Reclaimed by the Tycoon - Chapter 2

The Festival de Vino de Verano was not something Salvador had ever been tempted to attend before. In fact, he usually gave it a wide berth, choosing to spend the month of August on the Spanish mainland, or elsewhere abroad. Even as a boy, he’d taken an intense disliking to the event, and the way it brought hordes of tourists—many of them entitled, wealthy Europeans—to the streets of the city. He had not been above picking their pockets, though, when he’d been particularly hungry. To assuage his conscience, for his morality had been black and white, even when driven by necessity and starvation to do something he considered beneath him, he would share his loot with the children he ran with, making sure that if he ate, they all ate.

It was a long time ago, yet on these streets he felt those parts of himself, the street urchin he’d once been, weaving into the fabric of the man he’d become.

Not that many people knew the full truth of his childhood. Beyond a few sanitized descriptions of him in the media as a ‘self-made billionaire’, he kept the real story of his upbringing to himself. With one exception: the woman at his feet.

Isabella was one such part of his past—a source of shame and guilt, an action he wished he could forget, for many reasons.

He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have let himself be induced to wander the streets, on the eve of the festival, to see if maybe now, with the changing perspectives of wealth and adulthood, he might feel differently. After all, having recently acquired one of the world’s biggest luxury brand holdings, which happened to include a premier Castilionian winery renowned for their Garnacha, he’d felt almost an obligation to show his face and see what the event was about.

He just hadn’t banked on coming face to face, more or less, anyway, with Isabella.

She’d cut her hair since he’d last seen her. Then, it had been a glossy dark brown, falling in waves down her back, or tumbling over her shoulders, curtaining her breasts when they’d made love and she’d straddled him, crying his name out, begging him, needing him like he was her last breath. Now, it was shoulder length, cut in a sophisticated bob that emphasized the enchanting shape of her dark green eyes, and the sweep of her full lips, painted a deep red. His gut rolled in instant recognition of how attractive he still found her.

Which was an insult to both of them, but particularly her.

There was no way she’d welcome his attention again, and he would never offer it. Their affair had been a mistake. No matter that his divorce had now come through, and he was a free agent, it didn’t change the fact that their liaison had been wrong. She’d walked out on him the second she’d learned the truth, but he hadn’t gone after her.

He didn’t follow her and tell her that while he was still technically married, both he and his wife knew their relationship was over. They were simply maintaining a charade for her father, who had suffered a series of strokes and was in palliative care. Neither had wanted to put him through the stress of a public divorce, and so they’d agreed to live separate lives privately, but still continue to maintain the appearance of being together publicly.

Salvador had trusted Isabella. He knew that if he’d followed her and told her the truth, it would have solved everything. Yet, he hadn’t.

Whereas his marriage to Charlotte had been based on friendship and gratitude, cool and predictable, a pleasant backdrop that enabled him to pursue his business ambitions, his relationship with Isabella was the exact opposite. In the five weeks they’d been together, their relationship had been characterized by fire and flame. Lava-like explosions ensued whenever they were together. Their touch alone had been incendiary. They’d made love like they couldn’t stop themselves, with urgency and rapacious need. He’d thought of her, constantly. Her voice, her mind, her body, were all infinitely distracting, utterly engrossing, so he’d started to wonder if she was a witch who’d cast a spell on him.

He'd watched her walk away, and thought about chasing her down, making her understand that she was mistaken about him. But in the back of his mind had been the question: And then what?

It was possible that his relationship with Isabella would have simply burned itself out, in time. The brightest fires often did. But what if the opposite was true, and he became more obsessed and spellbound by her? What if she became all he could think of, all he wanted, to the point his business suffered?

What if he became even more obsessed with her, and she turned around one day and said she didn’t want him anymore? He’d known that pain and rejection before. Never from a lover, but from foster parent after foster parent, from people who’d pledged to care for him and then decided he was too difficult, too hard to live with, much less love.

Isabella had been an aberration; he was better off without her.

That was a decision he hadn’t once questioned. He might have missed her like a limb, at first, but he’d refused to let himself weaken. The short-term pain was worth it, to regain control of his thoughts and destiny. It had required an extreme amount of discipline, but that was not something Salvador had in short supply.

As with two years ago, the smart thing now would be to walk away. Someone else would come and help Isabella quickly enough. And yet, of course, there was no way he was going to do that. Leaving any woman—let alone this woman—collapsed on the footpath, just because he’d found their relationship to be an inconvenient distraction at one point, was obviously beneath him.

‘Don’t be absurd, Isabella. Let me help you.’

‘I told you—’ her nostrils flared with indignation. More passion. More lava. How he remembered their fights, the way they would spark off each other, sometimes arguing two sides of the same coin simply for the pleasure of sparring. As a boy, he’d sought out fights often: he’d been angry and defensive, with a massive chip on his shoulder. But by the time he’d passed through adolescence, he was both feared and revered on the street. He’d learned that being in control of his emotions was far more satisfying than letting them go. Until Isabella, that was something he hadn’t questioned—and he was glad he hadn’t had to question it since. Feelings would always be something he kept under a tight grip—which meant getting as far away from this woman as possible.

Looking down at her now though, a familiar spark was igniting in the pit of his belly, making his blood rush and roil. ‘Well then, what is your great plan?’ he asked, crossing his arms, choosing to let her think he was amused by her stance, because he knew it would drive her crazy.

‘Someone else will help me.’

‘What are you afraid of? That I’ll touch you and we’ll start ripping each other’s clothes off, like we once did?’

It was deliberately provocative, and he was rewarded by a pink staining of her cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t go reminding me of that time in our lives, if I was you. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of.’ She sniffed. ‘Not that being “the other woman” was my fault—or my choice.’