A Price Worth Paying(46)

He left her then to get up, leaving her utterly bewildered and baffled, and yes, sore when she made a move to get out of bed. So it was all part of the act of being a dutiful husband to his granddaughter? Nothing more than common courtesy?

Still, he hadn’t had to call. He didn’t need to impress anyone now. The deal had been made and they were married. There was no getting out of it for her. He didn’t have to be thoughtful. And yet he had been.

She padded barefoot to the bathroom and wondered anew about the man she had married. The man who was now not only her husband, but her husband in every sense of the word.

Their deal was temporary, their marriage fated to last a few months, no more. But after a night like last night, when Alesander had blown her world apart and then bothered to kiss it back together again, he seemed almost the perfect package. And at times, almost a man she might even think about choosing for her husband—in some parallel universe where they had met under different circumstances without the history of deal-making and blackmail that lay festering between them.

Damn, damn and damn!

What was he doing to her, that she could even think of wanting him for her husband? Was she so blinded by his lovemaking that she had forgotten that this was nothing more than a business arrangement? Was she so blindsided that she had forgotten the sheer terror of a missed period?

She should never forget that feeling, not if she wasn’t to be taken in again by someone who didn’t care for her—who had never loved her—who she never wanted to see again.

Still cursing, she slipped out of the voluminous robe and stepped into the shower, lifting her face up into the spray.

Why had Alesander insisted on having sex? Why had he had to complicate things when their arrangement had been fail-safe? She’d known sex would complicate things. Sex always did.

But the land hadn’t been enough for him and sex was the price he’d exacted from her.

A price she’d agreed to.

And no matter how mind-blowing the sex and the redemptive power of a potent kiss, was it a price worth paying?

The hospital let Felipe go home the next day, but only, they said, because Alesander had arranged a nurse to be there around the clock for him. But, they warned, it would not be for ever.

Still, Felipe seemed positive after the wedding. At least for a few weeks.

Winter was closing in around the vineyard, the leaves falling from the vines when she found him sitting in his usual chair, looking out over the near barren vineyard, his eyes half shuttered. He seemed not to notice her presence, even after she’d spoken to him, and so she assumed he was asleep, when she picked up his coffee cup and a gnarled limb reached out, a bony set of fingers grabbed her wrist. ‘Mi nieta!’

She jumped, and then laughed at her reaction. ‘Sí. What is it, Abuelo?’

‘I have something to tell you,’ he whispered. ‘Something I have been meaning to tell you.’ He craned his head around. ‘Is Alesander here?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s out in the vineyard somewhere. Do you want me to get him?’

‘No. What I want to say is for you, and you alone. Sit down here next to me.’

She pulled over a chair. ‘What is it?’

He sighed, his breath sounding like a wheeze. ‘I want to tell you. There is not much time left to me. I must tell you …’

‘No, Abuelo, you mustn’t think that way.’

He patted her hand as if she was the one who needed compassion and understanding. ‘Listen to me, there is nothing the doctors can do for me now, but I can still tell you this, that since you came here, since your marriage, I have never been happier. I have you to thank for making the sun shine in my life again.’

‘Please, Abuelo, there is no need.’

‘There is every need. Don’t you see what you have done? You have given me hope. You have reunited two families who have barely spoken to each other for more than a century.’

She dipped her head. If he only knew, he would not be proud at all. But still she managed a smile and patted his hand. ‘I am glad that you are happy, Abuelo.’

‘More than happy. The rift between our families goes back many years. I never thought to see it end. But Alesander, he is a fine man. He is like the son I never had.’

He stopped on a sigh and his head nodded down, and she thought that he had finished then, already drifting back into his memories and his regrets, when he suddenly looked up, glassy eyes seeking hers. ‘Do you know what happened?’