The Spanish Daughter(58)

“You haven’t proven to him yet that you would be a good wife,” she said.

Her comment irked me, though I didn’t know exactly why. Then again, almost everything my mother said had that effect on me. I sighed in resignation.

Grabbing a basket, I set out for the orchard in search of ingredients for dulce de guayaba, the only dessert I was good at.

Guayabas were a lot like large lemons, but harder and sweeter. When you split them, the food inside was red and full of seeds. I found a tree bursting with them—I used to come here a lot during my childhood—and filled my basket.

“A miracle, ladies and gentlemen!” a voice startled me. “The elusive lady is outside her palace without her eternal companion.”

I turned around to find Juan standing there.

I hated his sarcasm. I turned my back on him and continued picking guavas. I hadn’t seen much of him after the party, though I heard through Catalina that our father had given him a job on the plantation. Papá’s reasons for hiring him were a mystery to me. I’d never understood his interest in our poor neighbor.

“What do you want?” I said.

He scoffed.

I turned around, a guayaba between my fingers. “What?”

He had a contemptuous smirk on his face. “You’ve become so vain. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m the same person.”

He shook his head. “You used to be so sweet.”

Though I would never admit to it, I knew he was right. I’d become so impatient with my sister that when we practiced our music I yelled at her over the most trivial mistakes. Not to mention my mother—she got on my nerves with her mere presence. At my worst, I excused Papá for cheating on her with that mysterious maid and having a child out of wedlock. But then, almost immediately, I would ask the Lord for forgiveness and say a quick prayer.

“Well, you’ve changed, too,” I said. “You’re so mean now. You rarely smile, and I really don’t appreciate that sarcastic tone you used with me earlier.” Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. “You never wrote me. You never came to visit. You were gone much longer than you ever said you would be. And then, one day, you show up here expecting everything to be the same. You want me to be the same idiot who followed you around everywhere you went.”

“I liked that idiot.”

He caught me off guard. I fought a smile.

“Well”—my tone softened a bit—“that idiot no longer exists.”

He took a step toward me. I tried to take a step back, but there was a tree behind me. Please, don’t touch me.

He removed a strand from my face and placed it behind my ear. I shivered.

“Are you sure she’s not somewhere inside there?” he said.

What was it about Juan that always made my knees weaken? I’d already rationalized this. He had no future—other than living off a salary. He was unsophisticated. Next to Laurent, he looked like a Neanderthal. The idea of Juan at one of Silvia’s famous gatherings was unthinkable. I’d die of shame before bringing him over. And to top it all off, his family was nonexistent, the only family member we’d ever known was his father, and he’d been an eccentric at best.

And yet, there was something about Juan that I found irresistible. Particularly when he looked at me with the intensity he did at this moment, as if I were the only person who could hold his interest.

He didn’t remove his hand. He continued to caress my hair.

“I’ve always loved your hair. You’re the only blonde I’ve ever known,” he said this last part, almost to himself.

I wondered, the same way I’d done so many times during his years of absence, if he’d met other girls, if he’d loved someone else. The thought of Juan kissing another girl infuriated me.

“So tell me, my dear Angelique,” he said, mocking my father’s accent. “Are you going to marry that French parasite?”

Parasite? The insult took me away, for a few seconds, from the trance his fingers were putting me in as he rubbed the nape of my neck.

“You don’t even know him,” I said weakly.

“I don’t need to. I know the type.”

He was standing close to me now, and I could smell him—a mixture of man with the woodsy cologne he used since he turned thirteen. The smell brought back so many memories.

I leaned my back against the tree trunk, grasping the basket handle as if my life depended on it. He must have noticed this because he glanced down for an instant and his lips curved into a tiny smile.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

My mouth went dry. “I may.”

“Well, if you must marry him,” he said nonchalantly, “then we must say goodbye forever.”

He drew back. I didn’t know what came over me, but I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him toward me.

Smirking, he looked down at me. My chest was heaving though I didn’t know why or what had changed, only that I didn’t want him to leave. The smile disappeared from his face.

“Give me one last kiss before you belong to someone else,” he said staring at my mouth.

It was as if he’d hypnotized me. He must have because I couldn’t remember what my grievances with him were anymore, or what I was doing here in the first place.