A Stormy Spanish Summer(16)

Vidal closed his eyes and then opened them again. He had thought he’d put the past behind him, but Felicity had brought it back to life with a vengeance.

He needed this to be over. He needed to walk away from the past and draw a line under it. He needed to be rid of it—and for that to happen he needed to be rid of Felicity herself.

Vidal’s mouth compressed. As soon as they had seen Felipe’s lawyer, and arrangements had been made for Vidal to buy from Felicity the house her father had left her, he would remove her from his life—permanently.


Upstairs in the bathroom adjoining her bedroom, the door safely locked, Fliss stood motionless and dry-eyed beneath the beating lash of the powerful shower. She was beyond tears, beyond anger—except for the anger that burned inside her against herself—beyond anything other than the knowledge that she could stand beneath the fiercely drumming water for the rest of her life—but no amount of water would ever wash away the stain she herself had stamped—dyed—into her pride via what she had done when she had responded to Vidal’s contemptuous kiss.

Stepping out of the shower, she reached for a towel. Perhaps she should not have come here, after all. But that was what Vidal had wanted, wasn’t it? The letter he had sent as her father’s executor, advising her of the fact that her father had left her his house, had said that there was no need. No need as far as he was concerned, but every need for her, Fliss reminded herself as she towelled her hair dry. Her body was concealed from her own gaze by the thick soft towel she had wrapped around herself, which covered her from her breasts down to her feet. She had no wish to look upon the flesh that had betrayed her. Or was she the one who had betrayed it? Had she had more experience, more lovers, the lifestyle and the men Vidal had accused her of giving herself to—if she had not deliberately refused to allow her sexuality and her sensuality to know the pleasures they were made for—she would surely have been better equipped to deal with what was happening to her now.

She couldn’t possibly really have wanted Vidal. That was impossible.

Her heart started to beat jerkily, so that she had to put her hand over it in an attempt to calm it.

It was impossible, wasn’t it? A woman would have to be bereft of all pride and self-protection to allow herself to feel any kind of desire for a man who had treated her as Vidal had. It was the past that was doing this to her—trapping her, refusing to let her move forward. The past and the unhealed wounds Vidal had inflicted on her there …


It was the sound of her bedroom door rattling that brought Fliss out of the uneasy sleep she had eventually fallen into, after what had felt like hours of lying awake with her body tense and her mind a whirlwind of angry, passionate thoughts. At first the image conjured up inside her head was one of Vidal, his long fingers curled round the door handle. Immediately a surge of sensation burned through her body, igniting an unfamiliar and unwanted sensual ache that shocked her into reality—and shame.

The darkness of the night, with its sensually tempting whispers and torments, was over. It was morning now. Light and sunshine flooded into the room through the windows over which she had forgotten to close the curtains the previous night.

The faint knocking she could still hear on the door was far too hesitant to come from a man like Vidal.

Calling out that she would unlock the door, Fliss got out of bed, glad that she had done so when she discovered a small, nervous-looking young maid standing outside the door and pushing a trolley containing Fliss’s breakfast.

Thanking her, Fliss quickly checked her watch. It was gone eight o’clock already, and her appointment with her late father’s lawyer was at ten. She had no idea where the offices were, or how long it would take to get there. She’d have preferred to go there alone, but of course with Vidal named as her late father’s executor that was impossible.

With the maid gone, Fliss gulped down a few swallows of the deliciously fragrant coffee she had poured for her, and snatched small bites from one of the fresh warm rolls which she had broken open and spread with sharp orange conserve. Her mother had told her about this special orange conserve, beloved of the family, which was made with the oranges from their own groves. Just tasting it reminded her of her mother, and that in turn helped to calm her and steady her resolve.

Half an hour later she was showered and dressed in a clean tee shirt and her plain dark ‘city’ skirt, her hair brushed back off her face and confined in a clip in a way that unwittingly revealed the delicacy of her features and the slender length of her neck. Fliss automatically touched the small heart-shaped gold locket that hung from her neck on its narrow gold chain. It had been a gift from her father to her mother. Her mother had worn it always, and now Fliss wore it in her memory.