“So, you quarreled about Frank?”
“No.”
“Well, what was it, then?”
“Nothing. Everything.” Rafe hesitated. “It was confusing. She still loves this man but later, when I thought back on what had gone on…” His eyes met Nick’s. “I think, perhaps, Carin wanted me to tell her that I loved her.”
“That you…” Nick stared at his old friend. “Help me out here, okay? She left you because you didn’t tell her you loved her?”
The men’s eyes met. Rafe’s face took on a ruddiness that had little to do with the chill in the air. He stuck his hands into his pockets and started walking.
“Right. I said it was confusing.”
“Not really. I mean, it sounds simple, to me. Why didn’t you just say it?”
“Because I don’t!” Rafe came to a stop again and swung towards Nick, his eyes almost black with anger. “Carin is a wonderful woman. She’s beautiful and bright. She made me happier than I thought a man could be. Waking in the mornings, with her in my arms. Falling asleep with her curled against me at night. Just being with her…” He swallowed hard. “But love? Love is a nonsense word, used by people who believe in fairy tales. It deludes those who pretend to feel it. I know this, Nick, and yet you think I should have lied to my wife? That I should have said, ‘I love you, querida,’ just to keep her?”
Nick looked at Rafe for a few seconds before he spoke. “You’re going to have to help me with this, Rafe,” he said carefully. “I thought you told me that Carin is still in love with Frank.”
“What if I did?”
“Well, why would she want you to say you love her, if she loves him?”
“I don’t know.”
“And how can you be upset about her being in love with another man if love means nothing to you?”
Rafe’s jaw hardened. “It means something to her.”
Nick whistled softly through his teeth. “It’s an interesting puzzle. And it makes me wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
“If you’d said you loved her, just to make her happy…” He held up his hand before Rafe could speak. “Hear me out, okay? If you’d said you loved her, and if she’d said she loved you, too, you’d have said, what? That she didn’t know what she was talking about?”
“Sim. Yes, that is what I would have said.”
“Or maybe you’d have said she was lying.”
Rafe moved fast, knotted his fingers into Nick’s lapels and dragged him forward. “I told you before. My wife does not lie!”
A muscle knotted in Nick’s jaw. “Take it easy,” he said quietly.
Rafe stared at him. “Santos Deus,” he whispered. He let go of Nick’s jacket and took a step back. “Forgive me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I can’t think straight. I bark at my housekeeper, my secretary…my men go out of their way to avoid me.”
“And you don’t know what’s wrong with you?” Nick smiled. “Rafe, old buddy, you’re in love.”
“No! I told you, I don’t believe in—”
“Neither do a lot of us, until we meet the right woman.”
The men stood looking at each other for a long moment. Finally, Rafe gave an agonized groan.
“All right,” he said, “it’s true. I don’t know how it happened, that I, of all men, should have fallen in love but, Deus, I love Carin. She is my heart, my soul, my life.” He grasped Nick’s arm, this time in desperation. “But what does it matter?” His voice roughened. “She doesn’t love me. She loves this man—”
“Forget that. I told you, what they say isn’t always what they mean.”
“Then…” Rafe cleared his throat. “Then, you think there’s a chance? That I can go to her, take her in my arms, tell her that I have been the worst kind of fool…?” He stared at Nick. “What is it? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Rafe. Dammit, I’m sorry…”
“Tell me what you know, Nicholas.”
“I think it’s too late for a reconciliation. You see, Carin asked me to do a favor for her. To check on something, I supposed you’d call it a legality…” He took a breath. “I guess you chose your baby’s name together, right?”
“For heaven’s sake, what has Amy’s name to do with this?”
“Well, it isn’t Amy. Not anymore. That was the favor Carin wanted, to find out how to go about changing the baby’s name, legally.”
Rafe froze. “She cannot take my name from my daughter. It is on the birth certificate. She is Amy Alvares…”
“The Alvares is still there. It’s the ‘Amy’ part that’s gone.”
“The Amy part?”
“Yeah. Carin changed it. Your little girl isn’t named Amy Brewster Alvares anymore. She’s Amalia…Rafe? Rafe, what the hell are you doing?”
But Rafe had already run across Fifth Avenue, to find his wife and tell her that he loved her.
* * *
It wasn’t quite that easy.
Rafe paced the living room of the al Rashid penthouse, waiting to see if his wife would even agree to see him.
Nick had caught up to him as he’d raced out of Central Park, taken him upstairs, told Carin her husband was here and then he’d hustled a protesting Amanda into her coat and out the door.
“But, but, but,” Amanda kept saying, casting little glances at Rafe that were not friendly, but finally Nick kissed his wife to silence.
“She’ll be down,” he’d hissed at Rafe, just before he’d closed the door.
All Rafe could do now was wait, and hope, and pray.
He paced the room, paced it some more. He went to the wall of glass that overlooked the park, stared at the terrace…
“Hello, Rafe.”
He spun around and felt his heart stutter in his chest.
His wife was standing on the stairs, her hand on the banister. She was wearing jeans and a sweater; her hair was tousled and she had no makeup on her face. She was, in other words, incredibly beautiful…but the look in her eyes was bleak.
He took a couple of steps towards her. “Hello, Carin.”
“Nick said you want to see me.”
“I…Yes. Yes, I do.”
She came down the rest of the steps, wrapped her arms around herself as she had the night they’d quarreled—the night he’d lost the only thing in life that mattered to him.
“I realized you want to see Am—to see the baby, but she’s asleep. If you come back tomorrow morning, say, around nine…”
“Of course, I want to see her. But I came to talk to you.”
Carin unfolded her arms and tucked her hands into her pockets. She swept past him and he caught a whiff of her scent, a soft fragrance that he sometimes half imagined he could still catch, drifting lightly on the air in the bedroom they had shared.
“I told you the rules, Rafe. You’re to call, before you—”
“You renamed our daughter.”
Carin turned and looked at him. A flush rose in her cheeks; her lips trembled, and that was when he knew, when he was certain, she loved only him.
“Nick’s
an idiot,” she said sharply. “Why did he tell you that?”
Rafe smiled as he walked towards her. “He thought it had some meaning, querida, that it meant you would never take me back into your life, and he wanted to warn me not to have hope that you would.”
“Well, he was right. Don’t have hope, Rafe. I’m not—”
“Why did you change it?”
“Why? For—for tradition. For—for respect. For…” She caught her breath as he stroked a hand over her cheek. “Please, don’t do that.”
“What? Don’t do this? Touch you?” He threaded his hands into her hair, those dark, silky locks, cupped her face, lifted it to his. “You used to like me to touch you. To hold you, amada, do you remember?”
“I remember telling you not to come here unannounced.” Her voice wobbled; she tried to pull away from him but he wouldn’t let her. “And I remember telling you not to use words like that when they had no meaning for you.”
“What words?” he whispered, and he bent to her and kissed her mouth.
“You know what words. Querida. Amada. They don’t mean a damn.”
“They mean that you own my heart, Carin.” A smile curved his mouth. “But you have never said them to me. I have never heard you call me querido or amado.”
“Why would I? I don’t love—”
“Yes,” Rafe said gently, “you do. You love me.” He took a deep breath. “And I love you.”
“You’re just saying that, because you—you want me to come back, so our daughter will grow up in your home.”
“Sim. I want that, very much. But what I want the most, querida, is to spend the rest of my life proving my love to you. Carin.” He paused, knowing that all the words he’d ever spoken, the ones that had helped him purchase his ranch, that had helped him leave behind, forever, the little boy from the slums of Rio, were not as important as the ones he would speak now. “Carin, I never understood what love was. I thought it was a dream for the weak, a game for those who played it. But I understand it now, querida. I believe in it because I love you, with everything I am, and if you truly leave me, I will be empty inside, forever.”