CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
M IA STARED OUT of the window as a soft sigh escaped her. They’d been at Villa Paraiso for ten days, ten glorious days she didn’t want to end, and yet she felt in her bones that it was time to go home. Santos hadn’t said as much, and neither had she, but it was as if there’d been a change in the air, a shifting of seasons, as inexorable as the waning of the moon or the pull of the tide.
The sun still shone brightly, the days were long and lazy and full of love, but still Mia heard a whisper of the future, and it felt like the threat of a storm, despite the blue skies.
One morning while she sat in the garden, soaking in the sunshine and reading a paper-back she’d found in the library, Santos disappeared to his study to answer some emails. Three long hours later, he came to find her, managing to look both sheepish and obdurate, his shoulders thrown back, his dark brows drawn together.
‘Did you get done what you needed to?’ she asked lightly, and he let out a small sigh as he sank into a deck chair next to her. All around them oleander and frangipani grew in unruly abandon, and in the distance the sea sparkled under the sunlight, as bright as a diamond. Still, despite the peaceful beauty of the scene, Mia braced herself for what might come next.
‘More or less, yes.’
‘Which is it?’ she asked, striving to keep her voice light. ‘More...or less?’
Santos didn’t answer for a moment, his lips pursed and his gaze on the ground. Mia put down her book. It definitely seemed like less...which meant Santos needed to return to Seville. She’d known it was coming; had felt it in herself, in the changing mood, a sense of time running through their fingers like sand. And yet still she experienced a sense of wrenching loss, almost like a tearing inside. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to return to Seville and the painful memories they’d made there.
‘I’ve been absent from work for over two weeks,’ he said at last. ‘I haven’t been gone from work for that long since we first met...’ He glanced up at her, and she was heartened to see his expression soften. ‘And, even then, I was back at my desk on the fourteenth day.’
She smiled in memory. ‘Were we crazy, do you think, to get married after such a short time?’
He smiled back as he reached for her hand, twining his fingers though hers. ‘Most likely, but I don’t regret it for a second.’
‘I don’t either,’ she replied honestly. And yet...the future loomed in front of them. It was easy, Mia thought, to feel as if she was in love when she was on a Greek-island paradise, without any problems or other people around. But, back in Seville, she feared the old issues would come to haunt them. They’d revert to their former and maybe even truer selves—who was to say otherwise? Santos would become cold and stand-offish, and she’d become both rebellious and despairing, longing to run, to escape.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked softly. ‘You suddenly have the bleakest look in your eyes.’
‘I’m worried,’ Mia admitted. ‘About going back to Seville.’
His fingers tightened on hers. ‘It will be different this time, Mia, I promise.’
‘You don’t need to take all the responsibility, Santos,’ she said. ‘All the blame. What happened before was down to both of us. How we reacted when the pressure hit... It became the perfect storm that took both of us.’
His forehead creased, his eyes narrowing. ‘What do you mean?’
What did she mean? ‘I suppose we’re both products of our backgrounds,’ she replied slowly. ‘You, with the weighty history of your family, as well as your father’s death...’
His frown deepened. ‘And you?’ he asked after a moment.
Mia shrugged. She was the one who had opened this particular can of worms, and yet now she was reluctant to let any of them wriggle out. She hated talking about her past, the pity it inevitably incurred. She’d told Santos a little about it when they’d first met, and more on the yacht, but she had always done her best to act dismissive, as if none of it mattered any more. Did she really want to go into it all now? And yet maybe she needed to, for both their sakes.
‘Mia?’ he prompted gently.
‘I just mean,’ she said, knowing she was hedging a little, ‘That I’ve been similarly affected. You remember I told you that I moved around a lot as a kid? Well, that affected me—as you would expect it to.’
That was the very much condensed version, she thought with an inward sigh.
‘Ye...s,’ Santos agreed slowly. ‘But you never talked about how . In fact, you assured me it hadn’t actually affected you all that much. Something I didn’t really believe at the time, but I didn’t press the point, because it felt as if we had so much other stuff to deal with. Maybe I should have...although I suspect you would have given me the run-around. But I hope you’re not going to do that now?’ He quirked an eyebrow, and she had to smile. He knew her so well.
‘No, I’m not going to,’ she replied wryly. Despite her deliberately light tone, her heart was starting to thud rather hard. She really didn’t like talking about this. She didn’t even like thinking about it, or remembering...
‘You told me,’ Santos began, glancing down at their clasped hands, ‘That you moved around a lot, sometimes every few months, and that it got lonely. You also said your mother died when you were seventeen and you started working then, on your own.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I knew that must have affected you, but you turned the tables on me so neatly, and made me talk about myself, that I let it go. I shouldn’t have. I realise that now.’
Mia rolled her eyes. ‘Santos, are you going to blame yourself for this too?’
He gave a small smile of acknowledgement, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘No, not if you tell me what you didn’t want to before.’
‘It’s not a big secret or something,’ Mia said quickly. ‘I just don’t like talking about it. As you haven’t liked talking about, well, about stuff.’ She didn’t want to dredge anything else up, not now.
Santos gave a brief nod, his warm, golden-brown gaze steady on her. ‘Okay,’ he said, his voice level, accepting, as if he was ready for whatever she threw at him.
‘Well...’ She hesitated, not knowing how to begin; not wanting to. ‘It was a pretty unstable childhood, as you can imagine,’ she said slowly. ‘Not just the moving around, but the places we moved to. My mother was something of a free spirit, so we ended up in a lot of communes, cooperative farms...that kind of thing. Some of them were really cool,’ she said quickly, ‘And, you know, genuine. Others...weren’t.’
Santos’s fingers tightened on hers. ‘Mia,’ he said in a low voice, ‘What are you saying?’
‘Those places attract all sorts of types,’ she continued, and now her voice started to sound a little wobbly, which was exactly what she didn’t want.
Don’t feel sorry for me.
Sometimes, growing up, it felt as though her dignity was the only thing she had. She didn’t want to lose it now. ‘Drug addicts, wastrels...predators.’
Santos tightened his hand on hers, so she winced as he squeezed her fingers, and he murmured an apology as he loosened his grip. ‘ Dios benedito... What are you telling me?’
‘There were a few dicey situations,’ she admitted. ‘Heaven knows, it could have been worse. I was never... Well...’
She drew in a hitched breath. ‘But a couple of times it was close. Some guy would sidle up to me, or corner me somewhere alone, tell me how pretty I was, try to... Well, you can imagine.’
Santos swore under his breath, his expression turning thunderous.
‘I got used to being on my guard,’ Mia explained. She’d slept with a knife under her pillow sometimes. ‘And used to not trusting people, I guess. Making myself invisible...and always moving whenever I needed to, just the way my mother did.’
Santos’s face was pale, his golden-brown eyes wide and dark. He looked seriously shaken. ‘Mia... Dear Lord. Did you never tell your mother about any of this?’
‘I tried, at first, but she wasn’t really interested. She’d never actually wanted me, you see. At least, that was what she told me, but she kept dragging me around, so who knows? Maybe she did.’
She let out a sound that was meant to be a laugh, but definitely wasn’t. Mia dragged in a breath, determined to recover her dignity.
‘It was a long time ago, Santos, and I’ve moved on. I’m only telling you now because the way I grew up made a difference to who I am as a person. It made me guarded, I suppose, underneath...’
She swallowed, trying to ease the ache that had formed in her throat. She never talked like this.
‘I ended up choosing to live like my mother—moving around a lot, keeping everything easy, but underneath I’ve been someone different. Someone I never show to the world. Someone I haven’t always showed to you.’
‘And who,’ Santos asked in a low voice, his mind reeling from everything Mia had told him, ‘Is that person? How is she different from the face you show to the world?’
Mia stared at him, her lovely blue-green eyes so dark and fathomless. She wore her hair back in a loose braid and a few auburn tendrils had escaped to frame a face that was far too pale. He ached to hold her, comfort her, but she was holding herself slightly apart, her hand very still in his, as if she were fragile and about to break.
Maybe she was...and he’d never realised how much. He’d though he was able to be the light and laughing person he was in her presence because she was the same. But what if she wasn’t? What if it was all an act? What did that make her, or him, or their marriage?
‘Mia?’ he prompted quietly.
Mia slipped her hand from his and brought her knees up to her chest, curling her arms around them and hugging them tight. A few more wisps of hair had fallen from her braid and curled about her face, making her look young and somehow vulnerable.
‘I didn’t mean to say all that,’ she whispered.
‘But you did.’
A sigh escaped her, long and lonely. ‘It all sounds a bit melodramatic.’
‘Your childhood was dramatic,’ Santos reminded her. ‘You’re allowed to show some emotion.’ Rather ironic advice for him to give, since he liked to keep his own emotions under such tight control, and yet Mia had changed that about him. Maybe, against all odds, he could do the same for her.
Mia gazed down at her knees, her braid falling over one shoulder. ‘Like I said, I’ve been guarded, I suppose,’ she said at last, her voice so soft Santos strained to hear it even though he was sitting right next to her. ‘Careful. I’ve acted like I don’t care about many things because then people can’t hurt you.’ She looked up, her eyes wide with a glassy sheen. ‘But it’s not the same as actually not caring. Underneath, I care. I’ve always cared.’
‘Caring is a good thing, surely?’ Santos suggested, reaching for her hand again. ‘Querida?’
She let him take her hand but kept hers limp against his palm. ‘Yes, except when it hurts.’
He knew immediately what she was talking about: the miscarriage; how he’d left her alone. Guilt swirled in his stomach like acid. ‘Mia...’
‘Santos, there’s something else I haven’t told you,’ Mia said in a rush. ‘About...about the baby.’ She gave a little gulp. ‘Part of the reason I wasn’t as thrilled as you were was because I’ve always been scared to be a mother. To care about someone that much... And I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. What on earth do I know about being a mother? I didn’t exactly have the best example.’ She tried to laugh, but the sound was jagged and broken.
Santos gathered her up in his arms, needing to hold her. ‘Mia, I think you’ll make a great mother.’ He could already picture her, her face suffused with wonder and love as she gazed down at their baby in her arms. ‘You have so much love to give,’ he insisted. ‘You just haven’t been able to give it before.’
‘But I mess things up,’ she whispered. ‘And when things get hard—when I feel like I could get hurt—I run. That’s what I’ve always done, Santos.’ She wriggled away to peer up at him, her expression turning serious, a little fearful. ‘That’s how I operate, how I’ve always operated, as a child and as an adult. Maybe I don’t know any better.’
‘If I can change,’ Santos said after a moment, ‘And become Mr Touchy Feely...’ this elicited a soft laugh from her, which heartened him ‘...then you can learn to stop running. To stay and trust me. Because I swear, Mia, on my life, that I won’t let you down. Not this time. Not ever.’
Her face softened as she gently pressed one hand to his cheek. ‘It’s not about you letting me down, Santos, remember? It’s about the two of us together, working it out. Making it work.’ Her breath hitched. ‘I want to believe we can, but...’
She trailed off, shaking her head, and he frowned. ‘But what, Mia?’
‘I’m not exactly Aguila matriarch material,’ she said after a moment. She slipped out of his arms, tucking a few tendrils of hair behind her ears as she composed herself.
‘My mother will come round,’ Santos insisted. He couldn’t believe that was all that was bothering her. His mother was a force of nature, it was true, but she was just one person. Whatever insecurity Mia felt, it had to go deeper than that.
She let out a small sigh. ‘Maybe,’ she allowed. ‘But what about everyone else? What about you? Once...once the novelty wears off?’
Santos frowned, struggling not to feel a sense of hurt that she thought he might be so fickle, so shallow . ‘Do you really think that I would tire of you?’ he asked, unable to keep from sounding insulted.
‘Maybe,’ Mia replied bleakly. ‘I don’t know. This is still new, Santos. Greece has been wonderful, incredible, but we both know it’s not real life. And back in Seville my deficiencies will become all the more apparent—and I’m not just talking about not knowing what silverware to use.’
He folded his arms. ‘What are you talking about, then?’
She brushed another strand of hair from her forehead as she shrugged her slender shoulders, her blue-green gaze moving around the lush garden.
‘Everything. Your world isn’t mine, Santos, and I’m still not sure if I truly have a place in it. And,’ she continued, cutting him off before he could protest, her voice turning fierce, ‘I don’t want to be a problem you have to solve. I don’t want to be your responsibility, another burden you have to carry that you feel the weight of, that you come here to escape.’
She turned back to gaze steadily at him, while Santos strove to keep his emotions under control. He should never have admitted how he felt, how oppressive he sometimes found his own role.
An Aguila is master of his own heart and mind.
There was a reason for that, he realised. A reason he should have acknowledged and accepted. He did not want Mia worrying about him, thinking he couldn’t handle life with her.
‘That’s not what marriage is,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not what it should be.’
‘We can be each other’s responsibility, then,’ Santos replied, although he wasn’t sure he entirely meant it. He never wanted Mia to feel burdened by him.
‘How will that work?’
An exasperated breath escaped him before he could stop it. ‘I don’t know the ins and outs of it all, Mia, and neither do you. We can’t, until we try. We can hash it out, and deliberate and dither, but in the end we’ll still just to have jump in and try.
‘And,’ he added, his tone turning implacable, although he hadn’t meant it to, ‘The truth is, I have to get back to Seville. To work and, yes, to real life, because you’re right—this isn’t it.’ He knew he sounded autocratic, and he wanted to stop himself but, heaven help him, he’d bent over backwards to show Mia she could trust him. At some point, she was just going to have to do it.
Mia stared at him for a long moment, her expression pensive and a little resigned. Santos met her gaze with an obdurate one. He wasn’t going to beg her to come back with him, he realised. Not this time. He’d made his assurances and his promises more than once. Mia was the one who needed to take the next step now—for both their sakes.
‘All right,’ she said softly and, with a flicker of hurt and treacherous annoyance, he heard how sad she sounded. ‘When do we leave?’