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Alicia looked away as Isabella poured two glasses of wine and the young girl placed a platter of tapas before them—chorizo, breads, olives, cheese, fruit and little tartlets with anchovies and garlic.
When they were alone, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Your chef?’
‘One of Isabella’s projects,’ he said with an air of affection that ripped Alicia’s own heart out. For a moment, she caught a glimpse of the boy Graciano had been, the boy who’d had all the time in the world for her—who, despite his awful upbringing, had always smiled for her.
The sense of loss was dazzling.
That boy no longer existed for Alicia, but he did for others.
‘Projects?’ she queried, reaching for her wine and taking a gulp, so glad for the relief she didn’t notice the delicious flavour until her second sip.
‘She recruits people from the streets,’ he said, eyes focused straight ahead. He was looking at Alicia without really seeing her. ‘She cares only that they work hard and don’t do drugs—her two rules.’
Alicia’s heart shifted in her chest. ‘Does she know about your time living rough?’
‘It’s something she and I have in common.’
Alicia leaned forward a little. ‘Isabella, too?’
‘She was one of the first I hired.’
‘All your staff come from that background?’
‘What’s the point of employing people if not to give them a second chance? Here, they have a roof over their heads, a good job. Like Isabella, I have very few rules.’
She sipped her wine again. ‘What are your rules?’
‘Honesty and loyalty.’
Alicia flicked her gaze down to the table. From Graciano’s perspective, Alicia had failed him on that front.
‘And qualifications?’
‘In my opinion, people can become qualified in anything if they’re motivated enough, and nothing motivates like having lived on the streets.’
‘When you left Seville—’
‘When your father threw me out?’
Parched throat, she nodded. ‘I worried about you.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘I hated the thought of you going back to the streets. Some of the things you’d told me—the things you’d done, the things that happened to you... I couldn’t sleep for fear of how you were living.’
Silence crackled between them, broken occasionally by the tweeting of an evening bird drifting overhead.
‘Your worry was redundant. As you can see, I was fine.’
‘But how?’ she asked, urgently, leaning forward, then reaching for her wine and forcing herself to relax. ‘How did you do all this?’
‘Do you suspect a crime? That I somehow stole my fortune, Alicia?’
Her pulse kicked up a gear at the sound of her name in his mouth.
‘Of course not.’
‘Or that I became a gigolo to some wealthy woman and swindled her of her fortune?’
