she’d imagined them together, and in the past few days it had seemed that was all she’d thought about, she’d blithely assumed he wouldn’t notice she was a virgin and that she would have the wit to smother any pain because everyone said the pain only lasted a moment.
She’d known perfectly well he would reinforce the barrier he’d put between them if he knew she was a virgin and seeing his self-loathing horror at what they’d done made her feel more wretched and ashamed of herself than she had believed she could feel.
Had it been such a bad thing, keeping quiet about her virginity? It was her body. Wasn’t she free to do with it as she wished?
Silence filled the room as she composed her thoughts and tried to compose herself, biting back the tears that were right there, waiting to be unleashed.
‘I know Pieta’s death’s affected me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s made me see how short life can be. I could get a terminal illness or get hit by a car or be the victim of a natural disaster... People die every day. You’ve walked the streets of Caballeros with me...you’ve been in battle, you must feel life’s fragility.’
A tear leaked down her cheek. She wiped it away before continuing. ‘I’m not trying to be morbid. Before Pieta died... I’m trying to make you understand what it was like. I knew from the time I could speak that I would never inherit anything and I remember my mamma stroking my hair when I was seven and saying what a pretty girl I was and how lucky I was that I would have my pick of rich husbands and always live a life of luxury. My looks and my family name were expected to be enough for me to have a great future but I remember feeling sick at the thought of it.
‘Daniele wasn’t going to inherit but he was expected to build a great life for himself—why should it be different for me because I was girl? Why should my future depend on what would, essentially, be the goodwill of a man I hadn’t even met? Why should I be forced to beg for money to buy the clothes I need when I can earn it myself and control my own life? I think that was the moment I decided I would take my own path and prove that anything my brothers could do, I could do too, and do it better. I’ve spent my whole life working towards that. But I didn’t live like a recluse. I partied and had fun but relationships... I saw how my friends were with their boyfriends and how their relationships consumed their lives and knew I couldn’t afford that distraction.’
While she spoke, Felipe didn’t say anything, listening with narrowed eyes without comment.
She met his gaze and tried to smile but instead found herself wiping away another tear. ‘Until eleven days ago I never had the sense that it could all end at any moment. My father’s death was awful but he’d been in his seventies and had been ill for years. In many ways the end was a relief for him. Pieta was only thirty-five, young, fit, recently married, a whole future to look forward to and it was all taken away in a moment by something as innocuous as fog. Fog!’ She could laugh at the madness and cruelty of it.
To watch her father slowly disintegrate had been heart-breaking but his faculties, his sense of humour...they had all survived in him to the very end. They’d had time to prepare. Nothing could have prepared her or any of them for Pieta’s death.
‘All those people who died in the hurricane in Caballeros, they’d had futures and family too, people who loved them. If it could happen to Pieta and to them, then why not me?’
Felipe made to speak but she raised a hand to stop him.
‘Whether I have days left to live or years or decades, I want to live it to be the best I can but I want to feel it too. You make me feel things I’ve never felt before. Good feelings. Scary feelings. But real feelings.’ Feelings she’d ached to explore to see where they would take her because what if she never felt them again? ‘Do you understand that?’
His dark eyes held hers as he gave a sharp inclination of his head.
‘I don’t know if it was this new awareness of life and its fragility that woke these feelings up or if it was just the catalyst...’ She attempted a smile. ‘No, I do know. If I’d met you under different circumstances I still would have wanted you. What I don’t know is if I would have had acted on it. I don’t expect anything from you or want anything more than this. Don’t think you took advantage of me. I gave my body to you freely as a consenting woman, just as you gave yours freely to me as a consenting man.’
She tried to smile again but her chin wobbled too much for it to form. ‘And that’s it.’
As Felipe listened, his fury with both Francesca and himself slowly seeped from him.
Curled on the huge bed, she looked so intensely vulnerable that his heart ached.
His pulses hammering, he shifted closer to her and took her cold hands, which just a short time ago had been warm, and rubbed them gently between his own then pressed a kiss to them.
She attempted another shaky smile that made the ache in his heart expand.
‘I hurt you, didn’t I?’ he said quietly.
She drew her lips in and nodded. ‘That was my own fault. If you’d known...’
‘If I’d known it was your first time I would have taken it slowly, not taken you like a rutting bull.’
She pulled a face. ‘If you’d known it was my first time you wouldn’t have taken me at all. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
He laughed, his chest lightening at her wry quip.
‘You’re right, I have made many assumptions about you, querida,’ he said, reaching out to stroke her pale cheek. ‘It’s the nature of my life. I work with men, the people I protect are normally men too.’
Women had always been on the periphery of his life, even his own mother, too busy working to feed him for him to learn any feminine secrets. Women were a mystery. He’d shared his bed with many of them through the years but had no clue as to how their minds worked. Francesca was the closest he’d come to understanding.
‘Women have always seemed like a different species to me,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I accepted your family’s description of you being a danger to yourself at face value, which I wouldn’t have done if you’d been a man.’
‘Maybe they were right,’ she whispered.
He shook his head, knowing she was thinking back to her gung-ho response to the Governor’s demand for a cash bribe. ‘To begin with you were on the edge but you soon found the strength you needed. What I am trying to say in my clumsy way is that I’ve not been able to look past my initial assumptions and too busy fighting my attraction to you to see you as you really are.’
‘How do you see me now?’
‘As strong.’ And beautiful. ‘You’re a fighter, querida.’
Another tear rolled down her cheek. She screwed her face up as he wiped it away with his thumb.
‘Not very strong now,’ she mumbled.
He leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ve seen men bigger than me cry. It’s nothing to do with strength and nothing to be ashamed of.’
She sighed and nodded then seemed to gather herself together, her back straightening. ‘I should put my nightshirt on.’
Her
