CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
The door closed , enclosing them in the cab. A little of the tension contained in Diaz released. Enough to snatch a breath. And inhale a trace of Rose’s beautiful, toxic scent.
‘You think it acceptable to cut and run after dumping that on me?’ he demanded tersely.
The woman who’d dumped the bombshell rested her head back and gazed at the cab’s ceiling. ‘You are hardly in a position to complain about me cutting and running after what you did.’
There was a pounding in his head. ‘So this is payback?’
‘No.’ She turned her gaze to him. ‘Just pointing out your hypocrisy. I left so you could digest what I’d told you in your own time and without my hateful presence there to distract you.’
‘How can I digest that? You tell me you’re pregnant with twins and then you disappear?’
‘I didn’t disappear, Diaz. I left. Even if you’ve deleted my number, you know how to get hold of it and get hold of me. You certainly know where I live.’
The implication being that he’d done the opposite and made it damn near impossible for her to get hold of him. That it was an implication that happened to be the truth did nothing to still the tempest raging in him.
The cab driver rapped loudly on the plastic-glass thing separating them from him. ‘Where to?’ By the impatience in his voice, it was a question he’d already asked.
Rose closed her eyes a moment then gave the name of a hotel in Westminster. The cab set off.
Diaz twisted in his seat to face her. They’d both positioned themselves at the furthest point to the other. He made an effort to speak in a cordial tone. ‘You’re staying in London?’
‘Only for tonight. I’m going home in the morning.’ There was weariness in her voice.
‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘I’ve got a train booked.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘If I drive, we can talk. We have a lot to discuss.’ The lives of the two babies currently nestled in her belly. His babies. Their babies. Created during the one night of his whole life he’d never wanted to have to think of again.
He’d crept out of her bed and walked out of their Devon home with a stomach full of lead knowing he must never see her again.
How could he have not considered the possibility that their carelessness— his carelessness—could have had such huge, life-changing ramifications?
‘And many months to discuss it,’ she said.
‘Months? Rose, you’re pregnant now .’ In the blink of an eye, the future he’d created for himself far from the toxicity of all the feelings she evoked in him had been ripped away. Far from excising her from his life for good, he was going to be tied to her for ever.
He’d despised her from the start. It had been irrational then, he understood that now, but his grandmother’s Devon house had been the one place that had felt like home to him. The one place he and Rosaria could simply be. Their parents’ home—and he used that word loosely—in Madrid had felt more like a high-end, stylish museum than a place to live and relax. Like many high-end museums, visits were by appointment only, even for the fabulously chic owners’ children.
Diaz’s fabulously chic parents had sent the usual driver in the Bentley to collect their two children from their respective hideously expensive boarding schools, and the two Martinez children had been driven to their grandmother’s full of plans for how they would spend their summer. Diaz had seen it as his responsibility to keep Rosaria entertained. Keep her safe. Her uncomplicated adoration of him had made him feel like a prince in comparison to how their parents’ indifference had made him feel.
And then they’d arrived and discovered a new housekeeper had replaced the retired Joan. A new live-in housekeeper with a skinny daughter in tow who was a similar age to Rosaria. That had been it. His little shadow had left him without a thought and attached herself to Rose, and, Dios , had he resented Rose for it. Resented that this stranger had treated the place he’d considered his home as her home. Resented, too, his grandmother’s obvious adoration of this wild child who’d had no volume control, a seeming allergy to footwear, never walked when she could skip or run, and whose presence had infected the entirety of the one place he’d felt he belonged.
Diaz liked to think he’d have got over his irrational resentment if she hadn’t become such a bad influence on Rosaria, an influence that had grown as the girls strode through adolescence. If not for Rose, his sister would still be a part of his life, not living in a hippy cult in Nevada, poisoning her mind and body with all manner of drugs and refusing to take his calls.
It was almost beyond credulity that the wild child who’d led his sister astray would be the one to lead a clean adult life. He almost wished he had evidence that she’d never really changed her rebellious ways and so could go for sole custody, but having lived with her for months while they shared the care of his dying grandmother, and having watched her like a hawk throughout, he had to accept that, in this regard, Rose had changed.
Besides, if he was to try and take the children from her, his grandmother, may she be resting in peace, would see that he was sent to hell for it. He knew damn well she was already looking down on him with sorrow that he’d never intended to keep his marital promise.
His grandmother had always been blind to Rose’s faults. Always forgiven and excused every transgression.
‘Indeed I am,’ Rose agreed. ‘ I’m pregnant, not you, so don’t think you can start throwing your weight around.’
‘I don’t throw my weight around .’
She speared him with a stare.
‘Don’t give me that look,’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t know what you want from me but—’
‘Nothing but a bottle of gin, but that’ll have to wait until I finish breastfeeding.’
‘Enough of the jokes,’ he snarled.
‘It’s either make jokes or let myself lose my rag like you’re on the verge of doing.’
He hated that she was right.
Breathing deeply, he rolled his neck. ‘Let me make one thing clear,’ he said tightly. ‘You might be the one carrying them but they are my children too, and I will be a father to them.’
Her blue eyes flashed. ‘I know. That’s why I told you.’
‘Then as we are in agreement in that regard, I will drive you home tomorrow because I’m moving back in.’
‘No and no, and before you explode, let me make one thing clear.’ There wasn’t the slightest shred of amusement on her face. ‘When our year of marriage is up, we’re still divorcing.’
‘I’m counting the days until I can file the divorce papers, but you are not keeping me from my children,’ he bit back. ‘Try it and I will fight you, and don’t think I won’t, and I will win.’ Even if she did have the funds to fight him right back. Funds she’d inherited from his grandmother.
‘For heaven’s sake, Diaz, will you stop assuming the worst of me?’ she cried in exasperation. ‘When the babies are born you can be as involved as you want to be, but I’m carrying twins and that means extra risks and I’m not willing to risk their health or mine with the stress that living with you would bring.’
His barely controlled temper rose back up his throat. ‘You are calling me a health risk?’
‘Quite frankly, yes. My blood pressure has already risen and I’m barely halfway through the pregnancy.’
‘You can’t stop me moving back in. The house isn’t in your sole name yet.’ Unbeknownst to either of them, his grandmother had long ago transferred the house deeds into their joint names, long before she’d made her one request that neither of them had been able to refuse—that they marry.
‘You’re right, I can’t, so I’m going to appeal to whatever shred of decency you have left inside you and ask—beg—you, for the sake of our babies, to let me get on with the pregnancy alone.’
‘You have a responsibility to bring the babies safely into the world but I have a responsibility, as their father, to help you do that.’
‘And how is it going to help me when you and I can’t even be civil to each other?’ she demanded. ‘You can come to all the scans and appointments and other medical pregnancy stuff, but please, nothing more than that. Just sharing the same air as you raises my blood pressure and that isn’t good for them or for me.’
The cab came to a stop. In the distance, Westminster Abbey. He barely registered it.
Neither of them moved.
‘Please, Diaz,’ she beseeched. ‘I’ve put our babies first by telling you about the pregnancy when I could have kept you in the dark, and now I need you to put them first too. Please. For their sake.’
And this was the danger of Rose, he thought dimly as he gazed into the large blue eyes brimming with an emotion that made his heart pump far harder than it should. The flashes of vulnerability. They affected him in a way nothing else did, caused a painful ache in his chest he’d never learned how to erase.
Dios , how could one woman inflict so many contrary emotions in one man?
He’d been rash in his declaration that he move back into the Devon house with her. And that was another danger of Rose. The burning toxicity that flowed through his veins when he was with her. It always stopped him thinking rationally and brought out the impulsive side to his nature.
Rose was his personal poison, and there was no antidote.
‘Let me be sure I understand things,’ he said, speaking quietly as he gathered his thoughts and made another attempt to quell his inner turbulence. ‘You are saying that I can accompany you to all pregnancy-related appointments but that is the extent of my involvement with the pregnancy? But when the babies are born you will not try to stop me being a father to them?’
‘All I’m saying is let me bring them safely into the world without any pressure or stress and then yes, of course, you can be as hands-on a father as you wish to be.’
‘There is no of course , not with you.’
She closed her eyes and expelled a slow breath. ‘You have just proven my point. You assume the worst in everything I say or do. You always have.’
Now he was the one to expel a slow breath. ‘Not always,’ he rebutted softly.
Their eyes locked back together, shared memories flowing between them of those months when they’d pulled together and worked in harmony for his grandmother’s sake, and he remembered how his grandmother’s blind faith in Rose had been paid back tenfold in the tender love and care Rose had given her, and he felt it again, that ache, that yearn to cross the invisible divide they’d both erected between them…
They’d crossed that divide four months ago. Smashed it into pieces. The price they both had to pay for it was more than either of them could ever have imagined.
He cleared his throat. ‘And the birth? Am I allowed to share that with you?’
Her chin wobbled. Blinking hard, she swallowed and nodded. ‘They’re your babies too. You should be there to greet them into the world. All I ask is that you put aside your loathing of me for it.’ The semblance of a smile broke free. ‘I’ve heard that labour can be a bit painful so I’d much rather not have you glowering at me while I’m going through it.’
* * *
Rose sat on a rock in the small, private cove reached through the bottom of the garden, and watched the waves crash onto the shore. Despite living by the coast for so many years, she’d never had much interest in the sea. Since discovering she was pregnant though, she’d found herself taking long beach walks, the fresh sea air clearing the demons in her head as she marvelled at the changing nature of it all, how one day there was barely a ripple as far as the eye could see, the next a swirling tempest.
It had been weeks since she’d found the energy for her daily walk. Now it took all her reserves just to reach the cove. That morning had taken more of her reserves than normal.
Diaz was coming over.
It would be the first time he’d been to the house since that night.
She’d not felt that she could refuse. Not when he was coming with a specially commissioned twin cot for the babies.
Only four weeks to go and then their babies would be sleeping in it. The complicated nature of Rose’s blood pressure and other warning signs meant she’d been advised to have a caesarean at thirty-eight weeks. She hadn’t argued. All she wanted was for her babies to make it into the world whole and healthy. Diaz hadn’t argued either. On this one thing, their thoughts were perfectly aligned.
She hadn’t seen enough of him to know if their thoughts aligned on other aspects of parenthood. He’d accompanied her to all her medical appointments but that had been it. He’d taken her request to go through the pregnancy without his blood-pressure-raising presence seriously, and for that she was grateful. She was grateful, too, for the regular thoughtful messages he sent, checking in that she was okay. His primary concern was the health of their babies but she knew in his own sick, twisted way, that there was an underlying concern for her health too. She just wished her heart didn’t skip to see his name flash on the screen. Wished she didn’t have such a strong awareness whenever she sat in the cove that a twenty-minute walk along the beach would take her to the house he’d bought a few months ago so he could be close at hand if she needed him.
She wished a lot of things, none of which could ever come true.
Her phone pinged a message.
Be with you in ten.
Her heart thumped, and she closed her eyes with a long sigh.
There was a pain beneath her ribs, and she rubbed it as she walked—waddled—up the gentle path to the garden. Her head was hurting too. She’d long resembled a beached whale but today she felt especially bloated.
Passing the small housekeeper’s cottage she’d lived in with her mother, she blinked back the tears that had been swelling more frequently than they’d done in years. Grief, Rose had learned, was like the sea. Some days you barely felt a ripple. Others, it was like a tempest of it had unleashed. There had been more tempest days than calm in recent months. She’d never needed her mother more.
Wiping a falling tear, she sniffed the emotions back and continued to the house where her every memory of the man who haunted its walls had been born.
And there he was, his tall rangy figure coming round the side of the old manor house, dark brown hair blowing in the cold breeze, wearing dark jeans and a tan leather jacket. Despite being only a quarter English, he’d never felt the cold like she had.
Her breath caught in her throat and for a beat she wished she had her camera around her neck.
There had been a day, years ago, when she’d been sixteen and thrilled with her first professional camera, a Christmas present from Mrs Martinez, and she’d taken pictures of anything and everything. Diaz had been alone in the old-fashioned drawing room reading something on his tablet. The Christmas decorations had been taken down but he’d filled the room so well with his still presence that Rose had barely noticed their absence. She’d taken the photo of him without thinking.
He’d looked up at her, she remembered. Remembered too the long pause before his lips had twisted and he’d asked what she thought she was doing, taking sneaky pictures of him.
Mortified, not just at being caught but at the compulsion to take his picture in the first place, she’d given him a sulky smile and said it was only the one picture and that it was for her dartboard.
Now, nine years later, she saw him clock her again. Noted the hesitation in his gait before he crossed the lawn to her.
He rammed his hands in his jeans pockets. ‘You have been for a walk?’
Feeling suddenly and unaccountably awkward, she looked down at his expensive black boots and answered quietly, ‘Just to the cove.’
She felt his stare pierce her but he made no comment. She could only imagine what the restraint of keeping a civil tongue in his head around her was costing him, and wondered how long after the babies were born he could keep this civility up. Probably until he judged she was fully recovered from the birth. Her head was hurting too much for her to think how she would play it when that happened and normal loathing resumed.
Walking in step, they reached the boot room in silence. Rose swallowed as she pulled her house keys out and unlocked the door.
Instead of following her into the cramped space, Diaz took a step back. ‘I’ll get the cot.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll unlock the front door.’ Silly, really, as he still had his own keys. She should ask for them back, especially now that he’d signed his share of the house over to her.
Mrs Martinez’s dream of them making this house a proper marital home had lasted less time than their marriage. Another four months and their marriage would be dissolved, and the dreams that had come vividly to life for one passionate and beautiful night would dissolve with them.
Those dreams had already dissolved, and Rose blinked the remnants away knowing they’d only resurfaced because this was the first time Diaz had entered the house since that fateful night.
‘Do you still want it in your room?’ he asked once he’d brought the huge box inside.
‘Please.’ She couldn’t meet his stare. ‘Next to the bed.’ The bed they’d conceived their babies in. ‘Either side will be fine.’
Carrying the box to the stairs, he stopped before taking the first step and looked directly at her. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
She shrugged. ‘Just feeling very pregnant today. Why?’
His green eyes narrowed in speculation before he gave a short smile. ‘You must look more pregnant than last time. Rest your feet. I won’t be long getting this together.’
Rose turned away so she wouldn’t have to watch him climb the stairs.
* * *
For all that he’d pre-set his mind into ‘get done and get out’ out mode, Diaz still found he needed to brace himself before crossing the threshold into Rose’s bedroom.
How he’d resented his grandmother for giving this room to her. It had been the room his parents used when they visited. His grandmother’s dry, ‘But they’ve only visited once in the last four years and there are three other rooms they can use if they ever grace my door again,’ had cut no ice with him. The interloper had inveigled herself even more tightly into their lives. That his grandmother had allowed the move into the bedroom to be a permanent thing once Rose finished senior school, even after she’d caused his sister’s near-death and been the catalyst for Rosaria cutting him from her life, had angered him like nothing else ever had… Apart from when Rose denied culpability.
He breathed deeply, refusing to let memories of that sickening row surface. Especially the way it had ended. Especially that.
Except he was now in her room for only the second time since she’d taken occupancy of it and having to fight the memories from that one other time from surfacing too.
He should have got one of his team to bring the cot over and put it together, not let his caveman instinct of doing it himself override his rationality.
He wanted to put together his babies’ bed but didn’t want to see the bed they’d been created in and deal with all the memories that came with it, and so he blurred it from his sight…but couldn’t blur the neat, white dresser with the baby change mat on it, or the pretty box filled with tiny nappies. Couldn’t blur the calming, feminine aesthetic of a room that had once been more functional than lived in.
Despite his intention to ‘get done and get out’ his gaze was drawn to the photo tiles artfully placed on the walls. Rose and her mother, Amelia. Rose’s mother alone on the beach with her eyes closed and her face tilted to the sun. Rose and his grandmother. Rose’s father and his wife and children in what Diaz presumed was the garden of their Australian home. Rose and Rosaria…
He tore his gaze from the pictures and got to work.
* * *
In the kitchen, Rose had turned the radio on so she didn’t have to hear Diaz move around her bedroom and be consumed with the memories of the one and only time he’d stepped foot inside it since his grandmother had insisted it be Rose’s all those years ago.
He’d been furious when he’d found out, she remembered painfully. Not that he’d said anything. He hadn’t needed to. Diaz’s fury had been etched on his face. He’d accepted Rose moving out of the housekeeper’s cottage and into the manor house after her mother’s death so she could complete her final school year, but hadn’t expected the move to become permanent. He’d thought she would complete her exams and then go to her father in Australia, a man she’d never lived with and hadn’t seen in the flesh since she was a baby; she was perfectly certain Diaz would have paid a one-way ticket to be rid of her for good.
Mrs Martinez had had other ideas.
‘This is your home, and I want you to stay. You’ve got your university place, and Plymouth’s only a short drive so you can still do your degree and still have all the fun that comes with student life, but you’re too young to be out in the world on your own,’ she’d said, even though Rose had recently turned eighteen. ‘And I’m too old to be in this rambling place on my own.’ She’d smiled. ‘Besides, I’d miss all your noise.’
‘That’s a really lovely offer,’ Rose had said, covering the elderly woman’s hand, ‘but what would Diaz say? You know how he feels about me.’
Mrs Martinez’s face had hardened. Clearly, she was remembering the terrible evening and terrible row that had taken place only weeks earlier. ‘I love my grandson but when it comes to you, he has a blind spot. I can do whatever I want in my own home, and what I want is your young, lively presence to live vicariously through.’
‘He’ll think I’m trying to take Rosaria’s place in your affections,’ Rose had warned.
‘Then he’s a fool because you earned your own place in it a long time ago. I don’t want to live on my own, Rose. Diaz is too busy conquering and travelling the world to visit as often as I’d like, and Rosaria…’ She’d sighed sadly. ‘Rosaria has chosen her path.’
Indeed she had, Rose now thought wearily. And it was a path Diaz still blamed Rose for Rosaria taking.
She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to think about that awful confrontation. Seven years had passed. It shouldn’t still have the power to hurt.
Movement in her belly was just the distraction she needed…except the accompanying stabbing sharpness wasn’t the usual discomfort she’d become used to since the babies had grown so big inside her. Close to tears with the pain, she rubbed at the spot with one hand, and stared intently at the other hand. Was she imagining it had swollen even more?
‘All done… What’s the matter?’
Rose looked from her swollen hand to Diaz, who’d appeared at the kitchen door. Tried to smother the panic suddenly gnawing at her. ‘I think we need to phone the midwife.’