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‘Not until you tell me why you’re so upset. What did Danny tell you?’
Lizzie was trapped between his dangerously familiar frame, and the cold, unyielding door; her emotions went into overdrive. ‘Just let me go!’
‘Not until you tell me what’s wrong.’
Passions soared as they glared at each other. ‘My grandmother’s ill and the estate has been repossessed,’ Lizzie blurted. ‘Are you satisfied now?’
‘What?’ Chico said quietly.
She pulled away. ‘Don’t try to stop me. I have to go.’
‘In the middle of the course?’
‘Yes, in the middle of the course. I can’t stay here and allow events to unfold without having anything to say about it. I have a responsibility to fulfil, as the last—’ she hesitated, hunting for the right words ‘—as the last responsible person in the Fane family. I have to do something. Can’t you see that?’
She looked in vain for some flicker of understanding or compassion in Chico’s face, but he remained expressionless. ‘So, you’re leaving,’ he said.
‘I have to.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
Of all the things he might have said, that was the last thing she had expected. ‘Will you?’
‘Of course. Can’t you tell me more?’
She couldn’t tell him what was happening at Rottingdean when she wasn’t sure herself. It hurt knowing that, however right it felt when she was with Chico, it was never enough to keep them together, and that this time it was almost certainly goodbye. His face gave nothing away, and when he leaned forward, she pressed back. Undeterred, he fisted her hair, drew her head back, and drove his mouth down on hers. For a moment her mind blanked. Chico’s kisses were like a drug she could never get enough of, but this felt depressingly like a last goodbye.
‘Will you let me help you?’ he said again as they broke free.
‘I don’t know what you can do to help,’ she confessed.
‘Money can do a lot of things, Lizzie.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘This is something I have to do by myself.’
‘It may not be that easy.’
‘When is life ever easy?’
‘It might be easier if you sometimes allowed people in.’
She looked at him with surprise. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, I’ve got people who could look into this for you—while you finish the course,’ he said pointedly. ‘It’s worth bearing in mind that without the accreditation from here your business plan will stand little chance.’
She listened patiently, but she already knew what she had to do; when he’d finished, she killed Chico’s idea stone dead. ‘Will your people hold my grandmother’s hand when she’s dying? Will they explain to the tenant farmers that they don’t have a home any more? No, Chico. This is something only I can do.’
‘Now? In the middle of the night?’
‘As soon as I can.’ She glanced at the door, eager to start her packing.
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘As long as it takes.’ She didn’t even know if she’d be coming back. She couldn’t afford the plane fare, and any money she had would have to go to pay legal fees, and even that would be a stretch.
‘But you have commitments here.’
She searched Chico’s eyes, wondering if he would miss her, or if he was asking purely practical questions, perhaps already thinking about who could take her place on the course, and lead the team at the end-of-year match. ‘I couldn’t feel worse about leaving.’
‘Then, don’t leave. You’re the captain of the team, Lizzie. You have responsibilities here. You’d be leaving your fellow students in the lurch, and you’ll jeopardise your chance of graduating this year.’
A shiver ran through her at what seemed like an implied threat, but maybe she was overreacting. She steadied herself. ‘Some things are more important than ambition, and my grandmother’s life is one of them.’
Instead of backing off, Chico moved in close, and, planting his fist on the door, he stared into her eyes. ‘You do know this is the last thing your grandmother would want you to do, don’t you, Lizzie?’
‘She needs me. And family always comes first. The tenants are my extended family, and I care about what happens to them.’
Chico’s exasperation broke through. ‘You talk to me about family?’
‘Yes, I do, and I’m not frightened to bring the subject up. I expect you to understand that what I’m dealing with now is very much in the present.’
Shaking his head, Chico pressed his lips down in disagreement. ‘I’ll tell you what I do understand. I understand. I understand family and how they can ruin your life. Why can’t your parents do something useful for once?’
Lizzie laughed this off. ‘I don’t think they’re going to start now, somehow, do you?’
They both knew the answer to that question, and as Chico swore viciously his anger sliced through her. He had told her something of his hideous childhood in the barrio when they’d had their solitary chats in the stable, and then, after suffering all that, he’d been drawn into Lizzie’s family’s sordid affairs.
‘You asked me how my parents affected me, and you’re right,’ she said. ‘As a child I did feel rejected. If it hadn’t been for Danny’s friendship, I don’t know what I’d have done. I hid myself away at home. I didn’t trust anyone, and then you came to Rottingdean, and perhaps I sensed a kindred spirit, because you were the first person I really opened up to. But that girl you remember? That’s not me. I’ve changed. My grandmother moved back in, and taught me to trust again, and how to live life on my own terms. I’ll never forget what she did for me.’
‘What she did for both of us,’ Chico said.
A slow breath eased out of her. ‘So, you haven’t forgotten?’
‘How could I forget, when your grandmother and Eduardo saved me? When I heard I’d been accused of assaulting your mother, I was staggered at first, and then I was angry. It was as if I was ten years old again with a gun stuck in my back pocket, eager for revenge. And after the fury I felt impotent, because there was no way I could defend myself against the accusations. I wrote to you, confident that you knew me, and would know those accusations were lies, but you never replied. That’s when I learned to close off my feelings.’
‘I never got any letters,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Your mother,’ he ground out, full of frustration and anger at what had been lost—trust, friendship, together with Lizzie’s peace of mind for so many years. ‘She took them. Your mother must have destroyed my letters. She stopped you having them.’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Lizzie, always the voice of reason, pointed out quietly.
‘She must have done,’ he argued fiercely. ‘Who else would do that to you?’
Lizzie looked down and thought about this for a moment. ‘Does it matter?’ she said at last.
‘To me? Yes, of course it matters,’ he exclaimed with passion. ‘I poured my heart and soul into those letters—’ He saw Lizzie’s lovely face light with indulgence. ‘Okay, my teenage heart and soul, but still...’
‘You were right to ask me to speak up for you,’ she said firmly. ‘And of course, I would have done—if I’d known,’ she added, looking at him now with compassion, as if she could feel the weight of
his frustration at the time that had been lost between them as keenly as he could.
‘Why do you always have to be so understanding, Lizzie?’
She smiled a little at his passion. ‘Maybe I understand you,’ she said.
He had always thought Lizzie’s childhood in the big house as deprived as his, until her grandmother had moved back in from the dower house to take over Lizzie’s care. To think what her parents had stolen from her—and he wasn’t just thinking about his letters now, but Lizzie’s innocence, and her freedom to enjoy her childhood and growing up, as every child should. It beat him up inside even now to think how easily she could have become a victim of her parents’ depravity. It didn’t bear thinking about. Neither of them would ever be able to thank Lizzie’s grandmother enough for what she’d done for them.
‘If you wait, I’ll come with you when you go back to Scotland.’
Lizzie looked at him with surprise. She was right to. Sharing his feelings was new to him, but her grandmother’s illness had set him back on his heels.
‘I feel a bond with your grandmother,’ he explained. ‘And gratitude. I believe I owe my success to her, and to Eduardo. Your grandmother taught me how to sift the good people from the bad, and I owe it to her to be there now.’
He could tell that Lizzie’s decision was already made.
‘How could you leave now?’ she said. ‘It’s almost Christmas, and when we come back in the new year, it’s our graduation, which you must attend, and then it’s the match. By that time it could be too late. I’m sorry, Chico, but I can’t wait for you. I have to go now. Could I please borrow one of the Jeeps?’
He frowned. ‘To do what?’
‘To drive to the airport.’
‘Do you know how far that is?’
‘Well, no. I’m not quite sure, but—’
‘You’ll take my jet,’ he said flatly. ‘My pilot will fly you directly to Scotland.’
