The Last Illusion. Diana Hamilton
than a few half-hearted efforts to push her into the real world. While Charley’s parents had been alive Freda hadn’t felt able to interfere with the lifestyle of her quiet, studious and painfully innocent niece. Besides, she had been too engrossed in running her own successful agency to spare the effort needed to try to change someone who had been patently happy with the way she was.
But the way she had been then meant that she had been completely gullible, quite unable to see through a man like Sebastian Machado. A few kind words, a few careless caresses, had been enough to turn her silly, innocent head. No, he had needed to expend very little effort to ensure he got what he wanted: a woman who was stupid enough, besotted enough, to play the part he had allotted her in his devilish plans.
‘Yes, I have changed.’ She agreed, stony-voice, with his earlier statement and crossed her long, elegantly slender legs with a whisper of honey-toned silk, knowing that the fashionable short skirt of the suit she wore, her slender high heels, showed them off to advantage.
And strangely, the defiant little movement excited her, because there was a quiet assessment in the way he watched her, in the slide of those sultry eyes as they roamed down to the tips of her toes and back up again to her glinting eyes, and it told her his words hadn’t been empty, that he acknowledged the change and accepted it. And that worked to her advantage.
As long as he realised that she was no longer the adoring little doormat who had been willing to submit to the hurts and humiliations he and his mistress, Olivia, had subjected her to for the sake of the meaningless caresses and empty words he deigned to spare her, then they could discuss terms as equals.
That alone would be worth the expense of this trip, the arguments she’d had with Greg when she’d told him of her decision to face her unwanted husband in person. At last she was the redoubtable Sebastian Machado’s equal, and she had nothing whatever to fear!
Quickly, before his brooding presence made her change her mind on that score, she folded her hands tightly in her lap and told him crisply. ‘I want a divorce.’
‘Why?’ His expression didn’t alter by as much as a flicker of an eyelid. He brought his hands up, steepling his long, strong-boned fingers, the tips resting against the sweeping curve of his upper lip.
His cool question almost took her breath away, an insult in itself, and anger stirred, making her voice taut as she shot back, ‘Need you really ask? Our marriage ended four years ago. It’s high time we tidied up the loose ends.’
‘And you think a divorce would get rid of those loose ends, extinguish the past? Are you that naïve?’ His tone was still uninterested, the hooded eyes never leaving her face as he dropped in, ‘You could have asked me for a divorce at any time during the past four years, or at least made your intention to seek one plain to me and my solicitor. Why didn’t you, if our marriage had become so intolerable to you?’
That floored her. Charley felt her eyes go wide, staring into the dark and sultry depths of his as if she might find the answer there. During the past four years she had never tried to hide her married status, but she had never spoken of it to anyone except Freda and, much later, Greg. And even then she hadn’t told all the truth, merely explaining that she and Sebastian had had irreconcilable differences. Divorce hadn’t entered her head until Greg had proposed.
And she didn’t know why. But she wasn’t going to confess the sudden bewilderment his query had produced, because that might suggest she had clung on to the legality of their relationship because she couldn’t face the final severance.
She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again they glinted with cold amber lights. She could never inflict on him the type of pain he had dished out to her, but she could have the satisfaction of pricking his overblown ego a little. And her voice was tart as she informed him, ‘You know why I left you. Do you imagine I wanted to remember you and what you had done?’ Carefully, she unfurled the fingers she hadn’t realised had been so tightly clenched and made herself rest her hands lightly on the slender carved wood arms of her chair. ‘I blocked you, and our marriage, out of my mind. I never gave it a second thought until I realised I needed my freedom to marry again.’
She thought she had earned herself a reaction in the sudden spasm of a muscle along his hard jaw, but couldn’t be sure. The tips of his fingers were still resting against his mouth, so she could have imagined it. She got to her feet, suddenly tired. She didn’t have time to play games. The sooner this interview was over the sooner she could book into the modest hotel where she had reserved a room for the night.
His eyes swept up, lazily following her movement, his attitude still sublimely relaxed. And she said, ‘As we haven’t lived together for so long, I can’t see how there can be any difficulties. Especially as ours was a civil wedding.’ Olivia had spelled out exactly why that had been, why Sebastian had chosen not to have a religious ceremony, and Charley tacked on tightly, ‘Greg and I would like to marry before the end of the year—in the autumn, preferably. Which gives us time, I would imagine, to get the divorce finalised.’
Suddenly, she needed to get out of here. It was as if the atmosphere of this house, the watchful presence of the man who had once meant more than life itself to her, was suffocating her, gathering her back into the web of deceit and cruelty, the binding strands interfaced with the wild magic of Andalucía, with the dark, irresistible charm of this devil in human guise that had almost broken her all that time ago.
She wouldn’t even mention the possibility of his buying back those shares. That could be done later, through solicitors. She couldn’t bring herself to spend one more moment with him. And she began to walk out of the room, making herself move slowly, because if she once gave in to the urgent desire to hurry she would find herself running until her lungs burst inside her.
‘No.’
The single word lowered the temperature in the room by a thousand degrees, and Charley’s feet felt as if they had been nailed to the floor as the blood in her veins turned to ice. But he couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant, she berated herself, then swung round quickly, defensively, because she could hear him moving, coming towards her.
‘Under Spanish law a divorce is possible if the couple have been living apart for two years—provided, of course, that both are agreed.’ His black eyes mocked her. ‘Unless the desire for a divorce is mutual, then the statutory period of separation is five years.’
He smiled for the first time, but it didn’t touch his eyes. It was a mere baring of teeth that sent icy trickles of disbelief running down her spine.
‘You can’t be serious!’ Her voice emerged thickly and she had no control over the flood of dismay that sent hectic colour to stain her cheeks. She stepped back, her poise deserting her. He was crowding her, much too close, making her achingly aware of the scent of him, the warmth of him, the shockingly vibrant, power-packed, raw masculinity of him.
‘Never more so.’ His voice was an assured purr, and it made her stomach churn.
She was backed against the impenetrability of one of the walls, but he didn’t move closer. If he had done, their bodies would have been touching, but he didn’t need to make such an open statement of his physical domination, because already she felt weak and giddy, as if she were about to faint for the first time in her life.
There were tiny dancing lights in the brooding blackness of his eyes, and the graceful, upward lilt of one arched black brow reinforced his wicked amusement, the machiavellian satisfaction he derived from gaining the upper hand.
‘So, mi esposa, you have another full year to wait before you can even begin divorce proceedings.’
He placed his palms flat against the wall, on either side of her head, and she was trapped, and frightened, yet determined not to show it. And she told him fiercely, ‘Call yourself a man? You’re nothing but a spiteful little worm!’ and had the satisfaction of seeing him stiffen, his proud features frozen over as he dropped his hands and stepped back, his shoulders high and hard.
‘Explain yourself!’ He looked as if he would like to kill her where she stood, and she