A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,49

her eyes, trying to gently cut him off. She could not bear to hear more, least of all to hear him talk of a love that had no place in her marriage. ‘Please don’t.’

But Felipe was equally determined to finish. ‘Please, hear me out. There is not much time left to me now, and it is selfish of me to hope for anything beyond a death that lets me slip away quietly in my sleep and rejoin my Maria, that should be all I wish. Yet still I wish for more. I wish with all my heart that there might be news of a child before I go.’

‘You’re not going anywhere, Abuelo!’ she cried, holding his knotted fingers in hers, knowing that his wishes were for nothing, knowing there could never be a child.

‘You will tell me,’ he insisted, ‘if there is news. Promise me you will tell me and put a smile on an old man’s face before he dies.’

‘I will tell you,’ she said as the tears streamed down her face, ‘I promise.’

‘Don’t cry for me,’ he said, misinterpreting her tears. ‘I am not worth crying over. I did not mean to make you sad.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she told him, with one final brief, desperate hug, ‘I am so very sorry.’ And she fled from the cottage in tears.

What had she done?

She ran on and on through the vineyard, her emotions in turmoil, oblivious to the magnificent view and uncaring of the vines snatching on her hair and tugging at her clothes, totally gutted at what she had done.

She’d lied to her grandfather. Yes, to make his last days happy, it was true, but what consolation was that when she’d lost him everything he’d ever held precious in the process? The last of his vines and she’d as good as given them away.

And she’d piled lie upon lie upon lie until he believed so much in this fiction she’d created, that he was building an entire future based on this perfect marriage.

This perfect lie.

And he’d told her he was proud of her and he’d thanked her for saving the family, for breaking a vow of revenge and a curse on them for generations.

When she was the curse.

She’d betrayed Felipe and his trust in her. Betrayed his love for his only remaining relative, the only person he could put his faith and hope for the future in.

Lied to him and betrayed him by giving away all that he had left and held precious.

But seeping up through all the welter of emotions, through the tangle of her despair and her self-recrimination, there was a slow, simmering anger bubbling away inside the guilt and remorse.

For she too had been betrayed.

Because Alesander must have known!

All along, Alesander would have known about the vow to drive the Otxoas from their land. She might as well have offered it to him on a silver platter.

And then the land hadn’t been enough and he’d wanted her too.

Was that part of the revenge? Was he laughing at her the whole time?

She felt sick. He’d played her for a fool.

She’d even imagined he cared.

Oh God.

She came to the edge of the property and the new fence where once she’d come in despair when she’d learned that Felipe was dying, and where she’d come up with a plan to make his last days happy.

A stupid plan.

A stupid woman to ever think it could ever work. A stupid woman to think she could pile lie upon lie and get off scot-free, with no consequences and no price to pay.

And she’d imagined that sex with Alesander was the price she’d had to pay.

No.

Knowing she’d betrayed the love and trust of the only family member she had left, the family member who was relying on her to save the family name from obliteration—this was the price she had to pay.

With a cry of anguish, she sagged, tear-streaked and heaving for air, against a trellis upright, ancient and thick. She clung to it, panting, looking out over the view that had once seemed so magical to her—the spectacular shoreline that curled jaggedly around in both directions, framing a brilliant blue sea, with the red-roofed town of Getaria nestled in behind the rocky headland—and she would swap it in a heartbeat to be back in a cramped student flat with noisy neighbours and lousy weather.

The whole time he would have known. The whole time he would have been laughing at her behind her back, thinking that she had achieved singlehandedly what his family had