The Spanish Groom

‘Say that again…’ someone breathed.

Dixie reddened, and then turned very pale with fright at what she had almost revealed in her distress and buttoned her mouth. ‘Don’t mind me…I don’t know what I’m s-saying,’ she stammered fearfully.

And she registered then that her brain was in a state of complete flux. What César Valverde had suggested already seemed completely unreal, a figment of her own fevered imagination. A fake engagement to please Jasper? A fantasy slim Dixie Mark Two, united even in pretence with César’s icy sophistication? Did blue moons come up in pairs?

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do for a laugh around here now,’ someone lamented.

‘You’ll have to get your goldfish out of the fountain…wasn’t the ideal environment for them anyway. César raised Cain when he saw you out there feeding them,’ Bruce reminded her ruefully.

‘There’s only one now, and I don’t even have an aquarium!’ Dixie sobbed, because it felt like absolutely the last straw. To take her goldfish out of the fountain below César Valverde’s office and never, ever come back into the building? Suddenly she felt completely bereft and cut adrift.

Across the room, her desk was being cleared for her. One carrier bag grew into three as books, knitting, fish food and sundry items were removed from the crammed drawers. Tissues were supplied and a glass of water was pressed on her.

‘We’re all going to really miss you, Dixie…so we had a lot of fun.’ She was mortified when a large fat envelope was thrust by Bruce into her shoulder bag. She realised then that everyone had known even before she did that she was getting fired, and had been waiting to comfort her.

‘I’ll give you a lift home with your bags,’ Bruce volunteered.

The chipped china jardinière was filched from beneath the dying cactus on her desk, and the goldfish she had found abandoned at the bus stop in a plastic bag removed with some difficulty from the fountain and temporarily rehoused.

‘I just can’t get over how kind everyone’s been,’ Dixie confided as she climbed into Bruce’s car in the basement car park.

She clutched the planter with careful hands, gazing down at the single handsome goldfish she had secretly christened, César. He had eaten his original companion, and even the one she’d actually bought for him, fearing that he would be lonely. César the fish was up near the surface, patrolling with fast flicks of his tail. Dixie gave him a loving and abstracted smile.

‘César can be a real bastard. But the guy’s a complete genius. You can’t expect him to be human too. Try not to think about it. Go round and do Scott’s washing…or whatever,’ Bruce advised, striving to be upbeat. ‘That always seems to give you a lift.’

Yes, it did, she acknowledged ruefully, only this evening she would be waiting tables. But doing anything for Scott gave her the feeling that she had some small personal stake in his busy life. And in the right mood, if Scott didn’t have a hot date or wasn’t eating out, he might suggest that she cooked some supper and stayed to eat with him. She lived for those infrequent invitations.

‘You were in with César a very long time,’ Bruce commented abruptly.

‘We talked a little about Jasper.’

‘Dixie…why did you say César tried to blackmail you?’

‘I must’ve been trying to make a silly joke…’

Bruce sent her scared face a covert appraisal. ‘He never did approve of your friendship with the old man. Can’t think why.’

As soon as Bruce had carried her bags upstairs for her, he left to speed back to the office, long hours being a feature of his highly paid employment. Dixie unlocked the door of her flat. She transferred César the fish into a large glass mixing bowl and fed him, setting him next to the window in the hope that a view of the pigeons on the roof opposite would keep him entertained.

Locking up again, she went down the street to call in on a neighbour she often babysat for at weekends. In return the older woman kept her Jack Russell dog, Spike, during the day.

She took Spike for a quick walk in the park, and then nervously carried him back up to her flat for the night. She wasn’t allowed to keep pets, but she had never had any bother sneaking Spike in after it got dark. Now that the light nights had arrived, she was really scared that she would be seen.

How on earth had her life got into such a terrible, frightening mess? she asked herself in a daze as she watched Spike wolf down his dinner. The future had looked so promising when she had first come up to London to share Petra’s spacious apartment, certainly a lot brighter than it had seemed for many years beforehand…

Dixie’s mother had died when she was five and her father had remarried the following year. It was hard to recall even now that Petra wasn’t really her true sister but actually her stepsister—the daughter of her father’s second wife, Muriel. Already a teenager, Petra had had little interest in a child seven years younger, but Dixie had always longed for a big sister and had adored blonde and beautiful Petra. At seventeen, Petra had left home on her first modelling assignment.

A year later, Dixie’s father had died of a heart attack, and the year after that Muriel had shown the first symptoms of what was to prove to be a long, debilitating terminal illness. Dixie had never managed to pass any exams because she had been forced to miss so much school. Whenever Muriel’s health had been particularly bad, Dixie had had to stay at home to see to her needs. She had left school at sixteen.

Over the following four years, Petra had sent money home regularly but the demands of a career which took her all over the world had made it impossible for her to visit much. A year ago, Muriel Robinson had passed away, and Dixie had more or less invited herself up to London to stay with Petra. Used to living alone, Petra had understandably not been too keen on the arrangement at first, but had soon appreciated that Dixie could look after her apartment when she herself was abroad.

For her own convenience, Petra had opened a household account in both their names, and paid in sufficient money to cover her bills, so that Dixie could easily pay them for her. And when, soon afterwards, Dixie had started work at Valverde Mercantile, she had had her entire salary paid into the same account.

Dixie had frequently ordered expensive food and alcohol for Petra’s lavish parties. In the same way she had dealt with Leticia Zane, after the interior designer’s initial meeting with Petra, ensuring that all the costly redecoration was done in exactly the way her sister wished.

And then, about three months ago, Petra had suddenly announced that she was leaving the UK. Giving up the lease on her apartment, she had packed her bags and flown to Los Angeles. Dixie had moved into the flat. But within weeks the demands for payment had begun rolling in from her sister’s creditors. Dixie had discovered that the joint account was not only empty of her own savings but also overdrawn. Only after the deputy bank manager had patiently explained it to her had Dixie understood that she herself could be held liable for Petra’s unpaid bills.

She had immediately phoned her sister. After admitting that she was broke, but promising to help as soon as she could, Petra had rather drily reminded Dixie of all the money she had generously sent over the years that Dixie had been nursing her mother, Muriel. And Dixie had felt really guilty, because tough as those years had been they would have been intolerable without Petra’s financial assistance.

But the next time Dixie had phoned that same number she had been told that Petra had moved on without leaving a forwarding address. That had been two months ago, and since then she hadn’t heard a word from her sister.

The awful fear that Petra had not the slightest intention of getting in touch again, or of trying to satisfy her creditors, was now beginning to haunt Dixie. She felt so disloyal, thinking about Petra that way. Yet in her heart of hearts she was facing up to the harsh fact that her glamorous stepsister invariably put her own needs first.

And Dixie was terrified of being taken to court and appalled by the reality that she had no way of settling those dreadful bills. That was so unfair to the creditors concerned, and César Valverde had offered to pay them…

‘CAN I JUST RUN OVER this again?’ Dixie asked the table of customers anxiously. ‘That’s one cheeseburger with pickles, one without dressing, a double—’

‘How many times do we have to go over this?’ one of the teenagers groaned. ‘A double hamburger with pickles, a single cheeseburger without…’

Pink with embarrassment, Dixie hurried to amend her notebook as the girl ran through the entire order again. Beneath the jaundiced eye of the manager, Dixie thrust the order over the counter.

‘Get those tables cleared,’ he urged impatiently.

Scurrying over to her section of the busy café, Dixie began to load up a tray. She was so tired that she could feel her knees wobbling whenever she stood still. Wiping her damp brow with the back of her hand, she lifted the heavily laden tray. As she straightened, she could not help but focus on the tall, dark male blocking her view of the rest of the cafe. Dixie froze in shock and dismay.

César Valverde stood six feet away, emanating the kind of lacerating cool which intimidated. Brilliant dark eyes entrapped her evasive ones. As he lifted one ebony brow at her frazzled appearance and coffee-stained overall, Dixie simply wanted to curl up and die. Oh, dear heaven, how had he found out where she worked? And what did he want now, for heaven’s sake?

But then had she really believed that César Valverde would take no for an answer? He wasn’t accustomed to negative responses. His naturally aggressive temperament geared him to persist and demand in the face of refusal, she reminded herself. A workaholic, he thrived under pressure and lived for challenge. When César Valverde set himself a goal, he went all out to get it. She should feel sorry for him, she told herself. He really didn’t know any other way to behave.

An exasperated male voice demanded, ‘Where’s our food?’

‘It’s coming…it’s coming!’ Dixie promised frantically, rudely dredged from her reverie. She fled without looking where she was going, as to look would have brought César Valverde back into focus again.

A shopping bag protruding from beneath a table was her undoing. Catching her foot, Dixie tipped forward, and the tray shot clean out of her perspiring hold. Eyes wide with horror, she watched pieces of food, coffee dregs, crumpled napkins, plates and cups go flying up in the air and fall in all directions. The noise of smashing china was equalled if not surpassed by the shaken exclamations of customers lurching from their seats in an effort to escape the aerial bombardment.

A deathly silence fell in the aftermath. Feverishly muttering incoherent apologies, Dixie bent down to scoop up the tray. The manager removed it from her trembling hands and hissed in her ear, ‘You had your final warning yesterday. You’re fired!’

Only yesterday, three entire meals complete with accompanying drinks had landed on the floor, because in an effort to speed up Dixie had overloaded a tray and then stumbled. Tears of mortification and defeat stinging her eyes, Dixie scuttled into the back of the café. Ripping off the overall, she reached for her cardigan and bag.

When she emerged again, the manager stuffed a couple of notes into her hand. ‘You’re just not cut out for waitressing,’ he said ruefully.

A long, low and expensive sports car hugged the pavement outside the café. The driver’s window whirred down. César surveyed Dixie with an enquiring brow.

‘It’s your fault I dropped that tray…you spooked me!’ Dixie condemned unevenly.

‘If you hadn’t been so busy trying to ignore me it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘You are so smug and patronising. I hate you!’ Dixie gasped truthfully, studying his staggeringly handsome dark features with unconcealed loathing. ‘You always think you’re right about everything!’