CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I T WAS TWILIGHT when Mia slipped back into the hacienda, her body aching, her eyes gritty, and yet her heart surprisingly at peace. She’d made her decision.
The house was dark and quiet, almost eerily so, and she felt a stirring of unease and guilt. She’d been gone a long time, she realised, at least four or five hours. She’d missed dinner, with its five interminable courses and his mother’s cool-eyed gaze watching her every move. To be fair, she wasn’t sorry she’d missed that, especially in light of what Santos’s mother had proposed this afternoon— a divorce . But Santos must have wondered where she’d gone. Would he be angry?
The floor creaked as she headed towards the stairs, feeling more uneasy by the second at how empty everything seemed. The hacienda was huge, it was true, but there was no sign of life anywhere, neither family nor staff. Then she saw a sliver of light from the door to one of the many reception rooms which had been left slightly ajar. After a few seconds’ hesitation, Mia tiptoed towards the door and peeked into the room, with its leather sofas and chairs, heavy, dark furniture and big stone fireplace.
Santos was there, slumped in an arm chair by the French doors that led out to one of the many terraces, an empty tumbler dangling from his slack fingertips. His head rested on the back of the chair and his eyes were closed. He looked exhausted, but worse, he looked despairing. Mia’s heart clenched with love and fear. She shouldn’t have left for as long as she had. But she’d needed the time to get her own head—and heart—straight.
She stepped into the room. He didn’t stir.
‘Santos,’ she called softly, her heart full of love for this beautiful, proud but humble man. After what felt like an age, his eyes fluttered open. He blinked several times and then his golden-brown gaze trained on her, as focused as a laser. His lips twisted in a way that made Mia catch her breath.
‘You’re back.’ He did not sound pleased, or even relieved. The words came out flat, toneless, and inwardly she shrivelled.
‘Yes.’ Mia hitched her old backpack higher on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I was gone for so long.’
Santos’s gaze flicked to the mantle clock and then back again. ‘Six hours.’
Longer than she’d realised, then. ‘I’m sorry,’ Mia said again. ‘Truly, Santos.’
‘Are you, though, Mia?’ Santos asked. He rose from his chair in one sinuous movement, stalking to the drinks table in the corner of the room where he poured himself two fingers’ worth of whisky and tossed it down in one gulp. ‘Are you really?’
‘Santos...’ Mia had no idea what to say. ‘Yes, I am. I... I needed some space to think. After...’ She paused and swallowed. ‘Are you angry?’
‘No.’ He put down the glass and then turned to face her, his arms folded, his expression foreboding. ‘I was angry at the start, I admit. I realised you’d overheard my conversation with my mother and predictably drawn all the wrong conclusions.’
‘Had I, though?’ Mia challenged quietly, parroting a semblance of his earlier words back to him. ‘She asked you to end our marriage, Santos. You...you paused, like you were thinking about it. You didn’t say no, at any rate.’ She hadn’t meant to lead with that, but those seconds of silence had hurt . They still did.
‘I was shocked by what she was suggesting, Mia,’ Santos replied evenly. ‘It took me a moment to absorb. And yes, I admit, I thought about it for a second—but not then .’ His gaze blazed at her, a furnace of pain. ‘I thought about it a few minutes later when you left— again .’
Mia’s mouth opened and closed and she took a step towards him. ‘Santos, I wasn’t—’
‘ Don’t lie to me,’ he cut her off, and now he sounded lethal and coldly furious. Mia didn’t think, through all their difficulties, that she’d ever heard him sound like that before, and it scared her. She’d expected him to be worried, yes, annoyed as well, but this ?
‘After all we’ve gone through,’ he continued in that same cold voice, ‘All we’ve tried to overcome... Don’t lie to me, Mia.’ His voice caught and then broke, the fury gone, revealing the pain pulsing underneath, making Mia’s heart ache and her throat tighten with unshed tears. ‘You took your backpack,’ he explained as he closed his eyes briefly, his voice a jagged splinter of sound. He opened his eyes to stare at her bleakly. ‘That’s how I knew.’
‘Santos, I’m sorry.’ She could barely get the words out. Tears crowded her eyes, and she blinked them back.
‘Were you going to leave?’
Mia knew she needed to be completely honest with him, as he’d been with her. ‘I... I thought about it,’ she admitted in a low voice. ‘Like you, for a second . I was—I was scared, Santos, as well as hurt, by what I’d overheard. And, like I told you, running is my gut instinct, my kneejerk response. But I didn’t get very far, not even to the front door, before I realised that wasn’t what I wanted.’
‘What did you want, then?’ Santos asked, his voice still toneless, as if he didn’t really care very much about the answer. ‘And why did you still go, then?’
Mia decided to answer the second question first. ‘I went because I needed to clear my head.’
‘For six hours?’
‘Santos, please, listen,’ she begged. ‘I know I shouldn’t have gone for so long, and I am truly sorry. But it really threw me, what your mother said, and also how I had responded. Not you, but me—how quickly I felt that I needed to run. I scared myself , Santos; that’s what I’m trying to say.’
For the first time since she’d come into the room, she saw a flicker of interest in his eyes, a spark of understanding and maybe even compassion. ‘And?’ he asked quietly.
‘And I needed to think through things,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t want to just react when I saw you next—lashing out in hurt or choosing to stay silent, like we both did before, even though we were hurting. I wanted to be different. I still do, but I needed time.’
‘All right.’ He folded his arms and met her pleading gaze with a level one of his own. ‘So, you couldn’t have sent me a text to let me know that’s what you were doing?’
Mia closed her eyes as guilt rushed through her like acid. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should have. I suppose old habits die hard. I wanted to be completely off-grid, to be able to think without any interruption, but that wasn’t fair to you. I should have let you know where I was.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Please believe me, Santos. I am sorry.’
‘So am I,’ he said heavily. He walked back to the arm chair he’d been in before and dropped into it, his head resting in his hands. ‘But where does this leave us, Mia? We both struggle to break these old patterns of ours. Are we ever going to succeed?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mia admitted quietly. ‘But I want to try. That was the conclusion I came to when I was wandering around your orange groves, Santos. I looked at this land and I felt how it’s as much a part of you as your heartbeat. And I realised how much I loved that and love that part of you. And I want to be part of it, of this place. I want to be part of it with you.’
Santos lifted his head from his hands, a strange look coming over his face. ‘You’ve never said that before.’
‘Said what?’ Mia asked uncertainly.
‘That you loved me. Or even part of me. You’ve never said those words to me.’
‘I... I know.’ Again, the guilt. She knew she hadn’t said them because she’d found them so hard to say. ‘I do love you, Santos. I’m not sure when I started—if I fell in love with you back on the beach in Portugal, or if it happened over time—but I do love you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’
He smiled faintly, heartening her. ‘I was thinking the same thing earlier. I don’t know when I fell in love with you, but then I realised it doesn’t really matter. The point is, I love you now.’
‘And I love you now.’ With each time, it became easier to say. She wanted to say it. She wanted him to know—and be sure.
‘And do you think,’ he asked after a moment, ‘That love is enough?’
‘Not by itself,’ Mia replied. ‘But with effort and hard work and hope—yes. It is more than enough.’
For a second Santos stared at her and then, to her shock, his face crumpled. ‘I thought you’d gone,’ he whispered, and his shoulders shook.
‘Oh, Santos.’ Mia flew to him, dropping to her knees in front of him as she put her arms around him and drew his head towards her breast. He came willingly, wrapping his arms tightly around her as they clung together. ‘Santos, I didn’t. I didn’t leave you. I love you. I love you. I love you.’ She would keep saying it until he believed it. Until he knew it as surely as she did.
He held her tightly, his lips against her throat. ‘And I love you so much, Mia. I want to fight for this, for us. But... I don’t want to go through what I did today ever again. I don’t want to live in fear that you might leave me.’
She could tell it cost him something to admit this, and it made her ache all over again. ‘Santos, you won’t. I won’t leave. I promise,’ she told him, her voice throbbing with emotion. ‘That was what I realised today—that I don’t want to leave, ever . And even if I did I wouldn’t because, like you said, I made a commitment. We both did. And we have to trust each other, Santos...trust that we’ll honour it.’ She tightened her arms around him. ‘Do you trust me?’
He lifted his head to gaze at her with damp eyes. ‘I thought you didn’t trust me.’
‘I do,’ she said softly. ‘I know it will be hard, especially with how set your mother is against me.’
‘She isn’t,’ he told her, and when Mia started to protest he shook his head. ‘Please, believe me. She was, it’s true; I didn’t realise quite how much, and I’m sorry about that. But she told me today—after you’d gone—that she hadn’t understood how much we loved each other. She will come round, Mia, I promise. She already is and, even if she doesn’t, we’ll still be together. Nothing can change that. If my mother can’t accept it, I’ve told her she can live elsewhere.’
‘Santos, you didn’t...’
‘I did,’ he assured her. ‘And I meant it. I want you to be happy here, and I also want you to feel safe and accepted by everyone. That’s non-negotiable.’
‘Thank you,’ Mia whispered, moved by his sensitivity and kindness. ‘That means a lot to me.’
‘I love you,’ he told her again, and she smiled.
‘I love you too. So much.’
She leaned forward to kiss him gently on the lips. The future shimmered in front of them, unknown yet not uncertain. They would find a way forward...together. ‘Nothing can change that,’ she echoed, and then Santos deepened the kiss.