Page 37 of Spanish Marriage Solution

‘Why? Because of your father?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t let any child grow up the way I did. Mateo was resentful of me for not truly being his. I was the evidence of my mother’s faithlessness and that needled him but, since I was also the only way he’d ever get an heir, there wasn’t much else he could do.’

The aching grief in her chest had gradually subsided and all she wanted was to lie here in his arms and ask him questions about his childhood. She was hungry for information now.

‘Did he hurt you?’ she asked, concerned.

‘No.’ Sebastián gently stroked the crease between her brows. ‘Don’t worry, mi cielo, he didn’t. Not physically. He was...exacting. Demanding. A jealous man too. I used to love visiting the stables, because I loved the horses, and I spent a lot of time with Javier, who was the best stable manager we ever had. Javier didn’t know I was his and I didn’t know he was my biological father, not then. I just knew I liked being with him. Mateo became very jealous of the time I spent with him and eventually he fired Javier and told me that Javier had lost his job because of me. Because I was disloyal and ungrateful.’

Her heart seized at the blunt words. ‘That sounds...awful.’

His eyes glinted as he looked at her. ‘Mateo already had an unfaithful wife, and he drew the line at having an unfaithful son. Especially when that son was actually the son of his wife’s lover.’

‘Still,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t excuse him being awful to you. It wasn’t fair of him to treat you like that. It wasn’t your fault that you weren’t his. It’s not as if you were allowed to choose your own father.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But then being Javier’s son wasn’t the only reason he resented me.’

‘There was another reason?’

‘Yes.’ The glitter in his eyes became sharper, harder. ‘He told me that I’d killed my mother.’

Alice’s eyes went wide with shock and concern. He’d been too blunt but that was exactly what Mateo had told him and in just that way. Making him feel like a murderer.

He shouldn’t have said anything about it, of course, but she’d asked and there was no reason not to tell her. She should know about his bitter childhood so she’d understand what he hoped to avoid with Diego.

She was beautiful here, lying naked against his chest with the warm Caribbean salt-scented air feathering over both of them. Her hair was a wild tangle over her shoulders, and she still had the flower behind her ear that he’d put there that morning, a hibiscus blooming pink and gold and red.

Her eyes were red from her moment of grief for her lost baby and her lost fertility, the tracks of her tears still shiny on her skin. The sight of them made him ache.

He shouldn’t have made their first discussion about that loss, not when it was obviously still so painful for her, but when he’d come out of the water and dropped down beside her, that scar on her belly was all he could see. He knew what it was and he hadn’t wanted to say anything about it earlier, and yet after spending days making love to her, knowing it was there and knowing what it meant... He couldn’t keep ignoring it.

Her lost child, her lost fertility, her lost marriage were all things they needed to talk about, just as they needed to talk about their future and their own marriage. Everything had remained so unspoken between them for so long and they couldn’t keep doing that.

So he’d touched that scar gently, tracing the line of it over her warm skin.

She hadn’t held back when he’d asked her about it and when she’d starkly said that she’d never have his child, and he’d seen the grief in her eyes, he’d felt the same grief inside himself too. Both at realising that, yes, he wanted her to carry his child, and yet knowing she never would.

That it felt painful to him meant that the edge of the precipice was even nearer than he’d thought, and that he’d have to be careful. Yet he’d pulled her into his arms to comfort her instead, unable to stop himself.

Years ago he’d wanted to do the same thing when he’d seen the light inside her go out, but back then it hadn’t been his place to do so.

He was her husband now, though, and it was definitely his place, and, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not, he was going to give her comfort and space to grieve however he could.

They had to be able to talk to each other in order to build a healthy relationship between them. A relationship that would provide the best environment for Diego to grow up in.

Now, Alice was looking up at him, her eyes dark. ‘What do you mean you killed her?’

He tried never to think about that day in his father’s office. It had been a long time ago, yet, despite the years, it still felt as if his father with those words had reached inside his chest and gouged out his heart. The simple cruelty of it, to an eleven-year-old boy, still bothered him.

Another reason why you can’t fall in love with her.

Of course not. He’d seen the true face of love that day and it was petty and cruel and jealous. He wanted no part of it ever again.

‘Mateo never told me how my mother died,’ he said. ‘And no one knew that I wasn’t Mateo’s son. And until the day he fired Javier, not even I knew.’

Alice look aghast. ‘What? You mean he kept that all from you, only to dump it all on you then? Why?’

His father’s face had been red with fury and Sebastián had been bewildered as to why. He’d thought that his spending time with the horses was what Mateo wanted, especially learning from Javier, the most experienced of the stable hands.

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