CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
Diaz could not stop pacing the corridor.
How long had she been in the operating theatre? It felt like hours.
He could not stop his mind racing to what was happening in there.
This was not the way the birth was supposed to go. He wasn’t supposed to be shut out.
Rose wasn’t supposed to be unconscious.
She was supposed to have a spinal anaesthetic and Diaz was supposed to be sitting beside her not glowering at her. That had been the plan.
The midwife had told them to go straight to the hospital. Diaz had never driven with such distracted concentration before, the urge to put his foot down fighting with the need to make the drive as smooth as it could be for her. Only thirty minutes could have passed from the phone call to their arrival but they’d entered the maternity wing with Rose complaining the lights were hurting her eyes.
Pre-eclampsia. Deadly if left too late.
‘We need to get these babies out now,’ the obstetrician had said, and it had been the barely detectable urgency in his voice that had alerted Diaz to just how serious the situation was.
Rose had recognised the seriousness too.
From the hospital bed they’d wheeled her to the theatre room on, those captivating blue eyes had locked onto his. Fear had rung from them. ‘Don’t let our babies die,’ she’d whispered. ‘Please, Diaz.’
At the door, he’d clasped her hand and kissed her fingers. ‘Nothing is going to happen to our babies and nothing is going to happen to you, okay?’
And then she’d been wheeled inside and he’d been barred from following, and since then he’d heard nothing, had no clue as to what the hell was going on in there, had only been able to torture himself with terrible thoughts that turned his blood to ice and stopped his heart from beating.
‘Mr Martinez?’
He spun around and found the obstetrician at the door.
‘Rose?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘She’s in recovery.’
‘She’s okay?’
‘She’s out of danger. It will be…’
But the obstetrician’s next words evaporated through the ringing in Diaz’s ears as a wave of relief so powerful he doubled over under its force punched through him. ‘Gracias a Dios,’ he muttered reverently to himself. ‘Gracias a Dios.’
It took a long moment to compose himself.
‘And the babies?’ he asked, straightening.
‘You daughters will be just fine too…’
‘They are girls?’ His heart caught. Neither of them had wanted to know the sex but Rose had confessed when they’d been in the waiting room for one of her medical appointments that she had a feeling she was carrying girls. Just a passing comment but it had stuck with him, and from that point he’d always imagined their babies as girls.
The obstetrician smiled. ‘Two girls. They’re tiny, naturally, given how premature they are, but they’re fighters like their mother. They’ve been taken to the neonatal unit. One of my team will take you to them shortly.’
‘Can I see my wife?’
‘Soon. Let her come round from the anaesthetic first.’
* * *
It took effort for Rose to open her eyes.
She heard her name and slowly turned her head. Diaz was sitting on a chair beside her.
She had to swallow to croak, ‘Hi.’
‘Hi yourself.’
Exhaustion made her sigh. ‘Have you seen them?’ When she’d first come round from the anaesthetic, the nurse had been quick to assure her the babies had made it safely into the world.
He smiled. Even through the blurriness of her vision, she could see the awe in his eyes. ‘They’re beautiful, Rose. Just perfect.’
Her heart swelled. She longed to see them and hold them. Part of her wish was answered when Diaz brought pictures of them up on his phone for her.
‘I’ve forwarded them to you and I’ve got one of my team printing them off so you can hold them until you can hold our girls for real.’
Tears filled her eyes. ‘Thank you. That’s a really thoughtful thing to do.’
‘It is the least I can do. I’m afraid they’re not up to your standard of photography, but you can rectify that when you’re better.’
She blinked back the tears and tried to smile, but the anaesthetic and pain relief were still working their magic in her. ‘Will you kiss them for me?’ Her eyes were getting heavy again. ‘And tell them I love them and will be with them as soon as I can?’
‘I promise.’
‘Thank you.’ It was becoming a struggle to speak. ‘And, Diaz?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can we call them Amelia and Josephine?’
His shoulders rose and the strangest smile curved his cheeks. ‘I guessed you’d…’ He gave a low laugh and admitted, ‘Those are the names I’ve been calling them in my head.’
Her eyes closed and she fell back into sleep with a contentment in her heart and a soft smile on her lips.
Amelia and Josephine were her mother’s and Diaz’s grandmother’s respective names.
She didn’t register the lingering brush of warm lips on her forehead.
Five months later
* * *
Diaz let himself in through the front door. ‘Rose?’
No answer.
After checking all the rooms downstairs, he headed up to her bedroom. She was sprawled face down on the bed, fast asleep, one hand dangling in the cot, which had been pushed against the bed so she could comfort the twins through the night when needed. But this wasn’t night time. It was three in the afternoon.
Amelia was asleep too, but Josephine—Josie as they both called her—was awake and kicking her legs. He scooped her up. Immediately she went for his nose. If ever he was confused over which twin was which, all he had to do was bring them to his face. If she tried to suck his nose then it was Josie.
His almost noiseless movement woke Rose, and she lifted her head. When she saw Diaz, she blinked in confusion.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he mouthed.
Another confused owl-like blink and then she put her head back on the pillow.
Carrying Josie downstairs, he took her into the kitchen and, holding her securely with one arm, made himself a cup of instant coffee. He disliked instant but there were no fresh coffee beans. Other than half a loaf of bread, some teabags, an empty box of cereal and some dried pasta, the cupboards were bare.
He sighed.
Rose thought she was a superwoman who could do it all. The only person she permitted to share the childcare load was Diaz, who she let come and go as he pleased. He limited his travels as much as he could but he had an international business to run. When he wasn’t around, she was alone with the girls. He always knew when she’d had no sleep at all because he’d walk through the door and she’d mumble the time for the girls’ next feed before zonking out. When she was awake around him, it was as if he faded into the background for her, a presence that blended into the walls.
The current status quo couldn’t continue. It wasn’t good for any of them, least of all Rose.
The current status quo also meant that when he was around to share the load, he returned to his home in the next town once the twins were in bed, even though neither twin slept through the night. He’d stayed full time the month after they’d all been discharged from hospital, sleeping in his old room, but then one morning Rose had declared herself recovered from her caesarean and that it would now be better if he slept under his own roof. Knowing how fragile she was, he hadn’t argued. Back then, with newborn twins who refused to sync their feeding or sleeping schedule, he’d only been concerned with getting through each day too, and had agreed to leave on the proviso they employed a nanny to help her. Preferably two. One for each child.
Every nanny interviewed had been rejected. Rose had found fault with each and every one of them. She’d flatly refused a live-in housekeeper to take the domestic burden off her shoulders too, even though she was living in a three-thousand-square-metre, seven-bedroomed house. It had taken weeks of cajoling before she compromised and allowed him to hire a daily cleaner.
He checked the fridge. Empty except for some butter and four made-up bottles of baby milk. It had broken Rose’s heart that all her efforts to breastfeed had proved fruitless.
Josie clocked the bottles and made grabby hands, which Amelia, with the scarily strange telepathy that bound the twins, took as her cue to wake up and start screaming the house down.
Things had to change, he thought grimly, putting a bottle in each of the bottle warmers, and when Rose appeared with Amelia in her arms, he passed her a warmed bottle with a smile as grim as his thoughts.
Yes, things had to change. He’d bent to Rose’s wishes for five months, knowing it would take time for her to recover from the birth and adjust to the seismic shock of the reality of newborn twins.
Luckily, he’d been working on a plan to enact change, and the time to enact it was now. He just needed to tread carefully.
‘You’re back early,’ she said tiredly.
‘Just as well,’ he said, trying not to sound too pointed. ‘What are you planning to feed yourself?’
She pulled a face and raised a shoulder before sinking onto the kitchen sofa and feeding Amelia her bottle. ‘Toast probably. I forgot to order a food delivery.’
He settled Josie in his arms at the kitchen table. ‘Shall I get take-out?’
‘If you like.’
He hated this lethargy. Hated to see her hair lank, unbrushed and bedraggled, her clothes crumpled, her usually bright complexion pasty. Especially hated the dullness in her eyes. She was too thin too. In the last two months, all the baby weight had suddenly fallen off, and he knew it was because she too often forgot to eat. He didn’t know how to approach any of this without sounding like a critical monster. Rose was neglecting herself because all her energy was devoted to their daughters. Whatever state she’d let herself fall into, when it came to their daughters, she really was a superwoman. Their daughters were happy, healthy and thriving under her loving care.
‘Chinese or Thai?’
Another listless rise of the shoulder. ‘How was Paris?’
‘Athens,’ he corrected, then wished he hadn’t when he saw her dismay.
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Listen, I have been thinking and I would like to take the girls to Spain. It is time that they got to know the other half of their heritage.’
Even greater dismay rang clear. ‘Not yet, Diaz. It’s too soon.’
He made sure to keep his tone even. ‘Not in the least. The sooner they are introduced to flying, the sooner they will get used to it.’
‘But they’re only five months old,’ she pleaded. ‘They won’t understand any of it. Please, wait a few more months.’
‘Their brains are like sponges.’ Even if they would try and eat an actual sponge if given half a chance. ‘And the sunshine would do us all good.’ This early English summer had, so far, been a wash-out.
‘I know it would but…’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m not ready to be parted from them yet.’
Her upset set off an ache in his chest, which he smothered by kissing the top of Josie’s sweet little head. ‘I’m not taking them without you,’ he assured her steadily through the thumping of his heart. ‘You’ll be coming with us.’
There was a moment of blankness before comprehension dawned. ‘Oh. I misunderstood.’
‘Rose, I wouldn’t take the girls anywhere without you.’ Even if he wanted to, which he didn’t, it wouldn’t be fair to Rose or the girls. Rose was their world.
Her tear-filled eyes widened until, chin wobbling, she dropped her stare from his and wedged Amelia’s now empty bottle between her thigh and the arm of her chair. After brushing a lock of dirty blonde hair out of her eyes, she moved Amelia onto her lap and began gently patting her back.
He pretended not to notice the effort it took for her to keep the tears at bay. Being a superwoman mother to twin babies came at a price, and the cost for Rose was major sleep deprivation. Safe in her own home, she was too tired to see how exhausted she was.
Her voice not quite steady, she quietly said, ‘If you want us to go to Spain, the girls will need passports.’
‘They already have them,’ he confessed. He’d anticipated this argument and so had fixed it before it arose. ‘I arranged it.’
Her gaze flew back to him, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. ‘When?’
‘Two weeks ago. I signed for them the other morning before I left for Athens. They’re in the safe in the study.’
‘You never mentioned it.’
‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’
She didn’t look convinced. ‘I didn’t know fathers could apply for baby passports.’
‘I have the same legal parental responsibility as you.’
‘Oh, yes…’ She suddenly jerked her chin and blinked. ‘Has our divorce come through?’
It was not the first time she’d asked this. ‘Not yet.’
‘I thought it would be done by now…’ Her voice trailed off as anxiety flittered over her face. ‘You did file the papers, didn’t you?’
Their one-year anniversary had passed six weeks ago.
‘Yes,’ he lied smoothly. The birth of the twins had changed everything as far as Diaz was concerned…not that he’d voiced this to Rose, not with her mental and emotional state being what it was. One step at a time. Getting her to Spain was merely the first step.
Her nod was absent, her thoughts clearly busy.
‘So, that’s settled, then,’ he said decisively before her thoughts could get too busy. As much as he wanted the old Rose back, he knew it would be better if she returned while they were in Spain rather than under this roof where the ghosts of their shared past lived.
‘What’s settled?’
‘Spain. I’ll make the arrangements. We can leave tomorrow.’
* * *
Rose clutched at her hair. ‘But we can’t go yet,’ she wailed. ‘I haven’t got a suitcase for my own stuff.’
She could scarcely believe how quickly Diaz had made this trip to Spain happen. She’d woken in the early hours to Amelia making snuffling sounds in her sleep, certain she’d dreamed the entire conversation. Most of her life had felt like a waking dream since she’d brought the girls home from hospital. She’d never known such exhaustion existed.
Her precious girls were worth every hour of sleep lost.
It wasn’t until Diaz had turned up while she was giving them their morning feed and asked if she’d started packing that she’d realised their discussion about Spain had been no dream. Things had moved at a rapid dream-like pace ever since, which was a bit of a shock to a system grown accustomed to taking one long day at a time.
Uncertain what was best to pack for the girls, she’d played it safe by stuffing her cases with the entirety of their wardrobes, which Diaz’s driver had already put in the back of the car, and now she had nothing to stuff the bundle of her own clothing currently heaped on the bed into other than an old beach bag.
Strong hands clasped her shoulders. The physical contact made her start. Diaz was around so much that she never really noticed him as anything but the one person who loved her daughters as much as she did. She didn’t have the functioning brain cells to see him as anything but their father, so to feel such solid contact from him when the most they’d shared in five months was brushed arms as they passed the babies between them was another shock to her system.
Stern green eyes locked onto hers. ‘All you need is your passport and I have packed it with mine and the girls’. We will buy whatever you need when we get there, but we have to go now or we will miss our slot.’
‘We can get another slot,’ she protested.
‘No,’ he said firmly, hands still grasping her shoulders. ‘It is the summer. Flight slots are scarce, even private ones. We need to leave. Now.’
Before she could argue again, he let go of her shoulders and expertly lifted both girls out of the cot. Holding them securely in each arm, he headed out of the room without a backward glance.
Trying not to cry—she had no idea where the tears came from—she snatched an armful of clothes from the bundle, shoved them into the beach bag and hurried after them, just as Diaz knew she would. It didn’t improve her mood to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror as she left her room. With her black jeans and light black sweater, she looked like she could be cast as a member of the Addams Family. They wouldn’t even need to bother with gothic make-up. She looked a wreck.
She didn’t want to leave the safety of her Devon home. That was the problem. As tired as she was—and she was very much aware her exhaustion made her more emotional than she would normally be—travelling to Diaz’s territory made her feel all antsy, like there was an undertone of motives, a reason for his determination to get them all to Spain being kept from her. Although what that something could be, her exhausted mind couldn’t begin to envisage.
* * *
Rose’s first trip on an aeroplane had been for a visit to Diaz and Rosaria’s parents in Spain when she’d been seventeen. Rosaria had begged for Rose to be allowed to go with them. Mrs Martinez hadn’t needed persuading.
Diaz had graduated from university the year before. To celebrate, his uber-rich parents, the celebrated faces and brains behind the Tinez luxury beauty brand, had given him a large pot of cash with which to make his own way in the world. As a result, his visits to Devon had substantially decreased, the long weeks of his presence throughout the year reduced to the weekends he could fit them into his busy schedule. Strangely, Rose had found herself missing him, although when he did turn up she quickly resorted back to loathing him in the face of his unrelenting hostility towards her.
The return flight eight years earlier had been the height of luxury. First class! It had blown her mind. No doubt if Diaz had booked it, she’d have been stuck at the back in cattle class.
This journey, travelling on Diaz’s private jet, which made the luxury of first class seem like the cattle class he’d have chucked her in all those years ago, she was too exhausted to appreciate the sumptuousness of it all. Both girls screamed their heads off during take-off but then quickly quieted, and with Amelia asleep in her secured carrycot and Josie contentedly trying to eat Diaz’s nose, there was nothing to stop Rose from obeying her body’s yearn for sleep…and nothing to stop the most potent memory of her last visit to Spain from weaving into her dreams…
‘Sure you don’t want a puff?’ Rosaria asked, waving the spliff over Rose’s face.
‘I’m sure.’
Rose had tried dope once, over the Easter holidays, from the small stash Rosaria had brought home with her from boarding school. She’d hated the way it made her feel all woozy. Rosaria, though, liked the way it made her feel, and having unlimited funds from her generous but neglectful parents meant she could afford to buy it whenever she chose. And afford to buy other narcotics too, Rose suspected, despite Rosaria’s denials. She knew lots of people smoked dope but it made her increasingly uncomfortable to see her best friend smoke it. Worried her too. Rosaria had changed in the last year. The one time Rose had tried to voice her concerns, Rosaria had brushed them away with an airy, ‘I’m eighteen. I make my own choices now. Don’t worry,’ she’d added in a placatory tone, ‘I know what my limits are.’
And maybe she did, Rose thought as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of the sun on her bikini-clad body. The girls had the Martinez villa to themselves and were sunbathing around the pool.
She was probably worrying about nothing. They’d been in Spain for four days and had spent every waking hour together. This was the first time Rosaria had done anything she shouldn’t since they’d arrived, so maybe she should cut her some slack and…
There was the strangest prickling of her skin, and then Rosaria swore under her breath. ‘My brother. Quick, take it.’
Rose shot upright and found the spliff stuck between her fingers before her brain caught up to realise what she was doing.
Striding past the pool, Diaz. Diaz wearing nothing but a pair of black swim shorts and black shades, his attention firmly on the screen of his phone…until he realised he wasn’t alone and came to an abrupt halt.
Rose had frozen. The beats of her heart had gone haywire. When Diaz’s stare locked onto hers, a fuzzy, electrical sensation danced over her skin and all of a sudden she was filled with a sticky awareness she couldn’t begin to understand. What she did understand in that frozen moment, though, was that Diaz, her best friend’s hateful older brother, was no longer a boy. At some point, when she hadn’t been watching, Diaz had turned into a man. A beautiful, broad-chested, sculpted man and, oh, she could hardly breathe to look at him.
She’d barely noticed he’d started walking again. Not until he stood before them and his nose twitched and his gaze dropped to the spliff held in her frozen fingers.
‘How dare you bring that filth into my parents’ home?’ he accused tightly.
In an instant, the spell he’d cast her under was broken. ‘I…’ Feeling Rosaria’s pleading eyes on her, Rose’s denial caught on her tongue. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finished lamely.
‘Sorry you got caught,’ he snarled before glaring at his sister. ‘Did you share this with her?’
‘No, of course not,’ Rosaria denied. ‘You know I wouldn’t touch that stuff. Rose brought it.’
The rest of Diaz’s diatribe was lost through the whooshing in her ears at Rosaria’s betrayal.
‘Did you hear what I just said, Rose?’ he demanded, compelling her to look back at his furious face through sheer force of will. ‘I will be telling my grandmother about this and will let her decide whether your mother should be informed. Considering the gravity of your mother’s condition, I am disgusted you would do anything to make the time she has left harder. Thank God you’re going home tomorrow—when you get back, you stay away from my sister, do you hear me? I always knew you were bad news. This friendship ends now.’
He stormed away, his poison still ringing in Rose’s ears.
‘Rose?’ Rosaria whispered.
‘Don’t say anything,’ she managed to drag out, hugging her knees tightly and fighting back tears of humiliation and hurt and betrayal. ‘Just…don’t.’
‘Rose…’
‘No.’
A hand lightly touched her shoulder.
‘Rose. Wake up.’
She snapped her eyes open. Diaz was hovering over her. Diaz of now, not the Diaz of then. He had one of their daughters in his arms. Amelia. She couldn’t read the expression on his face. If it was anyone else, she’d guess it might be concern.
‘You were crying in your sleep,’ he said slowly.
She touched her wet cheek. ‘Just a dream,’ she whispered.
‘Must have been a bad one.’
She nodded and looked away, grateful when a member of the cabin crew stepped in and announced they would soon be landing.