Loe raamatut: «The Maid's Spanish Secret»

PROLOGUE

RICO MONTERO ARRIVED at his brother’s villa, two hours up the coast from Valencia, in seventy-three minutes. He’d been feeling cooped up in his penthouse, hungry for air. He had pulled his GTA Spano out of storage and tried to escape his own dark mood, not realizing the direction he took until he was pulled over for speeding.

Recognizing where he was, he told the officer he was on his way to see his brother—a means of name-dropping the entire family. The ploy had gotten him out of having his license suspended, but he still had to pay a fine.

Since he was literally in the neighborhood, he decided not to compound his crimes by lying. He rolled his way through Cesar’s vineyard to the modern home sprawled against a hillside.

He told himself he didn’t miss the vineyard he had owned with pride for nearly a decade—long before his brother had decided he had an interest in grapes and winemaking. Rico’s fascination with the process had dried up along with his interest in life in general. Selling that property had been a clean break from a time he loathed to dwell upon.

It’s been eighteen months, his mother had said over lunch yesterday. Time to turn our attention to the future.

She had said something similar three months ago and he had dodged it. This time, he sat there and took the bullet. Of course. Who did you have in mind?

He had left thinking, Go ahead and find me another scheming, adulterous bride. But he hadn’t said it aloud. He had promised to carry that secret to his grave.

For what?

He swore and jammed the car into Park, then threw himself out of it, grimly aware he had completely failed to escape his dour mood.

“Rico!” His sister-in-law Sorcha opened the door before he had climbed the wide steps. She smiled with what looked like genuine pleasure and maybe a hint of relief.

“Mateo, look. Tío Rico has come to see you.” She spoke to the bawling toddler on her hip. “That’s a nice surprise, isn’t it?”

She wasn’t the flawlessly elegant beauty he was used to seeing on Cesar’s arm, more of a welcoming homemaker. Her jeans and peasant-style top were designer brands, but she wore minimal makeup and her blond hair was tied into a simple ponytail. Her frown at her unhappy son was tender and empathetic, not the least frazzled by his tantrum.

The deeply unhappy Mateo pointed toward the back of the house. “Ve, Papi.”

“He’s overdue for his nap.” Sorcha waved Rico in. “But he knows someone took someone else into the V-I-N-E-Y-A-R-D.”

“You’re speaking English and you still have to spell it out?” Rico experienced a glimmer of amusement.

“He’s picking it up so fast. Oh!” She caught Mateo as he reached out to Rico, nearly launching himself from her arms.

Rico caught him easily while Sorcha stammered, “I’m sorry.”

If Rico briefly winced in dismay, it was because of the look in Sorcha’s eyes. Far too close to pity, it contained sincere regret that her son was prevailing on him for something she thought too big and painful to ask.

It wasn’t. The favor he was doing for his former in-laws was a greater imposition, spiking far more deeply into a more complex knot of nerves. What Sorcha thought she knew about his marriage was the furthest thing from reality.

And what she read as pain and anger at fate was contempt and fury with himself for being a fool. He was steeped in bitterness, playing a role that was barely a version of the truth. A version that made a sensitive soul like Sorcha wear a poignant smile as she gazed on him holding his young nephew.

Mateo stopped crying, tears still on his cheeks.

“Ve, Papi?” he tried.

The tyke had been born mere weeks before Rico’s ill-fated marriage. Mateo was sturdy and stubborn and full of the drive that all the Montero males possessed. This was why he was giving his mother such a hard time. He knew what he wanted and a nap wouldn’t mollify him.

“We’ll discuss it,” he told the boy and glanced at Sorcha. “You should change,” he advised, unable to bear much more of that agonized happiness in her eyes.

“Why—? Ugh.” She noticed the spot where Mateo had rubbed his streaming face against her shoulder. “You’re okay?” she asked with concern.

“For God’s sake, Sorcha,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

He regretted his short temper immediately and quickly reined in his patience. His secret sat in him like a cancer, but he couldn’t let it provoke him into lashing out, certainly not at the nicest person in his family.

“I didn’t mean to speak so sharply,” he managed to say, gathering his composure as he brought his nephew to his shoulder. “We’re fine.”

“It’s okay, Rico.” She squeezed his arm. “I understand.”

No. She didn’t. But thankfully she disappeared, leaving him to have a man-to-man chat with Mateo, who hadn’t forgotten a damned thing. He gave it one more try, pointing and asking for Cesar, who had taken his older brother Enrique to speak to winemakers and pet cellar cats and generally have a barrel of a good time by anyone’s standards.

Mateo’s eyes were droopy, his cheeks red, very much worn out from his tantrum.

“I know what you’re going through,” he told the boy. “Better than you can imagine.”

Like Mateo, Rico was the younger brother to the future duque. He, too, occupied the unlit space beneath the long shadow of greatness cast by the heir. He, too, was expected to live an unblemished life so as not to tarnish the title he would never hold. Then there was the simple, fraternal rivalry of a brother being that few years older and moving into the next life stage. Envy was natural, not that Monteros were allowed to feel such things. Emotions were too much like pets, requiring regular feeding and liable to leave a mess on the floor.

Rico climbed the grand staircase to the bedroom that had been converted to a playroom for the boys, not dwelling on Cesar’s stellar fulfillment of his duty with two bright and healthy children, a beautiful home and a stunning, warmhearted wife.

“There are some realities that are not worth crying about,” he informed Mateo as they entered the room. “Your father told me that.” It was one of Rico’s earliest memories.

Cry all you want. They won’t care. Cesar had spoken with the voice of experience after Rico had been denied something he’d desperately wanted that he could no longer recollect.

Cesar had come to reason with him, perhaps because he was tired of having his playmate sent into solitary confinement. Reason was a family skill valued far more highly than passion. Reason was keeping him silent and carrying on today, maintaining order rather than allowing the chaos that would reign if the truth came out.

Doesn’t it make you mad that they won’t even listen? Rico had asked Cesar that long-ago day.

Yes. Cesar had been very mature for a boy of six or seven. But getting mad won’t change anything. You might as well accept it and think about something else.

Words Rico had learned to live by.

He was capable of basic compassion, however.

“I’ll always listen if you need to get something off your chest,” he told his nephew as he lowered them both into an armchair. “But sometimes there’s nothing to be done. It’s a hard fact of life, young man.”

Mateo wound down to sniffling whimpers. He decided to explore Rico’s empty chest pocket.

“Should we read a book?” Rico picked up the first picture book within reach. It was bilingual, with trains and dogs and bananas labeled in English and Spanish.

As he worked through the pages, he deliberately pitched his voice to an uninflected drone. The boy’s head on his chest grew heavier and heavier.

“Thank you,” Sorcha whispered when she peeked in.

Rico nodded and carried the sleeping boy to his crib. The nanny came in with the baby monitor.

Rico followed Sorcha down the stairs saying, “I’ll go find Cesar. If Mateo wakes, don’t tell him what a traitor I am.”

“Actually, I was going to invite you for dinner later this week. There’s something I want to talk to you about. Can we go into Cesar’s office?” Her brow pleated with concern.

Rico bit back a sigh, trying to hold on to the temper that immediately began to slip. “If this is about me remarrying, Mother has passed along your concerns.”

Your sister-in-law thinks it’s too soon, his mother had said yesterday, not asking him how he felt. She had merely implied that in Sorcha’s view, he was in a weakened state. His choice had been to confirm it or go along with his mother’s insistence on finding him a new wife.

“This is something else,” Sorcha murmured, closing the door and waving toward the sofa. “And my imagination could be running wild. I haven’t said anything to Cesar.”

She poured two glasses of the Irish whiskey she had turned Cesar on to drinking and brought one to where Rico stood.

“Really?” he drawled, wondering what she could possibly impart that would need to be absorbed with a bracing shot. He left the whiskey on the end table as they both sat.

“Please don’t be angry with me. I know I was overstepping, suggesting your mother hold off on pressing you to remarry, but I care about all of you.” She sat with her elbows on her thighs, leaning forward, hands clasped. “You may not be the most demonstrative family, but you are family. I will never stay silent if I think one of you needs...” Her mouth tightened.

“Sorcha.” He meticulously gathered his forbearance. “I’m fine.” And, before he had to suffer another swimming gaze of tormented sympathy, he added, “If I were in your shoes, I would understand why you think I’m not, but honestly, you have to stop worrying about me.”

“That’s never going to happen,” she said primly, which would have been endearing if he didn’t find it so frustratingly intrusive. “And there may be other factors to consider.” She sipped her drink and eyed him over it. Then sighed. “I feel like such a hypocrite.”

He lifted his brows. “Why? What’s going on?”

She frowned, set down her drink and picked up her phone, stared at it without turning it on. “Elsa, our nanny, showed me something that came up in her news feed.”

“Something compromising?” Sorcha would have taken up the concern with Cesar unless—Oh, hell. Had something gotten out from the coroner’s report? “Is this about Faustina?” His molars ground together on reflex.

“No! No, it’s not about her at all.” She touched her brow. “Elsa always comes with us when we have dinner at your mother’s. She’s acquainted with the maids there and follows some of them online.”

At the word maid a premonition danced in his periphery. He refused to reach for the drink, though. It would be a tell. Instinctively, he knew he had to maintain impassivity. He couldn’t tip his hand. Not before he knew exactly what was coming next.

“To be honest, I rarely check my social media accounts,” he said with a disinterested brush of non-existent lint from his knee. “Especially since Faustina passed. It’s very maudlin.”

“I suppose it would be.” Her expression grew pinched. She looked at the phone she held pressed between her palms. “But one way or another, I think you should be aware of this particular post.”

Biting her lips together, she touched her thumb to the sensor and the screen woke. She flicked to bring up a photo and held it out to him.

“On first glance, Elsa thought it was Mateo dressed up as a girl. That’s the only reason she took notice and showed me. She thought it was funny that it had given her a double take. I had to agree this particular photo offers a certain resemblance.”

Rico flicked a look at the toddler. He’d never seen Mateo in a pink sailor’s bib and hat, but the baby girl’s grin was very similar, minus a few teeth, to the one he had coaxed out of his nephew before the boy’s head had drooped against his chest.

“I actually keep my privacy settings locked down tight,” Sorcha said. “I’ve heard photos can be stolen and wind up in ads without permission. I thought that’s what had happened. Elsa assured me she never shares images of the boys with anyone but me or Cesar.”

The Montero fortune had been built on the development of chemicals and special alloys. Rico had learned early that certain substances, innocuous on their own, could become explosive when in proximity to one another.

Sorcha was pouring statements into beakers before him. A maid. A baby that looked like other children in the family.

He wouldn’t let those two pieces of information touch. Not yet.

“It’s said we all have a double.” His lifetime of suppressing emotion served him well. “It would seem you’ve found Mateo’s.”

“This is the only photo where she looks so much like him,” Sorcha murmured, taking back her phone. “I looked up the account. Her mother is a photographer.”

Photographer. One beaker began to tip into another.

“This is part of her portfolio for her home business. Her name is Poppy Harris. The mother, I mean. The baby is Lily.”

His abdomen tightened to brace for a kick. A sizzle resounded in his ears. Adrenaline made him want to reach for his drink, but he only lifted his hand to scratch his cheek—while his mind conjured the forest of lilies that had surrounded them in his mother’s solarium as he and Poppy had made love so impulsively.

“Do you...remember her?” Sorcha asked tentatively.

Skin scented like nectarines, lush corkscrews of curly red hair filling his hands as he consumed her crimson lips. He remembered the exact pitch of her joyful cries of release, the culmination of madness like he’d never known before or since.

And he remembered vividly the ticking of the clock on the mantel as he had sat in his mother’s parlor the next morning, an itchy fire in his blood driving him mad. He’d been on the verge of going to look for her because he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Then Faustina had arrived, striking like dry lightning with sheepishly delivered news. Family obligation had crashed upon him afresh, pinning him under the weight of a wedding that had been called off, but now was back on. They would pretend the gap in the parade had never happened.

“Rico?” Sorcha prompted gently, dragging him back to the present. “I know this must be a shock.” And there was that infernal compassion again.

He swore, tired to his bones of people thinking he was mourning a baby he had already known wasn’t his. He was sorry for the loss of a life before it had had the chance to start. Of course he was. But he wasn’t grieving with the infinite heartbreak of a parent losing a child. It hadn’t been his.

And given Faustina’s trickery, he was damned cynical about whether he had conceived this one.

“Why did you jump straight to suspecting she’s mine?” he asked baldly.

Sorcha was slightly taken aback. “Well, I’m not going to suspect my own husband, am I?” Her tone warned that he had better not, either. Her chin came up a notch. “You were living in your parents’ villa at the time. Frankly, your father doesn’t seem particularly passionate about any woman, young or old. You, however, were briefly unengaged.”

Rico had long suspected the success of his parents’ marriage could be attributed to both of them being fairly asexual and lacking in passion for anything beyond cool reason and the advancement of family interests.

Sorcha’s eyes grew big and soft and filled with that excruciating pity. “I’m not judging, Rico. I know how these things happen.”

“I bet you do.” He regretted it immediately. It wasn’t him. At least, it wasn’t the man he was beneath the layer of caustic fury he couldn’t seem to shed. Sorcha certainly didn’t deserve this ugly side of him. She was kind and sensitive and everything the rest of them didn’t know how to be.

She recoiled, rightly shocked that he would deliver such a belly blow. But she hadn’t risen above the scandal of secretly delivering his brother’s baby while Cesar had been engaged to someone else without possessing truckloads of resilience.

“I meant because my mother was my father’s maid when she conceived me.” Her voice was tight and strong, but there was such a wounded shadow in her gaze, he had to look away and reach for the drink she’d poured him.

He drained it, burning away the words that hovered on his tongue. Words he couldn’t speak because he was trying to spare Faustina’s parents some humiliation when they were already destroyed by the loss of their only child.

“I’ll assume if you’re lashing out, you believe it’s possible that little girl is yours. How she came about is your business, Rico, but don’t you ever accuse me of trapping Cesar into this marriage. I left, if you recall.” She stood, hot temper well lit, but honed by her marriage to a Montero into icy severity. “And so did Poppy. Maybe ask yourself why, if you’re such a prize, she doesn’t want anything to do with you. I have an idea, if you can’t figure it out for yourself.”

She stalked to the door and swung it open, inviting him to leave using nothing more than a head held high and an expression of frosty contempt that prickled his conscience through the thick shields of indifference he had been bricking into place since Faustina had been found.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Rico ground out, mind reeling so badly as he stood, his head swam. “I was shooting the messenger.” With a missile launcher loaded with nuclear waste. “Tell Cesar what you’ve told me. I’ll let him punch me in the face for what I said to you.” He meant it.

She didn’t thaw. Not one iota. “Deal with the message. I have a stake in the outcome, as do my husband and sons.”

“Oh, I will,” he promised. “Immediately.”