by Lucy Keane
‘Where have you been?’ The demand was curt, and his eyes were coldly angry. It was the first time she’d ever seen him quite like that.
‘You—you said I could have the morning off!’ She was taken aback by the hostility of his reception.
He gestured at the wide expanse of beach. ‘You could at least have told me where you were going. I might have needed you.’
‘But you did know—Miguel took me out for a drive!’ Her voice rose in protest. ‘We were discussing it last night, after dinner. And anyway, you said you wouldn’t be free till one.’
‘The meeting finished early.’
She didn’t quite know what to reply. Why should he be so angry again all of a sudden? She hadn’t done anything wrong.
They stood, glaring at each other, the wind whipping long streamers of red hair round her face. She pushed it back off her forehead, and held it, to keep it out of her eyes. It was lifting his hair too, in an uneven ridge of dark little feathers.
‘Where’s Miguel?’
She shrugged. ‘He had to go to a business lunch. He wanted to bring me back to the hotel, but I preferred to walk.’
She wished he’d stop looking at her like that.
‘Where did he take you?’
‘For a drive in the hills. Around. Does it matter?’
‘Is he seeing you again?’
She laughed awkwardly, without humour. ‘No, of course not! How could he, even if he wanted to? We’re going to Granada this afternoon.’
She couldn’t read the look he gave her—the light in his eyes was less aggressive; more as though he wanted to read every single thought. His laser look—with an indefinable difference.
‘What exactly have I done wrong?’ she asked defensively. ‘Shouldn’t I have accepted an invitation from someone you’re doing business with, is that it? I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ She knew she didn’t sound in the least apologetic, just antagonistic, driven to defend herself by the need to hide her real feelings.
He drew a visibly deep breath, and took his hands out of his pockets. ‘No. You haven’t done anything wrong.’
She stood her ground. ‘Then was it the meeting? Didn’t it go well?’
‘Forget it. I’m sorry.’ He took a step closer, then looked at her narrowly. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’ve been crying. What is it?’
‘I haven’t. It’s the sea wind—it stings my eyes.’
She could tell by his expression that he didn’t believe her. Without a word he took the shoes from, her, and to her astonishment touched her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and pulling her towards him. As always, her body reacted at the contact, but she deliberately kept her mind from all speculation. If he could kiss her the way he had last night, holding her hand meant nothing to him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel and get a drink.’
They walked slowly, in silence for a while, Julius matching his stride to hers. His clasp was firm and warm; despite her surprise at the gesture, she was glad when he didn’t let go of her hand. She decided it was an apology for the way he’d just spoken to her, even though he didn’t seem willing to explain to her what had provoked it.
After a while he said, ‘It wasn’t until I overheard you talking to Miguel last night that I realised in how many ways your father’s death must have changed your life. Do you still miss your parents very much?’
His guess as to why she’d been crying? If that was what he thought, it was better he should go on thinking it. But she hadn’t known he’d been paying so much attention to her conversation with Miguel—it had only been a passing reference.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’m only just beginning to find out what they meant to me.’
He was silent again, and then went on, ‘I also realised you must have had a very different sort of life with them. I hope you didn’t—’ He broke off, and then started again, ‘You obviously thought I insulted you when I offered to buy you a dress yesterday. It was only meant as a… token of appreciation for your coming on the trip with me.’ She had never heard him sound so careful in his choice of words with her. ‘Was that why you wore what you did last night?’
She gave a rueful smile. ‘Then you did think it was a bit over the top?’
‘No. I didn’t think anything of the kind.’
Now that he seemed more approachable, she couldn’t resist skating perilously near that thin ice. ‘It seemed to have quite an effect on Miguel.’
He looked down at her. ‘He wasn’t the only one.’
Her heart gave that little leap suddenly, but then the light in her eyes died just as quickly. Making him jealous had been something she’d promised herself she wouldn’t try to do. Now instinct warned her not to gratify her curiosity any further. The consequences could be more disastrous even than last night. She wasn’t prepared for him in this mood, and it would be both humiliating and unwise to have to acknowledge her own feelings to him.
‘Amy—’ He stopped walking, pulling her back to face him and in those few seconds her mind was working desperately. She didn’t want an explanation—she didn’t even want him to say anything that would alter the awkward atmosphere between them, which seemed infinitely preferable now to any sort of discussion.
‘About last night. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘You didn’t,’ she lied.
‘I think I did,’ he said gently. ‘But it was nothing to do with the dinner—’
‘It’s all right,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘You don’t need to explain.’ She detached her hand from his. They had stopped by the boarded path that ran from the hotel down to the beach over the softer sand that was hard to walk on—they were almost at the hotel.
‘I have to go back to my room to change before lunch,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘Can I have my shoes, please?’
He handed them to her, his eyes still on her as though he was trying to read that careful expression that shuttered her face.
‘Amy, I have to talk to you—’
She was already walking ahead of him. ‘It’s OK,’ she said with false lightness. ‘I’ve told you, you don’t have to explain anything.’
‘Amy—!’
But she was almost running as she reached the hotel foyer, still in her bare feet. She didn’t look back.
During the drive to Granada that afternoon they were carefully polite to each other, and to her intense relief he showed no inclination to open up the topic she was now so wary of, seeming preoccupied and remote. It was dark when they arrived. She had slept for the last part of the route, but although he woke her when they reached the outskirts of the city she only had a very sketchy impression of the historic provincial capital—just streetlights and rows of dark trees as they drove up the hill to their parador. She remembered Jacquie telling her that it was in the gardens of the Alhambra.
The parador was unlike any hotel she’d ever stayed in, the entrance hall that of an old mansion with its azulejos—coloured Andalusian tiles—and old Spanish furniture. There were paintings hung on the walls and antique ornaments, and through carved wooden doors she glimpsed an enclosed courtyard.
She was relieved that Julius would be leaving the hotel almost immediately for his business appointment. If it hadn’t been for indulging in that silly whim the evening before, she could have been enjoying the prospect of the hours they would spend together the following day, but now she felt as though they were on a knife-edge. The slightest impulse could split their precarious relationship apart. She sensed that she could only avoid that happening if she preserved the situation exactly as it was, no matter how artificially.
But her plans for passing an uneventful evening alone were dramatically altered by the unexpected arrival of Miguel—and, unable to resist his dazzling smile and very persuasive charm, she agreed to go out to dinner with him. It was flattering to have been chased all the way from Marbella. It also kept her from brood
ing on the situation with Julius.
She enjoyed the evening, but after a while the compliments and rather too obviously loaded remarks began to get on her nerves; she didn’t want the evening to have to end with an argument, and took a very public and brisk leave of him when they finally returned, late, to the parador.
It was as she reached the staircase that, glancing back, she was aware of Julius entering the hotel. He didn’t see her, his eyes going straight to Miguel. She took the stairs two at a time in her haste to disappear from view, but she had the feeling that he had caught sight of her.
She was right. And breakfast the next morning was very nearly a further disaster: they were almost instantly into a replay of the conversation on the beach. His mood seemed to have changed since all that edgy politeness of the previous afternoon, and it didn’t take her long to account for the hostility.
‘Enjoy your dinner last night?’ It was like the opening of an attack.
‘Yes, thank you.’
A pause. ‘What was Miguel Diaz doing here?’
She kept her eyes on her coffee-cup. Surely they couldn’t be about to launch into the discussion she was so afraid of right in the middle of the dining-room?
‘He came to see me—why?’
‘Did you ask him to?’
‘Of course I didn’t!’ She glanced up then, to find him watching her, his expression unusually grim. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. She went on as casually as she could, ‘He knew I was coming here— and I’d told him you were going to another business meeting tonight. He didn’t have anything else to do so he thought he’d come along and take me out to dinner. Anyway—’ she tried to sound as though she had no idea of the answer he was going to give ‘—how did you know?’
‘He was here when got back last night. You were on your way upstairs. Is that all he did—take you out to dinner? You don’t look as though you’ve had much sleep.’
A waiter, who couldn’t have chosen a worse moment if he’d tried, was suddenly at her elbow with a basket of elaborately arranged flowers.
‘Senorita Thompson? These are for you.’
She didn’t need to find the card, buried in the profusion of pink and blue ribbon that decorated the side of the basket, to know they were from Miguel. And, judging by the look on his face, Julius was in no doubt about who’d sent them either—his expression was thunderous. They seemed to lend substance to the veiled accusation in his last remark—that she had spent the night with Miguel.
His final remark had been a deliberate insult, but it wasn’t that that hurt her. Last night, lying awake, she had given a great deal of thought to Julius’s recent treatment of her, and had come to some painful conclusions. She would avoid an explanation between them for as long as she could, but she was sure he was jealous of Miguel, and that must mean he wanted her himself. It couldn’t be love—not when he was so deeply involved with Fiona—and that was where she found herself caught in an impossible situation. If it wasn’t love, she didn’t want it. But if it was love, she could never live with the knowledge that she had bought her own happiness at the expense of another woman’s.
Now the inquisition over Miguel only served to confirm her suspicions. Abruptly, she pushed her chair back, but Julius must have guessed her intention and before she could get away from the table his hand shot out and his fingers clamped themselves round her wrist.
‘Sit down, Amy!’ It was an order, not a polite request, and she resented it at once. His eyes were steely. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. There’s something I must know.’ She hesitated, looking down at his hand, but he didn’t slacken his grasp. Reluctantly she sat down again. There wasn’t much else to do in the circumstances. She couldn’t really think straight; all she was aware of was the pounding beat of her own heart, so loud he must be able to hear it too.
‘Does it have to be now, this minute?’ she asked in a strained voice.
He released her wrist. ‘No. Finish your breakfast. Then we’ll go out for a walk.’
But she couldn’t eat. She was aware all the time of his impatience as he drained his coffee-cup and then flicked over the pages of a Spanish newspaper, his thoughts clearly distracted, waiting for her. She felt almost sick with nerves. They had reached the crisis she had been trying to avoid.
They left the parador to enter the ancient gardens. The approach under the street-lamps the night before hadn’t prepared her for the size, or the splendour, of the buildings that lay around her. The winter morning sunlight warmed the many walls and turrets to the colour of pale honey, and the very air seemed to sparkle. Almost forgetting for a moment the reason they were there, she turned impulsively to Julius, and found him studying her face rather than the scene before him.
‘Like it?’ he asked.
She gave a tense smile, and looked away again. ‘Of course!’
Unexpectedly, he took her hand, and they walked up to the entrance to the palace area together—a peace gesture perhaps? The way he was touching her didn’t have to mean anything, except that she couldn’t be indifferent to it. From that moment the atmosphere between them seemed subtly to change. Some of the antagonism vanished, though the tension remained; she felt as though they were walking on glass.
They crossed sunlit courtyards, admiring the arches carved with fretwork like cream lace, the old wall tiles, the stone basins splashing with mountain water. It felt unreal to her, as though she were watching it all in a film, her true self elsewhere, the crisis looming closer with every minute that passed. Julius put his arm round her shoulders as they stood to examine the twelve stone lions that surrounded one of the fountains, and again she was conscious of him watching her, rather than the scene before him.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he said at last.
She only had to relax a little to lean against him. Don’t do this; don’t indulge in something that will only make you unhappy afterwards, a voice kept repeating in her head. But she let herself touch him, the length of her thigh against his, her arm against his side.
‘It’s so beautiful—I can’t find words for it.’
Suddenly, her mood unstable as it had been since she got up that morning, she was flooded with a poignant, bittersweet happiness all the more intense because she knew it wouldn’t last. She knew all the consequences, and she didn’t care. She would pay later.
He made no comment, and they walked on; but he didn’t take his arm away. She was conscious of the weight of it across her shoulders as they left the walled areas of the palaces and fortress. All the time she was wondering when he would introduce the topic she so desperately wanted to avoid.
The long avenues of tall dark trees led to the famous gardens of the Generalife. Massive sheltering hedges towered over them like walls, screening formal gardens of stunted little winter roses, yet more fountains and perfect orange trees, their dark leaves jewelled with fruit. She was only half aware of them—the inevitable moment ticked closer with every second.
Julius found a tiny orange—not much bigger than a large nut, its leaf still attached. He gave it to her.
‘A souvenir.’
She smiled tensely, examining it. ‘You’re not supposed to pick these.’
‘I didn’t. Fate put it in my path.’
She met his eyes this time. His words held more than their obvious meaning, and his eyes told her a message she didn’t want to read. She looked away quickly, and put the orange in the pocket of her jacket.
They sat down by the wall, looking across the valley. The trees were leafless, but the air crisp and clear like a summer wine, the quintessence of sunlight. There was a splashing of water running continually through the fountains and sluices. Even the noise of traffic from the city was too far away to encroach on the magic, and for a while they were entirely alone.
She closed her eyes, relaxing a little for the first time. ‘This is almost like Eden,’ she said unguardedly. ‘A dream I don’t ever want to wake up from.’
She knew instantly from the quality of
his silence that, after all her caution, she was the one now who had opened that dangerous gate to the discussion she had been trying to avoid. She knew too that he was looking at her, even though there was nothing but an orange-red blur of light against her eyelids.
‘Man, woman and garden.’
Her reply was deliberately double-edged. ‘There’s even forbidden fruit.’
‘Not forbidden,’ he said slowly. His voice was very tense. ‘Only unwise.’
She opened her eyes then, and looked at him, struck by his tone. ‘I meant the little oranges in the courtyard of the fountains,’ she said carefully.
‘Did you?’
His gaze held hers, and she could feel a thousand tiny pulses beginning to flutter all over her body, while her heart beat painfully against her ribs. She was on the very, very edge… something she so desperately wanted, and couldn’t let happen.
Her arm was resting along the back of the bench. He was sitting at a little distance from her. He took her hand, turning it over, studying the palm, and it took all her self-control not to lean forward so that he would take her in his arms.
‘Do you believe in fate, Amy?’
The question took her by surprise. She tried to sound flippant, and then regretted her reply—it seemed all wrong for the place, and the time, but she didn’t dare give any other. ‘Are you asking me to answer that as a witch?’
He looked at her hand, lying passively in his own, and slowly turned her palm to his, linking his fingers through hers. His expression was serious, his eyes still studying their joined hands. ‘I’m not asking you to foretell our futures. Until recently, I’d have said there was no such thing as fate intervening in someone’s life—your future was very much what you made it. And I was doing my best to make mine according to what I thought was a pretty sensible plan.’
‘And then?’
He looked at her directly, his eyes an intense grey. ‘And then something—maybe fate—came along and the plan wouldn’t work any more.’
His fingers unexpectedly tightened on hers, and he stretched out his other hand to caress the side of her face. His touch affected the whole of her body and involuntarily she found herself leaning towards him, drawn by that force now too powerful for her to resist. Then, without being quite aware of how it happened, they were both standing pressed desperately close, and his arms were round her, locking her from the escape she had no intention of seeking. He had kissed her three times before, but it had been nothing like this slow, controlled persuasion that ravished every sense, until without thought she gave herself to it utterly. She was conscious of every contour of that hard, muscled frame against her own, and she was both shocked and elated to realise how much he desired her.