‘No, I do not.’ She snapped the words out as emotions cascaded over her. Whatever was the matter with her? Was it simply pregnancy hormones that made her so sensitive, so very emotional, or was it being forced into close proximity with the man she’d once loved with abandon, hoping it would be enough, that one day he would love her too?
She moved to the window and focused her attention on the view of London beyond the apartment, thinking of her mother and older stepbrother that’d made up the mainstay of the dysfunctional family she was part of. The constant visits by the police looking for her brother and the ever-changing partners in her mother’s life were exactly what she’d hoped to escape when she’d married Max. How very wrong she’d been. Now her child seemed doomed to be part of a family where broken promises and part-time fathers were normal. It was the last thing she’d ever wanted and not at all what she would have chosen.
‘Then I want you to rest as the doctor suggested—especially as we will be travelling to Madrid tomorrow.’ Max’s words snapped her back into the moment, but the fizz of anger didn’t abate.
She turned to look at him, frowning in confusion. ‘Madrid?’
‘Sí, Madrid. Raul and Lydia are getting married.’ There wasn’t a drop of emotion, good or bad in his words. Did he still resent his brother?
She kept her thoughts to herself. Safer to stay on the topic of discussion. ‘On Christmas Eve?’
‘Sí, on Christmas Eve.’ He crossed the room and joined her at the window. His profile was stern as he looked absently out over London. ‘And I have promised we will be there. He is my family.’
The pointed remark to their discussion of moments ago wasn’t lost on her. Did he really consider Raul Valdez as family? She wasn’t entirely convinced a man who rebuffed emotions as if he had a bat in his hand could suddenly become sentimental over a brother.
* * *
Max glared at the skyline of London and tried to push down the annoyance of what he’d learnt of his brother’s impending nuptials. He felt a failure in the shadow of the love Raul had admitted he had for Lydia, the woman who’d been at their first meeting for a short while. As he stared unseeingly at London, beneath a winter-grey sky, he became acutely aware of Lisa’s questions as if she’d spoken the words aloud. Was Raul his family? Did he belong or deserve to be named as such when the only other person he thought of like that was the mother he’d lost when he was fourteen and his little sister, now almost twenty-one and living her own life.
‘It was obvious there was something between them from the very first moment I saw them, but I did not expect this.’ He tried to divert the attention from himself, from what was happening here between him and Lisa. As his wife, wasn’t she his family too?
‘Didn’t you expect it, Max? Do you think all men should be so against committing themselves emotionally—for life?’
Her green eyes fired her anger at him, anger he knew would take a long time to cool, unless his rapidly forming plans would salve it. He had no intention of pretending that all was okay. He knew she still wanted that happy-ever-after nonsense and that his mixed messages, thanks to his wildly changing emotions, were making her colder toward him. Angry, even, and he had no intention of arriving in Spain with a wife that was obviously angry at him. He didn’t want Raul to think he had triumphed where his new older brother was failing—completely and utterly failing.
‘I didn’t expect Raul to rush into marriage, not when they were so obviously poles apart the day I met him.’
‘Some couples fall out and make up, Max,’ Lisa insisted, with a jaunty rise of her brow, just as she had done that night when a business dinner had become a night of explosive sex. ‘It’s part of the fun of being a couple, being in love.’
‘That’s not love, that’s just sex.’ The words were out before he could stop them, the anger in them clear.
Lisa looked at him, not saying a word, and the tension in the room became unbearable until she moved away from him, giving him some sort of relief from having her so close. So entwined in his life when he’d already proved and she’d admitted that he wasn’t the man she needed, the man who could love her unconditionally.
‘Maybe it’s something you should attend on your own.’ Her words were soft, almost wistful, but beneath that he could detect the steely hardness she used to deflect the world and anyone who threatened to hurt her. He’d never found out why, content that she wanted to keep the secrets of the past as much as he did. It suited him well, as did the hot passion they’d shared. But things had suddenly changed—too much.
‘Oh, no, Lisa, that is not about to happen. You and I will go together—as husband and wife.’ He moved toward her, saw the surge of defiance in her eyes, which sparked angrily at him, a stark contrast to her pale face. He would have to calm his anger. He might not have wanted to create a child, but he had and he wouldn’t now do anything to jeopardise his baby or Lisa.
He hadn’t decided if taking Lisa to Madrid was an excuse to keep her close or the competition of being the better brother, but all he knew was that she had to be there with him. He needed to see for himself that she rested, that she was taking care of herself as the doctor had instructed. Just as his mother should have done. He was adamant that they would remain married and very sure that he would do anything necessary to make her want to stay with him beyond New Year’s Eve. He wanted to be the father he’d never had. He just wasn’t sure if he could.
‘What, to show we are so happily married?’ The accusation was stinging—and true as her words flew at him, dragging him back from thoughts that would only lead to the past, to the pain of losing his mother so soon after his baby sister was born. He might only have been a teenager then, but he wasn’t about to take any chances with his unborn child. At least not until he was sure everything was as it should be.
‘Happily or not, we are married, Lisa, and expecting our first child. That at least you cannot deny.’
Her anger sparked across the room like lightning and he pushed down the irrational guilt. He wasn’t the only one who’d walked out on this marriage. Lisa had done the same the morning after the night that had changed their lives. Had she come to find him, tell him about the baby because she’d already known his world was falling apart around him?
It wasn’t the first time such a mutinous thought had occurred to him. He knew that Lisa had married him because she’d loved him. She’d told him often enough, but his constant silence had not been what she’d been looking for, what she’d wanted to hear. He didn’t tell lies, he’d had enough of those in his childhood to know how destructive they could be, but his reluctance to say those three words she most wanted to hear had finally made staying with her impossible. Walking out had been the only option, before he hurt her any more than he already had done. Was this all about revenge, about making him feel the same pain?
‘No, I can’t, but I wish I could walk away from you, this time for ever. I know what it’s like to have a part-time father, then stepfathers drifting in and out of my life when it suited them—or my mother.’
An unwanted wave of sympathy washed over him after his angry thoughts about her motives and he moved toward her, wanting to offer comfort, reassurance—anything to make her feel better. This was the first time she’d allowed him to see into the window of her childhood and he guessed it wasn’t the happy picture she’d always tried to portray or hide behind.
‘So, it seems we both have our own motives for remaining married.’ He locked away his emotions, becoming the cold, detached businessman he’d been since a car accident had halted his footballing career five years ago.
‘It looks that way. When do we leave for Madrid?’ She was as cold as he was, proving, if nothing else, that any of those softer and sentimental emotions she’d once had for him had well and truly been buried—and it suited him perfectly. Emotions complicated things. Emotions only led to pain.
‘I have chartered a private jet to ensure your comfort. We leave tomorrow morning.’
Initially, he thought she was going to challenge him, but after a moment of those green eyes scrutinising him, she nodded. ‘When do we return?’
‘As soon as the wedding celebrations are over. I have plans here in England for the festive season.’
Now he felt the full force of her suspicion. ‘What plans?’
He wasn’t about to reveal anything yet, but her talk of wanting a Christmas tree reminded him of the one occasion they’d talked about anything to do with their past. She’d told him how her family had never had time or the inclination for festive celebrations, that Christmas was something she’d missed out on as a child. He might not be able to feel love, but he wanted to make her happy, prove he could enter into the façade of family life being forced on him, even though he had no intention of engaging his emotions. With this in mind, he’d put in motion arrangements for the kind of festivities his mother had loved—the kind he’d never had since her death.