Postcards From Madrid. Lynne Graham
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‘Couldn’t that wait until we’ve boarded the jet?’ Antonio asked as though it were the height of bad taste to be seen feeding a baby.
Sophie shook her head and buttoned her soft pink mouth. She had to. If she hadn’t she would have thrown a screaming fit. She had started the day with a crazy sense of adventure and happiness and her mood had gone steadily downhill ever since. Just then she was hitting rock-bottom. Antonio was gorgeous but she hated him. She hated fancying him like mad and she hated being married to him. At that moment she was convinced that a divorce from Antonio could not come quickly enough to satisfy her. She could have signed on the dotted line right there and then without a shred of regret.
He hadn’t even bothered to offer her lunch at the hotel and her stomach was meeting her backbone. He had treated her like wallpaper most of the day. And when he wasn’t treating her like wallpaper and ignoring her, he was either accusing her of doing something dreadful or criticising her. Sophie breathed in very deep, pent-up tears of self-pity clogging her throat. Here she was travelling off into the unknown to live in a different country, which was a quite terrifying prospect, and the only guy she had to depend on was behaving like an arrogant, insensitive bastard!
They boarded the private jet. Sophie cast a jaundiced eye over the luxury appointments and wondered what Antonio would do if she fainted from hunger. How bad would it make him feel? She reckoned she would have to die to get a real reaction from him. The jet took off. Her heart-shaped face adorned by two high spots of colour, Sophie was shown by the flight attendant into a sleeping compartment where a cot had already been secured in readiness for Lydia’s occupation. She tucked her niece in for a nap and surveyed the opulent bed for the grown-ups. How many women had Antonio had in there? She bit her lip painfully and screwed her eyes up tight in a desperate attempt to hold back the tears ready to flood out. The level of her own distress shocked her.
Although it was rare for Antonio to touch alcohol before evening, he was contemplating the non-existent joys of matrimony over a brandy. Getting married had proved to be the hell he had always dimly suspected it would be. Sophie had allowed him to put a wedding ring on her finger and had then allowed another man to put his hands on her. That betrayal struck at the very roots of his masculinity and plunged Antonio right back into the same elemental rage that challenged his rapier-sharp thinking processes. His rational mind endeavoured to point out that it had been a kiss exchanged in public, but the conviction that passion had overpowered common sense and decency was not a consolation.
He pictured her tear-stained face afresh, her green eyes like wet jewels as she clutched that pathetic bunch of flowers. A heartbeat later she had had her arms wrapped round the vertically challenged gorilla from the run-down shop on the caravan site. As he recalled from his first visit when he had been looking for Sophie, the guy tended to grunt rather than speak, Antonio reflected with raging incredulity. He tipped his brandy back in one fiery gulp. Why had she not told him that she had a boyfriend? Did she think she loved the gorilla? Were grunts really that appealing? Why had she kept quiet about the relationship? Was she in fact expecting to continue the affair in secret? He set the glass down with a hard snap that sent a crack travelling up the crystal stem.
To his knowledge no Rocha wife had ever been unfaithful, although there had been a few rather unexpected deaths over the centuries. Death before dishonour. For the very first time Antonio found himself in sympathy with distant ancestors who had ridden off to war for months on end leaving young and beautiful wives behind at home. How was he supposed to go away for weeks on business? In the space of a moment, a new horrific dimension had been added to Antonio’s outlook on matrimony. He tried to regard the potential problem of his bride’s future behaviour as a basic security issue. Careful supervision and geographical location would reduce the chances of any similar offence occurring.
When Sophie returned to the main cabin, Antonio slid upright with the grace of a panther ready to spring at an unwary prey. Having looked her fill at his bold bronzed profile before he registered her reappearance, Sophie ostentatiously ignored him, screened a fake yawn and picked up a magazine for good measure.
‘I saw you with Norah Moore’s son at the airport,’ Antonio murmured with icy cool.
‘Did you?’ Sophie was surprised but not concerned. ‘Matt can be so kind and thoughtful. Maybe you assumed that I bought those flowers for myself. I didn’t,’ she declared with emphasis. ‘Matt gave them to me.’
Antonio listened to that irrelevant and aggravating response with an amount of disbelief that did nothing to cool his ire. ‘Do you seriously think that I am interested in where the flowers came from?’ he enquired grittily.
‘Oh, no, I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested,’ Sophie countered with a hint of acidity, still without having deigned to glance in his direction.
‘Put the magazine down and look at me when you speak to me,’ Antonio instructed grimly.
Sophie kept her attention on the magazine and turned a page very slowly and carefully. Antonio brought out a defiant streak in Sophie that had remained dormant and unknown even to her until she had met him. She wondered why it was that he had only to address her in a certain tone or raise an aristocratic eyebrow to excite her even temper to screaming pitch.
Provoked beyond bearing, Antonio swept up the magazine and slung it aside.
‘So now you’re going to add bullying to all your other sins,’ Sophie commented in a tone of immense martyrdom. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised—’
‘What other sins?’ Antonio raked at her incredulously.
‘Oh, let’s not get into that right now,’ Sophie advised, rising to her full, unimposing height and pausing to hurriedly cram her feet back into the high heels she had removed. ‘Unless you’ve got all day to listen. And, of course, even if you did magically have the time or the good manners to listen, I might drop dead from hunger first.’
‘Hunger?’ Antonio growled, black brows pleating.
‘Obviously I shall have to get used to my comfort being ignored in favour of yours. I haven’t eaten since eight this morning and I am starving,’ Sophie tossed back at him accusingly. ‘And you couldn’t care less, could you? Because you’ve made it very clear that if you’re not hungry, I’m not supposed to be hungry either!’
‘The detour back to the hotel for the photographic session meant that there wasn’t time for lunch,’ Antonio informed her drily, striving not to notice how the vivid colour of anger enhanced the brightness of her eyes.
Sophie folded her arms and sent a flashing look of scorn at him. ‘So, in other words, starving me was deliberate—’
‘How the hell do you make that out?’ Antonio launched back at her wrathfully.
‘I argued about the photographs being cancelled and that annoyed you and so lunch went off the menu—’
‘How could you think that I am capable of being that petty?’ Antonio’s disgust at the allegation was convincing. ‘I did not wish to reschedule our flight. For that reason I arranged for a meal to be served to us now.’
Chagrin rather than relief at that news gripped Sophie. ‘Couldn’t you have explained that to me back at the hotel?’
‘You were sulking—’
‘I don’t sulk!’ Sophie hurled.
‘—and if you want to sulk like a little girl you will be treated like one,’ Antonio completed without hesitation, while wondering how she would react if he just lifted her off her absurdly high-heeled shoes and kissed her into merciful silence.
‘Try that on me again and you’ll see what happens!’ Sophie threw feverishly.
Infuriated by the weird thoughts and ideas interfering with his concentration, Antonio resisted the temptation to rise to her bait. Stunning dark eyes cool as a winter lake, he surveyed her with intimidating self-command. ‘I believe you think that you can distract me from your own inexcusable behaviour at the airport. You haven’t a prayer on that