Page 66 of His Innocent for One Spanish Night

‘Because I have to be in Seville by midday.’

Carmen was slender, dressed in jodhpurs and a black T-shirt and boots. Though tiny, her stance was confident and her dark eyes suspicious, and her question as she glanced over towards Emily was direct.

‘Quién es ella?’Carmen asked—‘Who is she?’

‘This is Emily,’ Alejandro said in English. ‘Emily, this is my sister Carmen...’

‘Buenos días,’Emily said.

The greeting wasn’t returned.

‘Emily is doing the new website.’

‘Justthe new website?’ Carmen said. ‘Or one of the Romero brothers too?’

‘Hey...’ Alejandro warned his sister, but it didn’t stop Carmen.

‘Does Mariana know?’ she asked, again in Spanish.

‘Don’t even go there, Carmen,’ he told her.

‘Clearly she doesn’t know, if you’re heading to Seville. Isn’t that where you hide all your lovers?’

‘No one’s hiding.’

‘Why do people have to lie?’ Carmen sobbed, and then turned on her heel and ran off.

Alejandro stood there, shaking his head. Then he turned and must have seen Emily’s stricken face.

‘Did you understand all that?’ he asked.

‘I think so.’ She felt a little sick, in fact. ‘Am I being hidden?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped, and they got back in the car and drove in silence.

Alejandro could feel the tension in Emily and he addressed it. ‘You think I’m hiding you because I’m still seeing Mariana. But I told you right at the start we’d broken up. I confided in you.’

She stared ahead but didn’t respond.

‘Say it—whatever it is you’re thinking. Because if you don’t fight your corner, Emily, then no one else will...’

She clearly did not know how to, though.

‘So we drive in silence.’ He shrugged.

Fast too.

She pulled down the sun visor and tried to ready herself for the hotel in Seville. To make matters worse there was a shiny red bump on her chin—when she’d stopped getting spots by the time she was sixteen.

She could see the signs for Seville now, and suddenly not only had she been invited to address the situation, she wanted to. She was so tired of ignoring her own insecurities.

‘Have you told Mariana that it’s over?’

‘As I’ve already told you—yes. I told her in December, and then I told her to make it public the very night that you and I met.’

‘But she hasn’t?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

---