The Real Romero(52)
‘What would you like to know?’ Lucas’s voice was teasing as he fondly addressed his mother. ‘You have limited time for questions because you should be taking it easy.’
‘I’m sitting,’ Antonia retorted, smiling. ‘How much easier can I take things? Please don’t join the queue along with all my friends who have insisted on treating me with kid gloves ever since I got ill.’
‘Why don’t you explain...?’ Lucas brushed aside Milly’s hair and delivered a feathery kiss on the side of her cheek, just enough to send the heat spiralling through her.
Milly’s eyes glazed over. If she wasn’t under a microscope, she would have punched him, because he was the one who had propelled her into this awkward situation; how fair was it that she was now being dumped in the thick of it, having to concoct some vaguely realistic lie? Not very.
Antonia was watching her expectantly and Milly reluctantly stumbled into a suitable tale of sudden love and searing romance. She swept aside the minor detail of her broken engagement as just a bit of nonsense from which she had thankfully escaped because, had she not, how else would she have found herself with Lucas? Fate.
Good word. Antonia picked up the cue and reminisced over her own wonderful marriage. Fate had thrown her and her husband together from such a young age.
How could Milly resist confiding about her own parents, also childhood sweethearts? She couldn’t. They had died too young but desperately in love; she felt scared at the thought of being deserted by those she loved, but she still believed in love with all her heart, whatever the risks it brought. She was thinking of Lucas and the mystery gold-digger when she said that. Belatedly, as Antonia nodded approvingly, Milly remembered that this was not supposed to be a bonding experience. She cleared her throat and wondered whether she should shove the man at her side into picking up the baton and continuing their fictional tale of love.
‘Of course.’ She decided against that course of action because who knew what he would say? He hadn’t uttered a peep while she had been in confiding mode, although she had felt him edge a little closer to her, all the better to...what? Prolong his mother’s incorrect assumptions? ‘Wonderful though our sudden love is, I have to admit that your son can be a little...forceful.’
‘Too forceful?’ Antonia asked, and Milly ruefully inclined her head to one side, as though seriously giving the question house room, before erring on the side of tactful.
‘Borderline arrogant,’ she sighed, patting Lucas’s thigh without looking at him. ‘I guess it’s something to do with having grown up in the lap of luxury. I’m afraid I grew up in the lap of, well, rubbing pennies together and trying to make ends meet...’ She left Antonia to make the obvious deduction, which was that they were worlds apart and therefore incompatible in a fundamental area. The first of many, if only she knew.
Antonia seemed delighted with her admission. ‘So good,’ she murmured, tearing up, ‘that you’ve finally come to your senses...’ she smiled at her son and leaned forward ‘...and realised how much more fulfilling it is to have a real woman at your side. My dear, let me tell you about my dearest husband and myself. We rubbed many a penny together before Roberto’s career began to take off! I could tell you a hundred tales of having to choose between paying the bills and buying food, especially in the beginning when we owed the bank so much money...’
* * *
‘Thank you so much for helping me out there,’ was the first thing Milly said when, an hour and three pastries later, they were being ushered up to their bedrooms. ‘Why didn’t you...why didn’t you...?’
‘Launch into a speech about why our fast and furious romance is destined to crash and burn within the next fortnight?’