CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
For some reason , Rose had imagined Diaz’s Spanish home would be an ultra-modern villa in the heart of a bustling city like his parents’ home. Instead, they were driven to a whitewashed layered Moorish-style villa framed by high palm trees, and cut into the rocks of a cove where the sea lapped up to the travertine marble steps that in turn led to sprawling lawns and the vast outdoor living areas.
‘What do you think?’ he asked when they were standing in the part-shaded outdoor dining area with its own bar, an industrial-sized barbecue and huge inbuilt pizza oven, gazing out over the sun slowly setting on the horizon of the calm sea. The babies were by their feet, sleeping in their carrycots.
Still unable to look properly at him after all the memories dredged up by the horrible dream that had been no dream but a replay of a time it hurt her heart to remember, she could only answer truthfully. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Inspiration to start taking photos again?’
The studio she’d created for her photography had been closed since Mrs Martinez’s stroke. Rose hadn’t picked up her camera since the night the twins were conceived. She’d taken hundreds of pictures of the girls on her phone but her camera remained stored away.
‘One day,’ she answered, before changing the subject. ‘Coincidence that you’re living in a private cove?’
‘Devon always felt more like home than Madrid. I always knew I wanted something with a similar feel to it.’
‘Even though I tainted the feel of it with my malign presence?’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I didn’t. You did.’ The fog of the last five months had acted like a blanket on their history. The only time she’d vaguely shaken it off had been when she’d put a stop to Diaz sleeping over at the house, a scratching awareness that she must not allow herself to become accustomed to or reliant on his constant presence. He was the father of her children and proving himself an amazing father but she’d be a fool to think the entente cordiale they’d unspokenly entered could last. At some point, Diaz’s inherent loathing of her would resurface, even if he did temper it for their daughters’ sake.
That’s what her dream had been about. A needed reminder and warning.
‘Then I apologise.’
So shocked was Rose at this unexpected apology that she whipped her gaze to him.
His stare continued to take in the horizon before he gave a brief nod. ‘Let me introduce you to the staff.’
As unnerved by the apology as the dream, she tautly quipped, ‘Do they know I’m the daughter of your grandmother’s housekeeper? Or shall I tell them I belong downstairs too, so to speak?’
‘Rose, stop it,’ he said quietly. ‘You know I never thought that.’
‘Do I?’ Lifting Amelia’s carrycot, she gave a quick smile. ‘Not that it matters any more. The only thing that does matter is our girls, so make the introductions and then you can show me to our room. I want to get their stuff unpacked before they wake for their bottle.’ If she’d known travelling was a sure-fire bet to make them fall asleep, she’d have taken them out for evening drives before bed.
She headed inside the way she’d come, into the magnificent living area, chiding herself for letting emotions surface when she needed to keep them locked away, especially from him.
But her resolve lasted only until they reached the bedrooms.
‘Where’s the cot?’ she asked as she scanned her appointed room, uncaring of its feminine beauty when all she could see was what wasn’t there. Diaz had assured her he’d had the same cot commissioned for the Devon house installed here.
‘In the adjoining room.’
‘Can you get it brought in here please?’
She heard him take a deep breath. ‘No.’
‘But there’s plenty of room in here for it.’
Diaz folded his arms across his chest and braced himself for what must come. ‘It is time for them to move into a room of their own. You need to sleep.’
She rounded on him, her captivating beauty dark with anger. ‘That is not a decision for you to make. Bring the cot in here, right now.’
‘No. I’m sorry, Rose, but we need to start as we mean to go on. They will only be in the room next to you and—’
‘I’m not going from room to room when they wake when all I have to do is lean over when they’re right next to me.’
‘I don’t expect you to. Their nannies will go to them.’
Her furious shock was so powerful he felt it like a slap to his skin.
‘Their nannies ?’ she yelled. ‘You’ve gone behind my back and employed nannies ?’
On cue, the girls woke up. In unison, their faces screwed up and they began crying.
‘See what you’ve done?’ she said, her voice only a few decibels lower. ‘You’ve upset them.’
No, you have with your shouting, he wisely decided not to say. He’d prepared himself for upset.
When they’d taken a girl each and were pacing the room, gently bouncing them to soothe them, he said, ‘I didn’t want to go behind your back but I didn’t see an alternative.’
‘What, other than the alternative of letting me be a mother to my own children!’
‘Nothing and no one can take that from you, Rose, but you’re exhausted. You’ve been raising twins without any family to ease the pressure when I’m away—’
‘That’s because I don’t have any family, unless you want to count my father, who lives on the other side of the ruddy world!’
‘I know that, and I also know how badly you missed being able to hold them those first few days and how badly you feel about being unable to feed them yourself.’
Her face crumpled.
He moved closer to her. He’d had a feeling it was those issues that had been driving her to exhaustion. ‘None of that was your fault, Rose. You have nothing to make up for. You have done your best and you are a fantastic mother for it. All that matters is the love and care you’ve given to them, and you’ve given it in abundance and as a result we have two healthy, happy little girls.’
As if to prove his point, both girls had stopped crying. Josie’s mouth was aiming for Rose’s nose and Amelia was trying to insert a finger into Diaz’s ear.
‘It’s time you gave yourself a break,’ he continued. ‘Surviving on such little sleep isn’t good for anyone—much more of it and you’ll be a walking zombie.’ If he’d had doubts about employing nannies behind her back, Rose crying in her sleep on the plane had fortified his resolve. Even in the days when he’d despised the air she breathed, he would not have been able to endure that whimpering sound. ‘Just give the nannies a chance. You don’t have to use them every night if you don’t want, and if after, say, two weeks, you’re still not happy with the arrangement then we’ll rethink it.’
He could see her finally taking his point in. It was there in the dejection of her shoulders and the wobbling of her chin.
‘What if the girls don’t like them?’
Knowing he’d won, he relaxed. ‘Let’s introduce them and see how they take to them.’
* * *
Growing up, Rose had never thought of herself as poor. Her mother had been a whizz at making a little money go a long way and Rose had never gone without. They’d lived in a rented house in a Somerset town where everyone had to stretch their money and the local primary school’s used uniform sale had a queue before it opened. Rose and her mother had often been the first in it.
Moving to Devon and into the little cottage that came with her mother’s new job had been like entering a whole new world. The riches in Mrs Martinez’s manor house had been mind-blowing, a wealth Rose had never imagined. The sumptuousness of Diaz’s parents’ Madrid home, though less surprising by that point, had nonetheless been impressive.
None of what she’d experienced had prepared her for Diaz’s home. She’d known he’d created his own vast fortune in the nine years since his university graduation but, restlessly exploring in the early hours while the house slept, the baby monitor clutched in her hand, she realised his wealth was something else. In the underground garage, a fleet of supercars she couldn’t name but instinctively knew cost the price of a decent house each. That was on top of the cars he drove and was driven in when in England. Where his grandmother had been content to employ a housekeeper and his parents a handful of domestic employees, Diaz had a fleet of staff that rivalled his fleet of cars in numbers.
The villa itself was deceptive. Anyone looking at it from the outside would assume someone incredibly rich owned it, but it was only when you were inside and able to focus on all the detailing and the abundance of seamlessly blended ancient and modern artwork, and the labyrinth of airy, white-walled rooms the external dimensions only hinted at, that you realised this was the home of someone with unimaginable wealth.
Rose supposed her inheritance from Mrs Martinez meant she would be considered unimaginably rich by most people’s standards. Even after throwing away half her inheritance to access the poker game and force Diaz’s attention, she had enough left in the bank to see her comfortably through for the rest of her life. But nothing like this. Not even close. In comparison, she was like her mother making a little go a long way.
It was unnerving for reasons she couldn’t comprehend. As were the little touches she’d noticed to make the place more toddler friendly. Their daughters were a long way from being toddlers. Months and months. So why the safety locks on the kitchen cupboard doors and the clear plastic corner protectors on all the tables?
And why a freshly painted playroom filled with more unopened boxes of toys than would be found in a toddler toy store and the clearly new fencing around the kidney-shaped swimming pool area?
Overactive imagination, she told herself when she reached the top of the staircase that led to the sleeping quarters. Overactive imagination and sleep deprivation…
The door opposite her appointed room opened.
Her heart had already jumped into her throat before Diaz emerged, tousle-haired, wearing only a pair of navy swim shorts. He had a towel slung over his shoulder.
He paused. Took her in with a long stare. Quietly, he said, ‘ Buenos dias , Rose. You’re up early.’
Painfully aware that she was wearing night clothes—having failed to chuck night wear in with her beach bag of clothing, a pair of silk shorts pyjamas and mid-thigh-length silk robe had been delivered and laundered for her before she’d gone to bed—and even more painfully aware of Diaz’s even greater lack of clothing, she self-consciously tightened the sash of her robe. ‘I could say the same about you.’
‘I like to swim before the world wakes up and demands my time.’ His gaze narrowed as he studied her face. ‘Did you sleep?’
‘A little.’ She didn’t know where to put her own gaze. The sexual awareness she had for Diaz, born that awful day in Madrid when she’d been seventeen, had all but disappeared since the birth. Being this close to him virtually naked, his tanned, rangy muscular body with its smattering of dark hair across the perfectly defined chest and abdomen only feet from where she stood…
Her awareness must have been blanketed in the same fog as their shared history because she could feel it awakening, and as prickles danced on her skin and her veins thickened, an even stronger charge pulsed, an image forming, of gently encircling his flat, brown nipples with her tongue, and suddenly the memory of his taste was right there in her mouth, as vivid as it had been the night they’d made their babies.
Her heart racing into a burr, she hurriedly fixed her stare on the terracotta flooring beneath her feet and wished for its coolness to seep into her heating bloodstream and freeze the memories into oblivion.
‘And the girls?’ he asked in the same low voice.
God only knew how she was able to speak. ‘They’ve been asleep since eleven.’ It was the first time they’d slept through the night.
‘Spanish air must suit them.’
‘That, or they’re exhausted from the travelling.’
From the periphery of her vision, she saw him raise a non-committal shoulder. ‘Time will tell. So why didn’t you sleep? Keeping one ear open in case they woke up?’
She nodded. She’d agreed to testing out the nannies but cold feet had seen her put her cold foot down about them attending the girls through the night until they’d got used to them. Luckily for Diaz’s perfect nose, he hadn’t argued. ‘I should check on them.’
‘It’s only six o’clock. Let them sleep a little longer.’ Casually, he added, ‘Join me for a swim?’
Taken aback at the offer, Rose’s gaze shot up before she could stop it and locked onto his. Locked fast.
A pulse of electricity shifted the air around them…and pulsed in his eyes.
Powerless to break the hold of their stares, a wave of scalding heat rose inside her from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.
The pulse in his eyes darkened into a hooded, unmistakably sensuous gleam.
Slowly, he straightened.
Shivers let loose inside her. The scalding heat intensified, the act of breathing suddenly impossible.
His chest and shoulders rose, strong neck extending.
Rose tried to speak but her heart was thrashing so hard the beats were slamming into her throat.
Time stood suspended until, finally, he took a long inhalation and gave a short decisive nod. The smallest smile curled his lips. ‘You know where to find me if you wish to join me.’
And then the air shifted again as his mostly naked body moved past her and disappeared down the stairs.
It was a long while before Rose was capable of moving her own body.
* * *
Diaz swam his usual lengths of the pool. He’d always enjoyed swimming but since becoming master of his own destiny, he’d taken to doing fifty laps daily wherever he happened to be in the world. For years he’d kept the routine, right until he’d moved back to his grandmother’s home after her stroke. It was Rose’s presence that had stopped his daily swims. And it was Rose fully in his mind now as he thrashed through the water. Rose, a year after he’d caught her smoking drugs by his parents’ swimming pool.
The charge of awareness he’d felt that hot day in Madrid had kept him away from Devon for much of the following year. That, and his singular failure to eradicate the image of Rose in a white bikini.
Dios , he’d watched her blossom from a skinny waif into a captivating beauty without even noticing, and he’d been sickened with himself for the way he’d finally noticed. Sickened with the way it had made him feel.
Six visits he’d made home that following year. The first had been for Amelia Gregory’s funeral. He would never, for as long as he lived, forget the white-faced desolation of her only child. Rose’s grief had been so complete that not even Diaz had complained when his grandmother insisted she move into the main house. Not at that point, anyway.
The fourth visit to Devon had been for Rosaria’s nineteenth birthday months later. She’d just completed her first year at university and Rose, recently turned eighteen, had completed her final senior school exam. His intention to take his sister out to celebrate her birthday had been thwarted when she’d announced she would be going to Rose’s school prom as Rose’s plus one, then going to an after-party, overbearing big brothers most definitely not invited.
He’d known something bad would happen that night. Some sixth sense weighing down in his guts had stopped him sharing a bottle of wine with his grandmother that warm summer evening. And so, when his phone had rung with his sister’s name, he’d taken a deep breath before answering. ‘Rosaria?’
‘Diaz, it’s Rose,’ a panicking voice had said.
‘What’s happened?’ he’d snapped.
‘Rosaria’s overdosed. The ambulance is on its way…’
‘Where are you?’
He’d arrived at the address to find his baby sister being wheeled into the back of an ambulance and a group of crying partygoers huddled by his car.
‘Who provided the drugs?’ he’d demanded as he’d slammed his door shut. ‘Tell me now or I will hold each of you culpable.’
‘Rose brought them,’ one of them had said tearfully.
In the back of the ambulance, his unconscious sister. Sobbing beside her, Rose.
‘Get out,’ he’d snarled.
‘Diaz, I…’
‘I said get out ,’ he’d roared.
White faced and shaking, she’d obeyed.
She had still been white faced and shaking when he’d returned many hours later to his grandmother’s, after it had been established his sister was expected to make a full recovery. To that day, he had no idea how Rose made it from the party address to his grandmother’s house. At the time he hadn’t cared to ask. At the time he’d been too intent on releasing his fury, shouting so loudly and viciously that his grandmother had intervened.
‘Diaz, it wasn’t Rose’s fault.’
‘Not her fault?’ he’d shouted. ‘She provided the damned drugs!’
‘I didn’t ,’ she’d protested.
‘See, not only is she a drug dealer but she’s a liar too!’ he’d yelled at his grandmother before rounding back on Rose. ‘It’s already been confirmed that it was you, and I’ll make damned sure the police know it too…’
‘You will do no such thing,’ his grandmother had cut in. ‘Whoever provided the drugs—and if Rose says it wasn’t her then I believe her—no one forced Rosaria to take them. Your sister has developed a drug habit, Diaz.’
‘Bull.’
‘You’ve not been here.’ It was Rose who’d said that. Rose, who had been very much responsible for his avoidance of Devon and subsequent failure to notice his sister’s unhappy relationship with narcotics.
‘Rose, go to bed,’ his grandmother had said. ‘I’ll deal with this.’
And so Rose had disappeared upstairs to the bedroom he’d thought of as belonging to his parents, and his grandmother had sat him down and given him the truth about his sister’s drug habit, a habit both she and Rose had been increasingly concerned about and Rosaria increasingly devious about. His grandmother had told his parents but their attitude had been that all young people experimented and that she wasn’t doing anything they themselves hadn’t done, and that she’d grow out of it in her own time. The typical laxness he’d expected from his feckless parents.
His grandmother had been the one who’d decided not to tell Diaz. She’d feared he would overreact and that Rosaria’s rebellious nature would see her rail against him and push her deeper into a habit that could easily flip into an addiction. Even as angry as Diaz had been, he’d known his grandmother had acted for what she’d—mistakenly, in his opinion—thought was the best.
Not long after his grandmother had gone to bed, Rose had crept back down, and cringed when she’d found him alone in the unlit kitchen, the only illumination that early morning coming from the full moon.
‘That’s right, run away,’ he’d sneered when she’d turned to flee.
She’d turned back to face him. She’d been wearing a short nightdress, her braless high breasts jutting against it, her dirty blonde hair loose and messy… Bed hair. She’d cleaned her face but remnants of make-up had ringed her eyes. She’d been as dishevelled and sexy a sight as he’d ever seen; a sight that had only made him hate her more.
‘You’re poison, do you know that?’
This time she hadn’t cringed. She’d folded her arms, pushing her high breasts even higher, and looked him square in the eye. ‘No, it just suits you to believe that.’
‘You fed my sister drugs.’
‘No. Rosaria brought them.’
Rage burning back up in him, he’d kicked his stool away and prowled over to her. ‘You might have my grandmother fooled, but you don’t fool me. My sister was an innocent until you came into our lives.’
She’d stepped back against the counter and lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Then you must be the fool if you really believe that.’
He’d clasped her shoulders and brought his face down to hers. He’d been so close the mintiness of her breath and remnants of the sultry perfume she’d drenched herself in before she’d led his sister away to near death had swirled headily into his senses. ‘You are like Circe,’ he’d whispered, sliding his hands up her throat and spreading his fingers over her silky-smooth cheeks in a clasp. He’d felt the beat of her pulse beneath his little finger. ‘Beautiful on the outside but filled with malignancy.’ He’d brushed his mouth against her wide lips…such succulent lips… Heard the quickening of her breath. ‘I pity the man who falls under your spell and tastes your poisoned fruit.’
Headily aware of how close he was to taking a taste of the fruit for himself, he’d let her go and walked away.
And now, seven years later, his body still vibrating from the charge of awareness that had pulsed between them outside their bedrooms, Diaz hauled himself out of the pool and castigated himself for how nearly he’d succumbed to the irresistible temptation that was Rose again.
For the first time in so very long he’d watched the flame of awareness reawaken in her. Felt the flame that lived inside him rouse in response.
Only the instinct that came from knowing her so well had enabled him to temper that flame.
It was too soon.
When he made his move, he needed it to be with the real Rose, not the Rose with eyes bruised from exhaustion and a fog in her brain, but the Rose who didn’t shy away from confrontation and always, always matched fire with fire.
The Rose whose near-death still brought him out in a cold sweat just to remember.
Diaz had spent half his entire adult life fighting the toxic spell she’d cloaked him with but, as he’d learned that fateful night, one taste of her poisoned fruit created a singular hunger that neither time nor distance could erase. God alone knew how hard he’d tried to erase it.
Some fights could not be won.
For good or ill, Rose was as much a part of him as their babies were. And he was as much a part of her.
* * *
She must have imagined it, Rose told herself fretfully as she paced her bedroom and wished her babies to wake for the distraction they would provide. She’d had a little more sleep than she’d become accustomed to but nowhere near enough. She would need to sleep for a week to catch up on all the sleep she’d missed these last five months. Sleep for a month!
Sleep deprivation was proven to cause hallucinations, so that’s what the look she’d seen in Diaz’s eyes must have been. A hallucination evoked because her awareness of him had uncoiled from its dormancy and for the first time since the birth of their daughters, she’d been entirely alone with him. That was the only explanation.
She’d known since that awful night Rosaria almost died that he desired her and that he despised his desire almost as much as he despised her. The chemistry between them had simmered like poison for seven long years until it had finally taken possession of them both.
It made her want to weep to remember how beautiful it had been. His tenderness. The care he’d taken of her once he’d realised…
She squeezed her eyes shut to block the memories. Remembering was unbearable. It only brought home her desolation when she’d found his note where his head should have been.
In all those years his desire had always been wrapped up in resentment, the pulse of attraction in his eyes always accompanied by a twist of his lips.
There had been no twisted lips when his hooded stare had met hers that night.
And there had been no twisted lips when their eyes had collided that morning and that electrical pulse had ensnared them.