Page 3 of Virgin's Stolen Nights with the Boss

Carmen had been just a little girl, standing at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping as herpapáspoke on the phone with hermamá. Her heart had started to thump with excitement as she’d heard them discussing her...

‘Flamenco lessons?’ Papá said. ‘She’s only four!’

Carmen felt giddy with excitement as she pushed the door of her mother’s studio open.

Her mother had abandoned the studio, just as she had abandoned her children, yet Carmen often sneaked in. There was the scent of Mamá in the air, even if Carmen couldn’t remember her. There were shawls and castanets and shoes with nails in the heels and toes.

Sometimes she would drape a shawl around her shoulders and push her little feet into the shoes, or tie a faded silk rose into her long dark hair and smile at her plump little body in the mirrored walls. She had painted her lips red once, and her cheeks too, and put on a pretty bead necklace.

Sebastián, who had been a teenager then, had washed the lipstick off her face...

‘But I want to dance like Mamá,’ she had told him.

After all, Mamá was a world-famous flamenco dancer. She had seen her—and not just in the photos that lined the studio walls and the bar over at the bodega. Carmen had heard her mother’s rich voice giving interviews on the radio, and seen her on television. She had even heard her mamá say to a reporter how it broke her heart to be separated from her children.

The reporter had asked if she might one day perform with her daughter. Mamá hadn’t answered that question. Instead she had spoken about the devotion that the art of flamenco required. Still, Carmen’s little mind had lit up with visions of her on the stage beside her famous and beautiful mamá...

She would be a mini Maria de Luca, and Mamá would scoop her up into adoring arms.

And now Mamá was coming home to teach her.

Carmen’s heart soared as Papá came off the phone.

‘Mamá has seen the photos I sent her of you. She thinks you’re too...’ He paused and sounded sad. ‘She wants you to start flamenco lessons.’

‘Yes!’ She jumped up and down in excitement and delight. ‘When? When can I start?’

‘Soon. I will call Eva.’

‘Eva?’ Carmen had blinked. Eva was a flamenco dancer who came to the exclusive infant school that she attended, and gave private lessons to some of the children. ‘But Mamá is much better than Eva.’

It was that night that she had begun to comprehend that hermamáhad no intention of coming back.

Yes, Carmen was needy and demanding. And she had screamed that night for her mother, over and over. It wasn’t her father, or her brothers, nor Paula, her nanny, she wanted.

‘Quiero mi mama!’

I want my mummy!

When it had become evident hermamáwasn’t coming—was never coming—Carmen had chopped off all her long black hair, right there in the studio. And on the day of her first private flamenco lesson Carmen had refused to come out of her bedroom.

‘Carmen,’ her papá had sighed, weary from the antics of his overly dramatic daughter. ‘Mamá thinks you need more exercise.’

‘I don’t want to dance flamenco, like Maria.’ It was the first time Carmen had called her mother that. ‘I want to ride horses.’

Even at five it had felt like revenge when she’d won her first ribbon. Her father had laughed at his daughter’s apparent fearlessness. In truth, Carmen had been terrified.

She still was, at times, but she would never let anyone see it.

Even though Papá had been proud of her achievements, he had been so depressed, so desperate for his wife’s return, that he had just thrown money at the situation rather than offer true guidance.

It was Alejandro who had told her to stop holding out any hope that Maria might one day return, and Sebastián who had had ‘the talk’ with her about periods.Theywere the ones who had guided her in place of her parents.

And now it was her brothers who were telling her she needed to fight.

‘Papá wasn’t in his right mind when he made his will,’ Alejandro said as they walked back towards the cars.

‘He was never in his right mind where Maria was concerned.’ Carmen shrugged.

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