Page 25 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

His dark eyes held hers. ‘I have a family now. I felt the distance. The first thing I saw when I arrived home was my beautiful wife, who I have not seen laugh since she moved here, laughing with a good-looking young man.’ He raised his shoulders. ‘I should not have jumped to conclusions.’

And her heart shouldn’t be leaping that Ramos had called her beautiful again and had practically admitted to jealousy. Or possessiveness. Or something along those lines.

Most likely any possessiveness on his part came from her bearing the title of his wife. It was his arrogant pride that was possessive.

‘Now, am I right in thinking you want the staff to treat you as the mistress of the house?’ he said in a lighter tone.

That knocked the confused thoughts out of her, and she blanched. If she never heard the word mistress again it would be too soon. ‘I want them to respect me as your wife.’

His gaze held hers for a time that stretched so long Flora found herself holding her breath again and fighting not to lose herself in the melting swirl.

‘They do respect you,querida,’ he said.

‘They spy on me,’ she whispered.

‘They watch you, yes,’ he agreed. ‘On my instructions. But it is not easy for them to respect you as my wife when you do not act as my wife. A marriage is the union of two people and so far there has been no unity between us. I blame myself for that—I should never have put you in this guest room. I only put you in here because you were fragile from the birth and needed time to recover and adjust to our new life, but I see now that was a mistake. It allowed you to hide away. I was trying to do the right thing by you but that time allowed too much separation between us and caused much distrust, as what just happened testifies.’

‘But there hasn’t ever been trust between us,’ she replied shakily. Dizzying heat was filling her head at the direction in which she could sense Ramos was taking them.

‘Then it is time for us to build some, if only for our son’s sake, and time for us to build a proper marriage.’

Her mouth ran dry. The thuds of her heart deepened with a violence that matched the churning in her stomach. ‘What do you mean?’

But she knew.

Ramos stretched an arm and took hold of her left hand. Turning it palm up, he traced a circle over the sensitive skin.

Flora was helpless to stop the shiver that rippled through her at the sensation.

He shifted closer, his knee now pressing against hers, and traced the length of her wedding finger. His velvet voice dropped to a murmur that was as seductive as the melting swirl in his eyes. ‘You are my wife and I am your husband, and it is time for us to build a real marriage together with you in my bed and my ring on your finger.’

His scent was filling her senses. Memories of the night they’d shared were clamouring for release and, though she fought desperately to contain them, she couldn’t contain the remembered caresses of his hands and mouth. They sprang so vividly she could feel the sensation of them on her skin, powerful enough to send a pulse throbbing deep in her pelvis and bring her hurling to her senses.

She snatched her hand away and shoved her chair back, far out of his reach.

Horribly aware that she’d been a whisker from falling under his spell again, painfully aware that her face was crimson, she managed to say with just the right amount of indignation, ‘Excuseme, but you can’t just suddenly demand I share a bed with you.’

Far from being perturbed, he appraised her with a knowing smile. ‘I demand nothing, but you made your choice when you signed our wedding certificate. You signed up for marriage without caveats, and so did I.’

‘That doesn’t mean you can just take your conjugal rights now you deem me well enough for it!’

‘Who said anything about conjugal rights?’ he asked innocently. ‘I merely said you would be sharing my room and my bed, nothing more than that.’ He rose to his feet and winked. ‘I’m sure you’ll agree though that sharing a bed should help kill the irrational jealousy we both seem to suffer from.’

‘I’m certainly not jealous!’ she spluttered. Where on earth had he got that idea from? Hadn’t she just practically given him carte blanche to have all the affairs he wanted? Would an irrationally jealous person do that?

He raised a disbelieving brow then said, ‘We will choose a ring tomorrow but everything else changes from now. I will instruct Madeline to move your possessions into my room when we go out tonight.’

‘Out?’she echoed.

His eyes pulsed. ‘Yes,querida. Out. On a date. Just me and my beautiful wife. I have let you hide away for too long, from me and from the world.’

Then, with long, languid strides, he disappeared from her room, leaving Flora shell-shocked from all the grenades he’d just detonated and the palm of her hand still tingling manically from where his fingers had caressed it.

In her five months living in Barcelona, Flora had never left the villa without her son and it was with a huge dose of trepidation that she kissed his sleeping face goodnight.

It was with even greater trepidation that she stepped onto the galleried landing. From her vantage point she could see Ramos waiting for her on one of the deep blue velvet sofas in the living area. Dressed in a snazzy navy suit with a black open-necked shirt, his ankle hooked over his thigh, he had a glass of bourbon in one hand and was reading something on his phone with the other.

Her breath caught in her throat, the thuds of her heart echoing loudly in her ears.

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