Normally she hated pack
ing. It reminded her too much of all the times she’d had to move home after her father had left, each time to somewhere smaller and more depressing and further away from the family life she’d taken for granted. Now, though, she didn’t care. She just wanted to leave. To get as far away as possible from yet another man who had judged her and found her unsatisfactory.
Dumping her case on the bed, she began haphazardly stuffing clothes into it.
She had come here to turn her life around. To prove that she was worthy of recognition. That she deserved to belong.
Only once again she had been found lacking.
Her mouth trembled and she clamped it tighter.
So now what?
Stay and know that she was there not on the basis of merit but because the Osorios felt sorry for her?
No, thank you.
She was done with people feeling sorry for her. At school, her classmates’ curiosity about her father’s disappearance had been bad enough. But it had been her teachers’ sympathy—the carefully worded letters home to her mother, offering counselling and access to the hardship fund—that she’d found almost impossible to endure.
Then she’d had no option. Aged thirteen, there had been no escape from their pity. But she wasn’t a teenager now. She was an independent adult with freedom to make choices, and she was choosing to leave with some of her dignity intact.
Panic was prickling her skin. For years now she’d hidden her fears behind several coats of mascara and a couldn’t-care-less pout. But now she could feel them all seeping out of her pores—for Luis had tapped into the worst fear of all. That once someone got beneath the surface and saw the real Cristina they would find her a disappointment, a failure, a fraud—
‘Cristina.’
She hadn’t heard him come in. She’d been too lost in the mental fog of her misery and anger. But it didn’t matter anyway, for she had nothing to say to him.
‘Cristina?’
He had crossed the room and was standing behind her.
She ignored him. No doubt his mother had sent him after her. What other reason could there be? From the moment she’d stepped on to the island Luis had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want her there.
‘You can’t just pretend I’m not here—’
No, she probably couldn’t. But she wanted to.
Ever since her father had climbed into that taxi and simply not returned she’d felt abandoned, rejected. And yet for some reason she couldn’t quite explain Luis’s careless dismissal of her hurt more than anything else. Probably because it wasn’t just her photographs he’d rejected. It was her and that night they’d spent together. That beautiful, extraordinary night they’d spent in Segovia.
A night when he’d renewed her faith in men and more importantly in herself. When he’d made her feel beautiful and extraordinary. Her mouth twisted. Only of course none of it had been real. He’d been acting, playing a part. Just as her father had liked to do.
And she’d fallen for it.
Just as her mother had done.
And just like her mother, even though she’d had no reason to trust him, she’d let her guard down again. Tonight she’d stood beside him in the fading light, trying to concentrate on the flotilla of little boats racing around the island. But when he’d turned that dark grey gaze to her, his eyes slowly unpicking the buttons on the front of her blouse, she’d forgotten all about the boats. Forgotten too about his lies and the vile accusations he made.
The urge to reach out and run her finger along the length of his jaw had been so strong, so sharp it had hurt.
Her breathing was suddenly staccato.
But not as much as it hurt now, to realise that it had all been in her head. That was what men like him did. They made you feel, they made you care about them, so that like some stupid moth you kept banging into the flame even though you knew that it would burn you.
She’d known all this and yet she’d still let herself believe that the way he looked at her, the way his hand brushed against hers, had meant something.
Gritting her teeth, she tossed a jumper into the suitcase—what a complete and utter fool!
A hand reached past her and flipped the suitcase shut.