That fleeting glimpse of him sadly had been yet more fodder for her very active imagination.
If only this stupid charade had done what it should have done and exposed his failings. At this point in time, shouldn’t he have morphed into an arrogant bore with too much money for his own good? Shouldn’t the impact of his good looks have done her a favour by diminishing?
She sighed and peered a little more closely at her reflection. The hair looked wilder than usual but she had given up trying to tame it. Was this the look she really wanted to go for? Wild hair and a strappy dress, and high-heeled sandals that were so not her thing?
She and Lucas, at his mother’s urging, were going to have a supposedly romantic dinner out tonight. She had given Milly a stern talk on buying something pretty for the occasion, because she had not been shopping, and had managed to use what she had brought with her: jeans; T-shirts; more jeans; jogging bottoms.
So, despite lots of protests, she and Antonia had spent much of the day out. There had been no need to venture further afield into Madrid because Salamanca boasted designer shops for every taste. These were just the sort of things that were undermining the ‘cracks in the relationship’ that should have been happening by now.
Every crack Milly tried to break was papered over by Antonia, who seemed to think that her outspokenness was a charming and refreshing change from all the limpets who had cluttered her son’s life before.
And in the meantime, while all this was going on, she was seeing sides to Lucas that chipped away at her defences.
He was ferociously intelligent and, whilst he was good at listening to other sides of an argument, he liked to win. Over dinner—which was usually when she saw most of him, because his days were spent working to make up for the fact that he wasn’t actually in his office or on a plane going to meetings somewhere or other across the globe—they talked about everything under the sun. Antonia might generate the topic, but they would all contribute. And the topics flowed from one to another, from what was happening in the news to what had happened in the news, sometimes years previously.
He was a loving son without being patronising. He was very good at teasing his mother, and Milly’s heart always constricted when she witnessed this interplay between them.
Of course, she and her grandmother were very close, as she had insisted on telling them a couple of nights ago, but it was still something to have grown up without a mother figure. Or a father figure, for that matter. She might have had a sip or two too many at this point, Milly recalled uncomfortably. She had held the floor for far too long and she might even have become a little tearful towards the end. She shuddered thinking about it.
He was also funny, witty and downright interesting. He had travelled the world. It helped when it came to recounting fascinating anecdotes about faraway places.
Her heart picked up speed as another treacherous thought crept into her head like a thief in the night: she looked forward to his company. She spent her days in the grounds, sometimes by the swimming pool reading her book, often in the company of his mother. But, when five o’clock came, she always felt a stirring in her veins, as though her body was beginning to wake up and come alive.
And that wasn’t good.
In fact, it frightened her because, face it, Lucas was as distant as he had promised. Yes, when they were in each other’s company he was warmth and charm itself but, the second his mother wasn’t around, a shutter dropped and he became someone else. Someone cool, controlled and somehow absent.
Now, she noticed, he had stopped sitting quite so close to her on the sofa and the physical shows of affection...the little touches on her shoulder, her cheek, her arms...had dropped off.
She guessed that this was his subtle way of informing his mother that all was not quite right in the land of wonderful love and happy-ever-afters.
Had Antonia noticed? Milly didn’t know. She had thought of trying to open a discussion on the subject, maybe starting with a few vague generalities before working her way up to her and Lucas and what they had, and then ending by finding out what Antonia’s thoughts were. But she always chickened out because she wasn’t sure she would be able to hang on to her composure if the questions became too targeted.
Right now Lucas was downstairs. He usually stopped working around six so that he could spend some time with Antonia while Milly was upstairs having a bath, changing...analysing her thoughts and coming up empty handed.
And, while Milly relaxed downstairs, usually with a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade, he took the opportunity to get cleaned up. It was a clever game of avoidance that Antonia didn’t seem to notice, but Milly noticed it more and more because she was noticing everything more and more.
Tonight, Milly entered the sitting room to find Antonia there sipping a glass of juice, her book resting on her lap.
Like all the other rooms in the splendid house, this one was airy and light with pale walls and furnishings and adjustable wooden shutters to guard against the blistering sun during the hot summer months. And, as with all the rooms, the air was fragrant with the smell of flowers, which were cut from the garden several times a week and arranged by Antonia herself in an assortment of brightly coloured vases to be dispersed throughout the house.
‘I wanted to see how the dress looked.’ She beamed and beckoned Milly across and then ordered her to do a couple of turns so that she could appreciate it from every angle. ‘Beautiful.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Milly said awkwardly. ‘I’m not accustomed to wearing dresses.’
‘You should. You have the perfect figure to carry them off. Not like those scrawny women my son has dated in the past. Like boys! Simpering and preening themselves and looking in every mirror they pass! Pah! I tell him, “Lucas, those are not real women, they are plastic dolls and you can do better than that”...’ She smiled smugly and waved Milly into a chair.
‘We have our differences,’ Milly said weakly, determined to head off an awkward situation at the pass. ‘You might think that those model types are no good for Lucas but in fact...in fact...they suit him far more than you might imagine. I mean...’ She leaned forward and stared earnestly at the handsome woman in front of her whose head was tilted to one side, all the better to grasp what was being said because, impeccable though her English was, she still became lost in certain expressions. ‘It’s okay to be outspoken but, in the end, it can get on a guy’s nerves.’
‘Is that what happened to your last boyfriend?’ Antonia asked gently. ‘Was that why it all fell apart, my dear?’
Milly blushed. She had breezily and vaguely skimmed over the details of the broken engagement that had supposedly encouraged her into the arms of her one true love, Lucas. Antonia had conveniently not dwelled on the subject. Now, she was waiting for some girlish confidence.
‘It fell apart,’ Milly said slowly, ‘Because he didn’t love me and, as it turns out, I didn’t love him either.’ This was the first time she was actually saying aloud what she had been privately thinking. ‘I was just an idiot,’ she confessed. ‘I’d had a crush on Robbie when I was a teenager...’ She smiled, remembering the gawky, sporty kid she had been, more at home with a hockey stick than a glass of vodka, which had been the in drink at the time with all the under-age drinkers: the alcohol could be camouflaged by whatever you happened to dilute it with and parents could never tell you were actually getting a little tipsy at parties.
‘Robbie was the cutest boy in the class. Floppy blond hair, gift of the gab. Plus, he would actually take time out to chat to me. It felt like love, so when he showed up in London and asked to meet up I guess I remembered what I used to feel and somehow transported it to the present day and decided that those feelings were still there, intact. He was still cute, after all. He brought back memories.’
And he had known how to manipulate her weaknesses to his own benefit but, in the end, it took two to tango. He had made inroads into her common sense because she had allowed him to.
‘But