A Price Worth Paying(34)

‘You did more than let me kiss you. Your body told me it wanted me.’

‘You flatter yourself,’ she said, shaking her head, in denial because she had to be. He had felt good, it was true. Maybe very good. But he could not know what she had been thinking. ‘You’re wrong. I don’t want you. Sure, we shared a kiss, and maybe it was okay, but it was only for Felipe’s benefit.’

‘Now who’s kidding themselves? You weren’t thinking about Felipe when I kissed you.’

‘That doesn’t mean we’re having sex. There’s no way I want sex with you. No way at all.’

‘Fine.’ He took a step back from her. ‘I must have been mistaken. If that’s the way you want it, I will go back up there and tell Felipe this marriage is off.’

‘What? Why? I don’t understand. You make one arrangement and then you insist on another? You can’t do that to him! How could you do that after everything we’ve done? Felipe believes it now. He believes we’re getting married. He thinks he’s walking me down the aisle. How could you do this to him?’

‘How could I do that to him?’ he said. ‘No. You should be asking how you could do this to him. You’re the one suddenly wanting to deny him his happy ending.’

He was shifting the blame onto her? ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. Though maybe I should, because Felipe warned me from the very start that I should be careful. He said you were an Esquivel and that I shouldn’t trust you, that you would be ruthless. I should have listened to him all along.’

‘Maybe you should have.’

His cold, hard words floored her. Where was the man who had sucked her into his kiss, and whose heat had damned near melted her flesh? Where was that man? Had he been an entire fiction? She felt sick just thinking about how much she’d wanted him. ‘I hate you. I don’t think I’ve ever hated you more than in this moment.’

‘That’s fine. I told you I wasn’t nice. Hating me will make it so much easier when you leave.’





CHAPTER EIGHT



SHE WANTED TO hate him after that. She did her best to. Late at night atop her single bed she did all she could to hate him. But hate disappeared in the overwhelming truth.

She should never have let him kiss her.

Now her body ached to make love to him and yet she didn’t want to make love to him. She couldn’t make love to him. Making love made a person vulnerable. She’d learned that with Damon, their relationship going from boyfriend and girlfriend, moving with their lovemaking to a higher level. To love. Or so she’d thought.

Damon’s betrayal had ripped all sense of wanting intimacy out of her. Keep it platonic, she’d learned. Keep it simple, and you couldn’t be hurt.

Keep it platonic—businesslike—and there could be no complications.

She knew this to be true. She knew she’d been right to insist on a sex-free marriage. She didn’t want to go through what she had with Damon again. She couldn’t live with the fear and the gut-sickening uncertainty.

And yet still the thought of Alesander’s threatened lovemaking left her breathless and hungry. She tossed and turned in the small bed, tangling in the sheets, thinking about sheets tangled for other, more carnal, reasons.

Wishing that she didn’t look forward to it as much as she dreaded it.

Wishing she could simply hate him and be done with it.

She tossed again. Oh God, why the hell couldn’t she sleep?

The season shifted inexorably towards the harvest, and Alesander was busier, managing both his own business and yet still finding time to spend in Felipe’s vineyard, repairing trellises and filling in pot-holes in the driveway and, even though she knew he was doing it because the land would soon be his, she could not hate him for it when she saw how it made Felipe happier, to see his vines and the vineyard looking cared for again.

She tried to keep her distance as much as she could but somehow he was always there, shrinking the tiny cottage with his presence, talking to Felipe about the grapes, or comparing techniques to manage the vines.

And there could be no avoiding him because, as the harvest drew closer, so too did their wedding. Alesander appointed a wedding planner charged with the task of organising a wedding extravaganza in less than a month. Simone was happy to leave her to it, but there was no escaping the endless questions. There were meetings to be had, decisions to be made, plans to be drawn up.