Retaining His Bride (A Completed Novella)

Chapter 7

For fifteen years Clio had avoided the National Gallery, and now she was here with Enrique.

The Prado in Madrid was set in the lush greenery of a park. The National Gallery was in Trafalgar Square, defined by the iconic lion statues and Nelson’s Column, with a sweeping view to Big Ben. The cold winter sunlight glinted off the metallic branches of an enormous Christmas tree. Clio had been so caught up with the wedding, she’d scarcely registered it was less than ten days to Christmas.

“This is really what you want?” Enrique said, as they climbed the imposing steps to the entrance.

“It’s exactly what I want,” she said.

As they wandered around the various rooms in the gallery, Enrique held her hand for the first time in fifteen years. Somewhere deep inside her soul, something long broken started to mend.

They spoke in Spanish, hers a little rusty, his as eloquent as ever. The years rolled away and they were just a man and a woman enjoying each other’s company.

He took her for lunch but Clio scarcely tasted her meal. Her mouth felt dry with dread at the thought he would fly back to Madrid that afternoon.

She poked her fork at a delicious concoction of flaky pastry and winter berries, looked up to see Enrique eyeing it, and wordlessly pushed the plate towards him. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Quite sure,” she said. Back then they’d shared everything. But she’d let him down by being unable to share her life with him.

He pushed away the empty plate. “So, Clio, I’m going to ask you again—and this time I expect an answer. About my grandmother’s curse—have you ever been happy with a man since me?”

She met his gaze full on—not sure herself of what her answer should be.

“Of course. I got married.” Even though I didn’t feel for my husband anything like what I’d felt for you.

“And then divorced,” he said. So he had kept an eye on her. “That says to me you weren’t happy.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I was happy at first.” Just not happy enough. You never really loved me, her ex-husband had accused her on more than one occasion. She shrugged. “There were problems.”

“Problems?” he said.

“I met him on the rebound—heartbroken over you—when I went back to university in London. He was as different from you as it was possible to be.”

“Wealthy?” he said with a bitter twist to his mouth. Had he really thought that was important to her? Or was she kidding herself that it hadn’t been?

She nodded. “He came from a family much like mine. I was…vulnerable and craving security and he was safe. He chased after me. I let myself be caught.” Never had she felt the passion she had for Enrique. “I dated him for several years, always cautious about commitment. When he was offered a top job in Hong Kong, we married and I went with him.”

“But it didn’t work out,” he said. The grimness of his expression told her he wasn’t any happier talking about this than she was.

“Hong Kong was an exhilarating place. I loved it. But I wasn’t allowed to work. I got bored playing hostess for Toby. It was clear we wanted different things from life. We split amicably enough, and I came back to London. Oddly enough it was the combination of my recruitment experience and my Hong Kong hostessing skills that led me to starting Maids in Chelsea.”

“And since then?”

She found it difficult to meet his gaze. “I’ve been too busy establishing my business to date anyone seriously,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I believe in the curse.”

“Maybe you should,” he said. “Because I’m beginning to wonder if Sofia put the same curse on me.”

*

Enrique was deadly serious. His abuela had never formally laid a curse on him. But she’d told him continually that Clio had been the woman for him and he’d been a fool to let her go. Swallow your pride and go after her, she’d said in the weeks after Clio had left. Whether his arrogance in dismissing the advice had been because of his youth or because of his stubborn nature he didn’t know. But here with the lovely woman Clio was today, he realised his grandmother had been right.

“Why would you say that?” Clio asked now.

He gestured with his hands. “Because I have never been truly happy with any other woman than you.” It was the first time he’d admitted it, even to himself. “Of course there have been other women. But none who made me feel like I felt for you. Now, here with you, I know why. You ruined me for anyone else.”

She played with a strand of her hair, twisting it around her finger. “Did I? I’m not sure I really appreciated what your proposal of marriage meant. Things spun out of control so quickly. One minute I was a student, the next I would be a wife and then maybe a mother. I really wasn’t ready for babies. The loss of control over my own life terrified me.”

“And I wouldn’t listen. Too hot-headed, too arrogant, too—”

She reached out and placed her hand over his. “Maybe just too young.”

He searched her face. “I see what we achieved yesterday and wonder what we might have achieved together,” he said. “In those years lost to us.” He realised how much he had missed by not making the effort to understand her.

“Or maybe not. You might have not climbed so far, so fast, with the encumbrance of a young, lonely wife with no career, miserable away from her family and blaming you for it.”

“Like what happened to you in Hong Kong?”

She shook her head so vehemently her hair swished across her face. “No. Not like that at all. I never loved my ex-husband the way I loved you.”

“Because of the curse?” He didn’t believe in the superstitious old ways. And yet…

“Because I was too young and inexperienced to recognise that I’d already met the love of my life and that no other man could ever live up to him.”

“Is that true, Clio?”

“Maybe that’s the truth of the curse—and your grandmother was wise enough to see what we couldn’t.”

“And now?”

“We’re all grown up. And perhaps more capable of making better decisions.”

Her eyes were full of questions he wasn’t sure he knew the answers to. But one thing was for sure. He couldn’t wait a moment longer to kiss her.

And the restaurant had handily hung mistletoe above all the tables for two