by Dani Collins
“Did your parents pass away? Have you always lived with them?”
“I have, but my parents are alive. Divorced. Dad works in the oil patch.” She tried not to sound as forlorn as she had always felt when talking about her parents. “He shows up every few months for a week or so, sleeps on the couch and does some repairs. He used to give Gran money sometimes, for taking care of me. I think he gambles most of what he makes. It’s one of those things no one in the family talks about, but money has always been an issue with him.”
“Thus the divorce?”
“I’m sure that was part of it. Mom had her own issues.” She turned from the cleared patch that faced the pond and started on the path around it.
She hated that she had to reveal her deepest shame, but he ought to know it, so he would understand her reasons for refusing to marry him.
“They were really young when they had me. Mom was only nineteen. Not ready for the responsibility of being a parent. My dad brought her here to live with his parents then left to work far away. Mom stuck around until I was two, then she started moving around, living the life she thought she was entitled to, I guess.”
“Partying? Drugs?”
“Freedom, mostly.” Poppy understood now how overwhelming parenting was, but she hadn’t dropped her daughter like a hot potato just because it was hard. “She didn’t want to be a mom. She wanted to ‘explore her potential.’” Poppy air-quoted the phrase. “She tried modeling in Toronto and worked as a flight attendant out of Montreal. She was a music promoter in Halifax, went to Vancouver to work on a cruise ship. Followed a man to India for a year then came back and opened a yoga studio in California. That’s how she met her current husband, teaching one of his ex-wives to downward dog. He’s a movie producer. They have two kids.”
Two sulky, spoiled children who complained about the meals Poppy’s mother cooked for them and the music lessons and soccer practices she drove them to.
Poppy tried not to hate them. They were family, but they were also entitled little brats.
“You never lived with her?” Rico asked behind her.
“By the time she was settled, I was starting high school. Bringing me across the border even for a visit was more bureaucracy than she wanted to face. She still hasn’t seen Lily except over the tablet. I think she wishes I had never been born. Not in a spiteful way, but she would rather pretend her youthful mistake had never happened.”
The path became streaked by the shadows of a copse of trees. She plodded into it, trying not to be depressed by her parents’ neglect when they’d left her with such amazing grandparents.
“What I’m hearing is that you wish both of your parents had taken steps to bring you to live with them.”
“Is that what you’re hearing?” She stopped and turned, thinking her grandparents had been onto something because there was safety in the darkness, where her vulnerability wasn’t painted in neon letters across her face. “Because I’ve come to realize they did me a favor, leaving me with people who tucked me in and told me they loved me every night.”
She had surprised him by turning to confront him. He had pulled up, but stood really close. His face was striped by ivory and cobalt.
“Have you told them? Your parents?” she asked.
“I told them she was likely mine, even though the DNA results were inconclusive. I said—”
“What?” Poppy’s elbows went stiff as she punched the air by her thighs. “Why did you even come here if you didn’t know?”
“Because I had to know,” he said tightly, “Your guilty expression when you opened the door was all the proof I needed.”
She was such a dope, confirming his suspicions before he even knew. How did he disarm her so easily again and again?
“What was their reaction?” she asked, focusing on her deeper concerns. The duque and duquesa had struck Poppy as being aliens in human skin, assimilating on earth well enough not to be detected, but incapable of relating to normal people or showing genuine emotion.
“They asked to be kept informed.”
“I see. And is your mother still on the hunt for the next Señora Montero?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I’m capable of reading a headline.”
“Elevate your browsing choices. Gossip sites are garbage. If you wanted to know what I was doing with my life, you should have called me.”
“I’m more interested in how your mother is going to react to Lily.”
“She’ll accept a fait accompli. She’s done it before.”
When Cesar’s indiscretion with Sorcha had resulted in Enrique. But as far as Poppy could tell, Rico’s father had barely noticed he had a grandson while his mother had given Enrique tight smiles and offered unsolicited suggestions on how he could be improved. He looks due for a haircut, Sorcha.
So Poppy snorted her disbelief. “I’ve seen what her type of ‘acceptance’ looks like and it’s colder than an arctic vortex.”
“Be careful, Poppy.”
“That wasn’t a cheap shot. I’m saying Lily is far too important to me to set her up to be the subject of criticism and disapproval for the rest of her life. If they’re going to treat her like a stain on the family name, I won’t take her anywhere near them.”
He probably thought she should be grateful he was planning to let her accompany him and her daughter, but he only said, “They’re not demonstrative people. There will be no welcome embrace from either of them. Reconcile yourself to that right now. They do, however, bring other strengths to the table. We Monteros look after our own.”
“My stepfather can put her in movies if she decides she wants wealth and fame.”
“Wealth is not fortune, fame is not standing,” he stated pithily. “What sort of future are you planning for her? You’ll date, perhaps introduce her to a few contenders and, one day, when you’re convinced you’re in love, you’ll allow another man to raise my child without any of the genuine advantages to which she’s entitled? In ignorance of her family and the attached opportunities overseas? No. I won’t let you deny her what’s rightfully hers.”
“It’s not up to you. And don’t say it like that! ‘When I’m convinced I’m in love.’ I love Lily. Try to tell me that feeling is a figment of my imagination.” She would knock him through the ice. “Do you plan to love her? Because, given what I saw of your upbringing, you were never shown how.”
A profound silence crashed over them.
“Just as you were never taught to hold your temper in favor of a civil conversation?” Oh, he sounded lethal. The cold in the air began to penetrate her clothes.
“Answer the question,” she insisted. “My love for Lily took root the day I learned I was pregnant.” It had grown so expansive her body couldn’t contain the force of it. It quivered in her voice as she continued. “I won’t set her up to yearn for something from you that will never happen. I’ve been there and it is far too painful a thing to wish onto my child. You know it is.”
She had pushed herself right out onto the ledge of getting way too personal. She knew she had, but that was how much her daughter meant to her.
The umbrage radiating off him should have flash-melted the snow and razed the trees, illuminating the skies in an explosion of light.
Even so, she nudged even further by warning through her teeth, “Don’t shove your way into her life unless you intend to be there every single moment, in every possible way she might need you to be.”
His hands jammed into his pockets and his profile was slashed with shadows.
“You—” Something made him bite off whatever he had been about to say. He made a sucking noise through clenched teeth, as though enduring the removal of a bullet or something equally wounding. “My brother’s sons are not unhappy. He had my same upbringing. He’s managed to become quite attached. I would expect to form that sort of c
onnection with my own child.”
She was glad for the dark then, because sudden, pitying tears froze to her lashes. His words were such a careful admission that he was fine with not being loved as a child, but would find a way to extend his heart to his daughter.
For that reason alone, for the opportunity to gift him with his child’s unconditional love, she knew she would have to allow him into Lily’s life.
“Even so...” She folded her arms and squished handfuls of her quilted sleeves with her woolen mittens. She had had a front-row seat to the way his parents’ marriage worked and it was...sad. They spoke without warmth to each other, as if they were inquiring about a telephone bill minus the anxiety that they might struggle to pay. “What kind of marriage would that be as an example for her?”
“A calm and rational one?” he suggested.
“I don’t want rational! I want what my grandparents had.” She waved wildly in the direction of the house where she had witnessed deep, abiding love, every single day. “I want pet names for each other and a love that endures through a lifetime.”
“You want me to call you red?”
“Don’t make fun of me. Or them,” she warned. “Gran stayed in that drafty house an extra year for Gramps, because she knew it would break his heart to leave it. Now she can’t stand to sleep in it without him there beside her.”
“And you want that?” He sounded askance.
“It beats being married to a stranger. Occupying a mausoleum of a house while pursuing separate lives.”
“My parents’ marriage is an alliance based on shared values. That’s not a bad thing if you agree on those values beforehand.”
“Speaking from experience, are you?”
Another harsh silence descended. This time she regretted her words. His pregnant wife had died. He might not have loved Faustina, but it must be a very raw wound.
Recalling that, her suspicions of his motives arose again. Maybe he would come to care for Lily, but why was he here now? What did he really want?
“Rico... You understand that one baby cannot replace another, don’t you?” She knew she had to tread softly on that one, but couldn’t hold that apprehension inside her. “If that’s why you’re here, then no.” It broke her heart to deny Lily her father, but, “I won’t let you do that to Lily.”
He stiffened and she braced herself for his scathing reaction, but it wasn’t at all what she expected.
“Faustina’s baby wasn’t mine.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE WORDS WERE supposed to stay inside his head, but they resounded across the crisp air. Through the trees and off the sky. They made icicles drop like knives and stab into the frozen snow.
From a long way away, he heard Poppy say a hollow and breathless, “What?” Her thin, strained voice was no louder than his own had been, but rang like a gong in his ears.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, the leather of his gloves cold. All of him was encased in the dry ice of Canadian winter while his blood pumped in thick lumps through his arteries. His chest tightened and his shoulders ached.
“I shouldn’t have said that. We should get back.” He glanced the way they’d come, but it was shorter if she would only keep moving ahead on the path.
Thankfully, he couldn’t see a soul. They were the only pair of fools out here stumbling through the dark. He waved for her to proceed.
“Rico.” Her mitted hand came onto his forearm. “Is that true?”
The quaver in her voice matched the conscience still wobbling like a dropped coin in the pit of his stomach.
“Forget I said it. I mean it, Poppy.”
“I can’t.” She didn’t let him brush away her grip on his sleeve. “It matters. Tell me.”
“If I tell you...” He shifted so he cupped her elbow, holding her before him. “It stays between us. Forever. Do you understand?”
He had already said too much, but she was the mother of his child. His actual child. He had only tentatively absorbed that knowledge, only enough to know that one way or another he would bring them both back to Spain with him. Marriage was the quickest, most practical means of doing that. Therefore, she deserved to know the truth about his first marriage. As his wife, he expected her to protect his secrets as closely as he would guard hers.
And, damn it, he felt as though he’d been holding his breath for a thousand years. He couldn’t contain it one minute longer.
“Her parents found her,” he said, overcome with pity for them, despite his bitterness at Faustina’s lies. The colossal waste of life couldn’t be denied. The unborn baby might not have been his, but he was a decent enough human being to feel sadness and regret that it had been as much a victim as its parents.
“Where?” Poppy asked with dread.
“The garage. It wasn’t deliberate. They’d packed bags, had train tickets. She was with her parents’ chauffeur, naked in the back seat. They must have made love, perhaps started the car to warm it, then fallen asleep. They never woke up. Carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Oh, my God.” She covered her mouth. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes. Her parents were devastated. Still are. They didn’t know about the affair. They begged me to keep it under wraps.”
“So you’ve been letting everyone think—How do you know the baby wasn’t yours?”
“I had the coroner run tests.”
“You told me that day you two weren’t sleeping together.” She twitched in his grip.
He released her. His palm felt cold, even inside his glove. He was solid ice, all the way to his core, still playing what-ifs in his head.
“Do you think she knew it wasn’t yours?” she asked tentatively.
“Of course she knew,” he spat with the contempt he felt for himself as much as for Faustina. “I had already begun to suspect. As soon as they found her, I knew what she had done. We weren’t sleeping together. We made love once during our engagement. Faustina insisted. Said she wanted to be sure we’d be a good fit. After that, there were excuses. Headaches. Finally she said we should wait until the ceremony, to make our wedding night more exciting.”
He hadn’t argued. The first experience had barely moved him, certainly hadn’t rocked his world the way another very memorable experience had. He skimmed his gaze over Poppy’s face, so ghostly in the moonlight.
He’d told himself things would improve with Faustina once they got to know one another. He hadn’t realized yet that it was possible to fall into immersive pleasure so profound he could be transported from the world around him. So much so that he made love with a woman he barely knew in the near-public solarium and had thought about her every day since.
He ran his gloved hand over his face. The seam in his palm scraped his skin, allowing him to focus on the rest of the ugly story.
“I believe she learned she was pregnant and slept with me so she could pass the baby off as mine.”
“When?”
He knew what she was asking. “A few weeks before she broke things off with me on the day you and I were together.”
Poppy rubbed her arm where he’d held her elbow.
“I’ve since learned that when she left my parents’ house, she went straight to her own and told them she had called off the wedding. Her father threatened to disinherit her. They’re very faithful and strict, demanded she abide by the agreement. They would have fired the driver if they’d had any inkling of her reason. Maybe even sued him for damages or destroyed him in some other way. Faustina’s choice was to live destitute with her lover or crawl back to me.”
It was the only explanation for how a stable, well-bred, otherwise honest woman could have behaved in such an underhanded way.
“A week before they died, she used her settlement from our marriage to close on a small house in the north of Spain, near his relatives. That’s where they were headed.”
“That’s so...sad.”
“Sad and sordid and I torture myself every day wondering if she would be alive if I’d refused to marry her that next morning.”
“Why did you agree? The presidency?” Her voice panged in a way that grated against his conscience. The opportunity to run Faustina’s father’s company, proving himself in his own arena away from Cesar’s shadow, had been the carrot that drew him into the engagement, but it wouldn’t have enticed him to go through with the wedding the second time.
“She said she’d just found out she was pregnant, that it was the reason she’d been so emotional the day before. She said the baby was from that one time—when I used a condom, by the way. I should have suspected she was lying, but...” Here were the what-ifs. What if he had asked more questions, balked, told her he’d slept with the maid? That he’d liked it.
He hadn’t done any of that. He’d done his duty by his family. He had done what was expected because, “I thought the baby was mine.”
“When did you start to suspect it wasn’t?”
“The wedding night. She didn’t want to have sex. Said the pregnancy was turning her off.” Rico had been nursing his own regrets and hadn’t pressed her. “She was very moody. Conflicted, obviously. And putting her ducks in a row to leave me. We never did sleep together again. Things grew strained as I realized she was keeping something from me. I put off a confrontation, but it was coming. Then I got the call from her father.”
“I’m so sorry, Rico. It’s truly awful that you’ve had to carry this.”
“I don’t want your pity, Poppy.” He curled his hands into fists, straining the seams in his gloves. “I want your silence. I expect it. Not even Cesar knows and we don’t keep much from one another. But I swore to her parents I’d keep it quiet.”
“What about the company?”
“Her father asked me to stay on as President. He’s sickened that she tricked me. I could weather the scandal if the truth came out, but it would destroy them. Despite Faustina’s behavior, they’re good people. I don’t want to hurt them any more than they have been.”