Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key Read Free Page A

been obvious even to a cynic like him that they were crazy about each other, and as far as he could see the honeymoon was still on.
    Ten years down the line, who knew?
    ‘Motherhood suits you.’ He saw the flicker cross her face and knew he had inadvertently dredged up a memory.
    ‘Thank you, Rafael. The twins, it’s hard not to think about…It was all so different this time.’
    Rafael had no trouble interpreting the disjointed sentence. He watched her swallow and wished he had kept his mouth shut.
    He saw her lips quiver and hoped she was not going to start crying. He put a lid on his empathy, a sympathetic word or gesture now would no doubt open the floodgates and he had a major dislike of female tears. ‘Why think about it?’ he said brusquely.
    Rafael’s philosophy was if you made a mistake you lived with it. Beating yourself up over it was to his way of thinking a pointless exercise, and an indulgence.
    ‘You’re right.’
    ‘If only more people realised that.’
    Generally appreciative of his ironic sense of humour, Angelina did not smile.
    Her shadowed eyes were trained on the far end of the vaulted hall where her husband, a son balanced expertly on each arm, paused to allow admiring relations to kiss the cherubic cheeks.
    ‘He is such a good father.’
    ‘And you are a good mother, Angelina.’
    She shook her head. ‘It makes me think…did I do…?’ She lifted her troubled brown eyes to Rafael. ‘Was it the right thing?’
    Rafael had no doubt. ‘You did the right thing.’
    Rafael had strong feelings about advice: he never requested it and he never gave it.
    It was a sound position, it was just a pity that he had forgotten and made an exception for Angelina.
    ‘But I hate lying…’
    ‘Confessing might have made you feel better, but what would it have achieved other than—?’
    ‘Make Alfonso call off the wedding. He would never risk a scandal.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Rafael lied. In his mind there was no maybe.
    He actually had no doubt at all what the outcome would have been had Angelina found Alfonso and not himself at home the day she had arrived at his cousin’s city apartment to confess all.
    Would Alfonso have felt sympathy for Angelina, forced to give birth at sixteen to her married lover’s child? Yes.
    Would he have married her after she had confessed? No.
    ‘You did the right thing, Angelina. Why should you suffer now for a mistake you made when you were little more than a child? You were the victim then—is it fair you be the victim now? Everyone makes mistakes…’
    ‘Alfonso doesn’t,’ she said wistfully.
    Rafael might have said that Alfonso wasn’t perfect, but he knew it would be a waste of breath. To his wife he was.
    ‘It doesn’t seem right I’m this happy. I wonder if she’s happy, my little girl. I wonder sometimes…’
    ‘Better not to,’ Rafael advised tersely. ‘Why think about what you can’t have?’ He had wasted many nights wanting his mother back, but he was no longer ten and he knew better.
     

CHAPTER THREE
    M AGGIE WANDERED THROUGH the winding streets just soaking up the atmosphere. She had a whole afternoon to do her own thing before she needed to be back at the hotel for what the tour guide had enthusiastically described as an ‘authentic paella experience.’
    Attendance was optional but he’d told her it was highly recommended.
    Having paused for a glass of wine at a pavement café, she pulled the map from her shoulder bag. The tour guide had declared the street market a must for any visitor to the city in search of authentic Spain and, according to her map, it was really close.
    Half an hour later and totally lost in a maze of alleys Maggie decided to admit defeat. With the clock ticking and the tour guide’s instruction to be back at the hotel by seven if she planned to join the group for dinner, she finally decided to head straight for the cathedral.
    Maggie was just beginning to think that she would miss out on seeing that too when she