by Sara Wood
Waving away help, he hefted the slabs off the lorry as if to prove to himself that he hadn’t gone soft. Yet the pictures persisted, tormenting him.
He kept replaying the events of the evening, seeing over and over again the far-away look in Maddy’s eyes and the entrancing sweetness of her face when she’d described what she’d done with her day. Surely a highly coloured version, calculated to hook him.
If so, she’d been successful. Long-dead memories had been brought vividly to life for him. He had gone beyond the pain and his loveless heart had been touched by the images she’d conjured up. OK. Maybe she remembered the Quinta with affection. Much to his surprise, he did too. So what?
Pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he looked around at the barren, blackened land and winced at what he saw. For the first time he acknowledged the distress that the destruction of the farmhouse had caused him.
He’d intended to stay detached. To do the job requested and take off again, his heart untouched. It was easier that way. No feelings equalled no pain.
But Maddy had forced him to listen to her rapturous descriptions and now he could feel the hurt as surely if his own body had been torn in half.
For years he had pretended that this land meant nothing to him—and he’d virtually been convinced. But in reality he’d been protecting himself, ever since he’d fled from his grandmother’s vicious tongue. And from the guilt he carried with him to this day of his part in the death of Maddy’s parents and his.
Grimly he had made a life for himself that had excluded the place he loved secretly in his heart. He’d kept busy—rather like Maddy—but in his case it hadn’t been necessity that had made him work long hours, but the knowledge that if he stopped to think he’d want to return.
And if he did so he would have to relive the accident which had brutally changed his life.
He battled to stall that moment. For now, he had enough on his plate.
And yet he felt compelled to gaze at the ravaged land, unable to stop himself from thinking that Maddy’s father and his mother—who’d loved the Quinta more than anyone—would have been in despair over its destruction.
The two families had laboured to turn the old manor house from a ramshackle ruin into a magnificent home. But it had been his mother and Jim Cook who had known every stone and beam, who had harboured a deep and all-consuming love of the farm.
Through them, he and Maddy had learnt to know its moods and to identify the insects, the birds and the plants that colonised the fertile Quinta soil.
The delights of the mellow old Quinta had offered him solace. And a kind of emotional fulfilment. Plus the love of his mother, of course—and that of his grandfather and Jim Cook, all of whom had loved horticulture as he did. The nurturing of plants had been an escape, a balm to the soul, for each one of them.
Perhaps it was the memories of those happy times that had softened his heart and made him susceptible to Maddy’s feminine wiles.
He groaned. How he loathed and despised himself for being in an almost permanent state of arousal when she was near!
He’d kept away from women since Luisa had died, three years ago. So much had died inside him, too. He knew he’d become cold and unemotional to protect himself—just as he had as a child.
Yet something about the wholesale ruination of the Quinta had left him a sucker, open to softness and sympathy. He frowned. And something about Maddy had cracked his protective shell even more.
His hand shook. Last night, whilst eating that peach, he’d felt an overpowering desire to take Maddy in his arms and gently kiss her soft lips into submission, to feel the plushness of a woman’s body beneath his. To taste ecstasy again.
He had to stop working for a moment because his breathing was so laboured. But he shouldn’t feel like this about someone so superficial and materialistic. That domestic angel he’d seen last night was a mirage. She wasn’t like that at all—no matter how badly he wanted her to be that mirage, that angel.
With dismay, he realised that he missed Luisa more than he’d thought. For some reason he’d been unconsciously searching for someone to replace her. As if anyone ever could.
For she had been sweet and gentle and as honest as the day was long. Even to look at her had given him a warm feeling inside. Her face…
He felt himself tense up. In vain he tried to recall her appearance. Another image kept getting in the way. A woman with bright, silvered eyes that could change to darkest charcoal and completely drown him. Whose smile beckoned and lured like that of a siren. Who made him laugh and rage and wonder in the space of a few minutes. Maddy.
And yet she wasn’t worth one hair of Luisa’s head. His eyes watered and a lump came to his throat. His Luisa had been ripped from his mind and replaced by a harlot. He shouldn’t even sully his late wife’s memory by even thinking of her in the same breath!
‘She’s a money-grabbing hooker! Remember that, you idiot!’ he muttered angrily under his breath.
Riven with anger and self-loathing, he dropped a paving stone and cracked it. His booted foot kicked it viciously aside and he wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t mentioned their parents’ accident. His moment of mad longing for her had been brought to a shuddering halt and his rampant hormones had gone into free fall.
‘Boss? You all right?’
He glared at Manuel, his manager. ‘What the hell do you think?’ he flared. And then groaned, waving a hand in apology. ‘I’m sorry, Manuel. Forgive me. Inexcusable.’
His manager’s face was gentle and understanding. ‘Bad time, boss. We feel it hard. You…’ He shrugged as if to express his sympathy, then put his hand on Dex’s arm. ‘Sorry to tell you this. Last chance to search the house. Four hours till the bulldozers move in.’
Dexter felt his chest tighten. ‘Right. Don’t pull any men off,’ he muttered. ‘I want to be on my own.’
He strode purposefully to the ruins of the house. This was it. A final goodbye. Soon there would be nothing left of the memories that crowded into his mind.
The good and the bad. The two grandfathers, increasingly pulling in opposite directions because of their vastly different characters and strutting about like stallions, shouting at one another whilst he and Maddy leapt out of their way.
The happiness he’d felt when he’d worked in the nursery, helping Jim Cook—and how ironically he’d often wished at that time that Jim had been his father.
His mother, white-faced and haunted as she’d kissed him that dark day when he was fifteen, her hair soft and fragrant on his face when she’d enveloped him in her arms and husked an emotional goodbye.
He hadn’t known then that it had been a final farewell, that she’d intended to escape his father’s bullying and run off with Jim Cook. He hadn’t known that it would be the last time he saw her alive.
It hurt. Dear heaven, how it hurt. Suppressing a sharp spasm of pain, he put on his tough working gloves and bent to rummage in the chaos that had once been his home.
Full of anticipation, Maddy crested the hill. And immediately she froze as if turned to stone.
Her legs suddenly gave way beneath her and she crumpled to the soft green turf, staring in horror and clutching at her chest as the breath jerked in harsh and laboured gasps.
‘No!’ she croaked, trying to deny the undeniable. ‘No!’
Her mind whirled as she struggled to make sense of the terrible scene. A devastating forest fire had clearly roared over the estate, stopping only at the foot of the hill where she sat. Below her she could see a wide trench that must have been a hastily constructed fire break. It had saved the western part of the Quinta land from fire damage, but not the major part of the estate.
Reaching out shakily, she grasped at the emerald turf for some kind of solid reassurance. Beside her, behind her, the sweet and verdant land offered untold delights to the eyes. Ahead there was nothing but desolation.
At first sight it seemed that everything was black, but then she began to make out
the heaps of grey ash that once must have been living plants. And there were incongruously gaudy orange diggers working in the centre of the plain where the Quinta had once stood.
Her hand flew to her mouth in horror. The beautiful farmhouse had been utterly ruined.
Everything she’d remembered so vividly and so lovingly had been destroyed. All her happy memories had been wiped away and, with them, a part of herself had gone too. Everything the Quinta had represented—those tender moments with her father and her deep love of the land—had been cruelly obliterated.
She gave a plaintive cry that came right from the depths of her being.
‘Oh, Dex!’
No wonder he’d been preoccupied. Curt. Unwilling to bend his mind to being sociable towards his proposed bride. Awash with misery, she shaded her eyes, realising he would be out there now, working to clear the land. And her heart went out to him. She understood his pain. However emotional she was feeling about the terrible scene, it must be ten times worse for him.
She’d loved the Quinta. But it had been Dex’s entire life.
Long-suppressed tears began to roll down her face. She had to go to him. To say how she felt, that she understood.
Sobbing, driven on by her desire to comfort him somehow, she stumbled down the hill, towards the ugly blackness.
The sun burned down remorselessly. His chest felt hollow, as if an emptiness had begun to spread through his body.
He’d been working for perhaps an hour. His eyes prick-led and he scowled ferociously at the blackened mess. This was hopeless. There was nothing worth saving. What was the point? He was looking for something he’d never find.
Love. Peace of mind. Tenderness.
Damn Maddy Cook for stirring up his emotions! Curse her wine-dyed hair for making him want what he could never have!
‘Dex!’
His whole body jerked at the sound of her shocked gasp and then he sprang up from his crouching position to face her, white-hot with fury that she should invade his space at this deeply personal moment.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he roared in hoarse fury.
For a split-second she thought that he meant to hit her. His fists were clenched and his body hunched menacingly in a physical threat.
Shaky from the long trek and the shock of what she’d seen, she lost her footing. Fell onto the tarry ground and winced at the horrible crunch of charcoaled wood and plant matter as it crumbled beneath her.
Brushing herself down, her face now smudged like a chimney sweep’s, she slowly rose to her feet.
And then she saw him clearly. He was grey with despair. His black eyes blazing in a bitter fury at what had happened to the Quinta.
‘Oh, Dex!’ she whispered hopelessly.
Misery twisted his mouth. A look of utter bleakness collapsed all the muscles of his face before he hastily turned away and ripped savagely at a carbonised beam which was sitting drunkenly on what remained of a stone wall.
For a moment she closed her eyes, because she couldn’t bear to see him so desperately unhappy. She wanted to help him. To make everything all right again. But knew she couldn’t.
And, because of her helplessness, the tears began to fall down her cheeks again.
‘Dex!’ she mumbled brokenly, watching in despair as his rage unleashed itself on the charred timbers of his home. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s awful. Nothing in my wildest dreams prepared me for this. I—I can’t believe what’s happened. Was…was anyone hurt?’
‘No!’
She flinched at his abruptness. The old Maddy would have muttered something and hurried away with her tail between her legs. But she couldn’t leave without knowing what had happened. Too often she’d remained unquestioning over important matters. She knew that only led to a torment of uncertainty that scoured away at her, keeping her awake at night.
So she braved his angry and uncompromising figure and trampled grimly over piles of debris till she’d come close enough to speak without shouting.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said chokily. ‘The house was built of stone but there’s little of it left—’
‘That’s because of the wood in its construction,’ he growled curtly, pushing away a heap of rubble in exasperation. ‘The roof. The floors. Lintels and doors. They burned and weakened the stone. In any case, the heat was intense. The gas cylinders at the back of the kitchen exploded.’
She shivered in horror, cringing at the thought of an entire house being burnt to the ground. Her home. His. All she could see were a few remnants of the outer wall and the huge, solid chimney, some large timbers and heaps of tangled, blackened stuff that must be all that was left of the family furniture and possessions.
Incongruously, in the far corner where the kitchen had been, a buckled steel fridge reared out of the piles of soot and charred wood. Her eyes darted about. There were partly melted saucepans. An iron bath that had fallen to the ground floor and now lurched precariously against the mangled remains of the wrought-iron balcony. Over it all rose a stench of soot and smoke. Already her throat felt sore from it.
She mopped her face, hot and sweaty from the long walk and the heat of the scorched earth.
‘It’s appalling,’ she whispered. ‘How can you bear it?’
The broad back expanded with a huge intake of breath. ‘You think I have any choice?’ he bit.
He shot a cold, malevolent look over his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that was stupid,’ she mumbled, her hands twisting helplessly together. ‘I don’t know what to say—’
‘Then don’t.’ He took a longer look at her and she was very conscious of her dishevelled appearance. Her face must be scarlet from the heat and sweat was making her clothes cling to her in a totally unbecoming way. To say nothing of the streaks of soot everywhere. He frowned. ‘Did you walk here?’
When she’d first climbed into his truck on the day she’d arrived he’d talked of a fire, she recalled with a jerk. It must have happened some days ago…
She cringed. And all the while she’d been batting her eyelashes at him and cavorting around at the hotel… It was too awful. What must he have thought of her?
‘Yes,’ she choked, not knowing where to start with her apologies. ‘I—I came to see you—’
‘Is that a fact?’ he sneered. ‘I think you wanted to see the Quinta,’ he grated. His eyes seared hers, glittering with a terrible anger. ‘Your dowry.’
She went white. ‘No! That is, I wanted to see it, of course—’
‘Yeah. Of course,’ he growled, extending his arm mockingly as if introducing the wreckage to her. ‘Well, here it is.’
She trembled, bewildered and frightened by the darkness of his fury. And ached to console him. But the gap between them was more than the foot or so that separated their two bodies. He had wrapped himself in a murderous hatred of the fire that only his frantic physical assault on the ruins of the farmhouse could possibly appease.
Maddy was more deeply upset than she could ever have imagined. The gardens which had graced the long drive up to the Quinta had been obliterated by the fire. The two grandfathers had planted oleander and bougainvillaea, hibiscus and datura, exotic palms and bananas. Specimen shrubs from all over the world had been incorporated into the design. It had been the talk of the Algarve and the imaginative planting had brought garden lovers to the garden centre from far afield. Now just a few miserable trunks of blackened palms bore witness to its former glory.
‘There must have been thousands of plants here,’ she choked.
‘My life’s work!’ he rasped.
‘Dexter!’ she gasped.
She wanted to touch him. To console him. And he was blocking her out. That hurt so much.
It was terrible to see the virulence of his rage. He lifted the blackened oak beams as if they weighed nothing, his muscles bulging with effort, the veins in his neck standing out.
Sweat had formed a dark, sticky V on his back and be-grimed his face, and he only paused
to flick an impatient gloved hand at it when it began to trickle into his eyes.
And those eyes! She cringed at their expression. It was as though he was in a deep hole of hell. Her tender heart ached for him. He’d lost everything, she thought in horror. No wonder Sofia had been grimmer than usual.
‘Are you…ruined, Dex?’ she breathed timidly.
He whirled around, his mouth grim, a fearsome glitter in his eyes.
‘What if I am?’ he snapped.
Her face crumpled at her inability to find words of comfort.
‘It…it would be dreadful!’ she stammered.
‘Wouldn’t it just?’ he snarled.
Although she flinched, she could understand his bitterness. It must have been the most terrible shock. Distressed for him, she tried to collect her thoughts together.
He turned his back on her again, but she felt that she had to tell him how she felt. He needed to know that she cared and if he needed her…
Wanting to be needed more than anything, she gulped, fiercely suppressing the tears which threatened to render her incoherent again. She had to tell him how she felt, that she shared some of his pain.
‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ she said shakily. ‘I was expecting to see trees and meadows and rows of plants in the nursery. Instead, I saw…I saw that everything was burnt and charred.’ Her voice wobbled as she relived the horror, and then her frantic desperation to find Dex and to express her compassion. ‘It was horrible to walk across what had once been fields,’ she jerked. ‘The grass crackled beneath my feet and broke. Every step I took sent up clouds of soot.’ She gave a shudder. ‘I think the acrid smell will stay with me for ever. So much, reduced to ashes,’ she whispered, reliving that nightmare journey in the merciless sun, every painful, miserable step. ‘And—and this…the Quinta…’
She couldn’t voice her feelings properly. A huge lump of emotion had risen to block her throat and tears were hot and prickling at the backs of her eyelids once more.
Dexter stopped viciously hurling timber out of his way and stood there glaring at her, cold and tight-jawed, sooty smears on his forehead and cheeks.