Inevitably, Lisa had met Sophie’s eyes. She knew what her old friend thought. But the other girl compressed her lips and shook her head, tears flooding her eyes.
After the scratch meal at the kitchen table Sophie had pushed back her chair, glancing at her watch. ‘James should be back by now. He’s been to the Practice Manager’s leaving do. He said he’d back out of it, but I told him not to. There was nothing he could do to help Ben. But I promised to phone and give him what news there is.’
Smothering a yawn, Sophie had left the kitchen and, after helping Honor load the dishwasher, Lisa had excused herself and gone to her old room.
And wished she hadn’t. Downstairs, with the others, while the talk had been all of Ben and the dozens of concerned family friends who had phoned, her mind had been kept occupied by thoughts of the anxiety these good people were trying to handle.
Now, alone, her thoughts returned to her own misery. She knew it was selfish but she simply couldn’t help it. What was Diego thinking of her? Had he believed the stupid lie he must have overheard? Had he misconstrued her distress on hearing of Ben’s accident?
Naturally, she’d been distressed. Ben was a very dear friend of longstanding. But Diego hadn’t known the full story or understood how wretchedly guilty Sophie had made her feel, piling on the sense of responsibility, increasing her need to get back to England immediately because the badly injured Ben had been asking for her. He hadn’t known, or been able to understand, because he hadn’t given her the opportunity to explain anything at all.
Or didn’t any of that merit room in his head? Had he already decided he wanted nothing more to do with her after what she’d accused him of? Remembering the distance he’d put between them after she’d confessed to her unthinking overreaction it seemed the more likely scenario.
In any case this anguished introspection wasn’t going to make anything better, was it?
‘Can I come in?’ Sophie, after a moment’s hesitation, thrust herself into the room and two seconds later Lisa was being grabbed in a bear hug. ‘I’m so sorry, Lise! What I said on the phone was hateful! Will you ever forgive me?’
‘Forget it,’ Lisa said with the little breath that was left in her lungs. ‘I have. You were upset—’
‘No, I was hateful!’ Sophie denied vehemently, releasing her, standing back a pace, her eyes brimming. ‘I was upset—distraught, more like it—but that didn’t mean I had to lay a guilt trip on my best friend!’
Best friend!
The first warmth she’d felt since she’d woken this morning stole round her heart. Lisa gave Sophie a gentle shove that deposited her at the end of the bed and plonked herself down on the pillows, her legs tucked beneath her. Just like old times, gossiping half the night away, she thought with a clutch of gratitude at her heartstrings.
‘When I thought my twin was going to die and Dad asked me to get the number from your father and phone you and tell you Ben had been asking for you, I simply let rip and lashed out. I was about to lose my brother, or so I thought, and you were swanning around in the sun with your Spanish hunk. It was unfair and wrong and I’ll never be able to apologise enough.
‘I was fed up with you when you broke your engagement.’ Sophie gave a noisy sniff. ‘I’d wanted you to be sort of cemented in our family. But Ben did explain at the time, after you’d decided to take off for Spain, that you and he had been going to settle for a dead boring marriage—my description, not his. No passion.’ She was twisting the hem of her sweater between her fingers, her eyes downcast. ‘Then you met up with the only real love of your life again and bingo!’ She raised red-rimmed apologetic eyes. ‘I’m crazy in love with James, so I do understand what happened.’
‘Shut up!’ Lisa said gently, swallowing a lump in her throat. At least she had her best friend back and that was a lot to be thankful for.
Sophie asked, ‘How’s it going with your Spanish hunk? We thought he might have been coming with you. We got the guest room ready, just in case. Mum was determined to get you to stay with us here and not be alone in our miserable little flat.’ She gave a tiny sigh. ‘I expect you’ll be haring back as soon as Ben’s out of danger.’
Lisa firmly changed the painful subject. ‘Never mind all that. Let’s talk about you and James. Tell me, how’s the house-hunting going? Is everything still on track for a midsummer wedding?’
No way could she discuss what had happened between her and Diego. Maybe she’d be able to confide in her friend later, when the pain of it was a little less savage. But not now.
It was two days before Ben was allowed visitors for longer than a few minutes. On the third morning he’d been moved out of ICU and into a private room and his parents and his twin visited for half an hour and reported good progress. Confined to bed with a cage over the lower half of his body, he was getting bored and cranky which, Honor said happily, meant he was well on the mend.
The atmosphere lightened dramatically and when Lisa left for the early evening session Sophie and Honor were preparing a celebratory meal of roast beef and Arthur’s favourite apple pie. Her father had made daily phone calls to the Claytons to keep up to speed over Ben’s progress. He’d spoken to her once, just to say he’d heard she was back and hoped Raffacani wasn’t too put out by her departure. He hadn’t suggested they meet. Lisa hadn’t expected him to and for the first time in her life had no room in her heart for disappointment.
Lisa approached Ben’s bedside with some trepidation. She couldn’t imagine why she had been uppermost in his thoughts when he’d thought he might be dying. But she kept a smile on her face and it widened when she announced with genuine pleasure, ‘You’re looking a whole heap better than I thought you would.’ She bent to kiss his cheek, laying the flowers she’d brought on his bedside locker.
‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’ He indicated the bright bouquets in vases on every available surface. ‘You only needed to bring yourself.’
‘Right.’ Lisa took her time locating a chair and bringing it to the bedside. In extremis, he had called out for her and he was going to tell her why. She dreaded hearing he had been deeply in love with her all along but had done the decent thing and stood aside when he rightly concluded she was in love with another man. Truly, she had never wanted to hurt him.
He had never given the smallest sign that that was the case, though. She would never have agreed to marry him if she’d thought for one moment that he was madly in love with her. But some people were experts when it came to hiding their feelings.
‘Well, I’m here now,’ she said quietly as she sank down on the chair. ‘So why did you ask to see me when you thought you might die?’
He shot her a shame-faced look and too quickly denied thinking any such thing. ‘Who said anything about dying? Other people might have been weeping and wailing and thinking the worst but I knew I’d be OK,’ he said, not really convincingly. ‘Got a lot to live for, haven’t I?’ His voice strengthened with relief as he informed her, ‘I only got a smashed up leg—they’ve put metal pins in it—the rest of the injuries were pretty small beer, apparently, so I was luckier than I thought I was. No, the timing might have been a bit off, under the fraught circumstances, but I’d been going to ask your father for the phone number. I hadn’t got around to it and it was playing on my mind.’
His hand reached for hers and gave it a friendly pat. ‘I’d been worrying about you and I wanted to find out if you were OK, that Raffacani was treating you right. I had a pretty good idea of your feelings for him, but I was a bit unsure about him. I mean—a guy who would tell you, Come and live with me, or else—it made me more uneasy the more I thought about it, I guess.’
He gave her a wry smile. ‘I’ve got too used to looking out for you. And the habit sticks. I wanted to let you know not to be afraid of coming back if things weren’t working out. I would make the Dads give you a job on the staff again so you wouldn’t need to be afraid of being out of work. And, knowing you, I knew you’d be feeling you wouldn’t be we
lcome. I admit the folks were cut up when I told them the engagement was off. I explained why—though not about Raffacani’s threat to cancel all his advertising—and they came round. I wanted to let you know that we’d all welcome you back, if the need arose.’
‘You’re a good friend, Ben. The best,’ Lisa said huskily, her eyes filling emotionally. She blinked rapidly and noticed his increasing pallor with a stab of guilt for allowing him to say so much. ‘I should go; you’re beginning to look tired. I’ve kept you talking for too long. I’ll visit tomorrow if it’s OK with the family.’
She got to her feet. As well as tiring him she knew that the natural progression from what he’d already said, bless him, would be to question her about her relationship with Diego.
Her non-existent relationship.
She wasn’t yet up to discussing it with anyone, not even her dearest friends, without making a complete and utter fool of herself.
But Ben twisted his head on the pillow. ‘Stay. I get so bored! They won’t come to throw you out for at least another ten minutes.’
He looked so aggrieved she didn’t have the heart to leave. But she had to keep the conversation away from her ruined relationship with Diego somehow.
So, sinking back on the chair again, she said quickly, ‘Then you’ve got ten minutes to explain why you’ve started to show boy racer tendencies. Sophie and I always complained that you drove like an old granny on her way to the shops! No one can understand why you did what you did.’
Ben pulled a face, clearly embarrassed. ‘It won’t happen again, believe me! At the time of my accident my mind was away on another planet.’
On another planet? She said softly, ‘That’s not like you, Ben. You always have your feet well grounded.’
‘Don’t I know it!’ His face turned fiercely red, alarming Lisa until he told her, ‘I never thought I’d go and fall in love, but one look at her did it. It shook me rigid!’
‘Ben!’ Happiness for him brought the first real smile for days to her lips. ‘Good for you! Who is she?’
‘Sarah Davies.’ He spoke the name with hushed reverence. ‘You won’t know her, of course. She’s one of the high-flyers Raffacani brought in. She edits the gardening section—we’re broadening out, not just concentrating on way out fashions very few could wear or afford and society functions of no real interest to the majority of readers.’
‘And does she feel the same?’ Lisa steeled herself to ask. The last thing she wanted was to see him hurt. A man who up until now had staunchly pooh-poohed the idea of romantic, passionate love could be hurt so much more than a man who had been regularly falling in and out of that state since his teens.
Ben shrugged, wincing as a minor chest injury protested. ‘How would I know? Though when I finally plucked up the courage to ask her to have dinner with me she did look pleased. It was to have been the night of the accident, would you believe? My mind just wasn’t on what I was doing. I was all knotted up, wondering how I should play it—no practice in that sort of thing, as you know. And there I was, knocked sideways by a big white van! I guessed I’d well and truly blown it, until this came.’ He tipped his head in the direction of a get well card prominently displayed on the locker. ‘Read what she’s put and tell me what you think.’
‘That she’s holding you to that dinner date and hoping to visit you as soon as she gets the nod,’ Lisa affirmed after reading the cheery message. She got up and put the card in his hands. ‘I don’t think you’ve blown it. In fact I’m sure you haven’t.’
Leaning over, she put a careful kiss on his forehead. ‘And, as for how to play it—don’t even think about it. Just follow your heart and do what it tells you.’
Diego paced the terrace, the moon-silvered stone walls of the ancient monastery behind him offering no refuge from his tortured thoughts.
There had been no closure. Their brief time together had been meant to heal old wounds but had opened up new ones, wounds so raw and painful he could neither sleep at night nor rest by day.
He’d told himself he could put it all behind him, forget her, get on with his life. It hadn’t worked. He didn’t want to return to his home in Jerez, or get back to work, or stay on here.
He wanted to be with her. With Lisa. He needed her. Whatever her faults, he had to have her in his life, convince her he could make her happier than Clayton ever could.
And to accomplish that he had to do something about it. He had to go and get her, make her see they were meant to be together. It had been fated ever since he’d lifted her to her feet on that mountain track five years ago and first looked into her beautiful eyes. He’d been a lost man ever since and was damned well going to find himself again. With her. Only her.
Swinging on his heel, he stalked back into his favourite home, took the stairs two at a time and began to pack the few things he’d need. First thing tomorrow he’d be on the first available flight to London.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE flocks of butterflies in Lisa’s stomach began to beat their fluttery wings as the hired Seat climbed to the upper reaches of the twisty mountain road.
She was doing the right thing. She was! She had to hang on to that belief or she would find herself turning round in the next pull-in she came to and heading straight back to Seville.
A detailed map of the area was spread out on the passenger seat but she’d only really needed it at the start of the journey from the airport. It was as if she had an internal homing device that was drawing her back towards the man she loved.
Easing the car round a particularly tight bend she recognised the glimpse of spectacular scenery—the mountainside dropping to a deep river valley, the huddle of white-washed houses far below enclosed by the verdant greenery of vines, citrus trees and olives.
As the road widened slightly it began to descend and the butterflies cranked up their annoying activities, her neck and shoulders ached with tension and, despite the car’s air-conditioning system, Lisa began to sweat. Another mile, maybe two, and she would reach the monastery. And Diego.
But she was doing the right thing!
Reaching the Claytons’ Holland Park home after visiting Ben yesterday evening, the words she’d said to him had echoed with startling, inescapable clarity inside her head.
‘Just follow your heart and do what it tells you.’
She had stood as still as a stone on the doorstep, listening. And her heart had told her to return to Spain, find Diego, and tell him how much she loved him. The voice was clear, insistent.
Her body had glowed—every vein, every nerve end, every muscle and sinew responding to the inescapable tug of him, as if he were calling to her from his remote mountain hideaway.
Now she was seeing the almost mystical experience of the evening before in a more grounded way. Diego might not be still at the old monastery. But Rosa and Manuel would be able to tell her where she could find him; they would give her the address of his home near Jerez and his place of business.
And she knew that when she eventually ran him to earth her admission of love might well leave him cold; he might simply tell her he wasn’t interested. That was something she would have to accept.
Even so, she was doing the right thing. There was a smooth, untroubled logic to it. Things left undone, important things, didn’t bring a peaceful mind. Ben had shown her that.
Soon after his accident, when he’d thought he might not make it, he’d said he needed to see her. He’d wanted to make sure she was all right, to tell her to come back home if things weren’t working out for her, that she’d be welcome, no hard feelings. He hadn’t wanted to leave the assurances unsaid.
And life was notoriously precarious. If something happened either to her or, heaven forbid, Diego, before she’d put the record straight there would be no peace, no closure.
Tears were wetting her face when she eventually switched off the ignition on the forecourt. Briefly closing her eyes, she gave herself a few moments to quieten her mind before mopping the dampness
away with a tissue, exiting and stretching her cramped muscles. She took a deep breath and walked steadily over the sun-baked slabs towards the main door.
Her mouth ran dry and her heart banged savagely against her ribs. Would he refuse to let her cross the threshold? Refuse to listen to what she had to say? Had she come on a fool’s errand?
Don’t even think about it—don’t accept defeat until it’s inevitable. Think of something else, or don’t think at all!
The late afternoon sun burned through the thin cotton of her blouse. But at this time of year the evenings in the mountains would be decidedly chilly. Had she packed a sweater? Did it matter?
‘Señorita!’ The great door swung open and Rosa’s pretty face was wreathed in a beaming smile. Lisa gulped and did her best to return it.
‘I heard the car. So it is you—you stay?’
Lisa tucked a heavy strand of hair behind her ear, took a steadying breath. ‘I’m not sure.’ And wasn’t that the truth—she could be thrown out in two seconds flat. ‘But I’d like to speak to the señor. If you’d tell him I’m here, please.’
‘Come—’ Rosa ushered her into the cool vastness of the great hall. ‘I fetch Manuel. He has the good English. I have not so good.’
Not a bad idea at that, Lisa thought as she lowered herself into a heavily carved chair beneath the tall window flanking the door, wishing the flutter of internal nerves wasn’t making her feel quite so nauseous. There had been too many misunderstandings in the past; they could all do without any more. Though she’d have thought that a simple request to tell Diego she was here would have been easy enough to understand.
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