chapter THIRTEEN
SHE WAS PREGNANT.
Alesander reeled from the room, needing air, blindsided by Simone’s confession to a dying man. She was pregnant and she hadn’t even bothered to tell him—the child’s father—first.
He should be angry.
How long had she known? A few days? A week?
No, not just angry. He should be furious.
This was exactly what he had feared all along, and it was really happening. Their temporary arrangement had suddenly got a whole lot more complicated.
And she hadn’t even bothered to tell him.
He turned his face to the sky, into air now as crisp and cool as the Txakolina wine produced from the grapes in these vineyards, searching for answers.
So why wasn’t he furious?
Instead he felt almost … relieved.
He breathed out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
Because she couldn’t go home now.
Strange how that idea suddenly seemed so right. He would not let her go. She was bearing their child.
She would have to stay now.
Felipe was dead.
Strange, how it still took so long to sink in, even when you knew it was true.
Desolate, exhausted, she gently placed her grandfather’s hand over his chest and rose from her chair, kissing his snowy whiskered cheeks one final time. ‘Goodbye, Abuelo,’ she said. ‘Sleep tight.’
Numb and bone-weary, she left the bedside chair that had been her home for the last three days. Her back ached, her head hurt and there was a hole where her heart had once been.
Abuelo was dead.
There was nothing for her here now.
Soon she would pack her things and return home. But not even that thought brought her comfort.
‘Simone?’
She looked up to see Alesander standing in the doorway and he looked so familiar and strong that for a moment her heart kicked over, as if there was life left in it after all. And then she remembered that he was supposed to mean nothing to her and it died again.
‘He’s gone,’ she said, finally accepting it, and with acceptance came a torrent of tears.
She would have fallen if he hadn’t been there to catch her. ‘I know,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her against his chest and he felt both a friend and a stranger. How long since he had held her in his arms like this?
And he felt so good, so solid and warm. He smelled so good. She drank in his scent in greedy heaving gasps, relishing the masculine scent of him while she could, knowing she would miss it when she was gone. He stroked her back until the crying jag finished. ‘Come on. I’ll take you home.’
Home.
Where was that?
Once upon a time she had been desperate to leave Spain and get back to Melbourne.
But now?
Now she’d fallen in love with a craggy coastline and cerulean sea and with vines that tangled above her head and gave the grapes a view of the sea.
Now she’d fallen in love with a man she had to say goodbye to.
Now she wasn’t sure where home really was.
He led her to the car, drove her back to the apartment as day turned to night. He didn’t talk while the lift carried them upstairs, he just stood with his arm around her shoulders and never before had she appreciated anyone’s silence or support more.
She let him lead her through the darkened apartment to the bedroom with its big wide bed and strip her down to her underwear. There was nothing sexual about the way he touched her. It was like a parent undressing a child before putting them to bed. Gentle. Caring. But with purpose.
She clambered in, almost crying out in pleasure at the bed’s welcoming embrace. She’d imagined he’d leave her then to sleep, but a moment later he surprised her by joining her, pulling her into his arms and just holding her close to him. She wasn’t worried, he hadn’t touched her for the best part of a month.
She felt him press his lips to her head.
She felt … safe.
Empty and numb, but safe in this man’s embrace. And right now, that meant more than anything.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered against his chest, the wiry hairs of his chest tickling her lips.
‘What for?’ he said, his mouth in her hair.
‘For just being here.’
He lifted her chin with one hand. In the darkened room she sensed rather than saw his eyes on her, she felt the fan of his breath on her cheek, before he dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers.
No more than a touch of flesh against flesh, and then another, just as brief, but she sighed at the contact, sighing at the memories it stirred inside her, whispers of past kisses like the tendrils on the vines, catching and tugging at her senses.
Oh, how she’d missed his mouth.
How she would miss it when she was gone.
How she would miss him.
She blinked into the darkness, and the darkness didn’t matter because it was as if she could see. Suddenly she was aware of the press of her body against his, aware of every place their bodies touched, aware of the stroke of his long-fingered hand over her skin.
Suddenly she was aware of the tension in his body, as if he was holding himself rigid to protect her, so that he could comfort her.
And numbness turned to life as comfort turned to need.
Tomorrow she would have to make plans. There was a funeral to be arranged. There would have to be papers signed and transferred. She would have to make arrangements to return home.
But that was tomorrow.
First, there was tonight.
Maybe their last night?
‘Alesander?’ she whispered, her toes brushing his shin, her breasts tight and aching in her bra and a pooling heat growing in her belly.
‘Yes?’
She tilted her head higher, found his lips with hers and whispered over them the words, ‘Kiss me again.’
He made a sound, strangled and thick in the back of his throat, even as he pulled her closer to him. ‘If I do—’
‘I know,’ she said, smoothing her hand down the long gentle slide of his back, to the small of his back and the curve of his behind, memorizing him through her skin. ‘I need it. I need to feel alive.’
She didn’t have to ask him twice. His mouth took hers, warm and real and alive, and she drank in his taste and his heat, as welcoming as the mattress beneath her, while his hands tangled in her hair or swept down the length of her, his touch so sweet—so missed—it made her cry into his mouth.
Then he lifted his head. ‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ he asked, and she thought how sweet he was to ask, as if finally she mattered, not just the sex.
‘It’s perfect.’
He did not rush. It was not like that heated encounter in the vineyard. He took his time reacquainting himself with her body, noticing the places where her flesh dipped lower or her hip bones jutted higher. She’d lost weight while she’d looked after Felipe, he could tell. He would see that she ate from now on. She would have to eat.
He slipped off her bra and her sigh sounded like thanks. He cupped her perfect breast in his hand and she whimpered with need.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her as he lifted himself over her, not knowing how he could have let her alone for so long; promising himself he never would again, knowing he would never have to.
She opened herself to him and his fingers found her slick and wet for him. She cried out as his thumb teased her sensitive nub, arching on the bed. He should linger there, he knew. He should take his time and pleasure her properly and he would.
Next time.
This time he knew what she wanted.
He didn’t reach for a condom. He didn’t need one. She was pregnant already, with his child in her belly.
He stroked the flat of his hand over her mound, over that belly, over one perfect breast that would feed his child, while he steadied his swaying erection with the other, finding her centre, finding her hot and slick and oh, so sweet.
And, oh God, he thought as he entered her in one long thrust, and she angled her hips to meet him, so welcoming.
He kissed her then, in that exquisite moment of joining, making love to her mouth while buried to the hilt inside her.
It was mind-shattering.
And then he moved and it got better.
He groaned. He would not last. It had been a long time. Too long. And her needy cries and hungry fingers on his skin told him she needed this as much as he did.
Maybe more.
She moved both with him and against him, tight and hot around him, and so perfect he wanted to control it and stay this way for ever.
His traitorous body wouldn’t let him, the slip and slide of flesh against flesh compelling and urgent and unable to be withstood.
And when she came apart around him, any last shred of control was blown away in the fallout.
With a cry he unleashed himself inside her, pumping into her perfect body as her muscles tightened around him and urged him on.
Spent, he rolled off her, tucking her close against him as ragged breathing eased and their bodies calmed. He kissed her hair and she nestled into him.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered and he kissed her on the head again. He lay like that in the dark, listening as her breathing steadied and feeling her body relax as she slipped inexorably towards sleep.
How had they come to this place, he wondered, where he was so comfortable with her staying—where he was comfortable with the concept of her having his child?
Where he was happy with it?
When had the change occurred?
And why?
He had no answers as the woman beside him slumbered in his arms. Maybe tomorrow, with the cool clear light of a new day, it would make more sense.
Already he looked forward to the morning, but for more reasons than that alone. Because come the new day the woman beside him would awaken and they would have sex again. Come the new day she might be feeling better and more in the mood for talking.
Surely then she would remember to tell him about the baby.