by Lilac Mills
Sophie smiled. ‘This is what you employ me to do,’ she reminded him gently. ‘To look after you.’
‘I do not need looking after.’
Alex caught her eye and they shared a look. Humour lurked on his face.
‘Paco misses you,’ Sophie said, changing the subject.
Hugo’s grumpy expression softened. ‘I miss him, also.’
‘Have they said when you’re likely to go home?’
‘Two or three more days.’ He shifted slightly in his chair and pain flashed briefly across his face.
Sophie reached out and placed her hand over his in sympathy, but he shook her off. She caught Alex’s eye again and suppressed a smile. Her suspicions that Hugo was going to make a terrible patient were confirmed, and she guessed she’d have some fun and games trying to prevent him from doing too much. At least he’d had the foresight to employ someone to help, even if he’d done so grudgingly. He was realistic enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to cope on his own directly after the operation, although Sophie suspected he’d taken her on more for Paco’s sake than for his own.
The thought that Hugo mightn’t need her now that his nephew was here flitted through her mind, but she pushed it to one side. Alex himself had said he was here because of work, and he wasn’t sure how long he was staying, so she was probably worrying about nothing.
She’d accepted the fact that she’d have to return to the UK in a couple of months. She had. Honestly. But the thought of leaving any sooner than that filled her with dread.
No, she was fretting for no reason. Alex would be gone in a few days, maybe a week, and the three of them – Hugo, Paco and herself – would slot straight back into their old routine.
Suddenly feeling awkward, Sophie got to her feet. ‘I expect you’ve got some catching up to do,’ she said to the pair of them. ‘I’ll go for a wander and find somewhere to get a coffee.’
Hugo waved her away and Alex merely nodded, and as she slipped out of the ward, she heard them talking to each other in quick-fire Spanish.
By the time she returned (having found a vending machine and a hard plastic seat on which to perch while she drank her coffee and tried to read a couple of pages of the book she carried with her everywhere), Alex looked ready to leave, and Hugo looked ready to go back to bed.
From the sallowness of his skin and the deep lines around his eyes and mouth, Sophie could tell he was in some pain. She attracted the attention of a nurse and then they said their goodbyes, Sophie promising to return tomorrow afternoon.
‘It’ll be a bit later than today because I’m going out to lunch,’ she said. ‘Is there anything I can bring you?’
‘No. Who are you lunching with?’
‘Dominic Brockman. He offered to give me some surfing lessons, but I’m not too keen on the idea. I’m going to watch him in the morning, though, as he’s going to surf off the end of the bay.’
‘Be careful and don’t get too close to the waves,’ Hugo warned.
‘I won’t.’ She hesitated, wanting to give him a peck on the cheek but guessing he wouldn’t appreciate it.
‘Who’s Dominic Brockman?’ Alex asked as they made their way back to the car.
‘He’s on Radio TEX in the mornings. His parents own Mrs Tiggywinkle’s shop in Playa de la Arena.’
‘Have you known him long?’
‘Not really. A few days.’
‘And he’s offered to teach you to surf?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing.’ He unlocked the car and they got in.
‘Yes, there is. You’ve got a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.’
‘A what?’
‘You look grumpier than Hugo,’ she explained. His English was exceptionally good, but unsurprisingly it didn’t seem to stretch to some of the more obscure English sayings.
‘It’s just…’ He paused for a moment, concentrating on pulling out of the car park and onto a busy road. ‘I thought you were here to look after my uncle, not to spend your time dating.’
Sophie inhaled sharply. The cheek of him! She was rather hurt too, to think that was the impression he had of her. ‘I am here to look after Hugo,’ she replied stiffly. ‘Please be assured that I don’t intend to allow anything to affect that.’
‘Tell me, do you have a contract? What qualifications do you have that make you suitable to care for him?’
‘No, and none. Look, if you’re not happy with me, then speak to Hugo.’
She didn’t appreciate having her integrity or work ethic called into question, especially when this man knew nothing about her. Hell, he’d not even been aware that Hugo was having his hip replaced, so what right did he have to question his uncle’s arrangements for his care? Or her ability to do precisely that? And the sort of care she’d provided for her mother was miles apart from the basic household tasks Hugo wanted her to perform. For Alex to suggest she needed a bloody degree for that was insulting.
‘For your information, I nursed my mother for years until she died, and I didn’t need any sodding qualifications for that!’ Tears were close to the surface, threatening to spill over onto her cheeks, and she gulped them back. There was no way she was going to let this obnoxious man see her cry. She refused to give him the satisfaction.
‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he replied stiffly. ‘When did she pass away?’
‘At the beginning of October.’
‘Not long.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
No he wasn’t. He couldn’t care less. He clearly didn’t like her, didn’t want her living in Hugo’s house, and wasn’t happy about leaving his uncle in her care.
‘If you give me a couple of days to sort out a flight, I’ll be out of your hair.’ Dear Lord, she needed to sort out more than a flight – she had nowhere to live, no job…
She glanced at Alex out of the corner of her eye, hoping she was wrong about him wanting her gone, but his expression gave nothing away.
‘I can’t leave any sooner,’ she said. She really couldn’t – she didn’t want to turn up in the UK with nowhere to stay, although at this precise moment she didn’t have the foggiest idea what she could do about that.
‘Why do you want to leave?’
She frowned. ‘You said…?’
‘I didn’t say you should leave. Hugo needs you. But more importantly, he likes you.’
‘He said that?’ Her anger began to drain away, along with her distress.
‘Yes. Please don’t take offence; I’m simply looking out for him. I don’t want him to be exploited.’
‘What?’ The plug was back in her tub of anger and the bowl was rapidly filling up again. ‘You think I’m exploiting Hugo? How?’ she demanded furiously.
‘The villa is worth a lot of money. He is a single man living on his own…’ Alex shrugged a shoulder.
‘How dare you? How bloody dare you!’ Sophie was almost incandescent with rage. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Hugo was old enough to be her father. The fact that she and Hugo had separate bedrooms should tell Alex that nothing was going on between them. And he’d already asked her that question last night when he’d barged into her room. Clearly he hadn’t believed her. Hang on a minute…
‘You can’t have it both ways,’ she cried. ‘One minute you’re accusing me of playing around with Dominic off the radio, and the next you’re saying I’ve set my sights on your uncle and accusing me of being some kind of gold-digger. Which is it? Eh?’
Alex inhaled deeply and let out a long, slow breath. ‘Look at it from my point of view,’ he said levelly. ‘I arrive in the middle of the night to find a strange woman in my uncle’s house and my uncle in hospital having an operation which I know nothing about. He’s not told the family about either his need for a hip replacement or about you. You hear of old people being preyed on and I don’t want it happening to Hugo.’
&
nbsp; ‘If you’re that concerned about him, how come you didn’t know he needed an operation? Hips don’t suddenly go overnight, you know. He’s had this problem for a while.’
‘Touché.’ His lips twisted into a rueful smile. ‘You are right, of course. I should have known. My family should have known. All I can say in our defence is that I have been working abroad a lot and my parents – my mother is his sister – live in Madrid. We don’t come home as often as we’d like, or as frequently as we should. I also think Hugo deliberately didn’t share details of his health with us. My apologies.’
‘Not accepted.’ Sophie crossed her arms. ‘Don’t try to ease your guilt by having a go at me. You can’t blame Hugo for sorting out his care himself. He obviously didn’t feel he could ask you to help. So either you leave me alone to get on with what Hugo is employing me to do, or you tell me to go and you can look after him yourself.’
There was silence for the rest of the drive. She had no idea what Alex was thinking, but her mind was whirling with the problem of how soon she could get a flight – she had no intention of staying where she wasn’t wanted – and what the hell she was going to do once that flight landed. It would have to be a guest house in the short term, she imagined. There really wasn’t any other option.
Alex unlocked the barrier and drove down the track towards the villa, with Sophie sitting rigidly beside him, wanting nothing more than to flee into the relative privacy of her bedroom and sob. She was just about holding herself together and thinking she’d done well not to fall apart when Alex, damn him, spoke.
‘Are we still going out to dinner?’
Chapter 16
Sophie leapt from the car, slammed the door as hard as she could, and whirled to face Alex. ‘No! Of course we aren’t going out for dinner. What’s wrong with you? Some of us have got packing to do and a flight to book. And no, I don’t want a lift to the airport. I can find my own way there, thank you very much.’
‘I wasn’t offering to give you a lift.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ She threw her hands up in frustration.
‘Because,’ he said, a smile playing about his lips, ‘you’re not leaving.’
‘Watch me.’ She was aware she was behaving like a toddler having a tantrum, but dear God, this man seemed adept at bringing out the worst in her.
‘Please,’ he said.
‘Please what?’
‘Don’t go.’ That smile was still there. More of a smirk, she thought, and she wanted to wipe it off his lips and carry out her threat.
But he’d given her a way out, and did she really want to cut off her nose to spite her face? As she’d told herself earlier, he’d be gone soon, out of her hair, and there’d be just her and Hugo once again. That’s if she could tolerate this obnoxious man for a few more days.
‘Please,’ he repeated, sounding a little less certain of himself this time. ‘I know I haven’t been fair with you, but try to see it from my side. I honestly didn’t know what to think or what to believe, and the fact that Hugo didn’t tell any of us about the problem with his hip makes me feel awful. Did he think we wouldn’t care?’ Guilt and worry were written all over his face.
‘OK,’ she said, thinking he might have a point, although he had reacted unfairly, and she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘I’ll stay; but no more allegations.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And you don’t interfere in the house.’
He gave her a level stare and she thought he was going to object, but all he said was, ‘Fine, no interfering.’
‘And you can take Paco for a walk while I get ready.’
‘Get ready for what?’
‘Dinner.’
His lips twitched again, but he didn’t say anything. He simply nodded and strolled past her to unlock the front door.
She waited for him to go inside, and heard him talking to Paco before she slunk into the hall and shot to her bedroom, where she leant against the closed door breathing deeply. Despite his obvious suspicion of her, she couldn’t help being attracted to him. He was far too handsome for his own good, too sure of himself, too confident, and he was a threat to her carefully constructed and very new equilibrium. She neither needed nor wanted to feel so disconcerted by him.
Hoping the way was clear, she opened her bedroom door and crept slowly out.
Alex was in the hallway, putting a lead on Paco.
‘He doesn’t need that,’ she said. ‘He won’t go far. You can take him to the natural pool over there.’ She waved vaguely in its general direction. ‘He likes the water.’
‘I know where it is.’
‘Oh. Of course you do.’ She felt a bit silly. He probably knew the area much better than she did, and she wondered if he’d lived around here once. It was strange to think she was sharing a house with him and yet she knew so little about him, apart from his name and what he did for a living; although the details of his job were equally as unknown. She didn’t know how old he was either, although she could take an educated guess at mid-thirties.
‘Um, can I ask a personal question?’ she said.
He straightened up. ‘You can ask. I might not give you an answer.’
‘How old are you?’
‘How old do you think I am?’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Er… thirty-five?’
‘Thirty-seven. How old are you?’
‘Thirty-three.’
‘It’s good that we’ve got that out of the way,’ he said, and she could tell he was laughing at her, even if those perfect lips of his hadn’t moved. ‘Is my age important?’
Sophie shrugged. ‘Not really. I was just curious.’
‘We can get to know one another a little more over dinner,’ he said. ‘Shall we leave at around eight, to eat for nine?’
Nine was late. She was already starting to get hungry. She recognised that she was programmed to eat earlier than was usual for the locals, but Hugo had happily fitted in with dinner at six thirty, and she suspected that he was so grateful to have a wholesome meal put in front of him that he wouldn’t have cared what time it was served at.
‘Eight is fine,’ she said. The upside was that it would give her more time to find something suitable to wear, because she was as sure as God made little green apples that a pair of shorts and a strappy T-shirt simply wouldn’t do.
After Alex left, Sophie had a quick shower and dried her hair, then spent the next half an hour searching through her wardrobe.
There wasn’t a great deal to choose from. The summer clothes she had brought with her were years old. Thankfully she’d never tended to buy high fashion clothes, and shorts, T-shirts and bikinis didn’t tend to date much, but nevertheless she felt dowdy in the six-year-old dress she’d picked out.
It was pretty enough with its turquoise and pink colours, and she supposed it was quite flattering, but it was old and she’d worn it loads of times previously (although not for a couple of years) and she didn’t feel special in it. Though why she felt the need to feel special when she was only popping out for a bite to eat with her employer’s nephew was beyond her. It was hardly a date. Tonight’s dinner was born of a need to eat and Alex’s kindness in not having her cook for him.
Or maybe it wasn’t kindness. Kindness wasn’t a word she associated with Alejandro. So if it wasn’t that, then it must be that he didn’t trust her skills in the kitchen. Or that he felt uncomfortable having a strange woman prepare his dinner in his own house. Not that it was his house, but she knew what she meant. Dinner for two in the little dining area, or out on the terrace with the sun setting over La Gomera might be a little too intimate for his liking. Whereas dinner in a busy restaurant was far less romantic.
Romantic? Ha! Why was she thinking about Alex and romance in the same sentence? She most definitely wasn’t having any kind of romantic thoughts about him whatsoever. And she was pretty certain he wasn’t having any about her. They rubbed each
other up the wrong way for a start, and he definitely got on her nerves. Not only that, but he was rather rude and a bit too brooding for her liking. A bit too Mr Darcy-ish.
His melted chocolate eyes and faint hint of stubble, not to mention the accent, were quite gorgeous, though. Now and again he reminded her of a younger (although not by much) Álex González, but with shorter hair than his Riptide character in that X-Men film.
Handsome and arrogant with a hint of dark menace (was she reading too much into him?) was a worrying and dangerous combination, and she made a vow to keep her distance. Alejandro seemed like the sort of man to gobble a woman up (ignore the shiver, she told herself at the unsettling thought) and spit her out when he was done, with no regard to her heart. And Sophie had enough problems already, without adding yet more heartache into the mix.
Now Dominic, on the other hand, was more boy-next-door surfer dude, and an altogether different proposition. She didn’t feel at all threatened by him, nor unsettled or discomforted when she thought about him, and she found she was very much looking forward to having lunch with him tomorrow.
Not as much as you’re looking forward to dinner this evening, a treacherous little voice in her head whispered.
‘Oh, shut up,’ she muttered, giving herself one last look in the mirror.
It was dinner. Nothing more, nothing less.
So why did she have butterflies in her tummy and a sense of anticipation in her heart?
Chapter 17
Sophie had expected to be taken to one of the many restaurants in Playa de la Arena or Alcalá. What she hadn’t been expecting was a biker café in Santiago del Teide, a town perched high in the mountains above Los Gigantes and those famous cliffs.
The fact that the place (she was fairly sure the name ‘restaurant’ wasn’t warranted, and neither could it be called a bar) was heaving was some consolation. That it was chock full of people (mostly guys) in leather, with helmets dangling from the crooks of their elbows, wasn’t. The gleaming chrome and black bikes sitting neatly in rows on the road outside hadn’t inspired her with confidence either. In fact, they reminded her of a row of horses outside a saloon in the American West, and she was almost expecting a shoot-out between the sheriffs and the bad guys at any moment.
