The Maid's Spanish Secret

by Dani Collins

  Which put a hollow ache in her chest.

  Waking alone felt like a terrible start to their marriage. She had thought his passion meant he wanted her. After soaring through the heavens most of the night, she was juddering back to earth, landing hard as she realized he might want her physically, but that was all.

  She put on yesterday’s clothes and scowled at her pale face in the mirror. Her hair stuck out like shocks of lightning and she couldn’t even get a brush through it. She wanted to check on Lily before she showered, though. She grabbed the mass together in a fat ponytail and walked out in search.

  A glance into the room where Lily had slept showed the single bed had also been slept in. Her heart panged at the evidence he hadn’t had insomnia. He’d preferred to sleep apart from her. Were they to have a marriage like his parents? One based on “shared values”?

  They shared two things—a child and passion. It might be enough to build on, but relationships were a two-way street. If he was going to put literal walls between them, they didn’t stand a chance.

  Telling herself this was only Day One and she needed to give this time, she continued to the lounge.

  She found Rico on the sofa, reading his tablet and nursing a coffee. Lily was on a blanket nearby, working her way through a box of unfamiliar toys. She gave a scolding cry when Poppy appeared and held up her arms, demanding a cuddle where she rested her head on Poppy’s shoulder while Poppy rubbed her back. Lily was a resilient little thing, but they both needed the reassurance of a hug after facing all these recent changes.

  “Why didn’t you wake me when she got up?” She hid behind their daughter, mouth muffled against Lily’s hair while she kept her lashes lowered, too nervous of what she might see in his eyes to meet his gaze.

  “I wanted to let you sleep.” His voice rasped across her nerve endings, waking her to sensual memory without any effort at all. Maybe it was the words, the suggestion that he had worn her out—which he had.

  “She’s had toast and banana,” he added. “The housekeeper is making us a proper breakfast. It should be ready shortly.”

  “I could have cooked.”

  “We pay her to do it.”

  Lily pointed at the toys and Poppy set her down to continue playing.

  “Thank you.” Poppy hugged herself. “I’m not used to anyone getting up with her. Gran could keep an eye on her if my back was turned, but Lily was getting too heavy and fast for her to do much else.”

  “A potential nanny is meeting us in Valencia. You can look forward to sleeping in every day, if you want to.”

  “I can look after my own daughter.” Especially if she wasn’t working. That part was bothering her. Her income had been piecemeal with a small, but reliable paycheck from working part-time at the bus depot and occasional top-ups with school portraits and the odd headshot or boudoir shoot. Now she was reliant on Rico. It was way too much like being a burden. Again.

  “There will be many occasions when you’ll have to be at my side without her. You’ll want the consistency of a regular caregiver.”

  “What do you mean, ‘many’?” She finally looked at him, but he only raised his brows in mild surprise.

  “Do you need a paper bag to breathe into? Why are you looking so shocked?”

  “Because I thought you would go to work and maybe I’d find a job around your hours and we would eat dinner together, watch TV and go to bed like normal people.”

  He sipped his coffee. As he set it aside, he revealed a mouth curled into a mocking smile.

  “This is my normal. Whether you work is entirely your choice. I know many power couples in which both spouses hold down high-profile positions.”

  Maybe not the bus depot, then.

  “I also know many women, including my mother and Sorcha, who make a career of running a household, planning charity fund-raisers and attending events in support of their husbands.”

  “How charmingly old-fashioned.” She meant antiquated and patriarchal.

  The deepening of his smirk told her he knew perfectly what she was saying.

  “As I say, my normal. If you do intend to work, we’ll definitely need a nanny. At least that much is settled.”

  Poppy wanted to stamp her foot in frustration. She couldn’t go after him about doing his share on the childcare front, though. Not when he’d gotten up with Lily on his first morning with her, letting Poppy sleep in.

  “I’ve booked a stylist to come by in an hour or so.” His gaze went to her bare, unpolished toes and came back to her electrocuted hair.

  Her hand went to the seam in her distressed jeans. “Why?”

  “I’m introducing you and Lily to my parents this evening.”

  “I’ve met them,” she reminded with an urge to laugh, because it was such a gross overstatement. She had stood behind Darna on three occasions without garnering even a glance as Darna had nodded understanding of the duquesa’s orders. Rico’s father had once held out a dirty glass as she walked by, not even looking at her, let alone thanking her for taking it.

  “The press release will go out while we’re there. I expect a few photographers will gather at the gate. You need to look the part.”

  “Paparazzi are going to want photos of me? Really?” She crossed one foot over the other and hugged herself. “How are your parents going to react to that?”

  “By presenting a united front. That’s why we’re having dinner there.”

  “Presenting a united front,” she repeated. “That tells me how sincerely they’ll welcome me at their dining table, doesn’t it? And then what?” She thought of all the gossip sites where she’d seen pictures of him with Faustina, then snapshots of his grim expression as he put her in the ground. “Rico, I can’t do this,” she realized with sudden panic. “I’m not prepared. You know I’m not.”

  “That’s why I’ve called a stylist. You’ll be fine.”

  To her horror, tears of frustration and yes, fear, pressed into her eyes, but the housekeeper came in and invited them to sit down to the breakfast she had prepared.

  Poppy had to suck up her misgivings and let her new life unfold.

  * * *

  “You look beautiful,” Rico said sincerely. “If you could drop the wide-eyed terror, you’d be flawless.”

  His attempt to lighten Poppy’s mood fell flat.

  Her stylist had understood perfectly the effect Rico wanted and had spent a good portion of the day achieving it.

  Poppy wore a bronze slip with a lace overlay embroidered with copper roses. It was simple and feminine, sophisticated yet held a decidedly innocent flair. Her hair had been meticulously coaxed into tamer waves then gathered into a “casual” chignon suitable for a low-key dinner with family. Her makeup was all natural tones and her heels were a conservative height.

  By the time he’d offered the jewelry he’d bought her, she’d looked like a dog that had been at the groomers so long she’d lost her will to live.

  Now the fresh-faced nanny, who couldn’t be more than a year over Poppy’s age, suggested carrying Lily into the villa so their daughter wouldn’t stain or snag Poppy’s dress.

  Rico agreed and Poppy shot him a glance of betrayal then fell into step beside him, mouth pouted.

  Her angry dismay plucked at his conscience like a sour note on a string. He kept telling himself that she had already seen the workings of his family from an insider’s perspective. None of this should be a surprise to her. And this was how it was. He couldn’t pretend their life would be anything different. That would be a lie.

  Even so, he sensed she’d put up a wall between them and it rankled. Which was hypocritical on his part because he’d taken steps to withdraw from her last night, after their lovemaking had left him in ruins.

  What should have been a sensual celebration of a convenient marriage had become a conflagration that had turned him inside o
ut. He had been right back to that interminable family dinner after his encounter with Poppy two years ago. Cesar and Sorcha had turned up—an engagement Rico had completely failed to recall had been scheduled. They’d eaten in polite silence while his mother had stiffly come to terms with Rico’s wedding being off. She had already been floating the names of alternatives and a timeline for courtship.

  Rico had sat on the pin of a land mine, wanting to rise from the table and go after Poppy. He hadn’t seen a way in which he could even sustain an affair with her, though. As he’d eaten what might have been sawdust, facts had been reiterated about his father’s prospects in the next election. The importance of certain alliances had been regurgitated.

  Rico wasn’t so shallow as to value money and appearances and power over all other things, but he understood how possessing those things allowed him and his family to live as comfortably as they did. All the actions he took were about them, never only himself.

  So, even though his engagement had been broken, even though he was sexually infatuated with his mother’s maid, another bride would be slotted into place very quickly. The show must go on.

  There had been some relief in living up to those expectations, too. As earth-shattering as his encounter with Poppy had been, he had instinctively recognized how dangerous that sort of passion was. How easily exposure to a woman who provoked such a deep response within him could dismantle him. Turn him against the best interests of his family and even impact him at a deeper level. A place even more vulnerable than the injuries of bruised ego and broken trust that his first wife had inflicted on him.

  That premonition was playing out. His daughter had been the excuse, but the lure of Poppy had drawn him halfway around the world. He hadn’t waited for tests to prove they should marry. He had accomplished it with haste and dragged her back here as quickly as he could.

  Last night had proved to him they were still a volatile combination. Afterward, he’d felt so disarmed, so satisfied with having blown up his own life, he had had to leave her to put himself back together.

  If Lily hadn’t awakened a few hours later, he might very well have succumbed to temptation and crawled into bed with Poppy again.

  He couldn’t let her have that kind of power over him. That was what he kept telling himself. He had to keep control of himself or there would only be more scandal and disruption.

  But he loathed that stiff look on her face.

  It was too much like the ones on his parents’ faces as they entered the small parlor where Faustina had once thrown down a vase like a gauntlet.

  He ground his teeth, wishing at least Pia was here, chronically shy and uncomfortable as she might be. His sister was off studying snails or some other mollusk in the Galápagos Islands, however. Cesar had taken Sorcha and the boys to visit Sorcha’s family in Ireland. There was nothing to soften this hard, flat evening for Poppy.

  “My father, Javiero Montero y Salazar, Excelentísimo Senor Grandeza de España, and my mother, La Reina, the Duque and Duquesa of Castellón. You both remember Poppy.” He wasn’t trying to be facetious, but it came out that way.

  His mother smiled faintly. “Welcome back.”

  Poppy was so pale he reached for her hand. It was ice-cold.

  She delicately removed it from his hold and gave Lily’s dress a small tug and drew the girl’s finger from her mouth, smiling with tender pride. “This is Lily.”

  His parents both took a brief look at their granddaughter and nodded as if to say, Yes, that is a baby.

  “A room has been prepared upstairs,” Rico’s mother said to the nanny, dismissing her and Lily in a blink.

  The light in Poppy’s eyes dimmed. It struck Rico like a kick in the gut.

  This is who they are, he wanted to tell her. There was no use wishing for anything different, but he could still hear the thread of hurt and rejection in her tone as she had told him about her parents never coming back for her.

  He wanted to take her hand again, reassure her, but at his mother’s invitation, she lowered to perch on an antique wing chair, hands folded demurely in her lap.

  Champagne was brought in; congratulations were offered. Poppy’s hand shook and he neatly slid a coaster under her glass before she set it on the end table.

  His mother very tellingly said, “I imagine you’re still settling in. We’ll move into the dining room right away so the baby can have an early night.”

  This evening would not be a drawn-out affair. The rush was a slight, but Rico didn’t want to subject Poppy to their company any longer than necessary so he didn’t take issue with it.

  The first course arrived and Poppy tried offering a friendly smile at the butler. It was countered with an impassive look that made her cheerful expression fall away. She blinked a few times.

  The staff would talk to her when his parents weren’t around, he wanted to tell her. This was how they were expected to act with guests and she shouldn’t take it as a rejection.

  His father cleared his throat.

  Poppy glanced at him with apprehension. Rico briefly held his own breath, but his father only asked Rico about the progress he’d made on some alloy research.

  Annoyed, Rico was forced to turn his attention to answering him, which left his mother to make conversation with Poppy.

  “I’m told you enjoy photography, Poppy. How did your interest come about?”

  Poppy shot him a look, but he hadn’t provided that tidbit. This was also who his mother was. She would ferret out any item suitable for small talk that would avoid addressing more sensitive horrors like the fact Rico had messed with the maid, had an illegitimate child and brought them into the villa as “family.”

  Poppy spoke with nervous brevity. “When I was ten, my grandfather asked me to help him clean the basement. We came across his father’s equipment. My great-grandfather was a freelance photographer for newspapers.”

  “What type of newspapers?” his mother asked sharply.

  “Mother.” Rico quit listening to his father and gave the women his full attention.

  “The national ones,” Poppy replied warily, sensing disapproval. “Sports, mostly. The odd royal visit or other big event. I was intrigued so my grandfather closed in a space and showed me how the development process worked.”

  “You should have shown me.” Rico was ridiculously pleased to hear she shared the same spark of curiosity that had drawn him into chemical engineering.

  “I haven’t used it in years. We quickly realized the cost of chemicals and paper wasn’t sustainable. I switched to digital photography.”

  “Metol or hydroquinone,” Rico’s father said in one of his stark interjections, as though he’d retrieved a file from the dusty basement of his own mind. “Sodium carbonate and sodium sulfite for proper pH and delay of oxidation. Thiosulfate to fix it. None are particularly expensive, but there’s no market for the premixed solutions. We got out of it years ago.”

  “Only niche artists are using them, I imagine,” Poppy murmured.

  “Speaking of art,” his mother said with an adept pivot from boring science. “I’m attending an opening in Paris next month. I imagine you’ll be decorating a house very soon. What sort of pieces might you be looking for?”

  Poppy looked as though a bus was bearing down on her.

  “It’s early days, Mother,” Rico cut in. “We’ll talk more about that another time.”

  At this point he was only looking as far as getting through this evening.

  * * *

  The meal passed in a blur of racking her brains for the names of Canadian politicians who might have said something brilliant or stupid lately and trying to look as if she knew how to eat quail in gazpacho. Poppy was infinitely relieved when they left and went to Rico’s Valencian penthouse.

  This wasn’t a family property. It was his own home, purchased after Faustina had died. It was luxuri
ous and in a prime location with a pool and a view, but it was a surprisingly generic space, tastefully decorated in masculine tones yet completely without any stamp of his personality.

  She dismissed the nanny, put Lily to bed herself, then moved into the bedroom to kick off her heels and sigh with exhaustion.

  Rico came in with a nightcap for each of them.

  She immediately grew nervous. It had been a long, trying day, one that had started out with a rebuff when she’d woken alone. That sense of foreboding had grown worse as his stylist had spent hours turning her into some kind of show pony.

  She suspected she had disappointed anyway. As he set down his own drink and loosened his tie, she had a sick, about-to-be-fired feeling in her stomach, much like the one she’d had when she’d lost her first babysitting job after accidentally letting the hamster out of its cage.

  “Well?” she prompted, trying to face the coming judgment head-on.

  “I thought it went well.”

  She strangled on a laugh. “Are you kidding? I’ve never spent a more horrendous two hours and twenty-three minutes in my life.”

  “You were there, then.” He shrugged out of his jacket.

  “Don’t make jokes, Rico.” She stared at him, but he wasn’t laughing. Uncertain, she asked, “Was that really a normal dinner for you? The way it’s been your whole life?” She had thought her own mother awful for calling in lame efforts at nurturing with insincere apologies from afar. His parents had displayed zero remorse as they had openly dismissed his newfound daughter.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said with scathing sarcasm. “I didn’t sit at that table until I was twelve. Children are invited to the dining room when they know how to eat quietly and speak only when spoken to.”

  She thought of the way Lily squealed and slapped her tray and wore more food than she ate. But even Gran with her old-fashioned ideals about child-rearing had always insisted that dinner was a time for the whole family to come together.