He didn’t move.
For the longest time he sat on the bed staring incomprehensibly at the thick carpet while she lay on the bed gazing mutely at the ceiling.
He wanted to be sick. There was movement beside him as Francesca slowly sat up.
A trembling finger was placed lightly on his shoulder.
‘Felipe...’
Slowly he raised his head and caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall.
The reflection gazing back was a man he didn’t recognise.
He didn’t think he would ever recognise himself again.
WHEN HIS THROAT had loosened enough so he could breathe, Felipe got to his feet and put his boxers on. Only then did he turn to the hunched figure in the centre of the bed. She still had her dress on.
Francesca’s eyes were huge but when he met them he saw they were filled with defiance as well as misery.
With a sigh, he sank back onto the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. ‘You should have told me.’
Her voice was low but steady. ‘If I’d told you, you would have stopped.’
‘Damn right I would have stopped.’ He swore loudly as he remembered something else that made the hairs on arms lift. ‘We didn’t even use protection.’ Not that they’d needed it. It had been over almost as soon as it had begun.
‘I’m on the Pill,’ she mumbled.
‘Are you?’ he demanded. ‘You’re not just saying that?’
A quick shake of her head. ‘I used to have terrible pains every month. The Pill helped.’
‘Francesca... Dios...’ He raised his head and met her gaze. ‘What were you thinking?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Was it your intention to make me hate myself?’
She shook her head and blinked rapidly. If she cried, he thought there was every chance he would lose the plot completely.
How was it possible she’d been a virgin?
‘For God’s sake, will you say something? Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?’
‘I thought you wanted me to shut up,’ she whispered with a forlorn smile.
His hands clenched into fists and he swore loudly.
She screwed her eyes tight shut.
He fought to control his tone, to soften it. ‘Francesca, please, tell me why you didn’t think fit to inform me you were a virgin. Don’t you understand how sick I am at myself for what just happened? My self-loathing would have been high enough but discovering that...’ He threw his hands in the air. His affairs had always been conducted with experienced women who knew better than to expect anything from him. Did Francesca giving her virginity to him mean she wanted more? ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘Because I wanted it to happen,’ she said so quietly he had to strain to hear.
‘But why? There can never be anything between us, don’t you understand that? Even when this is all over and you’re no longer my client, you and I can never be.’
‘Why? Because I’m too young for you?’ Her voice shook. ‘I’m twenty-three, not thirteen, old enough to marry, to vote, to drive, to work, to make mistakes and be judged old enough to know better.’
‘No!’ His voice rose as he lost the battle with his temper. ‘I don’t do relationships. I told you this. You were a twenty-three-year-old virgin for a reason, I assume because you were waiting for the right man or for marriage. I could never be that man!’
‘I don’t want you to be that man!’ Francesca shouted back. Her shame and Felipe’s anger had pushed her to breaking point. ‘Stop making assumptions about me. I wasn’t saving myself. Haven’t you listened to me? I’ve told you more than once I don’t intend to settle down for years, not until I’ve set up my own law firm. I want a career first, thank you, and when I do marry it will be to someone who can treat me as his equal. You are not that man.’
‘Then why?’ He gripped the back of his head and breathed deeply. ‘Please, explain it to me so I don’t spend the rest of my life hating myself for taking advantage of your vulnerability. And do not deny that you’re vulnerable, you buried the brother you loved only days ago and something like that does affect you even if you don’t see it at the time.’
She dragged her fingers down her face and tried to control the violent trembling racking her body.
Whenever she’d imagined them together, and in the past few days it had seemed that was all she’d thought about, she’d blithely assumed he wouldn’t notice she was a virgin and that she would have the wit to smother any pain because everyone said the pain only lasted a moment.
She’d known perfectly well he would reinforce the barrier he’d put between them if he knew she was a virgin and seeing his self-loathing horror at what they’d done made her feel more wretched and ashamed of herself than she had believed she could feel.
Had it been such a bad thing, keeping quiet about her virginity? It was her body. Wasn’t she free to do with it as she wished?
Silence filled the room as she composed her thoughts and tried to compose herself, biting back the tears that were right there, waiting to be unleashed.
‘I know Pieta’s death’s affected me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s made me see how short life can be. I could get a terminal illness or get hit by a car or be the victim of a natural disaster... People die every day. You’ve walked the streets of Caballeros with me...you’ve been in battle, you must feel life’s fragility.’
A tear leaked down her cheek. She wiped it away before continuing. ‘I’m not trying to be morbid. Before Pieta died... I’m trying to make you understand what it was like. I knew from the time I could speak that I would never inherit anything and I remember my mamma stroking my hair when I was seven and saying what a pretty girl I was and how lucky I was that I would have my pick of rich husbands and always live a life of luxury. My looks and my family name were expected to be enough for me to have a great future but I remember feeling sick at the thought of it.
‘Daniele wasn’t going to inherit but he was expected to build a great life for himself—why should it be different for me because I was girl? Why should my future depend on what would, essentially, be the goodwill of a man I hadn’t even met? Why should I be forced to beg for money to buy the clothes I need when I can earn it myself and control my own life? I think that was the moment I decided I would take my own path and prove that anything my brothers could do, I could do too, and do it better. I’ve spent my whole life working towards that. But I didn’t live like a recluse. I partied and had fun but relationships... I saw how my friends were with their boyfriends and how their relationships consumed their lives and knew I couldn’t afford that distraction.’
While she spoke, Felipe didn’t say anything, listening with narrowed eyes without comment.
She met his gaze and tried to smile but instead found herself wiping away another tear. ‘Until eleven days ago I never had the sense that it could all end at any moment. My father’s death was awful but he’d been in his seventies and had been ill for years. In many ways the end was a relief for him. Pieta was only thirty-five, young, fit, recently married, a whole future to look forward to and it was all taken away in a moment by something as innocuous as fog. Fog!’ She could laugh at the madness and cruelty of it.
To watch her father slowly disintegrate had been heart-breaking but his faculties, his sense of humour...they had all survived in him to the very end. They’d