It would come to an end all too soon.

But not yet. Not yet.

Nine

Rodrigo stood looking down at the approaching car procession.

His family was here.

He hadn’t even thought of them since the accident. He hadn’t for a while before that, either. He’d had nothing on his mind but Cybele and Mel and his turmoil over them both for over a year.

He’d remembered them only when he needed their presence to keep him away from Cybele. And he’d gotten what he deserved for neglecting them for so long. They’d all had other plans.

He’d ended up begging them to come. He’d evaded explaining the reason behind his desperation. They’d probably figure it out the moment they saw him with her.

In the end, he’d gotten them to come. And made them promise to stay. Long. He’d always wished they’d stay as long as possible.

This time he wondered if he’d survive it.

And here began his torment.

His grandparents stepped out of the limo he’d sent them, followed by three of his aunts. Out of the vans poured the aunts’ adult children and their families plus a few cousins and their offspring.

Cybele stepped out of the French doors. He gritted his teeth against the violence of his response. He’d been wrestling with it for the past three days since that confrontation. He’d still almost ended up storming her bedroom every night. Her efforts to offer him sexually neutral friendliness were inflaming him far worse than if she’d been coming on to him hot and heavy.

Now she walked toward him with those energetic steps of hers, rod-straight, no wiggle anywhere, dressed in dark blue jeans and a crisp azure blouse that covered her from throat to elbows.

The way his hormones thundered, she could have been undulating toward him in stilettos, a push-up bra and a thong.

Dios. The…containment he now lived in had better be obscuring his condition.

He needed help. He needed the invasion of his family to keep him away from her door, from carrying her off to his bed.

Before she could say anything, since anything she said blinded him with an urge to plunder those mind-destroying lips, he said, “Come, let me introduce you to my tribe.”


Tribe is right, Cybele thought.

She fell in step with Rodrigo as she counted thirty-eight men, women and children. More still poured from the vans. Four generations of Valderramas.

It was amazing what one marriage could end up producing.

Rodrigo had told her that his mother had been Esteban and Imelda’s first child, had been only nineteen when she had him, that his grandparents had been in their early twenties when they got married. With him at thirty-eight, his grandparents must be in their late seventies or early eighties. They looked like a very good sixty. Must be the clean living Rodrigo had told her about.

She focused on his grandfather. It was uncanny, his resemblance to Rodrigo. This was what Rodrigo would look like in forty-something years’ time. And it was amazingly good.

Her heart clenched on the foolish but burning wish to be around Rodrigo through all that time, to know him at that age.

She now watched as he met his family three-quarters of the way, smile and arms wide. Another wish seared her-to be the one he received with such pleasure, the one he missed that much. She envied each of those who had the right to rush to fill his arms, to be blessed by the knowledge of his vast and unconditional love. Her heart broke against the hopelessness of it all as his family took turns being clasped to his heart.

Then he turned to her, covered in kids from age two to mid-teens, his smile blazing as he beckoned to her to come be included in the boisterous affection of his family reunion.

She rushed to answer his invitation and found herself being received by his family with the same enthusiasm.

For the next eight hours, she talked and laughed nonstop, ate and drank more than she had in the last three days put together, put a name and a detailed history to each of the unpretentious, vital beings who swept her along the wave of their rowdy interaction and infectious joie de vivre.

All along she felt Rodrigo watching her even as he paid attention to every member of his family, clearly on the best possible terms with them all. She managed not to miss one of his actions either, even as she kept up her side of the conversations. Her pleasure mounted at seeing him at such ease, surrounded by all these people who loved him as he deserved to be loved. She kept smiling at him, showing him how happy she was for him, yet trying her best not to let her longing show.

She was deep in conversation with Consuelo and two of Rodrigo’s aunts, Felicidad and Benita, when he stood up, exited her field of vision. She barely stopped herself from swinging around to follow his movement. Then she felt him. At her back. His approach was like a wave of electromagnetism, sending every hair on her body standing on end, crackling along her nerves. She hoped she didn’t look the way she felt, a woman in the grip of emotional and physical tumult.

His hands descended on her shoulders. Somehow she didn’t lurch. “Who’s letting her patient call the shots, now?”

She looked up, caught his eyebrow wiggle at Consuelo. The urge to drag him down and devour that teasing smile right off his luscious lips drilled a hole in her midsection.

The three vociferous women launched into a repartee match with him. He volleyed each of their taunts with a witticism that was more funny and inventive than the last, until they were all howling with laughter. She laughed, too, if not as heartily. She was busy having mini-heart attacks as one of his hands kept smoothing her hair and sweeping it off her shoulders absently.

By the time he bent and said, “Bed,” she almost begged, Yes, please.

He pulled her to her feet as everyone bid her a cheerful good-night. She insisted he didn’t need to escort her to her room, that he remain with his family. She didn’t think she had the strength tonight not to make a fool of herself. Again.


On La Diada De Sant Jordi, St. George’s Day, Rodrigo’s family had been there for four weeks. After the first four weeks with him, they were the second-best days of her life.

For the first time, she realized what a family was like, what being an accepted member of such a largely harmonious one could mean.

And they had more than accepted her. They’d reached out and assimilated her into their passionate-for-life, close-knit collective. The older members treated her with the same indulgence as Rodrigo, the younger ones with excitement and curiosity, loving to have someone new and interesting enter their lives. She almost couldn’t remember her life before she’d met these people, before they’d made her one of their own. She didn’t want to remember any time when Rodrigo hadn’t filled her heart.

And he, being the magnificent human being that he was, had felt the melancholy that blunted her joy, had once again asked if her problems with her own family couldn’t be healed, if he could intervene, as a neutral mediator, to bring about a reconciliation.

After she’d controlled her impulse to drown him in tears and kisses, she’d told him there hadn’t exactly been a rift, no single, overwhelming episode or grievance that could be resolved. It was a lifetime of estrangement.

But the good news was-and that might be a side effect of her injuries-she was at last past the hurt of growing up the unwanted child. She’d finally come to terms with it, could finally see her mother’s side of things. Though Cybele had been only six when her father had died, she’d been the difficult child of a disappointment of a husband, a constant reminder of her mother’s worst years and biggest mistake. A daddy’s girl who’d cried for him for years and told her mother she’d wished she’d been the one who’d died.

She could also see her stepfather’s side, a man who’d found himself saddled with a dead man’s hostile child as a price for having the woman he wanted, but who couldn’t extend his support to tolerance or interest. They were only human, she’d finally admitted to herself, not just the grown-ups who’d neglected her. And that made it possible for her to put the past behind her.

As more good news, her mother had contacted her again, and though what she’d offered Cybele was nowhere near the unreserved allegiance Rodrigo’s family shared, she wanted to be on better terms.

The relationship would never be what she wished for, but she’d decided to do her share, meet her mother halfway, take what was on offer, what was possible with her family.

Rodrigo hadn’t let the subject go until he’d pressed and persisted and made sure she was really at peace with that.

She now stood looking down the beach where the children were flying kites and building sand castles. She pressed the sight between the pages of her mind, for when she was back to her monotone and animation-free life.

No. She’d never go back to that. Even when she exited Rodrigo’s orbit, her baby would fill her life with-

“Do you have your book?”

She swung around to Imelda, her smile ready and wholehearted. She’d come to love the woman in that short time.

She admired Imelda’s bottle-green outfit, which matched the eyes she’d passed on to Rodrigo, and was again struck by her beauty. She could barely imagine how Imelda might have looked in her prime.

Her eyes fell on the heavy volume in Imelda’s hand. “What book?”

“La Diada De Sant Jordi is rosas i libros day.”

“Oh, yes, Rodrigo told me.”

“Men give women a red rose, and women give men a book.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”