Lynne Graham - A Spanish Affair

Yet over three years earlier when they were dating she had liked the way Alejandro had automatically taken charge and looked after her and had revelled in his masculine protective instincts. Looking back with hindsight, she marvelled at the way he had made her feel and how much maturity had changed her. Of course, she had been a virgin when they’d first met. As a result she had been far too quick to idealise Alejandro and believe that they had something special together. She had not even recognised him for the womaniser he was until one of the hotel maids had slid an old newspaper beneath her nose, pointed to a photo and said, ‘Isn’t that that Spanish guy you’re seeing?’

And there Alejandro had been, pictured at some snobby London party with a beautiful blonde in an evening dress. The accompanying prose had made it clear that he enjoyed the reputation of a heartbreaker who always had more than one woman in tow. She hadn’t wanted to believe the evidence even though Alejandro had already proved to be anything but a devoted boyfriend, cancelling dates as he did at the last minute and rarely phoning when he said he would. When she’d questioned him, however, Alejandro had been commendably frank.

‘I’m not looking for a serious relationship,’ he had told her without apology. ‘I’m not interested in being tied down.’

Feeling stupid and hurt over the assumptions she had made and grateful that she had, at that stage, stayed out of his bed, Jemima had put the brakes on her feelings for him and had begun going out socialising again with her friends. Before very long she too was dating someone else, a local accountant who was flatteringly keen to offer her an exclusive relationship. But when Alejandro had realised that she was seeing another man, he had had a furious row with her, which had made it perfectly clear that, while he expected her to share him, he was not prepared to share her. For a few weeks they had split up and, although she was heartbroken at losing him at the time, she had thought it was the only option left.

Barely a month later, though, Alejandro had come back to her and had said that he would stop seeing other women. Jemima had been overjoyed and their relationship had entered a far more intense second phase. Head over heels in love with him as she had been, she had plunged straight into a passionate affair. He had rented a house not far from the hotel where she worked and they had spent every spare minute there together. In her entire life she had never known such happiness as she had known then, during the romantic weekends he’d shared with her. The demands of business and family, not to mention the fact that he lived in Spain, had often kept them apart when they wanted to be together, and on her twentieth birthday Alejandro had asked her to marry him. He had not said he loved her; he had never told her he loved her. He had merely said that he could not continue spending so much time in England with her. He had made marriage sound like a natural progression.

But he had not invited her to meet his family before they took that crucial final step. No doubt he had known how much his relatives would disapprove of his ordinary English bride, who had so little to offer on their terms. Within weeks of his proposal they had married in a London church with only a couple of witnesses present. She had had no idea at all of what his life in Spain would be like. In fact she had been a lamb to the slaughter in her ignorance.

Dragging herself free of wounding memories that still rankled, Jemima lifted her head high. That silly infatuated and insecure girl was dead and gone. This time around she was in control of her own destiny and, with that in mind, she snatched up her phone and rang Alejandro.

‘We have to meet to talk about Alfie,’ she told him urgently.

‘Couldn’t you have decided that while I was still with you?’ Alejandro enquired drily.

‘I’m not like you. I don’t plan everything,’ she reasoned defensively.

He suggested that she and Alfie meet him the following afternoon at his London apartment.

‘I know you want to see Alfie again, but he would be better left out of it tomorrow—we’ll probably argue.’

Having agreed a time and won his agreement on the score of Alfie, Jemima put down the phone again and wondered anxiously what rabbit she could possibly pull out of the hat that might persuade him that their son was better off living with his mother in England…

THE LONDON APARTMENT was not the same one that Jemima remembered. The new one was bigger, more centrally located and sleek and contemporary in style, while the previous accommodation had been knee deep in opulent antiques and heavy drapes, a home-from-home backdrop for a family accustomed to life in a medieval castle.

A manservant showed her into a huge elegant reception room with the stark lines and striking impact of a modern artwork, again a very appropriate look for a family that owned a famous chain of art galleries.

She caught her reflection in the glass of an interior window and decided that, even though she was wearing the smartest outfit in her wardrobe, she looked juvenile in her knee-length black boots, short black skirt and red sweater. But her lifestyle no longer required dressy clothing and she preferred to plough her profits either back into the shop or into her savings. Having survived a childhood in which cash was often in very short supply, Jemima only felt truly safe now when she had a healthy balance in her rainy day account.

In the act of putting away a mobile phone, Alejandro emerged from an adjacent room to join her. His elegant black pinstripe suit and blue shirt fitted him with the expensive fidelity of the very best tailoring and the finest cloth, outlining broad shoulders, narrow masculine hips and long, long, powerful legs. Her attention locked to his lean dark features, noting the blue-black shadow round his handsome jaw line, and for a split second she was lost in the memory of the rasp of stubble against her skin in the mornings. She could feel a guilty blush envelop her from her brow to her toes. His black hair still damp and spiky from the shower, Alejandro was the most absolutely beautiful man she had ever seen and her heart was jumping inside her as if the ground had suddenly fallen away beneath her feet.

‘Is your friend looking after Alfie?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, but he attends a playgroup in the afternoons,’ she explained.

She turned down an offer of refreshments and hovered while Alejandro helped himself to strong black coffee that scented the air with its unmistakeable aroma. Memories she didn’t want were bombarding her again. He had taught her to grind coffee beans and make what he called ‘proper’ coffee. There had been so many things she didn’t know about that he took for granted. He had even been a better cook than she was and right from the start she had been captivated by his knowledge and sophistication. But before their marriage—when things had gone wrong between them—he had scooped her up into his arms and swept her off to bed and she had been so ecstatic that she wouldn’t have cared if the roof had fallen in afterwards. But once their sex life had ground to a halt, they’d had no means of communication at all and it had seemed natural to her that their marriage had then fallen apart. He had just lost interest in her, a development she had seen as being only a matter of time from the outset of their acquaintance.

‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ Jemima admitted in a sudden nervous rush, her eyes violet as pansies in the sunlit room. ‘I was worrying about what you said about Alfie.’

‘You named him Alfonso after my father. That was a pleasant surprise,’ Alejandro remarked.

‘He was named in memory of my grandfather, Alfred, as well,’ Jemima advanced, not choosing to admit that the kindly vegetable-growing maternal grandfather she recalled had probably been the only presentable member of her former family circle, in that he had worked for a living and had stayed on the right side of the law. ‘That’s why I call him Alfie, because that was how my grandpa was known.’