by Lily Zante
“You flirted with me.”
She opened her mouth to deny it—but a part of her knew that what he said was the truth. Partly. It was part flirtation…on her part, and she’d enjoyed having his attention, had enjoyed feeling desirable and wanted again.
“I thought we were two people who liked each other’s company. I never wanted more.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care whether you believe me or not. It is what it is.” Why did he have to behave like a pubescent teen? She attempted diplomacy, even if for her own selfish reasons. She couldn’t have this shitstorm flying around, not here, not now, not with her sister’s wedding taking place soon. Not with Carlos already here.
“It is what it is?” His face contorted.
“Can’t we just leave it, Ruben? Can’t we just let it go?”
“But you felt something, sometimes, didn’t you?” He angled his head at her, squinting. “Did none of it ever mean anything?”
She closed her eyes not wanting to admit things, not wanting to deny things. She had been confused, she had been unsure, she had been foolish. But now she knew exactly what she wanted and it wasn’t Ruben. It had never been Ruben. It had and would always be Carlos.
“You led me on.”
“I did not.”
For a man in his late twenties, he was taking this childishly. She hated herself right now. This was her mess—her vomit. She should have had the sense to steer clear but it was just that things had… well, they had kind of crept up on her. Stolen up on her like butterflies in a field of flowers.
His mouth set in a hard line. “All those days talking late into the night. All the things you told me—the last time when we met? You remember them? I listened to you because you looked kind of hurt and lonely to me. That didn’t mean anything to you?”
She remembered, of course, she remembered. She blinked rapidly, thinking how best to put this. “I remember those nights. That’s why I was so happy to see you again this time. But I swear to you, I thought we could take this through as friends. You broke up with Celeste. You were hurting too. I was—I was…going through a rough patch in my relationship. We all hit them. But I honestly wasn’t looking for something more. I have a husband.”
“Yet you choose to dress up and go out in the evenings alone, leaving your baby at home, looking for men to make you feel better?” He threw his words at her like bleach on baby skin.
A muscle in her jaw twitched and she held her breath. “I’m married, Ruben. I never hid the fact. It’s true, I needed reassurance. I needed company. You gave me that. But I wasn’t looking for anything more.”
She was sorry she’d hurt him.
“You are the kind of woman who plays with men’s feelings not caring how you twist and tread on them, just for your benefit.”
He was making her out to be a monster. She had faults, and she knew she was no angel. But she hadn’t intended for this. “You’re not listening to me. Our talks, our conversations meant something. Just not the kind of something you might have wanted them to. Last night crept up on us.”
Or had it?
She wondered if it had been his intention all along—the different restaurant, hidden along meandering cobbled streets, the ambiance of the place, the intimate setting? But if he’d intended to change the course of their friendship, it had only been because of the signals she’d put out. Had she asked for this, even though they had discussed their desire to remain friends ?
Who was she fooling at the end of the day?”
“I’m sorry if I hurt you. I never intended to.”
His face turned ugly, and those eyes that had often held her guiltily spellbound now stared back at her with contempt.
“You flirt. You dirty little flirt. It’s true what they say about you American women.”
Her anger surged to a new boiling point. “What’s that?”
“You’re sluts. All of you. You don’t care for people’s feelings, you only care for what you want.”
“That’s horrible. That’s a terrible, offensive, nasty thing to say—” She wasn’t blameless in this either, but he had taken things the wrong way. She’d longed for the emotional connection that he offered her, but she had never asked for it to come to this. She was so embroiled in their argument that she had failed to hear the taxi drive up.
“But true.”
“Not true. You’ve been hurt in a bad way—I see that now. You’ve been hurt before and what you’re going through now—it’s not because of what has happened in this situation, it’s because someone hurt you a long time ago and you haven’t gotten over it.” Incensed as she was by his words, she figured out what Ruben was about.
Maybe it was Celeste, or someone before her, that had done this to him. It wasn’t her doing.
“There’s a word for women like you, women who lead men on. Prick tease. That’s what you are.”
“Yeah, punk? Go ahead and say it one more time.”
Rona spun around at the menacing tone of Carlos’s voice behind her. She blinked at the hardness of his face, too stunned to see that he’d moved from behind her to being between her and Ruben.
“I can’t hear you? What was that again?” He asked.
She heard nothing but the sound of solid fist against bone.
Chapter 24
It wasn’t in Carlos’ nature to be deceptive. He liked to think of himself as a down to earth man who wore his heart, just like his feelings, on his sleeve. Or so he liked to think. He also didn’t like dancing around issues, or hiding the truth. He liked everything out in the open.
Rona’s infidelity—for he considered it as such, even if she hadn’t technically done anything—had crushed him. He was like a grizzly bear with that big hulking body of his and right now he felt helpless and weak and he didn’t know how to deal with it.
Punching someone would help. Punching that idiot would help even more. But he knew fighting was not the answer even if Ruben got what he deserved. He didn’t know how to deal with his wife. Not yet. His anger needed to simmer in that soup of misery for a few more days before he could bring himself to speak to her about this mess.
He would never trust her again. He already found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that she had deceived him and his brain refused to delve to the depths of the sewers to unravel the extent of her infidelity. He wasn’t yet ready to go there, but he would, in time.
He realized that being a mother wasn’t easy, and he assumed that his wife might even have looked at Ava’s life and envied it. He could accept that she’d become let down by him because he’d started to take her for granted. But he couldn’t accept that she’d been unfaithful. Anything but that. The vows he’d taken were for life and he had meant every single one of them, and so, he thought, had she.
As he walked towards the familiar hotel entrance, focusing on his thoughts and simmering in his revenge, the sound of a woman raising her voice caught his attention. The hairs on the back of his neck crept up. He knew that voice.
But it was only when he turned to look in the direction of the noise that his insides squelched to mush when he saw Rona talking to another man.
He knew in an instant that it was Ruben.
At that moment his insides detonated and his heart exploded right then and there as he strode towards them. But it wasn’t quite as he expected. Instead of the happy smiling faces he imagined, these two were anything but. The man looked angry. Carlos sized him up quickly; thin and tall, he had a boyish face, pretty almost. That’s what she’d picked over him?
“There’s a word for women like you, women who lead men on. Prick tease. That’s what you are.”
And the runt was talking to Rona like that?
“Yeah, punk? Go ahead and say it one more time.” Nobody was going to speak to his wife like that—not when he was around.
In his peripheral vision he saw Rona turn sharply but he was too busy getting his fist ready. “I can’t hear you? What was that again?�
� He didn’t wait for the man to answer but let his fist, tight, like iron smack straight into the man’s face.
Blood spurted and Rona’s terrified screams punctured the air. The guy hurtled back onto the hood of a car.
“Don’t you ever talk to my wife like that.”
Ruben held his hand to his face as blood gushed down his front and spurted all over him.
“Carlos! What have you done?” Rona screamed.
“What have you done?” he asked calmly while Ruben bled out. “I’m going to sue you, you—you—” He scrambled into his car and locked the door. They watched as he held his head back and blotted his face with a bunch of tissues.
“It’s broken. You’ve gone and broken his nose.” Rona gasped in shock, her hand on her face as if it was all too much to take in.
“Is that all you care about?” Carlos thundered. He wasn’t sorry for one moment and even though some of the anger had dissipated with his punch, his fingers were ready to hurt some more. Jealousy, like a tight fist weighted in lead, stuck in his stomach.
Rona faced him as Ruben sped away. “What did you do?” She asked again, the color draining from her face.
“I already asked you that question.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“You don’t want to know what I think.” He averted his gaze, seeing only her and that man in his mind’s eye each time he looked at his wife.
Would it ever be the same between them again?
“Carlos, it isn’t what you think.”
“You lied to me.”
“What?”
“You lied last night and you’re lying now.”
“No I—” She closed her eyes and he could already see how sorry she was.
“You were out with him last night.” His face crumbled. “I can’t believe you did that.” His words were lost in a whisper and she wanted to crawl into the ground. “See,” he told her. “You lied. I never thought I’d see the day when it would come to this.”
“Carlos I—” She opened her mouth but no words came out.
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No!” she said, as though he’d asked her if she wanted to die.
“Then what? What is this? What was this about? I turn up to see you talking to a man as though the two of you have been—”
“No, Never.”
“How long?”
“It wasn’t like that.” She folded her arms.
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“Don’t lie to me about anything, Rona. Part of me knows I won’t ever trust you again. Don’t let the other part of me hate you forever.”
She lifted her chin up and looked at him squarely. “We didn’t do anything—except…we kissed, once, last night. It just happened and I swear to you, I swear to you Carlos, please believe me—”
But he didn’t hear anything after ‘kissed.’ His mind painted a picture so vivid, in such detail, in such color that it might as well have been a 3D film. He had never even looked at another woman since the day he’d met her. His friends thought he was crazy—even the married ones—that he never even looked at anyone. They told him that there was looking and appreciating, and then there was going beyond, swimming in dangerous waters. But Carlos didn’t even entertain the idea of looking and appreciating anyone else.
Rona was all that he wanted.
So he couldn’t comprehend what had made his wife fall into the arms of another man and find it in herself to kiss him. His brain wasn’t wired up to accept that and he sure as hell couldn’t understand it. He stared at her, more through her than at her, as she spoke. He could tell by the frantic tone of her voice that she desperately needed him to believe her, but he was past that.
“Where’s Tori?” he asked, suddenly.
She stopped. “She’s in the gardens with Lizzi. Why?”
He didn’t answer her but strode into the hotel. The only way he could live with himself, the only way he could deal with any of this, enough to last until the wedding day, was to spend it with his daughter.
And right now, he didn’t care about Rona.
Chapter 25
Rona looked at the drops of blood on the ground with horror. What had she done?
She’d never seen Carlos this angry before—and even though she’d done wrong, so wrong, wrong, wrong—she knew she had to win back his trust.
Her arms and legs felt as though they were made of bendy plastic and she couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think clearly enough.
Carlos hadn’t been here a day and already he’d unleashed a firestorm. Of course, if she hadn’t set eyes on Ruben, none of this would have happened.
She raced through the lobby, leaving Gina staring at her white-faced. Out in the gardens she looked around frantically for Carlos and found him in the pergola with Tori in his arms. Lizzi tidied up the children’s books and toys, putting them back into the bag.
“You want to spend the day with daddy?” she heard Carlos murmur.
“What’s going on?”
When Carlos ignored her, Lizzi answered. “Tori’s father would like to look after the baby now that he is here. He says my services won’t be needed.”
Rona’s gaze darted to Carlos, who kept his back turned to her. Deliberately, she knew.
“Just a moment,” she said, putting her hands out to Lizzi. The girl had been promised a wage and this arrangement had suited them both. What was Carlos playing at?
“Can I have a word with you?” she asked him calmly.
Tori looked at her strangely, now that she spoke in an un-friendly non-mommy-ish voice. “Hey, beautiful,” said Rona, suddenly softening her pitch as she stroked her baby’s cheek.
Carlos ignored her.
“Carlos,” said Rona and bit through her teeth, trying not to lose her temper. She couldn’t lose it—he was right to be angry but…he had to believe her. He had to calm down. He was here for a goddamn wedding for goodness sake.
It wasn’t as if she’d had a full blown affair or anything.
“What?” He was going to make things difficult.
“Ava hired Lizzi for the summer. She’s been promised a wage. She’s been promised a minimum of four hours a day. You can’t just come in and take Tori off her.”
“I can do what I want—just like you did.”
She let out an uneasy sigh. “Can we discuss that matter in private?”
“I’m taking Tori today and as long as I’m here.”
“How long are you here for?”
He looked at her, his eyes shiny and soft for the briefest of seconds. “I took the month off for you but I’ve decided to leave the day after the wedding. You don’t have to come back, ever.”
She reeled back as though he’d shot her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do mean that.” The hardened expression on his face told her. She could see he had made his mind up, and despite having Lizzi to babysit, Rona knew that it made perfect sense for Carlos to have Tori.
“Let me give you the keys to the pensione. They’re in the office.”
“I don’t need your keys,” he told her in a cold voice. “Don’t wait up.”
“What do you mean? Where are you going? She’s a baby. She can’t be out all day.” She stared at him as though he’d tipped over the edge. She wasn’t so sure leaving Tori with him was a good idea any more. It worried her. “Carlos, you’re not thinking straight—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what to think,” he snapped. But Tori started to whimper at his sharp tone.
“Hey honey, hey,” he said gently, soothing her quickly.
She got it—he was hurting and it would take time for him to calm down. She couldn’t speak to him when he was like this. She wasn’t going to get through to him yet and no amount of explaining would help at this time.
“All of her things are in the baby bag; her diapers, formula milk, and the hotel staff will give you hot water to make her milk up. Her changing—”
�
��I know how to look after a baby, I’ve done it before.” He growled. What hurt her more was that he turned away from her, holding Tori up in his arms. But he couldn’t bear to look at her.
She shook her head and turned to go.
“Lizzi, I might have something else for you to help me out with.” It was just an idea but it was better than sending her home. “But if you don’t want to…”
The girl’s face brightened. “If I can help, I would like to.”
“Follow me,” said Rona and led her back to the office. Tori was in safe hands, even if Carlos was angry, he would be good with the baby.
That was one less thing to worry about.
She passed through reception where she was stopped by a worried looking Gina. “Rona, what happened? A guest reported a fight in the car park and there is blood everywhere.”
The rumors had already started.
“It’s—it’s…” she didn’t know where to begin.
“It’s okay,” said Gina, leaving Rona to feel thankful for not having to repeat her sorry story all over again. “You can tell me later.”
Rona managed a pained smile and walked through to Ava’s office.
“I’m sorry for the change in plan,” she said to Lizzi, struggling to keep her voice neutral. The girl looked at her blankly and Rona was grateful for the girl’s seemingly blasé attitude. Lizzi had no idea of the emotions which had just rocked Rona’s world. Perhaps this was a virtue in itself because the last thing Rona needed was lots of questions.
“For today, you could help me. It’s not too hard, I will show you what to do, if you’d like to.”
“Si,” Lizzi nodded. “I would like to help.”
Rona set her the task of checking the inventory spreadsheet against the new stock they had ordered. While Lizzi busied herself with that, Rona stared at her computer screen and wondered how it was that her life had suddenly fallen apart in less than a day.
Chapter 26
Left alone with his thoughts and his daughter, Carlos sat in the pergola and contemplated the disaster that marked the start of his vacation.
