The Unexpected Baby Page 6

  It must have been an unconscious desire to pay him back for the pain and humiliation he’d dished out that had been behind her decision to dress the way she had. Elena walked out of the living room onto the patio, where Jed and Catherine were eating breakfast, and saw fury darken his eyes and pull his mouth into a straight, hard line, and was wickedly glad she’d clothed herself in tiny lemon-yellow silk shorts and a matching cropped halter-necked top.

  ‘You look like a ray of morning sunshine!’ Catherine beamed, clearly having forgotten and forgiven Elena’s abrupt departure the evening before.

  ‘Thank you.’ She returned the older woman’s smile wholeheartedly. For the duration of Catherine’s stay she would play it Jed’s way—with an added twist of her own! A game she would play for all she was worth, because it would be a way of showing him, and, more importantly, herself, that she was far from beaten.

  She pulled a chair out from the table and sat, angling herself towards her husband, her long, shapely legs stretched out. Triumphantly she watched a muscle jerk at the side of his tough jaw as his unwilling eyes travelled the lightly tanned length of them, fastened for a millisecond on the juncture of her thighs, swept up over her naked midriff, then lingered on her breasts, lovingly cradled in sexy sheer lemon silk.

  She felt her nipples peak beneath his sultry eyes, and knew he’d noticed when he abruptly pushed himself to his feet and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, telling them tersely, ‘I’ll make fresh coffee.’

  ‘My, I never thought I’d see the day when Jed got all domesticated! You’re obviously very good for him!’

  Not so you’d notice, Elena thought drily as Catherine laid down her cutlery and patted her round tummy. ‘He insisted on making me scrambled eggs, even though everyone knows I should go on a crash diet What are you having?’

  ‘Just juice.’ She poured some from the frosted glass jug and lay back in the sun, trying to look relaxed. Thankfully, this morning’s session of feeling nauseous had only lasted a few minutes, and she’d managed to keep a glass of water down. At her mother-in-law’s mock frown she added, ‘I don’t eat much in the morning, but, boy, do I make up for it at lunchtime!’

  She buried her nose in her glass to hide the sudden onslaught of misgivings. Some time in the not too distant future Catherine would have to be told about the pregnancy. Was Jed aiming to pass Sam’s child off as his own, forestalling the type of scandal he would hate? If so, he was in for an unpleasant surprise, because if there was no hope of saving their marriage she was sticking to her intention of making a clean break, the timing of which was dependent on how long it took Catherine to get back on an even keel.

  Jed walked out with the fresh coffee, speaking to his mother. ‘Would you like to stay here and rest up while Elena and I go down to the village for provisions?’

  Elena accepted the fresh coffee he poured her and knew what he was up to. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure about his own ability to act the part of a loving bridegroom in front of his parent, and in any case he probably wanted privacy to read her another riot act.

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ she drawled, before her mother-in-law could reply. ‘Catherine hasn’t come all this way to sit on her own on my patio. Why don’t we go down to Cadiz, shop, have lunch, sit by the sea?’ She turned her wide smile on her mother-in-law. ‘You’d like that?’

  ‘Oh, it sounds lovely, dear! Cadiz—so romantic—Francis Drake and Trafalgar—and wasn’t it there that the King of Spain got his beard singed?’

  ‘Out in the bay.’ Elena smiled. ‘If you extend your stay, and I hope you will, we could cross it on the ferry—the locals call it the vapor—and visit Puerto de Santa María. It’s well worth the effort.’

  Catherine beamed. Elena could see the earlier flicker of uncertainty wiped from her face. She had invited herself here, and Jed’s suggestion that she spend the morning alone must have made her feel like an intruder. Jed wasn’t normally insensitive where his bereaved mother was concerned. His suggestion that they leave her behind clearly showed that she was getting to him.

  Elena turned a sultry smile on her stony-faced husband. ‘Then that’s settled, darling.’ She watched his eyes go black as she lounged back in her chair, stretching her arms above her head provocatively. She hid a smile. If he accused her of flaunting herself, he’d be right. It was the only way she could think of to get her own back!

  ‘Then perhaps you should get ready to leave?’ He’d turned his back on her, staring out across the rumpled mountains. His voice was as smooth as cream, with an underlying strand of steel only she could detect

  She got lazily to her feet to obey his order. She could afford to be magnanimous; she was winning, wasn’t she? Yes, the hard line of his shoulders was rigid beneath the fluid folds of the grey-green shirt he wore tucked into the waistband of his narrow-fitting stone-coloured trousers. She was really getting to him!

  Swinging round to Catherine, she advised, ‘Wear flatties; there’ll be quite a lot of walking. And a shady hat. If you haven’t brought one with you I can lend you one of mine.’

  She wandered back to her room, not letting herself think beyond the trip to the capital of the province. If she was to get through the rest of Catherine’s stay without going to pieces, she couldn’t afford to think.

  A toning button-through gauzy cotton skirt and matching short-sleeved jacket made her look decent. But she left all of the skirt buttons undone, apart from the top two, just to be provocative. She pushed her feet into thonged sandals, crammed a floppy-brimmed straw hat on her head, found another for Catherine and was ready to face Jed again.

  She found him blandly urbane, excessively polite as he drove them down the mountain, following Elena’s directions as they skirted the tiny red-roofed, white-walled village that clung to the lower hillside and spilled down into the valley.

  He was showing her that two could play games. His features had lost their earlier tension, and she couldn’t see his eyes behind the wrap-round dark glasses he was wearing. Thankfully, Catherine’s non-stop commentary on all she was seeing made any conversational efforts on her own part redundant, and her ‘Oh! I could stay here for hours!’ when they were in the crowded, exotic market made Elena want to hug her.

  ‘I have a better idea.’ Jed’s mouth quirked humorously as he regarded the flushed, happy face of his parent As his arms were full of bundles and carriers of fresh produce, he dipped his head to indicate a pavement café on the edge of the colourful, bustling market square. ‘Wait for me there while I go back to the car and put this lot in the cool-boxes. Then we’ll find somewhere nice for lunch.’

  He treats her as if she were a child, Elena thought, a traumatised child who has to be handled with great care. And she was guilty of that, too, she realised, as she found herself tucking Catherine’s arm through the crook of her own and murmuring cajolingly, ‘We’ll have coffee, shall we? It’s nothing like the weak apology for the stuff you get back home!’

  She registered Jed’s nod of approval just before he turned away, shouldering his way through the noisy crowd of vendors and shoppers. So he approved the way she was doing as she was told, treating Catherine with kid gloves. His second order, that she act like a besotted new wife—which she had every intention of obeying to the letter when his mother was around—would, she vowed with a tight little smile, be something he was going to regret. She was sure he already was!

  As soon as she and Catherine were settled with their café solo Catherine cast her eyes around the shimmering heat of the square, the shady orange trees and the golden stone of the high, balconied buildings. ‘It’s all so beautiful and vibrant, isn’t it? I can understand why you choose to live here—I hope you won’t miss it too much when you go back to Netherhaye. But I’m sure you and Jed will spend as much time as possible at Las Rocas.’

  As things stood, she wouldn’t be going back to Netherhaye, and Jed would certainly not be spending time with her at Las Rocas. But of course Catherine couldn’t know that; she
would only be allowed to learn the truth once she was more settled herself.

  So Elena merely smiled and sipped her coffee, and tried not to think of the way her marriage had foundered, the emptiness of the loss of love, and Sam’s shadow reaching from beyond the grave, casting a blight over what had once been so bright and beautiful.

  Yet it wasn’t Sam’s fault, and it wasn’t hers. They had done what they’d done for what had seemed to be sane and rational reasons at that time, and she’d truly, truly believed that they’d failed.

  No, the fault was Jed’s for refusing to listen, for thinking foul things about her, for not loving her enough—

  ‘Try not to be upset over your mother’s decision to make her home with me.’ Catherine interrupted the desolate drift of Elena’s thoughts, thoughts she told herself to put on the back burner for the time being, obviously mistaking her moment of solemn silence for something else.

  ‘I could see it came as a shock to you last night. I know Susan intended writing to you about it, but she obviously hasn’t got around to it.’ She patted Elena’s hand comfortingly. ‘She was grateful and touched when you offered her a home here with you several years ago—she told me so. But, as she said, Spain seemed a long way away, and you’d flown the nest, made a huge success of your life, and she didn’t want to cramp your style! She and I both agree that the younger generation don’t want an old mother sitting up in a corner, probably getting in the way. Which is why I decided to move out of Netherhaye. Less responsibility for me—and lots of privacy and leeway for young lovers! And Susan and I get on famously, so I shan’t be in the least bit lonely.’

  How long would Catherine and her mother remain bosom friends? Elena brooded uncomfortably. When the marriage breakdown became public knowledge they would be bound to take sides—

  ‘Why the long faces?’ Jed had appeared from nowhere. He was smiling, but his tone had been tough, as if, Elena thought, he suspected her of taking this opportunity to come out with all the nasty facts of one hideously wrecked marriage.

  ‘Girl-talk!’ Catherine said brightly, standing up and tucking her handbag under her arm. ‘Let’s find somewhere to eat—I’m starving! And don’t look so quelling.’ She prodded Jed’s broad chest with a forefinger. ‘We girls are entitled to have our secrets!’

  The wrong thing to have said, Elena thought. Jed smiled for his mother, but his eyes, when they glanced her way, were full of contempt. He was thinking about the child she was carrying. Sam’s child.

  Suddenly she wanted this day to be over. Wanted Catherine safely back in England. Wanted Jed to love her again, wanted to turn the clock back...

  But what she wanted she couldn’t have. She followed the other two into a shady warren of narrow cobbled streets. Her spine felt like wet string and her heart felt like a lump of sludge, low down in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the rest of the day because she was hurting so much.

  She had two options, she decided bleakly. One, she could drag along, looking and feeling like a wet weekend, making Catherine suspect something was very wrong, because she wasn’t a teenager in a sulk but a mature woman on her honeymoon. Or, two, she could act the part of the besotted new bride, just as Jed had told her to!

  Pride made her decide on the latter. Taking a deep breath, blinking away the threat of tears, she caught up with the other two, slipped between them and took Jed’s arm, leaning against his shoulder, her hip and thigh brushing his as they walked.

  She felt a shudder rake through his body, noted the way he tensed, and turned her grin of satisfaction into, ‘There’s a gorgeous restaurant overlooking the sea. We could eat outside, catch the breeze.’

  Jed grunted and Catherine cried, ‘Sounds good to me! Lead the way!’

  Elena did, keeping up the body pressure, reminding herself that she was punishing him, repeatedly reminding herself of just why she was having to stoop to that—to take her mind off the effect the closeness of him was having on her.

  When they’d seated themselves at an open-air table in a discreetly secluded corner—deliberately chosen because if she was going to make an exhibition of herself she didn’t want it to be public—shaded by an awning of clambering vines, cooled by the breezes from the Atlantic, Elena could see that Jed was having a hard time controlling his temper.

  The look he gave her as she slid into the seat beside his, allowing the unbuttoned edges of her skirt to fall apart to display every last inch of her long tanned legs, told her he was bitterly regretting having ordered her to pretend to be a loving wife!

  Good! She gave him a brilliant smile and did her best to convince herself that she was enjoying this, getting under his skin, making him want her and despising himself for doing it, livid with her for doing it to him.

  She put her hand on his arm and trailed her fingers down his skin. She felt his muscles tense and knew he wanted to brush her hand away, but he couldn’t do anything of the sort under Catherine’s fond maternal eye.

  ‘Perhaps I should order, darling?’ Elena murmured. ‘Very few people here speak any English at all—Cadiz isn’t one of those heaving internationally orientated tourist spots.’

  ‘Whatever.’ He dipped his head in seeming compliance, but she knew he didn’t like her taking charge. He liked making his own decisions—witness the way he’d issued those directives on the way their future was to be conducted.

  Tough! Elena consulted the menu and opted for roast vegetable salad—red peppers, tomatoes and aubergines—and clams cooked with sherry and garlic. ‘Does that sound OK to you guys?’

  She beckoned one of the white-coated waiters over and ordered in fluent Spanish. When she’d come out here all those years ago learning the language had been a priority, and now Catherine said admiringly, ‘Is there no end to your talents?’

  Smiling enigmatically, Elena plucked the shady hat from her head and ran her fingers through her hair, looking at Jed through her long, tangled lashes, her mouth pouting. ‘I think you should ask my husband that!’

  Recklessly flirting with him throughout the meal, Elena caught Catherine’s doting, satisfied smile and guilt pushed itself right into her heart.

  She was creating a fool’s paradise for this nice woman. She felt ashamed of herself. The true situation, stripped of pretence and game-playing, crashed down on her then, swamping her with misery, making her feel wretched.

  And she felt worse than wretched—she felt terrified—when, after Catherine had excused herself to visit the washroom, Jed took her chin in cruel fingers and told her, ‘I know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.’

  His eyes raked her face and her heart quailed at the dark, brooding intensity of his eyes as they rested on her lips. ‘Our marriage may be over in all but name, but be careful I don’t grab what’s so enticingly on offer. There’s only so much a man can take before he forgets his scruples.’

  And then his mouth was on hers, savagely parting her lips to gain admittance to the soft, sweet moisture within. She fought against the punishment—her hands balled into fists, pushing against his shoulders—fought against the flames of desire inside her, until the pressure of his lips altered, became utterly, shatteringly sensual, deeply erotic, as incredible as it had ever been when he’d loved her as much as he’d needed her, and then she opened willingly for him, fists unclenching, fingers gripping the wide span of his shoulders, blood pounding through her veins.

  There was no room in her head for thought, misgivings. Her whole body had exploded with need, with wanting him, loving him. Her brain had suffered meltdown, couldn’t cope with reality, wallowed in fantasy...

  Until he smoothly put her away from him, advising coldly, ‘Think before you play games with me. Teasing can be a two-edged sword. So watch your step, sweet wife, or you might find you’ve bitten off rather more than you want to chew.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ELENA put herself in the back of the car and let the conversation between mother and son up front wash
right over her.

  Jed had declared sexual war. That was what his kiss, his steel-edged remark had amounted to.

  Men could make love without love having a lookin, he’d as good as warned her. For her it would be different, because she couldn’t stop loving him, no matter how she tried, but she’d despise herself if she allowed him to use her that way.

  Why had she been so stupid? Why couldn’t she have acted normally, smiled and looked pleasant whenever he spoke, for Catherine’s peace of mind, but kept her distance? In acting the way she had she’d pushed him to the limit of his endurance.

  The way she’d behaved had been cheap and childish, and under normal circumstances she was very far from being either. But these weren’t normal circumstances, she thought miserably. She’d found herself in the terrible situation of feeling hatred for the only man she’d ever really loved. Hatred, love, pain and despair were a mind-shattering combination, and had made her act in a way that made her despise herself.

  She spent what was left of the afternoon showing Catherine around the property with a smile pinned on her face. Jed had said he had a raft of business telephone calls to make and had shut himself away in her study. As far as Elena was concerned he could stay there. The less she saw of him the better.

  But he appeared in time for a light supper, herb omelette and fresh fruit, and afterwards Elena excused herself. ‘I’ve got masses of watering to do, Catherine. So why don’t you put your feet up and let Jed tell you about the new premises he’s opening in Seville?’

  And she escaped to the peace of her garden.

  She’d changed into soft worn denims and a workmanlike cotton shirt, and tied her hair back with a leather thong. The everyday, pleasant chore of wandering up and down the winding paved paths, turning the hose on the stands of stately white lilies, hedges of dwarf lavender, fat pink roses and the silvery eucalyptus trees which looked wraith-like in the dusky light calmed her troubled spirits just a little.