The Latin Lover's Secret Child

Lucio tensed. It took him a moment to process this. “You said she’s recovered.”

“Recovering,” the doctor corrected. “Her body is stronger, but her mind—” he hesitated, picking his words with care, “—her consciousness is altered, has been altered for quite a while—”

“How long?”

“Three weeks.”

Jesus! Lucio rubbed at his temple, his head pounding. He needed sleep. He needed to feel like himself again. “She’s been seriously ill for three weeks?”

“Four, actually. Ever since her return from China. But the first week everyone thought it was just the flu. There were headaches, vomiting, the usual.”

And then seizures, altered consciousness, coma and loss of memory. Lucio grimly clamped his teeth together to keep from saying something he’d regret.

“She is better now,” the doctor reassured. “But she’s confused. I think…we all think…she needs you.”

She needed him?

Lucio nearly laughed out loud. The good doctor didn’t know what he was saying. Anabella most certainly did not need him. She’d made that perfectly clear over and over in the past year.

Lucio reached up to pull the black leather tie from his hair. His heavy black hair fell to his shoulders and with a weary hand he rubbed his temple and his scalp. He was tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

He couldn’t continue like this. Couldn’t continue fighting battles he didn’t care about. The grapes, the economy, the Argentina export business—these did not move him. They were a duty, an obligation, but were they truly his?

And Ana. She wasn’t his anymore, either.

“Not to mince words, but her family hired the divorce attorney. I never thought I’d see them asking me to return.”

“I can’t speak for Marquita,” the doctor replied, referring to Anabella’s beautifully preserved mother who had a taste for hard liquor, “but the Count has offered to send his plane.”

Lucio almost growled his dislike. “I don’t need the Count to send a plane for me. I have transportation of my own, thank you.” It was impossible to hide his bitterness. He and Dante were not friends. Would never be friends. He couldn’t even bear to be in the same room with Anabella’s brother.

The doctor hesitated. “What shall I tell the Count?”

“That I’m packing my things.” Lucio drew a deep breath, forcing himself to suppress his anger towards the Galváns. His marriage might be over, but it didn’t change his feelings. Married or divorced, in his mind, Anabella would always be his wife. To death do us part, and he’d meant it. “I’ll be home tomorrow morning.”

But on the plane that night, stretched out in the leather lounge chair in the first class cabin, Lucio’s thoughts were tangled. His emotions even more jangled.

He tried to picture Anabella ill. He couldn’t. His Ana was tough. Physically, mentally, emotionally. She was as spirited and independent as they came. Nothing touched her. Nothing fazed her.

Ironically, it was her strength that had allowed the divorce to happen in the first place.

She’d been the one who pushed. He’d fought the divorce, fought her, for months, refusing to let go. But his refusal only pushed her further away. Her anger gave way to tears, and then the tears gave way to silence.

They stopped speaking. Stopped being in the same room at the same time. Stopped all communication.

He remembered asking her what she wanted for her birthday and she faced him across the long dinner table, he at one end, she at the other, and she very politely said, “A divorce, please.”

And in that calm voice, and that quiet moment, he agreed.

Later when they sat down to sign the papers, he’d hesitated. But tears welled up in her eyes, and she stretched a hand out across the table, entreating, Let me go, Lucio. We’re both so miserable. Please just let me go.

He caught her hands in his and saw the tears in her beautiful eyes, the quiver of her full passionate mouth and felt hell close round him.

It was over.

Silently he signed his name, dated the document and walked away without another word.

But he hadn’t really walked away, he thought now, leaning his head back against the wide leather seat. He’d been ignoring the truth, denying the truth, unable to handle the fact that Ana could so easily dispose of him, of them.

Eyes burning, Lucio swallowed the rush of hurt.

You were wrong, Anabella, he thought, eyes closed, chest livid with pain. I might have been miserable at times, but I never wanted out. Your love might have died. But I will always love you.

The commercial jet landed in Chile early the next morning, where Lucio took a connecting flight, arriving in Mendoza just after ten. A car was waiting for him, and the driver—one of Lucio’s own—didn’t offer any information and Lucio didn’t ask.

Mendoza had only been home for four years. Lucio had bought the vineyard, villa and business with one cashier’s check. He’d known nothing about the winery business at the time. He just knew it was respectable and respectable was what Ana’s family demanded.

But now as the chauffeur wove on and off the highway towards the villa nestled in the foothills, Lucio couldn’t help reflecting that Ana had loved the gaucho, not the vintner.

The black town car drove through ornate iron gates tipped in gold, and turned down a long private lane leading to an elegant two-story villa, the smooth plaster walls a wash of soft apricot paint. It might be wine country Argentina, but the house was all Tuscany. The original owners had been Italian. The wood beams, hardwood floor, roof tiles all imported from Italy.

With the morning sun casting a warm rosy glow across the front of the one-hundred-year-old villa with the tall cypress trees and the plaster arch flanking the front door, the house looked magical.

Lucio felt a pang of loss. This is the place he’d brought Ana as his new bride. This is the place he’d thought they’d finally make their home.

Nothing ever worked out as one hoped, did it?

“Shall I bring your bags in, Senor?” The chauffeur’s respectful voice interrupted Lucio’s painful thoughts.

Lucio shook off his dark mood, stepped from the car, and adjusted the collar on his black leather traveling coat. He’d do what he’d have to do. “No, Renaldo. I’ll be staying at my apartment downtown.”

Suddenly there was a shout from upstairs. He heard his name called. Once, twice, and Lucio turned to look up at the second floor of the villa. The windows were open to welcome the freshness of the morning. He searched the windows for a glimpse of Anabella but saw nothing.

Seconds later the front door burst open and suddenly she was there, on the doorstep, breathless from the dash down the stairs.

“Lucio,” Anabella cried, green eyes bright. “You’re home!”

CHAPTER TWO

FOR a long moment Lucio could think of nothing to say. It felt as if his brain had stopped functioning altogether and he simply stared at Anabella, amazed to see her downstairs, at the door.

The doctor had made her sound ill—fragile—but she practically glowed, her skin luminous and her green eyes bright like Colombian emeralds. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She was barefoot and wearing snug jeans, a crisp white blouse, and her long glossy black hair hung loose. “Now that you’re here.”

Now that you’re here.

Her soft, husky voice burrowed deep inside his heart. She sounded so glad to see him, so unlike the Anabella he’d last seen eight weeks ago, just hours before she left on her big shopping trip to Asia.

That Anabella, the antiques buyer, had been dressed immaculately in a black suit, high black heels, her red leather suitcases stacked at the door.

She’d stood on the doorstep of the villa for a long silent moment looking at him before smiling faintly. “Well, this is it,” she said, her cool smile not reaching her intense green eyes.

“Is it?”

Her head tipped, giving him a flash of her black hair smoothed into a sophisticated French twist. “I think so.”

“And you get to make all the decisions?” He shot back, regretting that he’d driven to the house to say goodbye, regretting that he couldn’t even contain his temper.

He knew she hated his temper. She hated the unresolved issues still simmering between them. Her cool smile slowly faded. “No, Lucio, I didn’t make all the decisions. We made them together.” And pulling on her black leather traveling gloves, she headed for her car, her head high, her slender back straight.

And that’s how he’d remembered her. Cool, elegant, an ice maiden. But that wasn’t the woman before him now.

“Where have you been, Lucio?” Ana’s voice sounded uncertain and her unblinking eyes held his.

“On a trip.”

Her uncertain smile faded, as did some of the joy from her eyes. “You said you’d never leave me.”

He frowned, puzzled. “We agreed—”

“To be together,” she interrupted fiercely, finishing the sentence for him. And her expression darkened for a moment before she struggled to smile once more. Lucio could feel her struggle. She was trying to make it light between them but on the inside she was hurt. Angry.

“I’m here now,” he answered, unable to think of anything else to say even as his mind raced. She’d been the one to send him away, but that didn’t matter now. He could see that Ana was confused and he felt the urge to protect her, shield her, from memories that hurt. “Everything will be fine now.”

But her eyes filled with tears and she looked away, biting her lip. “It’s too late,” she said sadly.

“What’s too late?”

She hunched her shoulders and her body quivered. “They’ve done terrible things, Lucio. Things I can’t even tell you.”

His heart faltered. And then he remembered the doctor’s caution, the warning that Ana wasn’t herself, and that her memory wasn’t what it’d once been.

She must be talking about the illness, he reassured himself. No one had harmed her. He might not like her family, but they loved Ana. Dante loved Ana.

“Of course you can tell me,” he said gently. “You tell me everything. You always have.” Once, he silently corrected. Once you told me everything. Once we were as close as two people could be. But that was long ago and it’d been years since they were so open, so free, so hungry together.

“You told me to wait at the café. I waited and waited but you never came. What happened? I was so afraid and then my mother’s people came and they brought me home.”

He didn’t know what to say.

There was only one time when they were separated, forcibly separated, and that was years ago. That episode was the darkest point in his life, the point where all seemed lost.

She took a step away and her hands went to the pockets of her jeans. “Do you know what it’s like to be left? To be abandoned in the middle of the night?” Her rigid shoulders drew her white cotton blouse taut. She still had such a beautiful body, her breasts round and full, her torso lean, her hips curved beneath the faded denim. “I felt so lost, so confused. And I’ve been waiting for you ever since. Waiting for you to come find me again.”

But he had found her again. He’d found her three and a half years ago and they’d moved here, and later married, but their happiness hadn’t lasted. It hadn’t worked the first time. And it hadn’t worked the second, either. Their passion, their attraction couldn’t handle the brunt of reality.

Yet that was all water under the bridge. Clearly she didn’t remember anything since that terrible night five years ago.

“You said you’d be there for me,” she whispered, eyes blazing now, furious. Accusing. “You lied to me. You weren’t there when I needed you most.”

“I’m here now.”

Her brilliant green gaze held his, and she searched his eyes, her full lips pressed into a mutinous line. He didn’t know what she was searching for. He didn’t know what she hoped to find.

“Are you going to stay?” she asked at length.

The air felt bottled in his lungs. “As long as you want me to stay.”

“I want you to stay forever.”

The innocence of her answer, the childlike honesty, made him ache. His chest burned, his heart felt as if it were on fire. She was torturing him.

She’d been the one to send him away, he heard a voice protest inside his head. She’d been the one that wanted the divorce. Insisted on the divorce.

But that didn’t matter now, he silently argued. Right now she needed him. And that was all that mattered.

She grabbed the lapel of his leather coat between her hands. “Look at me,” she commanded, staring up into his face, her eyes almost feverishly bright. “Look me in the eye and promise me that you’ll stay.”

He leaned over, kissed the top of her glossy head. “I’m staying, Ana.” He whispered the words in her ear. “I promise.”

Lucio became conscious that they were still standing on the front steps of the villa with Renaldo. A woman in a white uniform hovered on the other side of the door. Everything was so public, he thought. Nothing was ever private anymore.

“Now can I come in, Ana?” he asked, tipping her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Will you let me come inside, and take my coat off, and just be with you?”

Ana’s heart melted at the warm intensity in Lucio’s dark eyes. This was the way he used to look at her, this was the way he used to love her. With so much passion. And so much conviction. This was the Lucio who was going to take her away.

“Yes.” She slid her hands into his, happiest when touching him. “Come inside, but I warn you, this place is just the kind of house you hate.”

“It’s not so bad,” he answered, his voice almost strangled.

She saw his mouth tighten. She knew he preferred simple things and this villa was typical of the Galván’s aristocratic lifestyle. “It is. It’s pretentious. Packed with antiques and knickknacks and expensive art. But we don’t have to stay here much longer.”

He let her lead him through the long entry. “And where would we go?”

Ana wanted to shrug, answer something light and frivolous. But she didn’t feel light on the inside. She felt wild, driven. Obsessed.

“Ana?” he gently prompted.

She balled her hands into fists. “I want him back. I need him back.” Her voice dropped. “Oh Lucio, I have to get him back.”

Lucio’s brow furrowed. His dark eyes met hers. “Who, Ana? Who are you talking about?”

“The baby.”

“What baby?”

She pressed her fists to her chest, trying to contain her fear. “Our baby.”

Gingerly he reached out to touch her cheek. “Ana, there is no baby. You miscarried.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. We don’t have children.”

She hated the rush of wild emotion. “We do. We have a boy.”

“Negrita, listen to me—”

“How can you not remember?” She searched his face, searched for a sign, some light, a hint of recognition. “Lucio, what’s wrong with you? You have to find our baby. You have to rescue our baby.”

Lucio couldn’t answer. He didn’t know how. His hand fell from her face.

It was worse than the doctor had said, he thought. Far worse. The doctor had said prepare yourself, but how to prepare oneself for this?

Lucio swallowed the lump filling his throat, struggling to come to grips with the shock. This wasn’t Anabella. This couldn’t be Anabella.

And then she whimpered softly. “Could we sit down?” she asked, her voice growing hoarse. “Somewhere dark, please.”

He immediately reached for her. “Your head hurts.” He lightly touched her forehead with his fingertips. She felt cool and yet just the touch of his fingers to her temple made her wince.

He glanced up, saw that the nurse had quietly materialized. “The nurse is here—”

“I’m fine. Really. I just need to sit.” But she was flinching at the sound of her own voice and her shoulders arched, rising towards her ears.

Lucio couldn’t bear for her to suffer, and she was suffering. He took her hand in his. Her pain was like a live thing and it spread through her hot and consuming. He felt it in her skin, in her pulse, in her mind.

He swung her into his arms and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom. “There must be something they can do, something they can give you,” he said, carrying her to her bed and setting her down on top of the burgundy silk coverlet.

Ana rolled over onto her side. “I don’t want anything.” She looked up at him and her eyes were dark. “The medicine makes me sleepy, and I can’t sleep right now. I have to think—”

“How can you think when your head hurts so bad?”

“But I have to. I have to get ready to go for him.”

Him. Not this crazy mumbo jumbo again. Lucio suppressed a sigh, feeling as if he’d stepped into a dense fog. But he had to find his way clear. He had to find a way to help her.

Crossing the floor, Lucio went to the window and drew the drapes to cut the glare. “Better?” he asked as the spacious bedroom darkened.

“Much.” She managed a small smile but he felt how her body seemed to shimmer with a ceaseless, restless energy.

He returned to her side and sat down, next to her on the bed. She pressed her face to his thigh, her hand covering his knee. “Stay,” she whispered, sagging against him, part fatigue, part relief.

“Of course.”

“And you’re not angry?”

She was so tired, he thought. The wild horse had nearly trampled her down. He smiled at her a little, still calming, reassuring. “Why would I be angry? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“But the baby—” She broke off, shook her head and looked at him with fear, with need, with painful vulnerability, but there was something else in her eyes now. Trust.

It was as if the last five years had fallen away and she was a child again, the seventeen-year-old he’d met who craved love.

He stroked her long hair back from her face. “I would never be upset with you about losing the baby. I promise, Ana.”

Grateful tears burned her eyes and she nestled closer, feeling his warmth, letting his heat creep into her. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” she whispered. She carried his hand to her cheek, and held it as if it were a life preserver in the middle of the sea. “It’s like a dream.”

He sat with her until she slept, and once he was sure she was peacefully sleeping, he headed to the door but once there, he couldn’t make himself leave. He stood in the doorway of her darkened room and looked at her where she lay curled on her side.

He could just make out her profile in the dim light. Her face was as perfect as it ever had been—fine, straight nose, slightly turned up at the end, full mouth, firm chin, high cheekbones and wide brow—but it wasn’t her beauty that moved him. It was just being back here, being so close to her again and after all these months, after all this time when he’d thought he was reconciled to living without her, he found himself burning with emotion.

Burning with need.

What the hell had happened to them? Where had everything gone wrong?

Suddenly Lucio resented Ana’s illness and helplessness, resented the fact that she didn’t remember—couldn’t remember—while he felt everything.

He felt the anger, the guilt, the sense of betrayal. He felt loss and grief and rage because dammit, he’d wanted this to work. He’d given everything to their relationship and why hadn’t it been right?

Worst of all, he still missed her so much. Physically missed her. He missed holding her, feeling the shape and weight of her, missed her softness against his body. And it hurt, too, that she’d been the one to say enough, to say she’d had all she wanted, all she needed, and now she was ready to move on with the rest of her life.

What was the rest of her life?

What was his?

Shaking his head, he left her room and quietly closed the door behind him. The nurse was seated in a chair outside Anabella’s room and she looked up at him as he passed. “Everything okay?” she asked.

Lucio nodded. “She’s asleep.”

His eyes felt gritty as he descended the staircase and blinking, he pushed back the sadness, pushed back the ambivalent emotions. This wasn’t the time, he told himself. And this most certainly wasn’t the place.

Seated in Ana’s office, Lucio sorted through her mail, filed the stacks of paperwork, wrote checks for businesses that had sent them statements. He’d forgotten how large her business had grown. She owned a shop in Buenos Aires and another here in Mendoza. The Mendoza store was newer. It didn’t have the business Anabella had hoped for. He studied her accounts for a moment, knowing she’d stretched herself too thin, taken on too much. She’d wanted to be successful, wanted to prove to everyone she wasn’t the baby of the family anymore, but the sophisticated antique dealer. The expert.

He smiled a little and leaning forward he picked up a slender cloisonné clock from the corner of her desk. He’d never seen the clock before. It was turquoise blue with a round ivory face and a pendulum of gold in the shape of a sunburst.

There was a knock on the door and the door opened. The housekeeper quietly carried a tray into the office with a late lunch and placed it on the edge of Lucio’s desk. “I know you haven’t eaten anything since you arrived,” Maria, the housekeeper said, pushing the tray towards him a little.

“I’m not hungry,” he answered, replacing the clock back on Anabella’s desk.

The housekeeper glanced at the clock. “The Senora brought it back from her last trip.”

The trip from China. Lucio felt an urge to throw the clock, break it in a thousand pieces. If Anabella hadn’t been chasing all over the world in search of exotic antiques she’d be well now.

He glanced up at Maria. She was a slim barely graying woman in her fifties. He mustered a smile. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Senor.” She’d been hired after Lucio and Anabella married. Anabella had hired her. “But you are missed.”

How nice to hear something like that, especially after the past six months when he felt completely dispensable. “Thank you.”

“Will you be here long?” the housekeeper asked.

Would he be here long? Yes. No. Only as long as Anabella needed his help.

Only until she sent him away again.

Wearily, Lucio leaned back, rubbed his eyes. “It depends.”

“Your room has been made up.”

The room he’d been banished to when Anabella stopped wanting him in her bed. “Thank you.” He watched the housekeeper start to leave and he sat forward. “Maria—”

She turned towards him. “Sí, Senor?”

How odd that he already felt like such an outsider. It’d only been a couple months since he moved out of the villa. “Let me know what I can do to help you and the rest of the staff. I realize things are not…normal.”

Maria bowed her head. “But what is normal, Senor? I don’t think there is a normal. I think there is just life.”

Lucio was still in the office two hours later when Maria knocked on the door again. He’d dozed off in the chair, slumped back, and he woke with a start. “Yes?” he called gruffly, pushing himself forward, and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He’d slept hard and he shook his head a couple times, finding it difficult to wake.

“The Count Galván is here,” Maria said entering the room and taking the empty tray from a side table. “He’s waiting for you in the salon.”

Lucio passed a hand across his face once again. So the big brother had arrived. Dante Galván certainly didn’t waste time.

Lucio was tempted to have Maria show the Count into the study, but glancing around the study with the framed pictures of Anabella on the desk and the personal keepsakes on the bookshelves made the room feel far too intimate.

Better to meet on neutral ground.

Or as neutral a ground as they were going to find in Lucio’s former house.

Entering the salon Lucio found his brother-in-law standing in the great room with the high painted beams, the plaster walls washed cream, the floor terra-cotta tiles imported from Italy. The oil paintings all dated from the 17th Century and the rich art and fine antiques spoke of wealth, class, prestige.