All along she felt Rodrigo watching her even as he paid attention to every member of his family, clearly on the best possible terms with them all. She managed not to miss one of his actions either, even as she kept up her side of the conversations. Her pleasure mounted at seeing him at such ease, surrounded by all these people who loved him as he deserved to be loved. She kept smiling at him, showing him how happy she was for him, yet trying her best not to let her longing show.
She was deep in conversation with Consuelo and two of Rodrigo’s aunts, Felicidad and Benita, when he stood up, exited her field of vision. She barely stopped herself from swinging around to follow his movement. Then she felt him. At her back. His approach was like a wave of electromagnetism, sending every hair on her body standing on end, crackling along her nerves. She hoped she didn’t look the way she felt, a woman in the grip of emotional and physical tumult.
His hands descended on her shoulders. Somehow she didn’t lurch. “Who’s letting her patient call the shots, now?”
She looked up, caught his eyebrow wiggle at Consuelo. The urge to drag him down and devour that teasing smile right off his luscious lips drilled a hole in her midsection.
The three vociferous women launched into a repartee match with him. He volleyed each of their taunts with a witticism that was more funny and inventive than the last, until they were all howling with laughter. She laughed, too, if not as heartily. She was busy having mini-heart attacks as one of his hands kept smoothing her hair and sweeping it off her shoulders absently.
By the time he bent and said, “Bed,” she almost begged, Yes, please.
He pulled her to her feet as everyone bid her a cheerful good-night. She insisted he didn’t need to escort her to her room, that he remain with his family. She didn’t think she had the strength tonight not to make a fool of herself. Again.
On La Diada De Sant Jordi, St. George’s Day, Rodrigo’s family had been there for four weeks. After the first four weeks with him, they were the second-best days of her life.
For the first time, she realized what a family was like, what being an accepted member of such a largely harmonious one could mean.
And they had more than accepted her. They’d reached out and assimilated her into their passionate-for-life, close-knit collective. The older members treated her with the same indulgence as Rodrigo, the younger ones with excitement and curiosity, loving to have someone new and interesting enter their lives. She almost couldn’t remember her life before she’d met these people, before they’d made her one of their own. She didn’t want to remember any time when Rodrigo hadn’t filled her heart.
And he, being the magnificent human being that he was, had felt the melancholy that blunted her joy, had once again asked if her problems with her own family couldn’t be healed, if he could intervene, as a neutral mediator, to bring about a reconciliation.
After she’d controlled her impulse to drown him in tears and kisses, she’d told him there hadn’t exactly been a rift, no single, overwhelming episode or grievance that could be resolved. It was a lifetime of estrangement.
But the good news was-and that might be a side effect of her injuries-she was at last past the hurt of growing up the unwanted child. She’d finally come to terms with it, could finally see her mother’s side of things. Though Cybele had been only six when her father had died, she’d been the difficult child of a disappointment of a husband, a constant reminder of her mother’s worst years and biggest mistake. A daddy’s girl who’d cried for him for years and told her mother she’d wished she’d been the one who’d died.
She could also see her stepfather’s side, a man who’d found himself saddled with a dead man’s hostile child as a price for having the woman he wanted, but who couldn’t extend his support to tolerance or interest. They were only human, she’d finally admitted to herself, not just the grown-ups who’d neglected her. And that made it possible for her to put the past behind her.
As more good news, her mother had contacted her again, and though what she’d offered Cybele was nowhere near the unreserved allegiance Rodrigo’s family shared, she wanted to be on better terms.
The relationship would never be what she wished for, but she’d decided to do her share, meet her mother halfway, take what was on offer, what was possible with her family.
Rodrigo hadn’t let the subject go until he’d pressed and persisted and made sure she was really at peace with that.
She now stood looking down the beach where the children were flying kites and building sand castles. She pressed the sight between the pages of her mind, for when she was back to her monotone and animation-free life.
No. She’d never go back to that. Even when she exited Rodrigo’s orbit, her baby would fill her life with-
“Do you have your book?”
She swung around to Imelda, her smile ready and wholehearted. She’d come to love the woman in that short time.
She admired Imelda’s bottle-green outfit, which matched the eyes she’d passed on to Rodrigo, and was again struck by her beauty. She could barely imagine how Imelda might have looked in her prime.
Her eyes fell on the heavy volume in Imelda’s hand. “What book?”
“La Diada De Sant Jordi is rosas i libros day.”
“Oh, yes, Rodrigo told me.”
“Men give women a red rose, and women give men a book.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“So now you know. Come on, muchacha, go pick a book. The men will be coming back any time now.”
“Pick a book from where?”
“From Rodrigo’s library, of course.”
“I can’t just take a book from his library.”
“He’ll be more than happy for you to. And then, it’s what you choose that will have significance when you give it to him.”
Okay. Why would Imelda suggest she give Rodrigo a book? Had she realized how Cybele felt about him and was trying to matchmake? Rodrigo hadn’t been the one to betray any special emotions. He’d been no more affectionate to her than he’d been to his cousins.
Better gloss over this. “So a woman picks any man she knows, and gives him a book?”
“She can. But usually she picks the most important man in her life.”
Imelda knew what Rodrigo was to her. There was certainty in her shrewd eyes, along with a don’t-bother-denying-it footnote.
Cybele couldn’t corroborate her belief. It would be imposing on Rodrigo. He probably knew how she felt, but it was one thing to know, another to have it declared. And then, he wouldn’t give her a rose. Even if he did, it would be because all the women had their husbands with them for the fiesta, or because she was alone, or any other reason. She wasn’t the most important woman in his life.