CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘I CANNOT BELIEVE you haven’t done this before.’
They were standing on the dock, under the hard, hot light of the summer sun, as Santos loaded the snorkelling equipment into the sail-boat and Mia watched him, hands on her slender hips. She was wearing a white bikini top and a pair of cut-off denim shorts. Thanks to the sun, the freckles on her nose stood out in golden relief, making her look all the more enticing.
They’d been on Amorgos for three days, and those days had been just as wonderful as Barcelona, if not more so...or even the first heady days of their romance. They’d walked into the nearby village and bought feta swimming in brine, fresh olives, tomatoes and crusty bread for a picnic they’d had on the rocky shoreline, washed down with a bottle of Agiorgitiko as they’d basked and kissed in the sun.
They’d hiked up to the top of the nearby mountain, visited a beautiful old monastery clinging to the hillside and had drunk retsina and eaten rosewater jellies with the smiling monks who’d given their marriage a blessing, chanting prayers over them before they’d left. They’d wandered through ancient ruins, following the footsteps of those who lived long ago, imagining who might have once lived there and the experiences they might have had, while wild goats had daintily plucked their way through the strewn rocks.
Everything he did with Mia made him feel as if the volume had been turned up, the intensity and brightness too. He was experiencing life as he never had before, and he loved it.
And as for at night ... At night, they’d rediscovered each other’s bodies again and again, finding passion and joy in each other’s arms that Santos thought he would never, ever tire of. This was the life he wanted—not one of stultifying duty or relentless work, but one of love and laughter, light, life and joy, amidst all the necessary travails.
Chasing on the heels of such happiness, the thought gave him a sinking sense of guilt and despair that he struggled to shed. They might not have said as much to each other, but this week at Villa Paraiso was a step out of time, of reality. In a few days, maybe a week, he would have to return to Seville. They both would. And, silently, they’d agreed not to talk about it.
And they wouldn’t today, Santos told himself as he gave Mia a smiling shrug. ‘I haven’t snorkelled because I’ve barely been here. I only had the place built a few years ago.’
‘Years,’ Mia repeated, cocking one eyebrow. ‘That’s a long time, Santos.’
He shrugged again, the smile slipping from his face. ‘There have been many demands on my time.’
‘I know.’ Her face softened. ‘I’m amazed you’ve been able to take this much time off, frankly, with all the responsibilities you have.’
They were skirting dangerously close to what they weren’t supposed to talk about. Santos held up a mask. ‘Have you ever snorkelled before?’
‘Yes, a few times. Nowhere as amazing as here, though.’ The smile she gave him was easy and wide. ‘I’m looking forward to it. I bet the view under the water is amazing.’
‘The view from here is pretty good already,’ Santos replied, with a waggle of his eyebrows at her bikini top.
‘I’d have to agree,’ she replied, waggling her eyebrows back at him and making him laugh. He’d never laughed so much as when he was with Mia. How had he forgotten that, in the midst of all their troubles? Why had he not worked harder to recapture it?
‘All right, I think we’re ready,’ he told her as he loaded the last of the equipment into the boat and then reached one hand out to help her in.
‘So why did you build this place?’ Mia asked as she settled herself in the boat and Santos hoisted the sail. Soon they were skimming over the blue-green waters, the villa and the dock receding behind them. ‘That is, if you were never really going to have the time off to come here. Does your mother come here, or your sister?’
He didn’t miss the slightly diffident tone she took when she mentioned his family, which he suspected was without even realising it. His mother had been as welcoming as she knew how to be, considering the state of appalled shock she’d been in that her only son, the heir to the Aguila fortune, had married a no-name American after two weeks’ acquaintance. Santos had believed—and still did—that his mother would warm to Mia in time. And when his sister finally made it back to Seville—something she didn’t do all that often—Santos hoped Mia would find a kindred spirit in her.
‘No, my mother never did,’ he told Mia. ‘I’m not sure she’d be interested. My mother prefers shopping and skiing to lazing about in Greece. And my sister would probably love it, but she’s often busy with work...as I am.’ He acknowledged this with a rueful grimace. ‘But in any case, I built this place for me. For my family: the family I hoped to have one day, not so much for them.’
The family I hoped to have one day. For once, those words didn’t reverberate with loss, but rather with hope. Yes, Mia’s miscarriage had been hard for both of them, but it was in the past, and they had a future to look forward to.
‘And then I never ended up going,’ Santos finished on a sigh. ‘More fool me, I suppose.’
‘Well, you’re here now,’ Mia reminded him. ‘And I’m glad.’
‘So am I.’
They shared a lingering look that made Santos’s insides warm. Yes, the future was something to look forward to. With that happy thought in mind, Santos went to adjust the sail.
When he returned, Mia continued with the questions, leaning back on her elbows, her hair flying in the wind. ‘You still haven’t said why you built it,’ she pressed. Her voice was light enough but there was an insistence underneath Santos both heard and felt. ‘For you and your family, yes, but why, when you have the estate, the apartment in Madrid, the Caribbean whatever, the ski chalet and I can’t remember where else?’
‘I think those are all of them,’ Santos said with a smile. ‘But this place is different. It’s...mine. And I wanted an escape.’ It sounded like an innocuous remark, he’d meant it to be, but he knew right away that he hadn’t fooled Mia by the way she narrowed her eyes and cocked her head.
‘An escape?’ she repeated slowly. ‘From what, exactly?’
Santos was silent for a moment as he turned to squint out at the sea, its surface shimmering with sunlight as if some giant, benevolent hand had strewn it with diamonds. He could breathe so much more easily out here, under the sun and on the sea...and with Mia by his side.
‘An escape from everything,’ he stated simply. ‘From being an Aguila. From being the Aguila—the head of the family and all that it means. From the responsibilities of work and managing an estate with over a thousand staff, and that’s not even including the Aguila offices in Madrid and Rome, which employ hundreds. From...from being me, but not really me—being the me I need to be in order to be the head of the Aguila family.’ The words had come out of him in a staccato rush and, he realised, were some of the most honest and revealing he’d ever said.
Mia stared at him for a long moment, her expression thoughtful, her eyes soft with sympathy which Santos couldn’t quite bear. He didn’t want to be pitied, of all things. He was an Aguila , the head of one of Spain’s oldest and most aristocratic families. And yet wasn’t that the problem in the first place?
He glanced back at the water, not trusting the expression on his face, not wanting to see the pity on Mia’s. Then he felt her reach over and cover his hand with her own.
‘I’m glad you have this place,’ she said softly. ‘For your sake, but also for mine—for ours .’
Santos nodded jerkily, still not trusting himself. They didn’t speak for a few moments, but as he let himself relax into the silence he realised it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Mia’s understanding wasn’t actually pity; it didn’t weaken him in her eyes, or in his own. To his own surprise, he realised that he was actually glad he’d told her.
Mia tucked up her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as she tilted her face to the warm sun. Santos was focused on steering the boat into the cove of a small, uninhabited island, little more than an outcrop of rock with a stretch of sand.
His handsome face was drawn into lines of concentration, his hands resting on the tiller, his broad shoulders gleaming under the summer sun. He looked a little bit like she imagined Apollo should look, Mia thought fancifully—bronzed, powerful, perfect. Every time she looked at him, she marvelled that he wanted to be with her. And yet, against all odds, he did...and, slowly and cautiously, she was starting to trust in that.
They hadn’t spoken for a little while, and Mia had been okay with that, because she’d sensed Santos had probably said more than he’d wanted to or was comfortable with, and he needed time to recover his equilibrium. She was still very glad he’d said all he’d had. Grateful that he’d been willing to share so much with her, because it helped her to understand him so much better.
If only she’d understood that before...
But no—no more recriminations or regrets. No more looking back at all. The future was shimmering all around them, just like the sunlit sea, and that was what Mia wanted to focus on.
‘So, if you’ve never been snorkelling, how did you know where to go?’ she asked teasingly.
‘Alvaro told me. He said this was a particularly good spot—not too rocky.’
It looked like a good spot, Mia acknowledged, the water crystal-clear, with a sandy shore all along the postage-stamp-sized island.
Tossing her a quick smile, Santos heaved himself off the side of the boat and waded through the water. He was a breath-taking sight, dressed only in a pair of board shorts, the sun glinting off his dark hair and the neatly trimmed stubble on his jaw, his burnished, olive skin taut over sleek muscle. He certainly stole her breath, anyway, Mia thought wryly. She felt as if she could watch him for ever.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ he called to her, and she didn’t need to be asked twice. She slipped over the side of the boat and into the water, which was lovely and warm and came up to her thighs. Santos secured the boat and then handed her snorkelling gear—mask, breathing tube and fins.
‘I always feel a little ridiculous with all this on,’ Mia admitted, and Santos grinned at her.
‘You look ridiculous too,’ he said, before pulling her in for a quick kiss before she put in her breathing tube. Mia laughed and shook her head, enjoying how happy he seemed. It was an unsettling thought, because it made her realise Santos hadn’t seemed happy back in Seville...and neither had she been. Had that been the cause of the problems, rather than any of their differences—rather their surprising and unspoken similarity ?
It was a thought she couldn’t quite her head around, not yet anyway. She needed to consider the idea more, let it settle and seep through her. Santos had talked about needing this escape and how heavily duty seemed to weigh on him...she’d had no idea about any of that. No idea that any part of him resented or at least felt burdened by the responsibility he carried so squarely on his shoulders.
Did the fact that she now knew that change anything? Mia wondered. She thought it did, or at least it could. She felt as if she knew and understood Santos more with him away from the estate and everything it represented, or at least this version of him. She felt the same way she had when they’d met in Portugal. But in Seville he had changed; he’d become taciturn, remote...and no more so when she’d told him she wasn’t happy to be pregnant. But even before then she’d felt his disapproval, his disappointment, and it had played on every doubt she’d ever had from a childhood of living with a mother who had resented her at every turn.
You’re not good enough... You’ll never be good enough... Nothing you ever do will win anyone’s love.
Those thoughts had circled relentlessly through her head in the awful weeks before she’d finally worked up the courage to leave, or, really, given in to the desperation to.
Being here in Greece reminded her of how different Santos could be...and how different she could be with him. With him like this, she didn’t doubt him or herself. She didn’t let herself get sucked into those old, toxic thought patterns of feeling inadequate or unlovable. She didn’t want to get sucked back into it once— if —they returned to Seville.
Would knowing this about him make enough of a difference?
‘Ready to snorkel?’ Santos asked and Mia nodded with something like relief. She didn’t want to think like this. She just wanted to be ...with Santos.
Taking a deep breath, she dived down under the crystalline water and kicked her fins to glide ahead, with Santos swimming easily by her side. She turned to smile at him and he grinned back, his lips curving around the mouthpiece of his breathing tube. Then he pointed, and she looked ahead to see a school of tiny blue fish moving like a cloud through the water, and she gave a gurgle of underwater laughter.
They continued to swim side by side, pointing out various fish and sea creatures to each other. At one point Santos saw an octopus in the distance, its tentacles almost seeming to move balletically as it propelled itself forward through the sea. After about an hour, Mia started feeling tired, and Santos suggested they swim back for a rest and their picnic, which sounded like heaven to her.
‘I forgot how tiring swimming is,’ she remarked as she waded through the water towards the beach of their little island, her mask and fins in her hand. Santos was at the boat, lifting a picnic basket Rosita had packed for them from its interior. He’d already tossed his snorkelling things onto the beach. Mia smiled in anticipation of a few hours eating and lazing—and who knew what else?—on the beach under the sun on this private slice of paradise.
If only they could stay here for ever...
But no, she reminded herself, she wasn’t going to think that way.
‘Hungry?’ Santos asked, turning to her with a smile, the picnic basket looped around one arm. His chest was beaded with droplets of water, his dark hair slicked back from his forehead. He looked utterly delicious, never mind what was packed in their picnic.
‘Ye— ouch !’ Mia let out a gasp of pain as she grabbed her right foot. ‘I think I stepped on something!’ Already her foot was starting to throb.
Santos’s forehead furrowed with concern as he chucked the picnic basket back into the boat and hurried towards her.
‘Let me see.’ He grabbed hold of her arm to steady her as Mia winced in pain. Whatever she’d stepped on, it had really hurt. She supposed she shouldn’t have taken off her fins before she’d got out of the water. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ she said after a second’s hesitation, because she hated feeling feeble, and she was certainly used to doing things for herself, but her foot really hurt .
Santos must have heard her uncertainty because without another word he swept her into his arms and carried her to the beach himself.
‘Santos, I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ Mia protested, struggling a bit feebly to get down. Santos’s arms merely tightened around her. ‘It was probably just a jagged rock or something.’
‘Well, let’s check it out.’ He lay her on the blanket he’d already spread out and then knelt in front of her, taking her foot into his hands. Mia bit her lip hard because, now that she was sitting on the ground, her foot started to feel hot and swollen, throbbing in time to the beat of her blood, which couldn’t be good.
‘I think you were stung by a sea urchin,’ Santos told her. ‘It can hurt quite a bit, but it’s generally not very serious—a bit more than a bee sting, but that’s all. Still, there are some spines embedded in your foot, which is causing you the pain. I can get them out, if you can hold still.’
‘Okay,’ Mia replied, her voice wobbling a little even though she wanted to sound brave. Her mother had never tolerated any weakness or whining, and Mia had always tried to take care of herself and stay strong. It was an instinct she struggled to shed, and yet right then it felt almost unbearably comforting and poignant to have Santos looking after her so tenderly.
He removed four spines, each one causing both a sharp pain which was followed by an abrupt relief, and when he was finished Mia sagged back onto the blanket. ‘Goodness, I don’t want to go through that again,’ she said faintly with an attempt at a laugh that didn’t quite work.
‘Your foot is quite swollen and hot to the touch.’ Santos frowned. ‘Maybe we should head back. We could have a doctor look at it.’
‘You said it was only a little worse than a bee sting,’ Mia protested. As much as she liked Santos taking care of her, she realised she did not want to be made a fuss of. She never had.
‘Still...’ His frown deepened as he glanced down at her foot. ‘It looks worse than I’d expect for a sea urchin sting.’
A frisson of alarm went through Mia at that, but she kept her voice light. ‘Well, have you ever been stung by a sea urchin?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he admitted, frowning. ‘But I don’t like the look of it.’
Mia shrugged. ‘I’m sure it’s fine. By the time we’ve eaten lunch and dried off, I’ll be ready to snorkel again.’ Even if it was hurting like the dickens just then.
‘All right,’ Santos agreed reluctantly. ‘I suppose we might as well eat. But if it’s still hurting after that, we’ll go back.’
He went back to fetch the picnic basket from the boat, and that was when Mia felt the first wave of dizziness sweep over her and start to pull her under. She blinked and the whole world seemed to waver as though she were in a dream. Nausea surged in her stomach, and she blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her head.
Santos turned from the boat and was heading back to shore, the basket over his arm, but it looked as if he was rippling...that the whole world was rippling...and everything was happening in slow motion. Her foot felt both icy and hot, numb yet throbbing with pain. How was that even possible? What was going on?
The rippling version of Santos came closer, everything about him distorted and blurry, but even then Mia could see the alarm on his face as he dropped the basket, sending strawberries and olives rolling across the sand. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. A strawberry rolled towards her and she kept her gaze fixed on it, trying to anchor herself in reality, except reality was fading in and out and she felt so very strange ...
‘Mia!’ Santos cried, reaching for her.
It was the last thing she heard before she slumped to the ground, unconscious.