But tonight she looked at that cold, hard line of his spine and arranged her face appropriately. “I was so surprised to receive an invitation to dine with you, Pau. After last night, I was certain you were going to avoid me for weeks.”
“I believe we’ve had enough childishness in this marriage already,” he said in that same arctic tone. She didn’t like it any better tonight.
And that was clearly meant to be a dig, Leontina knew. She didn’t take it as one, because she refused to accept that love had anything to do with childishness. He only wanted her to think so. Because it suited him for her to think so.
Because this man’s reaction to his feelings was to turn them into vengeance.
It bothered her that she still didn’t know why.
She might have some guesses—since she knew a thing or two about unavailable fathers—but she didn’tknow. He hadn’t told her.
Today she had to wonder if he ever would.
She didn’t react. She also didn’t take her seat at the table. They stood there, on opposite sides of the room, as if they were facing off. Leontina let her hand rest on her belly and tracked the way his gaze followed the gesture, then jerked away.
As if he didn’t want to think too closely about their child. Not when he was so busy impersonating granite.
“There’s an attraction between us,” he said after a moment, and Leontina was quite certain she wasn’t imagining the patronizing note in his voice. It set her teeth on edge, but she didn’t let herself outwardly react. She suspected that was what he wanted. “I imagine that surprised us both.”
He said that last part as if he was being magnanimous. Leontina laughed.
“It didn’t surprise me,” she said, shaking her head at him. “Because I knew what you looked like. I suspect you were the one who was a little more surprised.”
He didn’t like that. She could see that all over his face. But he nodded. “That’s likely true. Nonetheless, our connection has proven to be far more volatile than anticipated.”
“Is that another way of saying that you had no intention of ever permitting yourself to have a single feeling where I was concerned?” she asked, perhaps too cheerfully.
Because she could see that her cheerfulness bothered him—and she might not think that it was fair to call anything that was happening herechildishness, but she was only human.
She studied that absurdly perfect face of his and she could see the tightness of his jaw. The flatness of his lips. And that darkness in his gaze.
It made her wonder if he even knew what he felt about anything.
Though it was certainly notcheerful.
“I was trying to protect you,” he said shortly. “But you’ve indicated protection is unnecessary. After all, you were under the impression thatyouseducedme.” His gaze seemed darker. “The truth is, Leontina, this has nothing to do with you. It’s what you represent. You are your father’s last remaining hope to reclaim his standing in the nasty little worlds he inhabits. But I wanted to make sure that he has as little hope as he gave my father in the end.”
Suddenly, Leontina felt significantly less cheerful. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What did Umberto do to your father?”
Pau made a bitter sound. “He befriended him. At Giaco’s wedding, I saw that your father has his own vineyard now. That’s a new enterprise, isn’t it? Ten years old or so, I would bet.”
“I believe there were vines there before,” Leontina said, though she felt a sense of foreboding. “But no one cultivated them. Not before I was around fourteen or so. That was when they got more serious.”
“I don’t know if you know this,” Pau said, and he was still standing so straight, so tall, there by the window. Everything about him was dark and forbidding, and she knew this was about feelings because beneath it all, she could see that he was furious. “One of the things your father loves to do is find new ways to damage new people. After all, ruining the same people over and over is only so much fun. When he decided to start cultivating his wine, he naturally thought that he ought to branch out by connecting with established vintners. They were an exclusive group. Two in California, two in France, one in New Zealand, and my father here in Spain.” His mouth took on a bitter curve. “Not one of them is in business any longer. And my father is dead.”
Leontina stared back at him, trying to patch that together with the sense of foreboding she felt. “What exactly are you saying?”
Pau’s dark eyes flashed. “My father thought he found a friend, and he loved nothing more than to talk at length about the one and only topic that interested him. While my mother was here, she liked to complain about his one-track mind. I think everybody found him too much, but it was who he was.”
He paused then, and it seemed to hurt him to swallow. His eyes were even darker. Leontina found herself wondering if Pau might have been the only one who didn’t find Bernat Calixto to betoo much—and that made her heart clench.
Yet Pau pushed on. “So when he found a friend who couldn’t hear enough about his vines, his varietals, his soil composition, he had no barriers. No sense of self-preservation. He told your father everything he could possibly want to know, and in so doing, my father destroyed himself.”
His eyes seemed to glow then, with the kind of temper Leontina had never seen on him before. “Because, naturally, your father did not want a friend. Your father has never had a friend in his life. He wanted information. And he took it. Every single one of the men he reached out to either died from the stress or went bankrupt, while your father’s new enterprise did quite well because of them. Imagine that.”
“I can imagine that quite well,” Leontina said with a certain quiet fury of her own, because she hated this story. And not only because she hated that her father had gotten his talons into Pau’s family, too. “That’s what he does. That’s who he is. I’m so sorry, Pau, that your father got caught in his crossfire.”
“I appreciate that, Leontina, yet I don’t findsorryto be enough,” Pau hurled back at her. “My father loved only one thing. And your father took it from him. My mother beat her head against that wall for as long as she could. Part of me thinks that when she finally left, it was out of exhaustion. She was just sotiredof trying to be the focus of my father’s attention and never getting there.” He shook his head. “And when I tell you that he never loved me either, I’m not looking for sympathy. It is simply the truth. And I can accept that, because I knew how much this land and our legacy meant to him.” His dark eyes seemed to burn straight into her. “What I cannot accept is your father knew too, and took it from him anyway.”
