The Secret She Must Tell the Spaniard by Clare Connelly

Author:Clare Connelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-12-07T14:24:17+00:00

* * *

He thought she was asleep, but then she moved, pinning him with those assessing, intelligent eyes and something stirred in his gut—something long forgotten.

‘Graciano.’ She pressed a hand to his chest, then yawned, her eyes heavy. ‘Before, when we were—’

‘Having sex,’ he provided, amused that even after sleeping together again and again, she couldn’t form the words.

‘No, before that. Outside.’

He waited, watching.

She seemed to be wading through sleep and thought, concentrating hard. ‘We didn’t have protection. Is that—are you—’

He frowned, not following; Alicia’s expression showed frustration. ‘You don’t...’

‘What are you trying to ask?’ he asked, but with a soft laugh, lifting her hand and pressing it to his lips, a sinking feeling forming in the pit of his gut.

‘Children,’ she said quickly, not meeting his eyes. ‘You don’t want children?’

His brows shot up. ‘Do you want children?’

She focused on the tattoo scrawled across his chest. ‘You seemed disgusted by the idea.’

‘No. Not disgusted,’ he corrected, searching for a better way to describe how he felt. ‘Adamantly opposed,’ he settled on eventually.

Alicia’s face was impossible to read, her eyes shielded from him by her determined focus on his chest. On the one hand, he was flattered. On the other, he wanted to see, to understand—to know what she was feeling. Danger perforated his lungs, making breathing difficult. He knew he should get out of bed, but he wasn’t strong enough. Not then.

He’d been in the wilderness a long time; for now, he just wanted to enjoy the strange sensation that he’d come home, without analysing why that was problematic.

‘Why?’

Her small-voiced question took a moment to understand. He’d forgotten what they were talking about. But how to answer? How to explain the hole that opened up inside his chest when he’d lost his family so many years ago? As a teenager, he’d known he’d never have a family. He was a loner, through and through. In fact, the only time he’d doubted that decision, that deeply held knowledge, was that one summer, what felt like a lifetime ago, in Seville.

‘They’re disgusting,’ he said, flippantly. ‘Tiny hands, sticky fingers.’

‘I’m serious,’ she said, blinking up at him so something jolted in his chest.

‘So am I. Snotty noses. Do I really need to elaborate?’

‘But your own children,’ she said after a beat. ‘Surely you’ve thought about it?’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s one decision I’ve never doubted.’ He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t admit the truth to Alicia—that as a boy of eighteen, when they’d met and he’d felt like maybe he wasn’t a loner after all, he’d imagined a future rich with all the things so many people aspired to. That Alicia had made him doubt his desire to be solitary and truly independent.

But he’d been wrong then—there was no sense owning those feelings now.

‘My family died when I was just a boy—I have never wanted another family. I have never wanted that for myself.’

He waited for her to say something else, but her eyes were closed, her body still, and he let her sleep, or feign sleep, because the silence suited him, too.

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