The dreams had all centred around him. The worst one had been just last night when she’d dreamed of walking into his old bedroom while he was sleeping. Ellen had sat up beside him, naked just as she’d been in those vile nude pics she’d sent him all those years ago, smiling triumphantly at her, and Beth had realised it wasn’t Xavi’s bedroom but Ellen’s bedroom, not their bed he slept naked in but Ellen’s bed. And then Ellen had morphed into the woman from the New Year’s party.
It had been her own whimpers that had pulled her awake from that one. Her chest had been icy cold ever since. If she could have delayed her return again, she would have done.
There would be no more delays. Xavi’s mother was throwing a pre-wedding dinner party for a select number of family and friends that evening. As much as Beth would have preferred to stay away from Madrid until the wedding itself, she couldn’t do that to Mireia. Xavi’s mother had shown her nothing but love and had sent her the most wonderful message saying how delighted she was at the news that, finally, Beth would be marrying into her family.
However cold she felt inside, she wouldn’t let Xavi see it. Beth’s pride had dragged her out of bed in the early days of their break-up, had made her smile widely and embrace him the few times she’d seen him over the years and had made her pull herself together every time her heart stopped when he liked one of her posts or left a comment.
If not for her pride, she would never have recovered from any of it and if she was going to get through the next however long of marriage to him, she would have to cling to it tightly because the one thing she would never allow herself to do would be to fall apart in front of him. She would never give him the power to break her again. In the future, she would be the one with the power to breakhim.
Producing an easy-going smile, she said, ‘I’d forgotten how convenient flying private is over economy.’ The entertainment on her flight to England from Madrid had come courtesy of the rowdy stag party. She imagined they were still fighting off their hangovers.
Beth had thought about the stag party a lot during her return flight on Xavi’s private jet. Thought, too, about the corresponding hen party. If the hen was as happy to be marrying as the drunken stag who’d got to his feet approximately every ten minutes to yell out, ‘I’m gettingmarried!’ for all the plane to hear, then she thought they would have a good chance of making their marriage work.
Eight years ago, Beth would have been the happiest hen in the world.
His lips curved. ‘More leg room, too.’
‘How would you know? You consider first class to be slumming it,’ she teased. Xavi’s first holiday had been to his family’s private Caribbean island when he’d been three months old, every whim catered to by a fleet of staff. Beth’s first holiday had been to a decrepit British holiday resort when she’d been six as part of a newspaper cut-price deal. Her bed had been little bigger than a cot, which had been better than what her poor grandparents had had to deal with—the moment they’d climbed into their bed, it had collapsed beneath them. It had rained the whole week, too.
The curved lips widened into a grin. ‘Can I help that I’ve been raised to have rarified tastes?’
‘You’ve been spoiled your whole life.’
He laughed and swept an arm to the car. ‘Come on, let’s get you to your new home.’
The car’s cabin was wonderfully cool, a relief after that short blast of Spanish heat that had warmed even her ice-cold chest a little. At least, Beth told herself, it was the heat that had warmed it, not being back in Xavi’s orbit. If only the years had lessened his sex appeal by even an iota instead of enhancing it.
‘Are your family and friends ready for tomorrow?’ he asked once the car started moving.
Breathing through her mouth to stop the potency of Xavi’s scent doing too much damage to her senses, she nestled against the door and twisted around so she was facing him. First thing in the morning, the eight members of her English family, her five closest friends and fifteen of her colleagues were being collected from their homes to be driven to their closest airports, then flying first class to Madrid and being put up in Madrid’s finest hotel, all expenses paid, courtesy of Xavi. ‘Yes. Everyone’s very excited, especially my dad and my nan. Fenella and the rest of your staff have done a fabulous job getting it all arranged, so thank you for that.’
‘They were happy to do it.’
She kicked her heels off and casually asked, ‘How’s everything going with my grandfather’s estate?’
They’d spoken every evening in her absence, but they’d been short conversations. Xavi had been far too busy getting his affairs in order to take time off for their wedding and five-day honeymoon to hold a conversation that involved more than checking in with her. She hadn’t needed to pester him to know his crack team of lawyers would be pulling out all the stops to get probate done swiftly. After all, it was in Xavi’s interest for it to be completed as speedily as possible.
‘The grant of probate should be ready within the next couple of weeks.’
‘That soon?’ She’d assumed it would take a few months at the least, even factoring in Xavi’s diligence.
‘Your grandfather was a meticulous man who left his affairs in exemplary order.’
That he had been, althoughcontrol freakprobably described him better. Domestically, he’d been fastidious about everything, from the correct way to hang a towel to demanding Beth straighten the cushions when getting up from a sofa. He’d been far worse within the workplace.
By the time he’d died, Beth had become so used to the control-freakery that she barely noticed it, let alone let herself get riled up about it. It was just the way he was, and she liked to think that if her mother had lived, she, too, would have learned to ignore the infuriating aspects of his nature… Or maybe not. Beth hadn’t been raised by him or married to him. She’d only known him in his twilight years and then only sporadically. It wasn’t just her mother who’d left him, but her grandmother, too.
As Beth had eventually learned from her father—her grandfather had adamantly refused to discuss the subject—Marta had been much younger than Raul. When she’d left him, she’d been so desperate to get away from him that she’d agreed to leave their only child with him. She’d taken the payoff and lived her life in quiet solitude, passing away ten years earlier. A part of Beth wished she’d known about her before she’d died so she could have tried to reach out to her, but another part was glad she hadn’t. Beth’s mother had given her life so Beth could live. Beth’s grandmother had left her twelve-year-old daughter with the husband she despised. While Beth had suspicions as to why, she doubted she would ever know the truth. The dead couldn’t speak. Beth was the only one of the bloodline still alive.
‘That you are his only legitimate heir helps, too,’ Xavi added, unwittingly tapping into her thoughts. ‘There will be a hefty inheritance tax bill to be paid, but your grandfather made provisions for that. There is no reason to believe everything can’t be signed over to you when we get back from our honeymoon.’
Her smile at this needed no practice. Whenever her conscience gnawed a little too deeply at the wheels she’d set in motion, all she had to do was bring up Ellen’s time-stamped photo of Xavi asleep in her bed three days after he’d kicked Beth from his bed and remember his barefaced lie for resolve to steel her spine.
Their whole relationship had been a lie. Beth would have chosen to live the rest of her life in a grotty bedsit than live without Xavi. He’d not even given her the chance to make adjustments to their relationship so he could devote more of his time to the business, just off the bat dumped her like she was an unwanted plaster that needed ripping off his skin.
Shehaddistracted him from his work, that had been true, but he’d let her. They’d had sex in his office more times than she could remember, and he’d been more than happy to go along with her impulsive, often madcap whims, whether that was deciding at three in the afternoon on a Friday to drive to Barcelona for a long weekend or gatecrashing a party because the music pumping from the house had been so enticing—that had been a brilliant night—or whisking him off to Ibiza with zero notice to visit its hippy market she’d just read about.
If he’d ever said no to her she would probably have pouted, but would have accepted it. If he’d said she had to confine her impulses to outside working hours or do them without him, she would have accepted that, too. Instead, he’d severed their relationship without discussion. Whether he’d always planned to bed Ellen or if Ellen had just been a perk of being single again, Beth didn’t know nor care to know. It didn’t make any difference. Ellen had just been a huge dose of salt rubbed into a wound that had never healed.
