Page 2 of Midnight Surrender to the Spaniard

He looked a formidable opponent indeed.

‘Oh, Emily...’ she groaned.

Anna made her way up the stairs and quietly pushed open the bedroom door to see her daughter asleep on top of the bed, with all her soft toys tucked up inside it.

Gently, trying not to wake her, Anna put Willow in with the toys, tucking them all in, and then sat on the edge of the bed for a moment and looked at the bottle of eardrops on the bedside table.

Of course Anna wanted to be there to support her friend, but she knew that the changes in pressure caused by flying would likely cause her daughter pain. Until she had the surgery it was out of the question for Willow to fly. Yet Emily had been there for Anna every step of the way—even if Anna hadn’t quite told her everything about Willow’s father...

She hadn’t been able to tell anyone. She had clammed up so badly when she’d tried to tell her parents that they’d wrongly concluded that their daughter had fallen pregnant after some nameless one-night stand.

Four, almost five years later, her relationship with them was still incredibly strained. They adored Willow, though, determinedly not blaming the child for the sins of the mother...

It was to be Anna’s second difficult phone call of the night: explaining to her mother that Emily had invited her and Willow to her wedding in Spain in just a fortnight...

‘What about Willow’s ears?’ Jean Douglas immediately pointed out. ‘Do you really think she should be flying?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Anna admitted. ‘That’s why I’m calling you. I was wondering if you’d be able to look after her for the weekend. I’d fly out on the Friday and be back on Sunday.’

She listened to the long stretch of silence that followed. Anna’s mother had the same pale green eyes as her, and though Anna could just picture them, rolling at her daughter’s audacity, she pushed her request.

‘You did say that you wanted to be more involved with Willow.’

‘And what if we can’t look after her?’ her mother said. ‘It’s Ascension Day, and—’

‘I know that,’ Anna broke in. Because of course she knew that the fortieth day of Easter—Ascension Day—would fall on that Sunday. Her father was the parish vicar, and their lives ran on church time. ‘If you can’t have her, then I completely understand.’

‘What would you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Anna admitted. ‘I’ll speak to her GP and see if there’s...’ She swallowed.

It would be a two-hour flight from London to Seville, followed by a train journey to Jerez, and Willow, with her adventurous spirit, would be thrilled to go.

She asked herself the very question her mother had.

Whatwouldshe do if her mother said she couldn’t have Willow?

‘If you can’t take her then I won’t go,’ Anna said, though it tore her apart to say so. Emily had been there for her all her life—more than her blood family in recent years. Yet Willow had to come first. ‘There’s no one else I’d consider leaving her with.’

Even though her parents’ reaction to her pregnancy had broken her own heart, she trusted them with Willow’s. Willow saw her grandparents at church, and for birthdays and such, and loved them dearly. She adored spending time with them and was always pleading for a sleepover.

Her parents had so far refused.

They’d told Anna, even before she’d given birth, that they would not be used as a babysitting service.

‘Very well.’ She could hear her mother choking on her magnanimous words. ‘We’ll have Willow for the weekend.’

And even though she thanked her mother profusely, in truth she’d almost wanted her to say no.

Anna hadn’t had a single night apart from Willow since she was born, and two nights felt by far too many.

CHAPTER TWO

THEREWOULDBEno train journey to Jerez.

Anna had been told that Sebastián Romero would be waiting to greet her at Seville Airport.

Apparently it was a tradition that thepadrino—the Spanish equivalent of a best man—took care of such details on the eve of the wedding.

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