Page 88 of His Innocent for One Spanish Night

‘Go home, Emily—it’s getting a little awkward now.’

‘Awkward?’

‘Embarrassing,’ Mariana corrected herself, and then added, ‘For you. No one likes to see someone make a fool of themselves.’

Emily didn’t blush—rather she paled. Was that what everyone thought of her?

Mariana confirmed that it was.

‘Seeing your puppy dog eyes following him around... Alejandro, he found it cute at first. But now he would rather do his brother’s work in New York than be here, the place where he loves...’

Emily thought back to their first drive. How he had said that love only complicated things...that breaking up shouldn’t be hard to do.

Yet here she was, clinging on.

Well, no more.

Homeless and pregnant was an exaggeration, but as she dragged her case through theplazait wasn’t far from how she felt.

The wheels of her case clacked over the cobblestones and it sounded like women walking and doingpalmas, so close to the sound she loved, and so she went to drop in and bid farewell to Eva.

But, looking up to the studio, she saw she was mid-class.

Everything was just carrying on.

She sat on the edge of the fountain, trying to work out what to do. Whether to stay and try and find accommodation, or just head back to England...

‘Fight your corner, Emily...’Alejandro had said.

She didn’t want to fight her corner, though. She didn’t want to plead her case, or ask if it was true that he was avoiding her.

If it was true, and hewasavoiding her, then how did she tell him she was having his baby?

She reached into her bag to pull out her phone and call for a taxi. Perhaps her head would clear by the time she got to Madrid...

No!

She was tired of living like a frightened mouse.

What she didn’t want to live with was regret.

Emily already regretted the way they’d parted, and she knew that the passage of time would only make things worse.

She dragged her case back to the bodega, unsure whether she was being completely pathetic or dreadfully brave, just knowing it couldn’t end like this.

She was halted by Security.

‘I’m sorry. Access is for staff only.’

‘I am staff,’ Emily said—she had been contracted until five p.m.

But it would seem that when the Romeros closed ranks and wanted you gone, you were gone.

‘If you could watch my luggage for me.’

‘Señorita!’

The guard called her back, but she was already clipping her way across the courtyard and through to the main building. Instead of taking the stairs to Alejandro’s office, she headed for Sebastián’s.

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