The Return of Her Past

He was quiet for a time, rolling his glass in his hands. ‘Otherwise,’ he continued, ‘I’ve worked like a Trojan to fill my father’s shoes since he had that stroke. He died a few months ago.’

‘I read about that. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It was a release—for all of us, I guess. After the stroke he became embittered and extremely hard to live with. He was always a hard man. I never felt I was living up to his expectations before he became ill but even less so afterwards.’

He sat back and tasted his drink. ‘I’ve even branched out in new directions, successfully, but—’ he paused and shrugged ‘—I can’t help feeling he wouldn’t have approved or that he would have thought of a different way of doing things.’

‘I didn’t know him much,’ Mia murmured.

‘The thing is—’ Carlos drained his drink and looked out into the sunset ‘—I don’t know why I’m telling you this; maybe weddings generate a desire to understand things—or maybe monumental rows do it—’ he shrugged ‘—but I don’t know if it’s thanks to him and his…lack of enthusiasm for most things, including me, that’s given me a similar outlook on life.’

Mia frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s something missing. Hard to put my finger on it, though.’

‘Maybe you’d like to take a year off and live amongst some primitive tribe for a change? Is it that kind of an itch?’

He grimaced. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Then it could be a wife and family you’re lacking,’ Mia said in a motherly sort of way and was completely unprepared for what came next.

He studied her for a long moment, his eyes narrowed and very intent. Then he said, ‘You wouldn’t like to take Nina’s place?’

Mia’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You wouldn’t like to get engaged to me? Not that I was engaged to Nina, but—’ He gestured.

She swallowed, choked again on a sip of her drink and came up spluttering.

He eyed her quizzically. ‘An unusual reaction,’ he murmured.

‘No. I mean yes. I mean…how could you?’ She reached for a napkin from the trolley and patted her eyes and her mouth. ‘I don’t think that’s funny,’ she told him coldly.

He raised a dark eyebrow at her. ‘It wasn’t meant to be. I’m in rather desperate need of a—what should I call it?—a shield at the moment. From Nina and the whole damn caboodle of them.’ He looked irritated to death.

‘Them? Who?’ Mia queried with a frown.

‘The set she moves in, Juanita too, my mother and all the rest of them.’ He gestured. ‘You saw them all today.’ He paused, then smiled suddenly. ‘In comparison, the housekeeper’s daughter is like pure sweet spring water.’

Mia moved abruptly and went white to her lips. ‘How dare you?’ she whispered. ‘How dare you patronise me with your ridiculous proposal and think you can make me laugh about being the housekeeper’s daughter?’

‘Mia—’ he sat up ‘—it may be seven years ago but you and I set each other alight once—remember? Perhaps it didn’t mean a great deal to you, but it happened.’

‘M-may not have meant m-much to me?’ Mia had trouble getting the words out. ‘What are you saying?’

‘You ran away, remember?’

‘I…Carlos, your mother warned me off,’ Mia cried, all her unspoken but good intentions not to rake up the past forgotten. ‘She told me I could never be the one for you, no “housekeeper’s daughter” would be good enough to be your wife. She told me you were only toying with me anyway and she threatened to sack my parents without references if I didn’t go away.’

‘What?’ he growled, looking so astounded Mia could only stare at him wide-eyed.

‘You didn’t know.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

‘I ended up in hospital that night, remember? When I got home you’d gone. Listen, just tell me how it happened,’ he ordered grimly.

Mia stared into the past. ‘She came home first, your mother,’ she said slowly. ‘The storm had passed but I was still—’ she hesitated a moment ‘—I was still lying on the settee. I hadn’t heard her. You were asleep. She was…she was livid.’ Mia swallowed and shivered. ‘She banished me to the service quarters after I’d told her what had happened and she rang for a medevac helicopter. I don’t know when you woke up. I don’t know if you had concussion but the next day was when she warned me off.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘I never told them, not what had happened with you. But I had just received an offer of a place at a Queensland university. I hadn’t been sure I’d take it—it would mean I’d be a long way from my parents—but that’s what I told them—that I’d made up my mind to do it. I left two days later,’ she said bleakly. ‘You hadn’t come back. I didn’t even know if you would. But I couldn’t risk them losing their jobs.’ She looked at him long and steadily. ‘Not both of them at the same time. I just couldn’t.’

He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea. I must have been quite groggy because I don’t remember much about the medevac. But I did go back to West Windward after all sorts of tests and scans and—’ he shook his head impatiently ‘—palaver to determine whether I’d cracked my skull but you’d gone. That was when she told me you’d got a place at a Queensland university, that your parents were so proud of you and what an achievement it was for you. So I congratulated them and they told me they were so proud of you and there seemed to be no trauma attached to it.’

Mia patted her eyes again with the napkin. ‘They were proud of me.’ She shrugged. ‘Did you never…’ she paused, then looked at him directly ‘…did you never consider looking for me to check it out?’

He held her gaze for a long moment, then he said, ‘No.’

‘Why not?’ she whispered.

He looked away and rubbed his jaw. Then he looked directly into her eyes. ‘Mia, it occurred to me I could only mess up your life. I wasn’t ready for a relationship so all I could offer you was an on/off affair, especially if you were up in Queensland. I’d only just taken over from my father so my life was in the process of being completely reorganised.’

He shrugged. ‘I could have kicked myself for doing it—’ He stopped abruptly as she flinched visibly.

‘Hell,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but—’

But Mia had had enough. She jumped up precipitately. ‘So, if your mother hadn’t warned me off, you would have?’

‘No.’ He said it decisively and he got to his feet and reached for her. ‘No.’

As she jumped away she tripped and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her. ‘Listen to me,’ he ordered as he wound his arms around her. ‘Just listen.’

Mia ignored him and struggled to free herself.

‘Mia,’ he warned, ‘since when did you think you could beat me in a damn fight? Be still and listen.’

‘There’s nothing you can say I want to hear,’ she gasped.

He eyed her narrowly, her flushed cheeks and her eyes dark with pain, her hair coming loose. ‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘Then how about this?’

And before she had a chance to identify what he was leading up to, he bent his head and claimed her mouth with a kiss.

She went limp in his arms, from sheer surprise about the way he did it, the way he moved his hands on her body. The feel of him, steel-hard against her softness, was mesmerising. And her lips parted beneath his because she simply couldn’t help herself.

When it was over her head was resting on his arm, her hair flowing over it, her eyes huge, very green and stunned, her lips parted in sheer shock—shock that he had done it, shock that she had responded after his news of what had to amount to a betrayal.

‘Don’t look like that,’ he said.

‘Why did you do it?’ she whispered.