“Call me Jillian, por favor.”
“J-Jil-yan?”
“That’s good.”
Both women laughed in the face of Jillian’s lie before Maria disappeared with the flowers.
Remi’s mouth curved upward. “Flowers for Maria from a guest? That’s a first for her. She won’t forget your generosity.”
“I’m the one imposing.”
“Let’s get you out of this heat, shall we? You’ll find the thick walls keep house much cooler.”
She accompanied him inside, but only took a few more steps before she let out another gasp and came to a halt.
Alarmed, he reached for her in case she was feeling light headed. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
“No.” She turned toward him. “Forgive me for startling you,” she said, slowly easing her arm from his grasp. Every time he touched her now, he started a small fire.
“It’s just that I’ve known private homes with honeycomb vaulting such as this existed, but I’ve only seen the rare pictures of them in books. Outside of the Alhambra I’ve explored, I never thought I’d be privileged to experience a true Spanish treasure first hand. It’s like coming upon a mystical kingdom where Othello and Don Quixote would be at home.”
Her explanation helped his muscles to relax. The description of his birthplace was very moving. Indeed it paralleled his own thoughts formed from the cradle, but never expressed aloud.
“When you’ve freshened up, we’ll eat lunch in the patio room.”
“That sounds lovely. For the first time in several days I’m actually hungry.”
She followed him down a passageway of glazed, multicolored tiles to the right of the arched foyer. They had to be four hundred years old yet still retained their brilliant colors of blue, red, orange and green. Fabulous!
He came to a set of carved double doors with brass studs and opened them, revealing a magnificent room befitting a nobleman’s house.
“The bathroom is through that door on the left. Make yourself at home. I’ll be back with your suitcase. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s time for your eyedrops.”
He left her standing there bemused by her surroundings. In the midst of this kind of splendor, she had forgotten. A huge chandelier with real candles hung from the stalactite ceiling. At her feet lay an intricately inlaid wood floor in a striped Moorish design, making it difficult to know where to look first.
The big canopied bed of white lace would have dominated a smaller room. Her fascinated gaze passed from the brass wall sconces to the massive armoires and writing desk. The dark wood had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a long lost art.
In one end of the room she spied a round table of an unusual shade of yellow wood tinted with darker veining. Several ornately upholstered chairs in jewel tones surrounded it. At the other end she saw a grouping of damask love seats and an ottoman arranged around a fireplace.
Above the elaborately carved mantel hung an immense oil painting of a mature olive tree in full flower, its trunk gnarled and twisted. There was a plaque at the bottom. She moved closer to read it.
Gat Shemanim. The words were in Hebrew. What did they mean?
Her gaze flicked to the olive groves she could see from the window, then shifted back to the painting again. She could almost hear its silvery leaves rustling in the breeze, never realizing how fascinating an olive tree could be.
Senor Goyo had been tending them from boyhood, extracting the rich oil from their fruit revered by men over the centuries. The thought of him engaged in something so important throughout his whole life had a strange effect on her, moving her to tears for a reason she couldn’t comprehend.
To her dismay he’d come back in the room with her suitcase and his flowers, catching her in another emotional moment.
She heard him pause before he lowered her bag to the floor and walked over to her. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked in a husky tone.
Jillian knew what she wanted him to do, but that would be the worst thing she could do for herself, and it would only embarrass him.
“Great beauty always makes me emotional.” She tried to resist looking at him. “Tell me the meaning on the plaque of the painting.”
He studied her face briefly before he said, “The Garden of Gethsemane. Several olive trees still growing there would have witnessed the Lord’s suffering. My grandmother, devout in the faith, had it painted as a first anniversary gift for my grandfather. He insisted it hang in their bedroom. My parents kept up the tradition.”
“So this was their room, too.”
His dark head nodded. “Five generations of Goyos have slept in here.”
She stared at him. “Does that mean you, too?”
Lines broke out on his hard-boned features alerting her she’d stepped onto sacred ground. That was the trouble with asking questions that were none of her business. In her need to learn more about him, all she managed to do was upset him.
“I live in the house to the north of the courtyard.”
Not in the main house?
What terrible history had gone here to bring an end to traditions he clearly loved?
“Do you need a few more minutes alone?” he asked in a deceptively mild voice, but she wasn’t fooled.
“Give me five minutes to put in my drops and I’ll join you in the patio room. Where is it?”
“When you leave the bedroom, go left and you’ll soon come to it.” He put the flowers down on the bedside table and started to leave.
“Remi…” His black eyes swerved to hers. “Do you mind if I put the roses on that yellow table?”
“Why would I mind?” Before she could blink he’d done it for her.
“Thank you. It’s such an exquisite piece of furniture and the flowers look gorgeous against it. What kind of wood is it?”
His eyes scrutinized her. “Can’t you guess?”
“You mean that’s from an olive tree?”
“Sí, Senora.”
“I had no idea.”
“When I was little my grandmother told me God loved the olive tree best of all the trees He created. To hide its beauty from the other trees so they wouldn’t be jealous, He gave it a flaw in the form of a gnarled trunk.
“She was a wise woman always trying to teach me, but I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate the greatness of her wisdom until very recently.”
Once Jillian was alone she pulled the drops from her purse to treat her eye. Throughout the process his haunting words refused to leave her alone. That was the way with riddles.
Like every riddle, it wanted solving…
CHAPTER FOUR
JILLIAN LEFT THE BEDROOM a few minutes later and followed the passageway to the end. It opened up into an exquisite garden. Palm trees surrounded a rectangular pool of azure blue, decorated with colorful tiles. A latticed roof of Ottoman design sheltered it from the full brunt of the sun.
She felt like she’d come upon an oasis in the middle of the desert, yet it was deep inside this great casa. Charmed beyond words, she moved closer toward the inviting water.
Once again her lungs constricted, but this time