Second Chance in Barcelona

by Fiona McArthur

  The gap between each indrawn struggling breath grew greater, and the rise of her thin chest grew less, and then the cycle began again. They both knew the outcome and waited patiently. Felipe sat bowed with his hand in his grandmother’s and Cleo stood behind him, her hand on his shoulder, until finally Doña Luisa Gonzales breathed her last.

  ‘She has gone,’ he whispered, and dropped his head to kiss the still hand beneath his.

  ‘She will always be with you. Love is like that.’

  * * *

  Cleo and Sofia didn’t move back to Felipe’s house the next morning, though the funeral was set for four days later. Against her better judgement Cleo had agreed to stay until then.

  Sofia spoke to Felipe about interviewing staff to open her house again while Cleo was there to help but he offered his cousin full access to Doña Luisa’s apartment if she wished to live in the city. Sofia had been stunned but gratefully accepted the generous offer.

  This way, Alba, who was lost and uncertain and grieving for her mistress, would have a new focus, to help care for Sofia and Isabella’s daily needs for as long as she wished.

  Cleo had seen little of Felipe, who had disappeared into Doña Luisa’s office with the solicitor the first day and later with the priest to make the arrangements for the funeral. He’d then gone home to his own house after a brief goodbye.

  She told herself that the distance he created between them was what she’d expected to happen. He had no need for her now. Like her husband had had no need for her when he’d found a richer, shinier woman.

  But it was too late. She loved him. Had been in love with him since that first night they had lain together in her bed in Coogee, despite her denials.

  He’d captured her heart by his absolute wonder in her. Their connection, though she’d tried to pretend it had just been sex, had pierced her in a way she doubted any man would be able to do again.

  She wished she hadn’t agreed to stay for the funeral, damn it, but Sofia had begged her not to leave yet.

  They didn’t see him at all the next day, though he rang and spoke to Alba and a note had come in Felipe’s bold writing inviting her to lunch on the day prior to the funeral.

  She’d assumed that Sofia and Isabella would be joining them.

  * * *

  On the day before she left Barcelona, the day she was to lunch with Felipe, Cleo woke to a brilliant blue Catalonian sky and shafts of golden light that reflected off the many mirrors and onto the ornate ceiling.

  In two days she would be home at her Coogee flat, where her life would be a far cry from the elaborate halls of this city apartment or the grandeur and soaring ceilings of Felipe’s mansion on the hill.

  At the breakfast table a huge, barely open, long-stemmed rosebud sat to the side of both her and Sofia’s plates. ‘And what is this?’ she asked Alba when the maid came back in with the coffee.

  Alba, too, was wearing a small red rose in her buttonhole.

  ‘April the twenty-third in Barcelona is Lovers’ Day.’ Alba smiled. ‘Everyone gives roses. Traditionally it was the man giving a rose to his true love, and her giving him a book. Nowadays everybody gives roses, not only to lovers but to family and colleagues... It’s a beautiful day!’

  ‘Like Valentine’s Day?’

  ‘Perhaps. If you go into the city, all the stalls in the city centre will be selling roses. Sofia and I are going for a walk this morning with Isabella in the pram to see them.’

  ‘I thought Sofia was coming to lunch with Don Felipe and me?’

  ‘Not today,’ she said, and unsuccessfully hid her smile. ‘He will come at twelve and you must wait here for him.’ The look she gave Cleo said clearly that she was not to go down on the street where she could get into any mischief, such as finding babies to be born.

  They’d be alone?

  In a town full of rose stalls?

  With lovers everywhere?

  Could it get any worse, with an ache in her heart that she would have to hide and her wanting more? Dreading his friendly dismissal of what had grown between them?

  She had thought they had grown closer recently. Much closer. But it seemed that had been wishful thinking on her part. Apart from the note, he’d not even spoken to her since his grandmother’s passing.

  Once Cleo’s duties were done. Her assistance given. His needs met.

  But it was too late for her. She’d let her guard down, had foolishly begun to think maybe Felipe wanted more, wanted her in his life. She’d even dreamed, tentatively, of the future, but that had been before he’d distanced himself from her.

  He had no need of her now.

  He didn’t care for her like she cared for him.

  Felipe had never promised her a future.

  * * *

  Perhaps when she returned home it would pass. Love at first sight was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  Why was everything so tragic? She needed to go home and she couldn’t. Not until after the funeral.

  Perhaps she should just accept the last time she would be with Felipe alone...she laughed bitterly at that...with a chauffeur, and savour her small slice of time with him to keep for ever. As long as she expected nothing.

  The way he had stayed away the last couple of days had made it clear she’d done her job and she could go now. So much for a connection.

  But deep inside a tiny flicker of forlorn hope refused to be extinguished. He had held her hand at the Sagrada. He had smiled at her with warmth and appreciation and wanted to see her happy. Today was their last chance. Tomorrow would be a formal occasion and then she would be gone.

  She would know when he arrived.

  Would he be her warm Felipe or would he be the grim-visaged aristocrat with the solid walls of formality around him?

  Despite Cleo’s preference to wait for Felipe downstairs, at twelve she sat in the formal lounge in her white dress, which Alba had restored to its former pristine state...and breathed.

  Breathing was good. Mindful. Calming.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  She jumped. ‘I must have been daydreaming. I didn’t hear the lift.’

  He inclined his head. ‘You look lovely.’

  ‘You look very elegant yourself.’ He always did. No matter that he wasn’t formally dressed, anyone could tell he was an aristocrat. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We will drive around the city to show you the sights as we have kept you too busy.’ So the Felipe she got was the noble showing the visitor his city. His Barcelona. His tone was formal. Not like the Felipe in Australia or the Felipe at the Sagrada. Austere.

  He had said she looked lovely. But her tiny fledgling hopes of softness, of closeness between them died. ‘You haven’t kept me too busy.’

  Sightseeing with him acting like this wasn’t attractive anyway. ‘Though thank you.’ She allowed herself to be ushered into the lift, but she already felt like a burden to him, merely a task he felt he needed to complete.

  She wished she could just get on the plane today.

  He stood beside her, so tall and handsome, and she was having trouble not touching his arm, just one touch, but he was incredibly formal. Aloof. The aristocrat he was through and through, and she realised with despair that she was so not the woman for him. She should have known that. She had known that.

  His reserve dashed her mood and made her want to turn back. The faint drift of his cologne teased and she wished she’d dabbed herself liberally with her own scent to drown his out. She should never have come.

  He handed her into the car, past Carlos at the door, and sat back. At least Carlos seemed friendlier.

  On the seat in front of her, where Sofia had sat so many times, was a huge bouquet of long-stemmed, glorious red roses.

  He sat next to her. ‘They are for you.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘But we
are not lovers.’ Oh, Lord, why had she said that?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  FELIPE OPENED HIS eyes wide at her flat voice. ‘The roses, it is a tradition.’ She didn’t like roses? She’d seemed to like the ones growing at his house. ‘They can also be between colleagues, even friends, and I hope I may have at least grown towards that standing with you?’ Felipe was at a total loss. He’d expected her to display pleasure. Given him one of her beautiful smiles. Perhaps a kiss, or maybe that would have been too much to hope for.

  He could read nothing on her face. But her mood was odd. Funny how he had trouble sensing the moods of others but with Cleo he could tell straight away when something wasn’t right. He knew his nervousness to make this right today made him seem less approachable, almost grim, but he couldn’t help that. He was damnably tense. On edge to do this in a way she would remember. So much depended on her answers.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ she said. But there was a lack of enthusiasm in her tone he didn’t normally associate with Cleo. Was he wrong? Did she not care for him at all?

  This armful of roses had been a romantic gesture prior to walking her in Gaudi’s beautiful Park Güell and asking her to stay in Spain.

  To ask her to allow him to take the time to court her properly. To discuss the obstacles and how they would surmount them together.

  To propose marriage to her so soon after his grandmother’s passing was too fast even for him—but he had come today to at least begin.

  The wall between them had never been as formidable as it was now. Or was that because he so desperately wanted to break it down?

  Or, more damning, was it that now she actually had her ticket home she was already gone in her thoughts? ‘Is something wrong, Cleo?’

  This outing was so important and yet it seemed doomed already. Already the distance between them grew wider.

  ‘I’m tired.’ She did look weary and he cursed himself for not checking on her over the last two days. ‘It’s been a very emotional week.’ She finally looked at him. ‘You must be too exhausted to play tour guide.’

  That stung a little. ‘I am not playing.’ Nothing frivolous now, that was for sure. Though he had planned a few lighter moments that he’d thought she would appreciate.

  ‘Like you weren’t playing at being a flamenco dancer?’

  He frowned at her. ‘I was not playing then either. In my soul lives such a man. I thought you knew that.’

  Silence. He tried a new tack. ‘But that is not what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Something had gone very wrong at the outset and his plans were failing fast.

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about, Felipe?’ Her tone wasn’t encouraging and he wished he could take her back to the house and start again with this day. He’d thought to take her for a walk in the Park Güell with a picnic basket, and share their first kiss since far too long ago. But already he knew his plans were ashes at his feet.

  ‘Perhaps you would consider moving to Spain and working with me at the hospice?’ he said, far too abruptly. That had been one of the strategies he’d thought might interest her if she decided to stay. Stated alone, without context, it seemed overly demanding and even he had heard the harshness in his tone.

  She froze. ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘I once said I could imagine you at the Hospice Luisa.’ He softened his tone. Tried to make her see his vision for the future—but only if it was her vision, too. He tilted his head to study her. ‘I said I could see you as one who stands at the gate and comforts those going and those who must say goodbye.’

  Like she had just done so admirably for his sweet àvia.

  She shook her head. ‘No. I can’t.’

  ‘But what if you were a teacher of the gatekeepers? The mentor? Someone who shared those skills that I saw so eloquently in my grandmother’s household?’

  ‘No.’ Vehemently.

  He found himself pulling back from her strong denial. The word sounded like a death knell to all his hopes.

  She turned away. ‘This is what you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘One of the things. That and perhaps moving in with Sofia.’ The last thing he’d thought of when he’d realised that asking her to stay with him in his house as he courted her was not fair to either of them. But really he was floundering against her reserve.

  He was very afraid now that if he mentioned love to her she would open the door and get out of the moving car.

  How could he have got it so badly wrong?

  Surely she wasn’t immune to him? That day at the Sagrada. Her warmth and compassion in the early hours of the morning his grandmother had passed. Their one incredible night together in Sydney had affected her, he already knew that. She’d told him so on his jet.

  Every day since he’d let her in a little more, accepted his need of her, his love for her, until she took up space in his world and was embedded firmly in his heart.

  But perhaps he had got it wrong. Perhaps his grandmother, too, had got it wrong—though that would be a first.

  Or, more likely, he felt a little of the tension in himself ease at the thought, he had simply rushed his midwife and spoiled everything.

  All was not yet lost. It was just today that was lost.

  That he could believe. All he could do was retreat and regroup and approach her again later. But he would not give up. If he had to follow her to Australia, then he would. He would never believe she was immune to him.

  But if she left, and he followed, and she said no, then he would have to believe she did not have emotions towards him. Emotions he had seen with his own eyes—and that he shared for her.

  ‘Have I been thoughtless in proposing we meet up today? While you are probably still tired?’ He resisted the urge to grip his hair and pull it in frustration. Could he do nothing right with this woman? ‘But I knew tomorrow at the funeral it would be impossible for us to talk before you left.’ She didn’t comment and he accepted his mistake. There is no hurry, he told himself. Give her time.

  ‘Would you like me to take you back to the house?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CLEO’S LAST DAY in Barcelona dawned dismal and dreary, like the face she saw in the mirror.

  Outside, later, the sky hung leaden like her mood and the wind had a cool bite as she waited for the second black car that would carry her, Sofia and Isabella to the funeral.

  A taxi would take her to the airport straight afterwards.

  Her small bag was packed beside her and the tickets printed for the journey home. Tickets found also on her phone, because she liked to have the paper copies as well for extra insurance.

  She’d more than fulfilled her commitments to all of the Gonzales family and she wanted to leave as soon as possible.

  Even Doña Luisa’s insistence that she be there for Felipe had been completed. She’d done so well there that, well, he’d offered her a job in his hospice.

  Gee, thanks.

  Stupid her, wishing for more. She’d known a long-term relationship with Felipe had been a dream, but one look at the distant man who’d come to take her to lunch yesterday and she’d known he’d been lost to her.

  He’d looked almost afraid she was expecting more from him than he wanted to give.

  She’d been afraid he’d offer her a monetary bonus for loving them all. That would have hurt as well.

  On the drive back he’d barely spoken to her, though he had caught her arm as she’d gone to get out at the apartment. ‘Please, take the roses. I want you to have them.’

  She’d taken them, to make him feel better. Even though they’d made her feel worse. Had buried her face in the red velvet petals in the lift as her tears had dripped onto the mosaic floor. Thank goodness nobody had been home.

  He’d promised her nothing and she had no right to be disappointed that th
is was how it ended.

  Oh. Yes. Except for the opportunity to work at the hospice and remain as a companion to Sofia.

  * * *

  The funeral was held in the cathedral in the centre of Barcelona and the huge church was almost full. The rows of dignitaries and heads of state felt overwhelming to Cleo. Felipe and Sofia sat in the first pew and slotted in perfectly with all the exalted personages.

  Cleo fitted perfectly at the back with Alba and Rhona and Carlos.

  But when the long, traditional service was done with much pomp and ceremony it wasn’t over yet. Sofia had asked Cleo to go to the graveyard with her and reluctantly she’d agreed.

  She could leave for the airport from the cemetery but she could not go to the wake. Enough.

  Fewer people were present at the graveside service as only a few were invited to the private ceremony.

  What she couldn’t help notice was that apart from Sofia there was no one who approached Felipe in a genuine way to offer their condolences. Yes, there was respect, and acknowledgement of his loss, but no warmth. He really had no one. Where was the warmth?

  After the greetings and handshakes he stood back from others, emitting a solitary demeanour that demanded he be left alone. Without support. Her heart ached for him but that was nothing new.

  As the service closed and the first clods of earth were scattered, Sofia, with Isabella in her arms, walked up to him and touched his shoulder. Then she hugged him and, to Cleo’s surprise, he hugged her back. The first time she’d seen that from him. But his face remained a forbidding mask.

  Sofia kissed his cheek, said something quietly, and then she turned and walked away to talk to other people.

  Felipe remained at the graveside alone and finally Cleo couldn’t stand it.

  She crossed the grass, past exquisitely dressed groups of two and three people in designer black, until she stepped in front of him.

  She lifted her chin and met his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Felipe. I consider myself fortunate to have spent some time with your grandmother. She was a very strong woman.’