A Price Worth Paying(48)

Lied to him and betrayed him by giving away all that he had left and held precious.

But seeping up through all the welter of emotions, through the tangle of her despair and her self-recrimination, there was a slow, simmering anger bubbling away inside the guilt and remorse.

For she too had been betrayed.

Because Alesander must have known!

All along, Alesander would have known about the vow to drive the Otxoas from their land. She might as well have offered it to him on a silver platter.

And then the land hadn’t been enough and he’d wanted her too.

Was that part of the revenge? Was he laughing at her the whole time?

She felt sick. He’d played her for a fool.

She’d even imagined he cared.

Oh God.

She came to the edge of the property and the new fence where once she’d come in despair when she’d learned that Felipe was dying, and where she’d come up with a plan to make his last days happy.

A stupid plan.

A stupid woman to ever think it could ever work. A stupid woman to think she could pile lie upon lie and get off scot-free, with no consequences and no price to pay.

And she’d imagined that sex with Alesander was the price she’d had to pay.

No.

Knowing she’d betrayed the love and trust of the only family member she had left, the family member who was relying on her to save the family name from obliteration—this was the price she had to pay.

With a cry of anguish, she sagged, tear-streaked and heaving for air, against a trellis upright, ancient and thick. She clung to it, panting, looking out over the view that had once seemed so magical to her—the spectacular shoreline that curled jaggedly around in both directions, framing a brilliant blue sea, with the red-roofed town of Getaria nestled in behind the rocky headland—and she would swap it in a heartbeat to be back in a cramped student flat with noisy neighbours and lousy weather.

The whole time he would have known. The whole time he would have been laughing at her behind her back, thinking that she had achieved singlehandedly what his family had been unable to achieve in generations.

They would all laugh when she was gone. They were probably all laughing at her now, all in on the joke, just waiting for the old man to die.

And she’d gone to Alesander for help.

How could she ever face Felipe again?

‘Simone!’

Oh God, she thought as his voice rang out again, closer this time. Not him. Anyone but him. She tried to disappear into the tangle of vines but in a blue and yellow sundress she was too easy to spot.

‘Simone!’ he said. ‘At last.’

She turned her back to him, swiping at her tear-streaked face with her hands.

‘Simone, Felipe said he’d upset you.’

‘Go away,’ she said without turning around.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Just leave me alone.’

He took no notice. He came up behind her and put a hand to her shoulder. A touch she’d become so used to. A touch that had warmed her in places she daren’t confess. A touch that now left her cold. ‘Simone, what’s going on?’

‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried, spinning around and shoving away his hand. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again!’

‘What the hell is going on? What’s happened to make you this way?’

‘What do you think is wrong? Why didn’t you tell me the whole story?’

‘What story?’

‘Your potted history of the troubles between the Esquivels and the Otxoas.’

He frowned. ‘What about it? What am I supposed to have missed?’

‘The bit you so conveniently left out. The bit about the Esquivels vowing to drive the Otxoas from their land!’

He shrugged his shoulders, his hands palm up in the air. ‘What about it? I didn’t think it was important.’

‘What about it? Are you kidding me? Do you think I would have ever married you if I had known that your agenda the entire time was to run Felipe—to run us—off our land?’

‘Dios! This marriage was all your idea. Don’t you forget that. You were the one who came up with it. You were the one who so desperately needed it!’

‘And you were the one who insisted on the land being part of the deal! Because you knew, didn’t you? You knew all along that your family wanted us off. And because you saw a way of getting rid of my family from this land for ever!’