Her happiness ebbed at the reminder. ‘Is this your way of reminding me that our marriage is just a business deal with benefits?’ she whispered sadly.
He’d rolled her onto her back before she could snatch a breath; had pinned her wrists to the sides of her head before she felt his fingers wrap around them. ‘That isn’t what this marriage is,’ he said tightly. ‘I wanted to marryyou, Beth. I want to father your children and have a family withyou.’
Her heart swelled with a combination of hope and sadness, and for the first time since they’d been on their honeymoon, Beth was unable to stop herself thinking about the child they’d lost. The child Xavi had never known existed. Another swell bloomed inside her, a swell of sudden yearning to tell him the truth that he’d already fathered a child with her, but how could she? She’d never spoken the words to a soul and didn’t know if she could do it now, and even if she could, what purpose would it serve other than to hurt him?
To hurt him would be to hurt herself.
Xavi was right that she was impulsive. She’d agreed to marry him thinking she was going to embark on a wrecking project to destroy him the way he’d destroyed her, and then jumped in with both impulsive feet on her plan of action to pull it off.
He’d never wanted to hurt her. She was certain of it. Not deliberately. He’d behaved terribly to her, but she needed to find a way to forgive him for that because one thing she was certain of was that she was in this marriage for keeps. She loved him. She’d always loved him. She would always love him. She had no more choice in her love than she had over her natural hair colour and freckles.
The past was the past, and she had to find a way to live with it and find a way to embrace their future together. Find a way to embrace Xavi for who he was and not hate him for no longer being the young man who’d put her first, second and third in his life.
She had no idea how long they spent positioned like that, with Xavi pinning her down, his gorgeous face glaring at her, his arousal slowly springing to life at the base of her pubis.
And she had no idea what he was thinking. The face she’d once read like a book was closed to her of everything but what he wanted her to see.
Without saying a word or yanking her wrists from his hold, she held his stare and tilted her hips so his arousal was positioned at the entrance of her heat.
Neither spoke nor reacted facially as he slid inside her. Neither moved their gaze from the other as he brought them both to orgasm.
Chapter Nine
BETH OPENED HEReyes to dusky early-morning light and the weight of Xavi’s arm over her belly and the delicious feel of his chest and thighs spooned into her.
She smiled sleepily to herself and wriggled her backside, ready to tempt him into waking and making love to her again before he left her for the office and she collected Diego from Salma. After five magical days away together, reality could wait a little longer.
His arm tightened around her stomach. His mouth nestled into her hair. She wriggled again, luxuriating in the wakening of his arousal against her buttocks, and she turned her head to seek his kiss, only to find the movement hurt her head…and now she realised her head was aching, she realised the weight of Xavi’s arm over her belly was constricting and hurting her.
She sat bolt upright without even thinking about it. ‘I’m going to be sick.’ The words came out with no thought, either, and it was without thought that she scrambled off the bed and threw herself into the bathroom.
She only just made it in time.
Xavi, propped against the headboard, stroked his sleeping beauty’s fevered forehead and closed his eyes.
He’d never known Beth to be sick before. Sure, she suffered menstrual pains—at least, she used to—but that was it. He couldn’t remember her even having a sniffle, and it enraged him all over again to remember his doctor’s refusal to say whether she was suffering from food poisoning or a stomach bug. He hadn’t paid him an extortionate amount of money to drag himself to his apartment at eight in the morning and diagnose his new wife to be rebuffed withlikely thisorlikely that. He was the doctor. Make the bloody diagnosis and then give her something to make her better, not all this,either way, it needs to work its way out of her systemcrap. Xavi was no doctor, but an internet search had given him a better bloody diagnosis than the so-called bloody expert. If it was food poisoning then Xavi would be suffering from it, too. They’d last eaten on the plane home, both eating the same meal. If it was a stomach bug—much more likely, especially now that she’d developed a fever, too—then that meant some bastard had passed their germs to her. When he found out who it was, he would kill them.
His phone rang.
It was his executive assistant. The head of his cabin crew had just informed her that two of the crew had been struck down with a virulent stomach bug and wanted to warn Xavi in case he was struck down with it, too.
He swore very loudly in his head. He couldn’t even take delight in seeking revenge in his imagination, not when the perpetrators were his hardworking crew.
He did, however, get his revenge on Doctor Do-Nothing by calling him and insisting he pay house visits to both his stricken crew. ‘Wear a mask,’ he said icily when Doctor Do-Nothing tried to protest.
Beth’s eyes opened. ‘You’re still here,’ she mumbled.
‘Where else would I be?’
‘In back-to-back meetings?’
He smiled at her feeble attempt at a joke. ‘I’m staying right here until you’re better.’ Screw the meetings he had racked up for the day. Some things were more important than work.
He didn’t let himself think about the video calls he’d cancelled on their honeymoon. That was a different matter entirely. He’d cancelled one because Beth had wanted to go snorkelling, the other because he’d gone three hours without having sex with her.
‘I’m fine. Go to the office.’
‘You’re not fine. You look like a corpse.’
