Santiago's Love-Child

Rachel lifted her artfully darkened brows and released a theatrical sigh, but didn’t press the point.

‘If you say so,’ she said, wincing as she rubbed first one aching foot and then the other against her slim calves. ‘Now, what shall we do tonight?’

‘I fancy an early night, actually.’

‘Early night! You’ve had early nights for the past week.’ She looked her friend up and down through narrowed eyes, mentally chucking the top Lily was wearing in the bin—no self-respecting charity shop would want it—and getting her into something, preferably low cut, in a pastel shade maybe…? A nice soft smoky blue would bring out the incredible shade of her eyes.

‘It’s definitely time you let your hair down, Lily. It’ll do us both good,’ she contended.

Lily guiltily noted for the first time the lines of fatigue around the older woman’s eyes. ‘Bad day?’

‘Sometimes I wonder why I ever became an accountant,’ she admitted.

‘The six-figure salary…?’

Rachel grinned. ‘I get that because I’m brilliant at what I do. And I won’t bother trying to explain to someone who can’t even add up with a calculator that numbers are sexy. Now, about tonight. Dan has this really sweet mate…single, solvent…admittedly he’s no Brad Pitt, but then—’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers…?’

Rachel adopted an expression of mock gravity. ‘Well, I was going to say, Who is? But now you mention it women who don’t exfoliate regularly, Lily, have to be realistic.’ She turned her frowning scrutiny on the younger woman’s fair-skinned face. ‘Actually, considering your skin-care regime consists of splashing a bit of soap and water on your face, you have the most disgustingly gorgeous skin,’ she observed enviously. ‘A bit of decent foundation would totally disguise those freckles,’ she prophesied, frowning at the bridge of Lily’s small, tip-tilted nose. ‘Still, some men like freckles. Shall I ring Dan and—’

Lily knew one man who had said he liked her freckles, though she suspected they, like everything else about her, would disgust him now.

‘No!’ Rachel’s eyebrows lifted and Lily added more moderately, ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do, but, to be honest, a man is the last thing I need right now.’

It was easy to figure out what she didn’t need—blind dates featured pretty high on this list. What she did need was a much more difficult proposition!

‘Need and want are not always the same thing.’

‘This time they are,’ Lily insisted quietly.

Rachel looked exasperated and glanced absently at a message on her mobile phone before sliding it back into her bag. ‘What are you going to do? Take a vow of celibacy?’

Lily ignored Rachel’s question. ‘Actually, I was thinking it might be time for me to go home.’ Home…but for how much longer?

Lily deliberately pushed the subject of her uncertain future to the back of her mind.

It wasn’t easy. Her marital home was on the market, and according to the agents a couple were making interested noises, which, considering their viewing, was nothing short of a miracle.

Lily’s thoughts drifted back to the occasion three weeks earlier. Rachel had unexpectedly arrived when she had been halfway through showing the prospective purchasers around. Her friend had taken one look at her, and had calmly informed the startled pair that they would have to come back another day. She had then proceeded to escort them firmly off the property.

Rachel had then packed Lily a bag, arranged a sitter for the cat and asked a neighbour to water the plants. Lily had just sat there and watched her. She supposed her listless inertia had been a symptom of whatever Rachel had seen in her face.

The break had served its purpose, but now, despite the tears this afternoon, Lily was feeling less fragile. She no longer felt so…disconnected. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. Being grounded was painful, you had to think about things you’d prefer not to and make decisions…For months now, she realised, she’d just been drifting. She hadn’t even begun to look for somewhere to live. All she’d done was sign everything that Gordon’s solicitor had sent her.

Yes, it was definitely about time she stood on her own feet.

Rachel didn’t agree.

‘You can’t go home yet. I’ve got things planned.’

Lily, who didn’t like the sound of ‘things’ frowned suspiciously. She really wished that her friend hadn’t taken on the role of social secretary with such zeal. ‘Things…?’

Rachel acted as if she hadn’t heard. ‘God, but these shoes are murder,’ she complained, picking up the culprits, stilettos with black and pink bows.

‘Then don’t wear them.’ It seemed the obvious solution to Lily, who liked clothes but wasn’t as much of a slave to fashion as her friend.

‘Are you kidding? They make my legs look hot.’

Lily looked at the legs in question and observed honestly, ‘Your legs would look hot in wellingtons, Rachel.’ She glanced down at her own legs, currently concealed under denim. They were pretty good as legs went, but they weren’t in the same class as Rachel’s, which stopped traffic on a regular basis.

‘Yes, they would, wouldn’t they?’

Lily smiled. There was something oddly endearing about her friend’s complacent vanity.

‘But enough about my legs.’ With a little pat of one taut, tanned thigh through her short summer skirt, she turned her attention to Lily, who in turn looked wary, an expression her friend had observed always appeared when the conversation got even faintly personal.

Such tight-lipped reserve was something Rachel found hard to understand. If she had been through hell and back like Lily, she would have wanted to get it off her chest, but all her attempts to encourage Lily to let it out had failed miserably.

‘Don’t you think you’d feel a lot better if you talked about it?’

They both knew what ‘it’ was: Lily’s divorce—the ink was still wet on that—and her miscarriage earlier that year.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR a split second Lily was tempted to tell Rachel; the urge quickly passed.

Rachel didn’t know half the story and the truth was so shocking that she couldn’t predict how even her broad-minded friend would react to the unvarnished version.

Besides, the habits of a lifetime were hard to break and ‘sharing feelings’ had been encouraged during Lily’s childhood about as much as spontaneous hugging!

If she had let her feelings show, her grandmother’s impatient response had been, ‘Nobody likes a whiner, Lily.’ Lily had learnt not to whine. Her crying had always been done behind closed doors.

‘Nothing to talk about.’

‘Nobody does the stiff upper lip these days, you know, Lily. All that being reserved does is give you an ulcer.’

‘My stomach feels fine.’ Lily placed her hand against the curve of her belly and discovered with a sense of surprise that she had lost a lot of the soft, feminine roundness she had always hated.

The softness that Santiago had professed to find sexy and feminine.

She knew from experience that there were times when fighting the flashbacks did no good, that it was easier on those occasions just to go with the flow. Lily, dimly conscious of Rachel’s voice in the background, felt her eyelids grow heavy as she allowed the bitter-sweet memories to wash over her.

She had perfect, total, painful recall of the heat in his incredible eyes as he had tipped her face up to his and smiled a slow, sexy smile as he had drawn her against him, fitting his hard angles into her softer curves and murmuring throatily in her ear.

A woman should be soft and round, not hard and angular.

It was humiliating, but a full twelve months after that first scorching kiss and she still couldn’t think about it without getting palpitations.