Page 23 of Midnight Surrender to the Spaniard

And now she knew exactly what she’d been missing all these years.

CHAPTER FIVE

UNFORGETTABLE...

Despite their awful parting, her encounter with Sebastián was something she couldn’t shake off or forget—and not just because Emily soon sent a link to the wedding photos.

Her daughter snuggled on her knee while they went through the images.

‘Who’s that?’ Willow asked, pointing straight at the glamorous Maria, dressed in her flamenco regalia.

‘That’s Maria,’ Anna explained. ‘She’s Emily’s mother-in-law and a famous flamenco dancer.’

‘I want to be a flamenco dancersobadly,’ Willow sighed.

‘I know!’ Anna laughed, because Willow had put on the garish green flamenco dress that Emily had bought her just to look at the pictures.

‘Is that Alejandro?’ Willow pointed to a tall, dark and exceptionally good-looking man.

‘No, that’s his brother,’ Anna responded casually.

She hastily clicked on to the next image, but there was no escape there—it was a picture of her and Sebastián standing next to each other in the vestry.

She had been so acutely aware of him in that moment, Anna thought. Her arm had still been recovering from the lightest touch of his fingers, and if she allowed herself to she could close her eyes and capture again the sharp, clean scent of the cologne that enhanced the essence of the man.

‘What’s his name?’ Willow asked. ‘The brother?’

‘Sebastián,’ Anna said, curiously relieved to say his name out loud.

His impact had been so strong, it felt almost as if it had left some kind of residue behind.

From that day forward, every night, when Willow had gone to bed, Anna resisted the urge to look at those photos. She would pick up her sewing, or the blanket she was embroidering for Emily and Alejandro’s baby, but it was like knowing there were chocolate biscuits in the tin...

Sometimes she would put her sewing down and sit in her little garden on warm summer evenings, breathing in the scent of lavender, trying to escape the memories of him and hating him for that final one.

And it wasn’t just the evenings when there were too many moments when he came to mind—no, he popped into her head at the most random times.

Once, busy at work, she’d slipped off a shoe under her desk, just to wiggle her toes, and that simple, unthinking motion had taken her mind straight back to him.

She’d looked up the quote from Zhuangzi.

When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten; when the belt fits, the belly is forgotten. When the heart is right, ‘for’ and ‘against’ are forgotten. No drives, no compulsions, no needs, no attractions: Then your affairs are under control. You are a free man.

Anna felt she didn’t quite get it, and yet she set it as the wallpaper on her phone.

Sex, she now knew, had been dreadful with Willow’s father. But it wasn’t just the soul-shaking sex with Sebastián that she yearned for, it was the smiles and the honesty—well, apart from her omission about Willow—and how it hadn’t felt like bitching when they’d shared their mutual concern about the haste of the wedding.

Needless concern, it would seem, because Emily and Alejandro were besotted and eagerly awaiting the arrival of their baby—though Emily kept inviting Anna to come out and see her.

And now Willow was having her surgery, and although it was just a day case, Anna felt grateful that her mother had come too, and was there in the waiting room when she had to let go of Willow’s hand as she was wheeled off after having been put under anaesthetic.

Things were getting better with her mother.

It still wasn’t brilliant between them, but she knew her parents adored Willow, and now, as she sat with her mother in the hospital waiting room, Jean Douglas surprised her.

She was talking about her and father’s annual trip to Scotland, to visit cousins and aunts there. Anna was only half listening, her eyes on the door, waiting to hear that Willow’s surgery was done and her daughter was well.

‘...if Willow might like to come? A little holiday before she starts school?’

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