Avril Tremayne - 8 Brand-New Romance Authors

She took a deep breath, gathered all her nerve and opened the door.

He was sitting at his desk, looking cool and composed. Her heart lurched just at seeing him, but she couldn’t let that get the better of her now.

‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’

His words were as cool and clear as a mountain stream but she couldn’t falter now.

She put her briefcase on his desk, looked him in the eye and flicked it open. The dark depths of his eyes glittered as he watched every slow, purposeful movement. Taking out the letter, she placed it on the desk and then closed her briefcase.

‘Don’t play games, Santos. You know why I’m here. To put an end to our marriage.’

But not until he knew how she felt—knew she loved him. But telling someone who hated even to hear the word, let alone acknowledge the emotion, wasn’t going to be easy.

He stood up, his height as intimidating as the breadth of his shoulders, but she held his gaze, trying hard to ignore the lurching of her heart.

* * *

‘A marriage you instigated, Georgina. Here, in this very room.’

Santos moved from behind his desk and came closer to her, even now unable to resist the challenge her eyes fired at him. The first time she’d stood in his office, with fire and determination burning in her eyes, he’d wanted her.

He still wanted her. The force of the attraction hadn’t lessened after spending the night with her. It had increased.

‘One you willingly went along with. You changed it to suit your needs simply to get a business. You didn’t think I was worthy of an explanation about the heir you needed to inherit everything.’

Her angry accusation had found its mark but he wouldn’t let her see that.

‘You make it sound calculated when it wasn’t.’

He leant against the edge of his desk, folded his arms across his chest, fighting the urge to tell her everything. Then he remembered the pain in her voice when she’d told him she couldn’t have children.

‘I had no idea then that you couldn’t have children.’ His voice sounded unsteady even to him, and she closed her eyes, her long lashes shutting him out. He reached out to her, his hand touching her arm in a gesture of concern. She jumped back from him, her eyes now blazing. ‘I’m sorry.’

She remained silent, her steady gaze holding his, and he wished she’d let him close. He’d never meant to hurt her. She had made him feel things he’d never thought he would. He still found it hard to comprehend the aching void in his life, an ache born out of love. But now she hated him.

‘It’s not that I can’t have children, Santos.’

She spoke in a harsh, raw tone, her words snagging his conscience.

‘I just couldn’t bring a child into the world for that reason. I would have thought you of all people would understand that.’

His mind roared as the pain of his childhood rushed back at him. He’d been a mistake. One that had forced his mother into marriage with a man she couldn’t love. With dreadful clarity he realised Georgina was right. If he’d had to he would have resorted to fathering a child just to get the business—a child that he didn’t want. But wasn’t that why he’d never married? To avoid such a decision?

Guilt slashed at him, making his next words harsh and serrated.

‘If I could have avoided that I would have done.’

‘The same as you could have avoided all this.’ She pointed fiercely at the letter which lay on her briefcase. ‘If you’d just talked to Carlo he wouldn’t have had to go to the extremes he did. You denied Emma her big day.’ She paused for a moment, her dark eyes flecked with gold sparks of determination. ‘You should still talk to Carlo.’

Again she was right, and he gritted his teeth angrily. Talking to Carlo hadn’t been an option before, but he could put that right. With an exasperated sigh he thrust himself away from the desk and strode towards the windows. Raindrops ran down them, diluting the view of London.

‘Don’t hide from it, Santos. You used me to score points on your own brother.’

The accusation flew at him but he kept his back resolutely to her. She made him feel exposed, vulnerable. Damn it, she made him feel emotions he didn’t want—emotions he didn’t need.

He turned to face her, and despite the hardness of her expression he saw the pain on her face, felt it radiating out.

‘I was caught up in battle started by my mother. On her deathbed she made me promise never to let go of what was rightfully mine. When you so calmly offered marriage I never meant it to go any further.’

She made a sound that was a mixture of a gasp and a whimper—a sound full of pain. ‘So seducing me, getting me into your bed, was a mistake too?’

He watched the rapid rise and fall of her chest and realised she wasn’t nearly as rational as she wanted him to believe. ‘No, Georgina,’ he said as he moved towards her, his tone lower and huskier just from his memories of that night. ‘I wanted you then as much as you wanted me.’

She blushed, and it shocked him to realise how he’d missed that innocent blush.

‘I hate you for that.’

She hated him.

The venom in her voice left him in no doubt that she meant it and something changed inside him—as if somewhere a key had turned, unlocking something, some sort of emotion he wasn’t yet ready for.

‘Don’t play the wounded party with me when you already have one very convenient marriage behind you.’ Anger was the best line of defence. It would supress whatever it was she’d unlocked, because right now was not the time to analyse it.

‘Richard never forced me into his bed. He didn’t seduce me and I love him for that.’

Her words rang loud and clear in his head, as if she were at the top of a bell tower.

Santos gritted his teeth against those words. She’d loved Richard. It was as if he’d stepped back a few decades—as if he was witnessing the love his father and stepmother had shared, a love that had excluded him. But that exclusion hadn’t made him feel raw with the pain he now felt.

‘So you openly admit you married him for money?’ He maintained his angry defence—anything other than accept what the raging pain inside him might mean.

‘Yes, I did!’ She flung the words at him. ‘He asked me, he saw I needed help and offered it, but I had no idea then just how ill he was. That’s why he insisted I marry him—because he knew it was the only way to be sure he could provide for me into the future.’

He didn’t want to hear it, yet at the same time he did.

Her face softened. ‘He loved me, and for the chance he gave me I loved him.’

Santos was consumed with jealousy. He couldn’t hear anything else other than that she’d loved Richard.

* * *

Georgina watched as Santos’s face hardened. He couldn’t even stand to hear the word love—couldn’t contemplate such an emotion existed. He’d been denied it as a child and now, as an adult, he was determined to continue to deny himself.

She knew she was taunting him, using that word again, but she pressed on, hoping he’d see how she felt. ‘I loved him in a compassionate way. There wasn’t even a flicker of a spark of passion. It was a comfortable love. A safe love. Not the way I love you.’

Silence stretched between them. She remained tall and straight, even though she wanted to crumple on the floor right in front of him. The silence lengthened.

She shouldn’t have said anything—shouldn’t have opened her heart to his ridicule. Not when she knew how he scorned love. A lump gathered in her throat, almost choking her. This was no different from watching her father walk away. No different from having to say goodbye to Richard. As if her love had made them leave. She knew it wasn’t true, but the pain of it had made it feel that way.