by Olivia Gates
“Yeah, I noticed.” She chuckled, loving how he could be so alpha and capable and overriding and yet be totally comfortable letting another, and a woman, have the upper hand where she was best suited to take it. She cocked her head at him. “Families are very matriarchal here, aren’t they?”
He tossed her a piece of breath-freshening gum then piled their bowls in one hand and raised the other, ring and middle fingers folded by his thumb, fore and little fingers pointing up. “Women rule.”
She spluttered at the sight of him, so virile and formidable and poised, making that goofy expression and pop culture gesture.
He headed into the barbecue house and she melted back in her chair, replete and blissful. She’d never laughed like that before him. Before being here with him in his paradise of a home.
He’d only left her side to fly to work-literally, via helicopter-and had cut down on his working hours, to be there for her. She’d insisted he shouldn’t, that she was perfectly all right on her own or with Consuelo, Gustavo and their children.
But she’d stopped objecting, certain he wasn’t neglecting his work, had everything under control. And she couldn’t get enough of being with him. Against all resolutions, she reveled in his pampering, wished with all she had in her that she could repay him in kind. But he had everything. Needed nothing. Nothing but to heal emotionally.
So she contented herself with being there for him, hoping to see him heal. And he was healing. His moroseness had dissipated and his distance had vanished, had become a closeness like she’d never known, as they discovered each other, shared so many things she’d never thought she’d share with another.
She kept waiting for him to do something to annoy her, to disappoint her, as all human beings inevitably did. But the impossible man just wouldn’t. Then he went further into the realm of impossibility, kept doing things that shocked her by how much they appealed to her, delighted her.
He was everything his foster parents had said they’d picked him for and far more. Everything she admired in a human being and a man, and the most effective power for good she’d ever had the fortune to meet. And that was what he was to the world.
To her, he was all that resonated with her preferences and peculiarities. They agreed on most everything, and what they disagreed on, they discussed, came out conceding a respect for the other’s viewpoint and thrilled to have gained a new awareness.
And when she added up everything he’d done for her, had been to her-her savior, protector and support-he was, yes, just incredible.
Which was why every now and then the question popped into her head-where had this man been before the accident?
From the tatters she remembered, besides his reported promiscuity, he’d treated Mel with fed-up annoyance and everyone else with abrasive impatience. His treatment of her had been the worst. He’d barely spoken to her, had watched her with something almost vicious in his eyes, as if he’d thought her beneath his friend-his brother.
And every time there was one answer. The conclusion she’d made the first day she’d come here. Her memories had to be faulty. This, he, must be the truth. The magnificent truth.
“Ready to go back to your keeper?”
Everything became more beautiful with his return. She surrendered to his effortless strength, let him draw her to feet that barely touched the ground because he existed, was near.
She ended up ensconced in his protective embrace. His face clenched with the intensity she now adored, his freshness and potency filling her lungs. And it was as necessary as her next breath that she show him what he was to her.
She moved against his solid heat and power, raised her face to him, the invocation that filled her with life and hope and the will to heal, to be, trembling on her lips. “Rodrigo…”
Eight
Cybele’s whisper skewered through Rodrigo, wrenching at all the emotions and responses he’d been repressing.
From every point where her body touched his, torrents of what felt like molten metal zapped through his nerves, converging to roar through his spine, jamming into his iron-hard erection.
Nothing was left in his raging depths but the need to crush her to his aching flesh, claim her, assimilate her into his being.
And he couldn’t.
But how could he not-and remain sane?
Not that he was sane anymore. He hadn’t been since the first time he’d laid eyes on her. And with every moment in her company, he’d been surrendering any desire to cling to sanity.
He’d plunged into the wonder of experiencing her, discovering her, sharing with her everything from his daily routines and professional pressures to his deepest beliefs and slightest whims.
And she was far more than anything he’d ever dreamed of. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
But whenever he was away from her, he kept dredging up the past, the suspicions and antipathies that had at once poisoned his existence and fueled his resistance. He’d wanted to hate and despise her, to believe the worst of her then. Because she’d been the only woman he’d ever truly wanted-and she’d been forever off-limits.
She was no longer off-limits. Not on account of Mel, nor on that of his objections to her character.
He’d moved from condemning her for tormenting Mel with her volatility to suspecting that the instability had been created in Mel’s twisted psyche. Now that he was no longer jumping on anything to paint her as black as possible, and had seen all the evidence to the contrary, it made sense that a man in Mel’s condition could have interpreted her acts of love-which he couldn’t reciprocate in any healthy fashion-as emotional pressure and blackmail.
Later on, after their relationship had deteriorated further under the harsh realities of Mel’s disability, it stood to reason that the money Mel had asked Rodrigo for to buy her things hadn’t been things she’d hinted that she’d wanted. Mel had said he’d understood her demands, that she deserved some compensation to cheer her up in their endlessly trying situation.
But it could have been Mel who’d tried to satisfy any material desire of hers to placate her, to express his love in the only way he’d ever known how, and then to keep her from walking out on him in a fit of despair. And when that, too, had failed, he’d been down to the last thing he could do to prove to her that he didn’t consider her his live-in nurse-give her a baby.
Rodrigo now thought her memory loss was probably her mind’s way of protecting itself from being pulverized by grief if she remembered Mel and the desperate, traumatic love she’d felt for him.
After he’d reached that conviction, he’d fluctuated between thinking she was being so wonderful to him because she subconsciously saw him as all she had left of Mel, to thinking she treated him as she did because she didn’t remember loving Mel, and that when she did she’d become cold and distant again. He’d thought her coolness had been a reaction to his own barely leashed antipathy. But maybe she’d really disliked him, for reasons that were now gone with her memory. Or maybe the injury had caused some radical changes in her personality.
Too many maybes, too many questions the answers to which only she knew and no longer remembered. And it was driving him mad.
What if her dislike came back in full force, and this persona he adored vanished when her mind and psyche did heal completely?
The temptation to claim her now, bind her to him, negate the possibility, was too much.
He looked down in her eyes. They were fathomless with need. He could reach out and take her, and she’d be his. Ecstatically. She seemed to want him as much as he wanted her.
But did she? Or did she only think she did, because of some need to reassert her own life after surviving the accident that had claimed Mel’s? Was he merely convenient, close? Or was she responding to him out of gratitude?
Whatever the reason, he didn’t believe she was responsible for her desires, or capable of making a decision with so much missing from her memory.
And then there was his side of the st
ory.
He had no doubt he wouldn’t be betraying Mel’s memory. Mel was dead, and even while he’d lived, his relationship with Cybele had been anything but healthy or happy. If he could be the one to offer her that relationship, he would do anything for that chance.
But how could he live with himself if he betrayed her trust? And she did trust him. Implicitly. With her life. Was now showing him that she trusted him with her body, maybe her heart and future.
Yet how could he resist? Need was gnawing him hollow. And feeling her answering yearning was sending him out of his mind.
He had to plan a distraction, an intervention.
He stopped himself from cupping her face, running his fingers down her elegant nose, her sculpted cheekbones, teasing those dainty lips open, plunging his thumb inside their moistness and dampening their rose-petal softness, bending to taste her then absorbing her gasps, thrusting inside her…
He staggered away from temptation, rasped, “I have to get back to work.”
She gasped at the loss of his support, bit her lip, nodded.
Coward. Work was a few hours’ excuse to stay away. He had to do whatever would keep him away from her until she healed and came to him with her full, unclouded, unpressured choice.
He exerted what remained of his will. “And before I forget, I wanted to tell you that I’m inviting my family for a visit.”
Cybele stared up at Rodrigo.
For a moment there, as he’d held her against him, she’d thought he felt what she did, wanted what she did. She’d thought he’d take her in his arms, and she’d never be homeless again.
But it had all been in her mind. He’d torn himself away, the fierceness and the bleakness that had evaporated during the past four weeks settling back over him. She’d read him all wrong.
But he’d read her all right. There was no way he hadn’t seen her desire, understood her plea for him.
And he’d recoiled from her offer, from her need, as if they’d injured him, or worse, tainted him.
But though he was too kind to castigate her for testing the limits of their situation when he’d never encouraged her to, he’d still found a way to draw the line again and keep her behind it.
He was inviting his family over. Now that she’d been so stupid as to come on to him, to offer him what he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want, he was making sure she’d no longer have unsupervised access to him to repeat the mistake. He was inviting them as chaperones.
That had to be his reason for suddenly thinking of inviting them. Just yesterday, they’d been talking about their families and he hadn’t brought up his intention. He’d even said it would be the first year that no one came to stay at his estate at all. And she’d gotten the distinct feeling he’d been…relieved about that fact. Probably because he’d had all the distractions he could afford in the form of Mel’s death and her recuperation.
But her irresponsible behavior was forcing him to put up with even more distractions than she’d caused him, through his extensive family’s presence, probably until he decreed she was well enough to be let back into the wild. Which could mean weeks, maybe months.
It felt like a wake-up slap. One she’d needed. Not only couldn’t she let him swamp himself with family just to keep her at arm’s length, she couldn’t burden him with more responsibility toward her, this time over her emotions and desires-which in his terminal nobility he was probably taking full blame for inciting. She’d burdened him enough, when she had no right to burden him at all. She had to stop leaning on him, stop taking advantage of his kindness and support. And she had to do it now, before her emotions got any deeper.
Not that she thought they could. What she felt for him filled her, overflowed.
Only one bright side to this mess. Though she’d betrayed herself and imposed on him, she was now certain she hadn’t done that when Mel had been in the picture. She’d repressed her feelings before, and they must have broken free after the accident.
All she could do now was fade from his life, let him continue it free from the liability of her. She had to pick up the pieces of her life, plan how to return to a demanding job with a baby on the way, without counting on the help of a mother she was now sure wouldn’t come through for her as Cybele had remembered she’d promised.
Cybele didn’t need her mother. She’d long ago learned not to. And it wasn’t Rodrigo’s fault that she needed him emotionally. Any other kind of need had to end. Right now.
She had to leave immediately, so he wouldn’t have to call his whole family to his rescue. She had to stop wasting his time, cutting into his focus and setting back his achievements.
The moment they reentered the house, she opened her mouth to say what she had to, but he talked over her.
“When I relocated here, it seemed to me that Catalans search for reasons to gather and celebrate. It was explained to me that because they’ve fought so fiercely to preserve their language and identity, they take extra pride in preparing and executing their celebrations. My family is thoroughly Catalan, and they’re big on family unity and cultural traditions. And since I built this place over five years ago, it has replaced my grandparents’ home as the place to gather. It would be a shame to interrupt the new tradition.”
He was trying to make his sudden decision look as though it had nothing to do with her snuggling up against him like a cat in heat. She wanted to cry out for him to shut up and quit being so thoughtful. She had to say her piece and he was making it so much harder. Comparing those festivities and family gatherings with the barrenness of her own life was another knife that would twist in her heart once she was away from here.
She couldn’t say anything. Her throat sealed over a molten pain that filled it as he escorted her like always to her quarters, continuing her education in Catalan traditions and his family’s close-knit pursuits-all the things she’d never had and would never have. “Spring and summer are rife with fiestas i carnaval…that means-”
“Feasts and carnivals. I know,” she mumbled. “But I-”
A smile invaded his eyes and lips again, cutting her off more effectively than if he’d shouted. “I sometimes forget how good your Spanish is, and I’m blown away by how colloquial your Catalan has become in this short period.”
She nearly choked on the surge of emotion and pleasure his praise provoked, only for it to be followed by an even deeper dejection.
That deepened further when he swept his gaze ahead, animation draining from his voice, the newscaster-like delivery coming back. “The closest upcoming festival is La Diada De Sant Jordi, or St. George’s Day, celebrating the patron saint of Catalonia, on the 23rd of April. There are many variations of the legend of St. George, but the Catalan version says there was a lake that was home to a dragon to which a maiden had to be sacrificed every day. One day, St. George killed the dragon and rescued that day’s maiden. A red rose tree is supposed to have grown where the dragon’s blood was spilled. Now on the day, the streets of Catalonia are filled with stands selling rosas i libros-roses and books. The rose is a symbol of love, while the book is a symbol of culture.”
“I’m sure it would be a great time to be in Catalonia-”
He bulldozed over her attempt to interrupt him. “It certainly is. The celebrations are very lively and very participatory. Anyone walking down the streets anywhere in Catalonia is invited to join. Another similar celebration is Mother of God of Montserrat, on the 27th of April. In addition to these dates, each village and town has its own designated patron saint to pay homage to. Those celebrations are much like the larger celebrations, with parades of giants made of papier-mâché, fireworks, music from live bands and more. My family may stay until the 23rd of June, which is the shortest day of the year and coincides with the summer solstice celebration and the festival honoring St. John. Here in Catalonia, we light bonfires when the sun is at its most northern point. Catalans believe this wards off disease, bad luck and assorted other demons.”
She tried again. “Sounds
like a fun time ahead for you and your family-”
“And for you, too. You’ll love the energy and sheer fun of this time of year.”
“I’m sure I would. But I won’t be here for all that, so maybe another time?”
She felt his eyes turn to her then, felt their gaze as if it were his powerful arms hauling her back to him.
“What are you talking about?”
She kept walking, struggled not to give in to the need to look at him and catch his uncensored reaction to her announcement before the barrier of his surgical composure descended, obscured it. Stupid. Still wishing she mattered beyond being a duty.
“Based on your latest tests and diagnosis of my condition, and since you obviously won’t do it, I’m giving myself a clean bill of health. Time to return to my life and job.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” He stopped her midway in the huge sunlit corridor leading to her quarters. “You’re left-handed and can barely move your fingers. It’s going to be weeks before you can do a lot of basic things for yourself, months before you can go back to work.”
“Countless people with more severe and permanent disabilities are forced to fend for themselves, and they manage-”
“But you won’t only be fending for yourself now. You’re having a baby. And you’re not forced to do anything-you don’t have to manage on your own. I won’t allow you to, and I sure as hell am not allowing you to leave. And this is the last time we have this conversation, Cybele Wilkinson.”
Her heart flapped faster with each adamant word until it felt blurred like the wings of a hummingbird.
She tried to tell herself it was moronic to feel that way. That even if she had to concede that he was correct, she should listen to the voice telling her to be indignant at his overruling tactics, to rebel against his cornering her at every turn into doing what he thought was right for her. That voice also insisted there was nothing to be so giddy about, that he wasn’t doing it out of concern for her, but for his patient.