A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,25

to see them again.

Simone had witnessed the pain in her grandmother’s eyes, had witnessed the anguish in her grandfather’s and understood nothing of what was going on, except the raw agony that these new people in her life—people that she had grown to love and know that they were important to her—were feeling.

Anguish that had transferred to her.

‘My parents brought me to Spain when I was seven,’ she said. ‘Felipe paid the fares. He was trying to reach out to my mother but, of course, I know he wanted to meet me too, as his only grandchild. The visit started well. I remember a week or two of relative peace—or maybe they were just trying to hide the worst from me as a child—but then it ended badly. It was always bound to end badly.’

Horribly.

She could still hear her father’s shouting and accusations. She could still hear her mother’s shrill cries that she had never been welcome in her own home.

And most of all she could remember the look of desolation on Felipe’s and Maria’s faces as she’d been ripped from their arms, as if they knew this was the last time they would ever lay eyes on any of them ever again.

She hadn’t understood what was going on, but she’d been torn. She’d loved them all and she couldn’t understand why they couldn’t love each other. And she couldn’t understand the hurt. She would make up for it one day, she’d promised then and there. She would come back and make up for their pain.

‘I said I’d come back,’ she said. ‘In the midst of all the shrieking, I promised them I’d return.’

‘You did,’ Alesander said. ‘You’re here now.’

She dipped her shaking head. No. She’d meant to come back years before now. She’d meant to return when she was old enough to make the travel plans herself. But life and university and lack of funds had meant that promises of years gone by were overtaken by the needs of the present. She would still go back to Getaria, she’d repeatedly told herself—one day.

Except that she hadn’t. She’d let life get in the way of good intentions. And now Maria had died without ever seeing her again, and Felipe was dying too.

And good intentions, she realised, were not enough. Not when guilt that she had done nothing weighed so heavily upon her.

‘I’ll see you back at the house,’ she said.

He watched her go, lonely and sad, and just for a moment he was almost tempted to go to her. But why? What would he say? They were nothing to each other, even if he understood why she was doing what she was doing a little more.

But her demons were her own.

It was not his job to fix them.

CHAPTER SIX

‘HE’S HERE AGAIN,’ Felipe growled as Alesander arrived for the sixth time in as many days, but this time his voice contained less censure, more tolerance. Alesander had called by the vineyard every day. On one day he’d brought the contracts for her to sign and she’d read them in the privacy of his car parked out of sight, carefully checking to ensure the agreement included all the terms she’d asked for—the no sex clause, the termination, the consideration. Then, and only then, she’d put her signature to the contract.

But every day he’d stopped by the house to talk to Felipe and always finding something to repair while he was there, and for all his gruffness, the old man was enjoying talking to another man, she could tell.

‘Of course, he’s here, Abuelo,’ she said, emerging from her room. ‘He’s come to take me to the party. How do I look?’

Felipe craned his head around and blinked, his jaw sagging open. ‘What have you done with Simone?’

‘It is me,’ she protested before she caught the glint in her grandfather’s eyes and realised he was joking, the first time she’d heard him joke since she’d arrived. ‘Oh, Abuelo,’ she said, laughing, giving his shoulders a squeeze, trying to stop a tear squeezing from her eyes and ruin her eye make-up, ‘stop teasing.’

‘Who’s teasing?’ Alesander said from the open front door.

‘Felipe, the old rogue,’ she said without looking up. ‘He’s wondering what I’ve done with Simone.’ And then she lifted her head and saw him, in a dark-as-night evening suit and snow-white shirt, his dark hair rippling back from his sculpted face. Her mouth went dry. He looked—amazing.

‘You’d better go tell her to hurry up,’ Alesander said, ‘I don’t want to be late for Markel’s