Page 47 of Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard
‘My aunt and Miguel have moved closer to the hospital where he’s having his treatments,’ she intoned, ‘and their house is more than big enough for me for a while. And after that I have options, Rafael. I’ll work out what to do next. But I won’t be doing it as your wife.’
CHAPTER TEN
OPTIONS?OPTIONS?WHAToptions was she going to consider? Rafael stared at the empty space she’d left behind her and tried to marshal his thoughts.
She was his wife and she was walking out on their marriage! That was the first furious thought that sprang into his head but immediately he had to concede that she had a point because this hadn’t started life as any sort of marriage anyone would callconventional. Unfortunately, her brutal assessment of it as a business arrangement jarred. He should have been the first to agree with the description, but the fact that it jarred did all sorts of things to his peace of mind.
What was going on?
They’d made love! Fantastic, mind-blowing, amazing love, so why was he sitting here alone in this kitchen wondering what the hell was going on?
He pushed the plate of food further away, determined that he wasn’t going to do the unthinkable and follow her up the stairs. If she wanted to walk out, then that was fine. Nothing he could do about it. This was never meant to be have been a permanent state of affairs anyway!
More to the point, he had no time for the sort of ridiculous behaviour she had just displayed. God knew, what did it matter whether he’d been married for five minutes a hundred years ago? Why couldn’t she see that? Why were women so incomprehensible? It was particularly disappointing with her because she knew him so well! Better than any woman had ever known him! Indeed, no one had ever come close. They might have started off facing each other from opposite sides of the ring but they had gradually closed the distance, become a team.
She had cornered him and then she had decided to stand her ground, and what that amounted to was some kind of ultimatum and he’d never been one to do ultimatums.
Unnerved by thoughts and feelings that were alien to him, Rafael leapt to his feet, walked jerkily towards the kitchen window to stare outside.
Had she finished her packing? There wasn’t much to pack. He knew that because her clothes were laid out alongside his in the same wardrobe, same shelves, same drawers. He couldn’t care less what got flung behind doors, but she was as neat as a pin, and was forever folding his clothes into submission. Black T-shirts in tidy stacks, boxers rolled, socks in a drawer of their own.
When had she started organising him and how was it that he was only now noticing?
He rarely ate dinner without her. Business dos...yes, there had been a few. But he had bailed on a lot more than usual because he preferred her company. He liked hearing about her days. She made him laugh. She’d made friends with some of the women in the village. There was always gossip. She had a way of telling him what was going on that never failed to make him smile. His custom of always working if he happened to be in in the evenings had long been abandoned. There were now better things to do with his time. All those things, he now realised, involvedherand not all of them had to do with sex.
Agitated, Rafael half-wished he could shut the box that had suddenly been opened—hold back the river of thoughts pouring through his head, undammed for the first time.
What the hell were those so-called options she was going to consider? Argentina was waiting for her. Her aunt and cousin were in a luxurious place just outside Buenos Aires. He had seen some photos on her phone only a couple of weeks ago. And then what? Divorce? Was that one of the options she had mentioned? And thereafter the unknown opened up, gaping like a dark void waiting to be filled. Frankly, the world would be her oyster, because she had more money than she could shake a stick at.
Unbelievably wealthy, unbelievably sexy and unbelievably single...
Rafael’s blood ran cold when he thought of where that lethal combination would lead.
He didn’t stop to think himself out of anything. He slammed out of the kitchen, bolted up the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door before his usual stubborn pride could begin telling him what he should or shouldn’t do.
* * *
In the act of dumping the last of her things into one of the three cases she had fetched from where they had been languishing in one of the spare rooms, Sofia had zero expectations that Rafael would try and talk her out of her decision to leave him.
If she knew anything about him by now, it was that he never pursued. She had dumped him and there was no way that he was going to try and talk her out of it.
And there was certainly no way that she could turn the clock back and pretend that words spoken had not been aired.
She’d made her bed and now she was going to have to lie on it, and it was looking pretty grim. Beyond grim. Unbearable. Of course, she knew that this was where she was meant to be—and she didn’t regret starting the conversation that had brought her here because she’d neededhonesty—but the proverbial bed was still looking terrifying, cold and empty.
She stared down at the suitcase, startled to see that her usual orderly packing had given way to a free-for-all of clothes hurled indiscriminately into the case. Her head was so full of riotous thoughts that she couldn’t seem to separate them, couldn’t deal with them one at a time. Maybe if she could she wouldn’t be standing here feeling sick and dizzy.
She’d just said goodbye to the only guy she would ever love. He didn’t even know how she felt. He just knew that she had turned into a demanding shrew and, that being the case, he had slammed down the shutters, stuck up the ‘No Trespass’sign, and bolted the front door.
Try as she might to tell herself that that was fine, because loving a man who couldn’t even be bothered to share his past with you was a recipe for disaster, she still felt sick to the stomach.
No more Rafael.No more of those dark, dark eyes teasing her, caressing her, understanding her. She was on her own now and she was as adrift as a castaway at sea.
She jerked up at the sound of the door being pushed open, slamming against the wall, and then gaped as he stood there staring at her.
Every single self-defence mechanism she possessed slammed into place. Had a sense of pity got the better of him? Had he decided that she might deserve some kind of bracing pep talk now that she was on her way? After all, shehadbeen instrumental in David getting back on his feet and finding things to look forward to, not to mention sorting out the whole troublesome business of Freddy. Had he decided that she was due something a bit more than a flat refusal to indulge her perfectly normal curiosity?
‘What do you want?’ she asked, breaking eye contact and turning away to begin the process of flinging underwear into her suitcase.
