Modern Romance April 2019 Books 5-8. Chantelle Shaw
eyes landing on the view beyond them. ‘I think the novelty of freedom is exactly that—a novelty. As a child I was always afraid.’ She cleared her throat, and said no more.
So he prompted, ‘Afraid of what?’
‘What my mother would do.’
As though screws were being turned in every joint, his body tightened. ‘She hurt you?’
‘Oh, God, no.’ She spun back toward him, her eyes enormous, and he could see so much of the famed supermodel in his wife’s face that he wondered if they were alike in ways other than the physical. ‘My mother was the kindest person you could ever meet. Too kind.’
‘Is there such a thing?’
Amelia’s frown was instantaneous but it was as though a storm cloud was moving in front of the sun. ‘Modelling is a hard business. You can never be the prettiest, the skinniest, the best. She spent her life trying.’ Amelia shook her head. ‘She was a “good-time girl”—that was her reputation anyway, and it came to define her. She could never grow out of it, never shake it free. As I’ve got older, I’ve come to realise that she was living in fear, that she was afraid people wouldn’t like her any more if she wasn’t always the life and soul of the party.’
‘I’m sorry if she lived with that fear.’
‘I am too.’ Amelia swallowed. ‘But I spent a long time being angry with her.’
‘Why?’ he asked, though he had his own reasons for feeling anger towards her too.
‘She shouldn’t have kept me,’ she said with a wry twist of her lips. ‘I used to wish she’d put me up for adoption, you know.’
Sadness for the young Amelia flooded him—a surprising reaction, and not entirely welcome. ‘Why were you afraid of her, then?’ He reframed their conversation to her original statement.
‘Because she was erratic, and almost always drunk or high. She’d invite random people back to whatever hotel we were living in at the time. I can’t even tell you how often I woke up and found she’d left the hotplate on or taps running.’
Oh, Cristo.
Tears sparkled on Amelia’s lashes, making her eyes shine like the ocean on a sun-filled day but, instead of letting them roll down her cheeks, she ground her teeth together, her expression almost mutinous. ‘New boyfriends every few weeks—some of them creepy or not very nice, some of them fun but bad for her. I resented them all.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I hated them all. I hated them for taking her away from me. She was never a great mum, but at least when she was single, she’d try. Not very hard.’ She frowned. ‘Or maybe she did try hard and she just wasn’t wired that way.’
And—he couldn’t help himself—he reached out, pressing his hand over hers and squeezing it. ‘And yet you turned out okay,’ he said, the praise too faint, too light, but he wasn’t sure what else he could offer.
She wrinkled her nose again and shrugged. ‘I had examples of everything I didn’t want to become. It was odd, growing up that way. Lots of people might think fame is aspirational, but oh, how I hated it.’ She shook her head. ‘Photographers going through our trash, Mum being in those gossipy magazines every time she got dumped or stumbled out of a nightclub. When I was old enough, I did my best to protect her from it, but there was only so much I could do.’
‘You must have still been a child, even then.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You were only twelve when she died...’
‘Yes.’ She shook her head. ‘But I think having a mother like mine forces you to grow up a lot sooner.’
With a visible effort to clear her thoughts, she stretched an uneven smile across her beautiful face. ‘So that’s my story. What of yours?’
He didn’t want to stop talking about her—having opened Pandora’s Box, he wanted all the secrets, all the mysteries. ‘Far less interesting,’ he promised.
‘I doubt that.’
The waiter appeared and they ordered—a simple lunch, vegetarian for Amelia and seafood for Antonio—and then they were alone once more.
‘Your mother died when you were young?’ she prompted.
Antonio expelled a breath, wondering if it was impolite to discuss such a thing with a pregnant woman. ‘In childbirth,’ he said at length—there was no way to sugar-coat it. ‘But from very rare complications.’
‘Oh, I hadn’t realised,’ she said, looking away from him. ‘That’s awful.’
‘As I said, it was extremely rare.’
‘I’m not worried about myself,’ she rushed to assure him, angling her face to his, and now she turned her hand upside down, capturing his and lacing their fingers together, templing them on the table.
She looked at their interwoven fingers as she spoke—it was an intoxicating contradiction—his fingers so tanned and long, hers fair and small, with the wedding ring he’d given her sparkling back at him. ‘But how awful, that she never got a chance to know you. To be a mother. And she must have been so excited.’
That had him arching a brow. ‘Are you excited?’
‘Are you kidding?’
He laughed then. ‘No. I’m curious.’
‘Of course I’m excited!’ Her free hand curved over her stomach and his eyes followed the betraying gesture with curiosity. ‘Aren’t you?’
It was an excellent question. At no point had he stopped to analyse his feelings. He had discovered her pregnancy and known only that he had to make her his, and that the baby would be raised a Herrera, right here in Spain.
‘I’m...’
‘Yes?’ She blinked at him, a smile tickling the corners of her lips, as though she were trying to suppress it—and failing.
‘I’m curious.’
She burst out laughing. ‘That’s it?’
‘Well, is it going to be like you, or like me?’ he said, uncharacteristically sheepish. ‘A boy, a girl, tall, short, with blue eyes that shine like the Aegean? Or dark like mine?’
She sighed. ‘And isn’t that...exciting? I mean, we have no idea about any of this, and yet this is our baby! No matter what, they’ll be part me, part you. I can’t wait to meet them.’
Her excitement was contagious and he found himself nodding, trying to fathom what their baby would be like. Their food arrived and she pulled her hand from his—he regretted the separation, and wondered at that. But for weeks he’d kept his distance and then, after last night and the magic of seeing their baby’s heartbeat on the screen, suddenly, he didn’t want to keep his distance any longer.
‘And you were close to your dad, obviously,’ she murmured, bringing the conversation back to something calmer and more grounded in the present. ‘I mean, the park, the puppets, football...’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We were close. I idolised him.’
Her eyes were speculative, loaded with questions she didn’t voice. She was tentative in a way he couldn’t stand. They’d been sharing so much of themselves a moment ago, he didn’t want her to withdraw from him again. ‘You look like you wanted to ask me something,’ he said softly, and her eyes widened with surprise.
She nodded gently. ‘Is he...?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed, unprepared for the rush of emotion that filled him. ‘He’s dead.’ He frowned. ‘Saying that is strange. I haven’t...talked about him in the past tense yet.’ A frown stretched across his handsome face. ‘My father was an incredibly dynamic man—larger than life. I still find myself forgetting that