Chapter Ten #2
After running herself a bath, Beth lay in it until the water ran cold. She kept stroking her stomach, her heart veering from wild excitement to wild terror.
When had conception happened? she wondered. It wasn’t like before. She hadn’t come off the pill this time. Had it been her stomach bug that had caused it, when she’d been too ill to take her pill? Could it have happened that quickly? Or had she just been sloppy?
Had she…had she been sloppy because her subconscious had been seeking a way to tie her to him forever?
She pinched the bridge of her nose and swallowed hard.
On Monday she’d book herself in to see an obstetrician. Xavi would want to come with her. Maybe the doctor could narrow the conception date. It didn’t matter. What did matter was reassurance that this baby was going to be fine, and that all the conditions were right so that it could live.
It was an assurance Beth knew in her heart could not be made. Life was too fickle and precarious for assurances like that.
She swallowed back more tears.
Xavi would be home soon. He would give her all the assurance she needed, and by sheer force of his will, make her wishes for their baby come true.
Xavi let himself into the apartment. The door had barely closed when an excited Diego bounded over to run rings around him.
And then Beth appeared, ravishing in a halter-neck electric-blue satin dress that plunged in a V to her midriff and fell to her feet.
A thin gold belt was wrapped around her waist, hooped gold earrings just visible beneath her loose, gleaming red hair.
He couldn’t fail to notice the apprehension on her beautiful face, and knew she was thinking about the last time he’d left her behind when he’d gone away on business. Smiling wanly, he drew her to him. ‘Mi vida, you look beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’ Her arms looped around his neck, her lips forming the upside-down heart that never failed to make his heart ache. ‘You look tired.’
‘I’m exhausted.’ He hadn’t slept in twenty-six hours.
A cock-up with the flight slot had seen his plane depart an hour later than it should have done.
What should have been a relatively short drive from the airport to his apartment had taken an hour thanks to numerous accidents and roadworks gridlocking the roads.
Her crystal-clear green eyes gazed into his. ‘We don’t have to go.’
‘We do. He’s holding it here in Madrid so I can attend.’ Though God knew he would give anything to get out of the party and spend the evening losing himself in his beautiful wife, but losing himself in his beautiful wife had already caused enough damage.
He kissed her gently so as not to smudge her lipstick. ‘Give me ten minutes to change.’
She nodded and lifted her chin for another kiss. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘A whisky fit for an alcoholic should do the trick.’
Her whole face creased into a smile. ‘That bad, is it?’
‘It’s better now I’m home with you.’
Somehow, her smile broadened. ‘Good. And when we get back, I’ll show you how much better it is to be home with me and how much I’ve missed you.’
He went to give her another non-lipstick-smudging kiss, but her lips parted and, with a sigh, her arms tightened around his neck and her tongue slipped into his mouth for a hungry kiss that told him more than any words how much she’d missed him.
For one sweet moment, he returned the hunger because, Dios, the nights in the bed of his Manhattan apartment had been excruciating without her.
With great reluctance, he broke the kiss. ‘Ten minutes, mi vida.’
‘I’ll bring the drink up to you.’
He put a finger to her lipstick-smudged lips and shook his head. ‘We are already late. If you come into the bedroom…’
Her eyes gleamed with knowing, but she stepped back gracefully, laughing. ‘Go on, go get ready.’
He swooped in for one more kiss, then bounded to their bedroom, reenergised.
Having showered on the plane, he headed straight to the dressing room and donned a black tuxedo and black bow tie. Polished shoes on, hair swept back, cologne splashed on his neck and cheeks, and he was good to go.
Beth thought it just as well Gustav’s party was being held at Madrid’s Club Giroud, an uber-exclusive private members’ club a short drive from their apartment. Exhaustion was etched on Xavi’s face, although he’d certainly livened up since arriving home.
She’d been to Club Giroud only once before, when they’d first been together.
Xavi had taken her there for her nineteenth birthday, just weeks before he’d ended it.
She thought it best not to mention that to him.
There would be enough talk about their break-up when they got home and she made her confession and told him about the pregnancy. Both pregnancies.
For now, she would hug her news to herself and let him circulate and network with his mind where it needed to be—on the business. Because there was no doubt that for Xavi, this party was business to him.
The birthday boy’s stare clocked them as soon as they stepped into the club’s vast basement.
Embracing them both in that non-embracing way the fashion world did so well, he said to Beth in his thick French accent, ‘You look well—I do believe you have lost weight since the wedding. Are you taking the injection?’
‘I’m afraid an old-fashioned stomach bug is responsible for the weight loss.’
He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Whatever achieves the needed results. You should look at taking it for those last ten or fifteen kilos. How is your grandmother?’
Digging her nails into Xavi’s palm to get him to loosen his angry grip at Gustav’s thoughtless rudeness, she grinned.
Compared to most of the stick insects that inhabited the fashion world, Beth was an elephant.
It didn’t bother her in the slightest. Xavi loved her curves, and that was good enough for her.
‘She’s doing well, although I think she’s only just recovered from all those shots you and Beno?t had her doing. ’
His cool face became suddenly animated. ‘That we had her doing? She drank us both under the table and then did the same at the wedding!’ Without a flicker, he readopted his usual impervious pose and turned his attention to Xavi. ‘I hear the Grimaldi deal has gone through.’
Xavi’s tone was as cool as Gustav’s, she noted. ‘It has, yes.’
‘As you are here, some quotes for the magazine?’
His fingers squeezed hers tightly again.
Sensing he was too angry at the slight Gustav had made about her weight to bother schmoozing the arsehole, Beth cut in with a bright, ‘Gustav, it’s your birthday party! Surely, you’re not planning to work? Let the quotes wait for a day or two.’
He considered this through narrowed eyes. ‘And you? Will you grant me a short interview?’
‘An interview about what?’ she asked, confused.
‘You are now one-half of the Rosbel Group and one of the richest women in Europe. You are also young and beautiful and married to this beautiful man. My readers—indeed, the world—will be waiting with avid interest to learn about you.’
She dug her nails into Xavi’s skin again. Mercifully, he loosened his hold before the blood supply to her fingers cut off. ‘Gus…may I call you Gus?’
He looked taken aback at the question, but then gave a short nod.
‘Gus,’ she said confidingly, ‘if I was going to grant an interview to anyone, it would be you, but I’m a very private person. I’ve not been raised in the spotlight or ever sought it, so I’d rather keep my privacy and stay behind the scenes, and let our relationship remain one of friends.’
He looked even more startled at the notion of friendship, a startlement that increased when a member of the club’s security team tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a note.
He read it, his eyes narrowing before his stare darted to them both with barely concealed excitement. ‘Excuse me, there’s something I need to attend to. I will find you later. Enjoy the party.’
Once he’d disappeared into the throng, Beth met Xavi’s tight stare. ‘Don’t let him get to you—he’s not worth it.’
Dark fury was alive in his eyes. ‘He’s not, but you are.’
‘If you’re talking about the weight jibe, then don’t worry about it. He probably thought he was being complimentary and doing me a favour.’
‘Bullshit. And his comment was bullshit, too. You don’t need to lose weight.’
‘Look around you. Half—more—of the women here are supermodels. They’re the women he sees and works with every day. In Gustav’s eyes, any woman over eight stone is fat.’
‘Then Gustav’s eyes need testing. Those women are nothing but clothes horses, and you’re not fat.’
‘They’re the clothes horses who sell the clothes your brands produce to the public. Thin sells. Fact.’
The dark fury faded. With the whisper of a smile playing on his lips, he leaned into her to whisper, ‘Thin sells, but curves are priceless, and your curves are the most priceless of all.’
Her smile turned into a beam.
‘And it’s our brands, not my brands. You’re equal majority shareholder.’
If they weren’t surrounded by approximately two hundred people, she would have used the opportunity to make part of her confession, but they were and so she let the moment pass and swallowed back her guilt with a sip of the sparkling water she’d swiped from a waitress when they’d walked in, and as she sipped, Xavi noticed what was in her glass.
‘Why the water?’
Because she couldn’t tell him she was pregnant during a party, either, she smiled and told a partial truth. ‘I’m feeling a bit queasy.’
‘Still?’
She shrugged to show it didn’t matter. ‘It’ll pass. Oh look, Griselda’s over there.’
Griselda was a doyenne of the fashion world, a true original and one of the only creatives whose company Xavi enjoyed rather than pretended to enjoy.
Soon, they were chatting and mingling, and when Beth escaped to the ladies’, it was with Xavi fully relaxed and back to his usual charming self.
The club’s basement ladies’ toilets were as lavish and ornate as the ones she’d used in the club’s dining room all those years back.
It smelled delicious, one of the many touches that made Club Giroud membership so sought after.
Beth touched up her lipstick and eyeliner thinking she’d have to get Xavi to bring her for a meal here again.
They could take a trip to Barcelona and try the Club Giroud there, too.
Or Athens. Or Paris. Each one had its own distinct style and flavour, and she was keen…
Her thoughts slipped away when she left the ladies’ and spotted a bald, rotund man wearing a red cummerbund with his tuxedo approach Xavi. Her blood turned to ice before her brain connected what her eyes were seeing to the online picture she’d seen of him.
It was Paul Haldron.