Page 37 of Stolen For My Spanish Scandal

Those first few days I’d been too dazed and a little drunk with the effects of sex to notice the distance he’d put between us. But then, as the fifth day came around and he’d left me alone, I’d had enough. I couldn’t let this distance between us continue, not when we were going to be married and had a child to raise together.

So I’d crossed the rolling green lawns to his cottage. If it had only been about myself, maybe I’d have left him to his privacy, but it wasn’t only about me. It was about the baby, too. I couldn’t let him dictate everything. I couldn’t let him walk all over me.

I had to make a stand.

His stare was fierce, his heat surrounding me. He was in a white shirt and charcoal-grey trousers, the stark colours highlighting his dark beauty, a perfect foil to the rage burning in his obsidian eyes.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, ignoring the hard grip he had on my arms. ‘You’re not fine. If you were fine you wouldn’t have been skulking in this cottage for the past five days.’

It was an unwise thing to say, but someone had to say it to him. And since I was apparently the only person who wasn’t afraid of him, that someone had to be me.

He stared at me for one long second, then muttered a curse under his breath and let me go, stepping away, withdrawing his heat. A chill crept through me at the loss of his warmth. I tried to ignore it.

The ice was back in his eyes, the fierce expression fading, his perfect features hardening.

I didn’t like it. I preferred his anger to his cold detachment, because at least that was honest. At least that was more him than this ice was.

‘In there,’ he said curtly, nodding his head in the direction of the office.

Shoving away the feeling of disappointment, I turned and stepped back through the doorway, leaving him to shut the door on that fascinating secret room. A wall of shelves slid back into place, and I had to bite down on my urge to ask him what was in there, because I hadn’t looked when I’d had the chance. Not when all I’d seen was him.

Once the shelves were back, Con came over to me and slid a hand beneath my elbow, guiding me over to a couch and sitting me down on it.

The tiny cottage had been converted into a large, comfortable office, with that big desk and lots of shelving. The wooden floor was very old, dark and pitted, yet gleaming. A few hand-knotted silk rugs covered it, and under the window opposite the desk was the comfortable-looking couch in dark leather. The walls were undressed stone and very thick, giving the place a cosy, contained and secure atmosphere.

Con folded his arms over his broad chest, looming over me, staring at me with those cold eyes.

I was beginning to hate that expression, the one he showed to everyone else. Didn’t he know he didn’t need to be that way with me? Didn’t he know he could be himself when he was with me?

Abruptly, I felt close to tears, though I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the way he’d turned on me, because, regardless of whether I’d invaded his privacy or not, I hadn’t expected that. He’d never been angry with me before, yet in the space of the past five days cold and angry was all he seemed to be.

It didn’t start five days ago, and you know it.

That was true. He’d been cold and distant ever since I’d left Spain to live in London. Apart from that night in the garden, when we’d both crossed a line we hadn’t been able to come back from.

And then you both broke what you’d once had. You broke it irretrievably.

Maybe. But I suspected something had broken before that night. And I still didn’t know what it was, because he wouldn’t tell me.

I bit my lip hard, shoving away the tears and reaching for anger instead. ‘What was all that about?’ I demanded.

‘What was what about?’

‘You, in that room. Getting so angry with me.’

A muscle ticked in the side of his hard jaw. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay, fine. So is that how it’s going to be? Our marriage? Sex whenever you want it and then you disappearing off God knows where and refusing to talk to me?’

His dark brows twitched. ‘What more do you want?’

‘I want you to be there!’ The words came out far more vehemently than I’d expected, and I tried to moderate my tone. ‘I don’t want this distance you keep putting between us. I don’t understand it, not when we have so much we need to talk about.’

Something flickered behind his cold black eyes, a glimpse of an emotion I couldn’t read. ‘Fine. Let us talk about the arrangements now.’

His voice was expressionless, blank as a stone wall.

It made me even angrier.

---