Arden gave him a curious glance. ‘You mean, Felix had never met you before? But he’s your uncle.’
‘I call him that, but actually he’s my great-uncle. And my father wasn’t exactly a favoured nephew, especially after he married my mother.’
Don’t ask him to explain, she told herself, nothing about this man is of any interest to you...
‘Why?’ she said, hating herself as she said it.
Conor shrugged. ‘Felix saw himself as the family patriarch. I suppose it had something to do with all the money he’d amassed, ranching cattle and raising coffee— he gave orders, and everybody took them.’ He began walking slowly along the sand, and Arden fell in next to him. ‘Everybody but my father.’ He laughed softly. ‘He wasn’t interested in cattle and coffee. He had dreams of being an artist.’
‘An artist?’
‘A painter.’ Conor dug his toe into the sand and kicked at it. ‘But he had no choice. My grandparents died when my father was a boy, and Felix raised him. Felix had no children, so my father was the answer to his prayers—an heir to take over the running of El Corazon.’
She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she cleared her throat.
‘And?’
‘And it worked—for a while. My father went to work here on the finca, with Felix, travelled for him on business... That was how he met my mother, during a trip to the States, to secure a loan from some New England bankers.’
Of course. His mother had been a North American. That explained the perfect English, the green eyes.
‘Molly Flynn,’ he said with a little smile. ‘From Boston.’
And it explained that strange first name. Arden gave him another quick glance. Yes, she could see it clearly now. The man walking slowly beside her was a fascinating blend of Costa Rican and Irish-American; he had his father’s macho temperament, his mother’s gift of the gab, and he’d inherited the startling good looks of both.
‘What are you thinking?’
Arden flushed. ‘Nothing,’ she said, looking quickly towards the blue water of the lake. ‘I mean, I was—I was thinking that it must have been interesting, being raised by parents from such different backgrounds.’
‘My father died when I was ten. Before that, he raised me alone.’
‘But what happened to your mother?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ His voice had gone flat. ‘I was very small when she left one morning and didn’t come back.’
‘Left?’ Arden came to a stop and turned towards him. ‘What do you mean, she left?’
Conor stooped and picked up a handful of sand. ‘I mean exactly that.’ A muscle knotted in his jaw as he let the sand sift through his fingers. ‘She’d thought she was marrying into the Romero dynasty. But my father, the poor fool, decided that love had given him the courage to devote his life to what he really wanted.’
‘He was going to paint,’ Arden said softly, her eyes on his face.
‘Yes. He told that to Felix. Felix disowned him, and when my mother realised that she’d married a man who’d given up the Romero money to pursue a dream, she packed her things and went back to the States.’
‘But—but surely you’ve seen her since. I mean, she’s your mother. Mothers don’t just—’
‘She was never a mother, except for the nine months it took her to carry me.’ He swung towards her, his eyes cold. ‘She was a woman who knew what she wanted and did what she had to do to get it.’
Arden stared at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after a moment. Her hand lifted, went out to him. ‘Conor, I—’
‘It’s too bad she didn’t stick around,’ he said in that same cold voice. ‘She’d have been proud of me. I’m not at all like my old man. Hell, here I am, part of everything he turned his back on.’
Her hand fell to her side as reality returned. ‘Even if you have to shoulder Felix out of the way to do it.’
Conor laughed. ‘Suppose I told you I ran as far and as fast as I could from all of this when I was a kid?’
She hesitated. ‘The banana boat?’
‘The banana boat—and half a dozen other ways to earn just enough money to get me from one day to the next.’ He smiled tightly. “The only thing any of those jobs had in common was that you didn’t need a brain to do them. All you needed were muscles.’