A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,54

squeezed her eyes shut. Oh God, the truth. What was the truth any more? She’d told so many lies she was beginning to forget where truth ended and the lies began. She’d lied to Felipe every time she saw him and pretended to be happy in her marriage. She’d lied to herself pretending that she didn’t want Alesander and then burning up with him at night. And now she was slapping a man she’d only just finished convincing herself that she loved. But there was one indisputable truth that he could not argue with. ‘If we are talking truths, then I know of one truth you cannot deny—that if we had kept to the original terms of the contract, if we had never had sex, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, because the chances of conceiving a baby would never have been an issue.’

Silence reigned between them, letting in the sounds of the vineyard, the rustle of leaves in the breeze and the cry of seabirds amid the heavy weighted silence of blame and regret.

‘So when will you know?’

She shook her head, dragging in air. ‘Three weeks? Most likely less.’ Hopefully less. She swallowed, a sick feeling roiling in her gut. Would he ask her to make sure? He was a man of the world. He would know there were options. At least there were in Australia …

‘I won’t …’ she started. ‘I can’t …’

‘That is not our way!’ he simply said, putting a full stop on that particular conversation. ‘Three weeks, you say?’

‘It’s early in my cycle, which is good … well … it’s better. Safer.’

‘Sí.’ He frowned. ‘I can wait that long. And meanwhile I will show you that you are wrong, that I can exercise control and live without sex.’

She laughed, the sound bitter. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?’

Maybe it was, but he could do with the time away from her. He’d enjoyed her in his bed these past few weeks, and perhaps he’d enjoyed her too much. Perhaps that was the problem.

Putting distance between them, putting up barriers, might be the best thing for them. Felipe was growing weaker—the march of his disease relentless, the damage wrought becoming more apparent by the day. Soon she’d be going home and there was no point getting used to having her around.

And he didn’t want her getting used to being around. His women were supposed to be temporary. That was the way he liked it.

That was the way he’d always liked it.

They were almost back at the cottage when they heard it, a crash followed by a muffled cry.

‘Felipe!’ she screamed alongside him, suddenly bolting for the door.

‘They won’t let him come home,’ she sniffed, sitting in a hospital waiting room chair, repeating the words the doctor had just delivered. ‘I should have been there. I should never have left him.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. Felipe is ill. His bones are weak. If it didn’t happen today, it could have been tomorrow or the next day.’

‘But I should have been there.’

He pulled her closer, his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Felipe hates hospitals. It will kill him being away from his vines.’

‘Simone, he’s dying. He’s too sick now to be at home. You can’t look after him. You can’t watch him twenty-four hours a day.’

And she sniffed again and knew that there was nothing he could say or do that would make her feel better. Felipe had needed her and she hadn’t been there.

And where she had been and what she’d been doing—oh God—was Felipe to get his wish for a baby after all? Was that to be yet another price she would pay for her lies?

She buried her face in her hands and cried, ‘I should have been there.’

Felipe’s condition steadily deteriorated after that, the break in his hip ensuring he would stay bed-ridden. Simone spent as much time with him as possible. He had moments of great lucidity, where he would talk about Maria and how they had met and the fiestas where he had courted her.

He had moments of rambling confusion, where he would tumble words in Spanish and Basque and English all together and make no sense at all.

At night Alesander would collect her from the hospital and take her back to the apartment and make sure she ate something before she fell into bed and woke up to do it all over again.

He watched her withdraw into herself, watched the shadows grow under her eyes,