“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.