Page 95 of Midnight Surrender to the Spaniard

He was still in his funeral suit and unshaven. He was fully dressed, in a suit, on a beach, and she was the one melting and trying not to show it.

She wanted to leap up and fall into his embrace, or to kiss him or...

But Willow was here.

Or was she just hiding behind her daughter, and actually it was her heart that couldn’t handle it?

‘Willow’s loving the beach,’ Anna explained, watching her daughter running in the shallows. ‘And Dali insisted on staying because I’d already paid her for a full twenty-four hours.’

‘You paid her? I thought—’

‘She’smydaughter,’ Anna said. ‘And I don’t expect my friends to fund—’ She blushed. ‘Well, if I had stayed away last night...’ She tore her eyes away.

His rejection had hurt. And yet it was a pain she had invited in. No, she didn’t feel used, although spending last night alone had told her she was not as brave and sure in this as she’d insisted to Emily or to her mother.

Love had got her on that plane.

Love had seen her follow him up those stairs to his office and wrap herself around him.

And he would never want it.

Sebastián spoke. ‘I was thinking yesterday that I am just like my mother. Cold and—’

‘You’re not.’

‘Sometimes I am,’ he said.

‘Sometimes you have to be,’ Anna answered.

She was thinking of herself. Thinking how hard it was going to be in the future...visiting her friend, keeping things polite between them. Because she couldn’t drag her heart through this again. She would have to learn from him and be cold too.

‘Sebastián...’ She took a sip of lukewarm water from her plastic bottle and wondered how to say what she had to. ‘I’m going to be bringing Willow here in the future...’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t want to confuse her.’

‘Of course not—but in what way do you mean?’

‘“Mummy’s friend came to the beach in a black suit...”’

She watched him give a small smile and then she looked away. She stared at the beautiful blue ocean and listened to the laughter in the air, felt the breeze in the glorious, beautiful moment—and yet there was one thing missing.

‘You see, I want to kiss you,’ she admitted.

‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘But you won’t do it.’

‘No.’

‘And I like it that you won’t,’ Sebastián said. ‘I like it that you put Willow first. What did you tell her about coming here? That it was to see the baby?’

‘No, I told her my friend had lost his father.’

Her eyes sparkled with the effort of trying to keep the love she felt for him locked in her heart, hidden from everyone. She was exhausted by constantly calling him a friend. There was no one in the world she’d have done this for—except perhaps Emily.

‘What about your parents?’ he asked.

‘The same.’ She gave a tight shrug. ‘I asked them to bring her out, but no. It’s fine. She’s having a great time.’

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