Kate Walker's Alcolar Family Bundle by Kate Walker

Author:Kate Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘JUST what is wrong with you these days, Ramón? You’re wandering round in a dream.’

‘Perhaps he’s in love. Is that right, Ramón? Is the great Señor “marriage is not for me” Dario actually smitten at last?’

‘Don’t tease, Mercedes.’

It was Cassie who spoke, earning herself a quick, grateful smile from her brother-in-law. ‘I just think Ramón has a lot on his mind.’

‘A lot of woman!’ Ramón’s sister laughed. ‘Is that it? It would have to be someone really special to knock my brother sideways like this!’

A lot of woman. He certainly knew someone who fitted that description, Ramón reflected. And it was true that she had hardly ever been out of his mind in the week since she had stormed out of his apartment and out of his life.

He had tried to stop her. He had gone after her almost at once, but those few seconds’ hesitation had been all she’d needed. Fate had been on her side, it seemed. She must have stepped into a lift as soon as she’d left the apartment, achieved the impossible by getting a taxi the minute she’d walked out onto the street, and by the time he’d got outside she had gone. She had vanished and it was as if she had never existed.

‘You’re not still brooding over that Medrano deal?’

It was his father who spoke. Juan Alcolar was leaning back in his chair, apparently relaxed, a glass of the finest red wine from his son’s vineyard in his hands. But his eyes were sharp and assessing as they rested on his son’s face.

‘In a way—yes,’ Ramón admitted reluctantly, knowing that the problem was nothing at all to do with the deal, but everything to do with the Medrano daughter. Even just to hear her surname spoken aloud made his nerves tighten, his jaw tensing.

‘I told you to forget about that,’ his father told him. ‘Medrano’s a narrow-minded old goat. He always was too proud of his Catalan heritage for his own good. Too set in his ways too.’

‘Says the man who forgets that we have Andalusian blood in our veins as well as Catalan,’ commented Joaquin, wandering into the room and dropping an affectionate kiss on the top of Cassie’s blonde head. ‘You and Medrano are as bad as each other, papá. You can’t ignore Great-grandfather, no matter how you might want to.’

A couple of weeks ago, this conversation would have been unlikely, to say the least, Ramón reflected. But since Joaquin and Cassie had announced they were getting married—adding the extra good news that Juan’s second grandchild was on the way—a new warmth had developed between the older man and his first-born son. For the first time in years they seemed relaxed with each other.

Joaquin had mellowed too. Watching him now with his arm around his fiancée, no one would ever have believed that less than a month ago they had been on the point of splitting up completely. Had split up, in fact. Cassie had even ended up living with Ramón for a while.

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