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“Noon?” he muttered to himself. When was the last time he had slept until noon?
“Thirty seconds more, Adrian, and I knock down the damned door!” Alejandro called.
“You do and I’ll toss you over the balcony!” Adrian hollered back.
The action cost him as a headache split the middle of his forehead with a crushing sting. He somehow pushed himself out of bed, stumbled over to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what the hell’s going on,” Alejandro retorted as he barged in. His eyes landed on the half-filled brandy bottle. “Did you seriously drink all that brandy on top of wine?”
Adrian shielded his eyes and leaned heavily against the door. “Maybe.”
“At least pick a quality brandy if you’re going to drink yourself to death.”
“I assume you’re here for a reason?” Adrian growled as he brushed past his brother and moved into the bathroom.
“I was already on my way to see Madre when she called me. She said you had locked yourself in your rooms and wouldn’t come out.”
Adrian took a sip of cold water. His stomach rolled, but he managed to keep it down.
“Who says it doesn’t pay to get out of bed in the morning?” He forced a look of stoicism that belied the pain squeezing his lungs with an iron grip.
Everleigh’s gone.
When he’d left the chapel that day fury had guided his steps. How could he have been so stupid as to let his guard down?
Seeing his mother in the hospital bed, pale and hooked up to an IV, had brought those terrible months after the stillbirth roaring back. Not just the memories, but the pain—the vicious cycle of hoping that tomorrow things might return to normal, only to have that day never come. Other ghosts from his past—like the memory of that first day he’d woken up after Abuela’s death and realized that he was truly alone—had taken hold of his tongue when he’d spoken to Everleigh and delivered one crushing blow after another.
“...loving you is worth all of that.”
He’d wanted to pull Everleigh to him, hug her tight and never let her go. But just the thought of saying those words back to her had frightened him more than the thought of not having her in his life.
He’d done the right thing.
He’d let her go.
Hell, he’d pushed her away with such force there was no possible way she’d ever think of coming back.
He’d almost asked her to stay with him in Granada after they’d made love in the cottage. The thought of her going back to New York, of moving on with someone else, had filled him with a desperate possessiveness that had made him tighten his arms around her naked body.
By the grace of the powers that be, he’d never gotten the chance. Everleigh might have the courage to risk her heart, but he didn’t have the courage to risk his. He’d allowed himself to feel—just a bit—when Isabella had invited him to lunch. Allowed himself to hope that maybe they could move forward, even repair their relationship as Everleigh had with her father.
That little bit of power had devastated him when he’d gotten the call from the hospital—had left him frantic as he’d tried to ascertain whether his mother was alive, in a coma, paralyzed, or any of the other possibilities that had taken away his control as fear had poured in.
What would happen if he gave Everleigh the power to hold his heart in her hands? She wasn’t the type to purposely hurt him. Hell, even Isabella hadn’t meant to in this case. But it hadn’t taken away any of the panic that had chased him all the way to the hospital...the dizziness that had nearly knocked him off his feet as he’d raced through the corridors to her bedside.
His original conclusion was right.
Emotions had no place in his life.
Neither did Everleigh.
So he’d focused on a task he could measure from a distance: Isabella’s healing.
The surgery on her wrist had been successful, the concussion officially labeled as mild. And, despite his demands that Isabella remain in the hospital for a week, she’d displayed a stubborn streak and insisted on returning home to recuperate.
The Cabrera men had descended en masse upon the house. His father had flown in from England the day of the accident. Antonio had followed a day later from the Bahamas, and Alejandro had arrived late last night—after Adrian had started chasing his sorrows to the bottom of a bottle.
