by Olivia Gates
She couldn’t listen. And if another voice said she was criminally weak to be forgetting her minutes-ago resolution and clinging to whatever time she could get with him, she could only admit it. She wasn’t strong enough to throw away one second she could have in his company, extensive family and all.
As for walking away for his peace of mind, she believed his acute feelings of duty wouldn’t leave him any if he let her go before he judged she could handle being on her own. She also had to believe he could handle her being here, or he would have been relieved at her offer to leave. And since he wasn’t, she shouldn’t feel bad about staying. She’d offered to go, and he’d said no. Such an incredibly alpha, protective and overriding no.
Still, some imp inside her, which she was certain had come to life during this past month, wouldn’t let her grab at his lifeline without contention. Or without trying to do what it could to erase the damage her blunder had caused to their newfound ease and rapport.
“Okay, it’s clear you believe you’re right-”
“I am right.”
She went on as if he hadn’t growled over her challenging opening “-but that doesn’t automatically mean I agree. I came here as an alternative to staying in your center as a teaching pincushion. But, if I’d been there, you would have discharged me long ago. No one stays in hospital until their fractures heal.”
His eyebrows descended a fraction more. “Do you enjoy futility, Cybele? We’ve established that when I make a decision-”
“-saying no to you isn’t an option,” she finished for him, a smile trembling on her lips, inviting him to smile back at her, light up the world again, tell her that he’d look past her foolish moment of weakness. “But that was a decision based on a clinical picture from a month ago. Now that I’m diagnosed as having no rattling components, I should be left to fend for myself.”
She waited for him to smile back at her, decimate her argument, embroil her in another verbal tournament that neither of them wanted to win, just to prolong the match and the enjoyment.
He did neither. No smile. No decimation. He brooded down at her, seemed to be struggling with something. A decision.
Then he voiced it. “Muy bien, Cybele. You win. If you insist on leaving, go ahead. Leave.”
Her heart plummeted down a never-ending spiral.
And he was turning around, walking away.
He’d taken no for an answer.
But he never did. He’d told her so. She’d believed him. That was why she’d said what she had. He couldn’t take no for an answer. That meant she’d lose him now, not later. And she couldn’t lose him now. She wasn’t ready to be without him for the rest of her life.
She wanted to scream that she took it all back. That she’d only been trying to do what she thought she should, assert an independence she still couldn’t handle, to relieve him of the burden of her.
She didn’t make a sound. She couldn’t. Because her heart had splintered. Because she had no right to ask for more from him, of him. He’d given her far more than she’d thought anyone could ever give. He’d given her back her life. And it was time to give him back his, after she’d inadvertently hijacked it.
She turned away, feeling as though ice had skewered from her gut to her heart, only the freezing felt now, the pain and damage still unregistered.
Her numb hand was on her doorknob when she heard him say, “By the way, Cybele, good luck getting past Consuelo.”
She staggered around. He was looking at her over his shoulder from the end of the corridor, the light from the just-below-the-ceiling windows pouring over him like a spotlight. He looked like that archangel she’d thought him before. His lips were crooked.
He was teasing her!
He didn’t want her to leave, hadn’t accepted that she could.
Before she could do something colossally stupid, like run and throw herself into his arms and sob her heart out, Consuelo, in a flaming red dress with a flaring skirt, swept by Rodrigo and down the corridor like a missile set on her coordinates.
She pounced on her. “You trying to undo all my work? Seven hours running around?” Consuelo turned and impaled Rodrigo with her displeasure. “And you! Letting your patient call the shots.”
Rodrigo glared at her in mock-indignation before he gave Cybele a get-past-this wink. Then he turned and walked away, his bass chuckles resonating in the corridor, in her every cell.
Consuelo dragged her inside the room.
Feeling boneless with the reprieve, Cybele gave herself up to Consuelo’s care, grinned as she lambasted her for her haggardness, ordered her on the scales and lamented her disappointing gains.
She’d missed out on having someone mother her. And for the time being, she’d enjoy Consuelo’s mothering all she could. Along with Rodrigo’s pampering and protection.
It would come to an end all too soon.
But not yet. Not yet.
Nine
Rodrigo stood looking down at the approaching car procession.
His family was here.
He hadn’t even thought of them since the accident. He hadn’t for a while before that, either. He’d had nothing on his mind but Cybele and Mel and his turmoil over them both for over a year.
He’d remembered them only when he needed their presence to keep him away from Cybele. And he’d gotten what he deserved for neglecting them for so long. They’d all had other plans.
He’d ended up begging them to come. He’d evaded explaining the reason behind his desperation. They’d probably figure it out the moment they saw him with her.
In the end, he’d gotten them to come. And made them promise to stay. Long. He’d always wished they’d stay as long as possible.
This time he wondered if he’d survive it.
And here began his torment.
His grandparents stepped out of the limo he’d sent them, followed by three of his aunts. Out of the vans poured the aunts’ adult children and their families plus a few cousins and their offspring.
Cybele stepped out of the French doors. He gritted his teeth against the violence of his response. He’d been wrestling with it for the past three days since that confrontation. He’d still almost ended up storming her bedroom every night. Her efforts to offer him sexually neutral friendliness were inflaming him far worse than if she’d been coming on to him hot and heavy.
Now she walked toward him with those energetic steps of hers, rod-straight, no wiggle anywhere, dressed in dark blue jeans and a crisp azure blouse that covered her from throat to elbows.
The way his hormones thundered, she could have been undulating toward him in stilettos, a push-up bra and a thong.
Dios. The…containment he now lived in had better be obscuring his condition.
He needed help. He needed the invasion of his family to keep him away from her door, from carrying her off to his bed.
Before she could say anything, since anything she said blinded him with an urge to plunder those mind-destroying lips, he said, “Come, let me introduce you to my tribe.”
Tribe is right, Cybele thought.
She fell in step with Rodrigo as she counted thirty-eight men, women and children. More still poured from the vans. Four generations of Valderramas.
It was amazing what one marriage could end up producing.
Rodrigo had told her that his mother had been Esteban and Imelda’s first child, had been only nineteen when she had him, that his grandparents had been in their early twenties when they got married. With him at thirty-eight, his grandparents must be in their late seventies or early eighties. They looked like a very good sixty. Must be the clean living Rodrigo had told her about.
She focused on his grandfather. It was uncanny, his resemblance to Rodrigo. This was what Rodrigo would look like in forty-something years’ time. And it was amazingly good.
Her heart clenched on the foolish but burning wish to be around Rodrigo through all that time, to know him at that age.
She now watched as he met his famil
y three-quarters of the way, smile and arms wide. Another wish seared her-to be the one he received with such pleasure, the one he missed that much. She envied each of those who had the right to rush to fill his arms, to be blessed by the knowledge of his vast and unconditional love. Her heart broke against the hopelessness of it all as his family took turns being clasped to his heart.
Then he turned to her, covered in kids from age two to mid-teens, his smile blazing as he beckoned to her to come be included in the boisterous affection of his family reunion.
She rushed to answer his invitation and found herself being received by his family with the same enthusiasm.
For the next eight hours, she talked and laughed nonstop, ate and drank more than she had in the last three days put together, put a name and a detailed history to each of the unpretentious, vital beings who swept her along the wave of their rowdy interaction and infectious joie de vivre.
All along she felt Rodrigo watching her even as he paid attention to every member of his family, clearly on the best possible terms with them all. She managed not to miss one of his actions either, even as she kept up her side of the conversations. Her pleasure mounted at seeing him at such ease, surrounded by all these people who loved him as he deserved to be loved. She kept smiling at him, showing him how happy she was for him, yet trying her best not to let her longing show.
She was deep in conversation with Consuelo and two of Rodrigo’s aunts, Felicidad and Benita, when he stood up, exited her field of vision. She barely stopped herself from swinging around to follow his movement. Then she felt him. At her back. His approach was like a wave of electromagnetism, sending every hair on her body standing on end, crackling along her nerves. She hoped she didn’t look the way she felt, a woman in the grip of emotional and physical tumult.
His hands descended on her shoulders. Somehow she didn’t lurch. “Who’s letting her patient call the shots, now?”
She looked up, caught his eyebrow wiggle at Consuelo. The urge to drag him down and devour that teasing smile right off his luscious lips drilled a hole in her midsection.
The three vociferous women launched into a repartee match with him. He volleyed each of their taunts with a witticism that was more funny and inventive than the last, until they were all howling with laughter. She laughed, too, if not as heartily. She was busy having mini-heart attacks as one of his hands kept smoothing her hair and sweeping it off her shoulders absently.
By the time he bent and said, “Bed,” she almost begged, Yes, please.
He pulled her to her feet as everyone bid her a cheerful good-night. She insisted he didn’t need to escort her to her room, that he remain with his family. She didn’t think she had the strength tonight not to make a fool of herself. Again.
On La Diada De Sant Jordi, St. George’s Day, Rodrigo’s family had been there for four weeks. After the first four weeks with him, they were the second-best days of her life.
For the first time, she realized what a family was like, what being an accepted member of such a largely harmonious one could mean.
And they had more than accepted her. They’d reached out and assimilated her into their passionate-for-life, close-knit collective. The older members treated her with the same indulgence as Rodrigo, the younger ones with excitement and curiosity, loving to have someone new and interesting enter their lives. She almost couldn’t remember her life before she’d met these people, before they’d made her one of their own. She didn’t want to remember any time when Rodrigo hadn’t filled her heart.
And he, being the magnificent human being that he was, had felt the melancholy that blunted her joy, had once again asked if her problems with her own family couldn’t be healed, if he could intervene, as a neutral mediator, to bring about a reconciliation.
After she’d controlled her impulse to drown him in tears and kisses, she’d told him there hadn’t exactly been a rift, no single, overwhelming episode or grievance that could be resolved. It was a lifetime of estrangement.
But the good news was-and that might be a side effect of her injuries-she was at last past the hurt of growing up the unwanted child. She’d finally come to terms with it, could finally see her mother’s side of things. Though Cybele had been only six when her father had died, she’d been the difficult child of a disappointment of a husband, a constant reminder of her mother’s worst years and biggest mistake. A daddy’s girl who’d cried for him for years and told her mother she’d wished she’d been the one who’d died.
She could also see her stepfather’s side, a man who’d found himself saddled with a dead man’s hostile child as a price for having the woman he wanted, but who couldn’t extend his support to tolerance or interest. They were only human, she’d finally admitted to herself, not just the grown-ups who’d neglected her. And that made it possible for her to put the past behind her.
As more good news, her mother had contacted her again, and though what she’d offered Cybele was nowhere near the unreserved allegiance Rodrigo’s family shared, she wanted to be on better terms.
The relationship would never be what she wished for, but she’d decided to do her share, meet her mother halfway, take what was on offer, what was possible with her family.
Rodrigo hadn’t let the subject go until he’d pressed and persisted and made sure she was really at peace with that.
She now stood looking down the beach where the children were flying kites and building sand castles. She pressed the sight between the pages of her mind, for when she was back to her monotone and animation-free life.
No. She’d never go back to that. Even when she exited Rodrigo’s orbit, her baby would fill her life with-
“Do you have your book?”
She swung around to Imelda, her smile ready and wholehearted. She’d come to love the woman in that short time.
She admired Imelda’s bottle-green outfit, which matched the eyes she’d passed on to Rodrigo, and was again struck by her beauty. She could barely imagine how Imelda might have looked in her prime.
Her eyes fell on the heavy volume in Imelda’s hand. “What book?”
“La Diada De Sant Jordi is rosas i libros day.”
“Oh, yes, Rodrigo told me.”
“Men give women a red rose, and women give men a book.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“So now you know. Come on, muchacha, go pick a book. The men will be coming back any time now.”
“Pick a book from where?”
“From Rodrigo’s library, of course.”
“I can’t just take a book from his library.”
“He’ll be more than happy for you to. And then, it’s what you choose that will have significance when you give it to him.”
Okay. Why would Imelda suggest she give Rodrigo a book? Had she realized how Cybele felt about him and was trying to matchmake? Rodrigo hadn’t been the one to betray any special emotions. He’d been no more affectionate to her than he’d been to his cousins.
Better gloss over this. “So a woman picks any man she knows, and gives him a book?”
“She can. But usually she picks the most important man in her life.”
Imelda knew what Rodrigo was to her. There was certainty in her shrewd eyes, along with a don’t-bother-denying-it footnote.
Cybele couldn’t corroborate her belief. It would be imposing on Rodrigo. He probably knew how she felt, but it was one thing to know, another to have it declared. And then, he wouldn’t give her a rose. Even if he did, it would be because all the women had their husbands with them for the fiesta, or because she was alone, or any other reason. She wasn’t the most important woman in his life.
But after she walked back into the house with Imelda and they parted ways, she found herself rushing to the library.
She came out with the book of her choice, feeling agonizingly exposed each time one of the women passed her and commented on her having a book like them.
Then the men came back from the next town
, bearing copious amounts of prepared and mouthwatering food. And each man had a red rose for his woman. Rodrigo didn’t have one.
Her heart thudded with a force that almost made her sick.
She had no right to be crushed by disappointment. And no right to embarrass him. She’d give the book to Esteban.
Then she moved, and her feet took her to Rodrigo. Even if she had no claim on him, and there’d never be anything between them, he was the most important man in her life, and everyone knew it.
As she approached him, he watched her with that stillness and intensity that always made her almost howl with tension.
She stopped one step away, held out the book.
“Happy La Diada De Sant Jordi, Rodrigo.”
He took the book, his eyes fixing on it, obscuring his reaction from her. She’d chosen a book about all the people who’d advanced modern medicine in the last century. He raised his eyes to her, clearly uncertain of the significance of her choice.
“Just a reminder,” she whispered, “that in a collation of this century’s medical giants, you’ll be among them.”
His eyes flared with such fierceness, it almost knocked her off her feet. Then he reached for her hand, pulled her to him. One hand clasped her back, the other traveled over her hair to cup her head. Then he enfolded her into him briefly, pressed a searing kiss on her forehead. “Gracias mucho, querida. It’s enough for me to have your good opinion.”
Next second, he let her go, turned to deliver a few festive words, starting the celebrations.
She didn’t know how she functioned after that embrace. That kiss. Those words. That querida.
She evidently did function, even if she didn’t remember anything she said or did during the next hours. Then Rodrigo was pulling her to her feet.
“Come. We’re starting the Sardana, our national dance.”
She flowed behind him, almost hovered as she smiled up at him, her heart jiggling at seeing him at his most carefree.
The band consisted of eleven players. They’d already taken their place at an improvised stage in the terrace garden that had been cleared for the dancers, evidently all of Rodrigo’s family.