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Diego reflected as he watched her moisten her father’s lips with a sponge left for that purpose. This was life. This was Maxie’s life. A great shame washed over him when he thought how badly he had misjudged her. He hadn’t really let her in. If he had he would have told her about Oresto and she would have been able to confide in him about her father.
‘I would have left the match to be with you,’ he whispered.
‘I couldn’t have asked you to do that,’ she protested in an undertone. ‘Your first match back, Diego? Don’t you think I know how important that was for you?’
He shrugged this off with a rueful breath. ‘I’m just another player. There are always substitutes standing ready, longing for the chance to prove what they can do. You should have told me what was happening, Maxie. I would have brought you here.’
‘I never thought you’d want that level of commitment.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded incredulously, drawing her away from the bed to an alcove, where they could talk without disturbing her father.
‘I’ve seen what love can do, Diego. I know how destructive it can be.’
She glanced at her father as she spoke, and it killed him to see her wringing her hands. Capturing them in his he held them safe as Maxie told him how her father had mistreated her mother and how he’d later been eaten up with guilt when her mother had become ill.
‘But the guilt was too late,’ she said. ‘Just as it’s too late for me to tell my father that I love him.’
‘It’s never too late,’ he argued fiercely, dragging her close. ‘You’re here now, and I think your father knows that. I think he knows you’ve always been here for him, and that your forgiveness for whatever he’s done in the past is limitless and was never in doubt.’
‘Do you really think so?’ she said, searching his face.
‘I know it,’ he ground out fiercely, holding her tight. ‘I know it just as surely as I know that love can last. I know it in the same way that I know I can’t live without you. Can you ever forgive me for not being here for you—for not telling you how I feel about you before this?’
‘For not expressing your emotions?’ She smiled sadly. ‘Diego, we’re both lousy at that.’
‘So if I tell you I love you?’
The tension in her face softened. ‘I never thought of you as a romantic, Diego.’
‘And I never took you for a coward, Maxie Parrish. I still don’t. So if I ask you to marry me, will you risk it?’
‘Just hold me,’ she begged him, nestling close. ‘For now, just hold me.’
They stood for a long time without speaking, and when he released her she turned back to her vigil. He caught her before she reached the bed. ‘I’ll take over,’ he said quietly. ‘Please … Let me do this for you, Maxie.’
She looked at him in bewilderment.
‘You need a break,’ he said, appealing to her common sense. ‘Sit down for a moment outside and gather your strength. I’ll call you right away if you’re needed.’
‘I can’t believe you’d do this for me.’
‘I’d do anything for you,’ he said simply. When she rested against him he felt how exhausted she was, and he knew he wouldn’t tell her the history he shared with her father now. He wouldn’t tell her for a long time, and only then if he thought she was ready to hear it—so maybe never. The only thing that mattered to him was caring for Maxie and supporting her when she needed him, and he thanked God for giving him this opportunity.
When they left the nursing home he realised Peter Parrish had taught him a valuable lesson. While he had been sitting with Maxie’s father, doing all he could to make the man comfortable in the last hours of his life, he had taken the opportunity to review his own life, and had realised that the only thing that mattered was love.
‘I should have told you about my father long before this,’ Maxie said, worrying her lip as she frowned. ‘No, you shouldn’t.’
He was holding her in his arms on the bed at the palacio on the Isla del Fuego, where they were staying for Holly’s wedding. They hadn’t talked about Maxie’s father since the funeral, when Diego had said a few words over the grave about forgiveness and redemption and moving on. Maxie was still tender after her father’s death and needed constant reassurance. She had been holding it together for so long she hardly knew how to let go. He understood how vulnerable a strong person could be, and his heart had gathered her in.
‘Why are you telling me all this now?’ he said, kissing her brow.
‘Because I want to share everything with you,’ she said, turning her clear gaze on him. ‘I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.’
‘And there won’t be,’ he pledged, dropping a tender kiss on her lips.
This return to Isla del Fuego, where they had first met, first kissed, first argued, first loved, had been a poignant homecoming for both of them. He would always remember what Maxie had done for him here, as well as what she had created for Holly’s wedding—scenes of such celebration and love that the old house and the island on which it stood had been reinstated in his memory as a happy place rather than a prison.
‘Have I thought of everything?’ she murmured, worrying because today was the long-awaited day of Holly’s wedding.
‘You know you have,’ he reassured her, drawing Maxie into his arms.
The guests had been brought in by ferries which had been met on the dock by fleets of horse-drawn carriages, specially decorated with ribbons and flowers for the occasion. The weather, unlike on Maxie’s first sighting of the island, couldn’t have been more perfect, and everyone had enthused that this was going to be a wedding like no other. Even his hard to please brother Ruiz was in a perpetual state of ecstasy at the sight of the joy and anticipation on Holly’s face.
And now he and Maxie were resting on the bed after the final dress rehearsal. The sex was always phenomenal between them, but just lying together quietly was good too. ‘So, come on,’ he coaxed, ‘tell me what’s on your mind.’
‘I want to tell you everything,’ she murmured against his mouth. ‘Then we needn’t speak of it again. But there is something I want you to know.’
‘If it’s worrying you, and it will make you feel better if you tell me, then do so,’ he said. He would do anything to make Maxie happy.
‘My father didn’t always tr
ead a straight line.’ His impulse was to tense. He caught it in time. ‘But there was a reason for it,’ she continued. ‘When my mother became sick we had no money for her care. That was when I learned how to massage her leg, because it saved paying for extra sessions from the therapist. I soon became good at it.’
‘Because it mattered to you?’ he guessed. She smiled sadly.
‘Because it helped my mother.’ He gave an encouraging nod.
‘My father couldn’t afford the treatment my mother needed,’ she went on, ‘and so he started to borrow money—more and more money.’
A downward spiral that had ended with Peter Parrish trying to swindle two cocky Argentinian youths out of a fortune, Diego realised.
‘He wasn’t a bad man, Diego. He was a desperate man. The money wasn’t for him, but for my mother.’
He hushed her and drew her close to kiss the top of her head, thinking this hardly mattered now. But Maxie tensed and pulled away, her eyes full of some unspoken horror.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘It went wrong, Diego,’ she said, staring at him with that same look in her eyes. ‘My father’s plan went horribly wrong. Someone died because of him. I was too young to know the details, but I heard my mother crying one day as she confided in a friend that a young man had lost all his family money and killed himself because of my father’s actions. There were more rows, and my father was never the same after that. His intention, foolish though it was, had been to save life—not to destroy it. I think he went mad with grief, and then dementia took over. My mother died shortly afterwards, so he felt it had all been for nothing.’
‘But none of it was your fault, Maxie,’ Diego insisted gently. ‘You can’t go on blaming yourself for something your father did so long ago. And you mustn’t,’ he insisted. ‘Your father was trying in every way he knew to care for your mother, as you later cared for him. He could see no further than that any more than you could see further than your duty towards him. Don’t you think I understand that now?’
