‘That was the day you called me, wanting to set up a meeting. You said you’d been waiting for me to get back from LA. You said you’d missed me.’
‘I did miss you but I didn’t say I’d been waiting for you to get back from LA,’ he sharply corrected. ‘I said Livvy was in Sydney so it seemed logical to expect you to be home, as well.’
It jolted the swirling chaos in her mind into a sober reassessment. Nick’s recollection was more accurate than hers. He hadn’t lied to her. But he hadn’t told her the truth, either!
‘That was the day you decided to marry me, wasn’t it?’ she hurled at him.
‘The day I started considering a marriage with you,’ he admitted, not the least bit perturbed by the accusation. ‘No decision was made at that point.’
‘But what made you consider it, Nick? What got your mind thinking along lines it had never travelled before?’ she mocked savagely. ‘What was behind that call to me on November the fifteenth?’
She saw it in his eyes—the recognition of what she now knew—but he didn’t come straight out with it. He challenged for her information instead.
‘Why don’t you tell me, Tess?’
The silky invitation in his voice did not ring any warning bells in her raging mind. She saw it as another evasion, whipping her into laying out the truth in irrefutable terms.
‘That was the day your mother received a fabulous emerald necklace from your father, Enrique Ramirez,’ she punched out. ‘The day you received a packet from Brazil, informing you of your father’s death and laying down conditions for…’
‘Naming you as the woman I had to marry in order to gain an inheritance?’ Nick cut in, fury sparking into his eyes, lashing from his voice. ‘Did my mother go as far as that, Tess?’
Not quite.
Not quite but…the implication had been there because it neatly tied up loose ends in their family history.
Yet the violent turbulence emanating from Nick checked the fierce run of her own. She was no longer so sure of where he was coming from and belatedly her memory was murmuring that Nadia Condor came from a different place. In fact, there was only one safe place to be and she offered it to the man she still wanted to keep as her husband no matter how much grief he gave her.
‘Tell me the truth, Nick.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE truth…
The words rocketed around Nick’s brain, pounding out thoughts and feelings that hadn’t formed any insightful pattern because there’d been no need to stand back and define where he was at with Tess. He’d been living with her on a deeply intimate basis—time blurred by how good it was. She was his wife, the mother of his son. They were a family.
‘This is the truth,’ he insisted, reaching out, grabbing her hand, holding it tight, moving to pull her with him, striding for the bed. She couldn’t deny how they were in bed together.
‘Nick…’
The anguish in her voice goaded him into more volatile action. He swung and scooped her off her feet, cradling her tightly across his chest, his eyes stabbing through the frantic fear in hers. ‘This is the truth,’ he declared passionately, knowing Tess had nothing to fear from him. Absolutely nothing!
He laid her on the spill of gold and brown satin cushions, imprisoning her legs with his, the need to hold onto her urging him to cover her every possible move. His hands captured hers, stilling their wild flutter. He poured his whole life-force into crushing the doubts feeding her fear, his eyes meeting and holding hers with relentless intensity.
‘What you feel with me and what I feel with you…the owning…the deep sense of union…has it ever happened for you with anyone else, Tess?’ he demanded.
She remained defiantly silent, not prepared to surrender her soul to him. Fiery Tess. Icy Tess. Fighting him because of his mother’s bloody-minded interference.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not for you and not for me because it can only happen if the feelings are mutual, tapping into something so powerful it has to be unique to us.’
He paused, gathering himself to deliver more truth.
She was listening. She wasn’t straining against his hold. He could feel the whole focus of her being gathering its concentration on what he was saying, poised to sift every word for the worth of its meaning.
‘The truth is…you let my mother come into our home and destroy your trust in what we have together. My mother, who wouldn’t know truth if it hit her in the face!’
‘She might not know the truth but she hit me in the face with that date, Nick,’ came the fierce retaliation.
‘I did not marry you for money,’ he retorted just as fiercely.
‘No. You married me because I was probably the one woman you could think of who wouldn’t bother trying to get a slice of the fabulous Ramirez estate. The woman who already had so much money to burn…’
‘Stop it! Stop this absurd belittling of yourself! I won’t have it! You’re my wife because you’re the only woman I could envisage spending my life with. Having a child with. It has nothing to do with money!’
‘November the fifteenth!’ she hurled at him, her eyes flaring frustration with his refusal to attach any importance to that date.
‘Was the day I decided I would not live my life as my father had,’ he thundered back at her. ‘He disowned me in life and by God, I disown him in death! I am me, the man you married, Tess. Not my mother, grasping for all she can get. Not my father who took his pleasure without caring about the lives he left in his wake. I care about you and I care about our son and our marriage is not about money. If you can’t feel that…’
His eyes blazed into hers, intent on forcefully imprinting his truth. ‘You must feel it…’
Tess lay very still, absorbing the passion pumping from Nick, deeply moved by it yet wretchedly unsure how much of his caring was actually aimed at her. When his mouth crashed down onto hers, ruthlessly bent on making her feel it, she didn’t resist its wild marauding, letting her lips respond to every pressure he subjected them to, moving her tongue to the driving command of his, mentally registering every erotic sensation he incited and feeling the familiar bursts of desire building deep inside her body.
Just go with them, she told herself.
Nick might well have chosen to marry her to prove something about himself. If it wasn’t for money, she could live with being the wife of his choice. As the situation stood—according to Nick—she and Zack were the beneficiaries of his personal mission to become a family man instead of a philanderer.