Fierce Love (34 page)

Maggie’s heart dropped. She sat up and tried to smile, but as he stepped up on the end of the porch, he looked too wary to appreciate the effort. When she’d become so unstable, maybe he was having seconds thoughts about her, and she couldn’t blame him.

He sat beside her. He’d taken the basket and blanket inside and come outside looking for her. “First I’ll have to find a woman who’d want to marry me; then I’ll think about it.”

“So you don’t have an opinion?” Fox replied.

“Not at this moment, no.” He stretched out his legs and closed his eyes. “Isn’t that an odd subject to interest a kid your age?”

“No, you’ve got to plan ahead, or life will run over you.”

“Good advice,” Maggie agreed. “I’ve been run over a time or two.”

“Hell, I’ve got tire tracks on my heart. That would work for a country western song, wouldn’t it?”

Maggie laughed in spite of herself. “We’ll have to check and make certain it hasn’t already been used.”

Fox stood. “You want some ice cream?”

“No, thank you, I’m fine,” she answered.

“I’m fine too,” Rafael added. As soon as the door shut behind Fox, he leaned close to her. “I did let you go, but I think your father’s death has hit you much harder than you realize, and you ought to make an appointment with Dr. Moreno.”

Miguel’s death had affected her, but not for the reason he assumed. He had just given her an excellent excuse to speak with the physician, but she couldn’t appear grateful and feigned reluctance. “I don’t know; maybe I do have some sort of post-traumatic stress, but he’d probably just prescribe tranquilizers.”

“Maybe that’s what you need. As for us, I can’t stop you from worrying about me, but I wish you had more faith in me. If I thought I’d be killed on Sunday, I’d retire today.”

“If anyone could terrify a bull, it’s you,” she assured him. “But I doubt any matador expects to die in the ring.”

He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s think about dancing. You can’t go home until we’ve had a chance to dance again. We should go back to Bailaora now that you have your dress and shoes.”

They were both good at pursuing distractions, but the elephant still remained in the room, or on the porch. “Yes, let’s go tomorrow night. Would it be easier if I moved into Santos’s condo?”

He answered her question with a narrowed look, one of his most fearsome expressions, but he’d shown himself to be protective, not violent, and he didn’t frighten her. Her chest still felt tight, but that he thought her suffering from stress rather than being just plain crazy was an enormous plus.

The next morning, Rafael wandered around Zaragoza while Maggie and Santos met with Mr. Calderon. He found a bench with a good view of Augustín’s memorial. He seldom turned his back on a bull in Augustín’s pose, and with good reason. José Cubero, called Yiyo, had died at twenty-one when he’d turned his back on the bull he thought he’d slain. Even with the sword plunged deep, the bull had made a final lunge and sent a horn through Cubero’s heart.

He couldn’t argue with Magdalena. Sometimes the bull did win, and a matador was killed. But she cared for him rather than his growing fame. Perhaps her father’s death was too vivid in her mind to dream of love, but he couldn’t send her home to grieve with the scant hope she’d return to him. He looked at his watch and stood to go back to meet her. For the first time in his life, he’d met a woman he could love, but he wouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep.

Sergio Calderon closed his leather folder and clasped his hands on top. “I think we’ve covered enough for today. While I didn’t want to speak in front of the others, your father was always generous when anyone in his family had an emergency and needed funds. A gambling debt isn’t an emergency, of course.”

Santos laughed. “Other than gambling with my life in a bullring, I don’t bet on anything else.”

The attorney glanced at Maggie, and she shook her head. “I work too hard to earn money to risk it for a thrill. What about Enrique? He doesn’t seem to have much in the way of ambition.”

“Your father was concerned about him and blamed himself for not spending more time with him. I think we should be firm with him and insist he continue his education if he wants the Aragon fund’s support.”

“That’s fine with me,” Santos agreed.

Maggie nodded. “With two of you here in Spain, you can make whatever decisions need to be made between my visits.”

“I’ll keep you informed,” Calderon promised. He handed her his card. “Please call me should you have any questions. If you need money for an advanced degree, the fund is available to you too. Miguel frequently told me the year he spent at the University of Arizona was one of the happiest of his life. He was very pleased you chose it.”

“Really? We talked about other things.” She rose with the men, and while she still didn’t believe she knew enough about the investments that fed the family trust, she was confident the attorney and Santos could handle it without her.

Santos had left his crutches in the car, and he walked from the attorney’s office building with an obvious limp. “What do you want to do on Sunday?” he asked Maggie. “If you won’t go to the arena, you ought to come to my place so you won’t be alone and worry yourself into an emergency room visit. Maybe I’ll rent a boat and take you and Fox sailing.”

She’d thought she’d be gone by Sunday, but it was already Friday, and she hadn’t even looked up flights yet, alone made a reservation. “Sailing would be fun, and you’re right, I’d rather not be alone.”

Rafael had been leaning against the entrance to the building and overheard Santos’s question. He approached them, barely able to hide his disappointment. “You may go wherever you please. Sailing, to the movies, or the zoo. The Parc Zoologic has moats to separate the animals, not cages, so it’s a beautiful place to visit.”

“Thank you. I haven’t been to a zoo in ages.” She took his hand as they walked to Santos’s SUV. If she spent every Sunday he had a fight at the zoo, she might be considered for volunteer of the year. It was a silly thought she kept to herself, but it was better than swimming in anguish all alone.

When they returned to Barcelona that afternoon, there was a limousine parked in front of Rafael’s apartment building. He pulled his Mercedes up behind it and asked Maggie to stay put. “It could be Santos’s agent, but whoever it is, you don’t need to see them.”

She caught his arm. “Be careful.”

He covered her hand with his. “It has to be someone wanting to make money off me, so I’m in no danger.”

When he left the car, a sharply uniformed chauffeur circled the limo to open the rear passenger door. Rafael kept his hand on the door and leaned in, but the conversation was over in seconds, and he backed away.

An attractive women dressed in bright red took the chauffeur’s hand to exit the limo and followed Rafael with tiny steps on stiletto heels. Her henna-tinted hair caught the sun’s glow, and she reached out to catch his arm with beautifully manicured nails. Maggie recognized her without hearing her name and left the car to meet her.

Rafael took Maggie’s hand to draw her close. “My mother, Carlotta Mondragon, or whatever she’s calling herself now.”

Carlotta dismissed Maggie with a hasty glance and turned the full force of her charm on her son. “One name is as good as another, but my husband is Orlando Ortiz. I only wanted to see you, Rafe, to make certain you’re well. Surely I deserve a few minutes of your time.”

“When you had no time for me and MaLou? No, go home and continue pretending you have no son, or do you have others with Ortiz?”

Carlotta looked down and glanced up at him through her thick false lashes. “You do have two younger brothers. Wouldn’t you like to meet them?”

“No, why would I?”

She wrung her hands. “I sent money to your grandmother for you and your sister whenever I could.”

His voice sank to a threatening whisper. “My grandmother and sister are dead.”

Her eyes filled with huge tears. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“Too sorry to visit me while I was in prison?”

She took an unsteady step back, and the chauffeur moved forward to catch her elbow. “You expected me to share in your disgrace?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You’re the only disgrace in our family. Luckily, I thought you were dead and forgot you.”

“Well, I missed you. When I saw you in the bullring last Sunday, I couldn’t believe my eyes. You’d wanted so badly to become a matador, and you’ve succeeded.”

“So now you’re proud of me and want to be my mother? You’re too late. Go back to Ortiz’s penthouse and stay there.”

He turned his back on her, grabbed their luggage from his car’s trunk and followed Maggie up the stairs to his apartment. Once inside, he locked the door and leaned back against it. “All these years, I thought one of her men had slit her throat and tossed her body in the sea, and she’s been chauffeured around in a limousine. Ortiz is one of Spain’s wealthiest men, but clearly he has no taste in women.”

Maggie couldn’t argue with his observation. She picked up her bag and set it on the sofa but lacked the energy to unpack. “She’s younger than I thought she’d be.”

“She was only fifteen when I was born. I’d no idea I’d ‘disgraced’ her.”

Maggie sat on the sofa rather than approach him while he was so angry. She didn’t blame him when Carlotta had selfishly sacrificed the children who loved her to improve her own lot. She breathed deeply and waited for him to calm down enough to say more.

He lifted the curtain to check the front of the building. “She’s gone. Rather than break up the furniture, I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back later and take you dancing.”

“We don’t need to go out if you’d rather not.”

His voice held a convincing depth. “Believe me, I need to dance.”

When he left, she called Santos for Dr. Moreno’s telephone number and contacted his office to make an appointment. When she gave her name, his receptionist offered her sympathies, and while Dr. Moreno did not usually see patients on Saturday morning, he made an exception for her. Maggie thanked her and hoped her questions wouldn’t stun the physician as they had her father.

Unable to sit and worry, she got up to make herself useful and prepare dinner by the time Rafael returned. There wasn’t a morsel to cook in the kitchen, but there was a little market on the corner, and after making certain he owned a few pots and pans, she walked there and bought pasta, fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, zucchini and ground beef. She had to make a second trip for a few spices but soon had a thick vegetable sauce simmering and began making meatballs.

She heard Rafael close the door and stepped out of the kitchen. “I hope you like spaghetti.”

His mouth nearly fell agape. “I can pay for our dinner. You don’t have to cook.”

She understood why the ability to pay was so important to him, and wondered if women had ever done anything for him out of bed. “I love to cook, so please do me a favor and pretend to like spaghetti even if you don’t.”

He came to the kitchen door. “I love spaghetti, but you really don’t have to–”

She kissed him, taking care not to touch him with sticky hands. “Can we please let life slow down for an evening?”

“You mean sit here and pretend we’re normal people, even if we aren’t? I should apologize for that scene with my mother. I didn’t introduce you, and she would have been thrilled had she known you were Miguel’s daughter.”

“No apologies are needed. Frankly, I admired your restraint. She deserved a lot worse.”

He laughed and tried to hug her without getting bits of ground beef in his hair. “I have the awful feeling I haven’t seen the last of her. My grandmother made excuses for her, blamed her youth every time she stayed out late and left us to fend for ourselves. She’s the kind who give Gypsies a bad name.”

She finished the last meatball and washed her hands. “Do you suppose Mr. Ortiz knows he married a Gypsy?”

His eyes lit with a dangerous glow. “No, I doubt she admitted it, and I’ll bet she lied about her age.”

“Then she can’t suddenly reveal she’s El Gitano’s mother, can she?” She leaned against the counter. “If she comes back, you might insist upon meeting her husband rather than your half brothers.”

“That’s a wicked thought, Magdalena.” A wide grin showed he loved it.

He had no idea how wicked her thoughts might be. “Thank you. I called Dr. Moreno’s office and made an appointment for tomorrow morning. You’re right. I haven’t been myself, and it wouldn’t hurt to see a doctor.”

“I just want you to be happy.” He pulled her into his arms and squeezed her tight.

She relaxed against him and closed her eyes. It sounded like such a simple goal, and yet she hadn’t been truly happy with her life until she’d danced with him. “Maybe it wasn’t meeting you on the stairs,” she whispered. “Maybe it was that first dance.”

He began to move very slowly, an easy rocking sway, and she nestled against him and wished they never had to leave a dance floor.

Bailaora was as crowded as it had been on their first visit, and when they came through the door dressed for dancing, Felipe Muñoz clapped his hands and rushed toward them. “Sonia has run off with her lover, and I am in desperate need of dancers. To have
El Gitano
join us is an answer to my prayers.”