Fierce Love

by Phoebe Conn

  He sighed softly and pulled away. He went into the kitchen to look for a menu from a nearby café. She took her phone from her purse and went out on the stairs to return Craig’s call. He answered on the first ring.

  “I heard the news about your father on CNN. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, the funeral’s on Wednesday, and I want to stay here until after the will is read. I have a younger brother who might need a home.”

  “What? How old is he?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You don’t need a sixteen-year-old brother, Maggie. Don’t let anyone talk you into that.”

  Sick of his advice, she held her phone away from her ear and counted to ten before she answered. “It’s my idea, Craig, not anyone else’s. I haven’t even spoken to him about it. Now I need to go, dinner’s ready.”

  “Promise you’ll call me when you know when you’re coming home.”

  “I will.” She ended the call and remained seated on the top step. She could understand Craig’s motives a whole lot better from Spain that she had at home. He’d always presented his suggestions as a friendly expert who had her best interests at heart. What he’d really wanted was to convince her she needed him in her life. She didn’t.

  Rafael came outside and sat down beside her. “I can cook. I just have to remember to buy food.”

  She leaned against his shoulder. “It helps to make a list, but I don’t care what we eat tonight. I’m worried about Fox, but I don’t know if he’d want to live with me.”

  “We’ll need a bigger place if he does.”

  She squeezed his arm. For a dark-eyed Gypsy, he was awfully agreeable, but she couldn’t promise to stay with him when their lives simply wouldn’t blend. They didn’t need to learn it the hard way either. For the moment, however, it was enough simply to sit together and think about possibilities for dinner.

  Santos propped his leg on the coffee table and reluctantly considered taking Maggie’s advice and calling someone to come stay with him. There were women who’d leap into their cars to dash over and provide affectionate company, but he wouldn’t give them the impression he cared about them when he didn’t. He preferred to be alone. He reached for the file of Augustín’s papers and removed the white stationery Maggie had grouped in the front.

  They were written in his grandfather’s most elegant handwriting, not the relaxed scrawl of the yellow sheets, but the man’s lingering love for a young woman he’d known only a few weeks stretched belief. Augustín had seldom smiled or laughed. He’d never shown any pride in being a grandfather. Perhaps he’d always been such a serious individual, and if so, would the pretty Simone have fallen in love with him? Maybe she’d simply enjoyed the drama of knowing a handsome matador, or the fact her father hadn’t approved. The latter was more likely the truth.

  He wondered if his grandmother had known about Simone. He hoped not. Carmen was too unforgiving a woman to have understood her husband’s passion for another. He returned the sheets to the file and closed it. It was better not to love anyone than to wreak havoc in their life with loving promises that couldn’t be kept.

  Maybe Ana had been the perfect woman for him. He’d never trusted her past the dimensions of a bed, and now that his father was dead, whatever intrigues she’d continued with him were over. She would have other men, though, and he didn’t care enough to fight for her. He sat alone with his thoughts and his aching leg, and wondered what he’d forgotten to plan for the funeral.

  The twins lured Fox into their room. “Mother’s agreed to let us stay for two nights, but after the funeral, we might not be able to come back until we’re eighteen.”

  He sprawled across the bed. “Why would you want to come back? There’s a fine beach, but Carmen won’t miss you or any of us. Neither will Cirilda. Why would you miss them?”

  Connie sat down cross-legged on the rug. “We’d miss you, Fox. Won’t you miss us?”

  He looked up at the ceiling fixture, a misshapen blown-glass bubble in blues and greens that resembled a stranded jellyfish. The one in his room was a yellow sun. He liked his better. “I might, but I’ll go back to school soon and won’t come back. There’s nothing for me here.”

  Perry sat beside him on the bed. “We could meet you here.”

  He laughed. “What about your modeling career? Won’t you be too busy flying around the world to remember me?”

  Perry smiled knowingly and reached for his hand. “Give us something to remember.”

  Fox sat up. “Call me in five years.” He left the room before they could stop him, but he had to put his hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter until he was safely inside his own room. There were boys at school who would brag about having twins until their hair turned gray, but Perry and Connie were just little girls, and he wasn’t interested.

  Perry leaned against their door. “I thought it was worth a try.”

  Connie rose and went into the bathroom. “It wasn’t. Did you really expect him to rip off his clothes and ask who wanted to be first?”

  “No, I already knew it would be me.”

  Connie splashed her face with cold water to hide her tears. “You can have him.”

  “I intend to.” She stretched out on the bed where Fox had been lying and felt his heat. “He’s always liked me better anyway.”

  Connie bit her lip and for the first time in her life, wished she’d been born an only child.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tuesday morning, a telephone call from Santos again woke Maggie. She’d left her cell phone on the nightstand and grabbed it before the musical ring could jar Rafael awake. “How are you? Do you need another ride to the hospital?” she whispered.

  “No, my leg’s a lot better. I called to let you know you need to leave for the ranch right away. I’m taking Cirilda and Grandmother to the Tibur Hotel in Zaragoza. It’s close to the Basilica. The twins will be with their mother. Fox and I will meet you at the ranch.”

  “Are you able to drive?”

  “Yes, and Cirilda can take a turn if I need a break. I’m serious, Magdalena, go now; the traffic is already heavy on the freeway.”

  “Thank you, we will.”

  Rafael hugged his pillow. “What is it we’re doing now?”

  He looked resigned to doing whatever she asked, which was so endearing she leaned over to kiss him before she explained. “You convinced me I need something new to wear before we go to the ranch. I found a nice boutique near the beach house, but that’s too far to go just to shop.”

  “It’s not far at all.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Maggie was in the boutique’s dressing room, trying on a long-sleeved black dress. The manufacturer claimed the faux-wrap garment’s poly-spandex wouldn’t wrinkle. She thought the classic style was appropriate and stepped out of the mirrored room to show Rafael.

  “I think this will do,” she said as she turned for him.

  He nodded. “It’s rather severe, but it looks good on you.”

  “Anything would look good on you,” the clerk exclaimed. “You have a beautiful figure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Change your clothes,” Rafael suggested. “I’ll get the dress.”

  “Let’s not go over that again,” she begged wearily. “Please, don’t let him pay.”

  The clerk laughed. “Whenever a man is in a generous mood, you should simply say, ‘Thank you.’”

  “That’s undoubtedly sound advice for others, but not for me.”

  The clerk shrugged. “I tried.”

  Rafael walked up to the register to wait for Maggie, and as soon as she’d paid, the clerk brought out a digital camera. “Would you mind if I took your photo for our customer wall? We don’t have famous people in here every day.”

  Maggie looked up at Rafael. “Are we famous?”

  “I’m on my way,” he assured her. He pulled her close, and they smiled for the clerk’s photo. He whisked Maggie out of the shop before the clerk could take a second shot. “We look good tog
ether. Where do you suppose that photo will end up?”

  “I really don’t care.” Not ready to discover whether or not the dress wouldn’t wrinkle, she laid it carefully in the backseat. They were already packed and Rafael drove toward the freeway. “Thank you again for offering, but I never let men pay for my clothes.”

  “So you won’t owe them?”

  “No, it’s… You’re not like anyone else, but I didn’t want to take advantage of other men.”

  “You can’t take advantage of me,” he assured her. “I don’t expect anything in return. What do you expect from me?”

  Her mind went completely blank. “Give me a minute.”

  He laughed. “You’re not used to having deep conversations with men, are you?”

  Maggie thought she’d probably had too many. “No, I am, but I don’t usually answer.” When Craig had pushed her, she’d only dug deeper into silence.

  She reached for his arm. “I love being with you. That’s more than enough for me.”

  “Thank you, but you’ve got to want more.”

  “Why?”

  The traffic was heavy for midmorning on a weekday, and Rafael kept his attention focused on the freeway. “Because women always want more than a good time.”

  “There’s a lot more to you than a good time,” she argued. “We don’t know each other well yet. Tell me something about yourself I don’t know. Where did you go to school?” She held her breath and hoped he wouldn’t notice how deftly she’d shifted the attention to him.

  “I told you I could match Santos in pathetic stories. Are you sure you want to hear them?”

  “Positive.”

  “All right. I’ve never been to school. I taught myself to read by the time I was four. I picked up numbers on the street. I learned to speak English from tourists and TV. You can learn a lot from TV on how to act or how to dress. I saw a poster for a bullfight and sneaked in when your father was on the bill. It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen. I swear he glowed in the afternoon light.”

  “I’m sure he did. How old were you?”

  “Seven or eight, probably too young to make serious career choices, but I decided that very afternoon to become a matador.”

  Clearly, he’d needed a father figure, but she wished he’d been impressed by someone with a less dangerous line of work. But then they’d never have met. “Didn’t your grandmother want you to go to school?”

  “Not when it would have cut into the time my sister and I could beg on street corners. The more pitiful we looked, the better we did. Most tourists have plenty of cash in their pockets and don’t mind giving a few bills to cute little kids. Or at least they did then. When we got older, we’d do odd jobs for shopkeepers, whatever we could to earn money. I found a book with the answers for Jeopardy, and even though I’d never seen the show, I learned all the questions for fun. I taught my sister everything I knew, so no one could call us ignorant. I missed reading the Harry Potter books, but I’ll get through them all soon.”

  “You’re a remarkable man.”

  “You sound unconvinced.”

  “I’ll convince you later.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  She laughed with him and was sorry he’d had so little to laugh about before he’d met her. She hadn’t laughed often either. Craig had considered her far too serious. Maybe each of them had changed the other for the better in another facet of love.

  Anita Lujan had been weeping since she’d received the awful news about Miguel on Sunday, and she greeted Magdalena with a hug and held on. “I am so sorry you’ve lost your father,” she sobbed. “He was a fine man.”

  Maggie patted the housekeeper’s back as though she agreed. “Thank you. Is there anything I can do to help you prepare for tomorrow?”

  Anita stepped back and wiped her eyes on her apron. “We’ve little to do here. Your grandmother is holding the reception at the Tibur. The ranch has always been too rustic for her tastes and her fine friends, so we’ll hold our own reception for ourselves tomorrow.”

  Rafael carried their bags up to the rooms they’d used on their earlier visit. “A matador spends far too much time traveling from bullring to bullring, but you’ve got to be tired of traveling too.”

  “I am.” She sat on her bed. “But I’m not thinking past tomorrow. Do you suppose they’ll read my father’s will in Zaragoza?”

  “Let’s ask Santos. No, you better ask him on your own so it won’t look as though I cared whether or not you inherited millions.”

  “Millions? I’ve got to be at the very bottom of the list, Rafael, and I don’t expect a dime or euro.”

  “Then you won’t be disappointed.”

  She was sick with disappointment at what her father had proven to be, but she managed a smile as though they were discussing money and nothing more.

  At lunch, Santos showed Maggie his notes. “I’m trying to find something to say about Father that doesn’t sound trite or superficial or veer too close to the truth. He ran through women at a gallop, but everyone who knows him is aware of it. Hell, many of the matadors who were his contemporaries were just as cavalier where women were concerned.”

  “I don’t think I ought to be listening to this,” Rafael said. “You want to eat outside on the porch, Fox?”

  Fox picked up his plate and followed Rafael. Maggie looked down at her tepid bowl of soup and laid her spoon on the plate. “He thinks Father walked on water, and Fox doesn’t think at all, so we don’t need them.”

  Santos frowned. “I didn’t mean to insult them.”

  “No, of course not. Now is there something about the ranch Father loved? Did he ride, or sit on the porch enjoying the sunset? Was there something you know about him that others wouldn’t?”

  He pushed his half-eaten sandwich aside. “I’d forgotten he liked to ride. When I was small, he had a beautiful black stallion, and I had a pinto pony. We’d go out on the trails near the house. We didn’t round up cattle, but I used to pretend we were knights on the way to a castle. I don’t know what he was thinking. That’s not enough to say, though.”

  Maggie doubted their father could be described as introspective, and he’d probably not had his own imaginary adventures while they rode. “Maybe it will be enough to say his children loved him and that he’ll be dearly missed.”

  Santos’s eyes filled with tears, and he wiped them on his sleeve. “It’s a good thing Rafael’s outside. He’d never let me forget this.”

  She reached across the table for his hand. “I think you and Miguel may have grown up together. Did you read Augustín’s letters and poems for Simone? He can’t have been an attentive father, and Carmen isn’t an affectionate woman, so it’s no wonder our father grew up with a deep hunger for love. He took all he could get, and after meeting Carmen, I don’t blame him. I don’t know what his relationship was with Cirilda. Were they close?”

  “No, not really. I read the letters. Augustín was a champion in the bullring, but he closed out the world here at home. That still doesn’t give our father the right to use women as though they were video games.”

  She wished she could have argued Miguel wasn’t that bad, but she’d learned to trust Santos’s insights and thought he probably was. “Did he make you feel loved?”

  He slumped back in his chair. “He liked the fact I wanted to be a matador and taught me everything I know, but I don’t remember him every saying that he loved me. I can’t say that, though, can I?”

  “How about saying this: all of Spain loved him as a brave matador, while we loved him as the heart of our family. Thank you for all your love and prayers at this sad time, and for keeping Miguel Aragon alive in your prayers and memory.”

  Santos wiped away a fresh burst of tears. “That’s good. Now if I can just say it without crying like a little girl.”

  “You’ll do fine.” She waited while he wrote down what she’d suggested. “I thought I’d stay here until the will is read. Do you know when that might be?”

>   “Thursday. I should have told you. Sergio Calderon, the family attorney, has an office in Zaragoza. We’re all supposed to meet there at ten o’clock. He came to the beach house several times in the last month, but I don’t know if he was simply visiting Father or helping him revise his will.”

  “I doubt I’m even in the will, but I’m worried about Fox.”

  “Don’t be. Father won’t have forgotten him. If Margaret hadn’t died, Father would probably still have been married to her. Fox looks like her. She was slender, blonde and had huge green eyes. She was the best of the lot. I’m sorry, I don’t know your mother. Maybe she was the best.”

  Maggie laughed. “She seems to have divorced him the fastest, so I don’t believe she’d be in the running for that distinction. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” She went outside to join Rafael and Fox. “What did you want to say at the funeral?”

  Rafael leaned back in his chair. “Your father was very kind to me when I was an obnoxious kid who pestered him with silly questions. Maybe he would only smile at me as he walked out of the arena, but he always noticed me, and it meant the world. I wouldn’t have become a matador if not for him. He remembered me when I got out of prison. I should have thanked him for his kindness more often.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Fox interjected. “I’m just a leftover kid from his last marriage.”

  “I like you, Fox,” Maggie assured him. “We’ll have to wait until the will is read on Thursday, but if you don’t like whatever arrangements Father made for you, I want you to think about coming to live with me.”

  He gaped at her. “You’re not a real sister. Why would you want me around?”

  “You’ve grown on me.” She considered telling him about Arizona, but it would hurt Rafael, so she bit her tongue, and she was relieved when Fox got up to carry their plates into the house.

  “Where were you when I was sixteen?” Rafael asked, his smile teasing.