Of course, there was no dodging away from the one flaw in her pleasure; no way of avoiding the harsh and bitter truth that Santos had never, and would never say that he loved her. The blazing passion that he had showed her through the night was the only expression of feeling he had ever allowed himself and it was all that he ever would let escape him. And she would be a total fool to ask for more.
But he had said that he wanted—needed her. And he had made plain just how much that was true by the force of his desire, the hunger he had shown for her body. And for now that would be enough. It had to be. It was all she was going to get.
The smile that the memory of that desire had brought to her face still lingered as she turned slowly and indolently over in the warmth of the bed, luxuriating in the comfort, the relaxation, even the faint ache of muscles and parts of her body that had received so much attention during the night. And would soon receive that same attention all over again. All she had to do was to rouse Santos from his sleep and …
‘Santos!’
The smile faded from her lips, his name escaping on a cry of shock and horror, and she came fully wide awake in a rush as she took in the sight before her.
Santos was lying on his stomach, with his face buried in the pillow, the burnished jet of his hair in stark contrast to the crisp white cotton of the covers. The quilt had fallen down to lie across his narrow waist, leaving his long, muscular back exposed. And what brought the sound of shock and horror to Alexa’s lips was the sight of several ugly scars that marred the surface of the beautiful olive skin. There was one high up on his right shoulder, another two lower down, close to his spine. All three were just about identical, almost perfectly circular and slightly indented into the skin. Alexa winced at the ugliness of them, the fact that they were clearly old and had not been made recently doing nothing to reduce her distress at the sight.
‘Santos!’ she said again, reaching out an uncertain hand to touch him softly.
She knew that he was awake and that he’d heard her because of a faint twitch of his dark head, and the way his back tensed under her fingertips, every muscle drawing suddenly tight. But he didn’t look up, didn’t turn towards her.
‘What happened?’
For a long couple of seconds she thought that he wasn’t going to answer and her heart slammed against her ribcage as she waited tensely for his reaction. But then at last he let out his breath in a long, deep sigh and pushed himself suddenly upright, twisting round so that he was sitting with his back against the bed head, the ugly scars hidden from view.
‘If you don’t want …’ Alexa began, suddenly afraid that she had intruded where he didn’t want her to be, crossing over some invisible line that she hadn’t even been aware had been drawn between her and the part of his life that he wanted to keep private.
‘No …’
With one hand he waved away her concern, but his eyes remained fixed straight ahead of him, staring unfocused at some spot on the far wall.
‘It’s OK. It happened long ago. Almost thirty years.’
‘Thirty … you were a child?’
Santos nodded slowly, still not looking at her. She was sure that he wasn’t actually looking at anything but staring into the distance, seeing only his memories.
And whatever those memories were, the tension in his face, the frown that drew the black brows together declared only too clearly that they were far from happy ones.
‘You remember that I told you my mother didn’t know who my father was?’
Silently Alexa nodded, afraid to speak, afraid she would distract him.
She gave birth to me, that is all, he had said. I doubt if mi madre even knew who my father was. He could have been any one of a dozen possible candidates.
‘She had no way of knowing which of the men she had been with in the right month or so actually was my father. But she wanted to be on her way, wanted to leave for the new life she was sure was going to be hers in Argentina, with her current man—another new man. Someone who did not want a child, particularly not one fathered by someone else. So mi madre left me with mi padre …’
‘But you said she didn’t know …’ It burst from Alexa before she realised just what he had said, what the appallingly cynical emphasis he had given the words mi padre implied.
‘She didn’t know,‘ he said now, bringing his knees up under the covers and resting his elbows on them, his face cupped in his hands. ‘She just chose one at random—anyone—the closest one to hand. She left me on his doorstep with a note.’
‘She left you …’
In spite of the warmth of the room, the soft comfort of the downy quilt, Alexa felt shiveringly cold, her blood suddenly ice in her veins. She tried to imagine a small boy, lost, lonely, abandoned, sitting on a doorstep, waiting for the man who might be his father to open the door. Watching his mother walk away from him. All at once she felt she could begin to understand just why he had declared so obdurately that he didn’t believe in love.