetings with decorators, interviewing nannies among staff needed for the new house, enduring fittings for a new wardrobe for herself—Cesar gave her an obscenely high budget and told her to use it—choosing baby clothes and other nursery items and occasionally being woken by her husband with “He won’t settle. He must be hungry.”

If she had thought it would be a time of growing closer to her husband, she was both right and wrong. They often talked as they always had. He shared work details; she gave him updates on the house. They marveled at Enrique and laughed at themselves as new parents.

Where their son was concerned, they grew very close. If Sorcha had dreamed of watching Cesar fall in love someday, her wish was granted. He stole time with Enrique every chance he could, walked him at night, changed him when he needed it, even came back to her one time with his sleeves rolled up and the front of his shirt wet, Enrique smelling fresh and damp, wearing a different outfit.

“That turned into a bath. But he’s clean and dry now. And hungry.”

Sometimes they watched a movie in the evenings and when she started joining him in his gym, where she walked the tread while he did his weight routine, he only asked, “Did the doctor say you’re allowed?”

They slept together, often with their bodies touching. She knew he was hard every morning, but they kept their hands to themselves and their kisses tended to be pecks of greeting and departure. The domestic kind. A brief touch on her shoulder or waist, an even briefer touch of his mouth to hers on his way out the door.

Was he still getting used to the idea that he
could
kiss her? Was he showing restraint because she hadn’t been cleared for sex yet? Or did he simply not want anything more from her?

If she didn’t have a baby to show for it, she would think that passionate man who had seemed so driven by lust and determined to elicit the same in her had been a hot dream by a wicked mind.