From Barcelona, with Love (21 page)

He'd managed Juan Pedro's finances, and looked after the de Ravel estates, and now he also looked after Bibi. She had refused to touch any of her assets in America for fear of being traced. She'd wanted to disappear for good, for Paloma's sake. That meant she was broke, but Rodolfo had helped her.

*   *   *

At the café,
Rodolfo threw back his coffee in a single gulp and ordered another. “And for you,
querida
?” he asked.

Bibi considered the amount of caffeine she'd already consumed, then decided the hell with it. “An espresso, please,” she said, sighing at her own indulgence.

“It's spur of the moment that I'm here,” Rodolfo said, sitting back and folding his arms over his chest, smiling at her. “I brought some friends with me for the weekend. I called you earlier, but when you didn't reply I guessed I'd find you here.”

“Buying up all the best fruit and veg,” she said. “I'll be baking some bread later, if you'd like some.”

“Why not bring it with you tonight? I'm inviting you to dinner,” he explained.

“Ohh, but you said you have company … friends.”

“New friends, who I'm sure would like to meet you. And I know you would like to meet them. There's one young man in particular, a singer. You could bring your guitar, play together…”

Bibi's eyes flashed panic. “But I can't sing, I mean it's impossible. He might recognize me…”

“No need to sing, I'm just asking you to come and enjoy yourself for once, and anyhow nobody recognizes you now. You're simply my cousin. It's an opportunity for you to hear some music. I'm sure he'll sing for us, Vida. Perhaps you could play your guitar with him, try one of your new songs. Be
yourself,
Bibi, for a little while.”

She had often played her new songs for Rodolfo, but never for anyone else and she was nervous. She bent to stroke the dog.

“I'm scared,” she said simply. “After all we've done, all I've gone through, isn't this risky?”

“Would I ask you if I thought it were? I'm simply inviting you to dinner and to meet some friends. You've done it before. You need not play if you don't want to, but I thought the singer might enjoy hearing some of your new songs. They're different from your old ones. It will do you good. And besides,
he
is good. So? Will you come?”

Bibi took a deep breath; why did she feel as if she were burning her boats? “If you insist,” she said.

“
Querida,
I insist.” Rodolfo was pleased. He'd known she wouldn't be able to resist the pleasure of music. Her lifeblood.

“Anyway, who is this singer?” she asked.

“His name is Jacinto,” he said. “The young singer-songwriter who's doing so well. I thought it was time to put music back in your life, even in this small way. A woman needs friends, the kind of people who understand her,” he added, patting her hand, rather anxiously. He was worried about her loneliness. He hoped he was doing the right thing.

 

Chapter 32

Extremadura is a
mere few hours' drive north of Málaga and the tourist destinations of the Costa del Sol, but it is another world, of medieval villages and Renaissance palaces, with the ruins of aqueducts and amphitheaters built by the Romans. It's a place from where the conquistadors set out to find the New World. The Sierra mountains cut through the middle. There are stony hills and deep silent forests, home to wild boar and red deer, to pheasant and ravens and to the black stork and the Spanish Imperial Eagle. Moorish walls with lookout towers encircle the ancient town of Cáceres, while outside those walls are valleys dotted with ancient stone castles and monasteries. Herds of cattle, the Iberian Avelina-black and the Casareña White, roam those valleys, as well as flocks of sheep from which comes one of Spain's most famous cheeses, the Torta del Casar. Wild pigs feed on acorns, giving the region its famous Iberian ham, and there are orchards and groves of olives and vineyards.

The first time Bibi saw the little town of Trujillo, she was with Rodolfo. It was that magical hour between evening and night, when all was quiet. The square, with its lovely Renaissance palaces and arches, and narrow medieval streets winding off of it, was floodlit and quiet. Bibi felt as though she had stepped back in time; she might have been living in another century. Outside the town the countryside lay silent and secretive, and it was that silence, that remote beauty, that drew her instantly to it. After all the noise, the flashing cameras, the screaming and yelling and her own personal agony, she needed peace. She needed that silence. She needed to be alone.

It was there she found the castle.

Small, turreted, set atop its own green hill, remote but, via small winding roads, accessible to a motorway and from there to a train or a plane that would, if necessary, take her to the place where her daughter lived. Bibi might never see her daughter again but she needed to be there, in Spain, for her
. Just in case.
She never dared ask herself what that “in case” might be. All she knew was that in a matter of life and death she would be there.

The Castillo was too old to even know its own beginnings. Gothic with ancestors from the middle ages, it had a view over the valley to where Rodolfo's own house was hidden in the trees, a mere couple of kilometers away, and where his family flag flew when he was in residence.

“Like royalty,” Bibi teased, laughing. And he was.

The Castillo had been owned by a wealthy Chicago widow. It had been on the market for a couple of years, and was going cheap. Castillo Verano, Summer Castle, the widow had called it, but Bibi preferred its original name, Castillo Adivino—the Fortune-Teller's Castle, so called because a woman said to have supernatural powers and the ability to foretell the future had been its first owner.

It was love at first sight. “I have to live here,” she said, making Rodolfo sigh.

“It's just like with the dog,” he'd complained. “It's too old and decrepit for you to look after.”

“I don't care,” she said. “I need it. I can breathe here.”

And seeing the glint of new excitement in her eyes, of course he'd found a way to get it for her. To protect her, he had one of his Andorran companies purchase the Castillo. Bibi's name would not appear on the title deeds.

She did nothing fancy to it, she didn't have the money, but thank God, the Chicago widow had fixed up the roof, where, to Bibi's delight, a pair of storks now nested in a chimney. The widow had also drilled a well and put in plumbing that almost worked, and electricity that worked sporadically, when the old generator felt up to it. She had also installed a couple of bathrooms, importing immense American bathtubs and gilded fixtures, with showerheads that tended to trickle like gentle rain or else drowned Bibi in one giant swoosh before turning off completely, which meant she'd be stuck with shampoo in her hair and have to run to fetch a bucket of water from the kitchen to rinse it off with.

The “country” kitchen the widow had installed had the same kind of quirks. There was a big old stove that worked on propane, delivered by an old man on a flatbed truck, rattling up the hill with the tanks swaying from side to side, until Bibi feared they might explode. The stove had to be lit with a long taper, standing well back, so she didn't singe her arms. There were open shelves with old blue gingham curtains stretched across on a wire, where she stored her new dishes, bought in the street market. The deep stone sink had enormous bronze taps that swirled crazily when you turned them. Unlike in the bathroom, though, there was always good water pressure due to the fact that it was closer to the well on the south of the hill. There was also a big rustic table and benches that had obviously been built in the house and left there because they were simply too big to ever get out the door.

There was nothing grand about the Castillo Adivino. You entered through a big wooden door studded with iron
clavos,
and with hand-forged black iron hinges. It opened with a great clanking iron key on a chain that must have weighed a couple of pounds, and you walked directly into a lofty white room topped with heavy dark beams. The gothic windows with their pointed arches had not been touched, though the Chicago widow had put in a pair of glass doors that led to a stone terrace sheltered by a grove of almond trees, long unpruned and running wild. In the spring they were covered in pink blossoms and flooded the air with their scent.

There were three bedrooms beneath the turrets, one of which, the smallest and prettiest, she'd told herself she would keep for Paloma. She was dreaming of course, but then she needed to keep Paloma's dream alive. Their windows were set in embrasures the thickness of the stone walls, with cushioned window seats and views over the valley where the lights of Trujillo twinkled in the darkness. On moonless nights when the little town was floodlit, it looked like a backdrop for some old Hollywood epic.

Bibi had done nothing fancy with her castle. All she'd been able to afford was a fresh coat of whitewash on the interior walls and flea-market finds for furnishings. She'd bought, cheap, a high-backed dark green velvet sofa and a low white table with chrome legs, very thirties and completely out of keeping but she liked the whimsical way it looked amongst all those old beams and gray stones. A couple of mismatched armchairs sat across from the sofa opposite a vast stone fireplace with a massive iron hook hanging over the grate, where in the olden days she supposed a cauldron of stew, perhaps of wild boar hunted down in the forest, would have cooked. There were a couple of lamps, a cushioned basket for the dog, and a wooden hat stand with a mirror and brass pegs on which she hung her rather battered collection of straw hats.

Of course there was a piano, not the Steinway concert grand she'd had in Hollywood, just a small upright Yamaha, but its sound echoed pleasantly from the high ceiling. Plus two guitars, one electric, one acoustic, the same ones she'd always played. A few Andalusian woven rugs, cream with patterns of blue or green, a few cushions, a CD player—a gift from Rodolfo—a small TV, a laptop, and that was it.

Her bedroom had a view over the valley and a bed big enough for two, though Bibi knew only she would ever sleep in it. She'd found a swatch of cream lace, handmade right here in the area, and draped it comfortingly around, enclosing her and Amigo cozily in the quiet of the night. There was a foggy old cheval mirror, a pine chest, a comfortable wing chair, a small desk placed beneath one of the windows, and an armoire that held the baggy tops and long skirts she secretly hated.

She had to admit she missed those snug little cashmeres, the narrow designer skirts and short dresses and the heels. After all, she was still a woman. Now, even her jeans were baggy and her sweaters were described in the catalogs from which she bought them as “boyfriend sweaters.” Which meant Big.

The Castillo was a complete contrast to the multimillion-dollar over-decorated house in the Hollywood Hills, where it was always
she
who was responsible for everything and everybody—
she
who had to write the songs, make sure the next record was even better than the last, the next concert bigger and more spectacular …
Her
energy had fulfilled everyone's lives.

Here, alone, but for her dog, there was a kind of peace she hadn't known for a long time. Not since she was a child, living with her father at the de Ravel bodega, where Paloma was now.

Peace. She only hoped someday her daughter would find it.

 

Chapter 33

Los Angeles, California

Sunny's phone rang
just as she was about to leave for a meeting. She checked the time as she picked up the phone. Four thirty. She was supposed to have been there five minutes ago.

“Sun, baby,” Mac said.

Oh God, it was him. At last! She sagged with relief, then told her assistant to go on without her. “Say I'll be there in ten,” she said, beaming. Then to Mac, “Just tell me you're at the airport and about to catch a flight home.”

“Well, not exactly the
airport
…”

This couldn't be good. She sank into the chair behind her desk. “Why not?”

“Things got a bit complicated here.”

“Complicated? Like you miss me so much you can't bear to be without me and simply have to get on the plane, or else…”

“Or else what?”

“Or else I'll get on a plane and come to you.”

Mac laughed. Sunny always surprised him. “I'll bet you would, too.”

She said, “Anyhow, what's so complicated? I thought all I was missing was the traffic.”

“And me.”

Sunny sighed into the phone. “And you, Mac Reilly,” she said softly.

“I have to see Paloma tomorrow. Out at the de Ravel vineyard.”

“Hmmm, suddenly you're in wine country.”

“Sunny, Sunny, what can I say. Only that I miss you the way I'd miss a rib if you cut it out of me, the way I'd miss your thigh over mine if you didn't sleep with me, the way I'd miss…”

Sunny laughed. “Better stop while you're ahead.”

“Okay. But it's true. This family is complicated and I was thrown right into the middle of their fights.”

“Poor you, but I'll bet you're already hot on Bibi's trail.”

“I met the Matriarch.”

“Ah, the Matriarch.” Sunny slung off her white mules and put her feet up on the desk. Twisting a strand of hair lazily around her finger, she said, “So, what's she like?”

“Actually,” Mac said, “she looks a lot like you.”

“You mean like me grown old?”

“Well, not exactly
old,
” Mac said.

She took her feet off the desk and sat up. “How old not old?”

“Forty-one.”

She caught the hesitation in Mac's voice, then he added too quickly, “In fact it turns out I knew her, years ago. In Miami. We were both so young, just kids really.”