CAROL MARINELLI - Spanish Escape - The Playboy of Puerto Banús / A Game of Vows / For the Sake of Their Son

‘Are we taking the wife thing a bit far?’ Raúl checked tentatively. ‘You don’t have to cook.’

‘I want to,’ Estelle said. She was chopping up a salad. ‘I just want to have a night in, Raúl.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’ She frowned at him. ‘Do you ever stop?’

‘No,’ he admitted, then came over and give her a kiss. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Why?’

‘You didn’t wake up when I left this morning. You seem tense.’

‘I’m worried about my niece,’ Estelle said, removing herself from him and adding two steaks to the grill.

She was curiously numb. Since she’d done the test Estelle had been operating on autopilot and baking bread, which she sometimes did when she didn’t want to think.

She just couldn’t play the part tonight.

They carried their food out to the balcony and ate steak and tomato salad, with the herb bread she had made, watching a dark storm rolling in.

Estelle wanted to go home, wanted this over. Though she knew there was no getting out of their deal. But she needed a timeframe more than ever now. She wanted to be far away from him before the pregnancy started showing.

She could never tell him.

Not face to face, anyway.

Estelle could not bear to watch his face twist, to hear the accusations he would hurl, for him to find another reason not to trust.

‘I spoke with my father today.’

She tore her eyes from the storm to Raúl. ‘How is he?’

‘Not good,’ Raúl said. ‘He asks that I go and see him soon.’

‘Surely you can manage to be civil for a couple of days?’ She was through worrying about saying the wrong thing. ‘Yes, your father had an affair, but clearly it meant something. They’re together all this time later…’

‘An affair that led to my mother’s death.’ He stabbed at his steak. ‘Their lies left the guilt with me.’ He pushed his plate away.

The eyes that lifted to hers swirled with grief and confusion and now, when all she wanted was to be away from him, when she must guard her heart properly, when she needed it least, Raúl confided in her.

‘I had an argument with my mother the night she died. She had missed my performance at the Christmas play—as she missed many things. When I came home she was crying and she said sorry. My response? Te odio. I told her I hated her. That night she lifted me from my sleep and put me in a car. The mountains are a different place in a storm,’ Raúl explained. ‘I had no idea what was happening; I thought I had upset her by shouting. I told her I was sorry. I told her to slow down…’

Estelle could not imagine the terror.

‘The car skidded and came off the mountain, went down the cliffside. My father returned from his so-called work trip to be told his wife was dead and his son was in hospital. He chose not to tell anyone the reason he’d been gone.’

‘Did they never suspect he and Angela?’

‘Not for a moment. He just seemed to be devoting more and more time to the hotel in San Sebastian. Angela was from the north and she resumed working for him again. Over the years, clearly when Luka was older, she started to come to Marbella more often with my father. We had a flat for her, which she stayed in during the working week.’

‘He had two sons to support,’ Estelle said. ‘Maybe it was the only way he could see how.’

‘Please!’ Raúl scoffed. ‘He was with Angela every chance he could get, leaving me with my aunt and uncle. Had he wanted one family he could have had it. Perhaps it would have been a struggle, but his family would have been together. He chose this life, and those choices caused my mother’s death.’

‘Instead of you?’

‘I blamed myself for years for her death. I thought the terrible things I said…’

‘You were a child.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see that now. The night she died was two days after Luka’s birth. I realise now that she was on her way to confront them.’

‘In a storm, with a five-year-old in the back of her car,’ Estelle pointed out.

‘I thought she was trying to kill me.’

‘She was ill, Raúl.’

He nodded. ‘It would have been nice to know that she was,’ Raúl said. ‘It would have been nice to know that it was not my words that had her fleeing into the night.’

‘It sounds as though she was sick for a long time, and I would imagine it was a very tough time for your father…’ Estelle did not want involvement. She wanted to remove herself as much as she could before she told him. Yet she could not sit back and watch his pain. ‘He just wants to know you’re happy, that you’re settled. He just wants peace.’

‘We all want peace.’ He was a moment away from telling her the rest, but instead he stood and headed through the balcony door. ‘I’m going out.’

Estelle sat still.

‘Don’t wait up.’

‘I won’t.’

She didn’t want him going out in this mood, and she followed him into the lounge while knowing he wouldn’t welcome her advice. ‘Raúl, I don’t think—’

‘I don’t pay you to think.’

‘You’re upset.’

‘Now she tells me what I’m feeling!’

‘Now she reminds you that she read that contract before she signed it. If you think you’re going to go out clubbing and carrying on in your usual way I’ll be on the next plane home…’ she watched his shoulders stiffen ‘…with every last cent you agreed to pay me.’

He headed for the door.

‘Hope the music’s loud enough for you, Raúl!’ she called out to him.

‘It could never be loud enough.’

There was a crack from the storm and the balcony doors flew wide open. He turned then, and she glimpsed hell in his eyes. There was more than he was telling her, she knew that, and yet she did not need to know at this moment.

He was striding towards her and she understood for a moment his need for constant distraction, for she was craving distraction now. She was pregnant by the man she loved, who was incapable of loving her. How badly she didn’t want to think about it. How nice it would be for a moment to forget.

His mouth was, perhaps for the last time, welcome. The crush of his lips was so fierce he might have drawn blood. Yet it was still not enough. He wrestled her to the floor and it was still too slow.

Here beneath him there were no problems—just the weight of him on her.

He was pulling at his zipper and pressing up her skirt. She was kissing him as if his lips could save them both. The balcony doors were still wide open. It was raining on the inside, raining on them, yet it did not douse them.

He had taught her so much about her body, but she learned something new now—how fast her arousal could be.

He was coming even before he was inside her; she could feel the hot splash on her sex. Estelle was sobbing as he thrust inside her, holding onto him for dear life. Each thrust of his hips met with her own desperation. It was fast and it was brutal, and yet it was the closest they had ever been.

He was at her ear and breathing hard when he lifted his face. She opened her eyes to a different man.

‘Come with me to see them?’

He was asking, not telling.

‘Yes.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

It felt terribly close to love.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THEY FLEW EARLY the next morning, over the lush hills of Spain to the north, and even as his jet made light work of the miles there was a mounting tension. Had they run out of time?

Far from anger from Raúl, there was relief when Angela came out of the door to greet them, a wary smile on her face.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Welcome.’

She gave Estelle a kiss on the cheek, and gave one too to Raúl. ‘We can do this,’ she said to him, even as he pulled back. ‘For your father. For one day…’