Chapter Ten
Santiago
I’m in my ground-floor study with the view of the garden and fountain, listening to my mother’s voice down the phone as she tells me about her day.
This is a daily occurrence, and it’s reassuring to hear her voice, especially when the doctors’ reports of her progress are less so.
She’s not doing too badly, all things considered, but she’s not well enough to come to Paris yet.
Maybe that’s for the best, especially in regard to the situation I have here at present, which is not settled in any way, shape or form.
‘How are you, darling boy?’ she asks. ‘Have you found a wife yet?’
My mother is always more affectionate in the evenings after her meds—it’s not about me personally, it never is—and she regards me finding a wife as the thing that will finally ‘fix me’.
And yes, she uses those words. She’s always thought I was broken in some way.
It’s the only thing she and my father ever agreed on.
‘No,’ I tell her as patiently as I can. ‘That’s not a priority right now and you know that.’
She sighs as if I’m the world’s biggest disappointment, which I’m sure is true, no matter how big my company gets or how much money I make. She views my interest in science with abhorrence, and has never understood it or me.
‘You should make it a priority,’ she says with dogged determination. ‘You need a wife, Santiago. Trust me on this.’
I don’t know why I’d trust her when her own marriage ended so appallingly, and she ended up being so burned by it. She has a very selective memory about some things.
I should tell her that she should stop trying to fix me, that I’m not broken, but I’ve told her that before and she never listens. She only gets hurt and tells me I’m being mean to her. Mean to her like Antonio was mean to her.
‘Yes, Mother.’ It’s the only thing I can say to her these days. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow evening, okay?’
I put the phone down, then check my watch. The results of the paternity test should be available any time now, not that I’m at all worried about the results. Not after Beatrix finally stopped lying to me.
I lace my hands behind my head and lean back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling, going over what happened between us an hour ago.
Her, telling me that she was a virgin before our encounter in the church.
Her, on her knees, giving me the most intense pleasure I’ve ever experienced.
Her, looking up at me with tears in her eyes, real pain shining there in a moment of vulnerability.
She finally gave me the truth, and I should be feeling satisfied about it.
I should be feeling triumphant that I managed to force it from her.
Certainly when she went down on her knees, pleasure was all I could think about.
And how I liked seeing her kneeling. How much I wanted her to take me in her mouth.
Then she did and she wasn’t cold or calm, or serene. No, she looked up at me, her cheeks flushed, as if she couldn’t bear to look away, and I didn’t want her to. I wanted her to see the pleasure she was giving me.
But it was in the aftermath, when she put her cheek against my thigh, that I found my fingers idly caressing the soft silk of her hair, simply enjoying the feel of it against my skin.
Enjoying, too, the trusting way she leaned against me, and it…
did something to me. Hollowed me out in a way I wasn’t expecting, and couldn’t articulate.
In that moment I needed to see the expression on her face, so I caught her beneath the chin, and tilted her head up. Only to find her blue eyes liquid with unshed tears.
It shocked me, those tears, and even now as I think about them, I’m still shocked.
Why shocked? She’s pregnant with your child and you’ve been nothing but awful to her.
That conscience of mine keeps on nagging me, and I don’t like it. I’ve never been bothered by it before, so I don’t know why now it keeps sliding the knife in.
I shove myself out of my chair, and pace to the bookshelves, staring sightlessly at the spines, my body full of a strange restless energy.
As if I want to physically outrun the whispers in my head.
The whispers that keep telling me that I’ve behaved appallingly to a woman who did nothing wrong except not choose me.
That no matter how many logical arguments I give myself, I’m letting my own sexual jealousy get to me.
You made her cry.
I put my hands on the bookshelves and lean on them, looking down at the carpet, as a thread of cold shame winds through me.
I had no idea I could be so affected by a woman’s tears.
By anyone’s tears, for that matter. My mother used to cry frequently—still does—and her tears used to hurt when I was a boy.
I hated that she was in pain, and after my father threw us out I’d do anything I could to make her stop crying.
But that was before she made it clear that there was nothing I could do to make her feel better.
Nothing I could do to heal her pain. I was the reason she was hurt, the reason we were thrown out of our home, and she didn’t want anything at all from me, most especially not being told to stop drinking.
That she didn’t want anything from me was, of course, a lie.
She wanted the money I earned for her and the attention I gave her, and she took it all, even as she made sure that I never forgot why she drank and why she had so many difficulties with depression.
It was my fault. Everything was my fault.
But I refused to feel guilt for that, just as I hardened my heart against her tears, made sure they didn’t affect me.
That should include the tears of pretty Beatrix. Yet I can’t stop seeing the gleam of them in her eyes as she knelt at my feet. Can’t stop hearing the catch in her voice when she told me that if I didn’t want to hurt her, I shouldn’t be such a prick to her.
She’s a passionate woman, this I know. Both her anger and her desire burn hot, no matter how cold she appears, so it stands to reason that she should also feel hurt just as powerfully. She’s more vulnerable than she appears, especially now, pregnant with my child.
You let your anger control you when it comes to her.
My jaw tightens as the unpleasant truth hits home.
As much as I don’t want to admit it, I do let it control me.
I’m supposed to be the cool one, the logical one, yet she makes me feel anything but cool and logical, and I can’t stand it.
It makes me want to needle her, ruffle her, disturb her the way she disturbs me.
That’s a poor reason to be cruel to someone.
It is. Not to mention selfish, and I pride myself on not being selfish.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I push myself away from the bookcase, pulling it out and looking down at the screen.
It’s the lab. The results are back. There’s an email in my inbox, with an attachment, and the test results are clear: I’m the father of the child with a ninety-nine per cent accuracy.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since that’s exactly what I’m expecting, yet I’m also aware of that powerful feeling coursing through me once again, all primitive, possessive satisfaction and an almost heady triumph.
I loathe it. It’s ridiculous to feel this way simply because I’ve done what nearly the entire population of the globe has done, which is to perpetuate the species.
It’s not different. It’s not special. It’s what I was biologically engineered to do.
Yet for some reason, I want to shout my accomplishment from the rooftops as if no one in human history has ever done this before.
With some difficulty I force the feeling away, and grip tight to my logic.
Now I have all the facts, I need to be measured about this, because I have some decisions to make.
The child is mine, and, while I’ve never wanted children, I will have one all the same and I need to decide how to manage that.
Naturally, I’ll be nothing like my own father, putting himself and what he wanted above everything, even his own child.
I will never throw him or her away as if they were garbage lying around that has to be got rid of.
They will live with me. And as for Beatrix, well, that is something we’ll need to discuss.
I put my phone back in my pocket, and stride out of the office to find my housekeeper. Helene tells me that she put Beatrix on the terrace in the garden with some tea and pastries, since ‘the poor woman looked dead on her feet’.
Once again a feeling of shame grips me, and none of the defensive arguments I made to myself about how I did offer her something to eat make any difference.
I dragged her here, made her give a blood sample, forced the issue of our chemistry, then I put her on her knees to give me pleasure, only then to make her cry.
Those are not the actions of an unselfish man.
Perhaps you’re more like your father than you thought.
I grit my teeth, and shove the snide whisper away as I find my way to the stone terrace outside at the back of the house.
It’s one of my mother’s favourite places to sit, since it’s very peaceful, with the flowers and lawn, and pond with a fountain that fills the air with the musical sound of running water.
Beatrix is sitting on one of the cushioned chairs at the delicate wrought-iron outdoor table.
She’s holding a cup of steaming tea between her hands, looking down into the cup as if she’s trying to divine her future.
The sun has gone down, the last rays lighting the sky above her and outlining the soft curve of her cheek in gold, her loose hair a wavy silken waterfall.
She’s stunningly beautiful sitting there in the sunset, and I can feel my hunger for her rise yet again, even as the feeling of shame at how I’ve treated her tightens still further.
She raises her head at my approach, and I catch the flicker of anxiety in her blue eyes before it vanishes.
And in a moment of sudden clarity I realise that her anxiety is because of me.
Because she’s afraid of what I might do, of what I might ask of her, and she has reason to be afraid.
Especially considering what I’ve already done.
‘Don’t tell me,’ she says before I can speak. ‘You’re the father.’
‘Yes.’ I move over to the table and sit down opposite her.
She lifts one golden brow, still trying to hold on to her ice-queen mask. ‘What? No snide comments about what a liar I am? Not even a gloat about how you did what your father couldn’t?’
She’s angry still, and I don’t blame her for it.
Apologies are difficult, yet I can make them when I know I’ve been in the wrong, and I can admit that I am in the wrong here.
‘I’m sorry, Beatrix,’ I offer, because she deserves this at least from me. ‘I’m sorry for my behaviour towards you earlier. It was unconscionable.’
She blinks, surprise crossing her face. ‘You’re sorry? Seriously?’
‘I’m never anything but serious,’ I tell her. ‘I meant what I said, that I didn’t want to hurt you, that I didn’t want to make you cry. And I’m sorry I did both.’
She blinks again, a fleeting look of bewilderment crossing her face. ‘What brought this on?’
I don’t want to explain myself, but I make myself do it, because, once again, she deserves this from me. ‘I have…reflected on my actions,’ I say slowly. ‘And realise that I haven’t been fair to you.’
Her gaze narrows. ‘I see. If I’d known all you needed was a blow job to be nice to me, I would have given you one earlier.’
I’m irritated she would think that had anything to do with it, but, considering I didn’t reflect on my behaviour until after that had happened, she has a right to question me. ‘It wasn’t the blow job,’ I say. ‘It was your tears.’
She stares at me a second, shock in her eyes, then abruptly glances down at her teacup and the fragrant, steaming liquid in it. ‘If you’re expecting me to apologise in return,’ she says after a moment, ‘then I’m afraid you’ll be waiting until hell freezes over.’
‘Why would you apologise?’ I ask. ‘You did nothing wrong.’
She keeps her gaze on her cup. ‘And yet you keep punishing me.’
My muscles are tight, my jaw aching. Because as much as I don’t want to, I have to acknowledge this truth too, that I have been punishing her, and for the most childish of reasons: she chose him, not me.
‘I apologise for that also,’ I say stiffly. ‘That was wrong of me.’
She doesn’t respond, and a silence falls, heavy, weighted.
I don’t like the quality of that silence, how it gets under my skin and stays there, making me think of all the things I’ve done to her, all the things I’ve thought about her, and how wrong they were, and I don’t like it. Especially when we have other, more important things to discuss.
‘As to the baby,’ I say finally, into the quiet, ‘now I have all the facts, I can make a decision about it.’
She looks up at that. ‘We,’ she says, blue eyes full of determination. ‘We will make a decision.’