Modern Romance Collection: November 2017 Books 5 - 8. Annie West

      ‘I am not in love with Lydia.’ He snapped the words in rapid Spanish, again causing others to look his way.

      ‘Then maybe you are more like your father than you imagine.’

      Raul gritted his teeth. He wasn’t having this conversation. Not now. Not here like this. Not when he’d just sent Lydia out of his life for good. ‘I can’t talk any more.’

      ‘Talk to her, Raul—for me.’

      He cut the call without giving his mother any further opportunity to increase the pain that raged inside him like a wild animal, pain from the deceit of the past as well as the deceit of the present.

      He downed the whisky in one go and then slammed the glass down on the table. Lydia loved him? Not possible. She was as cold and calculating as he was—and also now financially very well off with her new property portfolio. Did that mean they were well matched? Or was she hiding the real Lydia as much as he kept his true emotions hidden?

      He thought back to their time together in Madrid and ultimately to that passionate weekend. He had been happy then, even forgetting the need to find Max as he’d lived the lie of being Lydia’s lover. But had it been a lie? Was the elusive emotion of love the reason he’d been so happy in Madrid, so like a completely different version of himself?

      As Christmas carols began to fill the bar again, jingling with merriment, he finally had the nerve to question himself, question just what it was that had sparked into life between him and Lydia from their very first meeting here in London. He thought back to the hard and cruel words he’d hurled at her just moments before she’d run out of his life. He could still hear the feral growl in his voice, as if it were being played alongside the bright and cheery carols.

      An angry curse slipped from him and he strode to the bar, ordering another whisky and swigging it back in one. He glared at his reflection in the mirrored wall of the bar, distorted by the array of optics. He’d been a fool to think Lydia would betray him. He knew she would never willingly drag herself through the mire of the press and was as much a victim as he and Max. He also knew now that the passion they had shared, one so strong and powerful, like nothing he’d ever known, was not born out of lust—but love.

      The unthinkable had happened. He’d fallen in love.

      Lydia Carter-Wilson, his fake fiancée, was the woman he wanted to marry, the woman he wanted to have children with—and he’d sent her away.

      Raul left the bar, the cold wind whipping at his coat as he crossed the busy street, dashing in front of black cabs. It wasn’t the whisky that had dulled his senses, making him careless, but the loss of the woman he loved.