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I couldn’t let this pass. “She was hurt,” I said. “She’s probably changed her mind.”
“Not according to you. According to you, Podge said Granda could go to hell and take all of us with him.”
Granda wheezed with laughter. “She always did have more spunk than the rest of you gave her credit for. I don’t blame her if she doesn’t want to see me. But just so you know, that doesn’t mean she’s out of the running for a piece of the pie.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—you haven’t seen her in fourteen years,” Marcus said irritably.
“Twelve,” Granda corrected, clearly not as feeble as he appeared. “And here or not, she’s family, just as much as the rest of you vultures.”
Shit, I could feel a tightening in my throat, tears starting in the back of my eyes. How many times had I wanted to hear those words? Only to find out they were waiting for me if I’d come back as myself.
“I’ll tell you what, Granda,” Marcus said grandly. “I’ll get in touch with her myself, see if she’s changed her mind. “And none of us are worried about the estate—there’s more than enough for all of us. It’s you we care about.”
“Bullshit,” Granda said. It would have been a perfect exit line, but he began to cough then, his frail body shaking from the force, and a moment later we found ourselves bundled into the hallway by the officious nurse.
“That was pleasant,” Ian announced when the door closed behind us. “Maybe we’d better keep it to one at a time—we don’t want him too agitated.” I could feel his curious gaze on me. “You all right, Bella? You looked a bit shocked back then.”
“I was thinking about Podge,” I said foolishly. I should have dropped the subject. “I think she might have liked to return.”
“Don’t be silly, darling,” Marcus said heartily. “You told us she had no interest in any of us, that she’d moved on with her life, don’t you remember?”
“Besides, we treated her like shit,” Ian said, watching me.
“That’s not fair,” Marcus protested. “I was nice to her. She had this huge crush on me, and I tried to be kind.”
“When Bella would let you,” Ian reminded him.
I needed to get away from them. The sense of betrayal ran deep, and I had a lot to sort out. I didn’t need to listen to them hash out my past. “I’m going to my room,” I said abruptly, pulling away from them. “I don’t think I can face running into the cousins right now.”
“Bella, are those tears in your eyes?” came Ian’s teasing drawl.
Damn. I would have to be very careful with Ian—he was far too observant. “You may view your grandfather’s upcoming death with equanimity, but I find it upsetting,” I said stiffly.
“Bella, your heart is harder than a stone,” Ian said. “The only thing that would make you cry would be a torn fingernail.”
Instinctively I glanced down at my long, slender hands, so different from Bella’s short ones, and I immediately put them behind my back. “Go to hell,” I said, turning my back on them and starting down the stairs. I needed time on my own, time to think, time to make sense of things. That wouldn’t happen with Marcus flirting and Ian jibing at me, and I moved quickly, the high heels as unsteady beneath my feet as my masquerade felt on my skin. I needed someplace to hide, to think, to make sense of all this, and when I reached the second floor landing, I slipped off the heels and ran.
Chapter Eight
I wanted to cry, but instead I was dry-eyed with frustration and anger. None of this was making any sense—Bella had visited me off and on during my time of exile and never once had she ever suggested that my banishment might be over. Of course, I’d kept insisting it didn’t matter, that I never wanted to see Mariposa or Granda again, but she had to have known it was deep hurt causing me to say such things. She hadn’t even so much as hinted there was a softening in Granda’s attitude, or the possibility that I could have returned to Spain as myself.
I’d learned long ago that with Bella you had to take the good with the bad, and there was no question that she wasn’t powerfully self-motivated. She made up for that with her charm and generosity, just as she had after the debacle in the caves, and you either accepted her or lost her. And I didn’t know what to do with this sense of betrayal running so deep.
She’d been frightened when she came to me, there’d been no denying that, and I would have done anything to help her. She could have simply told me the truth and I would have come to Mariposa as her if she truly needed me to.
But Bella had always had an elastic arrangement with the truth, one of those things you simply had to accept about her. I’d always known it, and it did me no good to get angry, but her recent prevarications were taking some getting used to.
The very last thing I wanted to do was spend more time with Ian and Marcus, but the Queen’s Room was getting stuffy in the midday heat. Glancing at my discarded sandals, I groaned at the thought of putting them on again. The silk slacks were now hopelessly crumpled, there was a splash of spilled coffee on the top that I couldn’t remember getting, and everything in my closet was too fancy, too precious. I needed to find something comfortable, just for quiet times, and something to walk in. If I had to be Bella twenty-four/seven I would go insane.
The brilliant idea was there a moment later—I would take one of the cars and drive down into the village. Santa Maria de Fe was not a cosmopolitan place, but it had street vendors and tourist shops. I would be able to find a pair of flat shoes and some plain sundresses to hide out in, to remind me that Kitty Whitehead still existed. Not Bella, not Podge, but Kitty. It was the only way I could survive.
I found Maldonado in the kitchen, sharing a cup of coffee with the cook, but he rose abruptly, all starched butler behavior. “Would you like Selene to make you something for lunch, Miss Bella? Mr. Ian usually eats in the field and Mr. Marcus and the cousins have gone out.”
Normally the thought of Marcus going off with Mary Alice would have left me feeling abandoned, but all I could feel now was relief and a quiet amusement at the thought of Marcus stuck with Mary Alice. “I’m fine. In fact, I thought I might go out myself. You mentioned there were several cars available.”
“Yes, miss. Your Alfa Romeo was recently tuned.”
Shit, I’d forgotten about Bella’s Alfa. “I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for a sports car,” I said. I was a relatively timid driver with a strong dislike of heavy traffic and aggressive drivers, and an Alfa was probably a very aggressive car. Even more important, I’d never learned to drive a stick, and Bella’s car hadn’t been an automatic. I didn’t even know if they made automatic Alfas.
