“And this is Isabela’s husband, Luiz.”
Luiz da Sousa took Carin’s hand and kissed it. “I am charmed.”
Carin flushed. Isabela looked as if she’d stepped out of a Paris salon; her husband was a dead ringer for Paul Newman.
“Any friends of Rafe’s are friends of mine,” she said in the squeaky whisper that she’d thought so clever just moments ago.
Rafe put a hand in the small of her back. “And this is—my apologies, senhor. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Carlos Garcia, Dona Carin. Muito gosto.”
“I’m—I’m pleased to meet you, too, senhor,” she stammered.
Was it possible…could she have made a mistake, tonight? Her appearance had achieved the effect she’d hoped for. The stunned looks on the faces of Rafe’s guests, the shock in his eyes and then the way his face had reddened with embarrassment and anger…
But she hadn’t expected him to make such a quick recovery, any more than she’d intended to make herself a spectacle for such sophisticated company. And who was that woman whose hand Rafe had been holding, the gorgeous blonde with the endless legs?
Rafe slipped his arm around her waist and flattened his hand on her hip. His guests would think it an affectionate gesture. In reality, his fingers pressed, hard, into her flesh.
“And now, my lovely wife, I want to introduce you to a special friend. A very old and dear friend.” He turned her around, towards the blonde. “This,” he said, his voice a dangerous purr, “is Claudia Suares.”
Claudia was tall. She was a knockout and she wasn’t wearing something long and feminine, she was wearing something that barely covered her thighs. Her smile could have sold toothpaste, automobiles, maybe even world peace.
She was the kind of female women hated on sight, Amanda would have said…and Amanda would have been right.
Carin swallowed hard. “Hello,” she said, proving that it was possible to fold your lip over a purple-smudged incisor and still manage to speak.
“How charming,” Claudia replied, in a voice as soft as a feather and as sweet as spun sugar. She looked up at Rafe and shot him that megawatt smile. “What a naughty boy you are, darling, to put the woman you married and the woman you were supposed to marry at the very same dinner table. Oh, aren’t we going to have fun?”
* * *
It was not fun. Not at all.
Carin’s plan, her clever, clever plan, lay dead and defeated as a collapsed balloon. She’d seen it start to expire the second she’d walked into the living room but Claudia’s announcement had provided the coup de grace.
Everyone had laughed pleasantly at the little joke, and then Rafe had explained that he and Claudia had once been engaged.
“Things didn’t work out,” Claudia had added with a hot, private look at Rafe.
“No,” Rafe had said smoothly. “But we still keep in touch.”
“We do, indeed,” Claudia had purred.
“Really,” Carin had said, smiling her lip-folding smile while she tried to figure out what that all meant. What was “once”? Was it six months ago? Six years? Or was it six weeks? And what were the “things” that hadn’t worked out, and what did it mean, that they still kept in touch?
For the very first time, it occurred to her that her husband might have been in another relationship before he’d felt obligated to marry her. Maybe their marriage was why “things” hadn’t worked out for Rafe and Claudia.
From the start, she’d been so hung up on the life she was leaving behind, on how Rafe was turning her world upside down, that she’d never stopped to wonder about what she might be doing, to his.
He and Claudia certainly seemed—close. All those little looks. The smiles. The little strokes of Claudia’s hand on Rafe’s arm, his hand, his jacket…
Conversation swirled around her. No one seemed to expect her to participate, and she didn’t. Eventually, mercifully, dinner finally ended. Carin thought that meant the evening had ended, too.
She was wrong.
“Nonsense, querida,” Rafe said pleasantly, and slipped his arm around her in another of those death grips. “The night is young. Let’s have coffee and brandy on the patio.”
No, she thought, no, and hung back as the others filed from the dining room.
“Rafe? I—I think I’ll go upstairs. Please tell your guests—”
“Our guests,” he said, and he bent his head to hers, put his mouth to her ear, as if to murmur an endearment. “You will stay until I dismiss you or so help me God, minha mulher, you will regret it.”
She believed him.
So she let him lead her out to the patio, pull out a chair for her as if he were the most solicitous of husbands.
Elena brought coffee. Carin poured it into tiny cups as translucent and delicate as eggshells, and Rafe poured brandy into crystal balloon glasses, and she wondered if anyone could possibly tell that she was dying inside, that this night of carefully-orchestrated revenge had boomeranged, that instead of humiliating her husband, she had humiliated herself…
And that her embarrassment wasn’t half as agonizing as being forced to watch the intimate by-play between Rafe and the woman he’d really wanted for his wife.
Someone told a joke. Someone else laughed. Isabela, who was as kind as she was charming, spoke to her. Carin simply smiled, nodded, and hoped she looked as if she were listening.
She wasn’t.
She was looking at Claudia and Rafe, at the dark head bent towards the fair one.
She saw the woman who had once been engaged to marry him add a teaspoon of sugar to his coffee before he could reach for the bowl, heard her finish his sentences for him. She listened to Claudia’s low laugh as Rafe leaned closer and whispered to her. She watched lovers so taken with each other that they’d forgotten the rest of the world existed…and she suddenly understood why her husband hadn’t demanded she share his bed.
Claudia was his mistress.
Carin shot to her feet. Her gown, that
damnably ugly thing, brushed against the table. Her cup and saucer fell to the tile floor of the patio and shattered.
Everyone stopped talking, looked at the broken china, then at her. She knew she should apologize, or make some little joke about her clumsiness, but her tongue felt too thick for her mouth.
“Oh,” Claudia said, “how awful. You’ve spilled coffee on your gown.” The perfect pink mouth curled up at the corners. “I do hope you haven’t ruined it, Carin. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to replace something so, ah, so unusual.”
“Claudia,” Isabela said sharply, and the man who was Claudia’s escort threw her a harsh look. But Rafe, Rafe, who was trapped in a marriage to her instead of to the beautiful woman he really wanted, said nothing.
Tears blurred Carin’s eyes. She gathered up her miserable skirt and walked quickly from the patio. When she stepped inside the house, she began to run.
“Carin,” Rafe shouted.
She heard him coming after her and she quickened her pace, stumbling on the bottom step as she raced for the bedroom.
“Carin,” he yelled, “wait!”
Wait? She choked out a laugh. She was finished taking orders from Raphael Alvares, finished with this travesty of a marriage. She never wanted to speak to him again, see him again, listen to him again.
He couldn’t keep her here, no matter what he threatened. She was taking Amy and leaving him, tonight.
Panting, breathless, she reached his bedroom and flung open the door. Let him get an attorney. Let him get a battery of attorneys. That was what she should have told him, from the beginning, but she’d been confused, exhausted, ashamed…
She cried out as Rafe’s arms swept around her.
“No,” she said fiercely, and beat her fists against the powerful hands locked at her waist, but he lifted her off her feet, carried her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him.
“Damn you,” she said, “damn you, Raphael Alvares!”
“Are you crazy?” He turned her in his arms, jerking his head back to avoid her flailing fists. “Carin!” He caught her wrists in one hand, captured her chin in the other. “Stop it!”
“I hate you,” she sobbed. “Do you hear me, Rafe? I despise you.”