Santiago’s Love-Child
Kim Lawrence

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

AFTER trying to sell an idea for ten minutes straight most people would have given up. Dan Taylor wasn’t one of them. Some people said that what he lacked in flair he made up for in determination. They were essentially correct.

Santiago Morais, who was considered to have more than his fair share of flair, listened to the younger man explain again why it wasn’t just necessary for Santiago to make up the numbers this weekend, it was his duty.

‘No.’

The ‘No’ wasn’t the sort of no that could be confused with maybe, and it wasn’t encouraging that the enigmatic expression on Santiago’s lean features had given way to mild irritation.

Actually Dan was a little taken aback by Santiago’s lack of co-operation. He was showing the sort of stony indifference that Dan had expected five years earlier when he had turned up at the London offices of Morais International. The only thing he’d had going for him then had been a tenuous—very tenuous—family link with the Morais family.

He had expected to be thrown out on his ear. Getting to see the man himself had been just as hard as he had expected. When they had come face to face, his resolve had almost deserted him. Santiago was younger than he had expected and much, much tougher.

Faced with a dark, cynical and very chilly stare Dan had instinctively dumped his carefully prepared speech and said instead, ‘Look, there’s absolutely no reason you should give me a job just because some great-aunt of mine married some distant uncle of your mother’s. I’m not qualified—in fact I’ve never finished anything I started in my life—but if you gave me a chance you wouldn’t regret it. I’d give it all I had and then some. I have something to prove.’

‘You have something to prove?’ The voice, deep and barely accented, made Dan jump.

‘I’m not a loser.’

The figure behind the desk got to his feet and became correspondingly more intimidating; this man was seriously tall and was built like an Olympic rower. For a long uncomfortable moment Santiago just looked at Dan in silence, those spookily penetrating eyes not giving a clue to what he was thinking.

‘Right, sorry to have bothered you…’

‘Eight-thirty Monday.’

Dan’s jaw dropped as he swung back. ‘What did you say?’

One of Santiago’s dark brows lifted. ‘If you want a job, be here Monday morning at eight-thirty.’

Dan sank into the nearest chair. ‘You won’t regret this,’ he vowed.

Dan had come good on his promise. He had quickly proved his worth and, perhaps more surprisingly, a friendship had developed between the two men. A friendship that had survived Dan leaving the company and setting up on his own two years earlier.

Dan adopted an injured expression as he looked across at his Spanish distant cousin, who had put down a file he’d been reading to say something in his native tongue into a Dictaphone. Actually it could have been one of several languages; Santiago was fluent in five.

‘I must say I think you’re being pretty callous about this.’

‘If by callous you mean I will not spend a weekend amusing a fat, boring and mentally unstable woman—I’m quoting you here—so that you can have your Rebecca to yourself…I am indeed callous.’

‘Rachel, and the friend isn’t mentally unstable exactly. I think she’s just having a breakdown or something.’

‘You’re really tempting me now, but the answer is still no, Daniel.’

‘If you’d met Rachel you wouldn’t be so heartless.’

‘And is your Rachel beautiful?’

‘Very, and don’t look at me like that. This isn’t some casual affair. She’s the one; I just know she is.’ His expression grew indignant when Santiago responded to his emotional admission with a cynical smile that was only slightly less corrosive than neat nitric acid. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been more sympathetic considering…’ Dan continued falteringly.

Santiago abandoned his attempt to carry on working and pushed his thick sable hair back from his brow. ‘Considering what?’

‘Aren’t you getting married?’

‘At some point I imagine it will be necessary.’ The exquisite irony of him continuing the precious Morais family name was not lost on him.

‘You know what I mean. Aren’t you marrying that hot little singer who I keep seeing you photographed with.’

‘That hot little singer has an agent with a vivid imagination. Susie is not in love with me.’

Dan’s expression grew curious. ‘So it’s just…’

‘None of your business.’

‘Fair enough, but I still think you’re being totally unreasonable. I’m asking you to spend a weekend in a cute cottage, not donate bone marrow! Look…look,’ he said, reaching into his pocket and extracting a photo. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous? And, as for her being older, I like older women…’ he added defensively as he shoved the photo under Santiago’s nose.

With a sigh Santiago took the creased item from the younger man’s fingers and dutifully glanced at the slightly out-of-focus image of a tall blonde who looked to him like many other tall blondes.

‘Yes, she is very…’ He stopped, the colour seeping steadily from his olive-toned skin as he looked at the person half concealed by Dan’s girlfriend.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ Dan asked, thinking of Santiago’s father, who had dropped dead at fifty-five from a massive heart attack several years earlier.

Santiago hadn’t inherited his dad’s looks, generous girth or taste for copious amounts of brandy—the old man had by all accounts been a bit of a sleaze—but who knew what else he had inherited?

Like maybe a propensity to heart disease and dropping down dead!

Dan had started to try and remember if you bashed someone who stopped breathing on the chest, or gave them mouth to mouth, when Santiago’s eyes lifted. He looked bleak, but much to Dan’s relief not about to expire any time soon.

‘I’m fine, Daniel.’ Santiago wasn’t about to reveal that he’d recognized the woman in the photograph. ‘This woman here, she is the friend who will be there this weekend?’ he enquired casually as he indicated the figure in the background.

‘Yeah, that’s Lily,’ Dan admitted without enthusiasm. ‘Rachel’s had her staying at her place for the past three weeks. They go way back. I never see Rachel alone. Wherever she goes, there’s Lily. I don’t think she likes men…she definitely doesn’t like me. Must be the husband dumping her has made her all weird.’

‘Her husband left her…?’

Dan nodded. ‘Not too sure of the details, but presumably that’s what made her fall apart.’

Santiago’s eyes lifted. ‘Are they divorced?’

‘Like I said, I don’t know the details. I had a colleague lined up for this weekend to keep her out of our hair, but he got mumps, of all things!’

‘That was inconsiderate of him,’ Santiago murmured sarcastically, thinking fast and hard—something he was well equipped to do.

‘I’m not saying he did it on purpose, but, hell-fire, Santiago, I’ve been planning this weekend for weeks, ever since I bought the ring.’

‘You are going to propose?’ He watched as Dan looked self-conscious and thought, I hope she’s not a total bitch. Being Lily’s friend was not the best of recommendations.

‘Six years is a very small age gap.’

‘Insignificant,’ Santiago agreed obediently, amused that it was something as minor as an age difference that bothered his young friend. ‘This alters things,’ he mused out loud.

‘It does?’ Dan sounded cautious.

‘Being a romantic—’

‘Since when?’

‘I will come and keep this…Lily…company.’

Dan was so grateful that it took Santiago ten minutes to get rid of him.

When Dan finally left, Santiago took the photograph he had slipped surreptitiously into his pocket and laid it on the desk. Hands pressed on the polished rosewood surface, he leaned forward, his eyes trained on the barely distinguishable features of the woman in the background. A quiver of movement tightened the contours of his impossibly symmetrical features. When admirers attributed that symmetry to generations of aristocratic inbreeding, Santiago could barely repress his amusement.

Lily’s hair looked dark in the snapshot, but Santiago knew it was a medium brown, not a boring matt brown, but a fascinating intermingling of shades ranging from golden blonde to warm, rich russet.

That heart-shaped little face—thinner than he recalled—those big, kittenish blue eyes, and soft, seductive mouth didn’t look as though they belonged to a woman who had the morals of an alley cat.

She had made a fool of him.

But, as Santiago had told himself many times over the last months, he had the consolation of knowing that he had had a lucky escape. Lucky me!

He wasn’t married to this heartless little cheat—someone else was. Another man enjoyed the expertise of those soft lips. Someone else slept with his head cushioned on those soft, warm breasts at night. That man was entitled to touch pearly skin that smelt of roses and vanilla, and wake up with pale, smooth limbs wrapped around him.

Another man was listening to her lies and believing them.

Someone else, but not me.

Oddly enough, thoughts of his lucky escape did not make Santiago feel like breaking into spontaneous song.

Then he remembered Daniel’s words and realised that it was possible nobody was enjoying the carnal delights of her voluptuous body. Recalling what a sensual little thing she had been, he doubted this situation would last for long.

He looked at his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists and rotated his head to ease the tension that had crept into his shoulders and neck. He was over the woman; it was the memory of his own criminal gullibility that plagued him, that stopped him fully enjoying what life had to offer. The obvious way to restore equilibrium was to face his problem. He needed what the psychologists called closure, and what he, in the privacy of his own thoughts, called seeing Lily get what she deserved.

Now, thanks to Dan, he had the chance.

Staring out of the window, seeing none of the panoramic view over the city, he mulled over what he had learnt and wondered how it could be used to his advantage. Apparently Lily was going through a rough patch. The protective instincts that sprang into life at the thought of her vulnerability didn’t survive more than a split second before good sense reasserted itself.

He smiled grimly. Maybe it was Lily’s turn to reap some of what she had sown…? Or maybe her present breakdown was part of some elaborate scam, which, knowing her as he did, was entirely possible.

Though he had nothing to prove, it would be good to confirm what he already knew: that he was over Lily.

‘You’ve been crying.’

Lily, who had thought she was alone, jumped at the accusation and gave a surreptitious sniff before lifting her head. ‘No,’ she mumbled, pinning a determined smile on her blotchy face, ‘it’s this darned hay fever.’

Her friend sighed. ‘You don’t get hay fever, Lily,’ she retorted, dropping her designer handbag on the floor and easing one shoe off with a sigh.

Lily watched the second four-inch heel follow suit as Rachel shrank to a willowy five ten. Her cheeks began to ache as she continued to smile brightly to compensate for her blotchy appearance.

She blew her nose defiantly. ‘Well, I do now,’ she insisted.

Rachel lifted her artfully darkened brows and released a theatrical sigh, but didn’t press the point.

‘If you say so,’ she said, wincing as she rubbed first one aching foot and then the other against her slim calves. ‘Now, what shall we do tonight?’

‘I fancy an early night, actually.’

‘Early night! You’ve had early nights for the past week.’ She looked her friend up and down through narrowed eyes, mentally chucking the top Lily was wearing in the bin—no self-respecting charity shop would want it—and getting her into something, preferably low cut, in a pastel shade maybe…? A nice soft smoky blue would bring out the incredible shade of her eyes.

‘It’s definitely time you let your hair down, Lily. It’ll do us both good,’ she contended.

Lily guiltily noted for the first time the lines of fatigue around the older woman’s eyes. ‘Bad day?’

‘Sometimes I wonder why I ever became an accountant,’ she admitted.

‘The six-figure salary…?’

Rachel grinned. ‘I get that because I’m brilliant at what I do. And I won’t bother trying to explain to someone who can’t even add up with a calculator that numbers are sexy. Now, about tonight. Dan has this really sweet mate…single, solvent…admittedly he’s no Brad Pitt, but then—’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers…?’

Rachel adopted an expression of mock gravity. ‘Well, I was going to say, Who is? But now you mention it women who don’t exfoliate regularly, Lily, have to be realistic.’ She turned her frowning scrutiny on the younger woman’s fair-skinned face. ‘Actually, considering your skin-care regime consists of splashing a bit of soap and water on your face, you have the most disgustingly gorgeous skin,’ she observed enviously. ‘A bit of decent foundation would totally disguise those freckles,’ she prophesied, frowning at the bridge of Lily’s small, tip-tilted nose. ‘Still, some men like freckles. Shall I ring Dan and—’

Lily knew one man who had said he liked her freckles, though she suspected they, like everything else about her, would disgust him now.

‘No!’ Rachel’s eyebrows lifted and Lily added more moderately, ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do, but, to be honest, a man is the last thing I need right now.’

It was easy to figure out what she didn’t need—blind dates featured pretty high on this list. What she did need was a much more difficult proposition!

‘Need and want are not always the same thing.’

‘This time they are,’ Lily insisted quietly.

Rachel looked exasperated and glanced absently at a message on her mobile phone before sliding it back into her bag. ‘What are you going to do? Take a vow of celibacy?’

Lily ignored Rachel’s question. ‘Actually, I was thinking it might be time for me to go home.’ Home…but for how much longer?

Lily deliberately pushed the subject of her uncertain future to the back of her mind.

It wasn’t easy. Her marital home was on the market, and according to the agents a couple were making interested noises, which, considering their viewing, was nothing short of a miracle.

Lily’s thoughts drifted back to the occasion three weeks earlier. Rachel had unexpectedly arrived when she had been halfway through showing the prospective purchasers around. Her friend had taken one look at her, and had calmly informed the startled pair that they would have to come back another day. She had then proceeded to escort them firmly off the property.

Rachel had then packed Lily a bag, arranged a sitter for the cat and asked a neighbour to water the plants. Lily had just sat there and watched her. She supposed her listless inertia had been a symptom of whatever Rachel had seen in her face.

The break had served its purpose, but now, despite the tears this afternoon, Lily was feeling less fragile. She no longer felt so…disconnected. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. Being grounded was painful, you had to think about things you’d prefer not to and make decisions…For months now, she realised, she’d just been drifting. She hadn’t even begun to look for somewhere to live. All she’d done was sign everything that Gordon’s solicitor had sent her.

Yes, it was definitely about time she stood on her own feet.

Rachel didn’t agree.

‘You can’t go home yet. I’ve got things planned.’

Lily, who didn’t like the sound of ‘things’ frowned suspiciously. She really wished that her friend hadn’t taken on the role of social secretary with such zeal. ‘Things…?’

Rachel acted as if she hadn’t heard. ‘God, but these shoes are murder,’ she complained, picking up the culprits, stilettos with black and pink bows.

‘Then don’t wear them.’ It seemed the obvious solution to Lily, who liked clothes but wasn’t as much of a slave to fashion as her friend.

‘Are you kidding? They make my legs look hot.’

Lily looked at the legs in question and observed honestly, ‘Your legs would look hot in wellingtons, Rachel.’ She glanced down at her own legs, currently concealed under denim. They were pretty good as legs went, but they weren’t in the same class as Rachel’s, which stopped traffic on a regular basis.

‘Yes, they would, wouldn’t they?’

Lily smiled. There was something oddly endearing about her friend’s complacent vanity.

‘But enough about my legs.’ With a little pat of one taut, tanned thigh through her short summer skirt, she turned her attention to Lily, who in turn looked wary, an expression her friend had observed always appeared when the conversation got even faintly personal.

Such tight-lipped reserve was something Rachel found hard to understand. If she had been through hell and back like Lily, she would have wanted to get it off her chest, but all her attempts to encourage Lily to let it out had failed miserably.

‘Don’t you think you’d feel a lot better if you talked about it?’

They both knew what ‘it’ was: Lily’s divorce—the ink was still wet on that—and her miscarriage earlier that year.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR a split second Lily was tempted to tell Rachel; the urge quickly passed.

Rachel didn’t know half the story and the truth was so shocking that she couldn’t predict how even her broad-minded friend would react to the unvarnished version.

Besides, the habits of a lifetime were hard to break and ‘sharing feelings’ had been encouraged during Lily’s childhood about as much as spontaneous hugging!

If she had let her feelings show, her grandmother’s impatient response had been, ‘Nobody likes a whiner, Lily.’ Lily had learnt not to whine. Her crying had always been done behind closed doors.

‘Nothing to talk about.’

‘Nobody does the stiff upper lip these days, you know, Lily. All that being reserved does is give you an ulcer.’

‘My stomach feels fine.’ Lily placed her hand against the curve of her belly and discovered with a sense of surprise that she had lost a lot of the soft, feminine roundness she had always hated.

The softness that Santiago had professed to find sexy and feminine.

She knew from experience that there were times when fighting the flashbacks did no good, that it was easier on those occasions just to go with the flow. Lily, dimly conscious of Rachel’s voice in the background, felt her eyelids grow heavy as she allowed the bitter-sweet memories to wash over her.

She had perfect, total, painful recall of the heat in his incredible eyes as he had tipped her face up to his and smiled a slow, sexy smile as he had drawn her against him, fitting his hard angles into her softer curves and murmuring throatily in her ear.

A woman should be soft and round, not hard and angular.

It was humiliating, but a full twelve months after that first scorching kiss and she still couldn’t think about it without getting palpitations.

‘Well?’

Rachel’s impatient voice acted like a lifeline back to the present. Lily grabbed it and held on. While she was fixated on the past the chances of her rebuilding her life were nil.

She dabbed her tongue to the beads of sweat along her upper lip and gave a strained smile as she rubbed her damp palms against her jeans.

‘Sorry, I…’ Am pathetic and living in the past? Can’t get it into my thick skull he never loved me? All of the above?

‘You weren’t listening. I could tell…’ Rachel considered her friend’s flushed face. ‘You look a bit…?’

‘I’m fine.’ Smile fixed, Lily pushed the intrusive images away without acknowledging them or his presence in her head.

‘What you need is a nice glass of wine,’ Rachel decided. ‘Just don’t move,’ she said, padding over to the big stainless-steel fridge in her bare feet. A moment later she returned with a bottle of Chardonnay and two glasses, which she filled.

‘A nice night in…yeah, I can live with that,’ she conceded, handing Lily her glass. She curled up comfortably on the sofa and reached for the newspaper. ‘I wonder what’s on the telly tonight?’ Turning over the pages, she suddenly stopped and lowered the broadsheet to the table. ‘Now there,’ she observed with a lascivious smile, ‘is something I wouldn’t mind finding in my Christmas stocking.’

‘I thought you were in love with your delicious Dan.’ Lily laughed, looking over her shoulder to see what hunk her friend was drooling over.

‘I’m in love, not blind. Now, there’s a man who doesn’t use a shoebox to file his returns. Look at that mouth and those eyes…’ she enthused.

‘You can tell about his filing system from his mouth?’ Lily teased.

‘No, that I can tell by the attention the financial pages give him on a regular basis. I wonder if he’s that sexy in real life?’ She slung a comical look of entreaty over her shoulder. ‘And please don’t spoil it by saying it’s just good lighting. You’re such a disgusting cynic.’

Lily went cold as she looked at the half-page photo showing an unsmiling, dark-eyed man. It was a standard moody black and white shot of an incredibly attractive man. Lily knew that the lighting couldn’t begin to do justice to just how sexy the man was in real life. It didn’t reveal the aura of raw sexuality he projected like a force field.

Aware that some sort of response was expected of her, and hyperventilating wasn’t it, Lily cleared her throat. ‘He does have something,’ she admitted, reading the headline above that pronounced MORAIS LEAVES THE OPPOSITION COUNTING THE COST AGAIN.

Me too, she thought.

‘Something!’ Rachel squealed. ‘He is off-the-scale gorgeous. That man,’ she said, poking the page with her finger, ‘not only looks like he could be quite deliciously bad in bed—’

Never again will I mock Rachel’s instinct, Lily decided. Of course, Rachel’s instinct only told part of the story—as well as being deliciously bad he could also be breathtakingly tender and passionately unrestrained. Lily pressed her hands to her stomach as the muscles deep inside tightened.

‘He’s also a genuine financial genius. His name is Santiago Morais.’ Rachel’s smooth brow furrowed. ‘He’s Italian or—’

‘Spanish,’ Lily inserted in a flat little voice. ‘He’s Spanish.’ And I am so over him, she thought, pressing her hand against her sternum to ease the tight feeling in her chest.

‘Yeah, you’re right. Since when did you start reading the financial pages, Lily?’

‘He makes the gossip columns too,’ she said, struggling to keep the bitterness from her voice as an image of the pop star Susie Sebastian, her pouting lips aimed like heat-seeking missiles at a willing male mouth, flashed into her mind.

‘That figures. You know, I think I’ll spend my next holiday in Spain. You never know, I might bump into Mr Gorgeous. He would carry me off to bed and make mad, passionate love to me.’

Lily half closed her eyes, and saw sun-dappled shadows dancing over a lean golden torso as the breeze stirred the leaves of a tree outside the window. ‘For five days straight?’

Rachel angled an amused look at Lily’s face. ‘Hey, get your own fantasy!’ she protested.

Lily blushed, which made Rachel chuckle. ‘You have hidden murky depths, girl.’

You have no idea, Lily thought.

For a while after she’d come out of hospital Lily had thought she would never feel anything ever again. Now she wasn’t so sure that would have been such a bad thing! Oh, when were things ever going to get back to normal? So she could get on with being a librarian who lived in a Devon seaside town.

She knew that it wasn’t healthy or constructive to go down the ‘what if?’ road, but she couldn’t help wondering what her life would be like now if she hadn’t gone down to the pool that morning all those months ago. It had been such a small decision, but the consequences had been life-changing.

An early-morning swim hadn’t seemed sinister or significant, just a good way to clear her head after a long, sleepless night alone in the decadent honeymoon suite of a Spanish five-star hotel, which, rumour had it, had been fully booked up for the next decade or so.

It would have been understandable if the thoughts that had kept her awake had concerned her absent husband. Her husband who hadn’t been answering her calls. The same husband who had texted her the previous morning to say the problem at work that had forced him to leave her at the airport at the start of their holiday had turned into a crisis and, no, he wouldn’t be joining her after all.

Gordon wasn’t to know that, following his text, determined to make the best of her holiday to this enchanting area, Lily had booked herself onto an excursion to the charming nearby Renaissance town of Baeza. Places like this were part of the reason she had fallen in love with Andalucia.

She hadn’t immediately placed the middle-aged man and his wife bearing down on her as the tour guide was in full flow. Then as she’d looked beyond the shorts and garish shirt she’d recognised a colleague of Gordon’s and his wife. She’d vaguely recalled meeting them on a few social occasions.

‘Matt…Susan.’ She called out to the couple.

They did the usual ‘small world, fancy meeting you here’ stuff, and then the older man looked around expectantly. ‘Gordon not with you?’

‘No, he couldn’t get away, I’m afraid.’

If he had, there was no way she’d have got to take this excursion; Gordon wouldn’t have budged from the five-star luxury of the hotel. If she had suggested that they go and see the real inland Andalucia, with its olive groves and rolling hills, he would have thought she was crazy.

‘Not surprised,’ the other man confessed. ‘He must be up to his eyes in it with his new venture. I couldn’t believe it when I heard on the grapevine he was leaving. I admit, I thought Gordon was a permanent fixture like me.’

Miraculously Lily’s smile stayed superglued in place. ‘So did I, Matt.’

‘And he was a sure bet for that promotion.’

Lily nodded in agreement. ‘He did mention that.’ One of the few things he had mentioned, it seemed.

‘But good for him, I say. You need to be a risk-taker sometimes.’ He looked across the square. ‘Is that your group moving on?’

‘Yes, it is. Lovely to see you.’

Blissfully oblivious to the fact that with a few words he had revealed her marriage to be a total joke, Matt shouted cheerily after her, ‘Remember me to Gordon and wish him all the luck in the future.’

He’s going to need all the luck he can get when I get hold of him. ‘I will,’ Lily promised with her best sincere smile.

Of course, she had known for some time that their marriage had problems, but she hadn’t suspected until now that they might be insurmountable.

My husband is leading a double life! What the hell is he up to?

At the first opportunity Lily slipped away from her tour group and sought refuge in the town’s delightful flower-filled plaza. She sat in a pavement café and ordered coffee, then, changing her mind, asked instead for wine in her clumsy, faltering Spanish. The proprietor brought a bottle.

She sat sipping the rich-bodied red and thinking about what she was going to do next. Didn’t a woman in her situation need a plan of action?

She could run up a credit-card bill, one guaranteed to bring tears to Gordon’s eyes. It wouldn’t be hard. Gordon had a deep, almost spiritual connection with his wallet—in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he was as mean as hell!

Then again, she mused, she could take the direct approach and get the next plane home, tell him straight if he didn’t want her to walk he’d better come clean about what he’d been up to. But was it a good idea to confront him when she wasn’t even sure any more if she wanted to save their marriage?

She could always cut the sleeves off his favourite designer suits, give the bottles of wine he’d put down as an investment to the church raffle…But, no, that had been done before by other, more imaginative wronged wives. But wasn’t she jumping the gun? Maybe her deepest suspicions were off and another woman wasn’t involved.

Sure, because Gordon’s never cheated before.

Lily toyed with the idea of sleeping with the first attractive man she saw. It would certainly be one way to have her revenge.

She knew the alcohol was partially responsible for her audacious line of thought, but for a while it was good to feel daring and in charge, not a damned victim.

When the bottle was empty she still hadn’t decided what course, if any, to take. The helpful proprietor of the café offered to call her a taxi and for once she thought, Hang the cost, and let him.

Given the day’s revelations and the fact she spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping off the unaccustomed alcohol, Lily never expected to sleep that night, and she didn’t, but not for the reason she had anticipated. No, all thoughts of her secretive husband and his mysterious new venture were crowded out of her head by the dark, chiselled features of a total stranger! This probably said something about her character. Lily wasn’t sure what, but she doubted it was flattering.

The next morning the solitude of the pool and exercise had the desired therapeutic effect, or so she naively believed at the time. After several slow, steady lengths she succeeded in rationalising what had happened in the hotel restaurant the night before. So she had been the victim of instant lust—it happened, she told herself with a mental shrug. Admittedly never before to her.

It was silly to get hung up about it.

It wasn’t as if she had done anything awful like cheat—at least only in her mind. And she suspected every woman who ever laid eyes on the tall, dynamic Spaniard with his sinfully sexy smile and incredible voice was guilty of that.

By the time exhaustion forced her to flip over onto her back and get her breath back Lily had reached the comfortable mental position of concluding she had handled the evening pretty well, under the circumstances.

The circumstances being she had hardly been capable of stringing two words together in the man’s presence, but there was no need to dwell on that! As for that frisson when their eyes had met and the tug, the feeling of connection, she had felt, such things did not happen between total strangers except in her feverish imagination.

Sensual fantasies aside, their brief encounter had actually been pretty much a non-event.

Lying on her back in the water, she couldn’t help her thoughts drifting back to the moment she had seen him. Lily involuntarily inhaled as the tall figure with a dark, classically featured face crystallised in her head.

He had achingly perfect, chiselled cheekbones, a proud nose, a strong jaw, dark, smouldering eyes and a sternly sexy mouth that just had to have fuelled countless female fantasies.

She had been lending half an ear to the elderly couple who had invited her to share their table at dinner when she had seen him framed in the doorway.

A tall, dark figure, dressed in a pale linen suit and open-necked shirt that revealed a tantalising section of olive-toned skin and undoubtedly had a designer name hand-stitched into the lining.

It hadn’t just been her, lots of people had looked, but Lily had carried on looking a lot longer than most others. She hadn’t been able to help herself. The stranger had been quite simply spectacular!

He’d been deliciously dark in a typically Spanish way, but nothing else about him had been typical! For a start he’d been much taller than the average Spanish male; she’d estimated that he had to be six four or five. Even the way he’d moved, with a fluid animal grace that had made her tummy muscles quiver, had been rivetingly different. His features had been classical, but strong. Her fascinated glance had lingered on his sensually moulded mouth.

It had felt like a long time, but it had probably only been a few seconds, before she’d managed to drag her hungry eyes clear, but in the process she’d connected briefly with his eyes. For a split second the rest of the room had faded away, and something that had felt like a mild electric shock had travelled through her body.

Lily had been utterly overwhelmed by emotions that she hadn’t recognised or understood. Rachel would no doubt have identified what she’d been suffering from as lust, but Lily knew it hadn’t been that simple.

White and shaking with reaction, she’d examined the pattern in the marble floor. Her heart had continued to race while some inner instinct had told her of his approach. By the time he’d reached her side every nerve ending in her body had been taut with anticipation.

She couldn’t even think about it now with a clear head, in the cold light of day without her pulses racing. She hadn’t been able to breathe; excitement had lodged itself like a tight fist behind her breastbone. Of course, when he’d walked straight past her as though she were invisible and clasped the elderly man beside her on the shoulder she’d felt every kind of fool.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER exchanging a few polite words with the couple, who were apparently frequent visitors to the hotel, the handsome stranger had walked away. It had only been later in the evening that Lily had found out his identity—his name was Santiago Morais, and he owned the hotel, and, so it appeared, a whole lot else.

He had barely even acknowledged she was there.

Except for a kind of stiff inclination of his head in her general direction, no eye contact—even the most generous of judges would have to conclude that it had been pretty thin material for a night’s steamy fantasies. The eyes across a crowded room, soul-mate stuff had been a product of her overactive imagination.

She was shaking her head over her own pathetic self-delusion as she heaved herself out of the pool and sat, knees up to her chin, eyes closed and head tilted back to catch the warmth of the early-morning rays.

When she opened them the cause of her sleepless night, Santiago Morais, was standing there looking down at her.

‘Good morning. I trust you slept well?’ In contrast to his formal enquiry there was nothing vaguely formal about the restless febrile glitter she saw in his deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes before he slid a pair of designer shades on.

Lily didn’t say anything, partly because the sight of him casually peeling off his shirt had paralysed her vocal cords.

She watched, too shocked to guard her expression as he dragged a hand through his dark hair and set off a sequence of distracting muscle-rippling. He really didn’t have an ounce of surplus flesh on his athletically lean frame.

‘I didn’t sleep well at all,’ he revealed without waiting for Lily to answer his question.

‘Sorry,’ she croaked, thinking he didn’t look as if he’d had a disturbed night. He was oozing an indecent degree of vitality, or was that testosterone? Things deep in her pelvis tightened and ached as she focused hazily on his criminally sexy mouth. Bad idea!

Don’t drool, be objective, Lily, she warned herself severely.

‘Did you have a good swim?’ he asked, unzipping his jeans to reveal a flat stomach with perfect muscle definition and a light dusting of dark hair.

‘I was just leaving.’

He had been watching her…? The thought caused a secret shiver to pass through Lily’s body. She lifted her arm in a concealing arc over her tingling nipples, and pulled herself up onto her knees just as the worn denim of his jeans slid down his narrow hips.

As she took in his muscular thighs complete with a light dusting of body hair her breath quickened to the point where she was not so much breathing as noisily gasping for air.

If only for the sake of her own traumatised heart, she knew she ought to avert her eyes. Heaven knew, she tried, but she couldn’t; her eyes were glued to his body. He was so beautiful. She could remember feeling awkward, clumsy and overweight in comparison to his sleek hardness.

‘I meant to lose some weight for this summer,’ she explained, feeling the sudden need to apologise for her appearance.

Above his designer shades Santiago’s sable brows lifted. Behind the dark lenses it was hard to see what he was thinking, but she could guess—Crazy woman, where is security when I need it?

She smiled to show she was actually sane. ‘But you know how it is.’ Stupid, of course he doesn’t.

Her attention was irresistibly drawn back to his body. By this point he had stripped down to a pair of black swimming shorts that left enough to the imagination to send her temperature soaring several degrees.

The sensation she experienced when she looked at his streamlined golden body was a lot as she imagined drowning might be. The inability to breathe; the heavy pounding of her heart…only drowning would feel cold and she was hot…very hot! She took a deep, shaky breath as she struggled to get her breathing back on track and averted her eyes from the arrow of dark hair that dived below the waistband of his shorts.

‘Why would you want to lose any pounds?’

Lily didn’t take Santiago’s bewilderment seriously. ‘You’ve got very nice manners, but I know I’m fat,’ she explained matter-of-factly. ‘I can’t even blame it on my genes; apparently my mother was slim.’ Her grandmother, who like many people equated extra pounds with laziness, had been fond of regretfully observing that Lily had missed out on her mother’s good looks.

‘Fat…!’ His incredulity gave way to laughter, deep, warm laughter. Through the smoky lenses of his sunglasses she was aware of his eyes moving in a broad, caressing sweep down the length of her body. When he reached her toes he released a long, appreciative sigh. ‘You are not fat!’ He dismissed the claim with a contemptuous motion of his hand.

Lily was so startled when, without warning, he dropped down onto his heels until his eyes were almost level with hers that it didn’t even occur to her to protest when he reached across and took her chin in his hand.

He looked into her round, startled eyes. His slow smile made her stomach flip. In this enlightened age Lily wasn’t sure if predatory should be turning her on.

‘What you are is soft…’ His voice was deep and dark and textured like deepest velvet. She trembled violently as his thumb moved in a circular motion over the apple of her smooth cheek and she experienced another debilitating rush of heat. ‘And lush.’ His glance settled on her slightly parted lips. ‘And very, very feminine. An hourglass figure is something that men will always admire.’

Gordon hadn’t thought so, and Lily felt qualified to disagree. ‘Not all men,’ she contended huskily.

He dismissed this unappreciative minority with a contemptuous shrug. ‘Why do you constantly run yourself down?’ he wondered, letting his hand fall from her face and frowning.

‘I don’t,’ she protested, placing the back of her hand against the place his fingers had touched her skin and feeling ridiculously bereft.

He looked amused. ‘It is obviously an ingrained pattern of behaviour.’

‘That’s me, a hopeless case. Look, it’s been very nice talking to you…’ Surreal was much nearer the mark. There was no mystery about why she was hopelessly attracted to him, the mystery was why he should even pretend to feel similarly about her. ‘But I really must be—’ His deep voice cut smoothly across her.

‘Not hopeless, querida. An appreciative lover, someone who could teach you to enjoy your own body, could cure you.’

Having begun to get to her feet, Lily sank back down as her legs literally folded beneath her. ‘Are you offering?’ In her head it sounded ironic, the sort of slick comeback that invited laughter. Unfortunately it actually emerged sounding humiliatingly hopeful.

‘And if I was would you be interested?’

Lily didn’t smile; she was too busy panicking. To take him seriously would obviously be a major mistake and a direct route to total humiliation. ‘I suppose that’s your idea of a joke,’ she snapped.

‘I am not laughing,’ he pointed out tautly.

Lily, who had noticed this, swallowed. There was a driven intensity in his manner that she didn’t understand, but it excited her anyway. As she stared he lifted a hand and again dragged it through his hair. His brown fingers were long and elegant…sensitive, but strong. He had the sort of hands you would like to look at against the bare flesh of your stomach…other places too.

‘You did not know your mother?’

She looked at him startled by his sudden change of direction and she stopped thinking about his fingers on her bare skin.

‘You said “apparently” your mother was slim,’ he reminded her.

‘Did I?’ Lily frowned. Her ability to carry on any sort of conversation was severely hampered by the fact that every time she looked at him she experienced a fresh jolt of mind-mushing sexual longing.

‘You did.’

‘Will you stop doing that?’ She snapped, adjusting her towel.

‘What?’

‘Checking out my cleavage.’ Last night he had blanked her, this morning he was mentally undressing her and not trying to hide it. What was going on?

A laugh was drawn from his throat. ‘Don’t worry. I can discuss your family and admire your body at the same time.’

‘That’s an original slant on multi-tasking,’ she replied faintly. Inside her chest her heart was fluttering like a trapped animal. ‘But I have no desire to discuss my family with you…’

A white wolfish grin split his dark, lean face. ‘Then I will settle for admiring your body.’

Lily gave a frustrated little groan and felt a trickle of sweat pool in the valley between her breasts. What I need is a cold shower, she thought, picturing cold arrows of water hitting her overheated flesh.

Think cold water… Unfortunately the mental cooling-down process was hampered by the addition of a slickly wet male body in the imaginary shower with her.

‘I don’t want you to do that either,’ she replied hotly.

‘Don’t you…?’

Working on the basis that it was better to avoid outright lies whenever possible, Lily didn’t respond to this husky question. ‘Do you always hassle hotel guests this way?’ she demanded huskily.

Slowly he shook his head and the twisted smile he gave her was hard to read. ‘No, this is actually a unique experience for me.’

The hell of it was she wanted to believe him. She had always despised women who believed slick chat-up lines and here she was wanting to believe that a man who could have any woman he wanted thought she was unique and irresistible. Delusions didn’t get any grander than that!

‘Just for the record, my mother gave birth to me, and then dumped me with my grandmother, who brought me up. I haven’t seen her…ever…and as for my father I don’t know who he was, but the odds are she didn’t either.’ Now why did I tell him that?

Lily began to get angrily to her feet. This had to be some sort of game. ‘I’m not playing,’ she muttered from between clenched teeth.

To her way of thinking there was no way a man who possessed a perfect, hard, streamlined, muscular body like Santiago could possibly find anything to admire in her own over-generous curves.

She gave a startled yelp when halfway to her feet the towel she was clutching was unceremoniously wrenched from her fingers.

‘Give that back!’ she pleaded huskily.

He shook his head, slung the towel carelessly in the pool and removed his shades. His extravagant lashes lifted from the razor-edged curve of his cheekbones to reveal stunning eyes, so dark as to be almost black and flecked by pinpricks of silver. Lily gasped and shivered uncontrollably; the message glimmering in those mesmerising depths was inescapably sensual.

‘You didn’t ask me why I didn’t sleep last night…?’

Raw and driven, his voice drew a low moan from her throat. Lily pressed a hand to the base of her throat where a pulse was hammering away. ‘I find hot milk works a treat.’

This sterling advice caused his mouth to spasm slightly, but didn’t alter the hot, hungry expression in his eyes. His voice dropped to a low, sexy rasp as he explained. ‘I didn’t sleep last night because I was thinking about you, and this morning I come out to cool down and here you are. Do you believe in fate…?’

Lily discovered she believed in everything he said in that sinfully sexy voice of his—which probably made her certifiable. ‘I really should be going…’ This is pure physical attraction and not a good thing to act on, she told herself firmly. ‘It takes simply ages to dry my hair; it’s so thick—’

His authoritative voice cut slickly through her garbled flow of inanity. ‘Your hair is rich and lustrous.’ He let the damp strands fall through his fingers.

‘You think…?’ she echoed weakly.

‘I do.’

Lily fought to inject a sliver of sanity into the proceedings and shook her head. ‘No, it’s mousy.’ His incredibly long ebony lashes had golden tips and the fine lines that radiated from around his eyes were incredibly attractive.

‘We really are going to have to work on that self-esteem issue.’

‘We? There is no we. We can’t have this conversation. It isn’t…I don’t know you!’ Her voice rose in weak protest as her defences went into meltdown.

‘What has that got to do with anything?’

‘Everything,’ she replied, staring helplessly up into his incredible eyes.

He shook his head. ‘It is totally irrelevant. Can you deny this feels amazingly right?’ he challenged as he took her by the shoulders. ‘I can’t look at you without wanting to sink into your sweet satiny softness and lose myself.’

‘You can’t say things like to me!’ she gasped while thinking, You can do just anything to me! Please do it now!

His earthy laugh made every downy hair on her body stand on end. Either he had meant it, or he was a spectacularly good liar! By that point Lily didn’t care which it was; she was burning up from the inside out with need.

His shoulders lifted expressively. ‘But I just did.’ His smile was a potent mix of tenderness and predatory ferocity.

He didn’t make any move to stop her when Lily, unable to resist temptation any longer, reached up and touched his lean cheek. ‘I want to see you, touch you.’

His eyes didn’t leave hers for a second as he took her fingers from his face and raised them to his lips.

‘And you shall,’ he promised. ‘If that is what you want?’

Lily shook her head. ‘I think…I don’t know…’

Santiago turned her hand over and traced a path across her palm with the pad of his thumb before touching the plain wedding band on her finger. His head lifted. ‘But you are thinking about your husband?’

CHAPTER FOUR

I’M NOT thinking about him, but I should be.

Sucking in a mortified breath, Lily snatched her hand away. His question hadn’t just spoiled the mood, it had killed it stone-dead. And a good thing too, she told herself. Her marriage might be a total sham, but she was still married, and in Lily’s mind, despite yesterday’s reckless thoughts of revenge, Gordon’s repeated infidelities didn’t give her a licence to do the same.

If she had stopped to think about it, which she hadn’t, she would have assumed that Santiago hadn’t cottoned on to the fact she was married.

Easy to see how that could happen. She’d been partnerless when he’d seen her, and, unlike women, most men didn’t seem to notice things like a wedding band.

It now seemed that he had known she was married all along, and the fact nothing in his manner suggested he had a problem with it made Lily feel totally disgusted.

Not that she was in any position to condemn him. She hadn’t exactly run screaming for the hills, had she?

‘You shouldn’t feel bad.’

Bad! She deserved to feel wretched. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ she choked contemptuously. Obviously he wouldn’t recognise a moral if someone gave it to him gift-wrapped.

A really stomach-churning possibility occurred to her. Had he zeroed in on her because she was married? Lily knew there were some men out there, generally commitment phobics, who targeted married women because they didn’t want things to get serious. A married woman had clear advantages for that type of sleaze bag.

‘I do understand, and what you are feeling is natural,’ he soothed.

The compassion in his manner increased Lily’s growing anger.

‘Done this sort of thing a lot, have you?’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth and turned her head away. Angrily she shrugged off the hand that he put lightly on her arm.

‘I have handled this badly,’ she heard him observe heavily.

Lily’s chin lifted. ‘So sorry things didn’t turn out the way you planned,’ she retorted bitterly.

Santiago studied her face before gravely observing, ‘It is natural to feel a degree of guilt, a sense that you are being unfaithful—’ Lily goggled incredulously at him; this man had to be the most insensitive ‘—to your husband’s memory. I respect you for the way you feel, I really do. In an age when so many place very little value on their marriage vows, your devotion is admirable.’

There was a short time delay before her brain computed what he had said and arrived at the unlikely conclusion—somehow he had the bizarre idea that she was widowed.

Oh, Lord! It should be fun explaining to someone who thought she was a faithful, devoted, grieving widow that her husband was alive and well, and her devotion was the sort that vanished at the first sniff of temptation.

‘But you are alive, querida, and you are a passionate beautiful woman, with your life ahead of you.’ He took her face between his hands. ‘I’m sure your husband would have wanted you to be happy. And though I’m sure you won’t believe me, one day,’ he prophesied confidently, ‘you will love again. And until then…’

‘Until then…?’

His hands fell away. ‘Until then you have needs…appetites…’

‘That’s where you come in?’ Why was she feeling so let down? He was hardly going to tell her that he wanted anything other than to take her to bed. At least he was honest.

‘You’re not going to deny the attraction between us exists.’

Lily shook her head and wondered what he’d say if she admitted she had never felt anything that even came close to this before.

‘Do not let being hurt once make you afraid to live.’

‘I’m not,’ she said, and realised that for the first time in a long time—perhaps ever—this was true. She took a deep breath; it was time to put him straight. ‘As for Gordon, you’ve got that all wrong. I’m actually totally furious with him.’

‘I believe it is not uncommon to feel angry with a loved one who dies. You blame them for leaving you.’

Eyes closed, Lily gave a frustrated sigh and let her head fall back. I tried, I really tried, and what do I get? Understanding and amateur psychology!

‘No, my husband isn’t—’

A nerve clenched in Santiago’s lean cheek as he cut across her. ‘We keep those we love in our hearts, but there comes a time when we must let go.’

Lily, who would have preferred to put Gordon in a damp, dark, rat-filled cellar, not her heart, stared up at him, her eyes scrunched up in concentration as she tried to figure out how on earth he could have got the idea she was a widow.

‘What made you think that my husband is dead?’

‘Everyone knows.’

‘People know?’ Oh, heavens, that explained some of the sympathetic looks she’d been getting. They all had her down as a brave, plucky widow on some sort of romantic pilgrimage!

And here was me thinking how lovely and friendly everyone was.

He nodded. ‘I know hotels are meant to be anonymous, but a woman alone in the honeymoon suite is a subject of conjecture. The staff knew the booking was made by your husband, so obviously when you turned up without him they speculated.’

‘You’d think they’d have something better to do,’ she snapped.

‘And then you told Javier…’

‘I didn’t tell Javier anything; I don’t know any Javier.’ She stopped. ‘Oh, no!’ Her questioning eyes flew to his face. ‘Do you mean the boy at Reception…?’

‘The “boy” has a three-year-old son, but, yes, he works Reception sometimes. He’s actually a trainee manager.’

Lily wasn’t really listening to his explanation; she was recalling arriving back from Baeza and going to pick up her room key. The details, due to the after-effects of the wine, were a bit hazy, but she could remember the chap behind Reception looking embarrassed when tears sprang to her eyes after he asked when her husband would be joining her.

‘He won’t be joining me.’ The realisation hit her. He never intended to. ‘He’s gone. He’s really gone for good.’

Lily absently massaged the tight skin around her temples. One problem solved—she now knew the why. She only had now to figure out how to tell him her husband was alive and well and therefore she was not available.

‘Have breakfast with me?’

‘What?’

‘Breakfast. Not here, if that’s what’s bothering you. I know a place about half an hour’s drive away. You need a four-wheel drive to get there,’ he admitted, ‘but, believe me, it is worth it. The setting is superb,’ he enthused. ‘The food is not fancy, but it’s made with fresh local produce and beautifully cooked. Luis has a huge wood-burning oven outside and you can eat alfresco.’

He seemed to take her silence as assent, because he said, ‘I’ll see you outside in, what…twenty minutes…?’ He smiled at her and then dived cleanly into the water.

‘You’re allowed to be upset, you know.’

‘What…?’ It took several seconds for Lily to drag her wandering thoughts back to the present and away from the man who had ultimately told her to go to hell.

Well, he got his wish.

Though, of course, she was post-hell now. She’d come out the other side, but would things ever get back to normal? She sometimes wondered if this was normal for her now; maybe she would carry this awful empty feeling around with her for ever…?

‘I said you’re allowed to be upset.’

A frown formed on Rachel’s crease-free forehead. ‘Are you coming down with something? You look awfully flushed.’

‘No, I’m fine,’ Lily lied. ‘It’s just warmed up this afternoon—’ she gestured towards the sun shining through the open window ‘—and this sweater is a bit—’

‘Of a disaster,’ Rachel completed. ‘I don’t mean to be brutal, but this bag-lady look doesn’t do you any favours, love.’

‘This is casual.’

‘No,’ Rachel denied brutally, ‘it is absolutely awful. Perhaps if you made a bit of an effort you might feel a bit better? If I’m down I buy a pair of shoes…’

‘Retail therapy isn’t the answer to everything.’

‘I didn’t mean to be terminally shallow,’ Rachel, who had flushed, retorted.

‘Of course you’re not shallow,’ Lily soothed, guilty for being snappy.

‘I do actually know a new pair of shoes isn’t going to fix everything, but it…Dear God, Lily, if you don’t have the right to fall apart after what has happened to you, who does? I tell you, if I’d been through what you have, losing the baby and Gordon, the total scumbag running off with that little—’

Lily did not want to talk about Gordon or his girlfriend, or the baby…especially the baby. ‘Am I falling apart?’

‘Ever so slightly maybe…Don’t you hate Gordon?’ Rachel turned her curious gaze on her friend. ‘If it was me I’d want to—’

‘Maybe I could do with a trim,’ Lily interrupted, running a hand lightly over her hair.

‘And a new pair of shoes?’

Lily grinned. ‘Don’t push it, Rachel.’ Her grin faded and she hesitantly added, ‘About Gordon—you know, he’s really not the bad guy in this.’

Rachel looked ready to explode. ‘Not the bad guy!’

‘And Olivia isn’t little.’ An image of the athletic redheaded figure of the sports psychologist her ex-husband planned to marry now their divorce was finalised flashed into her head.

‘She’s six feet in her bare feet and it was hardly a shock when Gordon asked for a divorce.’

Gordon had met her at the airport at the end of her Spanish holiday and Lily, who had been consumed with guilt and more miserable than she had thought possible, had not noticed at first that her husband had been acting oddly. She’d totally forgotten that he had a lot of explaining to do, because so had she.

He had waited until they’d got in the car to admit to her that it hadn’t been work that had stopped him joining her, but another woman.

Lily hadn’t bothered pretending to be shocked.

‘She’s called Olivia and she’s…well, the thing is, Lily, I want to be with her. I think we should get a divorce.’

‘All right.’

Gordon, who had obviously been geared up for a big scene, was gobsmacked by her reaction and slightly suspicious.

‘And you don’t have a problem with that?’

She shook her head listlessly.

‘Don’t you want to know…’ he flushed ‘…how long…?’

‘If you want to tell me.’

‘You do understand what I’m saying, Lily?’ He spoke slowly as though he were talking to a child. ‘This isn’t a fling.’

‘Not this time.’

Gordon flushed, and looked defensive. ‘Well, if you had been more…’ He stopped and made a visible effort to control himself.

She decided to move this along a bit. ‘Will there be any fallout…career-wise?’

‘I resigned.’

‘What about the promotion?’ The promotion that was all he’d been able to talk about all year.

A hint of defiance crept into her husband’s voice. ‘I realised that the civil service was stifling me. I need a change of direction.’

‘When did you decide this?’

‘I resigned two months ago.’

‘Should I ask what you’ve been doing every morning when you went off to work…and on those business trips…?’

‘Olivia and I are setting up a sports training facility in Cyprus.’

‘That’s different.’ She didn’t have to pretend total lack of interest.

‘Hell, I didn’t mean for it to happen, Lily, but you have to admit we’re not…but I don’t expect you to understand! The moment I saw her…’ he began in a low, impassioned voice.

Lily gazed through the car window not seeing the traffic streaming past. ‘Maybe I do understand.’

Gordon didn’t say so, but she could see he didn’t believe her. For a split second she was tempted to tell him that she had met someone too, and she now knew just how empty their marriage had been. She now knew that love could make a person buy very naughty underwear, and forget every principle she’d been brought up to believe in.

But there was no point. This was Gordon, who had once said comfortingly, ‘Of course you’re not frigid, you’re just not a very physical person. Don’t worry about it; not everyone is.’

The fact was Gordon thought she was a white-cotton girl. Santiago had made her feel and act like naughty black lace.

Rachel made a scornful sound in her throat. ‘Sure it wasn’t a shock—you expected your husband to leave you for his bit on the side when you were pregnant.’

Lily pushed her brown hair, which, without its normal monthly trim, had got long and uncontrollable, behind her ears. Maybe it is time to set the record straight?

‘It’s true.’ A light flush appeared along the smooth contours of her pale cheeks as she experienced an emotion close to relief as she admitted, ‘I really wasn’t surprised. Our marriage had been dead and buried for a long time before Olivia came along.’

Rachel’s jaw dropped, but almost immediately she began to shake her head. ‘I don’t believe it. You two were the couple everyone I know wanted to be.’

Lily looked away. That had been the irony, of course; they had appeared the perfect couple in public. ‘It’s true,’ she said.

‘Nobody’s that good at pretending,’ Rachel rebutted. ‘I don’t how many times I told people that you two proved marriage could work. I mean, you were practically childhood sweethearts.’

Lily ran her tongue over her lips…When did I last wear lipstick? When did I last wear make-up…? Rachel was right—it was time she entered the human race again. ‘In public, yes.’

There was silence before Rachel sank weakly into the nearest chair. ‘So you and Gordon weren’t happy? Seriously…?’

‘I wasn’t unhappy.’

Rachel folded her long legs underneath her and sighed. ‘I don’t mind telling you, you’ve really thrown me, Lily.’ Lily lifted her head. ‘I never had the slightest hint that things were that bad…or bad at all, for that matter. Why didn’t you ever say anything?’

Lily’s wide mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘You make your bed and lie in it—that’s what Gran would have said.’

‘I’m not your gran, and I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but she really was one cold—’

‘Leave it, Rachel,’ Lily begged.

Rachel acceded with a shrug. ‘If you were unhappy, why did you stay, Lily?’

‘I thought we might sort things…’ Lily stopped and shook her head. ‘It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times. The truth is I don’t know why I stayed. Maybe I was lazy, or simply scared of change? Maybe I didn’t want to admit I had made a mistake? Perhaps,’ she speculated dully, ‘a bit of all three.’

‘But I never heard you exchange a cross word.’ A still-sceptical Rachel gave a mystified frown.

‘There were cross words,’ Lily admitted, recalling the constant sniping and recriminations. ‘But we were past that. The fact is, I think we were both too apathetic to argue by the end.’

‘That’s so sad.’

Lily, whose own throat closed over with emotion, could only silently echo the sentiment. ‘I suppose we were a classic case of two people who grew apart, not together.’

A stunned Rachel exhaled a gusty sigh and shook her head, visibly struggling to come to terms with these calmly voiced revelations.

‘I knew straight off that Olivia wasn’t like the others.’

It wasn’t until the designer bag Rachel had been reaching into to switch off her phone dropped from her nerveless fingers, the contents spilling unheeded over the floor, that Lily realised that she had voiced her thought out loud.

‘“The others…!” Gordon had affairs?’

Lily met her friend’s dazed eyes and admitted awkwardly, ‘Two that I know of. There might have been more,’ she added in an abstracted voice. Almost certainly were.

Rachel released a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t believe any of this!’ She shook her head as if to focus her thoughts. ‘And you knew…?’

Lily nodded.

‘Did you care?’

The flash of her blue eyes lent animation to Lily’s pale face. ‘Of course I damned well cared!’ It had been deeply humiliating, but Gordon had always been filled with remorse afterwards…They mean nothing to me, Lily.

Rachel grimaced. ‘Sorry. I still can’t believe that you never said a word.’ Rachel shook her head in disbelief. ‘I’m your best friend.’

Lily’s hands lifted in a fluttery, helpless gesture. ‘It felt disloyal to talk about it and Gordon begged me not to tell anyone. Can you imagine what Gran would have said if she’d found out, and after she had loaned him the money for that car…?’ She stopped and angled a questioning glance at her best friend. ‘I suppose this sounds big-time weird to you?’

Rachel didn’t deny it. ‘And then some!’

‘And you think I’m totally pathetic?’

‘Well, it’s not as if there were children and—’ She broke off, a stricken look of horror written on her fair-skinned face. She leapt out of the chair and perched herself on the arm of the chair the other girl occupied. ‘Oh, Lily, I’m so, so sorry.’

Lily shook her head and smiled reassuringly. ‘No, you’re right, there weren’t.’

‘But you couldn’t have completely given up the marriage; you tried for a baby?’

Lily fixed her cornflower-blue eyes on her friend’s face and shook her head. ‘No, we didn’t.’

‘So it was an accident.’ Something that Rachel couldn’t identify flickered at the back of Lily’s eyes. ‘I’m not saying you weren’t pleased,’ she amended hastily. Nobody who had seen Lily in those early months could have failed to see she was delighted at the prospect of becoming a mother.

‘It’s the happiest I’ve ever been,’ Lily admitted.

‘Well, I don’t care what you say, I think he’s a total bastard to leave you when you were pregnant.’

‘I hadn’t slept with Gordon for almost a year before I got pregnant.’

CHAPTER FIVE

THE silence that followed this barely audible announcement stretched until, finally unable to bear it, Lily begged, ‘Say something.’

‘You and Gordon…you mean Gordon wasn’t the father!’

‘Obviously not.’ Lily, her eyes closed, passed a hand across her face. She was unable to meet her friend’s eyes. ‘Nothing you can say could make me feel more wretchedly ashamed than I already do,’ she choked.

‘What I’m going to say…Oh, Lily, you don’t really think I’d pass judgement, do you?’

Lily heard the hurt in her friend’s voice and her head came up. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did,’ she said miserably. She began to rise, but had not managed to get to her feet before Rachel grabbed her by the shoulders.

‘You can’t drop a bombshell like that and walk away, Lily,’ she protested, still looking totally gobsmacked. ‘I want to know everything.’

‘There’s nothing to know.’

‘Nothing! You had an affair. You got pregnant. You, of all people. That’s not nothing in my book. I can’t believe that all this time you didn’t say a word,’ she reproached. ‘Who…?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Are you still seeing him?’

Lily involuntarily inhaled as Santiago’s dark, classically featured face appeared in her head.

‘Do I know him?’

The words dragged Lily back to the present; she willed herself not to glance towards the open newspaper. ‘No, and I’m not still seeing him.’

She didn’t add that she was pretty sure he’d cut her dead if he ever did see her, not that that was likely considering the different worlds they lived in.

If things had gone differently she supposed they would have had to meet…? A man had a right to know if he was a father. Very conscious of the leaden weight of misery in her chest, she wondered what his reaction might have been if the baby had survived, and she had told him.

It was possible he might not have wanted to have anything to do with a child conceived by accident, but if he had she supposed they would have had to hammer out some sort of arrangement. Now, though, the speculation was pointless; she’d never know, and neither would he.

‘It was a holiday romance, that was all, a fling…’ She took a deep breath. ‘It meant nothing.’ She’d told so many lies and half-truths that another one couldn’t matter and if she said it often enough she might even start believing it.

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