‘No,’ she managed again but with less strength this time. Deep inside she could feel the way that the tension in the atmosphere had started to reach her chest. It was constricting her lungs, making it almost impossible to breathe, and there was a terrible sensation as if some hard, cruel hand had reached in to take hold of her heart, crushing and twisting it brutally, threatening to rip it right in two.
She had to say this because it was the only way she could survive in the long run, but saying it right here and now was almost more than she could bear. It was destroying her, smashing her self and her love into tiny little pieces, and yet she had no alternative but to do it.
‘No?’
If she had reached out and slapped him right in the face then Santos could not have sounded more stunned, more shocked. His pale eyes were so clouded that the soft grey was almost opaque and she could read nothing of his thoughts in them.
With a huge effort of will Alexa forced herself to her feet, making herself face him, look into those shuttered eyes, though the expression in them made her tremble all over, her mouth drying painfully over the words she needed to force out.
‘No, I don’t want to marry you.’
‘Liar.’ It was low and soft but deadly, like a striking snake. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Oh, but I do.’ Somehow she found the strength to say it. ‘I don’t want to marry you, not when it is just a way of paying my father’s debts, saving him from being prosecuted …’
‘All right!’
Santos flung up his hands in a gesture that almost looked like defeat.
‘All right—let’s take your father out of this. Let this just be between you and me.’
If her head had been spinning before, now she felt as if it might actually explode from the pressure of trying to contain the number of wild, whirling and totally contradictory thoughts within it. He couldn’t mean what he seemed to be saying—he just couldn’t.
‘I don’t understand—what do you mean?’
‘We will forget about your father—’
‘I can’t! What he did was wrong. I’ve accused you of using people—but he can be just as bad. I know that he told you where to find me.’
Those silvery eyes were strangely gentle as if he understood just what she was going through—which, of course, he did.
‘That was his poisonous wife. He only stood back and let her do it.’
Putting his palms and fingers together as people did when they were praying, Santos used both his hands to emphasise his words as he spoke.
‘I will forget about the money your father stole from me. I’ll write off his debts—forget the idea of prosecution—clear the whole thing. I’ll find it far harder to accept that he was prepared to use you to save his own skin. I doubt if I will ever forgive him for that. But if you ask me to then I will—if you’ll marry me.’
Accept it! Alexa’s heart screamed, desperate to agree. Accept it, you fool; it’s as much as you’re going to get. Accept it and don’t ask for more. You can be happy with this.
Happy for now.
She’d actually opened her mouth to agree, had formed the word ‘yes’ on her tongue when bitter truth hit home once again, forcing her to adjust what she had been about to say.
‘And why do you want to marry me?’
‘Because I want you, damn it!’
Striding swiftly across the room, he caught hold of her hands, held them tightly, both her fists surrounded by his broad palms, his long fingers. His touch was warm and strong and it should have felt comforting, balm to her wounded heart. But the truth was that it felt exactly the opposite, twisting the brutal knife even deeper into her desolated soul.
‘I want you so much that I feel I’ll go mad without you in my life, in my bed. Didn’t last night tell you that?’
‘Last night …’ Alexa began, then broke off, unable to complete the sentence.
Last night I thought you cared, she wanted to say. Last night I thought that when you called me querida you meant it. If last night had been just the beginning then I might have been able to accept it, to think that there was so much more to look forward to, that one day you might come to love me.
But that had been before she had woken up today and seen those scars on his back. Before she had realised how deep the scars on his mind, on his heart had gone. How they had killed every hope there had ever been that Santos could feel love. And today, with every word that he had said he had only dug the grave of those hopes deeper and deeper.
He had wanted her. He still wanted her. But wanting was not love.
It wasn’t enough. Not when she needed so much more from him.