Chapter Ten
“Would you like to join me at the Olivera cottage this morning?” Enrique asked his soaked son.
“Yes, I would,” Marcello said and ran past him and down the hallway—leaving wet footprints the entire way—toward his bedroom.
Miss Helena raced after him. Even though Enrique was annoyed beyond measure at his son, what mattered most to him was the light that had come on in those big, somber eyes at the very mention of the Oliveras.
Enrique realized they were his magic potion.
Because Marcello had needed to get ready, they were late, and as they went through the gate to the cottage, Enrique felt the strangest little shiver of trepidation, like a schoolboy tardy for class.
Was his world going to be constantly off-balance now that Gabriela was back? Would being around her renew his deep feelings of longing for a life he could not have? Would some awareness of her always form a background hum to every interaction between them?
He caught sight of her. The answer was yes.
She was sitting in a child’s chair at a small red table. It was the set Guido had built for her—for them—when they’d been children. Memories of long-ago tea parties—sunshine and fresh-made scones from Maria—came to him, vivid and compelling.
Though not quite as compelling as this moment.
Gabriela was wearing a simple cotton dress, white, with small blue flowers in the pattern.
It was a summer dress, with wide straps that left the soft swell of her shoulders bare.
The dress was riding up the curve of her thighs.
Her feet were also bare, and the sun was making her dark hair shine as if it was spun through with threads of gold.
A little boy sat in the chair adjacent from her. There was a container of soapy water in front of her, and she held a wand in her hand.
As Enrique watched, she dipped the wand in the bucket, and blew gently on it.
He felt a jolt of pure awareness that was shocking given the absolute innocence of her activity. But who had known blowing bubbles was so similar to puckering for a kiss? He remembered the knife-like sensations of passion rising that he had felt around her as a young man.
Stop it, he warned himself, but as he watched the bubble break free of the wand and dance, iridescent, in the air, he knew that would be easier said than done.
Marcello darted up to the table and skidded to a halt. He stared at Gabriela as if she was spinning pure enchantment out of plain soap and water.
Which, of course, she was.
“Can I do it?”
“Marcello,” she said, ignoring his question, “this is Henri. He is Mr. Madero’s grandson. Henri, this is Marcello.”
“Your Highness,” Henri squeaked, obviously coached for this meeting.
“In this garden, and when you play together, you may call him Cello,” Gabriela said, straightening.
“That’s not what my grandfather said,” Henri said, uneasily.
“It’s like when I’m with my father and my grandmother,” Marcello explained, patiently. “When you’re in pubic, you use their titties, but when you’re by yourselves, you don’t.”
Enrique bit back his own snort of laughter and watched, delighted, as Gabriela tried to contain hers.
“What he means, Henri, is in public places we use titles, but when we’re just among friends in the garden, it isn’t necessary. Cello, say hello to Henri.”
“Lo, Henri,” Marcello said as he reached for the wand in her hand.
“Lo, Cello,” Henri said cautiously, obviously worried about disobeying his grandfather’s instructions.
Ever so gently, Gabriela held the wand out of Marcello’s reach, and then handed it to Henri.
“I only have one,” she said, and Enrique clearly saw she had done this by design. “You will have to share it. Perhaps you could take turns seeing who can blow the biggest bubble?”
She watched for a moment, and then satisfied the boys would take turns, she got up from the table and turned to Enrique.
He was surprised to see she was wearing glasses.
Considering he was bracing for a reprimand, the glasses did make her look like a schoolteacher.
The exact kind who did not brook any type of nonsense, like tardiness.
But right underneath that, he detected a sort of radiance about her that seemed to stop his world. Everything seemed to blur together: the radiance, the laughter of the two little boys as they shared the bubble wand, the sun in the garden, strong aroma of the blooming olive tree.
Every man, he realized would, at some time in his lifetime, be given a cruel glimpse of the life he was not able to have.
This was the life he was not able to have: laughing children, a carefree moment in the garden, a woman who would have loved him best of all.
Checking one more time to make sure the two little boys were practicing sharing—a concept that was obviously more difficult for Marcello than Henri—Gabriela turned her full attention to him and came across the garden.
She looked searchingly at him, and then laid her hand, soft, on his forearm. He had not put on a jacket yet, his dress shirt rolled up at the cuff. Her touch, meant to be soothing, instead felt like a brand, as if she was marking him for life.
“Enrique, what’s the matter?”
He looked down at her arm, and then into her face. He drew in a deep breath. “Nothing. My apologies for being late.”
Those beautiful eyes, so deep, so perceptive, searched his own in a way that made him feel as if no matter what he said, she would see the truth.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.
How tempting it would be to tell her seeing her in the garden, laughing with the children, had brought him to stand on the edge of an abyss of a life that was shockingly lonely, that was bereft of the kind of dreams most men were allowed.
Still, even without saying a word, it felt as if she knew somehow. He should have realized that there was no hiding anything from her. Her perceptive abilities were at least as terrifying as Marcello conjuring potions in the bathroom sink.
He realized she was still touching him, and that the touch, while comforting now, would increase his sense of being bereft later. He withdrew his arm, sharply, from under her touch, and thrust his hand in his pocket.
“I’m fine, really,” he said.
She scanned his face once more, not believing him, but then she took a deep breath, and followed his cue.
“Let’s get down to business, then,” she said, looking at the folder of papers he carried. “You’ve brought what I asked for?”
She relieved him of them, and took them over to the bench and sat, opening the first folder.
“So,” she said, “I see there are four nannies, three now that Miss Penny has resigned.”
“Except, you would be the fourth.”
“Temporarily,” she reminded him. She scanned the documents quickly. He sank, his reluctance palpable to him, onto the bench beside her. He should have remained standing, but he was aware that brief touch had done the most dangerous of things.
Made him aware of a need.
A simple need. For connection. She did not ever have to know what sitting on the bench so close to her did for him. And to him.
“Which one of the nannies is Cello’s favorite?” she asked, not looking up.
He had no idea, but he tried to cover up what suddenly seemed like a shameful lack of knowledge by saying, “I think he dislikes them all equally.”
She looked up at him, then drew her glasses down to the end of her nose and peered over the rims. Again, he had the frightening suspicion that he could not hide anything from her.
“Okay, then, which one is your favorite?”
Enrique managed to quell the urge to squirm like a schoolboy not doing very well on a pop quiz. “I don’t think I should discuss the palace staff behind their backs,” he said uneasily.
She was not fooled—of course she wasn’t fooled—by his effort to turn his lack of knowledge into looking as if he was taking the high road.
“We’re not discussing the staff,” she said softly. “We’re discussing Marcello’s life.”
Henri started shouting it was his turn, not Marcello’s, and Marcello shouted back that it wasn’t. Enrique, thankful for the excuse, started to rise. She laid her hand on his thigh. It was worse—much worse—than her hand on his arm had been, even with a layer of fabric between her touch and his skin.
She seemed to realize it was a horrible mistake and snatched her hand back. Something that had nothing at all to do with small boys sizzled in the air between them.
It was as if a fire-breathing dragon had stepped from its lair. How did you put that back, once it had been let out?
For a moment, both of them lost track of where they were.
But, then with obvious effort, she drew back her shoulders, and looked back down at the file in her hand. “Who hired the nannies?”
He had to think about that for a minute. The truth was he didn’t really involve himself in staff issues, but he knew she’d look poorly on him if she thought he’d taken a cavalier attitude toward his son’s care.
Which led to the question: Had he taken a cavalier attitude toward his son’s care?
“Miss Caravanno has been here since Cello was born,” Enrique said. “Amelia vetted her, I believe. She was the only one, until the pregnancy, and then Miss Helena joined the staff. After, more were hired, but none have lasted very long.”
“Probably the most plum job on the island, and no one stays,” she mused.
“As you’ve seen, he can be quite a handful.”
“Who hires them?” she asked, as if he’d deliberately skirted the original issue.
“I’m not precisely sure which department that falls into.”
“Well, let me make it clear for you, then,” she said, and he could see little red spots of annoyance rising on each cheek. “It falls into the daddy department.”
Daddy. The word, like the scene of the children blowing bubbles with her, conjured images of the life he did not have.
A life of tossing baseballs, and wrestling, and laughing over silly things.
He realized, envious, that Gabriela had an authority about her when it came to raising Marcello because she had come from a family that knew exactly what a family was supposed to provide.
He, on the other hand, had accepted his wife’s lead in the matters of their child because he’d had no framework of family and because duty came first. Amelia, assuaging her own loneliness, had shut him out, and he had felt helpless, and unsure how to breach her boundaries.
Now, when his son needed him, and he needed his son, Marcello seemed intent on regarding him suspiciously, the outsider.
Gabriela was watching him, again, way too closely.
“I will find several suitable replacements for Miss Penny,” she said, after letting him squirm for a moment, “but you will do the interviewing and have the final say.”
“It almost sounds as if you are giving me orders,” he told her, stiffly.
“And do you want to know the reason for that? I can’t—I won’t—care about this more than you do. He’s your son, Enrique. What’s with this hands-off approach to parenting?”
She refrained from speaking the words what is wrong with you, but he felt as if he heard them anyway.
It had been many, many years since he had been called on anything. No one dared to criticize him, or question him.
He realized it was part of the abyss of loneliness that he had gazed into just a few minutes ago. He carried the mantle of his responsibilities alone. Mostly, it was a burden life had prepared him for.
But it was true that he had been completely unprepared to be plunged into the world of parenting, and the biggest responsibility of them all, raising a child who was capable of giving as much as receiving, who knew how to serve as well as how to be served, who understood he was part of the great surge of universal energy, not above it.
Enrique sighed. And confessed the truth to her.
“The hands-off approach to parenting is all I know,” he said quietly.
“Humph,” she said unimpressed, a teacher hearing a lame excuse like the dog had eaten the homework. “All right, go say goodbye to Marcello. Give him a hug, and tell him you love him.”
He got up from the bench and looked at his son, and then looked at her.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m not… I mean we don’t. We’re not demonstrative.”
“Are you telling me,” she asked, something both incredulous and furious in her tone, “that you don’t hug your son, and tell him you love him when you say goodbye to him?”
He was silent. “Well,” he offered finally, “before bed. Sometimes. I mean, a kiss on the top of his head.”
“But why?” she asked, genuinely appalled.
“It’s as I said. It’s all I know. It was never done for me.” His throat felt raw, as if he was confessing some terrible secret about his life to her.
Her mouth dropped open.
“Never,” he continued quietly. “I have never once heard those words.”
She snapped her mouth shut. She looked rapidly back at the file in her hands.
“Never?” she whispered, and glanced up at him.
He braced himself for her pity. But that was not what he saw in the amazing kaleidoscope of colors that were her eyes.
What he saw was a compassion so deep it was like a bottomless well.
It made him feel as weak as anything ever had, as if he could drop to his knees in front of her and let it wash over him, healing something in him that he had not known was broken.
“Go break the cycle,” she told him, her voice soft, but firm.
There was no mistaking it. Gabriela had just given him a command!