The Twelve-Month Mistress (16 page)

She couldn’t have made it clearer if she’d tried.

Oh, why the hell had he ever had to lose his memory? If only he could have remembered just how things had been then he would never, ever have let her back into his life. Never given her his heart to play with like a toy. Never had to stand there while she tossed it right back at him again, with yet another thoughtless refusal of his offer of marriage.

And now she expected him to believe this preposterous claim of ‘only one Alcolar’.

His response to that was very curt, short, and obscene, making her eyes widen sharply.

‘It’s true!’ she protested.

‘Yeah—sure.’

He dismissed the words with a flick of his hand.

‘Nice try,
amada
, but I really don’t believe you! I’d be a fool to believe a single word that comes from that lovely lying little mouth of yours. I mean—you just spent the last week here in my home, pretending nothing had happened…’

‘I
had
to! And you know why. I was acting on—’

‘On doctors’ orders!’ Joaquin finished for her, bitterness lacing his tone with black. ‘Yes, I know—I should do—you told me often enough. But wasn’t it convenient that those wonderful doctors’ orders should coincide so perfectly with exactly what suited you best—keeping me totally in the dark so that you could work out your own mercenary little scheme?’

Cassandra moved restlessly from one foot to another,
seemingly unable to keep still. She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of the robe, then pulled them out again, raked her fingers through her hair, apparently meaning to smooth it but in fact making the tangles so much worse. And had he been seeing things or had her hands had a distinct tremor as they’d moved?

‘What scheme?’

‘The one that kept you in my house, ostensibly looking after me—and winning my trust—when all the while you were after something else!’

That stopped her nervy fidgeting. It changed her mood too, in a startling way. Her jaw set firmly, her mouth stiffening, and she tossed back the long mane of blonde hair with a gesture of defiance.

‘And just what was I after?’

Joaquin recognised with fury the immediate and unwanted way that his body responded to the new fire in her eyes, the flare of colour along her cheeks. That same colour was echoed behind the opening at the throat of the robe, tinting her neck, and the soft skin below it, the beginnings of the sweet curves of her breasts, with the rosy pink of her raised blood.

She looked strong and magnificent—all woman; a real woman—and that woman called to the most primitive part of his masculinity with a heady, feminine power that made his head swim. What he wanted most in all the world was to grab her and throw her down onto the bed, rip that enveloping robe from the glorious body and bury himself in her, forgetting all his determination to be strong, to face her with what she had done and get her out of his life.

It was all that he could do to clamp his hands into tight fists at his sides, digging his nails into his palms to keep himself thinking straight and not wandering off onto the paths of sensual temptation.

‘Joaquin,’ Cassandra persisted, her voice low and deter
mined. ‘Just what am I supposed to have been after when I came back here—other than to look after you, of course?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? You wanted a home—a rich man to care for you. You must have already begun to guess that you were
embarazada
—that you were having a child. And it must have been too early for it to be Ramón’s, unless…’

‘No!’ She had seen the way his mind was working and jumped in swiftly to deny it. ‘
No!
There was no way it could have been Ramón’s! Do you hear me? No way!’

‘Well, then, you knew that my brother would realise the child was mine. While I didn’t remember that you’d ever left me, ever run to be with my brother, you took your chance—you moved back in here with me, made sure that I could only believe that the child was mine, hoping that I would think I was the only man you’d ever slept with…’

‘You
are
the only man I’ve slept with. Since I met you at least—there has been no one else in my life.’

She sounded too convincing. Too bloody believable. But the fiery rage inside his head was stopping him from thinking and he swept on, carried along on a tide of fury as hot and burning as the flood of lava from a newly erupted volcano.

‘And you nearly got what you wanted. I was actually ready to make you my wife. You got a proposal of marriage out of me.’

‘Which I refused.’

She’d scored a point there, Cassie thought with grim satisfaction. She’d actually stopped him dead, mid-flow, his black eyes going to her face, wide and shocked, the pupils so distended that they covered almost all the iris.

‘What?’

He looked so stunned that she almost felt sorry for him. But she couldn’t afford to back down now. For the first time since he had come up behind her in the bathroom, she felt as if the tide was actually turning in her favour. For the first time he seemed on the point of, if not backing
down, at least acknowledging that she had some cause for justification. And she couldn’t let that opportunity slip from her hands.

‘Have you listened to yourself, Joaquin?’ she asked. ‘Have you? Have you looked at what you’re claiming with any sort of rational thought—subjected it to a logical examination?’

His silence told her that she had his attention and so she pressed her advantage as hard as she could.

‘You claim that I left you to go and live with Ramón, but then your accident forced me back here to look after you. And that fitted with my plans because I’d just discovered that I might be pregnant…’

Might be pregnant!
The words rang in her head until she almost lost track of her train of thought. She’d never actually registered the real depth of meaning of them before.

Might be pregnant.
With Joaquin’s baby, whether he believed it or not. Oh, Lord, what was she going to do if this was right?

‘That’s what I said.’ Joaquin’s words dragged her from the confusion in her head, forcing her to focus once again.

‘Then tell me this—if that’s the way I was thinking, then why did I turn down your proposal of marriage last night? Why didn’t I just snatch that ring from your hand and cram it on my finger just as soon as I possibly could?’

His stunned silence spoke more eloquently of his feelings than any words could do. But she could still see an argument forming in his thoughts, the storm clouds gathering in his eyes, and she hurried to reinforce her argument.

‘I couldn’t say yes, can’t you see that? I loved you too much…’

‘Love!’ It was a short, hard, cynical laugh, breaking into her words and shattering the train of her point. ‘
Love!
Oh, now you’re really pushing things. I can’t believe that!’

‘Why not?’

To her astonishment, Cassie suddenly felt totally calm.
And it wasn’t the numbed calm of desperation. Instead she had never felt sharper or clearer in her life. It was the thought that she might be pregnant that had done this to her. The thought that she was fighting, not just for herself, but also for her baby’s future. Her child would need a father—and Joaquin too would need his baby, even if he didn’t see that right at this moment.

‘Why don’t you believe I love you? After all, if I didn’t care for you then it would have been the easiest thing in the world to say yes, I’ll marry you. To force you to commit right there and then even though I knew you weren’t ready to make that decision.’

‘I was!’ Joaquin growled savagely. ‘I knew what I was saying—what I wanted.’

‘I know—and I believed you then. But I knew that you weren’t thinking with a clear mind, that there were things you couldn’t know—things I’d had to keep from you. And I believed so much that you meant it that I couldn’t say yes, even if it was what I wanted most in all the world. I couldn’t say yes because it would be taking advantage of the difficult position your loss of memory had put you in. I knew you might come to regret what you said—and I was right about that, wasn’t I?’

She felt as if her heart had stopped beating, as if her breathing were totally suspended, as she waited for his answer.

‘Wasn’t I?’

Her answer was there in his face. She watched it change; knew her fate before he began to speak. And her heart broke deep inside as she heard his words confirm her thoughts.

‘Yes,’ he said, slowly and starkly. ‘Yes, I regretted my proposal. I regretted it like hell.’

That was her dismissal, Cassie knew. There was nothing more she could say or do. She could only turn and go. Leave with some dignity at least.

‘I thought so,’ she said sadly, too low, too desolate even for tears. Her eyes were dry and aching and she had to clench her fists in order to keep herself from rubbing at them savagely. ‘I’ll go and pack.’

She managed three steps towards the door, her heart aching even more savagely with each movement she made. One foot in front of another, and then again—and still Joaquin stood there, stony eyes, stony-faced, just watching.

One more step.

She reached out for the door.

‘No!’

It came so suddenly, so loudly, that she actually jumped inches off the floor, somehow landing facing back the way she had come so that she could see the change that had come over his face, the drained, shattered expression that had etched deep lines and white marks around the blazing eyes, the tightly drawn mouth.

‘No,’ he said again, more quietly but none the less steadily this time. ‘I can’t—I can’t let you go. I can’t let you walk out on me again. I barely survived the last time. I can’t go through that again.’

‘You…?’ Cassie tried, unable to believe what she was hearing. ‘You…’

But Joaquin wasn’t listening. He didn’t wait for her to struggle to get out the question that was on her lips. The question that was the most important thing she had ever had to ask in the whole world and yet somehow couldn’t find a single word to express in any way.

Instead, he came straight to her side, taking her hand in his and holding it so tightly that it seemed he feared she would break free, run from him, escape.

Not that Cassie was capable of any such thing. Her legs had never felt so weak, and her whole body was trembling with shock. The burn of emotion in Joaquin’s deep, dark eyes had quite shattered her, leaving her confused and bewildered and not knowing which way to turn.

Then he made matters so much worse by going down on one knee right there on the carpet before her. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but, still clasping her hand, he looked up into her face, his gaze holding hers transfixed, unable to look away.

‘Cassandra, I was talking nonsense—total garbage! I was hurt and angry and in shock and I’ve said the stupidest things and I don’t mean a single one of them. I’m going to try again,’ he said, and if she hadn’t already been shocked into stillness then the note in his voice would have knocked her for six in a split second. It was rough and husky, raw with the sort of emotion she had never heard from him before. And it was utterly, totally compelling.

‘T-try what again?’ she stumbled, needing to speak but not knowing at all what to say.

‘I’ve proposed marriage to you twice already and each time, I’ve made a total mess of it. The first time—at Ramón’s was an insult, but it was also a cry of desperation. I’d have done anything, anything at all, to get you to come back to me. And I thought you wanted marriage, so that was what I offered—I even had the ring in my pocket, though I made it sound like the worst possible sort of life sentence at the time.’

With his free hand he pushed back the lock of black silky hair that had fallen over his forehead, his eyes not leaving hers for a second.

‘I was in shock—I didn’t know what I was saying. I’d been going crazy since you left me. I looked everywhere for you but I couldn’t find you anywhere. And then suddenly there you were—with Ramón.’

‘In Ramón’s apartment,’ Cassie put in gently. She didn’t want to distract him from what he was about to say, but she couldn’t let him persist in that illusion. ‘I was staying at Ramón’s, but I wasn’t living
with
him.’

‘I know.’ Joaquin’s expression was shamefaced and he shook his head in despair at his own stupidity. ‘Deep down
inside, I always knew, but I wasn’t thinking straight—I wasn’t thinking at all. I’d seen you and Ramón together and—well, I’ll admit, I’ve always had something of a problem where my brother is concerned. He was everything my father wanted—and I was fool enough to think that perhaps he was what you wanted too.’

‘How could he be?’ Cassie questioned softly. ‘When all I want is you? I told you, there’s only one Alcolar that I love. And you’re that man.’

‘Then why…?’

She saw the shadows on his face, the pain of memory that clouded his eyes, and guessed intuitively at the question he was going to ask.

‘Why did I leave? Because I thought that you were growing tired of me. That my own personal twelve months with you were coming to an end. That any minute you were going to tell me it was over.’

‘Never! Oh, I may have kicked and struggled a bit—fought against admitting it until the very last minute, but only because I was terrified. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I’d never felt that way before—never felt so vulnerable, so exposed, so defenceless. And when you seemed to change…’

‘If I changed it was because I felt vulnerable too. Because I was scared of what was happening to me. And I didn’t dare say it because I thought that you were determined on what we’d agreed on from the start—that no ties, no commitment sort of relationship.’

‘And I’m to blame for that.’ Joaquin’s tone was wry. ‘I insisted on that from the start and I never told you the way that my feelings were changing. I was too weak, too afraid to open myself up to you. But I should have told you. Told you that you’re the woman that I adore. The woman who rocked my world, turned it and all my plans and schemes, my carefully thought-out path through life, right on their
head. You had me thinking about weddings and rings and happily ever afters…’

Suddenly he lifted his hand, splaying long fingers out over the pit of her stomach where, she hoped so desperately now, perhaps the earliest beginnings of a new life were starting to grow.