Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key

Maggie dragged her wandering thoughts back to the present and responded to the ghoulish enquiry from Sam with an absent nod of her head.

‘That explains why she looks so wrecked,’ Sam observed.

Ben shook his head. ‘No, it’s not work…’ His eyes widened. ‘Are you pregnant?’

The colour flew to Maggie’s cheeks, and Susan Ward looked uncomfortable, making it obvious that this had been her first thought too.

‘Ben!’ his father warned.

‘No, it’s OK, Dad,’ Maggie said, placing her hand on her dad’s shoulder. ‘It’s not a secret.’ She took a deep breath. ‘If you must know the wedding is off.’

Sam closed the fridge with his elbow and let out a silent whistle. ‘So no more slimy Simon!’

‘Simon is not…’ Maggie stopped. Actually he was. She suddenly felt pretty stupid that her little brother had recognised the characteristic and she hadn’t.

She had wasted four years of her life on Simon, which might have been acceptable if she had been desperately in love with him, but Maggie now knew she hadn’t been.

Maybe she was one of those people that couldn’t fall in love? A depressing thought but a definite possibility; she had certainly never experienced the sort of blind, intense passion her friends spoke of.

‘Do you have to send back the presents? There’s a coffee maker that’s much better than the one we have—’

Sam’s brother cut across him. ‘Did he dump you? Or…God, had he been cheating on you?’ The idea drew a chortle of laughter from his brother. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

‘Simon did not sleep with anyone.’ Not even with me, Maggie thought, swallowing the bubble of hysteria in her throat.

‘Well, what did he do, then?’

Maggie’s eyes fell as she hesitated. For the first time in her life she felt awkward bringing up the topic of her adoption.

She had never had any hang-ups at all about being adopted, no yearning secret or otherwise to find her natural mother—it had never even occurred to her that Simon had any concerns.

Though concern was clearly an understatement considering the lengths he had gone to to trace her birth mother. Thinking ahead, he had called it; anticipating future problems, he had explained with a self-congratulatory smile.

Maggie closed her eyes and could hear him calling her birth mother’s identity ‘a potential skeleton-jumping-out-of-the-cupboard situation’ before going on to explain in the same pompous manner that a politician in his position—one with a future—could not be too careful.

‘He had a problem with…’ She looked at the expectant faces and hesitated again.

Mum and Dad had told her years ago that they would understand if she wanted to contact her birth mother, but Maggie had never believed they could be as all right with the idea as they appeared.

Maggie, who had always been keenly conscious of the crazy guilt thing Mum had about not being able to do the things with her children that able-bodied mums took for granted, had no intention of searching out a mother who was able to enter the mums’ race on sports day.

To her mind even thinking about her birth mother felt like a betrayal of the parents who had loved and cared for her, and why contact a stranger who had given her away and risk rejection for a second time?

Would they believe that Simon had made the unilateral decision to search for her birth mother? Or would they think that she had decided they were not enough family for her? Maggie decided there was no point taking a risk.

‘It was a lot of little things. We simply decided that we didn’t suit. It was all very amicable,’ she lied, absently touching the bruised area on her wrist.

‘Maggie will talk about it when she’s good and ready and you two,’ John Ward said sternly, ‘have all the sensitivity of a pair of bricks. Your poor sister—’

‘Had a lucky escape,’ Ben interrupted. ‘And don’t look at me like that—I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking. Sorry, Maggie, but it’s true.’

Susan broke the awkward silence that followed this pronouncement.

‘What you need is a holiday.’

Maggie laughed. ‘You think I should go on the honeymoon cruise?’

Maggie had no desire to go on the cruise that had been a cause of friction. Though Simon had reluctantly agreed that it might not be proper to take his mother on their Mediterranean honeymoon, he had assured her that next time of course she would go with them; Mother apparently loved cruises.

He hadn’t asked Maggie if she enjoyed them.

‘Oh, goodness, no, there’d be too many middle-aged people on a cruise,’ Susan exclaimed, adding, ‘Where did I put those brochures you brought home the other day, John? I think they’re on the piano stool. Go get them, Ben.’

‘Mum, I can’t go on holiday. There’s so much to do. I need to cancel the—’

‘Your father and I will do that.’

John nodded. ‘Of course, and you might as well say yes, Maggie, because your mum will wear you down eventually. She always does,’ he added, dropping a kiss on the top of his wife’s fair head.

He wasn’t wrong. By the time the weekend was over Maggie found she had booked herself on a European coach tour.

Her mum had mixed feelings about her choice.

‘But, Maggie, there will be nobody under forty on a coach tour.’

‘Mum, I’m not looking for romance.’

‘What about fun?’

It was a question that Maggie considered on more than one occasion over the next few weeks.

Maybe, she mused, she ought to put sensible on hold and try spontaneous, though not as spontaneous as her friend Millie had suggested when she heard the news of the broken engagement. Fun was one thing but, as she told Millie, the idea of a casual fling with a stranger did not appeal to her.

She had responded with a mystified shake of her head to Millie’s suggestion that she might not have met the right stranger yet.

What Millie didn’t get was that she simply wasn’t a very sexual person.

CHAPTER TWO

RAFAEL worked his way across the room crowded with members of two of the most ancient and powerful families in Spain, brought together to celebrate the baptism of the twin boys who were the result of the marriage that had joined the two dynasties.

His cousin Alfonso, a frown on his face, approached.

Rafael arched a dark brow. ‘A problem?’

‘I’ve just been speaking with the manager, Rafe.’

Rafael nodded encouragingly.