Alejandro sighed. ‘You found her in the end,
didn’t you?’
‘No thanks to you.’
Alejandro’s smile felt as stiff and grim as his soul. ‘You found her thanks to a note shoved under your door at half-past eight on a Saturday night. I can repeat the exact words on the note if you want?’
His brother’s face went slack. ‘You?’
Alejandro nodded. ‘The time when I wasn’t trying to talk my mother down from full-blown depression, I was trying to get my father to come home. I attended soccer practice because my coach warned me he’d throw me off the team if I missed any more games.’
Gael shook his head. ‘You...’ he breathed again.
‘It wasn’t as easy for me as you think. Trust me on that.’
His brother stared at him for an age, before he nodded. ‘Okay.’
Alejandro stared off at the reflective lake for a minute before he turned around. ‘The deal is yours if you want it.’
Gael looked puzzled. ‘Why would you hand me a deal that’s already yours? I wouldn’t have gone that way myself, but you played your ace and you won. There’s no need to be coy about it.’
‘Santa Maria, I have zero idea what you’re talking about,’ he growled.
‘I’m talking about Elise.’ Gael shook his head. ‘Bringing an exquisitely beautiful woman with Japanese ancestry to pave the path for you? She’s playing the part to perfection, I have to give her that. The old man is eating out of her hand. And if my eyesight is still twenty-twenty, Jason’s set on getting lucky before the night is out.’
Cold dread tightened Alejandro’s nape. He lunged for Gael’s lapels. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said—’
‘Where is she?’
Gael drew back sharply. ‘Hey—’
‘Where?’
His brother pointed to the gardens at the side of the pavilion.
He barely felt the ground beneath his feet as he sprinted towards the cluster of cherry-blossom trees. The few guests who’d drifted out to enjoy the evening air hurried out of his way. His frenzied gaze darted over them, searching for her.
She wasn’t there.
A quick three-sixty turn and he wondered whether Gael had got it wrong. But then he spotted an archway into another garden. The typical Japanese garden was designed around a pond of lotus flowers, water lilies and rock steps.
Alejandro appreciated none of that as he stepped over a short bridge and arrived at a shallow waterfall that fed the lake. To one side of it pooled a larger pond, with a love seat at the end of it, complete with mood lighting.
He froze at the sight before him, shock and disbelief colluding to tell him he was hallucinating. But then a more urgent sensation took hold. The ever-tightening vice around his heart forced him to breathe through the shock, to blink away the disbelief.
To acknowledge that Elise was indeed in Jason’s arms.
Kissing him.
‘Elise.’ His voice was a ragged croak. She didn’t hear him. Her eyes were shut, her face concentrated...hand on his chest...lost in the kiss.
His dead feet stumbled closer, every atom in his body hoping he’d mistaken her for someone else. But it was her. The red dress. The hair. The body.
‘Dios mio. Elise!’
They parted unhurriedly, as if he were a nuisance they were reluctant to deal with.