November Harlequin Presents 2(101)

She’d missed him so much, she thought weakly, pausing in the shadowed porch while she sought to gain some kind of control over her emotions. He glanced up and saw her, and his mouth curved into a devastating smile that blew her good intentions to the four winds.

‘Javier!’ She raced down the steps, barely aware of the delivery van backing up the drive, but from the corner of her eye she caught a streak of black shooting out from the side entrance and she screamed, ‘Luca—no!’

The sickening thud and Luca’s agonising howl sounded simultaneously. Grace swung her horrified gaze from the sight of the dog, lying unmoving beneath the wheels of the van, to Javier, and the expression on his face made her want to weep. How could she have ever thought him heartless? she wondered. He’d once told her that he didn’t believe in love, but now she had proof that he’d been lying. For a few seconds she’d glimpsed raw pain, fear and the abiding affection he felt for his faithful companion in his eyes, before he’d controlled his emotions and hurried over to Luca. For a man who had received so little love in his life, he had so much to give—but his childhood had made him wary and mistrustful and rather than risk being hurt yet again he’d lavished all his affection on his dog who loved him unconditionally in return.

‘Tell Torres to call the vet,’ he rasped when she stumbled over to where he was kneeling beside the dog. ‘And hurry; he’s losing a lot of blood.’

For the next few hours Grace could do nothing other than pray for Javier’s beloved pet to be spared. She would do anything, give up everything she held dear, if it meant that Luca lived. She would do anything to see Javier smile again.

The thought slotted into her brain like the missing piece of a jigsaw and suddenly everything made perfect sense. She loved him. That’s why every day he’d been away had seemed endlessly long and grey, despite the brilliance of the late summer sunshine. Without Javier she only felt half alive. Somehow, without her being aware of it, he had become her sun and moon and her reason for greeting each day with a smile on her face.

It wasn’t just lust, she acknowledged shakily as she paced the rose garden. On their honeymoon he’d taunted her that he was the only man to turn her on, and she couldn’t deny it. Javier evoked feelings and wicked, wicked thoughts that she still found shocking, but he was the only man to bring her to the edge of ecstasy—the only man she had ever wanted with every fibre of her being.

Seeing him today with Luca, she finally realised that her feelings for him went far beyond physical desire. She wanted to hold him and protect him from hurt. She wanted to love him with her body and her soul. It was thanks to Javier that her father wasn’t spending the next few years in prison, and although they had both gained from their marriage contract he had treated her with respect and consideration.

It was no accident that his staff were devoted to him. Beneath his façade of haughty arrogance she had discovered him to be kind and charming, with a hot-blooded passion that made her ache for him.

But on their wedding day Javier had told her not to look for things that didn’t exist—a warning that he could never love her. Back then she’d believed him to be as hard and impenetrable as the walls of the castle and just because she’d glimpsed a chink in his armour was no reason to hope he would ever come to view their marriage as anything more than a temporary business contract, she reminded herself bleakly.

Right now, the only thing on his mind was Luca. He would be in no mood to deal with her emotions. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass Javier or herself by revealing her feelings for him and so, taking a deep breath, she walked back into the castle.



Luca had suffered a fractured leg, multiple bruising and, as happened with so many injured animals, had slipped into a state of shock, Javier explained when Grace joined him in the huge, stone-floored kitchen. It had taken both Javier and Torres to carry the dog into the castle and the vet had been reluctant to move him again. Instead the medic had tended to Luca’s injuries and administered a strong sedative and now they could only wait and hope that he would survive.

‘The next twenty-four hours are crucial, but the vet is confident he’ll recover,’ he told her grimly, his expression shuttered.

‘Oh, I hope so,’ Grace murmured fervently as she knelt beside Javier and gently stroked the unconscious animal. ‘I know how much you care for him,’ she said thickly, tears stinging her eyes when she recalled his devastation at the moment of the accident.

She felt him tense and then he caught hold of her chin and tilted her face so that he could look into her eyes. ‘Sometimes I think you know too much about me, Grace. I feel those deep blue eyes looking into my soul and laying bare my secrets.’