The Twelve-Month Mistress by Kate Walker Page B

here—to—to Ramón.’
    In his mind he was seeing the day that Ramón had come to the finca , recalling the welcoming smile on her face, the way she had encouraged him into the house. Hell, she had even given him her keys!
    The flare of hot jealousy hazed his eyes with red, blinding him as his hand clenched tight on the glass.
    ‘After what we shared.’
    ‘I told you at the time that there was more to it than enjoyment—than sex.’
    ‘And Ramón gives you this more?’
    ‘Right now, he gives me something that you never did!’
    Her voice had lost something of the firmness it had held only moments before. Something he had said had struck home, shaking her conviction, rocking the foundations they were built on. But what? Which particular sentence had hit the target, thudding into the red, if not precisely into the gold?
    There was something not quite right about this situation. Something he couldn’t completely work out—but every instinct he possessed told him that something was wrong. Something that raised all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck in warning like the hackles on a wary dog. But the haze of bitterness and shock, the raw agony of disbelief, clouded his brain so that thinking clearly was an impossibility.
    Joaquin lifted the brandy bottle again, waving it in Cassie’s direction, lifting one eyebrow questioningly.
    ‘Join me in a drink?’
    ‘No—and do you think you should?’
    ‘Think I should?’ Joaquin echoed cynically. ‘Why not? After all, if my brother can steal my woman from me then surely I am entitled to help myself to some of his brandy in return.’
    ‘Steal your woman?’ Cassie repeated, actually managing to look convincingly bemused. ‘What are you talking about?’
    “‘I’ve moved in with Ramón”,’ Joaquin quoted at her, considering the brandy bottle, then abruptly setting it down again. ‘You’re living with my brother.’
    ‘You knew that already! I told you…’
    The shocking sense of realisation was like a blow to her face, stunning her into silence, shrivelling the words on her tongue.
    Too late she realised how he was interpreting her reply. How he was putting far too much into it.
    Not ‘you’re living with my brother’, as in you share thisapartment with Ramón, but you’re living with Ramón. As she had once lived with Joaquin himself.
    ‘No,’ she tried but Joaquin wasn’t listening.
    ‘You said you were fine with what we had—that you didn’t want anything more.’
    He slammed his half-empty glass down on the table, heedless of the way that the rich amber brandy slopped over the side.
    ‘Then Ramón—my brother—crooks his little finger and you’re gone! Without a second thought—leaving me a note !’
    ‘I-I didn’t have any time to say any more!’ Cassie stammered clumsily. ‘I—’
    ‘No time?’ Joaquin practically spat the words into her pale face. ‘And why was that, querida ? Was your new lover waiting impatiently for you? Are you so insatiable that you’ve gone from my bed to my brother’s in less than a week? Couldn’t you wait to get to him—to Ramón? To my brother ?’
    ‘No! You’ve got it all wrong! I didn’t—’
    ‘Didn’t what, my darling? Didn’t leave me and come straight here to be with Ramón? Didn’t move in with him without a backward glance—’
    ‘Yes! I moved in with him!’ she tried again. ‘But not like that! We’re not lovers!’
    Blazing black eyes seared over her from head to foot, taking in the short, clinging robe, her bare legs and toes.
    ‘We’re not ! When I said he gives me something you never did, I meant…’
    Her voice deserted her just when she needed it most. What could she say that Ramón gave her? The mood that Joaquin was in, he would never believe her if she simply used the word friendship. And really, what Joaquin’s brother had offered was more than that. It was an unquestioning, peaceful, brotherly sort of…
    But no, she couldn’t use the word love .
    ‘What did