Fernando looks sideways at me, and I look back at him, my eyes wide. The right person? Who could that be…?
Then he simply grins, and gestures towards the hallway, starting to move towards it himself. “Come on, Ash. Let’s get ready for the day. I don’t know about you, but I need a shower.”
I can only watch him as he goes, my mind racing.
The right person.
Could he possibly mean… me?
Chapter Twenty-One
Fernando
I can’t help but be distracted when we get into the shower together, but as soon as we step out, my mind goes back to it again.
Back to what she made me think about this morning when she stood there in one of my rooms and talked about family.
The idea of her giving me children, of filling this house with laughter and small footsteps. I can picture her holding our children as newborn babies in her arms, see her dressing them for their first days of school, and everything else that goes along with it. I can see it so clearly that it almost hurts my chest, making my heart contract so greatly that I almost think I will die.
But there is something that I have to do first before we can embrace that reality. I have to make sure that this will work for us, and there's only one way to do that. To talk to her father, my old friend. To hope that he’s still as understanding as I remember him being.
“I’m just going to call my assistant,” I say to Ash, who is still getting dressed and drying off her hair. “I’ll step outside. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Okay,” she calls back, her voice muffled by a towel as she rubs it over the ends of her blonde hair.
I steel myself and jog down the stairs, out onto the beach. I walk a distance from the house for good measure before I call, wanting to make sure that she won’t overhear me.
“Hello?”
The sound of Joe’s voice makes me tense up. There’s a little interference on the line, a consequence of calling from so far away. Still, he sounds clear. I wonder what he’s doing right now. It must be late, but I know that Joe has always been in the habit of staying up later at night in order to correspond with European branches of the firm he works for.
“Hola, Joe. How are you doing?”
“Fernando!” Joe exclaims, with a happy laugh. “How are you, my man? It’s been a little while.”
“Yes, sorry about that. I guess we have both been busy,” I say, glancing back at the house in my paranoia that Ashley will overhear me. I have to get this conversation out of the way before I can do anything else. I have a feeling that Joe isn’t going to be happy about this, and I have to explain – before he gets the wrong end of the stick.
“Well, how have you been?” Joe asks, then immediately interrupts me before I can answer. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you – Ashley’s over in Barcelona right now!”
“I know,” I say, feeling a sensation crawling over the back of my head. An itch. He’s about to find out just how much I know about his daughter. “I actually ran into her.”
“Oh, you did?” Joe laughs. “Well, how about that? Small world, I guess. Well, how’s she doing? We haven’t heard from her since she made it to the city.”
“Oh, she’s doing great,” I say, closing my eyes for a brief moment at how awkward this all is. How the reason I know his daughter is fine is that I’m the one that’s been bringing her to multiple orgasms. “I think she really likes the city.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s great. Maybe she’ll come back and visit again in the future,” Joe says.
“I think it’s likely,” I say, gearing up to tell him what I need to say. This is as good a segue as any. The words are on the tip of my tongue, I think it’s likely because we’ve actually fallen in love and I’m going to invite her to live with me instead of going home to you.
“There aren’t any boys in the picture, are there?” Joe pipes up, unexpectedly, his voice turning gruff.
“Boys?” I repeat, playing for time with my mind whirring. Does he suspect…?
“I was pretty dubious about sending her out there on her own if I’m being honest,” Joe says. “She’s about that age that boys will be all over her. And she’s innocent, you know? Shy. She’s never had a boyfriend, and she doesn’t know how predatory boys can be. Especially for tourists who are going back home at the end of the week. The last thing I would want is for someone to take advantage of her while she’s over there.”
“Right,” I say. I’m thinking of two things simultaneously, the boys who really did try to hit on her and intimidate her, until I showed up; and the fact that it probably looks as though I’m the one that took advantage of her, at least from Joe’s perspective. He sees his daughter as an innocent young flower just about to bloom, and I’m the one who took that innocence away.