CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER NINE
Monaco was a small , busy city on steroids. It reeked of wealth. This was where the rich came to play and frolic, and there was evidence of that everywhere—from the decadent casinos, where the stakes were high, to the eye-wateringly expensive designer malls and the opulent bars and clubs. Under glittering blue skies, beautiful people drifted by, carelessly swinging their designer totes and hiding behind oversized sunglasses.
The atmosphere was lazy and decadent and Javier told her a few facts about the place that made her eyes widen. One in three people living in the city, he’d said, were millionaires, and most of them were not natives of Monaco at all but there to take advantage of the generous tax breaks.
‘Would you live here?’ she’d asked on day one as they’d sat people-watching outside one of the smart cafés with a couple of ice-cold cocktails in front of them.
‘I’d die of boredom!’ He had laughed in response and his eyes had lingered when he’d added in a wicked undertone, ‘Unless you were living here with me. The hot sex might make it worthwhile.’
The common-sense, down-to-earth part of Caitlin knew that those were words thrown out there in the moment, meaning nothing, and yet she couldn’t help herself from storing them up and reading into them feelings that might run deeper than he was prepared to admit.
So what if he and Isabella had embarked on a marriage of convenience? She had no idea why Isabella had called it off at the last minute; perhaps she had had cold feet at the thought of marrying for business and not love. She knew women could be sentimental in ways that men sometimes couldn’t fathom.
And maybe, deep down, Javier himself had longed for something more than a contract to unite two powerful families with ties that went back for decades. He cared deeply for the woman, however he categorised it, and Caitlin felt that maybe, just maybe, he was capable of love… wanted love…even if that was something he would never voice in a million years.
Had she come into his life to find him in a place where he was actually ready to fall in love, even though he made so many noises about not believing in it? Caitlin knew that it was crazy to speculate but, with every passing second, she just knew she could see evidence of a guy who felt more for her than he was prepared to say out loud.
This was stolen time, but when that stolen time came to an end would he look at her and realise that she was indispensable? Realise that she had crept into his heart, the way he had crept into hers? Would he realise that arranged marriages that made sense were not what they were cracked up to be? Would he realise that he might talk the talk till he was blue in the face but he couldn’t actually walk the walk now that he had invited her into his heart?
The fact that he’d brought Benji over said a lot. Caitlin had no idea what Tricia would be making of their prolonged absence but she knew that he remained on top of everything, waking before five to kill a load of emails. She, too, had fallen into a routine of catching up on stuff, working with him as she always had, but free to touch him because there were no curious eyes on his yacht.
Largely, they had a routine. Javier had managed to employ someone to take Benji out first thing for an hour and after that, while Benji snored his way through most of the day, they worked, talked, worked, made love, and had breakfast and lunch, sometimes in the nude, just for the hell of it.
The yacht was pretty amazing. It was not the biggest moored in the crystal-blue water, because there were a few far bigger ones bobbing here and there in the distance, but it was big enough, and kitted to the highest standard. There were three en suite bedrooms, staff quarters, an amazing kitchen and living quarters with pale leather seating. Two circular pools were perched on the upper deck, one with a Jacuzzi, and there was a fully stocked bar with bar-stools and tan leather seating against the sides, along with deck chairs and umbrellas.
And, in the bowels of the yacht, was lodged a six-seater black-and-red motor boat perfect for covering the distance between the yacht and the shore. Caitlin didn’t know who was more impressed by the speedboat—Benji or her. They hopped on board, with Javier at the helm, and eyes closed, she enjoyed every second of the experience as they sped towards the city.
Right now, encased by a moonlit night, Caitlin was as relaxed as she could possibly be on one of the loungers by the pool with Benji in his bed next to her on the deck. She heard the rustle of Javier behind her, and turned lazily to watch as he shoved a deck chair close to hers and settled on it, handing her a glass of wine.
It was still very warm and he was in a pair of faded swimming trunks and a white linen shirt cuffed to the elbow, which was flapping open, affording her a fantastic view of his hard, brown torso with its sprinkling of dark hair. She was in her bikini bottoms, a new purchase from one of the boutiques in Monaco, and had discarded the top at some point in the evening, probably just before they’d made passionate love after dinner.
It was a struggle, resisting all his attempts to lavish her with stuff , but she remained savvy enough to know that accepting presents from him would do nothing for her self-respect when everything came crashing down. So she’d dug into her savings and added ‘poverty’ to the tally of all the things she would have to deal with when the inevitable happened.
It was worth it. Deep inside her, she knew that.
‘Beautiful night…’ she breathed, sitting up and shamelessly enjoying the sight of Javier.
‘I’d forgotten how impressive the landscape here is,’ he admitted, gazing out to sea, his arm lightly touching hers as he sipped the wine.
‘Who uses this yacht when you’re not on it?’ Caitlin asked curiously, twisting a bit so that she was looking at him.
‘Family members. Occasionally my father and his cronies. Some of them enjoy time out from their better halves.’
‘You’ve told me a bit about your family,’ Caitlin began. ‘I know you were devastated when your mother died. I would be as well in your shoes. I suppose I had years of my mother failing to be a mother, so by the time she died I had already grieved for her in some ways. How did your mother die?’
‘I’m thinking this isn’t subject matter for a beautiful evening.’
‘Guess not.’
Caitlin immediately backed off. He’d said so much about himself but would he want to be reminded of it?
‘Cancer,’ he finally said heavily. ‘It was quick. Not a lot of time to say goodbye.’
‘I’m so sorry…and you’re right; this isn’t the sort of conversation to have when there’s a bright moon in the sky and we can hear the sound of the water lapping against the side of the boat.’
‘I was away at school at the time. I boarded from a young age. Arrangements were made and, by the time I returned, my mother was already dangerously close to death. It was…shocking how gaunt she’d become. I think she may well have known that something was wrong, but she wasn’t a complainer. She would have laughed off the weight loss and the tiredness until she couldn’t any longer. At any rate, I was with her for a handful of weeks, by which time she was too weak to engage.’
This was the most Javier had ever said to her about the details of his mother’s death and Caitlin felt a bloom of tender satisfaction as yet another small window opened up, letting her inside.
‘I know you said that your dad went off the rails a bit after she died because he couldn’t cope with the loss…’
She wanted to pursue this conversation, even though she knew that she was treading a thin line, because if those shutters slammed harder then she might be shut out for good, but she was greedy to see more of him.
* * *
Javier shifted. She was prying but he’d already told her so much about himself and he couldn’t understand how that had happened. Her questions were so lazy and gentle, and opened up a side to him in a way he couldn’t quite get a grip on.
Did he want to have this conversation when touching her would have been more than plenty? It jarred, didn’t it, sitting out here and talking about things he’d spent his adult life burying, yet again?
Yet, he was uncomfortably besieged by memories that filled his head like marauding wasps. He remembered how his father had cocooned himself and then emerged to have a catastrophic, short-lived fling with a gold-digger who had ended up conning him out of millions. The depth of his pain, hurt and bewilderment hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.
‘Not the time or the place, Caitlin.’
‘Understood.’
‘What we have…here and now…isn’t about this.’ The lines of what exactly they had in the here and now formed a blurry smudge in his head and he frowned.
‘About what?’
‘We’ve talked…we’ve had to, given the circumstances…but that doesn’t mean that the talking has to continue. Caitlin, when we return to London, all this is forgotten. Personal conversations of this nature will have no place in a work environment.’
‘Honestly, Javier, I didn’t mean to barge past any “keep out” signs. I guess, growing up in foster care, I spent a lot of time imagining what life was like for other kids. Not that we didn’t meet other kids, we did, but I always felt like an outsider.’
‘A lonely life.’ Javier felt the treacherous swirl of a current under his feet, dragging him back to the very place he had just closed off. ‘But,’ he said bracingly, ‘loneliness can make a person strong.’
He was relieved when he heard the buzz of his mobile next to him. It gave him an excuse to stand up and head indoors, excusing himself while staring down at the phone.
* * *
Caitlin watched as he strode away into the bowels of the yacht. Every shared confidence fed the love inside her and watered the hope that wouldn’t listen to common sense and go away.
Suddenly the void that had opened up at the thought of returning to London and handing in her resignation started to close. For the first time there was light at the end of a dark tunnel. First, he’d extended their time together. He’d wanted more than just sex, because if it had only been about sex, then he would never have confided in her, opened himself up. Yes, there had been times when she had caught some fleeting expression on his face that was soft and unguarded and had struck right to the core of her.
Then, he had personally arranged to have Benji flown over. That had been a giveaway because, as thoughtful and considerate as he was as a boss, getting Benji over had been well beyond the call of duty, and lust.
She idly stroked behind Benji’s ear and relaxed back in the deck chair. She could hear very distant sounds coming from the shore and, looking across, the glittering lights were like stars studded against the shoreline. The air was balmy and carried the fragrance of the ocean, salty and fresh.
She wondered how she could broach the subject of trying to make this wonderful thing they had together work. How could he contemplate walking away from what they had so that he could embark on finding a woman who met a checklist but with whom he would probably have nothing in common?
Maybe if he hadn’t confided in her… But he had, and he was a clever guy—clever enough to understand that, if he’d been affected by the past, it didn’t mean all doors were closed. His head might say that, but she’d seen his heart, and his heart wouldn’t agree.
Lost in swirling thoughts, but feeling ever more excited and hopeful with each passing moment, Caitlin was barely aware of Javier padding back across the deck until he subsided onto the lounger. When he looked at her there was a smile of satisfaction on his face. With only subdued lighting on the upper deck and the radiance of the moon, his beautiful face was all shadows and angles and thrillingly sexy.
‘Good phone call?’ Caitlin smiled and reached out to cover his hand with hers, moving to link their fingers, and for once not hiding the tenderness in her eyes.
‘Excellent phone call. Isabella.’
‘Really?’
‘There’s something you need to know, Caitlin.’
‘What’s that?’ Her voice was wary and, as their eyes met, he smiled.
‘Nothing for you to worry about, no need to look as though I’m about to tell you that the sky is falling down. It’s about Isabella… There are certain things I omitted from the story, certain facts that… Okay, how shall I put it…were not within my remit to tell you, but I can tell you now because they’ve finally and terrifically been made public.’
‘I’m intrigued.’ She liked the sound of ‘nothing for her to worry about’.
‘As you know, for both myself and Isabella, our marriage was something that made sense and suited us both equally.’
‘A marriage of convenience. Literally a business partnership.’
‘Beyond the business practicalities, it suited us emotionally. Friends but not lovers, and so no emotional complications.’
‘I’m still intrigued.’
‘It suited Isabella because she’s gay.’
Silence stretched between them, and Caitlin knew that her mouth had dropped open because this was the last thing she’d been expecting.
‘As in…’
‘As in the normal definition of the word,’ Javier said wryly. ‘She’s had a partner for nearly three years and I’ve always known about her preferences. I was probably one of the first and the few she shared that intimate secret with, and I’ve obviously been duty-bound to keep it to myself, hence I’ve said nothing to you earlier.’
He was smiling now and looking into the distance. ‘I’ve encouraged her over the years to come clean but she’s been scared stiff at how her father might react and, when his health began deteriorating, even more apprehensive. There was also the matter of an extremely traditional board of directors who would have had to accept something they might have found a little unexpected, although I personally thought that she was over-apprehensive on that count. Time’s moved on since the bad old days. But, largely, it was her father’s possible reaction that pushed her into accepting our marriage of convenience.’
‘What happened to change that?’
‘Her girlfriend gave her an ultimatum, and Isabella took a deep breath and did what she knew she should have done a long time ago—she told her father who, incidentally, is recovering extremely well and is already itching to get back to work.
‘By the way, she sends her love and apologises profusely if you thought that she was messing you around. When she disappeared without warning on that wedding dress viewing day, it was because her girlfriend had run out of patience and contacted her to return to Spain to sort things out or else she wouldn’t be there waiting in the shadows.’
‘Wow.’
‘You’re shocked?’
‘Surprised at you choosing to marry Isabella under those circumstances. That…that must have been a sacrifice for you, Javier. I know family bonds mean a lot, but still…’
‘Oh, the marriage also suited me, quite aside from the family bonds, strong as those were.’
‘How so?’
‘Long story, Caitlin…’ He hesitated but only momentarily. ‘I inherit vineyards in Spain when I turn thirty-five, but only if I marry.’ He grimaced. ‘Getting hold of those vineyards means a great deal to me. Isabella would have been the perfect solution. As it stands, I have to find another suitable wife, and my timeline isn’t exactly generous.’
‘Another suitable wife…’
‘Well, my parameters for marrying still stand, and now there’s a sense of urgency to my search because time isn’t going to stand still and wait for me to catch up.’
Caitlin stared. What a fool she had been. There was no door opening in his heart. What planet had she been on? He still wanted, and would only ever want, the sort of woman who would never make demands on him. Isabella would have been perfect, but in her absence he would find a suitably high-born Spanish woman who knew the rules of the game and would be content to be mistress of his empire without demanding love and attention.
Without demanding heart-to-heart chats…and giggling and laughter. And maybe just having sex to make babies, although clearly even that wasn’t a prerequisite. He and Isabella would presumably have left the baby-making part to the doctors.
The simmering euphoria she had felt just moments before, when she had been so convinced that what Javier felt was more than just lust, evaporated like dew on a hot summer’s morning. He’d told her that he wasn’t into commitment, that what he wanted would always be a manufactured business arrangement without the complications of emotion. Instead of listening, she had eventually chosen to play with the fantasy that he didn’t know himself as well as she knew him.
She had interpreted his behaviour and jumped to conclusions, but the hard truth was that all he wanted from her was the hot sex. He might have confided in her, they might have laughed together and she might have built her castles in the air based on those things, but Javier lived in a black-and-white world and love was never going to intrude. He was never going to be open to persuasion.
‘You’ve gone quiet on me.’
Caitlin blinked and focused. ‘It was very brave of Isabella to face up to her sexuality and tell her dad. It couldn’t have been easy. I can understand why you’re proud of her, because you care about her.’
‘Why am I getting the feeling that something’s going on under the surface here?’
Caitlin took a deep breath and grappled with a way forward. ‘I guess I’m a diehard romantic after all,’ she said quietly. ‘I never thought your marriage was that much of a cold business arrangement.’
‘Far from cold.’
‘For you to be prepared to face a future without…without…a future without any semblance of… Where you’d be both living separate romantic lives…’
‘Where are you going with this, Caitlin?’
‘And then,’ she murmured, ‘to hear that the deal suited you because you want to inherit some vineyards when you already have wealth beyond imagining… And to hear you say that you’re now time-pressured to find a candidate to fill the role of your wife—someone who doesn’t expect anything other than to run your households while you go about your business having fun on the side, because fun on the side would never involve any emotional involvement…’
‘Tell me what’s going on here. I thought I was being honest with you.’
‘You are. I just thought…’
‘That somewhere along the line I was going to fall in love with Isabella and live happily ever after? Even though I told you that love and everything that goes with it wasn’t for me?’ He tilted his head to one side and looked at her narrowly.
Caitlin saw it. She saw the light bulb going off in his head as he joined the dots and worked out what was going on with her. The silence gathered around them as they stared at one another and Javier hissed a sigh and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘Caitlin…’
‘So, I was a fool.’ She snatched the top she had earlier discarded and shoved it on.
‘I thought I’d made it clear…’
‘You did. Like I said, I was an idiot. I… I never thought in a million years that we would ever end up sleeping together, Javier.’ She was as tense as a bowstring. What happens next? she wondered.
She hadn’t originally planned to pour out her heart, but then again she hadn’t expected to be confronted with information that challenged everything she’d clung to. She gritted her teeth and stuck her chin out at a defiant angle.
‘But,’ she said tightly, ‘we did and, yes, you did warn me off, but I just didn’t have the good sense to protect my heart.’ She lowered her eyes because she didn’t want to see his expression: appalled horror; mouth slack with dismay; frantic glances towards the nearest escape route…
‘No,’ she said with wrenching honesty. ‘Maybe I didn’t want to protect my heart or, if I did, I wanted you more for whatever little time we had together.’
‘This is a conversation we shouldn’t be having, querida .’
‘Why not? And don’t call me querida ! Querida is the last thing I am to you!’
‘Caitlin, let’s not go there!’
‘Why not? Because it’s a scary place? Where’s the point in not being honest with yourself?’
‘I can think of a thousand reasons off the top of my head.’
‘When we were together, Javier, I felt I saw something in you, sensed something in you—something that made me think that there was more between us than you’re probably willing to admit.’
‘I don’t do emotion.’
‘I have no idea what that means. You’ve never explained exactly what that means! How can someone not do emotion ? You’re not a robot!’
‘Let’s drop this.’
‘It’s time for me to hand in my resignation, Javier.’
Like an unstoppable train gathering momentum, there was no way she could stop now, and she didn’t want to. She’d always planned to enjoy what she could of the guy she loved before walking away with her pride intact, but then the minute she had seen chinks in his armour everything had changed. She’d started to entertain the thought that she could change him. She’d started to believe that he would be able to see what they had as something deserving of a shot, as something more than just the fling he’d told her it was.
Surely no one was immune to emotion, the way he said he was? But he’d been prepared to marry Isabella and live a life devoid of any chance of real love. He was now prepared to marry some unknown, suitable woman and happily live his life in an emotional vacuum. Because he’d really meant what he’d told her about wanting a particular sort of woman—a woman who made sense, with no hearts and flowers attached to the relationship.
‘Clearly, I was foolish. I thought you’d just never fallen in love with anyone before but that maybe, just maybe, what we had had changed that. When you offered to bring Benji over, I jumped to the conclusion that you must feel more than just lust, because you really wanted to do something you knew would make me happy. I couldn’t have been more mistaken!’
It was cleansing, having her say after all this time bottling up what she felt. She could feel the weight lifting off her shoulders and realised that somewhere deep inside, when she got past the ‘living in the moment’ philosophy, she’d been terrifyingly aware of the day of reckoning lurking round the corner.
‘It’s a bit difficult to storm off when you’re sitting on a yacht in the middle of the ocean, but I’ll leave as soon as humanly possible.’ Her voice was flat and hard.
* * *
Javier felt as though he’d just been hit with a sledgehammer when he’d least been expecting it. He’d been pleased with Isabella’s news. She’d faced down her demons; every fear she’d had had proven unfounded and she’d been over the moon. He hadn’t thought twice about sharing the news with Caitlin. Left to him, he would have told her from the very start, but of course it hadn’t been his story to tell.
Now, when he reflected grimly, he could see that he hadn’t been thinking at all when it came to Caitlin. He’d made a few perfunctory remarks, laying down his ground rules, but he’d been so busy enjoying himself, enjoying her , that he’d taken his eye off the ball big time.
He cast his mind back now to the way he’d dropped his guard, and paled, because it was almost as though he’d learnt nothing from the past. He’d lived in a ridiculous, manufactured bubble and forgotten all the principles of self-control he’d always lived by. He hadn’t been himself, and he couldn’t understand why , but the one thing he did understand was that she’d mistakenly read all sorts of things into his behaviour and he couldn’t blame her.
He was man enough to accept the blame for the mess in which he now found himself. He’d drifted and, if he could pinpoint a moment when that drift had started, it was when he had seen her in her full glory twirling on a stool in a wedding dress for a wedding that wasn’t to be. The sight had knocked him for six and had lodged in his head like a burr, like something waiting to be released the minute the opportunity came along, and along had come that opportunity when the wedding had been called off.
And since then he’d ignored all alarm bells and red flags. He’d played truant from work for the first time in his life. He’d opened up about himself in ways he couldn’t remember doing. Was it any wonder that she had begun to feel all sorts of things about a relationship that had been a lot more casual for him?
He thought back to the flash of consternation he had felt when he’d found out that she was a virgin, and the ease with which he had dismissed any concern that she might have been a lot more vulnerable emotionally than she’d stoutly announced. She’d implied that he wasn’t her type, and he’d decided to go along with that, and not once had he bothered to reflect on whether that continued to hold true once they’d become truly intimate.
‘Caitlin…’ He raked his fingers through his hair and shifted.
‘You don’t have to say anything.’
‘You made it clear that I wasn’t the sort of guy you were looking for.’ To his own ears, the protest sounded pathetic.
‘You still aren’t, but I’ve found out that hearts don’t always play by the rules. I’m going to head in now.’ She stood up and backed away from him. ‘I’ll get my things from your room and pack. I’ll need to know about arrangements for returning to London.’
‘I would say that I don’t want you to resign but…’
‘I was going to before I told you how I felt. I was going to walk away because it would have been impossible for me to carry on working for you.’
‘You would have left me in the lurch ?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I could promise you what you want…’
‘I wouldn’t believe you anyway,’ Caitlin told him sharply. ‘I know how the cards stack up now. Good luck finding whatever it is you’re looking for so that you can get your vineyards.’
‘I can arrange everything for tomorrow. No need for you to wait for a flight; my man will take you in my private jet. If you’d rather, I can even arrange an overnight stay in a hotel on the mainland should you find our arrangement here…er…somewhat uncomfortable.’
* * *
In a flash, Caitlin knew with biting bitterness where Javier was going with this. She’d outlived her usefulness by confessing that she loved him. That wasn’t part of the game and never had been. Now he wanted her out as fast as possible. That hurt—really hurt.
‘Good idea,’ she said tightly. ‘How long do I have?’
‘I’m not rushing you off my yacht…’
‘Of course you are,’ Caitlin snapped dismissively, scooping up Benji and burrowing against him as she stared at Javier with simmering, edgy hostility. She lowered her eyes and gathered herself because he hadn’t asked for this, and just because he wanted to get rid of her now didn’t make him a monster. He just couldn’t return her love and was dealing with what she had thrown at him the best he could.
She turned away to feel his hand circling her arm, tugging her gently back until she wanted to pass out from the nearness of him.
‘Caitlin.’ His voice was ragged, barely audible. ‘You don’t have to do this…’
‘Do what?’
‘Go. You don’t have to go. We can pretend this conversation never happened.’
‘Of course we can’t,’ she said flatly. ‘And I wouldn’t want to.’ But there was a flare of triumph inside her because she knew then that, even if he didn’t love her, he really, really wanted her. Maybe she wouldn’t fade from his head as fast as all the others who had preceded her. It was scant comfort, but it was some.
She tugged her arm free and backed away, still looking at him, while Benji threatened to let the side down by leaping out of her arms and making a fool of himself by wanting to play with the guy staring at her.
Javier broke the silence. ‘I’ll arrange a hotel. And someone to take you to the mainland in the speedboat. Won’t be longer than an hour at most.’ He flushed darkly.
‘Perfect.’ Caitlin smiled tersely. ‘And then you can move on with your life, Javier, and thank your lucky stars that you successfully dodged a bullet.’
‘And you?’
‘Believe it or not, when you’ve lived the life that I have, you can overcome anything.’
What a lie, but she left him with that thought as she spun round on her heels and walked away.