Kate Walker - The Alcolar Family - The Twelve-Month Mistress / The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife / Bound by Blackmail

‘Oh—yes.’

Cassie flashed him a grateful look. She was no good at this sort of deception, no good at all. That was why she had had to leave the finca when Joaquin had made his feelings for her so plain. She could not have lived with him and not given away the state of her own emotions. It had been strained enough in the last couple of weeks; she couldn’t go through that again.

‘I have to go and pick them up.’

And do it without Joaquin finding out. How was she going to manage this?

‘We can do it on the way home,’ Joaquin stated firmly.

Which was just the sort of thing she was most dreading.

‘And go all the way back into town and then out again? It would add almost half an hour to the trip.’

‘I’ll drive Joaquin home.’

Once more Ramón came to her rescue.

‘I have my car here after all, and it’s bigger and more comfortable than yours—you’d have a much easier ride,’ he added with enviable casualness to his brother. ‘Then Cassie can go to my flat, pick up her bits and come along in her own car. Here, Cassie…’

He tossed her his house key, which she caught neatly and headed for the door before Joaquin could voice the protest that was clearly hovering on his lips.

‘I’ll see you there,’ she tossed over her shoulder, escaping thankfully from the tension that had been clawing at her ever since she had first heard the news about the lingering after-effects of the blow to Joaquin’s head.

As she hurried down the hospital corridor, the keys clutched so tightly in her hand that later she would find the impression of them embedded in her flesh, she found that her heart was thudding hard, sending the blood racing round her body in a flurry of panic that she could no longer subdue.

Just how was she going to get through the next couple of days—maybe even the next couple of weeks, if it took that long? She couldn’t lie to Joaquin for all that time, but then, at the same time, she had been forbidden to tell him the truth.

He had to remember for himself, the doctors had insisted—no good would come of trying to force things. The possible consequences of that could be risky, even dangerous. And for a week or so at least, Joaquin had to avoid any stress, any upset that might cause a relapse, or worse.

So for the time it took for the memories he had lost to return, Cassie had to live with him and pretend that nothing was wrong. She would have to act as if they had never rowed, never split up, never…

With a soft moan, she stopped dead, leaned back against the wall and covered her face with her hands, struggling for control. She had to pretend that all was well, while all the time knowing that as soon as Joaquin discovered the truth—or what he believed to be the truth—he would see this time she spent with him as one of deliberate deception, perhaps even trying to win him round by concealing the truth.

She had no way out. She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. She had never really understood the phrase about being caught in a cleft stick before, but she did now. She could not go forward, and she could not go back. She could only stay where she was, marking time, and knowing that one day, with a dreadful inevitability, the truth would all come out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I THOUGHT we would never get here!’

Joaquin’s impatient stride into the house matched the irritation in his tone.

‘When did you become such an old woman when you drive?’

‘I was taking care of you,’ his brother pointed out reasonably, his soothing tone grating on Joaquin’s already badly rattled nerves. ‘You’ve just had a—’

‘A nasty accident—I know, I know!’ Joaquin snapped. ‘But I’m not an invalid. I don’t need wrapping in cotton wool!’

He pushed his hands into the pockets of the black jeans that Cassandra had brought to the hospital that morning, shoulders hunched under the white polo shirt, and glared at his brother. Ramón appeared totally unconcerned by his irritation.

‘And I don’t want to be responsible for you suffering any sort of setback.’

‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much likelihood of that! Unless you count the possibilities of exhaustion from the length of time it took to get here. Cassandra would have had time to get to your place, collect whatever it was that she’d left there and still get here before us.’

If she was here at all, some nasty little voice inserted into his brain. Deep down, he knew that this was the real reason for his irritation and that he was taking it out on Ramón quite unnecessarily.

His real anxieties centred around Cassandra, and the problem was that he had no idea why. But he had seen the look on her face when he had said that he wanted to come home, and she had fled from the hospital room looking as if all the hounds in hell were after her. All he could imagine was that they must have had some sort of a major row in the time he couldn’t remember.

That was something he was determined to get to the bottom of. But first he had to get rid of Ramón. Only when he and Cassandra were alone together could he start to find out anything that mattered.

A sound from upstairs caught his attention, had him moving to the foot of the stairs.

‘Cassandra! Is that you?’ he called, then frowned as something swirled inside his head.

It was just a hint. Just a momentary flash on the screen of his mind. A feeling that he had done this before.

But then, of course, that was inevitable. This was his home. He must have done this or something similar dozens—more—times over the time he and Cassandra had been together. It was nothing.

‘I’m here.’

She had appeared at the top of the stairs while his mind was distracted, and now she started down towards him, a welcoming smile on her face.

‘I was just making up the bed—putting fresh sheets on it. Yes—I know!’

She had caught his expression and interpreted it with unnerving accuracy.

‘You don’t want to have to lie down—and you don’t have to, so long as you take things easy. But I wanted things ready. Then if you do feel tired…’

A swift glance at his face had her trailing the words off.

‘All right, I won’t fuss. But you must take things steady. It’s so good to see you back here.’

Moving up close, she gave him a swift, firm hug. But when his arms would have closed around her, holding her tight, enveloping her in the sort of hug that had been impossible while he was stuck in the hospital bed, she seemed to almost slip out of his grasp like water through his fingers, drifting away again, out of reach before he had even had a chance to be aware that she’d moved.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.

Amen to that! was the thought that echoed inside Joaquin’s head. That hug, the contact, brief though it had been, had brought home to him just how much he had missed her.

Just to touch her, to feel the warmth and softness of her body in his arms, to inhale her scent, the mixture of some herbal shampoo on her hair, the light, tangy perfume that she wore, was enough to switch his senses into overdrive. But it was the deeper, more intensely personal, faintly musky aroma of her skin that kicked him deep in the gut, hardening him in an instant, setting off the sort of hot, clamouring demand that had him gritting his teeth against a betraying groan.

He wanted her so badly. He felt as if he had been starved of her for weeks, not just the couple of days he had been in the hospital.

If his brother hadn’t been here then he would never have let her go. Even as she slipped away, he would have grabbed her, hauled her hard up against him, pulled her face up to meet his own and taken her mouth with all the force of the hunger he was feeling. Kissing her until they were both out of their minds with need.