‘Regaining my trust in you is going to take time.’ Until the end of days and then some.
An edge came into his voice. ‘If you don’t trust me, why agree to marry me?’
So I can destroy you.
‘Because you made such a convincing pitch for it?’ She laughed again and shook her head, wondering why she couldn’t just outright lie to him. ‘Xavi, let’s not pretend that everything’s going to be chocolate sprinkles straight away. We need to get to know each other again.’ She removed her sunglasses to look more directly at him. ‘Just remember, if I didn’t hold such strong feelings for you, I would never have agreed to marry you. I’m uprooting myself from my life, all of it. Everything I’ve built for myself these last eight years. I’m leaving my family and friends behind and walking away from the job I love for you.’
Removing his shades, too, Xavi studied Beth with the same intensity he’d studied her at her grandfather’s wake.
Beth had warned him that she’d changed from the young woman he’d been in love with all those years ago, but he’d already known that before proposing. He wouldn’t have contemplated taking this path if he’d thought they were the same people as they’d been eight years ago, but the changes to Beth weren’t just in general maturity; there was something else, too, something that had been gnawing at his gut since she’d returned to England and had grown stronger with each excuse to delay her return to him.
The Beth he remembered had fed on emotion. This Beth fed on logic and rationality. The passionate fire and zest for life that burned so bright in her had muted, and he couldn’t shake the feeling she was smothering it deliberately, just like he’d been unable to shake the voice nagging in his head that something else was going on with her.
He pulled in a deep breath through his nose and reminded himself that she was here and that in two days she would be his wife. After eight years apart, he couldn’t expect things to bechocolate sprinklesimmediately—he needed to find some patience, a trait he was forced to admit was not on his list of attributes. Beth was right that he was spoiled, and being spoiled with women counted in that, too. Xavi had grown used to women pretending that the sun shone out of his backside and could see how easy it was for men in his position to believe it actually did. Not every man of his position had a younger sister called Carlota primed to bring him back down to earth at every given opportunity.
Beth had never treated him as if the sun shone out of his backside. She’d treated him as if hewereher sun, but his family’s wealth and standing had meant nothing to her. She’d loved him for him, and that had been as intoxicating as the sex between them, and now she was back in his life, marrying him and entrusting her shares to him and so securing his position within the Rosbel Group. She’d entrusted her grandfather’s estate into his care, too; trusted him with billions in the form of assets, cash and shares. She trusted him where it most mattered; that was the important thing.
The second most important thing was that Beth was the only woman he’d ever wanted to marry, the only woman he’d envisaged having children with. That had never changed, and there was nothing to make him think they couldn’t make it work. They still shared a humour, and the spark was still there between them, too.
A lot of marriages survived with less than spark and humour. He didn’t think his parents’ marriage had been miserable, but he couldn’t remember it being particularly happy, either. That hadn’t stopped his mother’s utter devastation at his father’s death. She’d wandered the rooms of their home like a wraith for months, unable to settle, unable to concentrate, incapable of caring for her three grieving children.
‘You need to step up now, Xavi,’ his grandfather, grieving the loss of his only son, had told him privately the night his father had taken his final breath. ‘It is time for you to become a man. Your mother and your sisters need you.Ineed you.’
And so he’d stepped up to the mark his grandfather had set for him and become the man his family needed. He’d channelled the grief that had threatened to choke him and taken control of the household, from directing the domestic staff to ensuring his sisters did their homework and that Carlota, then only nine, brushed her teeth. He’d held everything together until his mother came out of her fugue, and then devoted his time to the studies he’d neglected for the sake of his family. Knowing his grandfather’s retirement plans had been put on ice, he’d worked hard and earned his place at Oxford on merit, and completed back-to-back degrees. His studies done, he’d joined the Rosbel Group, ready, willing and able to be groomed into taking over from the two aging men who were both more than ready to devote their lives to their local golf course; and then within months, Beth Granger had appeared in his life, and for six months derailed him from everything that was important in his life.
Reaching across the small table, he took hold of her dainty hand and brought the tips of her fingers to his lips. ‘I will make all your sacrifices worthwhile, I promise.’
Something flashed in her eyes before she leaned closer and clasped her fingers around his, her lips stretching into the upside-down heart he so loved. ‘If I didn’t know it would be worth it, I wouldn’t be here.’
Their lips brushed together across the table. Closing his eyes, Xavi breathed her in. The heat from the sun enhanced the soft scent of her skin, which was a smell like nothing else on this earth. If its uniqueness could be captured, he’d get his perfumers to bottle it. They would make a fortune. But it couldn’t be captured, and so it was a scent that belonged only to him, and in two days, Beth would belong only to him, too.
After pulling his mouth away, he gently tucked a lock of her English autumn-coloured hair behind one of her pixie ears. He’d longed to touch her since she’d stepped off the plane, but had resisted. Beth’s kisses were just too potent for sensibility. He could still feel the effect of the kiss they’d shared in the study, had carried her taste on his tongue since she’d left to pack up her life in England. ‘We need to get ready for my mother’s dinner party.’
Those incredible crystal-clear eyes pulsed. ‘Is this where we go to the bedroom?’
He kissed her again, a longer, deeper fusion. Rubbing his cheek to hers, he murmured, ‘Patience,mi vida. We need to leave soon.’
Her hand clasped the back of his head, her lips parting, her tongue darting into his mouth to dance with his. ‘You’re going to make me wait?’
‘You’ve made me wait for two weeks. Consider this payback.’
‘I thought we were all mature now,’ she teased seductively before sliding her tongue back into his mouth.
He returned the kiss…Dios, she tasted so damn good…and threaded his fingers deeper into her hair. ‘Only until you kiss me, and then I am twenty-four again.’ And when he was twenty-four, he’d been insatiable. The six months he’d spent with Beth had been the most hedonistic months of his life. He’d wanted her constantly.
He would not allow himself to fall back into that lust-blinded state again. This time, he would keep firm control of his libido and create clear demarcations between his work and his home, lines that had blurred beyond recognition when they’d first been together. Professionalism and propriety had gone out the window. Eight years on, and Xavi was still unable to look at the left side boardroom window without remembering how Beth had sat on its ledge with her skirt hitched up to her waist and her legs wrapped around him as he’d pounded into her. They’d barely straightened their clothes before his grandfather’s executive assistant had strolled in with pastries for the imminent meeting.
Beth had stripped him of his self-control and professionalism, and the result had been the near destruction of everything. He’d spent years waking with cold sweats from dreams of his father shaking his head and sorrowfully saying, ‘You promised to step up, Xavi.’
The first time that dream had struck him had been his first night in Milan after the meal where his grandfather and Raul had driven home how badly he’d taken his eye off the ball and screwed up. He’d woken in his hotel bed with a chest like ice and his skin clammy cold, and known there was no alternative. He had to end things with Beth.
When Xavi threw himself into something, it took all his attention. His feelings for Beth had consumed him and stolen his attention from the business and imperilled it. If he wanted to fulfil the destiny fate had set for him and step into the legacy his father had never been able to fulfil, it would have to be without her.
‘If you were twenty-four again, you’d have screwed me in the back of the car on the drive here,’ she said into his mouth. ‘You didn’t even try to kiss me.’
‘That was deliberate. You,mi vida, are irresistible. One kiss is never enough. I didn’t want our first screw in eight years to be a quickie in the car…’
‘You screwed me nearly as many times in a car as you did in a bed.’
