He did neither. No smile. No decimation. He brooded down at her, seemed to be struggling with something. A decision.
Then he voiced it. “Muy bien, Cybele. You win. If you insist on leaving, go ahead. Leave.”
Her heart plummeted down a never-ending spiral.
And he was turning around, walking away.
He’d taken no for an answer.
But he never did. He’d told her so. She’d believed him. That was why she’d said what she had. He couldn’t take no for an answer. That meant she’d lose him now, not later. And she couldn’t lose him now. She wasn’t ready to be without him for the rest of her life.
She wanted to scream that she took it all back. That she’d only been trying to do what she thought she should, assert an independence she still couldn’t handle, to relieve him of the burden of her.
She didn’t make a sound. She couldn’t. Because her heart had splintered. Because she had no right to ask for more from him, of him. He’d given her far more than she’d thought anyone could ever give. He’d given her back her life. And it was time to give him back his, after she’d inadvertently hijacked it.
She turned away, feeling as though ice had skewered from her gut to her heart, only the freezing felt now, the pain and damage still unregistered.
Her numb hand was on her doorknob when she heard him say, “By the way, Cybele, good luck getting past Consuelo.”
She staggered around. He was looking at her over his shoulder from the end of the corridor, the light from the just-below-the-ceiling windows pouring over him like a spotlight. He looked like that archangel she’d thought him before. His lips were crooked.
He was teasing her!
He didn’t want her to leave, hadn’t accepted that she could.
Before she could do something colossally stupid, like run and throw herself into his arms and sob her heart out, Consuelo, in a flaming red dress with a flaring skirt, swept by Rodrigo and down the corridor like a missile set on her coordinates.
She pounced on her. “You trying to undo all my work? Seven hours running around?” Consuelo turned and impaled Rodrigo with her displeasure. “And you! Letting your patient call the shots.”
Rodrigo glared at her in mock-indignation before he gave Cybele a get-past-this wink. Then he turned and walked away, his bass chuckles resonating in the corridor, in her every cell.
Consuelo dragged her inside the room.
Feeling boneless with the reprieve, Cybele gave herself up to Consuelo’s care, grinned as she lambasted her for her haggardness, ordered her on the scales and lamented her disappointing gains.
She’d missed out on having someone mother her. And for the time being, she’d enjoy Consuelo’s mothering all she could. Along with Rodrigo’s pampering and protection.
It would come to an end all too soon.
But not yet. Not yet.
Nine
Rodrigo stood looking down at the approaching car procession.
His family was here.
He hadn’t even thought of them since the accident. He hadn’t for a while before that, either. He’d had nothing on his mind but Cybele and Mel and his turmoil over them both for over a year.
He’d remembered them only when he needed their presence to keep him away from Cybele. And he’d gotten what he deserved for neglecting them for so long. They’d all had other plans.
He’d ended up begging them to come. He’d evaded explaining the reason behind his desperation. They’d probably figure it out the moment they saw him with her.
In the end, he’d gotten them to come. And made them promise to stay. Long. He’d always wished they’d stay as long as possible.
This time he wondered if he’d survive it.
And here began his torment.
His grandparents stepped out of the limo he’d sent them, followed by three of his aunts. Out of the vans poured the aunts’ adult children and their families plus a few cousins and their offspring.
Cybele stepped out of the French doors. He gritted his teeth against the violence of his response. He’d been wrestling with it for the past three days since that confrontation. He’d still almost ended up storming her bedroom every night. Her efforts to offer him sexually neutral friendliness were inflaming him far worse than if she’d been coming on to him hot and heavy.
Now she walked toward him with those energetic steps of hers, rod-straight, no wiggle anywhere, dressed in dark blue jeans and a crisp azure blouse that covered her from throat to elbows.
The way his hormones thundered, she could have been undulating toward him in stilettos, a push-up bra and a thong.
Dios. The…containment he now lived in had better be obscuring his condition.
He needed help. He needed the invasion of his family to keep him away from her door, from carrying her off to his bed.
Before she could say anything, since anything she said blinded him with an urge to plunder those mind-destroying lips, he said, “Come, let me introduce you to my tribe.”
Tribe is right, Cybele thought.
She fell in step with Rodrigo as she counted thirty-eight men, women and children. More still poured from the vans. Four generations of Valderramas.
It was amazing what one marriage could end up producing.
Rodrigo had told her that his mother had been Esteban and Imelda’s first child, had been only nineteen when she had him, that his grandparents had been in their early twenties when they got married. With him at thirty-eight, his grandparents must be in their late seventies or early eighties. They looked like a very good sixty. Must be the clean living Rodrigo had told her about.
She focused on his grandfather. It was uncanny, his resemblance to Rodrigo. This was what Rodrigo would look like in forty-something years’ time. And it was amazingly good.
Her heart clenched on the foolish but burning wish to be around Rodrigo through all that time, to know him at that age.
She now watched as he met his family three-quarters of the way, smile and arms wide. Another wish seared her-to be the one he received with such pleasure, the one he missed that much. She envied each of those who had the right to rush to fill his arms, to be blessed by the knowledge of his vast and unconditional love. Her heart broke against the hopelessness of it all as his family took turns being clasped to his heart.
Then he turned to her, covered in kids from age two to mid-teens, his smile blazing as he beckoned to her to come be included in the boisterous affection of his family reunion.
She rushed to answer his invitation and found herself being received by his family with the same enthusiasm.
For the next eight hours, she talked and laughed nonstop, ate and drank more than she had in the last three days put together, put a name and a detailed history to each of the unpretentious, vital beings who swept her along the wave of their rowdy interaction and infectious joie de vivre.