Billionaire's Defiant Mistress (18 page)

Because she lived in a big house with everything done for her, she sometimes felt herself to be invisible. What was her role? Everything was paid for by her rich husband and the house was run efficiently by the staff. She also wanted the dinner to make Carlos see her as his partner, rather than a trinket dangling from his arm – or worse, the blonde country girl quietly incubating his baby in the background.

It was also the first opportunity she'd had to be with him, as a couple, in public. They might have resumed their sex life to what it had been when they first met but she still didn't feel that they were close. This was a hurdle she wanted to leap over, she wanted to be his confidant, the person he turned to because he trusted her.

The dress she chose was perfect because it gave no indication of her swelling belly and it went very well with her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She ordered a variety of flowers with which she had decorated the room, the house smelt delicious.

When Carlos appeared in his dark suit which clung to his powerful muscular physique she noticed how formidable and heartbreakingly handsome he was. She counted her blessings and said a silent prayer, hoping that she wouldn't let her husband down.

“Now, you must stop worrying,” said Carlos, when he saw the frown on her face. “They are not going to bite you.”

Maybe they wouldn't bite, but that didn't stop Sarah feeling incredibly intimidated when they arrived. Claudia was a sleek Italian model who seemed to have a permanent, casual smile – as well as the most immaculate clothes Sarah had ever seen. Gianluca, her husband, was a retired soccer player and former team-mate of Carlos's. Since ending his sporting career he had moved into property investment and had shared many deals with Carlos. He was wearing a slightly crumpled linen suit, but carried an air of charismatic charm as well as exuding wealth and power. As for Carolyn – she had Sarah wondering if Carlos had any plain looking women friends, and her investment banker husband was equally good-looking.

During pre-dinner drinks, Sarah had a bout of the nervous trembles and spilt champagne over Claudia's jacket.

In a blind panic she spluttered out her apologies. “Oh, no. Oh, gosh. I'm really sorry!”

“Don't worry, it will be fine.”

“It was only twelve-hundred dollars, wasn't it, darling?” said her husband, jokingly.

“Come and sit down, Sarah,” said Carlos. “Elaine can serve the drinks.”

The truth was, she felt like a child who was being told off. But then her life experience was so insignificant at the side of her guests, that she was a child by comparison. All the research and homework she had done to improve her general knowledge had been futile. The elite group she found herself with were all a decade or more older than Sarah and they spoke of things she'd never heard of. They shared stories about people she didn't know and probably never would. When she was with Carlos the age difference didn't seem to matter – but now he was sat with his peers the distance between them had grown even larger. It seemed that Rafaela had been right all along.

She served a traditional English roast beef dinner and it proved to be a mistake just as Elaine had suggested it might. Sarah saw a deep frown on Carlos's face when the misshapen, slightly charred Yorkshire puddings appeared on the table – and she was sure she heard Carolyn asking Claudia about her delicious home-made pizzas.

Sarah tried to gloss over the menu disaster. “I thought you'd enjoy trying something different,” she said brightly.

Her four guests had stared at her curiously after she spoke.

“How did you meet each other?” said Nico, as he helped himself to a spoon of vegetables from the serving dish.

“I... I was... I was at work.” She paused. Is that all I'm going to say, she thought. “In a store, actually,” she added.

There was a brief silence which was broken by Carolyn. “Really? Which store was that?”

“Puxley's.”

“Puxley's? Darling, is that where you got my suit from?” asked Gianluca.

Claudia smiled at her husband. “Yes it is. Who knows, perhaps you served me, Sarah.”

“Not with a suit I wouldn't have. I worked on the perfume counter,” said Sarah, hating every word she was speaking and hoping the ground would open up and swallow her.

“Was Carlos buying perfume?”

“No. I was only interested in the woman behind the counter,” he declared, causing them all to burst into laughter.

The conversation about her lowly job deflated Sarah and over the rest of the evening she sank deeper into herself, the rest of the occasion passing her by in an embarrassing blur. The food had been an insipid non-event, the highlight of the evening being the expensive chocolate brought by Carolyn along with the superb strong Italian coffee made by Elaine. By the time the evening was over, Sarah felt completely drained. She barely had the energy to take part in the flurry of air kisses as they said their goodbyes.

Carlos slid the bolt across the front door and eyed his wife as she slumped listlessly against the wall. “So, what were you doing tonight?” he asked gently.

“What was I doing?” she snarled. “Are you referring to the tasteless meal and the overcooked beef? Or was it the way I threw champagne over a thousand pound jacket?”

“I mean the way you sat there, as if in the dock awaiting a death sentence.”

“What else could I do? Your friends didn't like me.”

“Nonsense. You didn't give them a chance.”

“I didn't have a clue what they were talking about; the conversation was over my head all night.”

“What did you expect? I have known them for years and it's a long time since I've seen them.”

“Yes. And you've known me for all of five minutes.”

“I didn't mean that,” he said, frustrated.

“Didn't you?” The bottom fell out of her world. Suddenly, she felt weak and beaten – as if she'd used all her strength against an immovable force and she'd run out of the willpower to continue. She shook her head as she lifted her palms upwards, shrugging. “We are wasting our time, we need to stop pretending,” she said with a tired expression. “It's time for me to give you your freedom back – then you can get back with Rafaela and maybe get the happiness you deserve.”

“Then I can
what
? What do you mean?”

Sarah looked at him, her head bowed, her voice quiet and sincere. “She's about to break up with Raul, you've told me that yourself – as did she. Your friends are wondering why on earth you married me – and tonight has proved that. She made it clear that she wants you, and I know you still want her, Carlos.”

There was a long silence as he stared at her. “Tell me, what makes you believe that?” he questioned.

Sarah's mind was made up and she was too emotional to notice the calm and friendly tone in his voice. She had been bottling up her thoughts for too long and she was ready to let them explode in an argument with Carlos.

“Not once did you touch me after we got married. You only got round to it the day we met
her
. Then you were all over me. It was as if she had driven you wild, but you couldn't have her, so I had to do.” Her bitterness poured out as it consumed her entire being. “And it felt like you closed your eyes so you could imagine it was her,” she whispered, as her eyes filled with tears. “It was her you made love to that night, not me. I was just the one that you touched. It was her in your mind, and her you were speaking to in Spanish – words I couldn't understand.”

There was a cold and shocked silence. “You believe that?” Carlos turned pale. “Are you telling me, that you believe I could behave like that?”

Sarah's mind was spinning to the point she didn't know what she believed. She wasn't even sure what she had said any more. She could feel the beat of her heart and the emptiness in her stomach and those sensations were only confusing her more. “Given the circumstances, it's the obvious assumption any woman would make.”

“A woman who respected her husband wouldn't make that assumption,” he said coldly. His icy words complemented the hard stare in his eyes. “A woman who respected herself wouldn't make that assumption either.”

His daring to answer her caused something inside Sarah to snap. “Respect myself? How can I possibly respect myself when you give me nothing back? You never tell me what's on your mind, I have to guess. You never talk to me about anything, unless it's trivial. The fact is, Carlos, I don't mean anything to you – not as a human being. I have never meant anything to you except as a thing for you to control. First I was a mistress – now I'm a baby carrier. It's not me you want
;
you only want me for what
you
get.”

Carlos could feel the slow burn of anger building up inside him. This messy emotional display was a wrapper for confronting him with outrageous allegations. “Do you think this outburst is going to make me judge you favourably?” he said. “It would be much better to sit down together and have an adult conversation about what is bothering you. It's certainly preferable to throwing out a bundle of accusations when you're feeling tired and emotional.”

She stood facing him. He had never looked more formidable and more determined than he did at that moment. Not even on that windswept afternoon by the lake, when he had proposed, having discovered she was pregnant.

But the last time she had already decided to go it alone, her pride and sense of self had been intact. Now, she felt her own self-respect was being dismantled piece by piece because of her unrealistic yearning that he would learn how to love her. She had to face it, he would never love her. She regretted giving in to his plan and wished she had followed her own instinct, kept her integrity and been a single mother who could hold her head high. She wouldn't have to fight the constant battle for a small piece of love and affection, whilst only finding that she was banging her head against an emotional brick wall. Hopefully it wasn't too late and she could still make some independence for herself.

“I've had enough of tiptoeing around your dark silences and the way you block my attempts at conversation. I'm sick of biting my tongue because Mr Moody doesn't want to answer my questions. You're a cold-hearted machine dressed as a man. You will never understand.”

She spun on her heels and crammed her fingers in her mouth so he couldn't hear the noise of her sobbing. She ran up the stairs, straight into the spare room, locking the door behind her as the tears flowed freely from her eyes.

She cried and she waited. She cried until she could cry no more and her eyes were dry, sore and aching. Her pain caused a headache and her stomach felt tight as she lay on the bed wondering what the hell she was going to do.

She decided, that when he knocked on the door, she would tell him that it was best everything was in the open. The marriage wasn't working, and the baby wasn't going to change that.

But Carlos never came, and she shouldn't have been surprised because Carlos wasn't the kind of man to come knocking meekly and ask for an audience, even with his wife. She eventually realised the conversation would have to be continued in the morning, in the cold light of day. It was then that she would begin facing a new future with a heart that had been broken in two.

She drifted in and out of sleep, still wearing her clothes, when through instinct her eyes opened in alarm. She knew something was terribly wrong.

She could feel a sharp pain in her abdomen. She lay there in silence, scared to move and frightened she would make it worse. She slid her hand between her thighs and could feel something warm and wet. Her heart and life were shattered when she lifted her hand into the air and saw that it was covered in blood.

There was an intense feeling of fear and shock which gripped her in a way she had never experienced before. She wanted to scream, but her throat could make no noise. She sucked in a deep breath and tried again. There was only one word she could think of as her mind was clouded with pain and fear.

“Carlos!” she screamed. “Carlos!”

Carlos was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. He was fully dressed, searching the ceiling for a clue as to why he was lying on that bed and Sarah was in the next room.

She is just so stubborn and wilful, he thought. I have such a busy lifestyle and an efficient manner of dealing with that – it's up to her to make the effort to fit in with what is already established, he reasoned. Did she believe that sulking in a bedroom on her own would make any difference? Did she think that an emotional tantrum would help to change his mind on anything? Carlos was determined to stand firm and had decided that Sarah was the one who had the hard lesson to learn.

Then came the scream. A horrible, spine chilling scream which reached into his heart and jarred his senses like nothing ever had before. He felt instant fear.

He had already leapt off the bed when he heard her scream for the second time, she was screaming for him. She was desperate for him to be with her.

Reaching the door of her room he found it to be locked. He rattled the handle a couple of times and in a blind panic kicked the bottom of the door. “Sarah!” he shouted. “Open the door!”

There was no response other than a distant whimper; his wife was clearly in distress. “Stand back, I'm going to break the door down.” Carlos took a pace back and aimed a full blooded kick to the centre of the lower part of the door. The door rocked in its frame as he stepped back once more and prepared himself for another assault on the barrier between him and Sarah. His legs, being strong and muscular, were up to the task and when mentally focused there was nothing to stop Carlos achieving whatever it was he needed to achieve. On the second kick, the door twisted and jarred against the lock. He stepped back one more time and aimed his third kick just to the side of the handle. The door burst open, the frame around the lock splintering and giving way to the determination of the frantic Carlos.

Switching on the light he made his way over to the bed where his distraught wife was curled up like a baby. Her face was white and she looked at Carlos, her eyes wide with terror. He touched her shoulder, “What is it?”