and voice seared her. He’d wished to surround himself with family. And he’d been thwarted at every turn, it seemed. Was he suffering from the loneliness and isolation she felt were such an integral part of her own psyche?
“I picked this land completely by chance. I was driving once, aimlessly, when I saw that crest of a hill overlooking this sea channel.” She looked where he was pointing. “The vision slammed into my mind fully formed. A villa built into those rock formations as if it was a part of them.”
She reversed the process, imagining those elements without the magnificent villa they now hugged as if it were an intrinsic part of their structure. “I always thought of the Mediterranean as all sandy beaches.”
“Not this area of the northern Iberian coastline. Rugged rock is indigenous here.”
The car drew to a smooth halt in front of thirty-foot wide stone steps among landscaped, terraced plateaus that surrounded the villa from all sides.
In seconds Rodrigo was handing her out and insisting she sit in the wheelchair she hadn’t used much today. She acquiesced, wondered as he wheeled her up the gentle slope beside the steps if it had always been there, for older family members’ convenience, or if it had been installed to accommodate Mel’s condition.
Turning away from futile musings, she surrendered to the splendor all around her as they reached a gigantic patio that surrounded the villa. On one side it overlooked the magnificent property that was part vineyards and orchards and part landscaped gardens, with the valley and mountains in the distance, and on the other side, the breathtaking sea and shoreline.
The patio led to the highest area overlooking the sea, a massive terrace garden that was illuminated by golden lights planted everywhere like luminescent flowers.
He took her inside and she got rapid impressions of the interior as he swept her to the quarters he’d designated for her.
She felt everything had been chosen with an eye for uniqueness and comfort, simplicity and grandeur, blending sweeping lines and spaces with bold wall colors, honey-colored ceilings and furniture that complemented both. French doors and colonial pillars merged seamlessly with the natural beauty of hardwood floors accentuated by marble and granite. She knew she could spend weeks poring over every detail, but in its whole, she felt this was a place this formidable man had wanted his family to love, to feel at home in from the moment they set foot in it. She knew she did. And she hadn’t technically set foot in it yet.
Then she did. He opened a door, wheeled her in then helped her out of the chair. She stood as he wheeled the chair to one side, walked out to haul in two huge suitcases that had evidently been transported right behind them.
He placed one on the floor and the other on a luggage stand at the far side of the room, which opened into a full-fledged dressing room.
She stood mesmerized as he walked back to her.
He was overwhelming. A few levels beyond that.
He stopped before her, took her hand. She felt as though it burst in flames. “I promise you a detailed tour of the place. Later. In stages. Now you have to rest. Doctor’s orders.”
With that he gave her hand a gentle press, turned and left.
The moment the door clicked closed behind him, she staggered to lean on it, exhaled a choppy breath.
Doctor’s orders. Her doctor …
She bit her lip. Hours ago, she’d consigned her husband’s body to his parents. And all she could think of was Rodrigo. There wasn’t even a twinge of guilt toward Mel. There was sadness, but it was the sadness she knew she’d feel for any human being’s disability and death. For his loved ones’ mourning. Nothing more.
What was wrong with her? What had been wrong with her and Mel? Or was there more wrong with her mind than she believed?
Her lungs deflated on a dejected exhalation.
All she could do now was never let any of those who’d loved and lost Mel know how unaffected by his loss she was. What did it matter what she felt in the secrecy of her heart and mind if she never let the knowledge out to hurt others? She couldn’t change the way she felt, should stop feeling bad about it. It served no purpose, did no one any good.
With that rationalization reached, she felt as if a ten-pound rock had been lifted off her heart. Air flowed into her lungs all of a sudden, just as the lovely surroundings registered in her appreciation centers.
The room—if a thirty-something-by forty-something-foot space with a twelve-foot ceiling could be called that—was a manifestation of the ultimate in personal space.
With walls painted sea-blue and green, furniture of dark mahogany and ivory ceilings and accents, it was soothingly lit by golden lamps of the side and standing variety. French doors were draped in gauzy powder-blue curtains that undulated in the twilight sea breeze, wafting scents of salt and freshness with each billow. She sighed away her draining tension and pushed from the wood-paneled door.
She crossed the gleaming hardwood floor to the suitcases. They were more evidence of Rodrigo’s all-inclusive care. She was certain she’d never owned anything so exquisite. She wondered what he’d filled them with. If the outfit she had on was any indication, no doubt an array of haute couture and designer items, molding to her exact shape and appealing to her specific tastes.
She tried to move the one on the floor, just to set it on its wheels. Frantic pounding boomed in her head.
Man—what had he gotten her to wear? Steel armor in every shade? And he’d made the cases look weightless when he’d hauled them both in, simultaneously. She tugged again.
“¡Parada!”
She swung around at the booming order, the pounding in her head crashing down her spine to settle behind her ribs.
A robust, unmistakably Spanish woman in her late thirties was plowing her way across the room, alarm and displeasure furrowing the openness of her olive-skinned beauty.
“Rodrigo warned me that you’d give me a hard time.”
Cybele blinked at the woman as she slapped her hand away from the suitcase’s handle and hauled it onto the king-sized, draped-in-ivory-silk bed. She, too, made it look so light. Those Spaniards—uh, Catalans—must have something potent in their water.
The woman rounded on her, vitality and ire radiating from every line. Even her shoulder-length, glossy dark brown hair seemed pissed off. “He told me that you’d be a troublesome charge, and from the way you were trying to bust your surgery scar open, he was right. As he always is.”
So it wasn’t only she who thought he was always practically infallible. Her lips tugged as she tried to placate the force of nature before her. “I don’t have a surgery scar to bust, thanks to Rodrigo’s revolutionary minimally invasive approach.”
“You have things in there—” the woman stabbed a finger in the air pointing at Cybele’s head “—you can bust, no? What you busted before, necessitating such an approach.”
From the throb of pain that was only now abating, she had to concede that. She’d probably raised her intracranial pressure tenfold trying to drag that behemoth of a bag. As she shrugged, she remembered Rodrigo telling her
