The Latin Lover's Secret Child

“And you’re not angry?”

She was so tired, he thought. The wild horse had nearly trampled her down. He smiled at her a little, still calming, reassuring. “Why would I be angry? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“But the baby—” She broke off, shook her head and looked at him with fear, with need, with painful vulnerability, but there was something else in her eyes now. Trust.

It was as if the last five years had fallen away and she was a child again, the seventeen-year-old he’d met who craved love.

He stroked her long hair back from her face. “I would never be upset with you about losing the baby. I promise, Ana.”

Grateful tears burned her eyes and she nestled closer, feeling his warmth, letting his heat creep into her. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” she whispered. She carried his hand to her cheek, and held it as if it were a life preserver in the middle of the sea. “It’s like a dream.”

He sat with her until she slept, and once he was sure she was peacefully sleeping, he headed to the door but once there, he couldn’t make himself leave. He stood in the doorway of her darkened room and looked at her where she lay curled on her side.

He could just make out her profile in the dim light. Her face was as perfect as it ever had been—fine, straight nose, slightly turned up at the end, full mouth, firm chin, high cheekbones and wide brow—but it wasn’t her beauty that moved him. It was just being back here, being so close to her again and after all these months, after all this time when he’d thought he was reconciled to living without her, he found himself burning with emotion.

Burning with need.

What the hell had happened to them? Where had everything gone wrong?

Suddenly Lucio resented Ana’s illness and helplessness, resented the fact that she didn’t remember—couldn’t remember—while he felt everything.

He felt the anger, the guilt, the sense of betrayal. He felt loss and grief and rage because dammit, he’d wanted this to work. He’d given everything to their relationship and why hadn’t it been right?

Worst of all, he still missed her so much. Physically missed her. He missed holding her, feeling the shape and weight of her, missed her softness against his body. And it hurt, too, that she’d been the one to say enough, to say she’d had all she wanted, all she needed, and now she was ready to move on with the rest of her life.

What was the rest of her life?

What was his?

Shaking his head, he left her room and quietly closed the door behind him. The nurse was seated in a chair outside Anabella’s room and she looked up at him as he passed. “Everything okay?” she asked.

Lucio nodded. “She’s asleep.”

His eyes felt gritty as he descended the staircase and blinking, he pushed back the sadness, pushed back the ambivalent emotions. This wasn’t the time, he told himself. And this most certainly wasn’t the place.

Seated in Ana’s office, Lucio sorted through her mail, filed the stacks of paperwork, wrote checks for businesses that had sent them statements. He’d forgotten how large her business had grown. She owned a shop in Buenos Aires and another here in Mendoza. The Mendoza store was newer. It didn’t have the business Anabella had hoped for. He studied her accounts for a moment, knowing she’d stretched herself too thin, taken on too much. She’d wanted to be successful, wanted to prove to everyone she wasn’t the baby of the family anymore, but the sophisticated antique dealer. The expert.

He smiled a little and leaning forward he picked up a slender cloisonné clock from the corner of her desk. He’d never seen the clock before. It was turquoise blue with a round ivory face and a pendulum of gold in the shape of a sunburst.

There was a knock on the door and the door opened. The housekeeper quietly carried a tray into the office with a late lunch and placed it on the edge of Lucio’s desk. “I know you haven’t eaten anything since you arrived,” Maria, the housekeeper said, pushing the tray towards him a little.

“I’m not hungry,” he answered, replacing the clock back on Anabella’s desk.

The housekeeper glanced at the clock. “The Senora brought it back from her last trip.”

The trip from China. Lucio felt an urge to throw the clock, break it in a thousand pieces. If Anabella hadn’t been chasing all over the world in search of exotic antiques she’d be well now.

He glanced up at Maria. She was a slim barely graying woman in her fifties. He mustered a smile. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Senor.” She’d been hired after Lucio and Anabella married. Anabella had hired her. “But you are missed.”

How nice to hear something like that, especially after the past six months when he felt completely dispensable. “Thank you.”

“Will you be here long?” the housekeeper asked.

Would he be here long? Yes. No. Only as long as Anabella needed his help.

Only until she sent him away again.

Wearily, Lucio leaned back, rubbed his eyes. “It depends.”

“Your room has been made up.”

The room he’d been banished to when Anabella stopped wanting him in her bed. “Thank you.” He watched the housekeeper start to leave and he sat forward. “Maria—”

She turned towards him. “Sí, Senor?”

How odd that he already felt like such an outsider. It’d only been a couple months since he moved out of the villa. “Let me know what I can do to help you and the rest of the staff. I realize things are not…normal.”

Maria bowed her head. “But what is normal, Senor? I don’t think there is a normal. I think there is just life.”

Lucio was still in the office two hours later when Maria knocked on the door again. He’d dozed off in the chair, slumped back, and he woke with a start. “Yes?” he called gruffly, pushing himself forward, and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He’d slept hard and he shook his head a couple times, finding it difficult to wake.

“The Count Galván is here,” Maria said entering the room and taking the empty tray from a side table. “He’s waiting for you in the salon.”

Lucio passed a hand across his face once again. So the big brother had arrived. Dante Galván certainly didn’t waste time.

Lucio was tempted to have Maria show the Count into the study, but glancing around the study with the framed pictures of Anabella on the desk and the personal keepsakes on the bookshelves made the room feel far too intimate.

Better to meet on neutral ground.

Or as neutral a ground as they were going to find in Lucio’s former house.

Entering the salon Lucio found his brother-in-law standing in the great room with the high painted beams, the plaster walls washed cream, the floor terra-cotta tiles imported from Italy. The oil paintings all dated from the 17th Century and the rich art and fine antiques spoke of wealth, class, prestige.

Lucio saw Dante glance around the room, Dante’s gaze briefly settling on one of the Italian paintings, a landscape with cherubs and maidens frolicking at a tree-shaded lake.

“You know how valuable these are, don’t you?” Dante said, gesturing to the wall. “Especially this one,” he added, pointing to the maidens by the lake.

Lucio would have smiled if he had the strength. With his world coming down around him, Dante wanted to discuss Lucio’s wealth? “Yes.”

Dante continued to study the oversize canvas. “When did you buy it?”

“Before I married your sister.” Meaning, with my money, not hers. And not yours.

Dante’s head lifted and the two men, both Argentine, Dante Italian aristocrat, and Lucio, Spanish-Indian, stared at each other with open hostility.

“I bought the house complete.” Lucio broke the tension-fraught silence. “The owner fell on hard times. I bought the land, the villa and all the furnishings with cash.”