A Stormy Spanish Summer(42)

Vidal closed his eyes. Why was he doing this? What was he hoping for? To force her to say she loved him in the same way that he had been forced to accept his misjudgement of her? Was that really the kind of man he was? A man whose pride demanded that she love him simply because he loved her? There was a sour taste in Vidal’s mouth, a heavy weight on his heart. Hadn’t he already damaged her enough?

Fliss heard Vidal exhale. Not in a sigh of regret, of course. That was impossible. She didn’t trust herself to turn round and look at him when she felt him move away from her to leave the bed. She didn’t watch him either as he dressed and thankfully, finally, left the room.

Her earlier euphoria had left her now. She felt drained and empty, hollowed out emotionally apart from the forlorn ache deep inside her heart. What she wanted more than anything else was to be held in Vidal’s arms, to know that what they had shared was special. Was she really so much of a fool? Was that really what she had expected? That like in some fairy story her kiss would instantly transform everything and cause Vidal to fall passionately in love with her?

Passionately in love with her? That wasn’t what she wanted at all. Was it?

Wasn’t there hidden away inside her the kernel of her sixteen-year-old self, with all the dreams and romantic illusions—delusions—she had then possessed? And wasn’t the truth that the intimacy they had shared had left her in great danger of that kernel splitting open, so that the seed inside it could grow into new life?

Fliss buried her face in her hands, her whole body shaking as she tried to tell herself that it was all right; she was safe and she did not love Vidal.


In his own room Vidal stood motionless and silent. He should really take a shower, but Felicity’s scent still clung to his skin, and since that was all he would ever know of her now, apart from what was captured within his memory and his senses, he might as well indulge himself and cling to it for as long as he could. Like an adolescent overwhelmed by his first real love.

Or a man knowing his only love.

He couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. He had never stopped loving Felicity.

This was the place to which his jealousy and passion had brought him. This barren place of self-loathing and regret—a true desert of the heart in which he would be for ever tormented by the mirage of what might have been. It gave him no comfort or satisfaction to know that Fliss had wanted him, or that her desire—the desire he had aroused in her—had ultimately overtaken whatever ideas of retribution and punishment she might claim, had kept her in his arms. He knew enough about the power of true desire to recognise it—in himself and in her. He could, had he had the stomach for it, have forced her to admit her desire for him—but what satisfaction would that have given him?

He had done her a terrible wrong in misjudging her, and there were no excuses he could plead in mitigation of that wrong, no way back to change it. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life. A second intolerable burden to add to the one he already carried, had carried for the past seven years. The burden of loving her without reason or logic and so completely that there could never ever be room in his life for another woman. There. He had admitted it now. He had loved her then and he still loved her now—had never stopped loving her, in fact, and never would.

It was the burden that Felicity herself carried, though, that weighed most heavily on his conscience and on his heart. Out of his pride and jealousy had come the belief that by guarding her innocence until she was mature enough to receive his courtship he could eventually win the heart of the girl with whom he had fallen in love. As that young man, that arrogant and selfish man, he had not been able to bear the thought of another man taking what he had wanted and denied himself. He had been furious with Felicity for choosing another man above him, and he had misjudged and punished her for that.





CHAPTER NINE


‘I SHALL leave you here to complete your examination of the house. My meeting with the water engineer should not take too long. As soon as it’s finished I shall come back for you, and then we can return to Granada.’

Fliss nodded her head. Her throat felt too raw with pent-up emotion as she stood with Vidal in the hallway to her father’s house. She had barely slept, and disturbingly her body, as though totally divorced from the reality of the situation between them, had reacted to his proximity in the car this morning as though they were real lovers, aching to be close to him. Several times she had felt herself being drawn to move nearer to him, her senses craving the intimacy of just being close.

Was it always like this after having sex? Was there always this need for continued closeness? This desire to touch and be touched? To be held and to know that that other person shared your thoughts and feelings? Somehow Fliss did not think so—which meant.