“Ah, it’s me you don’t trust,” Rico said in a tone of enlightenment. “You don’t want to admit you have a weakness where she’s concerned.”
Not even to himself, Cesar thought grimly, but couldn’t deny it. He was missing more than his son. He wanted his wife. He wanted to taste her skin, feel her against him in bed, hear her laugh. He wanted to watch her hands move as she told him a story.
He wanted to know how things were going with her mum. He was worried that she was being treated badly by the locals and hated that he wasn’t there to protect her.
He wanted to hold her, suspecting he might have made her cry. He wanted to reassure her it would be all right, but would it?
How could he make things right if he didn’t love her? How would he even know what love was? Blood didn’t come from a stone. If the raw material wasn’t present, you couldn’t extract it. What they had was chemistry—
He tipped his head back as realization frothed up in him as quickly as bicarbonate foamed in vinegar.
One element could bond to another, forming something that wasn’t present before. He knew that as conclusively as he knew his lungs took in oxygen molecules that could attach to hydrogen and become the water that made up seventy percent of his physical body.
He and Sorcha certainly generated enough heat to support a chemical reaction.
Hell, love wasn’t a substance anyway. It wasn’t something you found and weighed. It acted like an energy, one with enormous power. Sorcha’s love wasn’t sitting within him, taking up space. It was radiating through him, like light, accelerating his own emotions.
He quite suddenly urgently wanted to be with her. His need to feel her and smell her was magnified, expanding like a supernova, wanting to swallow her into him with the understanding they’d both be stronger for the bonding.
And apparently love had the ability to slow time, because the two days before he’d be home to see her suddenly stretched like an eternity. Would she even be there? A black hole opened inside him as he understood what he’d done to her that day.
If she wasn’t there waiting for him, it meant that he’d killed her love.
If you did love me, you’d understand how painful this is.
He did understand. He felt sick at deflecting what had been the greatest possible gift she could give him.
Moving to his phone, he quickly texted, asking if she was on her way home.
Tom wants to meet us. I’m staying for now.
Cesar’s heart stuttered in his chest.
She’d left him once before, but he wasn’t comatose in a hospital this time. He wasn’t going to let it happen again.
* * *
Everything, from the moment her mother had spilled Sorcha’s heart to being home again, where her mum said things like, “See? Falling in love with your boss isn’t a disaster,” was heart-wrenching.
Cesar didn’t love her. Sorcha told herself to be content with what she had. They were closer than they’d ever been.
But this was as far as they would go. She had to come to terms with the death of hope.
Thankfully she had her mother’s settlement package to distract her.
The biggest news had been that the mansion on the hill was being procured from the actor who’d bought it. Their old home would soon belong to her mother.
They had all debated at length about whether Mum should move into it. In the end they decided it didn’t matter how anyone in the village reacted. They had all learned to live with judgment long ago. If that was the home her mother loved, she ought to live there if she wanted to.
That set the groundwork for her mother to hire a manager to keep her existing house open for lodgers and its modest income.
She kept saying that with that income, she didn’t need anything more than the settlement she’d been entitled to in the first place.
Sorcha, having worked in the cutthroat business world, understood there was a time for kindness and a time when being nice got you nothing. After all they’d endured, she was not going to let her mother be talked out of one euro less than what she deserved. She had a vision of Tom Shelby swanning in and reminding her mum so much of the man she had loved that he’d soon have her signing away her claim to everything, including the house. No way was Sorcha leaving until all the t’s were crossed and i’s dotted.
Corm, bless him, suggested they meet at the pub so they felt as though they had home-turf advantage when Tom arrived. They were all quite nervous and it turned out to be a surprisingly amiable afternoon.
Tom opened with what sounded like a heartfelt apology. He explained that his mother was still alive, but in a home with dementia. He’d been a minor when their father died and his grandfather had had power of attorney. The grandfather had orchestrated the fraud, his signature was on all the papers prepared by a now dead lawyer. Tom was leaving it to a court-appointed authority to determine a fair settlement.
He was being as decent as he could be in the circumstances and Sorcha had to allow that she might have judged him too quickly in Spain. His remorse and desire to mend fences seemed very real.
“My being here is personal. I wanted to meet you properly,” he said, explaining that his—their—sister was working in South America and unable to get away, but was hoping to meet them soon. “Given the way I met Sorcha... That was a terrible shock,” he said, patting a warm—yes, it was even brotherly—hand over hers. “I’m so sorry for that. I must have struck you as incredibly callous. I had heard a rumor my father had children in Ireland, but as you can imagine, it was never discussed. When Cesar pulled me aside and told me... I wanted to speak to you then, but he said it wasn’t the time. He was so livid I was glad to get away with my life. Honestly,” he said with an earnest nod as Sorcha’s sisters giggled. “But I— Oh, hello. Speak of the devil.”
Tom picked up his hand off Sorcha’s.
“What? Oh!” Sorcha turned in her seat to see her husband striding through the pub toward them, hair damp and tousled by the weather, cheeks lightly stubbled in that rugged way he liked to wear his beard. He wore a rain-speckled suit and his eyes had dark bruises under them.
Her heart soared in excited reaction.
He stopped at the far end of the table and Sorcha was aware of the entire establishment quieting.
Speaking of livid, she thought as he looked at her. Was he angry she hadn’t come home? He was acting like a bloody dictator, if that’s why he was here, but honestly, what was wrong with her that she was so darned happy to see him even when he looked so grim?
She wasn’t mentally prepared to face him, though. She had married him in a state of delusion, believing she could somehow reach his heart, but she didn’t know how to resume their marriage now that the reality of his locked heart had been shown to her so bluntly.
Enrique squawked and Cesar dragged his gaze from predatory fixation on her to soften as he looked at his son. He took the boy from his auntie’s lap and gave him a little toss into the air, kissing his cheek, then winked one eye against the baby’s happy tap of his open hands against his face.
“I’m excited to see you, too. But I need to talk to your mother. Angela, would you mind?” He handed Enrique to Sorcha’s mum, who agreed to take custody of her grandson with the special adoring blink she reserved for Cesar.
Then he held out a hand in Sorcha’s direction. And because he was that arrogant and she was that obedient, she got to her feet on his wordless command.
He said to Tom in a very ominous tone, “You know, of course, that nothing said at this table has any legal bearing?”
“I do know that,” Tom said with a faint, dry smile. “Your wife said