His Suitable Bride(64)

This couldn’t be him … couldn’t be.

Had she dreamt of this moment for so long that she was hallucinating?

That was it. And perhaps arriving back like this was too much. Perhaps … But as she looked into his face, those eyes, she knew rationally it couldn’t be possible. Yet her heart told another story, every instinct clamouring loudly.

She started to feel slightly desperate. Was this going to happen every time she saw a boy his age? Surely someone had to see her, had to know? Had to take him away from her—because she didn’t think she would be able to move ever again. Or let him go.

Black-shod feet had appeared behind the boy. A man. There was a blur of movement and she had a sense of his size, his magnetism, even just in that quick moment as he bent down to pick the little boy up. His scent washed over her. It was familiar. Her heart had already stopped beating. Blood froze in her veins. Her hands dropped.

A coolly cultivated deep voice came from far above her head. The man spoke with a slight accent that was barely noticeable ‘… need eyes in the back of your head, they move so fast …’

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, or seeing. He was tall, so tall that even when Rowan stood fully—she didn’t know how—he towered over her own not inconsiderable height. He was so sinfully handsome that her brain seized—exactly the way it had when she had seen him for the first time.

Nearly three years ago.

This couldn’t be happening. This was too, too cruel. Life couldn’t be this harsh. And yet she knew well that it could.

He was still talking. And then abruptly he stopped, and the warm smile faded. Dark blond brows drew together over piercingly light blue eyes. The colour of blue ice. They pierced all the way through to Rowan’s heart and soul, ripping her open, laying her bare to the myriad expressions crossing his face: the shock of recognition, disbelief … and then something much more potent. Disgust, anger … hatred. Rejection.

Rowan felt her mouth move as if to speak. But nothing came out. Everything seemed to hurtle around them in fast forward, but they were cocooned in an invisible bubble. Suspended in time. She looked at the little boy held high in his arms, and that was her downfall. She felt as if her heart would explode. It was all too much. She had one coherent thought before she slid into a dead faint at her husband’s feet: my baby.

Isandro Vicario Salazar stood at the window of the bedroom in the suite that he’d carried Rowan upstairs to just a short time before. He looked at the distinctive telecom tower in the near distance, the bumper-to-bumper traffic in the streets down below, and saw none of it. His eyes were narrowed.

Rowan Carmichael. Rowan Salazar. His wife.

His mouth twisted into an even thinner line. His errant wife. The wife who had walked out on him and abandoned her own baby just hours after the birth because she hadn’t been ready to deal with it. A drumbeat of rage, barely contained, beat under the surface of his skin. In his blood. Stunning him with its force. That day he’d left her to rest after the birth, and returned some hours later—only to find her gone. He’d not laid eyes on her from that moment to this. He still reeled with the shock of seeing her. He reeled with the torrent of emotions that seeing her had evoked within him—emotions he’d suppressed long ago, that day, when she’d revealed her true nature and had shown him how unbelievably duped he had allowed himself to become. But not a hint of his inner emotions showed on his face even now.

A faint sound from the bed made him tense, and slowly he turned around.

Rowan waited a moment before opening her eyes. It was something she’d got used to in the past couple of years. A moment before reality rushed in, a moment to take stock, do a body-check, feel the sensations, feel if there was pain present … feel if she was well. But this time, as the muted sounds of car horns and traffic came from just outside, albeit a long way down, she tensed. The previous moments rushed back. The last thing she cared about right now was physical pain or if she felt well.

Her eyes flew open and there he was. It hadn’t been a mirage. Her husband stood with his back to the window, hands deep in pockets of what she knew would be superbly crafted bespoke Italian cloth. Like his shirt and his jacket. The clothes moulded to his form, hugging every hard contour, emphasising every part of his tall, broad-shouldered and powerful body. Exactly how she remembered … but even more devastating in the flesh.

She knew on some level that it was the cushion of shock that allowed her to be so coolly objective. He was, if anything, even more handsome. Although in fairness handsome was too trite a word, too pretty. He was altogether too male for a word like handsome. And he was right here in front of her, living, breathing … not a figment of her imagination. The exquisite pain of seeing him again when she knew well what he must think of her was mercifully not allowed to penetrate too deeply.