How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? Alejandro rubbed the bridge of his nose. Four hours ago he’d been in love, his certainty in the success of the first project that was truly his allowing him to entertain thoughts of shopping for a ring for the mother of his child.
And then his father, with surprisingly good intentions, had once again taken his life and turned it on its head.
“You don’t think you’re capable, do you? Of being a father, of...” Her voice trailed off, choked with emotion. He moved forward, to hold her close like he had at the inn, but she held up a hand. “Of committing,” she finished.
It was all happening at once. Too much. Too much swirling around inside like a hurricane, destroying everything in its path. He’d built his life around what his father had done, had pursued women and notoriety to punish him.
Except it had been a mistake. One mistake committed out of pain instead of a calculated affair. He’d lived nearly twenty years of his life on a myth that he’d been too angry, too hurt, to examine more closely. To act like an adult and talk with his father.
His entire reality had been called into question in one conversation. Much as he wanted to blame his father—how much easier that would have been—he had no one to blame but himself. And Javier’s words of warning had made him wonder...did he really want to be a father? A husband? Or was this just another twisted trick of his psyche?
He didn’t have an answer. Which was probably an answer in itself.
“Calandra...if you heard everything...” He spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know what to think.”
He watched whatever they’d had end as her shoulders straightened, her chin came up and her mask slid back into place, all within a few seconds. His heart, his chest, his whole damn body ached to hold her, to erase the last few hours and recapture the magic they’d found in Provence.
But he kept his hands by his sides. He’d borne witness to the painful price her parents’ abandonment had demanded of Calandra. How could he risk doing the same thing to the baby? Risk putting Calandra through yet another rejection? Like his father had said, if he didn’t know one hundred percent that he wanted this, it was better to let her go. Let their child go.
“It seems, then, that I have my answer.” A heartbeat where she hesitated, where the ice in her eyes cracked and revealed the insurmountable pain he’d caused her. Even if he did find an answer, he’d never be able to come back from this. From hurting her so deeply.
“Goodbye, Señor Cabrera.”
Somehow, he thought as he watched her walk up the stairs and disappear into the villa, he’d always known Calandra Smythe would walk out of his life.
He’d just had no idea he’d be the one to drive her away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Three weeks later
SILVERMOONLIGHTCREATEDa mystical glow on the ocean, the waves rising and falling beneath a dark sky speckled with stars. Calandra sat on the beach, one hand draped across her belly.
The ocean had looked incredible from the porch, the muffled roar calling to her. The view from her attic bedroom was nothing compared to the beauty laid out before her. Waves crashed on a smooth beach, the white-capped peaks glowing in the moonlight, the water tumbling over itself in frothy splendor to almost kiss her bare feet before receding. Stars spiraled above her head.
She kept her eyes on the barest glint of a horizon, where the midnight blue of the sky met the even darker blue of the ocean. Beneath her fingertips, something fluttered.
A sad smile tugged at her lips. She’d felt it this morning, the briefest twinge. She’d chalked it up to muscle spasms. But the fluttering had grown stronger, until it had been impossible to deny that she was feeling her baby move inside her for the first time.
Johanna had insisted on baking a cake to celebrate the occasion. A yellow cake frosted with caramel and topped off with sprinkles in the shape of baby rattles she’d served after dinner.
For all the years that Calandra had spent taking care of Johanna, her sister had repaid the favor twice over in the three weeks Calandra had been home. She’d picked her up at the airport, held her while she forced out the whole story on the couch with thankfully minimal tears. She’d arranged a meeting for Calandra with a finance student from her college to help her decide how best to manage the five-hundred-thousand-dollar deposit that had appeared in her account twenty-four hours after she’d left Marseille.
An email had also been sent with an attachment, a formal letter of recommendation from Alejandro Cabrera himself, head of Cabrera Shipping.
Last week she’d been mindlessly flipping through late-night movies, unable to sleep, whenThe Scarlet Pimpernelhad come on. She’d changed the channel with a savage push of a button, then changed it back again. Landing on the scene where the beautiful, tortured Marguerite had looked at Percy with sad eyes and whispered, “This is some absurd role you’re playing. I don’t know why. But I’m sure it is. Perhaps to keep the world at a distance. Only now you’re shutting me out as well,” it had plunged a knife into her heart so deep it had made her eyes burn.
She’d done the right thing. He hadn’t been playing a role when he’d flat-out told her he didn’t know if he wanted her in his life, wanted their child in his life. A definitive answer. One that had nearly killed her.
Better to know now, before the baby came and could get attached to a father who would disappear from its life, than to suffer that heartache later.
It didn’t stop the wondering. Or the memories. The dreadful, horrid, wonderful memories of a week when she’d climbed the Eiffel Tower, seen the Mediterranean from the deck of a yacht and knelt down to smell a sprig of lavender in front of a historic abbey.
At least Alejandro had given her that, she consoled herself. She’d lived more in the past week than she had in years. That little taste of life had come just in time. When their—her, she corrected herself—her child arrived, she would make sure it got that same taste of life, that same joy in both the big and small.
And through that, her child would at least know their father a little.
A breeze blew in, bringing with it the scent of sea salt. Out of the corner of her eye, something appeared. She turned her head and gasped. A yacht glided across the water, elegant and glowing white under the kiss of moonlight. If she squinted, she could just make out letters written in graceful red cursive.