by Lynsay Sands
Mouth tightening, at the thought of the unpleasant task to come, Ildaria pulled out a pair of baggy jogging pants, and an oversized sweatshirt and tugged those on as well. Fully dressed now in the most unattractive clothes she owned, Ildaria stopped to drag a brush through her damp hair, put it up in a ponytail, and then take several deep breaths.
It didn’t help much, but then she doubted anything would, except getting this over with. Turning away from her reflection in the mirror, she patted her leg and said, “Come on, buddy, let’s go see your dad.”
H.D. leapt off the bed and scampered out the door the moment Ildaria opened it. She followed more slowly, half hoping G.G. would snatch up H.D. and leave before she could get to the living room, and half afraid he would.
He didn’t. G.G. was standing by the island with H.D. in his big, brawny arms, petting him when she reached the kitchen. But he stopped to give her the once-over, a wry smile tugging at his lips.
“Only you could make sweats look sexy,” he said with weary amusement as his gaze slid back up to her eyes.
Ildaria frowned. There wasn’t anything the least sexy in what she was wearing. But perhaps it was the effect of the dreams, she thought. With the memories of those dreams crowding the mind, she could probably wear a potato sack and look sexy to him. Just as he would appear sexy to her in whatever he chose to wear. But he wasn’t dressed in unattractive clothes. He was wearing his usual Night Club outfit of black dress pants and black dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. Sort of casual dressy, but still very sexy.
“Your cocoa,” G.G. said quietly, nodding toward the two cups on the island. “I had a sip of mine. It doesn’t taste as good as yours, but I just followed the directions on the can. I suspect you do something different.”
“I add a little cream,” Ildaria explained, moving past him into the kitchen to fetch the cream Marguerite had brought with the groceries two weeks ago. It was nearly gone now. She’d have to buy more soon, she thought as she carried it back to add a little to both their cups.
“Thank you,” G.G. murmured, setting H.D. down and taking one of the cups as she replaced the cream.
When she returned, he was standing to the side of the table, waiting for her to take a seat. Ildaria picked up her own cup, and then chose the nearest end chair. She wasn’t surprised when he chose the opposite one, as far from her as he could get. Now that he knew they were life mates, he would avoid touching her at all unless he decided to agree to be her life mate. She had no doubt he knew enough about life mates to realize how highly combustible they were. One touch could be enough to set them off and have them tearing at each other’s clothes.
They were both silent at first. Ildaria had no idea what G.G. was thinking, but she was fretting over where to begin her explanation for her lack of experience. In the end, she just admitted, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Just start at the beginning,” G.G. suggested.
Ildaria nodded. “I guess it starts with my mother then. She was apparently something of a wild child. My abuela—my grandmother—said my grandfather was very strict, and my mother was always rebelling against his strictness. At sixteen, my mother decided she’d had enough and ran off with her boyfriend, telling my grandparents they’d never see her again.”
When G.G.’s eyebrows rose dubiously at that, she smiled wryly and said, “Yeah. Famous last words. She popped up a year later with me in tow. I was six months old. She’d been three months pregnant when she left, but too ashamed to tell them.”
“Ah,” G.G. murmured with understanding.
Ildaria nodded. “Anyway, had my grandfather still been alive, my abuela thinks things might have turned out differently, but he’d suffered a massive heart attack and died six months before. The same day I was born as it turns out. My abuela always thought that was important for some reason.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Abuela took us in, and agreed to help raise me, but only if my mother stopped drinking and partying and got a job.”
“But she didn’t,” G.G. guessed.
Ildaria shook her head. “I gather she was there for less than a month before she found a new boyfriend to move in with. My abuela begged her to leave me with her, but she refused and dragged me along. It was the first of many such moves. I guess it was the same pattern over and over. New boyfriend, she’d move in, taking me with her. They’d drink and party and fight and fall apart, and then she’d land back at Abuela’s with me three to six months later. I don’t remember any of that, but Abuela says the first couple of men were mean drunks and verbally abusive, which was bad enough, but then my mother moved on to men who were physically abusive.
“Same pattern,” she added with a shrug. “She just came crawling back to Abuela with bruises and whatnot rather than in a high dander about whatever the latest boyfriend had done. My abuela tried to talk to her, worried about her but also about me. I hadn’t been hit yet by any of the boyfriends, but she felt it was just a matter of time. She begged her to not move in with these men. Just live with her and date them. But my mother was headstrong.”
Sighing, Ildaria turned her cup slowly on the island before continuing, “And then one day, when I was four, she didn’t crawl back to Abuela’s. Instead, one early morning, one of my mother’s neighbors brought me to my abuela, explaining that my mother was very sick and asked that she please look after me for a couple of days. Once she felt better, she would come fetch me back.
“Abuela wanted to go speak to my mother, but had to leave for work and the neighbor assured her my mother was fine, just under the weather and unable to look after me properly. So, in the end, my abuela decided she would check on my mother after work and since she didn’t have time to find someone to babysit me, she took me to her job with her.”
G.G.’s eyebrows rose at this news and he asked, “Where did she work?”
“She was the head cook on a large plantation owned by Ana Villaverde,” Ildaria explained.
“And this Ana didn’t mind her bringing you to work with her?” G.G. asked.
Ildaria smiled at the suggestion. “My abuela was an amazing cook and sought after by rival plantations. I think her boss pretty much let her do what she wanted.”
“Ah,” G.G. murmured with understanding. “Good employees are hard to find.”
“Si, so anyway, she took me with her and kept me in the kitchen while she cooked. Apparently, everything was fine until late afternoon when her boss, Señorita Ana, came into the kitchen to meet me. It came out then that my mother wasn’t sick, she’d been beaten very badly.”
“You told them?” G.G. guessed.
“No.” Ildaria shook her head, but she didn’t explain how they learned it then. Instead, she blurted, “They also learned that while my mother’s latest boyfriend wasn’t beating me, he was sexually molesting me.” Ildaria lifted her chin defiantly as she said that, her teeth grinding together as she waited for his response.
G.G. breathed out as if he’d been afraid this was coming, but was still disappointed that it had. His expression compassionate, he said gently, “I’m sorry.”
That was all, no gasping horror, no outrage and vows of vengeance or justice. But it had more effect than those other things would have. Ildaria’s mouth wobbled with the bottled-up emotion that wanted to escape, and then firmed again. It had happened two hundred years ago. She didn’t even remember it. She’d be damned if she was going to get all emotional now.
Clearing her throat, she nodded in acknowledgment of his words, and then said, “My abuela was apparently very upset to learn this, so Señorita Ana very kindly suggested she take me home, telling her not to worry about my mother or her boyfriend. She would send men to take care of the boyfriend, as well as to fetch my mother back to my abuela’s along with a doctor to see to both she and myself.”
Ildaria paused to take a sip of her cocoa. She didn’t usually talk this much and her mouth was growing dry. The hot chocolate didn’t really help much, but it was still warm and tasted good, so she
took another sip before continuing. “When my abuela took me home, my mother and her boyfriend were there waiting. My mother was apparently a mess, but insisted she was well enough to look after me, and wanted to take me home. But the way she kept a wary eye on her boyfriend and flinched whenever he moved made my abuela suspect it was he who wanted me back and not to look after me. She had no intention of letting me be taken back to be abused, so sent me to my room and then told my mother about the abuse.”
Ildaria grimaced. “As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well. The boyfriend at first tried to deny he was abusing me, but my mother came to my room and asked me about it. I don’t remember it, don’t know what I said, but apparently it was enough that she went storming back out.” Ildaria blew out a breath and shook her head. “All hell broke out then. I gather my mother grabbed a knife and went after her boyfriend. He got the knife away and used it on her, and then went after my abuela when she tried to help my mother. I have no doubt he would have killed them both, and maybe even me. Fortunately, Señorita Ana had sent men to deal with the boyfriend as promised. When they arrived at his shack to learn he and my mother had come to get me, they followed and arrived in time to save my abuela. Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t as lucky. She died in hospital several days later from her wounds.”
Ildaria stopped to sip at her cocoa again, hardly hearing his murmured condolences. Talking about it brought back the dark feelings that always accompanied discussing this subject. Were she to analyze those feelings, Ildaria would probably have to say they were a combination of shame and anger, but she didn’t bother analyzing them. It was her past. Best forgotten, as her abuela used to say.
She did feel sad, though, that she never felt much loss when she thought about the death of her mother. But she’d been too young to have much in the way of memories of her. To Ildaria, she was just a photo that her abuela used to show her. Just as the fact that she had been abused was just a story she’d been told. She didn’t recall much of either.
Even so, Ildaria knew it affected her to this day. She suspected it was why she’d never been interested in sexual intimacy, and the reason she had so little experience with the opposite sex. Sexual situations brought those dark feelings rising within her and morphed into all-out rage. Or they had before G.G. She hadn’t had any of those feelings with him, not in their shared dreams anyway. He’d never so much as touched her in passing when they were awake, though. She had no idea how she’d react if he touched or tried to kiss her . . . which was rather concerning now that she thought about it.
“So your abuela raised you after that?”
Glancing up at that question, Ildaria realized she’d broken off the story. She gave her head a shake to clear out her other worries and nodded. “Si. There was no more bouncing from boyfriends to my abuela’s. It was just Abuela and I.” Her mouth curved into a soft smile. “The next ten years were wonderful. She was an amazing woman and I was nothing like my mother. Probably by choice. I didn’t want to be like her.”
“Understandable,” G.G. murmured.
“So I was a dutiful granddaughter, always doing what I was told, and spending a lot of time with Abuela, rather than with children my own age. She used to walk me to school on the way to work, and then I would go to her employer’s after school and do my homework in the kitchen until she was done and then walk home with her.”
“What about friends?” G.G. asked when she paused to take a breath.
“Oh, I had school friends,” she said with a shrug. “But I never saw them after school. Abuela worked late enough that my friends were inside when we got home.” Ildaria smiled faintly. “I know most people would consider that abnormal or unhealthy, but I didn’t really miss not having friends my own age. I had my abuela and she was always doing things with me. Teaching me to cook and clean, helping with my homework. We played board games and cards and laughed a lot. I loved my abuela. She was wonderful.”
G.G. nodded, but pointed out, “You said the next ten years were wonderful. What happened after that?”
Ildaria was silent for a minute, her mind going back to that time. “My abuela usually finished work around dinnertime when the night staff took over, and then we’d walk home to make our own meal. But if her employer was having a party, she’d stay late to help and send me home alone. It only happened perhaps once or twice a year over those first ten years, but then Señorita Ana got engaged. She was rich and from an important family, so the engagement meant a lot more parties, two or three a week. My abuela was getting older, and I knew she found these parties exhausting after working all day. I wanted to stay and help, but she refused to even consider it. She wanted me nowhere near these parties. She’d send me home every time.
“It was as I left before one of these parties that a man approached me at the end of the driveway. He introduced himself as Juan, a friend of my abuela’s employer, assured me I was safe with him, and insisted on walking me home. I wasn’t completely comfortable with him, but I didn’t want to offend my abuela’s employer by offending him. So, not knowing how to make him go away, I let him walk me home, thinking it would be a one-off. But a couple days later there was another party, and again my abuela sent me home alone, and there he was, appearing at the end of the drive to accompany me.
“As I say, I wasn’t comfortable with him, but couldn’t have told you why at the time,” she said unhappily. “Juan never did anything wrong, never touched me or said anything untoward. He was very polite and even charming, but I—” she hesitated and then tried to explain, “I was very naïve, but even so I think I sensed that he wanted . . . something,” she said helplessly, unable to better describe the creeping sense of discomfort he’d caused her when he hadn’t done anything that she could point to as being threatening. Grimacing, she gave it up and said, “I began to loathe the nights my abuela had to stay late for parties.”
Her gaze slid to G.G. and she paused briefly as she noted the grim expression on his face. He knew something was coming and was mentally preparing himself. It was part of the reason he didn’t gasp in horror or outrage at things he was told. Which, she suspected, was also part of the reason women liked to talk to him. He was a good listener, really listening . . . with interest and caring and calm. G.G. was a good listener in the way that a good driver kept an eye on the traffic ahead, not just on the car ahead. The driver who watched only the car ahead didn’t know there was trouble until the brake lights of the car in front of them came on, often too late to keep from hitting them. The good driver watching the traffic ahead, saw the brake lights of distant cars coming on and automatically slowed down, preparing for the coming trouble and usually avoiding hitting the car in front when it suddenly braked. G.G. listened that way, sensing something coming and preparing himself mentally for it so that he could remain calm and sympathetic, rather than making it about himself and his reaction to what he was hearing.
A nudge at her ankle drew her attention away from G.G. and down to see H.D. curling up against her. She smiled faintly, and reached down to pet him briefly before straightening and continuing, “Anyway, I think my desire to avoid the man was why I committed my first act of rebellion.”
“And what did you do?” G.G. asked.
“My girlfriends from school were always asking me to go places and do things. Not wanting to worry or upset my abuela I always said no. But Emilita, one of those school friends, was having a birthday party on the Friday night and invited me. I knew Señorita Ana was having another party that night. I didn’t want to have to walk home again with Juan, so I asked if I could go to the birthday party. It was directly after school, and we would all walk there together where her family would be in attendance. I was fourteen, certainly old enough to go to a birthday party, but I was still surprised when my abuela gave me permission.”
“Why wouldn’t she? You were always a good girl,” G.G. pointed out softly.
“Si,” Ildaria breathed unhappily. “I meant to be that night as well, and everything was fine at
first. A group of us went to Emilita’s house after school. There was food, non-alcoholic drinks, and a piñata. I had fun, so when the party started to wind down and some of the girls talked about going to a cantina where Emilita’s brother worked, and invited me . . .”
“You agreed,” G.G. guessed.
Ildaria grimaced, but nodded. “Emilita’s brother did work there. He served us alcoholic drinks we shouldn’t have had, but he did try to keep an eye on us too. Unfortunately, he couldn’t watch all of us at once. The other girls had apparently drunk before. They handled it better than me, who after one drink was drunk. After two I was stumbling drunk. I stopped counting drinks at four,” she admitted and shook her head with disgust at the stupidity of youth.
“What happened?” G.G. asked softly.
“Good question,” she muttered, and then said, “One minute I was with my friends, and then—I don’t even know how it happened, but suddenly these men moved in and I got separated from the group. In the next moment, I was outside in the alley behind the cantina and these two men in uniform were pushing me to the ground and tearing at my clothes.”
Ildaria crossed her arms protectively at the memory, and took a few deep breaths before continuing, “I was crying and saying, ‘No! Stop!’ and trying to get away, but there were two of them, and they were so strong. And then suddenly the one on top of me was gone, and then the other one was too. At first I was too stunned by the suddenness of their absence to react, but then I struggled to my feet. I staggered the moment I was upright, my head spinning. I grabbed the wall to balance myself and then I looked around and saw one of the men on the ground near me, unconscious. The other was struggling with a man in a suit, my savior. It almost looked like they were hugging, but then the one in uniform suddenly sagged and after a minute my savior dropped him and whirled toward me. It was Juan. There was blood on his mouth and I thought he’d been injured. I wanted to ask if he was all right, but his eyes were glowing, and he looked so enraged. I just stared at him stupidly and shrank against the wall as he stormed over to me.”