The Alcolar Family

‘No, we didn’t! We did no such thing! We—we had sex…’

‘Sex—yeah.’

Hearing the way she said it, the use of the basic, blunt term instead of any gentler euphemism, told him just what she had felt about it. All that it had meant to her. The thought burned like acid in his guts.

He knew where Ramón kept the alcohol in his apartment and he headed over to the cupboard, pulling out a bottle of brandy and wrenching open the top of it with a vicious movement. Sloshing an unmeasured amount into a fine crystal glass, he lifted it, tilting it in Cassie’s direction in a mockery of a toast, before taking a deep swallow of the fiery liquid.

‘Yeah, we had sex,’ he went on savagely. ‘Good sex—the best!’

He turned blazing dark eyes on Cassie’s ashen face, fury etched onto his face.

‘Don’t you dare to try to deny that, my darling!’

‘I—wouldn’t,’ she managed to whisper, raw and husky. ‘I couldn’t…’

‘No, you couldn’t, mi belleza,’ he tossed back at her. ‘You most definitely could not. Not unless you are also going to claim to be the greatest actress the world has known. Remember I was there with you every inch of the way that night. I know how you felt; how you responded to me. You were there beneath me; I was with you, holding you, inside you! You can’t convince me that you weren’t out of your mind with wanting me—needing me…’

‘Yes—yes! I mean no…’

Cassie’s hands flew up and outward in a desperate gesture to cut him off when he would have raged on.

‘No, I can’t pretend I didn’t want you—I never have. I told you at the time that it was mutual.’

‘And yet less than twenty-four hours later, you had packed your bags and moved out—running from me—running here—to—to Ramón.’

In his mind he was seeing the day that Ramón had come to the finca, recalling the welcoming smile on her face, the way she had encouraged him into the house. Hell, she had even given him her keys!

The flare of hot jealousy hazed his eyes with red, blinding him as his hand clenched tight on the glass.

‘After what we shared.’

‘I told you at the time that there was more to it than enjoyment—than sex.’

‘And Ramón gives you this more?’

‘Right now, he gives me something that you never did!’

Her voice had lost something of the firmness it had held only moments before. Something he had said had struck home, shaking her conviction, rocking the foundations they were built on. But what? Which particular sentence had hit the target, thudding into the red, if not precisely into the gold?

There was something not quite right about this situation. Something he couldn’t completely work out—but every instinct he possessed told him that something was wrong. Something that raised all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck in warning like the hackles on a wary dog. But the haze of bitterness and shock, the raw agony of disbelief, clouded his brain so that thinking clearly was an impossibility.

Joaquin lifted the brandy bottle again, waving it in Cassie’s direction, lifting one eyebrow questioningly.

‘Join me in a drink?’

‘No—and do you think you should?’

‘Think I should?’ Joaquin echoed cynically. ‘Why not? After all, if my brother can steal my woman from me then surely I am entitled to help myself to some of his brandy in return.’

‘Steal your woman?’ Cassie repeated, actually managing to look convincingly bemused. ‘What are you talking about?’

“‘I’ve moved in with Ramón”,’ Joaquin quoted at her, considering the brandy bottle, then abruptly setting it down again. ‘You’re living with my brother.’

‘You knew that already! I told you…’

The shocking sense of realisation was like a blow to her face, stunning her into silence, shrivelling the words on her tongue.

Too late she realised how he was interpreting her reply. How he was putting far too much into it.

Not ‘you’re living with my brother’, as in you share this apartment with Ramón, but you’re living with Ramón. As she had once lived with Joaquin himself.

‘No,’ she tried but Joaquin wasn’t listening.

‘You said you were fine with what we had—that you didn’t want anything more.’

He slammed his half-empty glass down on the table, heedless of the way that the rich amber brandy slopped over the side.

‘Then Ramón—my brother—crooks his little finger and you’re gone! Without a second thought—leaving me a note!’

‘I-I didn’t have any time to say any more!’ Cassie stammered clumsily. ‘I—’

‘No time?’ Joaquin practically spat the words into her pale face. ‘And why was that, querida? Was your new lover waiting impatiently for you? Are you so insatiable that you’ve gone from my bed to my brother’s in less than a week? Couldn’t you wait to get to him—to Ramón? To my brother?’

‘No! You’ve got it all wrong! I didn’t—’

‘Didn’t what, my darling? Didn’t leave me and come straight here to be with Ramón? Didn’t move in with him without a backward glance—’

‘Yes! I moved in with him!’ she tried again. ‘But not like that! We’re not lovers!’

Blazing black eyes seared over her from head to foot, taking in the short, clinging robe, her bare legs and toes.

‘We’re not! When I said he gives me something you never did, I meant…’

Her voice deserted her just when she needed it most. What could she say that Ramón gave her? The mood that Joaquin was in, he would never believe her if she simply used the word friendship. And really, what Joaquin’s brother had offered was more than that. It was an unquestioning, peaceful, brotherly sort of…

But no, she couldn’t use the word love.

‘What did you mean, Cassie?’ Joaquin questioned harshly, eyes cold and hard and sharp as lasers as they fixed on her face, watching the emotions that flew across it, one after the other, none of them actually settling. ‘What does my brother give you? What did he offer to entice you away from me?’

‘He didn’t—I…’

But she couldn’t finish because some change in Joaquin’s own expression alerted her to the fact that he had suddenly had a revelation. She could see in his eyes that he had been turning things over in his mind and had come to a conclusion—and something about the way those polished jet eyes suddenly narrowed warned her that the assumption he had made was not one she was going to like.

‘Gives you more…’ he muttered roughly. ‘Something I never did. Don’t tell me the fool offered marriage!’

Cassie knew that she had lost colour. She could almost feel the blood drain from her face so fast that it made her already scrambled brain spin weakly.

‘No—’

She tried for force but it came out as a pathetic croak, one that she could barely hear herself, and which Joaquin, clearly absorbed in his own thoughts, didn’t even register as he came towards her suddenly.

The look on his face frightened her. It was as if the man she had known, her lover, the man she had lived with for the past year, had disappeared and someone else had taken his place. Someone she didn’t know at all.

His face was hard and set, totally ruthless. There was no longer any light in his eyes, so that they were deep, opaque, and totally black.

Nerves dried her mouth and she took a couple of hasty steps backwards, then had to stop as her back came up against the wall. But Joaquin kept coming. Not fast, but his movements measured and determined, his unyielding eyes never even seeming to flicker or blink.

‘Okay,’ he said so casually that it shocked her. ‘I’ll bite.’

‘Bite?’

She had no idea at all what he meant.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Marriage.’

‘M-marriage?’

She really had to be going mad. She was so stressed that she was starting to hear things. Things that were totally impossible. She could have sworn that Joaquin had said…

‘Yeah, marriage.’

He pushed a hand through his hair, flexing his shoulders as if he was trying to ease some ache there, and then looked her straight in the eye.

‘If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you.’

I’ll marry you.

How many times had she dreamed of just this scenario? How many nights, tired and too weak to fight against the foolish need inside her heart, had she let herself think, let herself imagine for just the tiniest, brief moment, that one day Joaquin might ask her to marry him?

And in those dreams she had always, happily, joyfully, rushed in and said yes—yes—yes!—even before he had actually finished speaking.

But this time, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t find the strength to speak. Three times she opened her mouth, and on each occasion her voice failed her completely. She couldn’t force her tongue to form any words, felt as if her vocal cords had shrivelled into nothing, and her throat had closed up so tight that it was almost impossible to breathe.

If marriage is what does it for you, then okay, I’ll marry you. He had given her the world with one hand then snatched it back roughly with the other, reducing the gesture to less than nothing, to a lie, a mockery of any sort of real proposal. It was more like a slap in the face than any gesture of feeling.

‘Well?’

‘Is—is this meant to be a proposal?’

‘If that’s what you want it to be. What’s the matter, querida? Not romantic enough for you?’ Joaquin’s tone was harder, crueller than ever—and this was the man who was suggesting marriage?

Or at least that was what it seemed.

‘Would you prefer it if I went down on one knee? Sorry but I don’t do that sort of romantic gesture.’

‘You don’t do any sort of romantic gesture!’

‘Oh, please, belleza!’

Joaquin dismissed her protest with an arrogant toss of his head.

‘Don’t try to accuse me of short-changing you on the gestures! I gave you—what…?’

He appeared to consider, to calculate, though Cassie suspected he knew exactly what he was going to say and was only pausing for effect.

‘I gave you thirteen words—two more than you spared me when you were leaving me for good. You were planning on going for good, weren’t you? I mean, you didn’t exactly say.’

‘I…’

Cassie tried once more to answer him, and once more failed miserably. She was fighting a vicious little battle with the stinging tears at the back of her eyes; tears she was determined she would not shed. She wasn’t going to let this sardonic monster that Joaquin had suddenly turned into see just how badly he was upsetting her, how deeply his barbed words had stabbed into her already wounded heart.

‘Yes?’ he faked concern, interest in what she had been trying to say. ‘You what?’

‘If—if you thought I meant to leave then why—why propose? Why ask me to marry you when you believe I wanted to go for good?’

‘Because I don’t want you to go.’

Don’t want…

Cassie felt as if she were swimming through a dark, clouded sea, getting nowhere, or perhaps going round and round in circles. She couldn’t see where she was going and so she couldn’t begin to guess which way was right and which was wrong.

Had she got this all wrong? Was it possible after all that Joaquin had actually meant his proposal of marriage? That he really didn’t want her to go? But if that was the case, then why had he couched it in those appalling terms? There had been no real warmth, no hint of affection or even care in those coldly casual words.

‘I see it as the only way to hold onto you. You claimed you were happy with what we had—but you obviously were not. I was content with the way things were—’

‘And that was…?’

Wasn’t it obvious? the scathing glance he turned on her demanded. Did he have to explain?

Well, yes, he did, so she remained stubbornly silent until he was forced to speak again.

‘We had a great thing together—the best. You know what it was like that last night.’

‘The—’

Cassie’s stomach heaved nauseously as she struggled with the word, forcing herself to say it.

‘The sex.’

‘Of course. What else, amada?’

His tone turned the last word into something that was exactly the opposite of the ‘beloved’ it actually meant.

‘I wanted you from the start—and you never disappointed me. I still want you. But I want you all to myself. I’m not prepared to share you with any man—even my brother. If marriage is the price of that, then I’m prepared to pay it.’

‘You’d marry me—even though you believe I’ve been with Ramón all this week?’

Joaquin’s casually dismissive shrug was even more appallingly unfeeling than the callous way he had declared he wanted her sexually and nothing more.

‘It’s only a week. I can forget a momentary aberration if it’s nothing more than a few days. But after this—no more! You will be mine and you will not give Ramón even a second look.’

Cassie knew that she was staring. She even suspected that her mouth was gaping slightly in stunned horror, but she couldn’t shake herself out of the almost catatonic state into which his cold-blooded declaration had thrown her.

He couldn’t mean this! He just couldn’t!

He had to be joking—but then, if he was, it was the most dreadful, sick form of black humour imaginable. It was vicious and cruel and totally hateful.

‘So what’s your answer?’

‘My answer!’

Pushed beyond endurance, Cassie felt that her head might explode. But at least his taunting tone drove the tears away, drying them in an instant. She welcomed the tiny flame of rage that lit inside her, fanning it until it flared into a healthy blaze.

‘What do you think my answer is? What would any sane woman answer to such a travesty of a proposal? I don’t know how you even dare to think I might have to consider it.’

Wasn’t that enough for him to get the message? But looking into the bleak darkness of his eyes she saw that no, it wasn’t. He was actually waiting for her response. Waiting for her to say something more—to give him an answer to his hateful suggestion.

‘My answer is no! No! Never! No way! Not in my lifetime! I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man alive on this earth and the future of the human race depended on it.’

Drawing a deep breath, she locked her blazing blue gaze with his cold jet one and repeated, with insulting slowness and clarity, ‘My answer is no—I will not marry you!’

In the deathly silence that fell as her words died away she tensed instinctively, waiting for the explosion that she was sure was to come. An explosion of anger, or protest, or rejection—she wasn’t sure which. But she was positive that there was no way at all that he was just going to take that and leave it, without coming back at her in some way.

So she was stunned when once again he just shrugged his shoulders in nonchalant dismissal.

‘Fine. Okay, if that’s your answer.’

‘It is.’

She sounded as breathless as if she had been running for hours, the words escaping on shaken gasps.

‘Believe me—it is.’

‘Well, in that case, then, I won’t stay around.’ His tone was as stiff as the muscles in his neck and jaw, drawing his mouth tight and hard. ‘I’m sure—just from looking at you—that you’re expecting my brother any moment now, and it would probably be best if I wasn’t here when he arrived. Buenas noches, Cassie.’

This time Cassie knew she was really gaping, but she couldn’t stop herself. She just didn’t believe what she was seeing as he turned on his heel and marched towards the door.

‘Joaquin…’ she managed, not really knowing what she meant to say.

But her voice had no strength and Joaquin didn’t hear her. Or if he did he ignored her and kept on walking, his head arrogantly high, the broad shoulders and stiff, straight back expressing eloquently his total rejection of her without a word needing to be spoken.

He didn’t look back either, but then she had never expected that he would. And she couldn’t move, the aftereffects of shock and the wild emotional storm that had raged through her leaving her shaken and weak, unable even to think.

She let him go. Let him walk through the door, and watched it slam closed behind him, the terrible, unfocused, dreary sense of inevitability swamping her mind so that there was no room for anything else.

It was a dreadfully bitter irony that now, at last, Joaquin had done what she had wanted most in all the world. He had told her that he wanted her; that he didn’t want to lose her. He had even proposed marriage, for heaven’s sake!

But it hadn’t been for heaven, had it? Instead it had produced Cassie’s own personal form of hell. A hell in which by apparently offering her everything she had ever wanted, a future with him, he had shown that the real truth of the way he was feeling was the exact opposite of what she truly needed.

He wanted her. He didn’t want to lose her. He thought of her as ‘his woman’—but he didn’t love her. He would marry her, but only as a way of possessing her. The offer of marriage had been only to ensure that she had no relationship with his brother.

His brother!

‘Ramón!’ Cassie muttered aloud, the name bringing her out of the trancelike shock and into action again.

Joaquin still believed that she was having a relationship with his brother! He thought that he had left her here awaiting the arrival of her lover—of Ramón!

She couldn’t let that continue; couldn’t let him go on believing that his brother had made a move on ‘his woman’ while, ostensibly at least, Joaquin and Cassie had still been together. It was the sort of thing that Joaquin’s pride could never tolerate. The sort of thing that no man with any sense of honour would do to a friend, let alone a member of his own family.

Joaquin would never speak to his brother again if he continued to believe that was what had happened. And Cassie could not be the cause of anger and division between the two brothers. She knew that they had had a difficult enough time getting to be friends in the past. Joaquin had seen his half-brother as evidence of their father’s adultery, his unfaithfulness to his wife, and so had had to struggle to accept both the younger man and then the other, half-English brother Alex who had appeared later. She had to make sure that Joaquin knew the truth. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least try.

‘Joaquin!’

Heedless of the fact that she was still wearing only the flimsy robe and that her feet were bare, Cassie yanked open the door and ran out into the big hallway, the third floor landing in the apartment block.

‘Joaquin!’

Her call echoed round the empty space. Of course. The mood he had been in, Joaquin was clearly in no frame of mind to hang around. But somewhere in the distance, a floor or so away, she caught the faint sound of footsteps on the stairs, going down. Perhaps if she ran, she might just have a chance to catch him.

Bare feet making no sound, her hand clutching the polished wooden banister rail as she swung round the corners, she dashed down the big staircase, her breath catching in her throat at the thought that he might get away before she could speak to him.

‘Joaquin, please wait!’

Had the footsteps below her slowed, maybe even stilled, just for a second? She didn’t know and she couldn’t risk a pause to listen for fear that he might get right away from her. If he went out into the street she would lose him…

‘Oh, please!’

She landed on the marble tiled floor of the main entrance hall with a soft thud, her heart lifting jerkily at the realisation that she could just see Joaquin’s tall, dark figure on the other side of the glass-paned door that was still swinging with the force of his exit through it.

‘Joaquin!’

Somehow she found the strength to wrench it open, fling herself out into the evening air where a sudden rainstorm had soaked the street, the shallow stone steps leading up to the apartment building.

‘Joaquin, oh, please! Please wait! Please listen! I have to talk to you.’

He’d heard her.

She saw him stiffen, hesitate, then whirl round, spinning on his heel.

And as he did so it seemed as if time suddenly slowed, went out of focus and blurred. Even her own breathing suddenly seemed suspended and she watched in a sense of hopeless horror as the scene before her was played out in a sort of dreadful slow motion that she could do nothing to stop.

She saw Joaquin’s swift stride down the steps, the way his foot had gone out to move from one to the next. Then his check as she called his name. The swift, sudden turn, his head coming round to glance at her, that threw him totally off balance. The way that, still moving forward at the same time, he missed his footing, slipped, lost his balance completely.

She thought that she screamed. She knew that she opened her mouth to do so, but no sound came out.

And she could only watch in silent dread as Joaquin pitched forward, fell headlong down the remainder of the steps, landing awkwardly on the rain-soaked pavement below.

Fear froze her with her hands to her mouth as she saw his dark head strike hard against the hard stone of the final step, his long body rolling a couple of inches more then coming to a complete halt, lying dreadfully limp and unmoving on the pavement while the heavy rain lashed down onto his pale, still face.

CHAPTER SIX

A MAN like Joaquin didn’t belong in a hospital bed.

He was too big, too strong, too forceful, too vibrant, too alive to be contained in such a small space. And lying there, silent and still, unnervingly pale in spite of his tan, he looked shockingly reduced, younger, and infinitely more vulnerable.

Cassie didn’t know how many times this particular thought had crossed her mind throughout this, the longest night of her life. She only knew that it was the one she most often came back to, unhappy and unwilling, wishing there were something—anything she could do to ease the situation.

But Joaquin just lay there, unconscious and unmoving, his handsome face disfigured by the ugly bruise that had spread across his forehead, marking the spot where his skull had collided with the hard stone of the steps.

And Cassie sat by his bed, holding his limp hand and willing him to wake up, open his eyes.

‘Joaquin, can you hear me? Please show me that you can!’ she pleaded with him. ‘Please—just open your eyes—show me you’re all right. Please!’

She couldn’t believe the way that the world she thought she knew had turned to a waking nightmare. One minute she had been running down the stairs calling to Joaquin to stop, to wait—the next she had found herself crouched in the lashing rain beside his unconscious form, heedless of the way that the downpour had soaked into the thin silk of her skimpy robe, moulding it wetly to her body.

She had screamed at the hovering security guard to call an ambulance, tried to protect Joaquin’s face from the appalling weather, and waited for what seemed like an age for help to arrive. All the time she had held his hand, stroking it softly, telling him that everything was going to be all right—that he was going to be fine.

It had been there that Ramón had found her. Arriving home at last, he had taken in the situation in a glance, and immediately taken charge. After that things had happened fast. The ambulance had arrived; Joaquin had been lifted gently into it and they had set off for the hospital. Cassie had wanted to go with them, and only Ramón’s gentle logic had persuaded her otherwise.

‘You’re soaked through, sweetheart,’ he told her. ‘You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t get changed out of that wet robe. Believe me, Joaquin’s in good hands—and you’ll be much better able to help if you’re dry and comfortable. This could be a long night.’

And he was right.

Cassie dried herself off and dressed in a navy shirt and jeans as quickly as she could, throwing a white cotton cardigan over her shoulders as protection against the chill that the rain had brought to the night air, and pushing her bare feet into lightweight slip-on shoes. Before Ramón had time to down the coffee he’d made for himself, she was ready to go, anxious to reach the hospital as soon as possible.