CAROL MARINELLI - Spanish Escape - The Playboy of Puerto Banús / A Game of Vows / For the Sake of Their Son

‘So it’s your father’s business?’ Estelle asked, trying to find a fault in him—trying to tell herself that it was his father’s money that had eased his luxurious path to perfection.

‘No, it was my mother’s family business. My father bought into it when he married.’ He saw her tiny frown.

‘Sorry, you said De La Fuente, and I thought Fuente was your surname…’

For an occasional model who picked up men at Dario’s she was rather perceptive, Raúl thought. ‘In Spain it is different. You take your father’s surname first and then your mother’s…’

‘I didn’t know that.’ She tried to fathom it. ‘How does it work?’

‘My father is Antonio Sanchez. My mother was Gabriella De La Fuente.’

‘Was?’

‘She passed away in a car accident…’

Normally he could just say it. Every other time he revealed it he just glossed over it, moved swiftly on—tonight, with all he had learnt this morning, suddenly he could not.

Every man except Raúl had struggled in the summer heat with full Scottish regalia. Supremely fit, and used to the sun, Raúl had not even broken a sweat. But now, when the castle was cool, when a draught swirled around the floor, he broke into one—except his face drained of colour.

He tried to right himself, reached for water; he had trained his mind not to linger. Of course he had not quite mastered his mind at night, but even then he had trained himself to wake up before he shouted out.

‘Was it recent?’ Estelle saw him struggle briefly, knew surely better than anyone how he must feel—for she had lost her parents the same way. She watched as he drained a glass of water and then blinked when he turned and the suave Raúl returned.

‘Years ago,’ he dismissed. ‘When I was a child.’ He got back to their discussion, refusing to linger on a deeply buried past. ‘My actual name is Raúl Sanchez De La Fuente, but it gets a bit long during introductions.’

He smiled, and so too did Estelle.

‘I can imagine.’

‘But I don’t want to lose my mother’s name, and of course my father expects me to keep his.’

‘It’s nice that the woman’s name passes on.’

‘It doesn’t, though,’ Raúl said. ‘Well, it does for one generation—it is still weighted to the man.’ He saw her frown.

‘So, if you had a baby…?’

‘That’s never going to happen.’

‘But if you did?’

‘God forbid.’ He let out a small sigh. ‘I will try to explain.’

He was very patient.

He took the salt and pepper she had so nervously passed to him and, heads together, they sat at the table while he made her a small family tree.

‘What is your surname?’

‘Connolly.’

‘Okay, we have a baby and call her Jane…’

How he made her burn. Not at the baby part, but at the thought of the part to get to that.

‘Her name would be Jane Sanchez Connolly.’

‘I see.’

‘And when Jane marries…’ he lifted a hand and grabbed a fork as he plucked a name from the ether ‘…Harry Potter, her daughter…’ he added a spoon ‘…who shall also be called Jane, would be Jane Sanchez Potter. Connolly would be gone!’ He looked at her as she worked it out. ‘It is simple. At least the name part is simple. It is the fifty years of marriage that might prove hard.’ He glanced over to today’s happy couple. ‘I can’t imagine being tied down to another, and I certainly don’t believe in love.’

He always made that clear up-front.

‘How can you sit at a wedding and say that?’ Estelle challenged. ‘Did you not see the smile on Donald’s face when he saw his bride?’

‘Of course I did,’ Raúl said. ‘I recognised it well—it was the same smile he gave at the last wedding of his I attended.’

She laughed. There was no choice but to. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Completely,’ Raúl said.

Yet he was smiling, and when he did that she felt as if she should scrabble in her bag for sunglasses, because the force of his smile blinded her to all faults—and she was quite positive a man like Raúl had many.

‘You’re wrong, Raúl.’ She refused to play his cynical game. ‘My brother got married last year and he and his wife are deeply in love.’

‘A year.’ He gave a light shrug. ‘It is still the honeymoon phase.’

‘They’ve been through more in this year than most have been through in a lifetime.’ And she’d never meant to but she found herself opening up to him. ‘Andrew, my brother, was in an accident on their honeymoon—a jet ski…’

‘Serious?’

Estelle nodded. ‘He’s now in a wheelchair.’

‘That must take a lot of getting used to.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Is that the family emergency you had to fly home from your own holiday for?’

Estelle nodded. She didn’t tell him it had been a trip around churches. No doubt he assumed she’d been hauled out of a club to hear the news. ‘I raced home, and, really, since then things have been tough on them. Amanda was already pregnant when they got married…’

She didn’t know why she was telling him. Perhaps it was safer to talk than to dance. Maybe it was easier to talk about her brother and the truth than make up stories about Dario’s and seedy clubs in Soho. Or perhaps it was the black liquid eyes that invited conversation, the way he moved his chair a little closer so that he could hear.

‘Their daughter was born four months ago. The prospect of being a dad was the main thing that kept Andrew motivated during his rehabilitation. Just when we thought things were turning around…’

Raúl watched her green eyes fill with tears, saw her rapid blink as she tried to stem them.

‘She has a heart condition. They’re waiting till she’s a little bit bigger so they can operate.’

He watched pale hands go to her bag and Estelle took out a photo. He looked at her brother, Andrew, and his wife, and a small frail baby with a slight blue tinge to her skin, and he realised that they hadn’t been crocodile tears he had witnessed during the wedding ceremony. He looked back to Estelle.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Cecelia.’

Raúl looked at her as she gazed at the photo and he knew then the reason she was here with Gordon. ‘Your brother?’ Raúl asked, just to confirm things in his mind. ‘Does he work?’

‘No.’ Estelle shook her head. ‘He was self-employed. He…’ She put away the photo, dragged in a breath, could not stand to think of all the problems her brother faced.

Exactly at that moment Raúl lightened things.

‘My legs are cold.’

Estelle laughed, and as she did she blinked as a photographer’s camera flashed in her face.

‘Nice natural shot,’ the photographer said.

‘We’re not…’ Oh, what did it matter?

‘I need to move.’ He stood. ‘And Gordon asked that I take care of you.’ Raúl held out his hand to her. This dance was more important than she could ever know. This dance must ensure that tonight she was thinking only of him—that by the time he approached her with his suggestion it would not seem so unthinkable. But first he had to set the tone. First he had to make her aware that he knew the sort of business she was in. ‘Would you like to dance?’

Estelle didn’t really have a choice. Walking towards the dance floor, she had the futile hope that the band would break into something more frivolous than sensuous, but all hope was gone as his arms wrapped loosely around her.

‘You are nervous?’

‘No.’

‘I would have thought you would enjoy dancing, given that you two met at Dario’s.’

‘I do love to dance.’ Estelle forced a bright smile, remembered who she was supposed to be. ‘It’s just a bit early for me.’