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“Shame?” Nicole repeated, feeling utterly confused.
Quin’s mother had moved to meet her and was now holding out both hands in what seemed like appeal…or was it in greeting? Nicole quickly offered her own and they were taken and pressed, the dark eyes of Evita Gallardo suddenly transmitting an anxious concern.
“It is a long story,” she said. “And I have come because I owe it to you. I hope you will understand.”
Understand what? Nicole almost blurted out, but conscious of already sounding like a parrot, she constrained herself to nodding. Then realising she hadn’t even greeted the woman, she hastily said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs…um…Miss…? Gallardo.”
“Please…call me Evita. We are already family. You have borne me a grand-daughter,” came the soft reasoning.
“Right,” Nicole agreed, relieved to see no hint of criticism in the dark eyes. There seemed to be more a wish—a need?—for acceptance.
Because of Zoe!
The answer was so obvious, Nicole berated herself for getting uptight about her own impact on Quin’s mother. Regardless of how she was viewed, Evita Gallardo would undoubtedly be very guarded against offending the legal custodian of her grand-child. This meeting had to be about establishing amenable contact, opening a gateway into Zoe’s life. Which meant Quin had to be very seriously intent on being a constant part of their daughter’s future.
“I brought some albums with photos of Zoe,” she said, impulsively offering to Evita Gallardo what she had begrudged giving to Quin. Somehow it was different—woman to woman with the shared knowledge of how it was to have a child. “Perhaps you would like to look through them.”
“I would like it very much.” She squeezed Nicole’s hands in fervent gratitude, then released one to wave her own towards the sofa she’d left. “Please come and sit with me.”
“Coffee, Nicole?” Quin asked, distracting her momentarily from his mother.
His eyes glimmered with satisfaction, giving Nicole the instant impression this scenario was going exactly as he had planned. Ruthless in going after what he wanted, she thought, but what end did he have in mind? He’d caught her by surprise with this introduction to his mother, and Nicole could feel any control over what would happen next slipping right out of her hands. She saw no alternative but to ride this evening through as best she could. “Yes, please,” she answered.
At least having coffee when she first arrived was normal routine. After their first night together she had declined any further dinner invitations, preferring to eat the evening meal with her mother and Zoe before she left home. Besides which, dining out with Quin had seemed too much like dating and she’d wanted to keep the deal a deal with a finish line, not slide back into a relationship with him.
As she accompanied his mother to the sofa, Nicole reflected that it was now impossible to avoid an ongoing relationship, given Quin’s stated commitment to being far more than a nominal father to Zoe. Involving his mother was definite proof of how serious he was about it.
Though his mother would undoubtedly return to her home in Argentina and visits from her would probably be few and far between, so her presence here tonight didn’t really prove anything.
Nicole sternly cautioned herself against taking mental leaps into a future that might not materialise. She sat down with Evita Gallardo, very conscious that she should take only one step at a time in this murky situation. Assume nothing. Trust nothing. Just go with the flow tonight.
Quin placed her carry-bag on the coffee table in front of them. “Wait for me before you start with the albums,” he said. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
His eyes seared hers with the message he’d missed far too much already and Nicole inwardly bridled at the implied accusation of having shut him out from where he should have been. If he’d given her any sense of commitment during their two-year relationship, she wouldn’t have chosen to be a single parent.
“Of course, we will wait,” his mother answered a touch anxiously, as though pleasing her son was of paramount importance.
Quin headed off to the kitchen to make coffee and Nicole turned to Evita Gallardo, wanting the background information that Quin had always denied her. “You said the name of Sola carried too much shame. Would you explain that to me, Evita?”
She sighed heavily, giving Nicole the distinct impression that it took a huge effort to reveal a history, which was obviously a source of personal pain and embarrassment. The dark eyes held sadness and deep regrets as she began to speak.
“My husband, Luis Sola, was a very handsome, very charming, very clever man. I was…under his spell…for many years, believing he was everything he portrayed himself to be. But he used our marriage to gain access to people of wealth he would not have met otherwise, and he defrauded them, as well as members of my family, of a great deal of money. One day, everything seemed normal, and the next he was gone, leaving me and our son to face the scandal of his treachery.”
“That must have been very difficult,” Nicole murmured sympathetically.
Evita shook her head and heaved another sigh. “I could not bear it. And it was particularly bad for Joaquin, who had to carry the stigma of his father’s crimes at school. He was only thirteen and suddenly he was ostracised from everything. Even my family shunned him. Because he looked so very much like Luis, he was most unfairly cast as a bad seed who would also bring shame upon us all.”
“But you didn’t believe that,” Nicole said encouragingly, caught up in the story and wanting to hear more.
“I know my son. He is a Gallardo through and through.” There was a flash of pride in the pained eyes. “It was better for him that we accept exile in Australia than to stay in Buenos Aires where he would never be trusted. So we came here and Joaquin vowed he would prove them all wrong.”
“How?”
“By making restitution, returning all the stolen money.”
This was the driving force behind his single-minded ambition to make as much money as he could, Nicole realised, stunned by how little she had known about the man she had loved.
“Once we were settled here, he worked very hard. Studied hard,” his mother went on. “He won a special scholarship to a university and got a business degree, then moved straight into a bank to learn how to make money from money.”
