my baby’s grandparents. Of course I want to tell them. If I’d realized they didn’t know, I would have. It would have given them solace, knowing that a part of their son remains.”
His jaw worked for a moment. Then he exhaled. “I’m glad you didn’t bring it up. You’re not in any shape to deal with the emotional fallout of a disclosure of this caliber. And instead of providing the solace you think it would have, at this stage, the news would have probably only aggravated their repressed grief.”
But it hadn’t been repressed grief she’d sensed from them.
Then again, what did she know? Her perceptions might be as scrambled as her memories. “You’re probably right.” As usual, she added inwardly. “I’ll tell them when I’m back to normal and I’m certain the pregnancy is stable.”
He lowered his eyes, his voice, and simply said, “Yes.”
Feeling drained on all counts, she gazed up at him—the mystery that kept unraveling only to become more tangled. The anchor of this shifting, treacherous new existence of hers.
And she implored, “Can we go home now, please?”
Six
He took her home. His home.
They’d driven back from the airport to Barcelona city center. From there it had taken over an hour to reach his estate.
By the time they approached it at sunset, she felt saturated with the sheer beauty of the Catalan countryside.
Then they passed through the electronic, twenty-foot wrought iron gates, wound through the driveway, and with each yard deeper into his domain, she realized. There was no such thing as a limit to the capacity to appreciate beauty, to be stunned by it.
She turned her eyes to him. He’d been silent save for necessary words. She’d kept silent, too, struggling with the contradictions of what her heart told her and what her memories insisted on, with wanting to ask him to dispel her doubts.
But the more she remembered everything he’d said and done, everything everyone had said about him in the past days, the more only one conclusion made sense. Her memories had to be false.
He turned to her. After a long moment, he said, deep, quiet, “Welcome to Villa Candelaria, Cybele.”
She swallowed past the emotions, yet her “Thank you” came out a tremulous gasp. She tried again. “When did you buy this place?”
“Actually, I built it. I named it after my mother.”
The lump grew as images took shape and form. Of him as an orphan who’d never forgotten his mother until he one day was affluent enough to build such a place and name it after her, so her memory would continue somewhere outside of his mind and.
Okay, she’d start weeping any second now. Better steer this away from personal stuff. “This place looks …massive. Not just the building, but the land, too.”
“It’s thirty thousand square feet over twenty acres with a mile-long waterfront. Before you think I’m crazy to build all this for myself, I built it hoping it would become the home of many families, affording each privacy and land for whatever projects and pursuits they wished for. Not that it worked out that way.”
The darkness that stained his face and voice seared her. He’d wished to surround himself with family. And he’d been thwarted at every turn, it seemed. Was he suffering from the loneliness and isolation she felt were such an integral part of her own psyche?
“I picked this land completely by chance. I was driving once, aimlessly, when I saw that crest of a hill overlooking this sea channel.” She looked where he was pointing. “The vision slammed into my mind fully formed. A villa built into those rock formations as if it was a part of them.”
She reversed the process, imagining those elements without the magnificent villa they now hugged as if it were an intrinsic part of their structure. “I always thought of the Mediterranean as all sandy beaches.”
“Not this area of the northern Iberian coastline. Rugged rock is indigenous here.”
The car drew to a smooth halt in front of thirty-foot wide stone steps among landscaped, terraced plateaus that surrounded the villa from all sides.
In seconds Rodrigo was handing her out and insisting she sit in the wheelchair she hadn’t used much today. She acquiesced, wondered as he wheeled her up the gentle slope beside the steps if it had always been there, for older family members’ convenience, or if it had been installed to accommodate Mel’s condition.
Turning away from futile musings, she surrendered to the splendor all around her as they reached a gigantic patio that surrounded the villa. On one side it overlooked the magnificent property that was part vineyards and orchards and part landscaped gardens, with the valley and mountains in the distance, and on the other side, the breathtaking sea and shoreline.
The patio led to the highest area overlooking the sea, a massive terrace garden that was illuminated by golden lights planted everywhere like luminescent flowers.
He took her inside and she got rapid impressions of the interior as he swept her to the quarters he’d designated for her.
She felt everything had been chosen with an eye for uniqueness and comfort, simplicity and grandeur, blending sweeping lines and spaces with bold wall colors, honey-colored ceilings and furniture that complemented both. French doors and colonial pillars merged seamlessly with the natural beauty of hardwood floors accentuated by marble and granite. She knew she could spend weeks poring over every detail, but in its whole, she felt this was a place this formidable man had wanted his family to love, to feel at home in from the moment they set foot in it. She knew she did. And she hadn’t technically set foot in it yet.
Then she did. He opened a door, wheeled her in then helped her out of the chair. She stood as he wheeled the chair to one side, walked out to haul in two huge suitcases that had evidently been transported right behind them.
He placed one on the floor and the other on a luggage stand at the far side of the room, which opened into a full-fledged dressing room.
She stood mesmerized as he walked back to her.
He was overwhelming. A few levels beyond that.
He stopped before her, took her hand. She felt as though it burst in flames. “I promise you a detailed tour of the place. Later. In stages. Now you have to rest. Doctor’s orders.”
With that he gave her hand a gentle press, turned and left.
The moment the door clicked closed behind him, she staggered to lean on it, exhaled a choppy breath.
Doctor’s orders. Her doctor …
She bit her lip. Hours ago, she’d consigned her husband’s body to his parents. And all she could think of was Rodrigo. There wasn’t even a twinge of guilt toward Mel. There was sadness, but it was the sadness she knew she’d feel for any human being’s disability and death. For his loved ones’ mourning. Nothing more.
What was wrong with her? What had been wrong with her and Mel? Or was there more wrong with her mind than she believed?
Her lungs deflated on a dejected exhalation.
All she could do now was never let any of those who’d loved and lost Mel know how unaffected by his loss she was. What did it matter what she felt in the secrecy of her heart and mind if she never let the knowledge out to hurt others? She couldn’t change the way she felt, should stop feeling bad about it. It served no purpose, did no one any good.
With that rationalization reached, she felt as if a ten-pound rock had been lifted off her heart. Air flowed into her lungs all of a sudden, just as the lovely surroundings registered in her appreciation centers.
The room—if a thirty-something-by forty-something-foot space with a twelve-foot ceiling could be called that—was a manifestation