chapter FOUR
‘WHAT’S IT TO BE, my prospective wife? You decide. Do we have a deal?’
Did they? Her heart was hammering so loud she could scarcely hear herself think. Half of her was already celebrating. She’d done the unthinkable and secured Alesander’s agreement. Soon Felipe would see his precious vines reunited under the mantle of their marriage.
But after he was gone—after their marriage was dissolved—they would stay reunited. Alesander would own the entire estate.
He was waiting for her answer, his half-smile telling her that he was already anticipating her agreement.
Should she accept his terms?
Felipe had promised her what was left of the estate when he died, wanting the vines to stay in the family, wanting to ensure that she would be taken care of financially. After her spendthrift parents had left her with nothing but a few trinkets, it would have been all that she owned. And now, if she agreed to Alesander’s terms, she’d be left with nothing again.
But what good were the vines to her anyway when her plan had always been to return to her studies in Melbourne? What point was there in her keeping them, other than as a link to a past and a life she’d been denied most of her life? She didn’t belong here. Not really. She was no vigneron, whatever her heritage. She couldn’t even speak the language. Not properly. ‘All right,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper, knowing that ultimately she had no choice. ‘You have a deal.’
‘Good, I’ll get my lawyers to draft up the agreement.’
‘This can’t get out! Felipe must not suspect.’
‘You think I want it to become public knowledge? No, my legal people will not breathe a word of this. Nobody will know our marriage is not real.’
She nodded, feeling her shoulders sag and her very bones droop, suddenly bone-weary. She’d come here and achieved what she’d never thought she’d achieve—the impossible had happened and Alesander Esquivel had agreed to her crazy plan. Soon the vineyard would be reunited and Felipe would have a reason to smile again. She should be over the moon ecstatic right now. And yet instead she felt wrung out, both emotionally and physically. ‘I must go,’ she said, shocked when she glanced out of the window and realised how the light was fading from the day. ‘Felipe will be wondering where I am.’ She looked back at him. ‘I imagine you’ll be in touch when the papers are ready to sign.’
‘I’ll get my jacket. I’ll drive you home.’
‘There’s no need,’ she said, even as he was disappearing into his room. She would be fine on the local bus. She would be even later home but she could do with the time to think. And right now she could do with the space to breathe air not spiced with this man’s scent, a blend of citrus, musk and one hundred per cent testosterone.
‘There’s every need,’ he said, returning with a jacket he shrugged over his shoulders, a set of keys in his hand. ‘There are things we need to discuss.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like how we met, for a start. We need to get our stories straight and I’m assuming you’d prefer I didn’t go around telling people you knocked on my door and asked me to marry you. Plus we need to work out how quickly to progress this arrangement. Given the state of Felipe’s health, I’m guessing you’re not after a long engagement?’
‘Well, no …’ She hadn’t really thought about it. He was right, of course, it was just that she hadn’t given herself the luxury of thinking that far ahead. Not when she’d never actually been confident of pulling this plan off and securing his agreement.
‘Then let’s make it next month—it’ll take that long for the legalities, and meanwhile we need to be seen together and in the right places. We can work that out on the way.’ He snatched up car keys from a drawer. ‘Besides, I think it’s about time I reacquainted myself with my prospective grandfather-in-law.’
His car was low and lean and looked more as if it belonged on a racetrack than on any road. It didn’t help that it was black. She regarded it suspiciously. ‘Are you sure this is street legal?’
He laughed, a low rumbling laugh that she felt uncomfortably low in her belly, as he ushered her into the low-slung GTA Spano that seemed filled with leather and aluminium and cool LCD lighting.
Safe in her leather seat, the car wrapped around her like an embrace, the panoramic glass roof bringing the outside inside.
He didn’t so much drive through the busy streets of San Sebastian as prowled, driver and machine like a predator, waiting for just the right moment to switch lanes or to overtake, using the vehicle’s cat-like manoeuvrability and power to masterfully take control of the streets, until they hit the highway and the car changed gears and ate up the few miles before the turn-off to the coast and small fishing village of Getaria.
Along the way they sorted the story of how they’d met by chance in San Sebastian when she’d stopped him on the street to ask directions. Or rather, Alesander sorted their story, while she tried hard to ignore the blood-dizzying effect of sharing the same confined space with him. She didn’t have to turn her head and see him to know he was right there beside her, she could taste him in the very air she breathed, and somehow the scent of leather only added to the heady mix. She didn’t have to watch his long-fingered hands to know when they were on the steering wheel or when he changed gears because she could feel the whisper of air that stirred against her leg.
It was disconcerting. She couldn’t remember when she’d ever been so aware of anyone in her entire life.
Or especially any man.
But then she’d never asked anyone else to marry her before either, much less have them agree. This was brand new territory for her. Little wonder she was so on edge.
The closer they got to Getaria, the more anxious she grew and she found herself wishing she’d caught the bus after all. Now she’d have no chance to warn Felipe that she’d bumped into Alesander, no chance to let him get used to the idea before having him turn up on the doorstep. He would come around, she was sure, but he was bound to be a little unreceptive at first.
‘Don’t be surprised if Felipe is a little gruff towards you,’ she warned. ‘Given what’s happened, I mean.’
‘Given the fact I own three-quarters of his estate now, you mean?’ He shrugged. ‘As long as I have been alive and, indeed, for a long time before, things have never been easy between our two families.’
‘Why is that? What happened?’
‘What is the reason behind any family rivalry? A cross word. A dark look. And, in this case, a bride stolen out from under my great-great-grandfather’s nose and married to another before he could stop her.’
‘Who did she marry?’
‘Felipe’s grandfather.’
‘Oh, I see. Wow.’ She shook her head. ‘But still, that must have happened years ago. Surely something that happened a century ago isn’t still a sore point. The families are neighbours after all.’
‘Honour is very important to the Basque people and memories are long. One does not forget when one’s pride has been trampled upon.’
‘I guess not.’ And she wondered how she would be remembered when she was gone, after probably the shortest marriage in Esquivel history. It would, no doubt, add cause to keep resentment towards the Otxoa name simmering for the next century or more. Just as well she could disappear home to Australia when the marriage was dissolved. ‘What about your family? How will they take the news of you marrying an Otxoa?’
He smiled. ‘Not well. At least not initially. But I will tell them it is time to move on. I will make them come around and see that we cannot hold a grudge between our families for ever. And then, when it is over, they will delight in telling me that they told me so and that they were right all along.’
‘Will you mind that?’
‘I don’t care what anyone says, not when I’m going to end up with the land.’
‘Oh, of course,’ she said. The land that made it all worthwhile. The land she’d bargained away. His family would probably forgive him anything for that.
‘Tell me,’ he said, changing the topic, ‘is there a boyfriend at home in Australia waiting for you to return home? Who might be upset about your getting married and turn up suddenly to stop the wedding?’
She laughed. She couldn’t help it, the thought of Damon turning up to claim her from the clutches of marriage to another man too funny not to laugh out loud. But Damon wouldn’t have the guts to show his face, even if he had decided he wanted to get back with her. ‘No. No boyfriend.’
He looked across at her. ‘You make it sound like there was one.’
‘There was, for a while. But he’s history and he’s staying there. Believe me, he won’t be turning up to stop the wedding.’
‘What about other friends or family? Won’t they be concerned for you?’
‘There’s no family to speak of. Not now.’
‘But your father’s family?’
She shook her head. ‘I know it sounds odd, but I never met them. Dad discovered he was adopted when he was thirteen and he never forgave his adoptive family for keeping the secret from him for so long. And he never met his birth parents but he hated them for abandoning him in the first place. I think that’s why he and Mum got on so well together. They understood each other. They were alone in the world and they were all each other had.’
‘Surely they had you?’
‘They did but …’ She raised her head, searching the night sky through the clear glass roof for the words. How did one go about explaining such personal things to someone who was a virtual stranger, and yet who should not be such a stranger, given they were now engaged to be married? How much did he need to know? How much did she need to tell him?
And yet there was something liberating, too, about sharing something about your family with a total stranger, knowing that it would never matter. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d ever have to meet her parents. Not now.
‘I always thought Mum was all Dad ever wanted or needed.’
He looked her way and she caught his frown.
‘Don’t get me wrong, he was a good dad, sometimes great,’ she said wistfully, remembering a particular father and daughter three-legged race on the one primary school sports day. They’d come last but it didn’t matter, because at least that year he’d actually bothered to turn up, despite the fact he’d never had a job to go to like the other dads and had always made excuses and she’d spent every year watching her friends run with their fathers. But he’d turned up that year and she’d been beside herself, bursting with pride.
He’d done it for her, she’d realised years later, because she’d pleaded for the weeks and days before with him to go, and finally she’d worn him down, but at the time it had felt like Christmas.
‘Really, it was okay. I just got the impression he would have been perfectly happy never having kids. I guess I always just felt a little surplus to requirements.’
‘You have no other family? No brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’
He didn’t reply and she didn’t mind because she was more than content to look out of the window, looking at the rows of vines trellised so high above the hillside that you could walk beneath them, so different to the style of vineyard she was used to seeing at home. And it was easier for a moment to think about the tangle of vines than the tangle of families.
For a moment. Until she remembered another tangling thread.
‘Dad didn’t want Mum to come back to Spain, you know, when she heard that her mother was dying. He didn’t want her to rebuild any bridges and reconnect with a father he said had abandoned her. In all honesty, I think he only let her come in the end because he figured Felipe was old and it might result in an inheritance that might pay off their debts.
‘What he didn’t figure on was Mum and Felipe actually getting on okay. He expected they’d pick up where they’d left off last time and they’d shout the house down, but this time was different, I think because her mother had died. And Mum had grown up a bit and Felipe had mellowed and both she and Felipe were starting to realise all the things they’d missed.’
‘He must have been happy to have you around, after losing Maria.’
He shouldn’t have had to wait that long. She clamped down on a boulder of guilt she’d felt, heavy and weighted inside her from the day she’d heard Maria had died. Sometimes she could lock it away and almost forget it was there, and other times it would escape and roll awkwardly through her gut, crushing her spirit and making her remember a promise that she’d made to herself so many years ago.
A promise she’d broken.
She dragged in air. But she was here now. It wasn’t too late to make things better; to make up just a little bit for all that had gone before.
‘He was. We all were, all apart from Dad. He resented Mum talking in a language and laughing at jokes he couldn’t understand.’ Tears once again stung her eyes and she clamped down on the urge to cry. He was her father and she’d loved him but there were times she’d wanted to shake him too, and make him see that he didn’t have to take on the whole world to enjoy it. ‘And now they’ve both gone and Felipe is dying too.’ She turned her head away as two fat tears squeezed their way from the corners of her eyes, swiping the wetness from her cheeks.
‘The last few months have been rough on you.’
She squeezed damp eyes shut, wishing away the sting, trying to block out his rich, low voice from worming its way into anywhere it could do some damage. She wished to hell he didn’t sound so … understanding. She wasn’t looking for sympathy. She was looking for a solution. ‘Anyway,’ she said, huffing out air, shaking off her gloom, ‘I’m not planning on telling anyone at home about this—about our arrangement. Nobody need know. Because then I don’t have to go home and explain what went wrong with my quickie marriage. It might not bother you, but there’s no way I want to listen to everyone telling me, “I told you so”.’
‘You’ll have nobody? Don’t you think it will look strange if you have no one in attendance? Isn’t there a friend you can confide in and trust?’
That earned him a snort. She’d had a best friend she’d trusted. Ever since primary school, she and Carla had day-dreamed about the day they’d each get married and had sworn to be each other’s chief bridesmaids. They’d shared everything in life—the good times and the bad—and the job had always been Carla’s—right up until the day Simone had found her sharing her cheating boyfriend.
And not only sharing her boyfriend but sharing him in her bed, which, to her way of thinking, made the betrayal even more damning.
As for asking any of her other friends—there was no way she could expect photos or news of the wedding not to leak out onto social media, no matter how much she wanted to keep it quiet. And it would be unfair and unreasonable to ask her friends to keep it a secret, simply to protect her own need for privacy. They’d want to know why and they’d deserve to be told.
And that wouldn’t work when she didn’t want anyone to know. This marriage was hardly going to be one of her finest moments. She wasn’t sure she wanted witnesses to the event. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, thinking it was all getting too difficult. ‘Maybe we should just fly off to Las Vegas and not bother with a wedding here at all. Just come back and say it’s a done deal.’
‘And cheat Felipe out of the pleasure of walking his granddaughter down the aisle? How would it brighten his days to know you had been whisked away to marry a man whose family he has been in dispute with his entire life?’ He hesitated a moment to let that sink in, and sink in it did. As much as the idea appealed, how could she do that when this was all about convincing him this was real and making him happy?
‘Besides,’ Alesander continued, ‘why should anyone believe it? Whereas if they see us married before their eyes, surely that will be more convincing.’
Convincing. What did that mean in Spanish terms? She looked out of the window, biting her lip as the car wended its way along the narrow road up the hill towards Felipe’s shrunken estate. Her plan had seemed so easy when she’d come up with it. Marry Alesander and let Felipe end his days thinking his precious vines were reunited. What could be more simple?
But there was so much she hadn’t considered; so many details where her plans could come unstuck.
Convincing.
But she didn’t want a big church wedding with all the trimmings. Somehow a small civil affair seemed easier to undo. Less false, if there even was a scale of falseness.
Right now she wanted to believe it.
But maybe she’d been kidding herself all along. Maybe her idea had been doomed from the start and she was finally starting to realise it.
Except he must believe it was possible or why would he have gone along with it?
She turned to him, needing to hear what he thought. ‘Do you really think we can make this work?’
He looked over at her. ‘Having second thoughts?’
‘No, not really. It’s just that … it seemed like such a simple idea but there’s just so much to consider. So many tiny details to sort out.’
‘Ideas are the easy part. It’s making them happen that takes work.’
Wasn’t that the truth? ‘So you think we can do it?’
‘I’m banking on it.’
The land, she thought, sitting back in her seat. He will make it happen because he’s banking on the land. And she couldn’t resent the price he’d demanded or the deal she’d made, because right now having Alesander Esquivel on her team was her plan’s biggest asset.
If she had nothing else going for her, he would make it happen.
Oh yes, Alesander thought, he was banking on it. The way he figured it, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
He turned the car into the driveway leading to the small estate and immediately knew that something was wrong. Very wrong. In September one expected the vines to be dense, the foliage protecting the fruit hanging in clusters beneath, but the vines either side of the driveway were overgrown and tangled, the supporting trellises broken in places so that the vines had collapsed onto the ground.
The small house at the end of the driveway had the same air of neglect.
‘What is Felipe doing about the harvest? The grapes will be ready in a month or so.’
‘Not a lot. Even if he cared, I don’t think he’d have the strength to do much.’
‘But he has people working for him, surely?’
She gave him a pointed look as she undid her seat belt and pushed open her door. ‘Seriously? Does it look like he has an army of people working for him?’ He wasted the time it took to curse and she was almost out of the car before he stopped her with a hand to her arm.
‘Hey!’
She swung around, cold flame erupting from her blue eyes.
‘I’ll get those trellises fixed.’
‘Whatever.’ She tugged on her arm and he tightened his grip and pulled her closer.
‘We’re supposed to be friends, right—friends who might be a little keen on each other. So get angry with me, sure, but do it on your own time. Right now we’ve got a job to do.’
‘A snow job, you mean.’
‘Do you want this? I can leave right now if you don’t. Because I can wait a few months for this place to completely fall apart and then buy you out for a rock-bottom price if you’d prefer. Or we can do it your way. It’s up to you.’
She blinked and looked up at the house, where a grizzled face craned his neck to make sense of what was going on in the driveway outside. She smiled at him and waved from inside the car before turning back to Alesander. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Okay, so share that smile with me, and look friendly.’
She turned on a smile so sickly-sweet she must have added a cup of saccharin to the mix. ‘Thank you so much for the lift, Señor Esquivel,’ she said in a voice designed not to carry, merely to convey an impression to the man sitting at the window. ‘I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure meeting you but that would be an out-and-out lie.’
He took her hand before she could get out and pressed the back of her hand to his mouth, loving the way her eyes threw heated sparks at the graze of his lips on her skin. ‘I’m beginning to think this marriage might be more entertaining than I first thought.’
Her smile widened. She even managed a little laugh. ‘Lucky you. I’m beginning to think it’s going to be a real pain in the backside. Or maybe that’s just you.’
‘I aim to please.’
She pulled her hand free as she stepped from the car.
‘Don’t forget to smile,’ he said behind her.
‘Zer egiten ari da hemen zuen?’ Felipe said from his chair near the window as she entered.
‘What did you say, Abuelo?’ Simone said, leaning over to give him a kiss first to one and then the other of his hollowed white-whiskered cheeks.
‘He wants to know what I’m doing here.’
She nodded her thanks to Alesander behind her, and turned to invite him in. She was still angry that he could be so entirely oblivious to the contribution he’d made to Felipe’s decline, but she was grateful for the translation. When her grandfather spoke in Spanish it was hard enough to keep up, but when he reverted to the regional Basque language she had no hope of understanding.
But when she looked around she had to do a double take. The room seemed to have shrunk and the modest cottage that was perfectly adequate for the two of them now seemed tiny, the roof hovering low over their visitor’s head. She blinked and turned back to her grandfather. ‘I ran into Alesander in San Sebastian,’ she said, reeling out the story they’d concocted in the car. Not too many untruths to trip over. ‘We got to talking and found out we were neighbours and he offered me a lift home so I didn’t have to catch the bus.’
Her grandfather grunted and turned back to look pointedly out of the window towards the land and the vines he’d lost, his message clear, but before he’d turned away she’d seen there was more than resentment in his eyes. There was sadness too, and hurt. Simone turned to their guest and shook her head. He shrugged, as if he’d been expecting such a lack of welcome all along.
‘How go the grapes, Felipe?’ he asked. ‘People are saying it will be the best harvest for years.’
Another grunt from the window.
Alesander gave up. ‘I should be going.’
‘You won’t stay for dinner?’ She wasn’t sure she wanted him to—the little exchange in the car had left her feeling unsettled—but maybe he’d been expecting to be asked after driving her home. And it would make a change to have younger company for a little while.
He shook his head. ‘I won’t impose on any more of your time. Felipe, it was good to see you again. It’s been too long.’
The old man gave a flick of his gnarled hand without bothering to look around.
‘But if there is one favour I might ask you before I go?’
The old man’s head turned by only the barest of fractions towards their guest. ‘It is Markel de la Silva’s sixtieth birthday party on Saturday evening. I was wondering if you might let your granddaughter accompany me.’
The neck that seemed comprised entirely of cords twisted around until his flat glassy eyes met hers. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked her pointedly.
‘I would love to go,’ she said, liking the fact Alesander had asked Felipe for his permission. Their families might have been rivals for years but there was a note of respect in his request that had sounded sincere. Although she wondered what he would do if Felipe said no. ‘If it’s all right with you, of course.’
Felipe merely grunted. ‘You can do what you like, while you are here.’
‘In that case, yes,’ she said, already panicking about what she would wear. Party dresses hadn’t been a high priority on her packing list when she’d come, expecting to stay just a couple of weeks, not that she’d had many to choose from anyway. She’d just have to head into San Sebastian again and find something that would fit into her limited student budget.
Alesander must have been wondering the same thing, a telltale frown bringing his two dark brows closer together as if he could tell from what she was wearing that she would own nothing suitable for a posh Spanish party. ‘Did you bring a gown with you?’
A gown? ‘No,’ she confessed. Although he might just as well have asked if she even possessed a gown. ‘But I’m sure I’ll find something.’
‘I’ll take you shopping,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow. There is work I have to do in the morning first, but shall we say three o’clock?’
‘Watch that one,’ Felipe said between spooning up his paella. His appetite had been waning lately, and it was the one dish she could guarantee he would do more than pick at. ‘Be careful with him.’
‘You mean Alesander?’ I thought he seemed—’ she searched for words that didn’t include arrogant and bastard ‘—very pleasant.’
‘You think he is interested in you? Bah! He only came to see how close to death I am.’
‘No, Abuelo, why would you say such a thing? Why would he do that?’
‘Why else? He is after the vines. He already has three-quarters of them and now he wants the rest, you mark my words.’
She put her fork down, unable to swallow another mouthful, the ball in her stomach like lead and not only weighted with guilt. For, after the agreement she had made with him, Alesander as good as owned the vines. What would her grandfather say if he knew what she had done?
What she had done with good reason, she reminded herself, certain that once the marriage was announced, Felipe would be celebrating to know his precious vines were once again reunited, the fortunes of the Otxoa family restored.
Besides which, did it really matter who owned the vines after Felipe died? It might as well be someone who knew what to do with them.
‘I’m sure you’re wrong. I know you have had your differences with his father in the past, but I am sure Alesander is not as ruthless as you make out.’
‘He is an Esquivel. Of course he is ruthless!’
‘I could have met you in San Sebastian,’ she said when Alesander opened the car door for her the next afternoon. ‘You didn’t have to come all this way.’
‘I didn’t come for your benefit.’ He looked up at the window, where he caught the old man scowling at him before turning his head away. He waved, letting him know he’d seen. ‘Felipe needs to get used to seeing us together.’
‘Oh,’ she said, looking suddenly contrite, ‘of course,’ before falling quiet as she got into the car, and warning bells went off in his brain. If she was going to start thinking he was being considerate towards her because he was interested in her …
There was no way he wanted her thinking that. He waited until the car was at the end of the driveway so they were well away from the house and Felipe’s inquisitive gaze.
‘Perhaps I should remind you that we are actors in this masquerade. We are expected to convey an image—first that we are a couple—and second that we are in love.
‘But this is a marriage of convenience and it remains a marriage of convenience. A marriage in name only. That’s what you wanted and that’s what you will get. And if I show you any courtesy, and of course I will because it is all part of the act, it is not because I have suddenly fallen in love with you. It is merely to convince everybody else that I have.’
He looked across at her. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Of course I do. My mistake. I’m sorry for ever imagining you were simply being nice.’
He managed a brief smile at her response. On the one hand he found her Australian openness appealing, but at the same time he was concerned at her willingness to embrace something as simple as picking her up from her home as being a sign he cared, and he wondered anew about her long-term plans. She’d said she was doing this all for Felipe, but why should she give up her inheritance for a grumpy old man she barely knew and who he’d never seen happy and would probably never would?
Unless she’d had other plans from the start—other plans that involved making a fake marriage real and trading a modest inheritance for a luxury lifestyle. Was her demand that there be no sex just a way to lull him into a false sense of security?
It had better not be.
‘I warn you now, it would be a mistake to ever go thinking I was nice.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said snippily. ‘I won’t make the same mistake again.’