‘Now that I would love to see.’
Her cackle of laughter followed him out of the room.
* * *
‘You’ve hardly stopped for the past month,’ Raul said. ‘Take the day off—go and see Marta.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ His voice dropped. ‘Unless you want to come here and take me in my office.’
Even with Raul a mile away, just the suggestive sound of his voice whispering down the phone set a frisson of heat through her.
‘I’ll see you when you get home,’ she said firmly. ‘Goodbye.’
Swiping her phone to end the call, she padded over to the window and looked out at the lashing rain and palm trees swaying in the growing wind.
It was the height of summer and Barcelona was under a deluge of water.
She was supposed to be working at the centre but the circling storm had forced the pilot to ground the helicopter. She’d been on the verge of jumping in one of Raul’s cars and driving the three-hour journey there when Seve had called, insisting he had it covered and forbidding her to go in. She could only hope the weather cleared by Wednesday. She and Raul were meeting Pierre first thing, then Charley would head over to the current centre as part of the team taking the children to La Tomatina.
But today, for once, her time was her own.
A bath. That was what she needed.
It had been ages since she’d last had a long soak.
Filling the bath until it was a steamy mass of foamy water, she climbed in and lay back, closing her eyes, happy to listen to the heavy thud of rain.
When had she last felt so content?
The past few weeks had passed in a blur. She’d travelled with Raul to St Lucia to see the development of a new hotel complex, to Madrid where the headquarters of his air fleet was located, dined out with business colleagues and friends, and still managed to work a couple of days a week at the centre.
It was amazing how different everything felt. Before, when she’d travelled with him and witnessed his burgeoning empire, her inadequacies had felt strong enough to eat her whole. So she’d stopped accompanying him, using the excuse of her own businesses to keep her rooted in Barcelona. The side effect had been the jealousy that had gripped her on their nights apart, the fear of him meeting someone more suitable that had plagued her.
Now, her inadequacies didn’t matter. Her imperfections didn’t matter. She and Raul were together for a strict time period. This wasn’t permanent and, as a result, she no longer had to put on the pretence of being perfect. If he was concerned that she was less than perfect, he wasn’t saying, and, really, why would he? Come November, they would go their separate ways. They would divorce and he could then find himself the perfect wife he needed.
A lance of pain shot through her chest as she thought of him with another woman on his arm. She sucked in her breath, holding it tightly, waiting for the feeling to pass as it always did, although it seemed to be taking longer and longer for it to pass as the days went by.
She would not make the same mistakes as she had before.
Mind-blowing sex did not equate to love. That was what had got her into trouble in the first place, mistaking the lust she’d felt for him for love, then, when love truly had come, it had been too late and she’d been trapped. Worse, she’d become a stranger to herself.
But this time she knew better.
This time...
Unless you want to come here and take me in my office...
She’d told herself hell would freeze over before she made the first move. As if she would give herself willingly to the man who’d blackmailed her back into his bed.
And yet...
There would be no consequences if she walked away. Raul would never back out of the centre, not now. She’d known that since he’d turned up there and been pulled into the magic of the place.
And Raul knew it too.
She could walk away and there wasn’t a thing he could do or threaten her with to make her stay. Something told her that even if there were, he wouldn’t use it.
For over a month she’d been telling herself that she stayed because they’d made a deal, as hateful as it had initially been.
Her eyes opened with a snap as the truth hit her.
She’d stayed because she wanted to.
Raul had done a terrible thing blackmailing her back into his bed. A terrible thing. He’d believed—possibly still believed—awful things about her that she could never disprove without a lie detector but over the past month he’d treated her with something he’d never shown her in all the years of their marriage. Respect.
She hadn’t even known the respect had been missing until she’d found it.
Adrenaline coursed through her, her heart hammering as powerfully as the rain pouring like sheets against the window, her mind a train wreck of careering tracks.