Page 26 of Midnight Surrender to the Spaniard

Anna took out her phone and looked at the quote.

She thought of Sebastián and the wedding.

And still she did not regret it. For in their short time together he had taught her so much about how good sex with the right man could be.

Apart from the cruel parting.

Just to be safe, and so as not to appear pathetic if he inadvertently saw it, she deleted the quote from her phone.

On the flight she tried to focus on a biography she’d been saving to read but, gritty though it was, she couldn’t focus. Instead she felt butterflies leaping in her stomach and chest, accompanying her all the way to Seville.

Anna walked out of Arrivals at Seville, trying to forget the last time she had done so, and trying not to recollect how she and Sebastián had locked eyes, and the little joke he’d played, telling her that she’d got the wrong man.

Looking around for her friend, she was suddenly startled. She must be imagining things...because it couldn’t be him.

Him.

Sebastián.

This time he was unshaven, and his hair was longer than she remembered, and he was wearing black trousers and a pale grey rumpled linen shirt.

Maybe by some coincidence he was here to meet someone else—but, no, he put one hand up when he saw her.

Anna’s first thought was that he was too suave to wave.

Her second—selfish—thought was that she wished she wasn’t wearing the same skirt and sandals he’d seen her in before.

But then the nerves set in.

If he was here then something must be wrong!

Telling herself that there were a hundred reasons why Alejandro might have asked Sebastián to pick up his wife’s friend, she made her way over to the man who had haunted her dreams for weeks.

‘Hey,’ he said as she approached.

He must have seen her frown, then appear confused, and then seen her eyes widen in sudden concern that something might be wrong with her friend, because he was quick to reassure her.

‘It’s okay. Everything is okay.’

He touched her bare arm, but clearly things were not okay—because if they were, given how they had parted,hewould not be here.

‘Where’s Emily?’ Anna asked, desperately hoping to be further reassured.

But when he paused before answering she knew that there was something amiss.

‘In hospital. The baby is not behaving.’

Anna swallowed.

‘She was taken into hospital earlier. You were in the air by then, and Alejandro asked if I would collect you.’

The fact that his hand was still on her arm told Anna that there was more.

‘Alejandro has just called and said she’s about to be flown to Marbella, as there is an intensive care neonatal unit there.’

‘So they think she might have the baby? But it’s too soon!’ Anna’s heart leapt into her throat.

‘I don’t know any more than that.’

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