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‘So when did you learn to change a tyre?’ He settled back against the headboard, hooking Lulu in against him. ‘You don’t look like the tyre-changing type.’
‘I was ten years old and we got a flat on a motorway. A man stopped and offered to show my mother how to change it. Maman isn’t great with practical things, so he showed me instead.’
‘Where was your father?’
Lulu had been enjoying herself, but now she felt that private part of her crouching in the corner at his question.
She opted for saying, ‘He wasn’t in our lives.’ Which wasn’t exactly the truth. Every day of her young life, even if her father had been absent, his restless, angry presence had always been felt.
‘My grandfather was the one who taught me everything I needed to know,’ Alejandro shared, and she got the impression he was backing off.
She relaxed against him. She didn’t want to think about what was going to separate them in the morning, and besides, she was used to the idea of not involving other people in her problems.
‘My father wasn’t around much either—before or after the divorce,’ Alejandro mused. ‘And when he was it was like being hit by a cyclone of presents and energy. He would make a fuss of the girls and drag me out on some wild excursion that usually ended in someone getting hurt.’
Lulu frowned and looked up. ‘He hurt you?’
‘Fernando? No, nothing like that. He just never grew up—it was always a Boys’ Own adventure with him. Quad bikes…fast cars when I got older. He crashed everything. I was a man at sixteen. He was—well, more of a buddy than a father.’
‘What did your mother think about all this?’
‘As long as he paid her bills she couldn’t have cared less.’
Lulu flinched at his tone, and the urge to touch him, offer comfort, was strong in her. She hadn’t had a father figure until she was fourteen, but it sounded as if Alejandro hadn’t had either parent. She was so close to her own mother—perhaps too close—that it was difficult to imagine what the lack of one would feel like.
‘I was the bone my parents warred with one another for. They lavished me with attention when it suited them, but when it came to the practicalities of life it was my grandfather who offered lessons.’
‘But you said your father taught you to ride?’
‘He put me on a saddle, smacked the horse’s rump and let me fend for myself. As in riding lessons, so in life.’
He spoke without rancour, but Lulu knew enough about hiding those deepest hurts from her last year of therapy to suspect his big, tough exterior hid the boy he’d once been—longing for his father’s attention and not getting it. The fact he had taken up polo professionally despite this start said a lot about his feelings for his father. She guessed it wasn’t so much about wanting his father’s approval as proving himself a better man.
Lulu wisely kept that observation to herself.
Alejandro ruffled the curls at her neck. He was so tactile, and she noticed he had a thing about her hair. It made her feel all squishy inside.
‘Don’t listen to me, hermosa, it’s the l
ong day talking.’
But it wasn’t, and it made her feel closer to him. She watched him massage the muscle where his thigh joined his knee, stretching out his leg.
‘Torn ligament a couple of months ago,’ he said, following her gaze and answering her unspoken question. ‘I usually patch up a lot faster than this. Must be age and fast living catching up.’
Lulu thought that if he was paying for his sins he must be like Dorian Gray—there had to be a ruined portrait somewhere—because his looks were a hymn to male beauty. He did look tired, though, and speaking about his parents had brought a seriousness into his eyes. She sensed he would not reveal any more.
She could have told him she had no intention of probing any further.
The last thing she wanted to do was rake over the coals of the long-dead bonfire that was her father’s time in her life. She was too busy doing battle with spot fires—the anxieties and phobias that were its fallout—and she knew were waiting for her tomorrow. Because they never went away.
She found her refuge in routine, and she couldn’t have that this weekend.
But she was doing okay, and right now she felt better than okay. She felt something new was possible. In this room. On this night.
There hadn’t been a panic attack and she knew she wouldn’t have one tonight. She had never felt as safe as she did lying in his arms.
She glanced down at herself.
