Page 45 of Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard
He had made her feel secure.
What a joke.
He knew her inside out and she had kidded herself into thinking that she knew him as well, even if he couldn’t see it, even if his stubborn pride prevented him from accepting it.
She didn’t know him at all and that felt like a crushing blow. She wandered in and out of shops before heading back to his place a little after eight.
He was already there when she quietly let herself in. He’d obviously been waiting for her to show up because he was in the hall before she had time to sling her jacket over the banister.
‘I’ve been calling,’ was the first thing he said, moving towards her.
‘Have you?’ Sofia dodged past him and headed straight into the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t looked at my phone at all.’ She heard a tell-tale hitch in her voice and cautioned herself against giving in to self-pity. So she was here, stripped bare of all her illusions, and she only had herself to blame. He’d never promised her more than he could deliver and if she’d hoped for more then that was her fault.
Love had been a handicap, making her question less, demand less and accept more.
‘David said that you had some kind of emergency appointment with the dentist?’
‘I haven’t been to the dentist, Rafael.’ She spun round on her heels and looked at him, arms folded, eyes cool.
Rafael stared back, hesitant.
What was going on here? Astute as he was at reading situations, he was finding it difficult to get a grip. As a general rule, he had no time for any sort of hysterical behaviour. He didn’t like confrontations or arguments, preferring to walk away from histrionics, and this was shaping up to be all of the above mentioned. Judging from her expression, at least.
‘Then where were you?’
‘Out. Walking around.’
‘Out? Walking around?’
‘Thinking.’
Rafael remained silent, a dark flush delineating his aristocratic, high cheekbones.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I was thinking about, Rafael?’
‘I expect you’re going to tell me whether I ask you or not.’
‘I found something out today.’ Sofia heard the wobble in her voice and anchored herself firmly back in the reality of what she was dealing with—a guy who, in the end, cared so little for her that he hadn’t seen fit to tell her about what had probably been the biggest thing in his life to date.
Had it been a happy marriage? Sad? Disappointing? Something in between all three? How long had it lasted? Had it been love at first sight? What had she looked like? What had happened in the end?
She had asked David none of those questions, had not wanted to know any details at all except the ones that came from Rafael. Was she overreacting? She didn’t think she was, although some might. As far as she was concerned, this revelation felt like the summing up of everything she’d feared—that this wonderful, complex, infuriating, adorable and strangely vulnerable man felt no real attachment to her. Yes, he wanted her, but that was never going to be enough. And, yes, he liked her well enough but that didn’t touch the surface of what she wanted him to feel. She’d been greedy and this was the price she was now having to pay.
The truth was that, if he had had the connection with her that she had with him, he would have confided in her, slotted in that piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was such an important part of the whole picture. That was how relationships worked, wasn’t it? Had she found out sooner about this, maybe it would have been different. She might have been able to ease it into the conversation and excuse his reticence on the grounds that they were still finding a way forward with one another, still learning to have a relationship within the confines of their convenient marriage. But to find out when she thought that what they had was something special was truly painful.
‘David mentioned that you’ve been married once before.’ She didn’t bother beating about the bush.
The silence settled between them, suffocating and dense, becoming more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. The shutters had snapped down and his expression, his stunning dark eyes that had warmed when they rested on her, were as remote now as the cold, grey waters of a wintry sea.
‘He thought I would have known,’ she laboured on. ‘Of course, that was the first I was hearing of any such thing. I didn’t ask for details. I... I couldn’t. I thought those details would be better coming from you.’
Rafael’s gaze narrowed, his lean, darkly handsome face betraying immediate and instinctive rejection of what he viewed as a blunt battering ram aimed against his privacy. Things had been going so well between them that this felt like an attack out of the blue and, as with all attacks, his initial reaction was to repel. Taut with frustrated tension, he was at a loss as to the direction he should take, but the mere thought of having to explain himself to her or to anyone was like a drawbridge being slammed down.
Some things had the power to change the course of a person’s life and his brief and disastrous marriage had been one of those things. He’d been a fool, had been sucked in by a gold-digger and had managed to get out of it in one piece. End of story. Being called upon to revisit that intensely disillusioning and personal slice of his past evoked a primitive, negative response and a searing resentment that the matter had been raised at all. Gut reaction bypassed common sense.
‘What do you want me to say, Sofia? It was something that happened. That was then and this is now and I don’t see the relevance of digging into the past.’
‘Youdon’t see the relevanceof digging into the past?’ Sofia exploded, storming towards him, every nerve in her body reacting with rage at his casual dismissal of something she considered perfectly reasonable. She had had a couple of hours to think the thing through and there was now a seething mass of hurt and pain roiling inside her. Casual dismissal of what she was feeling just wasn’t going to cut it.
