Kate Walker - The Alcolar Family

‘We’re not ! When I said he gives me something you never did, I meant…’

Her voice deserted her just when she needed it most. What could she say that Ramón gave her? The mood that Joaquin was in, he would never believe her if she simply used the word friendship. And really, what Joaquin’s brother had offered was more than that. It was an unquestioning, peaceful, brotherly sort of…

But no, she couldn’t use the word love .

‘What did you mean, Cassie?’ Joaquin questioned harshly, eyes cold and hard and sharp as lasers as they fixed on her face, watching the emotions that flew across it, one after the other, none of them actually settling. ‘What does my brother give you? What did he offer to entice you away from me?’

‘He didn’t—I…’

But she couldn’t finish because some change in Joaquin’s own expression alerted her to the fact that he had suddenly had a revelation. She could see in his eyes that he had been turning things over in his mind and had come to a conclusion—and something about the way those polished jet eyes suddenly narrowed warned her that the assumption he had made was not one she was going to like.

‘Gives you more…’ he muttered roughly. ‘Something I never did. Don’t tell me the fool offered marriage!’

Cassie knew that she had lost colour. She could almost feel the blood drain from her face so fast that it made her already scrambled brain spin weakly.

‘No—’

She tried for force but it came out as a pathetic croak, one that she could barely hear herself, and which Joaquin, clearly absorbed in his own thoughts, didn’t even register as he came towards her suddenly.

The look on his face frightened her. It was as if the man she had known, her lover, the man she had lived with for the past year, had disappeared and someone else had taken his place. Someone she didn’t know at all.

His face was hard and set, totally ruthless. There was no longer any light in his eyes, so that they were deep, opaque, and totally black.

Nerves dried her mouth and she took a couple of hasty steps backwards, then had to stop as her back came up against the wall. But Joaquin kept coming. Not fast, but his movements measured and determined, his unyielding eyes never even seeming to flicker or blink.

‘Okay,’ he said so casually that it shocked her. ‘I’ll bite.’

‘Bite?’

She had no idea at all what he meant.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Marriage.’

‘M-marriage?’

She really had to be going mad. She was so stressed that she was starting to hear things. Things that were totally impossible. She could have sworn that Joaquin had said…

‘Yeah, marriage.’

He pushed a hand through his hair, flexing his shoulders as if he was trying to ease some ache there, and then looked her straight in the eye.

‘If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you.’

I’ll marry you .

How many times had she dreamed of just this scenario? How many nights, tired and too weak to fight against the foolish need inside her heart, had she let herself think, let herself imagine for just the tiniest, brief moment, that one day Joaquin might ask her to marry him?

And in those dreams she had always, happily, joyfully, rushed in and said yes—yes— yes! —even before he had actually finished speaking.

But this time, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t find the strength to speak. Three times she opened her mouth, and on each occasion her voice failed her completely. She couldn’t force her tongue to form any words, felt as if her vocal cords had shrivelled into nothing, and her throat had closed up so tight that it was almost impossible to breathe.

If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marr y you . He had given her the world with one hand then snatched it back roughly with the other, reducing the gesture to less than nothing, to a lie, a mockery of any sort of real proposal. It was more like a slap in the face than any gesture of feeling.

‘Well?’

‘Is—is this meant to be a proposal?’

‘If that’s what you want it to be. What’s the matter, querida ? Not romantic enough for you?’ Joaquin’s tone was harder, crueller than ever—and this was the man who was suggesting marriage?

Or at least that was what it seemed.

‘Would you prefer it if I went down on one knee? Sorry but I don’t do that sort of romantic gesture.’

‘You don’t do any sort of romantic gesture!’

‘Oh, please, belleza !’

Joaquin dismissed her protest with an arrogant toss of his head.

‘Don’t try to accuse me of short-changing you on the gestures! I gave you—what…?’

He appeared to consider, to calculate, though Cassie suspected he knew exactly what he was going to say and was only pausing for effect.

‘I gave you thirteen words—two more than you spared me when you were leaving me for good. You were planning on going for good, weren’t you? I mean, you didn’t exactly say.’

‘I…’

Cassie tried once more to answer him, and once more failed miserably. She was fighting a vicious little battle with the stinging tears at the back of her eyes; tears she was determined she would not shed. She wasn’t going to let this sardonic monster that Joaquin had suddenly turned into see just how badly he was upsetting her, how deeply his barbed words had stabbed into her already wounded heart.

‘Yes?’ he faked concern, interest in what she had been trying to say. ‘You what?’

‘If—if you thought I meant to leave then why—why propose? Why ask me to marry you when you believe I wanted to go for good?’

‘Because I don’t want you to go.’

Don’t want …

Cassie felt as if she were swimming through a dark, clouded sea, getting nowhere, or perhaps going round and round in circles. She couldn’t see where she was going and so she couldn’t begin to guess which way was right and which was wrong.

Had she got this all wrong? Was it possible after all that Joaquin had actually meant his proposal of marriage? That he really didn’t want her to go? But if that was the case, then why had he couched it in those appalling terms? There had been no real warmth, no hint of affection or even care in those coldly casual words.

‘I see it as the only way to hold onto you. You claimed you were happy with what we had—but you obviously were not. I was content with the way things were—’

‘And that was…?’

Wasn’t it obvious? the scathing glance he turned on her demanded. Did he have to explain?

Well, yes, he did, so she remained stubbornly silent until he was forced to speak again.

‘We had a great thing together—the best. You know what it was like that last night.’

‘The—’

Cassie’s stomach heaved nauseously as she struggled with the word, forcing herself to say it.

‘The sex.’

‘Of course. What else, amada ?’

His tone turned the last word into something that was exactly the opposite of the ‘beloved’ it actually meant.

‘I wanted you from the start—and you never disappointed me. I still want you. But I want you all to myself. I’m not prepared to share you with any man—even my brother. If marriage is the price of that, then I’m prepared to pay it.’

‘You’d marry me—even though you believe I’ve been with Ramón all this week?’

Joaquin’s casually dismissive shrug was even more appallingly unfeeling than the callous way he had declared he wanted her sexually and nothing more.

‘It’s only a week. I can forget a momentary aberration if it’s nothing more than a few days. But after this—no more! You will be mine and you will not give Ramón even a second look.’