Chapter 2
Jo Watters didn’t like him.
That wasn’t a news flash, but the passage of three years should have been enough for her to make peace with the fact that the choir and not the softball team had been awarded the PTA funds. Although he shouldn’t underestimate the psychological damage a year on the PTA could inflict and she’d managed six of them.
To be completely fair, their reunion wasn’t happening in the best of circumstances either. Hurrying across the tarmac through driving rain and whipping wind to a squat terminal with ‘Tarbes Lourdes Pyrenees’ on a large sign, their evening well and truly gone to shit, wasn’t conducive to making friends. Then there was the fact that they were both on their way to their ex-spouses’ wedding – to each other.
Friends was definitely too much to ask.
He held the door open for her and she gave an enormous sigh when the shelter of the airport enveloped them. Her blonde hair was a mess around her face, her clip askew. She was a tall woman, attractive and noticeable, not to mention articulate, intelligent and persuasive. Those were his memories from that year on the PTA. She had a stud in her nose that suggested an intriguing rebellious streak.
But that evening, as she swallowed and hitched her backpack higher, looking grimly around the terminal, she didn’t look so in-charge.
‘This way, please!’ called a flight attendant and they turned in tandem to follow.
She still hadn’t said anything to him. He hadn’t greeted her either, but they fell into step as they made their way through the terminal, reluctant allies now disaster had struck. But he didn’t need to talk if she didn’t. Anything they discussed right now would probably be unpleasant anyway.
‘Are you going to call Mónica or shall I call Ben?’ she muttered as they trudged on.
Damn, he’d been right. Conversation was unpleasant. She’d been right to ignore him on the plane, even though he’d felt a little stupid trying to say hello while she was pretending she hadn’t seen him.
She rolled her eyes when he didn’t immediately answer and pulled out her phone, tapping the screen and then holding it to her ear. ‘Hi, Ben,’ she said in a tight tone when the call connected. ‘I’m really sorry, but our flight was diverted and I’m nowhere near Zaragoza.’
‘Well, actually, it’s just over the other side of the Pyrenees,’ Adrián pointed out. She levelled a sharp look at him.
‘They have to get the plane back to London so they’re putting us in a hotel for a night and chartering a coach in the morning. I’m sorry you left already. My phone was on flight mode.’
Why did she keep saying sorry?
‘I’ll call you in the morning. Can you—’ Her eyes closed briefly. ‘Yes, I know the party is the day after tomorrow. It can’t take me too long to get across the Pyrenees.’ Her gaze flitted warily to him. ‘But can you spare a thought for Liss and Dec, please? No, it’s not that they don’t like Mónica – it’s not that simple. I haven’t said anything!’ Her mouth snapped shut and Adrián shoved a hand in his pocket, looking away as though that could stop him feeling every bit of awkwardness along with her.
They had more in common than being stuck in the wrong airport.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said firmly, disconnecting the call and stuffing her phone roughly into her backpack. ‘You could have at least moved a discreet distance away,’ she grumbled at him.
‘Because I don’t know anything about difficult relationships with exes and the complications of sharing custody of children,’ he responded casually, keeping his gaze fixed on the flight attendant who was leading them through the chaotic labyrinth of travel delays.
‘Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk,’ she mumbled.
‘That’s the conclusion I’d come to.’
They continued in silence, past advertising for perfumes and mountain sports that made him shudder at the thought and shops selling religious trinkets that looked as though they’d been imported from the blessed factories of China.
The only association he had with the French town of Lourdes was Catholicism, the religion his parents had all but abandoned, although the rosaries and crucifixes still made him think of his childhood, of respect and good behaviour. The last time he’d been in a church had been the one with the golden dome near Mónica’s parents’ place for Oscar’s baptism. And the next time he would find himself in a church…
The fun just never stopped today.
‘They’re using my kids as babysitters,’ Jo snapped at him suddenly.
‘And that’s my fault because…? They’re not both my exes.’
‘But he is your kid that nobody can manage!’
Even sarcasm couldn’t protect him from that shot. The bleed of hurt trickled down his spine. ‘We can’t all be model parents like you.’
Her gaze whipped to his. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I said you were a good parent.’
‘But you implied otherwise. I have an ex-husband and a well-developed bullshit detector, Adrián.’
At least she remembered his name. He’d wondered for a moment. She’d even pronounced it with the accent. ‘Good for you,’ he muttered, meaning it genuinely but not prepared to give up his sarcastic tone yet.
‘Yes, I work full time, but everything I do is for those kids. Why else do you think I’m tearing my hair out because we’re stuck here instead of in Zaragoza!’
‘Zaragoza,’ he muttered, correcting her pronunciation for lack of anything else to say.
‘The place is seriously pronounced Tharagotha? It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones.’
He winced at her terrible accent. ‘No, Zaragoza,’ he repeated more firmly.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ she muttered under her breath, swiping a hand through her hair. He felt the strangest urge to smile.
Adrián tried not to stare, but his gaze was drawn continually back to her as they followed the slow crowd to goodness-knows-where. Although she’d made it clear that being stuck with him wasn’t her idea of a good time, she didn’t storm off. She just walked silently beside him, thrumming with emotion.
Ben must have been a real idiot, a first-class cojón, and not only because he was marrying Mónica. What a mess – and that was just his own feelings.
After the marathon through the terminal came the hell of queuing. As a British airline, they expected the passengers to form a tortuous queue in a patient, orderly fashion. But due to a misunderstanding between the strict British passengers and the Spaniards who would wait longer to be saved the agony of standing in line, the queue became a disordered clump of people, pushing to the front for their hotel vouchers. Jo looked as though she’d like to break out the ‘f’ word again.
‘Boarding passes, please!’ called out the poor flight attendant, overwhelmed by the flood of disgruntled passengers. She had to squint at the mobile boarding passes to read the names and wrote each hotel voucher by hand.
‘?Madre de Dios! This is going take forever!’ Adrián exclaimed, slapping his thigh in aggravation.
A middle-aged woman in front of them turned and made the sign of the cross at him rather aggressively. ‘Nuestra Se?ora give you patience!’
‘Oh, that’s why I’ve heard of Lourdes,’ Jo mumbled as she rummaged in her backpack. ‘A virgin in a cave was just what today was missing. And why can’t I find my phone? I just had it!’ She opened the zip all the way, still searching as Adrián’s lips twitched with a smile. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘I— nothing,’ he said. ‘Here, let me hold the bag.’
She looked up with a furrowed brow, but handed over the backpack so she could use two hands to search for the device. By the time she found it, the clump of people had thinned as the passengers received their hotel assignments and headed for the coach to the city centre.
‘Will you hold this?’ she asked, thrusting her phone at him. He took it and tucked it on top of his own as she took a swig from her water bottle, wiping her hair off her neck. Stowing the bottle, she hastily whipped her hair back up into its clip, but the effect was still dishevelled. He couldn’t help thinking it was a good look on her: a strong woman with wisps of wavy blonde hair and a penchant for wry jokes.
He was still holding both phones when their turn came, so he handed his to the flight attendant, who scribbled something hastily onto a list and handed him a pair of hotel vouchers. Jo pulled up her boarding pass in the app and the woman nodded dismissively.
‘The second coach, please. We’ll depart for Zaragoza at nine o’clock tomorrow morning from outside the hotel. Please don’t be late. Your luggage will be forwarded ready to collect when you arrive.’
‘But—’
Jo grasped the cuff of his shirt and pulled. Giving her a sharp look, he tugged his arm back.
‘My guitar?—’
‘She’s answered the question,’ Jo said through gritted teeth. ‘You’re not going to achieve anything by waving your arms around.’
He drew himself up. ‘You saw me at the airport,’ he accused.
‘I saw you lose your shit over a guitar, yes.’
There was no way Jo would understand and he wasn’t about to explain the full story in the terminal, but he tried anyway. ‘Not just any?—’
‘Yes, a Rancho Valdez something-santo gold-plated twenty-carat guitar and that makes zero difference to this poor woman who just wants to go home.’ She shared a sympathetic look with the flight attendant.
‘Ricardo Martín Gonzalez,’ he mumbled. He sighed deeply. If anything happened to that guitar… Damn Mónica and her wedding – and her pre-wedding party and the coming ten days that were sure to be the worst of his life. ‘Fine. Let’s go.’ Juggling the paperwork, his phone and his trolley bag, he set off for the coach in a hurry.
‘It’s not going to leave without us!’ Jo grumbled, catching up with him and snatching the vouchers, stowing them in her backpack.
‘It might!’ he contradicted her with a shrug. ‘Besides, we’ve been standing in that queue for years and I’m starving,’ he said snappishly.
‘Wow, exaggerating just a little,’ she quipped.
‘And you’re not sarcastic at all.’
She stopped up short with a snort that he was fairly certain was supposed to be laughter. ‘What is wrong with us?’ she murmured.
He turned back to her, his hands on his hips, and said with a straight face, ‘We were on our way to the wedding of our ex-partners when our flight was diverted and we found ourselves stranded in the place where the mother of God reveals herself to the faithful in a cave. And I haven’t had dinner.’
Jo gave him a withering look that only made her look more attractive – a sign his thoughts were even more off-course than he’d realised. Searching in her bag again, she produced a wonky muesli bar and handed it to him. He snatched it eagerly, his stomach clenching in both anticipation of the snack and the faint hope that she’d meant it as a peace offering.
‘Thank you!’
‘My kids play a lot of sport. I usually have something in my bag.’ She watched him with a curious expression as he ripped off the wrapping and dug in. ‘But you should probably stop talking about the mother of God that way. It sounded like you meant she gave a strip show.’
The joke caught him at the wrong moment and he inhaled a few oats, choking and spluttering. But he was surprisingly glad they’d given up ignoring each other, even if she was the ex-wife of the soon-to-be-husband of his ex-wife and had said ‘mother of God’ and ‘strip show’ in the same breath.