chapter EIGHT
SHE WANTED TO hate him after that. She did her best to. Late at night atop her single bed she did all she could to hate him. But hate disappeared in the overwhelming truth.
She should never have let him kiss her.
Now her body ached to make love to him and yet she didn’t want to make love to him. She couldn’t make love to him. Making love made a person vulnerable. She’d learned that with Damon, their relationship going from boyfriend and girlfriend, moving with their lovemaking to a higher level. To love. Or so she’d thought.
Damon’s betrayal had ripped all sense of wanting intimacy out of her. Keep it platonic, she’d learned. Keep it simple, and you couldn’t be hurt.
Keep it platonic—businesslike—and there could be no complications.
She knew this to be true. She knew she’d been right to insist on a sex-free marriage. She didn’t want to go through what she had with Damon again. She couldn’t live with the fear and the gut-sickening uncertainty.
And yet still the thought of Alesander’s threatened lovemaking left her breathless and hungry. She tossed and turned in the small bed, tangling in the sheets, thinking about sheets tangled for other, more carnal, reasons.
Wishing that she didn’t look forward to it as much as she dreaded it.
Wishing she could simply hate him and be done with it.
She tossed again. Oh God, why the hell couldn’t she sleep?
The season shifted inexorably towards the harvest, and Alesander was busier, managing both his own business and yet still finding time to spend in Felipe’s vineyard, repairing trellises and filling in pot-holes in the driveway and, even though she knew he was doing it because the land would soon be his, she could not hate him for it when she saw how it made Felipe happier, to see his vines and the vineyard looking cared for again.
She tried to keep her distance as much as she could but somehow he was always there, shrinking the tiny cottage with his presence, talking to Felipe about the grapes, or comparing techniques to manage the vines.
And there could be no avoiding him because, as the harvest drew closer, so too did their wedding. Alesander appointed a wedding planner charged with the task of organising a wedding extravaganza in less than a month. Simone was happy to leave her to it, but there was no escaping the endless questions. There were meetings to be had, decisions to be made, plans to be drawn up.
And nothing could wait. Every little thing was urgent.
‘I can’t get a church,’ the wedding planner admitted at one of their first meetings, looking harried and stressed. ‘You’ve waited too long. San Sebastian’s churches are booked up months in advance and the village churches are full.’
Alesander brushed the problem aside. ‘Then we’ll get married in the Esquivel vineyard. It’s unconventional, but everyone will understand.’
The wedding planner looked noticeably relieved and turned to Simone. ‘Have you decided on who will be your attendant?’
Simone blinked. ‘Do I really need one?’
The planner looked askance at Alesander. ‘Who have you chosen as your best man?’
‘A friend from Madrid. Matteo Cachon.’
Simone’s ears pricked up. The name sounded vaguely familiar.
‘Not the football player?’ asked the woman, and Simone realised where she’d heard it. On the evening news. Matteo Cachon had just been signed in a massive deal that made him Spain’s most valuable football player. In the same report came the news he’d just dumped his long-term girlfriend, so he was also Spain’s most eligible bachelor.
He nodded. ‘Sí. He’s an old friend from university. We don’t see each other much these days but it fits in his schedule and he’s agreed.’
‘I have an idea about an attendant,’ Simone said, and when the wedding planner looked expectantly back at her, pen poised, added, ‘I’ll ask her and get back to you.’
Meanwhile Felipe was the happiest she’d ever seen him. He seemed to have dropped twenty years overnight. He even seemed to have more energy, demanding to be taken into town to be fitted out with a brand new suit, his first new suit since his marriage to Maria more than fifty years before.
It made it all worthwhile, even after the visit to his doctor, who’d taken her aside while Felipe was getting dressed to warn that while Felipe was feeling happier, she shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking he was getting better. There would be no getting better.
She’d thanked the doctor and swallowed back on a bubble of disappointment. Deep down inside she’d known that to be true, that there would be no sudden miracle or remission. She just hadn’t wanted to give that knowledge oxygen.
But the doctor’s warning made up her mind. She would stop this Cold War approach to Alesander. She would stop trying to make herself hate him and instead try to make this marriage look as happy for Felipe as she possibly could, although she hated the changed terms.
Because she would not let Felipe down.
The grapes tested perfectly one crisp day early in October and from then on it was madness. Swarms of workers filled the Esquivel vineyards, filling boxes with bunches of grapes, boxes emptied into a tractor drawn behind a trailer to be taken straight to the press.
Simone worked in Felipe’s vineyard as part of a team sent by Alesander, wearing oversized gloves and with a pair of thin-bladed snippers, perfectly designed for separating the bunches from the vines. If you knew what you were doing. In no time she knew she was the slowest person on the team. But she was determined to catch on, filling box after box with bunches of grapes.
Felipe sat on the vine-covered terrace and kept an eye on the progress, muttering to himself.
They took a break halfway through the morning, sitting amidst the vines, talking and laughing amongst themselves while they shared the most magnificent view on earth, and Simone felt privileged to experience this; to be part of something so utterly unique that she would never share in again. It made her sorry that she would ever have to leave.
And then they were back at work and there was no time for regret, only time for the grapes.
Alesander turned up at lunch time, with platters of food from a local restaurant, which the pickers shared around a big trestle table set up for the job.
‘Thank you for this,’ she told him near the car when he was leaving, and it didn’t matter this time whether she thought he was being nice or not, or whether she thought he was only doing it because he would soon own these vines, because she appreciated the gesture just the same. ‘Thank you for so much.’
He scooped her into his arms and dipped his head down and kissed her lightly on the lips, to the delight of everyone at the table nearby. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, and she knew he meant how she’d held herself separate from him while she’d told herself she hated him.
Because, in spite of all her reservations, she’d missed him too.
‘We get married in three days,’ he said.
‘Do you think the harvest will be finished?’
He growled and she felt it reverberate through her bones while his eyes held her hostage. ‘I don’t care. I’m marrying you anyway.’ And then he kissed her again.
It was because they were all watching, she told herself, as she snipped grapes for the next day and a half. He’d only said it because people were watching.
But still, regardless of what he’d meant, or whatever his motivation, she’d cherish forever the look in his eyes when he’d uttered those words.
Three mornings later, the harvest completed, she donned the dress that would make her the Esquivel bride. Her gown was by the same designer as the one she’d worn to Markel’s birthday party. Alesander had insisted on it and she’d argued that it wasn’t necessary, right up until she’d seen the gown paraded before them and wished it could be hers and before she’d had a chance to say she loved it, he’d said, ‘That one,’ and she’d known they were both right even before she’d tried it on.
And it was perfect. With its fitted bodice and tight waist and pleating across her hips, it echoed in so many ways the gown she’d worn to Markel’s party, but then this gown was so much more, the layers filmy and soft and the perfect foil to the fitted bodice.
Simone didn’t have to ask how she looked. Today there was no joking. Tears sprang from her grandfather’s eyes as she emerged from her room—tears that said it all. Tears that made all the lies she’d told suddenly worthwhile. It was worth it, she told herself, to see how happy Felipe looked today.
It was all worth it.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said in his thready voice. ‘You have made me the proudest man in the world.’
‘And you look wonderful, too.’ And he did, freshly shaved and in his new suit. She worried about his role, walking her down the aisle, and wondered if he was up to it, but today he looked ready for anything.
‘Come on,’ he said, offering her his arm, ‘the car is waiting for us.’
They arrived at the Esquivel vineyard to find most of the village waiting expectantly for her outside the vaulted cellars where the wedding was to take place.
‘Don’t be worried,’ her attendant said from the front seat. ‘Celebrations always follow the harvest. This is just one more cause for celebration.’
It was, apparently, as cameras clicked and buzzed around her as the bridal party made it from the car. Felipe took the longest time, untangling his legs but still smiling as he took his granddaughter’s arm for the walk down the short aisle.
Ezmerelda set off first, serene and magnificent and so calm it lent Simone strength. She followed on Felipe’s arm, his steps faltering and slow, but he beamed proudly to everyone along the way.
This is his moment, she thought, much more than mine, and she slowed her steps to match his, and let him have his moment. He was back, celebrating with the people he’d lived with all his life, the people he’d been cut off from, first with his wife’s illness and then with his own disease.
He was in his element and he was lapping it up.
And then she saw Alesander waiting for her.
So tall and broad, and so breathtakingly handsome beyond belief, and smiling indulgently, as if he knew what she was doing taking so long making her way down the aisle.
His smile worked its way into her bones. No wonder it was so hard to tell herself she should hate him.
Finally they were there and she kissed Felipe on the cheeks as he left her with her husband-to-be. She’d done it, she thought as she listened to her vows. Her crazy plan had worked out.
Or almost worked out.
And minutes later, as they were declared man and wife and they kissed, now it was almost done. Now there was just the reception and Alesander’s contract amendments to work through …
The reception was the easy bit. Ezmerelda was right, the village was in the mood to celebrate, and Felipe was not missing out on anything. She saw him stagger his way onto the dance floor as Alesander whirled her around the floor, and she wondered how long his strength would last, but how could she stop him when he was having so much fun?
Alesander whisked her past. ‘However did you do it?’ he asked. ‘However did you get Ezmerelda on side to be your attendant?’
She smiled and looked across to the couple who had danced non-stop since the music had started, the couple the photographers were almost one hundred per cent focused upon. ‘All I had to do was tell her I knew nothing about weddings and I needed her help.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Okay, it did help when I mentioned who your best man was.’
He laughed. ‘You are an amazing woman, Señora Esquivel.’
She blinked up at him and wished things could be different. ‘And you are an amazing man.’
He pulled her to him and they shared that moment as he spun her around the dance floor, and this time she let herself relax and be held because it felt so good when this man held her and she knew it wouldn’t last.
It didn’t last. Barely a minute into the dance they heard the cries of panic.
It only took a second to work out why the music and dancing had stopped.
Felipe had collapsed on the dance floor.