Hot Nights with a Spaniard (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases)

by Carole Mortimer

  Below her London lay in a glittering sprawl, and Lily felt as if a band were tightening around her chest as the lights grew smaller and fainter in the spreading pool of blackness. She was leaving behind everything that was familiar and hurtling out into the unknown. She hadn’t really had time to think about what she was doing and had acted purely on instinct. Looking down, she noticed with a thud of dismay that she was still wearing the flower-sprigged skirt and thin shirt that seemed to belong to another lifetime.

  The smiling steward appeared beside her and reeled off a long list of the drinks and snacks on offer, as if Lily were flying off on some indulgent holiday. It had been a long time since the tea and biscuits with Miss Squires, and she wasn’t sure when she would get the chance to eat again, so she asked for coffee and a club sandwich that she really didn’t want and picked up the evening paper that had been left on the table.

  The front page was dominated by pictures of the earthquake. Buildings leant at drunken angles next to those that had completely collapsed, leaving only wires and steel joists sticking up into the dusty air like fractured bones. Lily’s sandwich went untouched as her eyes skimmed the columns of print.

  Tristan’s name leapt out at her, almost as if it had been printed in foot high letters and highlighted in neon rather than mentioned in a narrow sidebar under a small heading. ‘Playboy shows his serious side. Full story pages 6-7.’

  Lily’s hands were shaking so much she could hardly turn the pages.

  It was a double page spread. The headline that stretched across both pages was THE PARTY’S OVER FOR EUROPE’S BAD-BOY BILLIONAIRE and beneath it was a row of photographs showing Tristan with his arm around a variety of beauties at parties and in nightclubs. ‘Never the same girl twice!’ said the caption underneath. The photo in the centre was bigger, and showed him sitting alone in the back of a car.

  Lily’s heart stopped.

  The picture had clearly been taken with a long-lens camera through a blacked out window. Tristan’s head was tipped back against the headrest, his eyes were closed, but the flash of the camera had clearly picked up the tears glistening on his cheeks. The caption beneath read: ‘Suffering: A clearly devastated Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo leaves the hospital where his wife was taken after miscarrying their child earlier this year.’

  The smiling steward appeared at her side. ‘Is there anything you’d like, Mrs Romero?’

  Oh, God, thought Lily. Where to start to answer that question?

  How about my husband’s forgiveness?

  Tristan sat on a hard wooden pew in the village church, his head tipped back against the wall.

  His eyes were closed but he wasn’t asleep. He wouldn’t let himself sleep because, although every muscle and every cell in his body screamed with exhaustion, he knew he had to stay awake and keep holding onto the baby in his arms. Behind his closed eyelids the events of the night before replayed themselves in a constant, tightening loop, so that repeatedly he relived the moment when he had heard the baby crying, then the frantic, adrenaline-fuelled desperation to try to reach it and the feeling of suffocation when he’d finally crawled into the tiny gap between the collapsed roof joist and the rubble of bricks and plaster that had once been the walls to Irina’s house.

  And that was the part where the film kept stalling, like a tape getting stuck and then jerking backwards. He could see the baby—see her small foot in its dirty pink sleepsuit, kicking and flexing, but as he reached out his hand, ramming his shoulder into the narrow space between the roof beam and a slab of wall, it seemed always to slip through his fingers …

  He came to with a cry, his arms tightening reflexively around the bundle in his arms, his eyes flying open and widening in horror as he looked down at the empty blanket clutched to his chest …

  ‘It’s OK. Tristan, it’s all right. She’s safe, look—she’s here.’

  Lily.

  It was Lily, standing over him and cradling the sleeping baby in her arms.

  Tristan dropped his head into his hands, rubbing his fingers hard into eyes that still felt as if they were full of grit. He wasn’t sure any more if he was asleep or awake. Was this just another scene in his disjointed series of dreams?

  He heard the quiet whisper of her skirt as she sat down beside him. The skirt she had been wearing in the garden when the social worker came, he thought randomly; was it a day or a month or a lifetime ago? And then he caught a breath of her clean milk and almonds fragrance and he knew that she was really there.

  Slowly he lifted his head and straightened up, feeling his muscles protest at every movement. Lily said nothing, but she took his hand in her free one, and they just sat like that for a while, his rough, grit-encrusted fingers entwined with her cool, pale, clean ones, her head leaning very lightly against his shoulder, listening to the sound of the baby’s breathing.

  ‘Why did you come?’ he said at last. His voice was rusty and his throat ached from shouting last night. Shouting instructions to Nico, and Dimitri and hundreds of others who were engaged in the same race against time to free those trapped in the rubble.

  She sighed softly and shifted just a little on the pew, so that she was facing him more, her grey eyes serious. ‘Bianca called. Your father had a heart attack yesterday. A serious one. They don’t think he’ll survive.’

  Tristan exhaled heavily, tipping his head back again as despair came down like the night. Not for Juan Carlos, but because he had thought, for a moment, that Lily had come because she wanted him. Because she loved him.

  ‘You came all the way here to tell me that?’

  ‘I thought you might want to see him, before he died,’ she said quietly. She was rocking the baby very gently, almost imperceptibly, in an instinctive maternal rhythm as old as time. ‘I wanted you to have that chance, before it’s too late.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s been a wasted journey,’ he snapped. ‘Juan Carlos can go to the corner of hell he reserved for himself years ago without any kind of goodbye from me.’ He looked up, frowning as a thought suddenly struck him. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual way wives know where their husbands are,’ she said with gentle irony. ‘There was a report about the earthquake on the news and I saw you in the background.’

  He gave a ragged laugh. ‘That’s it, then. Game over. The press will no doubt pick it up and then—’

  ‘They’re onto it already. Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said very wearily. ‘I don’t know; probably.’

  She had been looking down at the child in her arms, but now she lifted her head and looked at him, and the intensity in her beautiful eyes made his sore throat close. ‘Why?’ she said fiercely. ‘Because now everyone will know that Tristan Romero has a heart? That behind the cold façade of the womanising billionaire businessman there’s actually a man who cares about people?’

  He leaned back in the hard pew, trying to ease the ache in his back and his arms and his shoulders and his heart. ‘Is there?’ he said cynically. ‘Or is that just a new image, a fresh angle that they’ll use to sell papers?’

  ‘I think you care,’ she said huskily.

  ‘OK,’ he admitted, on a heavy outward breath, ‘I care. Dios, Lily, I care so much … but what’s the point when I can’t help the people I care about? I let you down yesterday, by saying too much. I ruined it for you. My toxic past just keeps coming back to poison your life, doesn’t it?’

  She got to her feet while he was speaking and stood in front of him, shifting the baby easily up onto her shoulder, cupping the downy hair that was still matted with grit and dust in her hand. Her face was creased with anguish. ‘Tristan, that doesn’t matter,’ she said and her voice was low and urgent. ‘None of that matters. I should never, never have put you through that, but at least it made me realise that the most important thing—’

  Just then the door at the back of the church burst open and the tranquillity was momentarily disturbed by the sound of heavy feet hurr
ying across the tiled floor. People sitting quietly in the pews praying or huddled in little groups giving comfort to each other looked round.

  ‘Señor Romero!’

  Quickly Lily slipped out of the pew and went towards Dimitri, taking his hand. His face was wet with tears.

  ‘Dimitri, what is it?’

  ‘Oh, Marquesa,’ he sobbed, ‘they have found Andrei!’

  Tristan had got to his feet and was standing perfectly still, his face white and tense beneath the streaks of dirt. Agony shot through Lily as an image of him standing by the window in the hospital suddenly flashed into her head, and she recognised the same desperate attempt to maintain emotional control. How could she have been stupid enough to think he didn’t care?

  ‘Is he alive?’ Tristan said tersely.

  ‘Yes. Dehydrated. He is on drip in health centre, but he will be all right soon.’ Dimitri’s expression of tentative joy wavered again as he glanced at the baby against Lily’s chest. ‘How is Emilia?

  ‘She’s fine,’ Lily soothed. ‘Sleeping peacefully. She’s so beautiful, Dimitri.’

  Dimitri looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet in helpless misery. ‘Yes. Just like Irina when she was small.’ His voice broke. ‘They have no one now.’

  ‘Dimitri, they have you,’ Lily said softly, and she held out the sleeping baby to him. Clumsily he took her into his arms and held her awkwardly, but his hands just seemed too big to manage the fragile bundle and the expression on his fleshy, implacable face was one of pained bewilderment.

  ‘I cannot care for them,’ he said hopelessly. ‘Khazakismiri men not brought up to look after babies. I not know how to start now, after so many years without a wife and family. If I was younger perhaps …’ He thrust the baby back to Lily almost imploringly. ‘But you could care for them, Marquesa. You and Señor Romero—’

  ‘It’s out of the question.’

  Tristan leapt to his feet and he pushed past Lily, walking a little distance away before swinging round to face them both. Beneath the grime his face was pale and taut with fury. ‘There are legal procedures. It’s not simple.’

  ‘Sorry, Señor.’ Dimitri looked stricken. ‘Sorry. I should not have asked. It is a miracle that they are safe, but now I worry about what will happen to them …’

  Lily laid a hand on Dimitri’s arm. ‘It’s perfectly natural that you’re worried, but try not to think about that now. It’s too early to make any plans for the twins’ future yet, but of course I’ll take care of them for the time being, for as long as it takes to sort something out.’ Dimitri’s face broke into a relieved smile. ‘On one condition,’ she added.

  ‘Marquesa …?’

  ‘That you go and get something to eat and some rest.’

  After Dimitri had gone, Lily carefully laid Emilia down in the makeshift bed someone had provided for her and went to where Tristan was standing, leaning with his back against a wall by the altar, his eyes closed. The old stone church had withstood the earthquake, but the stained glass window above his head was broken, and coloured shards of glass crunched beneath Lily’s feet as she went towards him. Her heart was hammering, a sickening drumbeat of quiet dread.

  ‘It seems so obvious, doesn’t it?’ he said bitterly, without opening his eyes. ‘And I know that it’s what you want more than anything, but I can’t do it, Lily.’

  She was aware of pain crouching in the corners of her mind, inching forwards, waiting to strike when he said the words that would spell the end, once and for all. She stopped a few feet away from him, clasping her hands together and pressing them to her lips.

  ‘No. It’s OK. I understand.’

  Still his eyes stayed shut, his long lashes dark against his white cheeks. His brow was creased as if he was in pain. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was barely more than a whisper. ‘You never wanted to get married. You never wanted children. You said all along you’d never love me. So, yes, I understand why you can’t do it.’

  His eyes flew open and he pushed himself violently away from the wall, taking her by the shoulders and staring down into her face with an expression of intense suffering that tore into her, filling her with anguish but also a peculiar kind of hope.

  ‘No! I love you more than I thought it was possible to love anyone … anything.’ He spoke slowly, clearly, his voice raw with terrible emotion. ‘God, Lily—I love you so much it’s killing me, because I can’t give you the one thing that you want and because loving you means that I have to do what’s best for you, and that’s leave you alone.’

  She shook her head, vehemently in denial. ‘No—’

  ‘Yes.’ Still holding her by the shoulders, he shook her slightly, his eyes searing into hers. ‘Because I can’t risk it. What if I turn out to be like him?’

  ‘Your father?

  ‘Yes. Him and all the other Romero men before him.’ He let her go abruptly, stepping back and raising his clenched fists to his temples. ‘You were right when you said I was afraid, though it took me a long time to admit it to myself. But I’m absolutely bloody terrified, Lily. I’m scared witless that somewhere that behaviour has been branded into me, hardwired into my brain, and that whether I mean to or not I’ll just end up repeating the cycle.’

  Hope flickered, a tiny flame in the darkness. She smiled steadily into the deep blue anguish of his eyes. ‘You won’t.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ he said fiercely. ‘Look at you—you’re a natural. It’s who you are. You look after things—from injured birds to stray cats. It’s instinctive. Intuitive. Whereas I’m—’

  ‘Like that too.’

  ‘No!’ He took an angry step forward, thrusting his hands into his pockets, almost as if he was afraid he might hurt her. ‘My instinct is to run away from anything remotely emotional,’ he said in a voice that dripped with self-disgust. ‘I’m the man who tried to buy you off, remember? I’m the man who tried to pay to have nothing to do with my own child. I’m the man who left you on your own when you were pregnant, and wasn’t there when—’

  Lily didn’t move, didn’t flinch. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re not that man. That wasn’t instinct. That was desperation. Your instinct was to be the man who holds a little girl’s hand in church when she drops her flowers. Your instinct was to put your younger brother before yourself. That was why you dropped out of university, wasn’t it?’

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly, his eyes fixed on hers. Lily didn’t miss a beat, continuing in the same gentle, hypnotic voice. ‘Your instinct was to look after a pregnant woman on the other side of the world, and provide for whole communities and bring hope to people whose lives have been torn apart. Your instinct was to risk your own life to rescue a child. Tristan, I watched you when you were asleep …’ for the first time her voice caught, and she moved towards him ‘… and you were holding the blanket as if you were still cradling her in your arms. Even then, even when you were half dead with exhaustion, your instinct was to protect her.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  The expression on his face was one of exquisite torment, and it took all Lily’s powers of self restraint not to throw herself into his arms and kiss away the hurt. But she couldn’t do that. Not yet. She stood a few inches away from him trembling with longing and hope.

  ‘I know so. I know that as well as being the man I want to be married to for the rest of my life, you’d also make the most fantastic, incredible father.’ She took a deep breath as her eyes blurred with hot, stinging tears. ‘But that doesn’t mean that we have to do this, Tristan. You were wrong when you said that this is the one thing I want. It’s not. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still want children, but only with you. Only if we’re doing it together, and if it’s not what you want then just having you will be enough for me because …’

  Here she faltered, and bowed her head as the tears ran down her face and splashed on the dusty floor. For a moment neither of them moved, and then she felt Tristan very gently take her chin between his fing
ers and lift her face to his. His blue eyes burned with passion and pain.

  ‘Because what?’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Because I love you so much.’

  He scowled down at her, trying to take it in. ‘So much that you’d give up your dream for me?’

  ‘You are my dream,’ she said simply. ‘It all begins and ends with you. And if some day, somehow, we had a family then that would be … amazing, but if we didn’t, then I’d still have more than I had any right to wish for.’ She paused, her eyelids flickering closed for a second, almost as if she were praying. ‘If I had you.’

  Tristan gave a moan of helpless longing. ‘You have me. Oh, Dios, Lily, you have me, for all of eternity …’

  As he bent his head to kiss her Lily saw a tear fall, leaving a clean trail through the grime on his cheek, and as his lips met hers she felt them tremble. He kissed her with slow and tender passion that felt almost like reverence, his hands cupping her face, his heart beating against hers. And then when both of them were gasping for breath and his fingers were wet with her tears he folded her into his body and wrapped his arms tightly around her, and just held her.

  After a long time Lily raised her head and looked up at him.

  ‘Is it wrong to be happy in the midst of all this devastation?’ she whispered.

  Tristan shook his head slowly. ‘No. It’s the only thing that’s right. The only thing that makes sense. The only thing that makes it possible to go on from this. And we will, I promise you we will.’

  Strength and certainty blazed in the depths of the blue eyes Lily loved so much. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against him.

  ‘Tristan, please …’ she said quietly, ‘hold me again. Don’t let go.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he whispered fiercely into her hair. ‘I’ll never let go.

  EPILOGUE

  LILY paused, a little blue birthday candle held between her fingers as she stood at the window of the big sunny kitchen.