by Anne Weale
‘What?’ she said blankly.
A smile flickering round his mouth, he said, ‘I will take you to the Ariège with the greatest pleasure, but on one condition: that you promise to marry me as soon as possible after we get back.’
Then, closing the gap between them and placing his hands on her shoulders, he said in a more serious tone, ‘I love you. I’ve been patiently waiting for a sign that it might be mutual. Is it?’
It took a few moments for it to sink in that he wasn’t fooling. He meant it. Nicolás, the unattainable, felt the same way about her as she did about him.
She took a deep shaky breath. ‘Of course it is, idiot!’ she said, half laughing, half crying.
And then Nicolás pulled her against him and kissed her in a way he never had before, with what she recognised as the same blissful relief that she was feeling.
Some time later, he said, ‘Let’s find a quiet restaurant where we can talk…or, a better idea, let’s go back to my place and have a meal brought to us there. How does that sound to you?’
It was clear to Cally that if she agreed to this plan she would be spending the night with him. ‘It sounds wonderful,’ she said happily.
The security officer was in the lobby as they left the building.
‘You can be the first to congratulate me, Vicente,’ said Nicolás. ‘Señorita Haig has just agreed to marry me.’
‘That’s wonderful news, sir,’ said Vicente, shaking hands with him. ‘My wife will be thrilled when I tell her.’ He turned to Cally. ‘My wife was badly injured in an accident two years ago. If it hadn’t been for Don Nicolás helping us, she wouldn’t have made such a good recovery…and we’re not the only people he’s helped. You’ll never hear about it from him, but your novio is one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. I don’t mean to sound impertinent, but you’re a lucky young lady to be marrying him.’
‘Vicente exaggerates,’ said Nicolás.
It was the first time Cally had seen him look embarrassed. Ignoring his comment, she said to the security guard, ‘I know I am, but I’m going to do my best to be the wife he deserves.’
‘I shall hold you to that,’ said Nicolás, putting an arm round her. His tone was teasing but there was tenderness as well as amusement in his eyes.
They walked through the city centre arm in arm, their fingers entwined. Madrid, always smarter and livelier than London at night, had never seemed more glamorous.
The entrance to the block of apartments where Nicolás lived was in a fashionable pedestrians-only street lined with some of the city’s most exclusive clothes shops and jewellers. His apartment was on the top floor. As he showed her into the large living room, Cally saw that one wall was lined with books, another with paintings and a third wall consisted of huge plate glass floor-to-ceiling windows with, beyond them, a discreetly illuminated roof garden.
‘Let me take your coat,’ said Nicolás.
While she unfastened the buttons of her classic wool coat, an investment made with her first Llorca Enterprises pay cheque, he positioned himself behind her to help her slide her arms from the sleeves.
Even when the weather had been at its coldest, she had never seen him wear an overcoat. His only concession to the cold had been a navy blue cashmere scarf wound twice round his neck. She had concluded that his running kept his circulation at a level that made him impervious to temperatures that made other men huddle inside their expensive loden coats.
He laid her coat over the back of a chair. ‘Are you starving?’
‘Not for food.’
‘That’s what I hoped you would say.’
He began to press soft kisses on her forehead, her eyebrows and her eyelids, working his way slowly towards her eager lips.
Presently, as their mouths met and fused, his hands began to explore the contours of her body with light but thrillingly intimate caresses that made her tremble with impatience to feel his fingers and palms on her naked skin.
For so many lonely nights she had tossed and turned, tormented by images conjured up by her imagination that had seemed to have no hope of ever being fulfilled. Now that, at last, she was here in his arms, suddenly all her inhibitions evaporated. She began to unbutton her shirt, her fingers made clumsy by haste to be rid of it.
Nicolás broke off the kiss and stopped stroking her, but only in order to unfasten his own shirt. As, not for the first time, she saw the broad shoulders exposed and the hard male chest laid bare, Cally drew in a ragged breath. He had looked magnificent in his running kit, but stripped to the waist he looked even better.
He seemed equally eager to see her top half exposed and, after tugging his shirt free from his trousers and shrugging it off, he reached for the hem of her white silk camisole and drew it higher and higher until it cleared her raised arms and he could toss it aside and reach round behind her to unclip her lacy bra.
As that, too, was tossed aside, he said, ‘I’ve been dreaming of this moment since that day we went to La Soledad and you were frightened by a snake. Do you remember? I do. For one unforgettable moment, I felt your breast fit my palm.’ His dark eyes burned with ardour she had never seen before. Speaking in Spanish, his voice low and husky, he said, ‘Now they are mine to caress whenever I want. But what I want now is to feel them against me.’ He put his hands on her waist and drew her closer and closer until the softness of her flesh was pressed to the muscular hardness of his.
Cally slid her arms upwards until her elbows were resting on his shoulders and she could enjoy caressing the back of his neck.
‘This feels wonderful,’ she murmured.
‘Mmm…I agree…but let’s go somewhere more private.’
With easy strength he picked her up and carried her through a doorway into another room where, in the light from the living room, she could see a wide bed.
Nicolás set her down on one side of it and tapped a couple of buttons on a control box on the night table. One activated reading lamps on either side of the bed. The other controlled long curtains which swished softly across another expanse of glass overlooking the terrace.
‘Is that your bathroom?’ she asked, looking at an inner door.
‘Yes…do you want to use it? Go ahead.’
When, three or four minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, having shed her skirt, tights and panties, she found Nicolás, too, had finished stripping off. He had also removed the bedcover and the top layer of bedclothes.
‘I used your toothbrush. I hope that’s all right?’
He gave her his bone-melting smile. ‘Isn’t sharing a toothbrush one of the key tests of love? I need to brush my teeth too. Be right back.’
Cally lay down to wait for him, feeling as if all her life the world had been like a picture hanging slightly askew which now was hanging straight.
He came back and stretched his long frame beside hers, propping himself on one elbow in order to look into her eyes. ‘There were times when I thought we should never reach this point,’ he said quietly. ‘The months since I’ve known you have seemed like years.’
She smiled at him. ‘But now we’re here and I’m all yours…longing for you to make love to me.’ As she had once before, a long time ago, she put her hands up to touch the high cheekbones, the forceful jaw. ‘I feel as if I have loved you all my life…that, in my heart, I recognised you the day you came to the door in Valdecarrasca.’
‘And I you,’ he told her softly.
Then the longing repressed by them both for so long became overwhelming and, as Nicolás’s lips and hands began to caress her in new ways, Cally found that somehow she had lost all her inhibitions and knew instinctively how to respond to him.
She surfaced from a deep sleep, thinking it must be morning. Then, looking at her watch, which she had been too excited take off earlier, she saw it was only an hour and a half since she had been at her desk, never dreaming that tomorrow and all the days after it would be part of the new life begun so rapturously this evening.
She
was wondering if she could reach across Nicolás to switch out the lights without disturbing him, when he stirred and gave a deep sigh of what she hoped was unconscious contentment. For herself, in both mind and body, she had never felt more relaxed.
Suddenly, when she thought he was going to sink into an even deeper sleep, he woke, his dark eyes snapping open, fully alert and bright with renewed vitality.
‘How long have you been awake?’ he asked, smiling.
Cally smiled back. ‘Only a minute or two.’
Nicolás turned towards her and pushed himself up on one elbow, his other hand stroking her hair away from her temples. ‘Are you exhausted? Is it too soon to make love again?’
‘I don’t feel as if I’m exhausted. You’re the one who claimed to be frazzled. I would never have guessed it,’ she teased him.
Nicolás gave the soft laugh that sent tingles down her spine. ‘You have a revitalising effect on me.’
It was even better the second time. With each kiss, each caress Cally felt their understanding of each other deepening. Why had he ever seemed an enigma when now he seemed the one person who, as time went on, she would come to know almost as intimately as she knew herself?
Afterwards, as they lay locked together, the rapid pounding of their hearts gradually subsiding to a normal beat, she slid her hands down his long back and touched her lips to his shoulder, inhaling the smell of his skin. Unlike most Spanish men, he did not use strong cologne. She liked his natural scent better.
Presently, Nicolás eased himself gently away. ‘I’m going to open a bottle and then we’ll decide what to eat.’
He sprang off the bed and went to the bathroom, reappearing moments later with a towel wrapped round his hips and over his arm a dark silk dressing gown she had vaguely noticed hanging behind the door.
‘This will drown you but it’s the best I can offer,’ he said, holding it ready for her to put on.
Cally scrambled off the bed and plunged her arms into the sleeves, thinking how different her body felt now compared with when he had helped her take off her coat. Then, although not a virgin, she had never known what it was to feel wholly possessed and fulfilled. Now she did.
Nicolás wrapped the robe round her while kissing the back of her neck, his hands smoothing the silk into place in a way that was meant to amuse her, and did, but also started another buzz of excitement. She knew that if he had wanted to take her a third time she would have consented eagerly.
In his kitchen, Nicolás produced a folder containing details of the food on offer at every takeout place in the centre of the city. While he opened a bottle of wine, Cally looked through them.
‘Do you live on takeout food?’
‘Mostly I eat out. Why cook when there are twenty professionals doing it a short walk away? I’ve only used the takeouts occasionally. They’re not as good as in New York, but they’re not bad.’
When their supper had been chosen and ordered, he said, ‘Do you want to call your parents tonight, or shall we drive down tomorrow and tell them in person?’
‘I thought we were going to the Ariège? Can’t I ring them from there? You aren’t going to have to introduce me to all your relations, are you?’ asked Cally, daunted by the thought of a long round of family presentations when all she wanted was to be alone with him.
‘No, that isn’t necessary. But I think I should pay a courtesy visit to your parents. My mother you can meet again when we get back from our trip. It’s not much of a detour to Valdecarrasca.’
Next day, as they drove back the way they had come in January, Cally spent a lot of time gazing, with wonder and delight, at the antique emerald ring that Nicolás had fetched from his bank earlier that morning. She had always thought emeralds the most beautiful of all the precious stones and when Nicolás had offered the ring as a placeholder until there was time to select a permanent engagement ring, she had asked if she could keep this one.
He had said, ‘Of course…if you’re sure you like it. It belonged to my paternal grandmother who left all her jewels to me for my future wife.’
During their lunch stop Nicolás said, ‘I’m having second thoughts about La Soledad. Perhaps I should relocate the website design centre and keep the house for our personal use. It was a family house once…it could be again.’
‘Isn’t it much too large for a modern family house?’ Cally said doubtfully.
‘I wasn’t thinking only of you and me and however many children we decide to have. When he retires, my father might like to have a place in the country where he can be with us but not on top of us. In a few years’ time your parents may want to sell the casa rural and take life more easily. In Spain, the elderly aren’t packed off to live in “homes” with other old people as often as they are in other countries.’
‘I know,’ said Cally, thinking of ancient Señora Martinez, still living with her descendants, probably driving them mad sometimes, but not ending her days in an unfamiliar environment with only occasional visits from her relations. ‘But do you really want to take on my parents as well as me?’
‘I’m not suggesting we should live at La Soledad all the time…only sometimes…whenever it suits us.’
The Haigs’ reaction to the news that their daughter was engaged to a Spaniard was, as Cally had expected, somewhat guarded. But as yet they were not aware that their future son-in-law was no ordinary Madrileño. For a couple who had lived abroad so long they were still oddly insular in outlook.
Juanita and the Drydens, on whom she and Nicolás called later, were more enthusiastic.
‘I knew you were made for each other,’ said Juanita, embracing them both.
A little later, Leonora said, ‘I’m beginning to think that La Higuera has a romantic influence on people who spend time under its roof. How long are you staying?’
‘Only tonight,’ said Nicolás. ‘Tomorrow we’re heading north for an unofficial honeymoon before we tackle the matter of where and how to get married. We both have a lot of friends who will expect an invitation and I also have a horde of relations who will be offended if they don’t get one.’
Even in Nicolás’s car it would have been a twelve-hour run from Valdecarrasca to their destination on the French side of the Pyrenees.
‘I don’t want you arriving too exhausted to make love,’ he said, teasingly. ‘We’ll spend the first night at the parador in the castle at Cardona.’
During the drive to Cardona he told her a bit of the castle’s history.
‘It has a tower called the Torre Minyona. In Catalan, minyona means a maid…a young girl…a virgin. In the eleventh century, Adalés, the daughter of the castle’s owner, fell in love with the Moor who was warden of the castle of Malda. Even though the Moor renounced Islam for her, the religious problem was considered so great that her parents and brothers condemned her to live in the tower with only a dumb servant to keep her company. Not surprisingly, she became ill and died a year later.’
It was easy for Cally to identify with the desperate girl, shut away with no hope of seeing the man she loved.
‘What appalling cruelty. Couldn’t he have rescued her…carried her off?’
‘I expect he thought about it, but when you see the castle, you’ll understand how impossible it would have been.’
The sun shone all the way and they shared the driving, Nicolás having greater confidence in her skills than she had. He actually cat-napped while she was at the wheel. It seemed that, in addition to all his other qualities, he was one of those rare men who did not feel themselves automatically superior to every woman driver on the road. After some initial nervousness, Cally began to get used to the car and its controls, and to enjoy driving it.
They stopped for coffee breaks and took an hour for a light lunch, but drank only mineral water, reserving wine for the evening.
As she thought of the night ahead, her third night sharing his bed, her heart beat an excited tattoo.
It was late afternoon when they saw the great mediaeval fo
rtress soaring against the sky on the crest of a hill. It looked impregnable.
But their suite in the Castle’s parador was luxuriously comfortable and a bottle of the best cava—the Spanish equivalent of champagne—was waiting for them in an ice bucket.
‘Some champagne…a shower…and then a rest before dinner. How does that sound?’ said Nicolás, when the porter who had brought up their baggage had been tipped and gone on his way.
‘Sounds perfect. Do they always greet guests with cava in paradores?’ She had never stayed in one before.
Nicolás smiled. ‘I emailed our expected time of arrival and asked them to have it ready. But first…a kiss.’ He reached out a long arm and drew her to him. ‘It’s a shame that Adalés and her Moor never enjoyed this moment.’
Cally put her arms round his waist and rested her forehead against his chest. ‘I can’t bear to think of them being so unhappy. I’ve been pretty miserable myself, but at least I was seeing you…working for you…not shut away like a criminal. The worst of it is that those sort of stupid prejudices are still keeping people apart, hundreds of years later.’
‘Stupidity isn’t likely to die out any time soon, but I don’t think we need to worry about it right now.’ His fingers under her chin, he tilted her face up to his. ‘You are so beautiful. I was watching you while you were driving. You were intent on the road. I could watch you for hours and never grow bored as one does with the pretty, empty faces in magazines and on TV.’
Cally had flown over the Pyrenees many times but never travelled by road over that formidable barrier between the eastern half of France and the northern provinces of Spain.
‘During World War Two, there was an escape route—le chemin de la liberté—from Nazi-occupied France through these mountains,’ said Nicolás. ‘Refugees, resistance fighters, Allied pilots who had had to bale out, they all toiled up through the passes from the other side with inadequate clothing and provisions. Now there’s a great subject that your author Rhys might like to tackle…if it hasn’t been done already.’