by Dani Collins
As he left, he experienced the same tug in his heart at leaving her that he felt at leaving his son, which told him how necessary this small separation was. He needed time to put his defenses firmly back in place.
* * *
Three days later, Scarlett braced herself, then started down the stairs to the small office Javiero had arranged for her there at Casa del Cielo. It shouldn’t feel like a gauntlet—or a green mile to an execution room—but Paloma was invariably in the main lounge or otherwise taking note of her every move.
Scarlett didn’t have the energy to bear up bravely in front of her. Not today. Depression and exhaustion had her feeling like the walking dead, but she couldn’t blame all her sleep deprivation on Locke. A gnawing insecurity had been keeping her awake since London. A harrowing sadness she couldn’t seem to shake.
Javiero had left while she’d been sleeping and they’d barely spoken since. She had texted him to let him know she’d arrived back in Spain safely. They’d managed an abbreviated call yesterday, with Locke fussing throughout. She hadn’t had much to say anyway. She was still very sensitive over the awkward dinner with her sister, and their torrid lovemaking and her newly identified feelings.
Should she have told him she loved him? In the moment, being physically close with him had been an expression of everything in her heart. Since then she hadn’t been able to read his mood, and her own had descended into despondency.
It didn’t help that Ellie hadn’t answered any of her texts. She’d had to hear from her mother that Ellie had arrived home safely. For some reason Scarlett was the one feeling horribly guilty and ashamed over the way things had gone with her sister. And then there was the brief call from her mother that had ended in a plea for money. Her mother had to pay some legal bills for her father to work toward his early release.
Scarlett’s stress level was already through the roof, which was affecting her work. Now she was worrying about her mother, and being here with Paloma without Javiero’s buffering presence was awful. She felt like a guest who had long overstayed her welcome.
All of it made every footstep feel as though she had anchors tied to them and was walking through freshly poured cement.
“Here she is now,” she heard Paloma say.
“Pardon?” She jerked out of her fog as she passed the archway into the lounge.
“Javiero would like to speak to you.” He was on a video call on his mother’s tablet.
“Oh. Hello.” Her heart gave a dip and roll, but her shy smile died before it formed as she took in his distracted frown.
“I was telling Mother that things have gone sideways.” He gave a terse nod toward someone off camera. “I’ll be here the rest of the week.”
“Oh.” And this was how she was being informed? Second to his mother, called onto the carpet so Paloma could look down on her from her seated position, her expression a mix of superiority and boredom?
“That’s unfortunate.” Scarlett met his gaze in the tablet, trying to hide her disquiet with an unbothered smile. Words like I miss you tangled on her tongue and she bit them back. Her love was too new to reveal for the first time like this, in front of his mother.
Given Javiero’s seeming indifference, she wasn’t sure there would be a good time. He didn’t look receptive at all. The skinless feeling she’d been suffering made her feel positively translucent. Tumescent. Tender and sensitive and throbbing painfully.
“Perhaps try me later and we’ll chat properly,” she suggested.
“With the time difference, you’ll be in bed. No, not that one,” he said impatiently to someone off-screen. “I have to go.”
“Of course,” she murmured as Paloma took back the tablet and ended the call with, “Cuídate bien.”
Scarlett hovered a moment, turning her ring, not sure she could endure more of this tension with Paloma. Maybe this was the opportunity she’d been looking for to defuse it?
“May I have a seat and speak with you about something?” she asked.
Paloma lifted her gaze from the tablet as she set it aside, regarded her a moment, then assented with a tiny nod at the chair.
Scarlett lowered into it, trying to find the woman she used to be when she had been Niko’s emissary. That had been such a different dynamic, though. Her only priority then had been to advance Niko’s interests. It had been easy not to care too deeply whether Paloma liked her. Now, however, every action she took had to be bounced off a mirror to see how it reflected on Javiero. Paloma had asked her yesterday how long she intended Locke to remain illegitimate, and loved to report on how much sleep she had lost due to Locke’s fussy nights.
Scarlett couldn’t go on like this, not with so many other concerns drowning her. This animosity with Paloma was choking her. If she was going to seriously consider Javiero’s proposal, she needed to lift some of the pall off her relationship with her future mother-in-law. She had to find a way to make this villa feel more like her own home, as well as her husband’s and son’s.
“Yes?” Paloma was exactly as frosty as she’d always been, making sure Scarlett knew her patience was razor thin.
“In the past,” Scarlett began carefully. “It was always important to Niko that he be seen as treating his sons and their mothers equally.”
“Yes, I know,” Paloma cut in icily. “I was his wife, yet I received as little consideration as his mistress. It was galling.”
And thirty-three years later, she still clung tightly to her grudge.
“Well, in the spirit of Niko’s wishes, I thought it fair to inform you...” Scarlett licked her lips. “I’m not sure if you were aware of all the details in the will. For instance, Kiara and I are each entitled to an allowance.”
“I’m sure, as trustee, that was something that was very important to you.”
“It was something Niko stipulated so we could raise his grandchildren in the standard of living he enjoyed.” Scarlett’s own patience was eroding.
Paloma’s brows went up at Scarlett’s impertinence.
Scarlett scraped herself back under control. “Since Val is supporting Kiara, she doesn’t need her allowance. She made an arrangement with Evelina to use her allowance to purchase an estate Evelina may use for her lifetime and which will ultimately benefit Aurelia.”
Paloma’s sour expression didn’t change. “I don’t understand why you think I have an interest in those people and how they conduct their financial affairs.”
“Well, I thought it was a sensible compromise. I know you feel what Niko bequeathed to you is inadequate.”
“You think I ‘feel’ it was inadequate? It was insult after years of injury.”
“Yes, well, that’s why I wanted to offer you the same thing.”
“Are you suggesting you will pay me to leave my home so you can live here on Javiero’s good graces? How dare you? Really.” Paloma leaned forward to emphasize it. “I genuinely want to know where you find the nerve to make such an offer to me.”
Scarlett was slack-jawed, frantically trying to see how she’d failed to say this respectfully. Her stomach turned. She should have waited until Javiero was back and run it by him first, but the damage was done now.
“I suggest you keep that allowance for yourself. You’ll need it when you and Javiero divorce.”
“We’re not even married!”
“And why is that? Because you were hoping to get rid of me first? You lived off Niko, you control his fortune, you have a generous allowance, your son will inherit from Javiero, yet you want more. You want to push me out and take the home my ancestors built! I have never in my life met a more avaricious opportunist, and I am acquainted with Evelina Casale!”
“That is not what I’m trying to do,” Scarlett cried on a flash point of heat, then forced her indignation back into its box, trying to see this from Paloma’s side. “I know you still harbor rancor, because I worked for
Niko. That was my job, Paloma.”
Using her name got her a stiffened spine for the overstep.
“I would hope you would give me a fair chance to prove who I am outside of being Niko’s PA,” she persevered.
“I know exactly who you are,” Paloma hissed. “I have a full report on your entire family. Your father is a drunk who went to prison for nearly killing people. Your mother runs some type of brothel—”
“Excuse me? She takes in students from time to time.”
“Your sister has light fingers and a light skirt.”
“Hey!”
“She’s a freeloader who can’t hold a job cutting hair. Your brother escaped drug charges by fleeing the country.”
“That’s not the way it is at all!” It was a lot like that.
“And everyone knows what type of work you were really doing for Niko. It makes me sick that my son has to attach himself to you. Do you think Javiero wants to be tarred with that brush? No. He’ll do it for his son, but your marriage won’t last. Dragging your feet won’t change anything. Move this cart along.”
“You didn’t even love him.” Scarlett found herself shooting to her feet.
All the taut strings that had been pulling her in a dozen directions for weeks snapped, and she stepped out of her own body while a fiery demon took over, spewing venom she hadn’t known was inside her.
“You have spent three decades crying ‘Poor me!’ because Niko hurt your pride. You want to know how I dare suggest you live somewhere else? Because I don’t know how anyone lives with you, especially yourself. You let Niko and your father throw adult responsibilities onto a child. You turned your son against his own father so he wouldn’t even see Niko when he was dying. You are the vile human being here, Paloma. Not me.”
Paloma’s eyes were wide. Appalled. “Yes,” she bit out in a glacial tone. “I can see that I’m the one whose behavior deserves to be criticized. Your roots are showing.”
The monster inside her ghosted away as quickly as it had taken her over. Scarlett sagged where she stood, her rage gone, leaving a swell of reactionary tears and a massive sense of mortification that she’d utterly lost control of herself.
Humiliation as much as anger prompted her words. “I’m taking Locke to Madrid.”
* * *
“What the hell, Scarlett?”
She had ignored his texts and calls while traveling into the city, but now that she was behind the closed door of their bedroom in Madrid, she had returned his call—without video because she was a coward—and that was his searing greeting.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
She had had time to absorb how terribly she’d behaved. Yes, she’d been provoked, but she felt sick at not keeping control of herself. The fact that she didn’t know what had come over her was sitting like a nest of snakes in her belly. She already felt so miserable, so unloved and wrong, she could hardly bear it. Now she’d made it all worse.
The dark clouds that seemed to follow her around closed in and jabbed lightning bolts of admonition and insecurity through her, wearing her down even more.
“Is it true?” he cut in. “You suggested she move out?”
“It wasn’t like that. I know I should have talked to you first. Your mother and I have been on the wrong foot from the beginning. I thought she would like having options.”
“You thought calling her a vile human being was an option? You don’t know what she’s been through! You don’t know what treatment we had to suffer from Niko all those years. All you know is the last few years when he’d lost all power to hurt us any longer. You were totally offside.”
“Do you want to hear my side of it at all?” Tears were cracking her voice, filling her eyes and seeping like fiery poison into the cracks of her fractured composure.
“Your side is always Niko’s,” he said coldly. “So, no. I don’t.”
“That’s not fair! She... She—” She had to swallow back a choke of anguish. “She said you just wanted to marry me so you can divorce me. That you’ll never want me because of my family. Is that true?”
“It wasn’t. Now that I’ve met them, I definitely have reservations.”
Wow. She stood there stunned, breath punched from her body.
After a moment, he swore and asked, “Is it true? What your sister said? Has this been your master plan all along, get Dad’s money, then get mine?”
The pain kept rolling over her in waves. “You really believe that?”
“I want to hear you deny it.”
“You’re the one who has been pushing for marriage, not me.”
“Marriage. Not a coup. You waited until my back was turned to try to evict my mother.”
The world around her seemed to expand while she shrank until she was nearly nothing at all. She felt very, very alone then. Bereft and unwanted. Useless. Off in the bedroom, she heard Locke begin to cry and despair engulfed her.
“If that’s what you think of me, then it’s a good thing we’re not married.”
“Oh, we’re still marrying, Scarlett,” he ground out. “I want my son.”
His son. Not her.
Something broke in her. Drips of mascara were falling off her cheeks onto her blouse.
“I can’t do this anymore.” She ended the call and made another one.
* * *
Javiero wrapped up in New York as quickly as he could, irritated that Scarlett didn’t call or text after hanging up on him—although he didn’t reach out, either. He was too furious.
Too conflicted. Did he want to marry her? Yes. They had a child. And after he had cooled down, he recognized that his mother wouldn’t have been as blameless in their argument as she cast herself. She had transferred her grudge against Niko over to Scarlett, and that needed addressing.
London was supposed to have gone very differently. Javiero had been waiting for Scarlett to be cleared by the doctor before pushing for a wedding date. With a special night and a seduction, he had expected to secure her commitment. He then would have had a conversation with his mother himself. Paloma had had enough time to lick her wounds over Niko’s abysmal last act. She may not like her son’s choice in bride, but she would have to respect that he had one.
It had all gone off the rails with the arrival of Scarlett’s sister. She’d been quite the piece of work, and he’d questioned the wisdom in tying his name to Scarlett’s.
He’d been trying to convince himself that Scarlett wasn’t anything like the people she’d come from, and then she’d thrown a tantrum, suggesting Paloma leave the only home she’d ever known.
That overstep had left him so incensed he had reciprocated her silence, giving them both time to cool off.
When he walked into the Madrid flat, he was prepared to address the whole thing with civility, but she wasn’t here. She wasn’t in Spain, he learned from the housekeeper. She had taken their son to Niko’s island villa.
All Javiero’s intentions to stay rational were incinerated in a bonfire of fresh wrath.
This was why he couldn’t trust her! His mother had warned him this would happen—that Scarlett would use their son as a hostage to get whatever she wanted from him. Damn her!
He called her, but it went to voice mail. She continued to ignore his calls and texts for two days. He grew more livid by the second. Finally, he tracked down the number for the landline and blistered the ear of a maid until she put him through.
“Hello?” a fresh female voice greeted warily.
“Get me Scarlett,” he said through his teeth. “Now.”
“Javiero? This is Kiara. How are you?”
“Devoid of patience. Put Scarlett on.”
“She’s asleep.” Her tone held rebuke. “Is this an emergency?”
He looked at the phone. No one said no to him. No one except—
“Is V
al there?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“No.” She sounded defensive, though. “I’m here to pack up my studio.”
“And what is Scarlett doing there? Also packing?”
Kiara left a silence that made a howl lodge in his chest.
“Put her on the phone, Kiara. Now.”
“I’ll tell her you called, but I can’t make her talk to you. I’m not going to try. She—”
“She can talk to me in the morning. I’m leaving now,” he cut in with a snap. He had begun making preparations the minute he’d learned where she was, hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but apparently it had.
“You’re coming here?”
“Don’t bother preparing a room,” he said with distaste. “I have a yacht on standby in Athens. I swore I’d never sleep another night in that house and I refuse to start now.”
Besides, he wasn’t staying. And neither were they.
* * *
“I looked up postpartum symptoms,” Scarlett told Kiara the next morning. “I think you’re right.” Her eyes welled, but when had they not been soggy lately? Her inability to control her emotions added to everything else that made her feel like a giant failure. “But making an appointment with the doctor feels like one more thing to deal with.” She hated herself for sounding so miserable and weak.
Kiara, bless her, crinkled her brow in empathy and said, “I called already. I’ll take you this afternoon.”
“Your being here means the world to me, you know. Thank you.”
“Of course. There’s nowhere else I want to be.”
A slight shadow flickered across Kiara’s warm smile. She wasn’t being completely truthful. She wanted to be with Val. Scarlett had watched Kiara’s face soften and glow each time she spoke of him—which baffled her because Scarlett had always found Val to be very challenging. Sarcastic and superior and devoid of kindness. There was even less tenderness in him than Javiero, as far as Scarlett could discern.
Val had won the heart of his daughter, though. Aurelia had had a meltdown last night, missing her papà. Kiara was making a family with the father of her baby and Scarlett was envious as hell.