‘What?’
‘You heard me. I proposed marriage first.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted to. Because I wanted exactly what Tess and Zack are now giving me.’
‘And just when did you decide that, Nick? I know you were still playing the field when Enrique died and that wasn’t even two months ago.’
The packet from Brazil…
Weird irony that he had barely given a thought to his father’s letter since Tess had told him about Zack, yet what he’d read as his father’s fantasy of an ideal life was now shaping up as his reality. Had Enrique got it right at the end? Certainly the carrot of meeting two half-brothers had pushed Nick into considering a marriage with Tess and subsequently acting on the idea, bringing him to where he was now.
‘Did the news of your father’s death suddenly awaken a sense of mortality in you?’ his mother mocked, impatient for a definitive reply from him. ‘Time to get married and beget children?’ she ran on, determined on pinning him down to her satisfaction.
Which meant fitting his decisions and actions into her values and that was impossible. Nick shook his head, realising he’d moved too far from his mother’s standpoint to establish any understanding between them.
‘Just go on living your own life, Mother, and let me live mine,’ he said dismissively, holding up a hand in farewell before heading out of her domain.
Far from acknowledging his exit line, her face lit up with the excitement of having seized an insight that answered everything on her terms. ‘The inheritance! That’s what this marriage is about, isn’t it? You denied that Enrique had left you anything but why would he gift me the emerald necklace and not give you—his own son!—much more? Marrying Tessa Steele is your ticket to the Ramirez estate,’ she declared triumphantly.
Nick’s stomach contracted at the sickening equation.
Her golden eyes narrowed to a satisfied glitter. ‘Yes, I can see him laughing as he wrote in the provision,’ she ran on. ‘A well-rounded joke on life…’
‘No, Mother,’ Nick bit out in grim fury. ‘I won’t touch a cent of the Ramirez fortune, either, and you could not be more wrong in linking Tess to a black joke on life by your Brazilian lover. She was not named in my father’s letter to me.’
One perfectly plucked eyebrow arched in disbelief. ‘Darling, you can trust me to keep a secret.’
It was futile trying to correct her.
She gave her feline smile. ‘What exactly did Enrique write to you?’
‘I told you,’ he said with cold finality. ‘He revealed I had two half-brothers—family I didn’t know about.’
‘And they’d get the inheritance if you didn’t…’
‘This is not about any inheritance!’ he yelled, driven beyond any tolerance for her priorities. ‘I came to tell you I had a family of my own now. Though I can see you’re not the least bit interested in your grandson, any more than you were ever interested in me.’
‘How can you say that?’ she protested heatedly.
‘Very easily!’ He tipped her a savagely mocking salute. ‘Good morning to you, Mother! Go ask Philip to buy you another house to decorate. Mine is off limits to you!’
‘Off limits?’ she screeched after him as he made his exit from the breakfast room, closing the door on her scene.
He didn’t wait to be shown out of the showcase home. He strode out on his own steam, wishing he hadn’t bothered coming. The only shared ground he had left with his mother was their past—the mother-son link that had tied them together whether they liked it or not. He’d thought it warranted courtesy but his mother’s attitude towards Tess and their marriage precluded that.
This was the parting of the ways.
It was time to let go what had never been good, anyway.
The emptiness there’d always been in his relationship with his mother was being filled by Zack and Tess. He certainly didn’t need to hang onto any maternal apron strings.
All this sound reasoning was running through Nick’s mind as he drove away from Balmoral Beach. Unhappily, he was not taking into account the fact that his mother might not want to let him go, nor did he consider how frustrated she might be feeling about being thwarted by him on a number of issues.
In fact, Nadia Kilman/Steele/Manning/Hardwick/ Condor was deciding on milking another source for the information she wanted—Nick’s new convenient wife, who could hardly deny her the right to see her own grandson!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BY THE time Nadia Condor finally took her leave, Tess felt the bottom had dropped out of her brave new world with Nick and she was free-falling into the most miserable darkness of her life. At least she’d cobbled enough pride together so that Nick’s mother could not have realised how much pain she had delivered, but that was little solace for the total shattering of her private fantasy.
The whole black irony was…she’d believed Nick’s word that this marriage would never involve them in the property trap. He didn’t want or need any part of her wealth and she didn’t want or need any part of his. It had never occurred to her there could be other property tied to their marriage. She knew nothing of the fabulous Ramirez estate. More to the point, Nick had not mentioned his father’s death, nor the terms of inheritance.
A marriage of convenience—that was what he had proposed and what she had accepted, for Zack’s sake, so their son would have a live-in father for as long as Nick was prepared to live in. What she had to do now was hold onto that reasoning and move forward as though nothing had changed, because in real terms, nothing had.
They were married.
Nick had bought them this magnificent family home.
He was not only living in, but proving to be a great father, even wanting them to have another child together—a brother or sister for Zack.
She had no complaints about him as a husband, either. He was caring, considerate, as generous with the time they spent together as though they truly were lovers, and the sex they shared had not lost one iota of its passionate heat. This was as good as she could have expected it to get…given that love had never been declared.
Promising it in his marriage vows didn’t count. She had chosen the words to be spoken. At the time, his tone of voice had actually persuaded her into thinking he meant them, but no doubt she’d been carried away by the emotional high of the ceremony, no feet on the ground at all.
It had taken Nadia Condor to bring her crashing down to earth today. Loving Nick Ramirez with all her heart did not mean he ever had to love her back. She had to stop feeding herself this fantasy. It was completely out of kilter with Nick’s purpose in choosing her as his wife…the one woman he could count on not to demand a divorce settlement, which he’d told her upfront!