The Vasquez Baby Read online

‘Stop shivering.’ Raul delivered the order in a driven tone but when his demand had no effect he reached for his phone. ‘I will get the doctor back up here.’

  ‘No.’ Her teeth chattering, Faith shrank away from him, exhausted and wishing that he was easier to understand. He’d made it obvious that he bitterly regretted their wedding and yet he’d sought her out and brought her back to Argentina. ‘Why did you bring me back here, Raul? Why?’

  ‘You’re my wife. You belong by my side and in my bed.’

  That simple statement encompassed everything it meant to be married to an Argentine male and she closed her eyes briefly. So it was all about possession. There was no love there at all.

  ‘I didn’t want this to happen to us—’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ His words and his tone were brutal, leaving her no escape. ‘You made this decision. You rolled the dice and you gambled. At least have the courage to face what you did to our relationship.’

  The sick throbbing in her head intensified. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And that from a woman? Talking is what women are supposed to do best, isn’t it, Faith? You think that every problem can be solved if it’s talked through.’

  Not every problem.

  ‘I have nothing more to say to you, Raul. You’re angry and bitter and I just don’t know you any more.’

  Something flickered across his dark, handsome face—dangerous shadows, a suggestion of something ugly lurking deep, deep inside.

  ‘I can’t be married to a man who doesn’t love me,’ Faith whispered. ‘I want a divorce. Give me whatever you need me to sign and I’ll sign it.’

  Her flat statement drew no response from him and in the end she looked back at him, only to find that he’d walked towards the pool and was standing with his back to her.

  Faith stared at him helplessly. Even from the back he was spectacular. His shoulders were wide and powerful, his legs strong and well-muscled. He carried himself with confidence, the astonishing success he’d made of his life evident in every aspect of his demeanour and behaviour.

  Once, she’d believed he was hers.

  She’d truly believed that they shared something special and the knowledge that for him their relationship had been empty hurt more than any of the wounds she’d incurred in the accident.

  He turned suddenly, feeling her gaze on him with that instinctive awareness that had always bound them together. ‘You went to all those elaborate lengths to get me to the altar and now you want a divorce?’ His mouth twisted into a mocking smile. ‘You’re giving up extraordinarily easily. Take some advice—if something is worth fighting for, it’s worth fighting to the death.’

  It was a remark so typical of him that in the old days—the days before marriage—she would have smiled and teased him unmercifully. She would have told him to chill out and not be so driven. ‘I never saw our relationship as a war, Raul.’

  ‘You started the war. You manipulated me into marrying you,’ he said coldly. ‘So it seems absurd for you to abandon your goal so easily.’ His supreme self-confidence and the chill in his tone simply added to her pain.

  ‘I didn’t have a goal, Raul!’ Feeling at an even greater disadvantage lying down, Faith sat up. ‘I’m not one of your companies!! I don’t have a mission statement or a five-year plan! I did not manipulate you!’

  ‘No? So who’s fault is it that we are in this position? Marriage was not part of my plan. I was clear about that from the beginning.’ He stepped forward, his voice throbbing with emotion. ‘No marriage. No babies. You entered into our relationship with your eyes wide open.’

  His words were so uncompromisingly harsh that for a moment she had trouble breathing.

  They were so different. How could she ever have thought that their feelings for one another would be enough to bridge the gulf between them?

  ‘It wasn’t like that. We were just having fun, Raul. I wasn’t even thinking about marriage.’ Faith sank back against the sun-lounger. ‘I thought we shared something special.’

  ‘We did. But it wasn’t enough for you, was it? Like a typical woman, you wanted more and more.’ His tone was an angry growl, his words so heavily loaded with accusation that she shrank. ‘You thought that you knew what I wanted better than I did. Well, you were wrong cariño. I knew exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t this.’

  Every word he spoke was designed to destroy any last tender shoots of hope that might have survived the initial blast of his anger.

  ‘You’re still talking as if I had some sort of master plan. I didn’t create this situation, Raul. I didn’t lie to you.’

  ‘You truly expect me to believe that it was an accident? Contraception is not a hit-and-miss affair.’ He spelled it out with brutal lucidity and Faith felt her heart suddenly bump erratically.

  He stood there like a mythical god—lean, arrogant and impossibly handsome, seeing everything from one point of view only.

  His own.

  ‘One day you’ll learn that you can’t control everything in life, Raul. Accidents do happen,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I am living proof of that, but it doesn’t matter any more, does it?’

  He drew breath, ready to challenge that remark as he automatically challenged everything and she lifted a hand in a defensive gesture.

  ‘No!’ She cut him off before he spoke. ‘Just don’t say what’s on your mind, Raul, because frankly I don’t think I can sit through another session of your thoughts on the subject.’

  ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

  ‘Oh yes I do. It would have been something along the lines of “if you hadn’t got pregnant we wouldn’t be married now” or “it’s lucky for both of us that you lost the baby.’” She’d been trying so hard not to think about the baby, but now there was no escaping it and her eyes filled with the tears that she’d been choking on for the past couple of weeks. ‘Well, do you know what? I don’t feel lucky. I know it wasn’t what you wanted and to be honest, I was surprised myself—but I don’t feel lucky, Raul. I minded that I lost the baby.’

  He was so tense that every muscle in his powerful frame throbbed with it. ‘I know.’

  ‘You do not know! How could you know? I protected you from it. You were in New York on business. I was devastated but I kept it to myself because you were tied up with that meeting, takeover—’

  ‘It was a merger.’

  ‘I don’t care what it was! I just knew it was important to you and I didn’t want to cause you extra stress. But I shot myself in the foot, because you decided that the reason I didn’t tell you about my miscarriage was because I was afraid you might call off the wedding.’

  ‘It was a natural assumption.’

  ‘Only for a man like you, Raul. Any other person would have thanked me for being so thoughtful and selfless.’ She turned her head, her voice a whisper. ‘Go away. Just go away. Why are we even talking about this, anyway?’

  ‘Because we are married,’ he bit out harshly. ‘And we have to sort this out.’

  ‘Some things just aren’t fixable. And this is one of them. Do you realise that you haven’t once thought about my feelings? All you’ve thought about is yourself. You think I trapped you. Well, do you know what?’ Her voice rose. ‘I wish you had ditched me at the altar. You would have been doing us both a favour.’

  ‘I would not have done that. Despite what you think, I do have a sense of decency.’

  ‘Decency? Where was your sense of decency when you said it was a good thing I’d lost the baby?’

  He stiffened, his handsome face pale despite his tan. ‘You are taking my words out of context.’

  ‘I wish I was, but I’m not. And frankly, I would have preferred you to have broken it off, than to find myself married to a cold, insensitive bastard.’

  He inhaled sharply. ‘I’ve never heard you use language like that before.’

  ‘Well, if you stick around, you’ll be hearing more of it.’

  Raul ran a hand
over his face. ‘You are extremely upset—’

  ‘Yes. Funny that, really. I lose a baby, discover that my husband is a cold-hearted, ruthless pig, get run over—’ Her heart was pounding so rapidly that she felt dizzy. ‘I can’t imagine why I’d be upset.’

  ‘You need to calm down. The doctors said you shouldn’t be subjected to any more stress.’ Raul lifted a hand in what presumably was a gesture of conciliation. ‘Why are we going over this again? No me importa. I don’t care. It’s history now. We have to move on.’

  ‘Where to, Raul?’ Faith choked, holding it together by a thread. ‘You’re relieved, but that isn’t how I feel. I feel terrible. You have no idea. Our relationship is dead and so is—’ She broke off with a whimper of pain, unable to finish the sentence. ‘I wish there had been a baby.’

  ‘I know you do.’ Raul’s tone was grim and his face was white with the strain. ‘Which is why you should have left me six months ago for some homely, domesticated male whose sole desire was to reproduce and spread his seed. You should have ended it instead of forcing me into something I didn’t want.’

  ‘It was an accident.’ She covered her face with her hands to hide the tears but clearly she was less than successful because she heard Raul swear and then felt his thigh brush against hers as he sat down next to her.

  ‘Stop crying. I’ve never seen you cry before. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.’ His strong fingers closed around her wrists and he pulled her hands away from her face, as if he could ease her distress simply by the force of his will. ‘And you wonder why I am so against marriage as an institution! Until we exchanged vows, we were happy together.’

  She sniffed. ‘It isn’t marriage. It’s you—the way you are—’

  ‘And you always knew the way I was. We both knew it, Faith.’ Raul’s tone was rough. ‘There was never any future for us. Eventually you would have wanted marriage and babies. It was inevitable.’

  ‘I hadn’t even thought about it.’ Furious with herself for crying, Faith wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. ‘I had a career when I met you. The last thing I was thinking of was playing happy families.’

  ‘When you discovered how badly you wanted a baby, you should have left.’

  ‘How are you so successful at negotiation when you don’t even listen to the other person?’ Faith bit back a hysterical laugh. ‘That wasn’t how it happened! I did not plan it. I had a whole career ahead of me. Plans! When I discovered that I was pregnant, I was in shock. But then I realised how much I wanted our baby.’ And him. She’d realised how much she wanted him.

  ‘And the fact that I didn’t wasn’t of importance to you?’

  ‘You asked me to marry you!’

  ‘Because you left me no choice.’

  His blunt admission sliced through her control and brought the tears to the surface. ‘Well, that’s romantic. And having admitted that you married me because I “forced” you, you now want to continue this relationship? Are you mad, or what?’ The tears trickled down her face and Raul’s sensual mouth tightened.

  ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘Why?’ The tears fell harder. ‘Because it makes you feel bad? Well, good. At the moment, I want you to feel bad.’ The utter desolation echoed in her voice and she saw his emotional turmoil.

  After a moment’s hesitation he reached out a hand towards her but she shrank away from him and he let it fall to his side. ‘How did our relationship reach this point?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was so in love with you.’ Her voice was thick with tears. ‘I didn’t think anything could ever damage what we had. I thought we were invincible.’

  ‘And presumably that’s why you did it.’ His voice grew several degrees colder and she knew that she would never convince him that she hadn’t become pregnant on purpose.

  ‘So just divorce me,’ she whispered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Divorce me for unreasonable behaviour.’

  ‘There won’t be a divorce.’ His tone was hard and icy cold. ‘You chose this path, cariño. Now walk it. I have some calls to make. Make sure you rest before dinner.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHAT was she supposed to wear for dinner?

  She’d fled from Argentina with nothing more than her passport. She certainly hadn’t stopped to pack a wardrobe.

  Glancing at her watch, she realised that there were still several hours until dinner, so she picked up her bag and stepped into the elevator.

  They were in the centre of Buenos Aires. How hard could it be to find something simple and practical to wear?

  She pressed the button for the ground floor, thinking of Raul. He’d changed so much and she didn’t have to look far to discover the cause of their problems.

  By becoming pregnant she’d committed the ultimate sin.

  The lift doors opened and she gave a gasp of shock because Raul was standing there, anger shimmering in his dark eyes.

  ‘Do you have a death wish? You are supposed to be resting.’

  For a long, agonising moment the tension throbbed between them momentarily blinding both of them. She was painfully aware of his sexuality and her stomach swooped and spun like a ride at a funfair.

  Suddenly, looking at his rigid shoulders, she realised that they’d never stood a chance.

  They were worlds apart; not just in terms of wealth, but in life experience and culture.

  They’d talked all the time, but never about his past, and she was only now realising how little she knew about him.

  The phone in his pocket rang and he removed it, scanned the number and then took the call. ‘Sí—I am aware of that.’ He switched between Spanish and English with effortless ease and Faith listened with reluctant admiration, trying not to be impressed but failing because his razor-sharp intellect had always given her a buzz. She’d loved arguing with him because his brain was so fast and challenging him had always resulted in lively debate.

  As if sensing her scrutiny, his eyes locked onto hers and a muscle flickered in his jaw. ‘No—cancel…I don’t care, I’m busy right now. They can wait until I’m ready.’

  Faith watched as he broke the connection with a decisive stab of one long finger and dropped the phone back into his pocket. She cleared her throat. ‘If you were cancelling a meeting because of me then you shouldn’t have bothered.’

  ‘How else am I supposed to stop you from doing something foolish? If I don’t watch you personally you will no doubt vanish again, and I have no desire to scrape you off the floor after yet another accident.’ He’d obviously come from a meeting because he was dressed in a dark formal suit but the white cuff of his shirt had ridden up slightly and she found her eyes drawn to the hairs that darkened the bronzed skin at his wrist. That tantalising hint of masculinity was sufficient to trigger an uncomfortably vivid image of him naked and Faith turned her head away quickly, wondering how a physical connection could possibly endure when everything else was so catastrophically wrong between them. It was true that Raul exceeded the most exacting woman’s standards of masculinity, but after everything that had happened, she shouldn’t be feeling this way.

  The brain was supposed to be connected to the senses, so why were hers humming and buzzing instead of freezing him off?

  Glancing over his shoulder, Faith saw two burly men standing in the opulent lobby. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Security.’ Raul stepped into the elevator with her and slammed his hand against a button. He controlled his privacy with the same ruthless efficiency that he used on every other aspect of his life.

  ‘I need to go shopping—’

  ‘You were never interested in shopping.’

  ‘I don’t have anything to wear. All my clothes are at the estancia.’

  He stared down at her for a moment. ‘I apologise,’ he said stiffly. ‘I hadn’t realised. You should have said something sooner.’

  The doors slid closed and Faith suddenly found herself trapped with him in a small, intimate space.

  Erotic ima
ges swirled around her brain and she stared straight ahead, trying to concentrate on something else. The utter stillness of his powerful body told her that he was doing the same thing and she knew instinctively that his brain was playing the same tricks.

  So how could not looking intensify the connection between them?

  In this closed-in space Faith was agonisingly aware of the latent power of his lean, strong body and she realised with a stab of pain that this was the first time she’d stood this close to him and not touched. In their relationship she’d been the affectionate one and he’d always teased her about it.

  ‘You can’t go five seconds without checking I’m still here.’

  And it had been true. She’d adored him and it wouldn’t have occurred to her to not show it.

  But now she envied his emotional detachment and wished she’d kept part of herself back.

  If she’d done that, would it hurt less?

  Probably not. Despite everything that had happened between them, part of her wanted to take that final step towards him and feel his arms close around her in that decisive, possessive way that had always thrilled her.

  And it horrified her that she still felt that way.

  She couldn’t be with a man who didn’t trust her, could she? For her, trust was as fundamental as breathing. And she couldn’t be with a man who had such little regard for her feelings. A man who knew her so little.

  Did she have no self-respect?

  Or was it just that she’d totally underestimated the power of love?

  Desperate to interrupt the uncomfortable flow of her thoughts, Faith struggled to make conversation. ‘I didn’t know you had an apartment in Buenos Aires.’

  He loosened his top button and jerked at his tie, the intimate confinement clearly affecting him in a similar manner. ‘Sometimes I work late.’

  The lift rose smoothly upwards and she stared at the view.

  ‘It’s stunning.’

  ‘Actually it’s on the market,’ Raul said stiffly. ‘I’ve discovered that a glass lift isn’t a good choice if you want privacy.’

  And Raul was fiercely protective of his privacy, she knew that. This particular billionaire wasn’t about to become public property, and he invested time and effort into keeping his profile as low-key as possible. His extreme wealth had protected their relationship from the intrusion of the outside world.