been unable to achieve in generations.
They would all laugh when she was gone. They were probably all laughing at her now, all in on the joke, just waiting for the old man to die.
And she’d gone to Alesander for help.
How could she ever face Felipe again?
‘Simone!’
Oh God, she thought as his voice rang out again, closer this time. Not him. Anyone but him. She tried to disappear into the tangle of vines but in a blue and yellow sundress she was too easy to spot.
‘Simone!’ he said. ‘At last.’
She turned her back to him, swiping at her tear-streaked face with her hands.
‘Simone, Felipe said he’d upset you.’
‘Go away,’ she said without turning around.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Just leave me alone.’
He took no notice. He came up behind her and put a hand to her shoulder. A touch she’d become so used to. A touch that had warmed her in places she daren’t confess. A touch that now left her cold. ‘Simone, what’s going on?’
‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried, spinning around and shoving away his hand. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again!’
‘What the hell is going on? What’s happened to make you this way?’
‘What do you think is wrong? Why didn’t you tell me the whole story?’
‘What story?’
‘Your potted history of the troubles between the Esquivels and the Otxoas.’
He frowned. ‘What about it? What am I supposed to have missed?’
‘The bit you so conveniently left out. The bit about the Esquivels vowing to drive the Otxoas from their land!’
He shrugged his shoulders, his hands palm up in the air. ‘What about it? I didn’t think it was important.’
‘What about it? Are you kidding me? Do you think I would have ever married you if I had known that your agenda the entire time was to run Felipe—to run us—off our land?’
‘Dios! This marriage was all your idea. Don’t you forget that. You were the one who came up with it. You were the one who so desperately needed it!’
‘And you were the one who insisted on the land being part of the deal! Because you knew, didn’t you? You knew all along that your family wanted us off. And because you saw a way of getting rid of my family from this land for ever!’
‘Listen to yourself! Do you really think I care about something that happened more than a hundred years ago? Do you honestly believe I set out with the intention of banishing the Otxoas from their land?’
‘What am I supposed to think, when the land is the one thing you expressly demanded? And now my grandfather thinks I’ve saved this family from some kind of curse and all I know is that I’ve made it happen. I’ve brought it down upon us. How do you think I feel about that? How do you think I feel?’
She broke down, her knees collapsing beneath her, sending her limp and sagging into the ground.
His hands caught her at her shoulders, pulling her up, pulling her towards him. ‘What do you care about the land anyway? You’re going home. You said yourself you don’t belong here.’
She pushed with all her might against him. ‘And that makes it okay? That’s your defence?’ She lashed at him with her fists, pounding at his unyielding chest, but he did not let her go and so she punched harder. ‘Don’t touch me!’
He held her at arm’s length and still she managed to lash out at him. He grabbed her wrists, locking them within the iron circle of his own and pulled her in close. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
‘You knew,’ she said, angling her face and her accusations higher. ‘You knew all the time about the land and the curse. That land means everything to him and now you’ve taken it.’
His dark eyes gleamed dangerously down at her, his hot breath fanning her face, the cords on his neck standing out in rigid lines. ‘And you made a deal, remember! You were the one who turned up on my doorstep begging.’
Fruitlessly she wrenched against the prison of his hands. ‘But you knew! All the time you knew!’
‘So what? The damned curse means nothing to me!’
‘But it does to him!’ She was so rigid she felt she might snap. She glared up at him. ‘It does to him and I hate you for what you’ve done!’
He growled and shook his head slowly from side to side, his dark eyes like magnets, their pull insistent and strong. ‘Oh no, you don’t. You don’t hate me at all.’
His slow words