The natural fit had been right in front of him. Who better than his grandfather, one of the original halves of the Rosbel Group, to hand over the rings as the de la Rosas and Belmontes became more than friends and business partners and became family?
He liked to think it was a decision—and a wedding—his father and Raul would approve of.
It was the change in atmosphere that alerted him to the bride’s arrival.
Holding her father’s arm, she emerged bathed…shimmering…in light.
All the breath left his body.
Clutching a posy of pink and white flowers, her glimmering white lace dress clung to and accentuated her curves. Strapless, it fitted like a heart-shaped hourglass to her thighs before spreading out like a mermaid’s tail, trailing gently behind her. Her auburn hair, swept over her left shoulder in soft waves, shone and sparkled, and as she walked slowly towards him, a lock of her fringe fell into her eyes. Without tearing her gaze from his, she blew it away before her lips formed their dazzling upside-down heart.
Only the roar of blood in his ears told Xavi his heart was still beating.
Beth had never had to consciously think about walking, but with her legs like jelly, it was taking all her concentration to put one foot in front of the other. There was a tempest of nerves in her stomach, the racing of her heart enough to put a hummingbird’s to shame.
Only her father’s steady presence beside her kept her vaguely rooted in reality. This didn’t feel real. She’d spent the morning feeling like she was in a waking dream and, walking through this magnificent cathedral with its impossibly high frescoed ceiling and with the light flowing through the stained-glass windows bathing everything and everyone in colour, that dreamlike sensation only grew stronger.
It wasn’t until she was ten paces from Xavi, darkly gorgeous in a light grey three-piece wedding suit, that the dream veil lifted.
Her hummingbird heart sighed and wrenched in a single motion, and in the next beat, the tempest in her belly churned with such violence she feared she was going to be sick.
She was on the cusp of marrying Xavi.
She was about to wilfully pledge her life to him knowing her pledge was a lie, and as all her thoughts and emotions collided, the impulse to turn on her tail and run away was almost stronger than she could bear.
Her heart wrenched again. She wanted it to be real. This wedding. Their marriage. The old dream of spending her life with him… She was about to touch it. Touch that dream and then step into it. If she could only forgive the devastation he’d wrought on her, she could step into it and embrace it.
Did it really matter that Xavi’s reasons for marrying her now were so different to when they’d made their plans for marriage and a family all those years ago? He would be hers, just as he’d once sworn he would always be. Why should she care that he wasn’t marrying her for love? He wanted her and desired her; that hadn’t changed. Why couldn’t it be enough for her when the truth was she’d never felt a moment of real, true happiness without him?
She barely felt her father release her arm or the kiss he placed on her cheek. Her hand had been enveloped in Xavi’s, and he was all she could see and feel.
The dreamlike sensation cloaking her again, she gazed into his dark brown eyes and felt the warmth and desire blazing from them warm her skin as effectively as his touch.
The two of them saturated with the colourful light filtering through the stained-glass windows, Beth watched Xavi’s lips move as he spoke his vows, but her heart was pounding too hard to hear the words as more than a distant whisper.
And then it was her turn, and Xavi’s dark gaze held hers as intently as she’d held his.
Squeezing his fingers tightly, she repeated the Spanish vows, flooded with emotions strong enough to burn her eyes with tears that didn’t fall, and yet her voice didn’t falter…shedidn’t falter. ‘I promise to love, cherish and be faithful, in good times and in bad, all the days of my life.’
When the time came to seal their vows, they gazed into each other’s eyes one long, last moment before their mouths came together in a tender, lingering caress that sealed what her heart already knew.
The vows she’d just made…she would never be able to break them.
‘Are you happy,mi vida?’ Xavi whispered into his bride’s ear as he moved her around the floor for their first dance.
She turned her cheek from where it was pressed against his chest and lifted her gaze to him. ‘I feel like I’m in a dream.’
He smiled and bowed his head to kiss her.
Truth was he felt like he was in a dream, too.
When they’d exchanged their vows, he’d felt something touch him, something that had felt almost holy, which was a strange sensation for a man who rarely attended mass and would have been happy marrying in the grounds of this hotel.
They’d been married only eight hours, but he felt different. He’d felt different since he’d walked Beth back down the aisle as his wife. He hadn’t expected that. What was marriage but a piece of paper? It had meant more to him when he’d been young and crazed on lust, and it had felt imperative that he tie Beth to him forever. That young man had let his head be turned for six months into believing in fairy tales and magic. Beth’s magic. It had possessed him.
He could feel her spell weaving around him again now, but that was okay. This was their wedding day. She’d made the same vows as he had, to love and be faithful for all their days. Powerful words that contained a magic of their own.
Had he ever stopped loving her? He couldn’t say. He couldn’t even say if what he felt for herwaslove, and it was dangerous to even think in such terms, a certain path to the madness that had subsumed him before.
