And he had to concede too that perhaps there had been more to his mother’s motives than pure greed and selfishness. Her distress when she’d said goodbye both times stung him now—hard. Like a slap across the face. This unwelcome revelation brought with it an even stronger feeling that everything he’d always counted on was falling apart at the seams.
Cesar pinched the bridge of his nose. All he could see was Lexie’s face and those huge eyes.
Anger surged again. What had she wanted from him? Damn her! Had she expected him to take her in his arms and soothe her? Promise her that everything would be all right?
Cesar wasn’t gentle. Or sensitive. Or kind. He was black all the way through, and he resented Lexie right then for making him see just how black he was. For showing him how little he could offer comfort. And for making him think of the bleak reality of his childhood, filled with a lifetime of resentment for his two half-brothers. How powerless he’d been under the influence of his bitter grandparents, intent on punishment and revenge.
Rage and a feeling of impotence wound up inside him so tightly that he exploded. He turned and raised the hand holding that heavy crystal glass and with an inarticulate roar of pain and rage flung it with all his might across the room at his stainless steel kitchen. He watched it shatter into a million pieces, amber liquid spraying everywhere.
An echo from a long time ago whispered across his soul, bringing a chill wind. It reminded him that no good came out of this dark, gothic place. And to have imagined otherwise, even for a second, was to have become weak.
Lexie Anderson would be gone in a few days, and right in that moment Cesar hoped he’d never set eyes on her again. Because she’d done the worst thing in the world: she’d made him forget who he really was.
* * *
Lexie was sitting in her chair on the set, waiting while they set up for a new camera shot. People milled around her, working, chatting. But she felt removed. She’d heard the helicopter leaving early that morning.
She’d known that Cesar had left the castillo even before she’d heard one of the producers say something about him having business to attend to in America.
She’d been awake for most of the night, alternating between seething resentment directed at Cesar for having awoken her body from a lifetime of numbness and anger at herself for being so stupid as to fall for him. She’d tried to tell herself that she hadn’t fallen so hard...but the hurt was too real and too deep for feelings not to be involved.
She’d never forget the look on his face when she’d told him about her baby. He’d shut down. Lexie had only ever talked about her baby to her counsellor. No one else knew. It was one of the reasons she was paranoid about press intrusion—in case anyone ever dug deep enough to find out.
Her son would be thirteen now, and every day Lexie wondered about him—wondered how she would cope if he ever came looking for her, asking for information. Sometimes the thought was overwhelming. She went cold inside as something struck her. Had she, on some level, put Cesar in the role of confidante because she’d been so desperate for support?
Even as Lexie felt anger for being so weak she had to acknowledge that she could have asked for help before. She’d just been too stubborn. That had been borne out the previous evening, when she’d gone to find the director to try and explain to him why she’d reacted the way she had.
She’d told him about the rape, knowing instinctively that she could trust him.
He’d shaken his head and taken her hand, his eyes full of compassion. ‘Lexie, you should have told me. If I’d had any idea of how huge that scene was for you I’d have approached it differently. We could even have got it out of the way in the first week...’
He’d humbled her, apologising for unwittingly causing her distress. It was as if another weight had lifted from her shoulders, and Lexie knew that if she hadn’t already told Cesar there was no way she could have confided in anyone else.
That only made her angry with him all over again. He hadn’t been able to get rid of her fast enough yesterday. His face had been hard. Clearly he’d rejected her unwelcome confidences. No doubt his other lovers didn’t come with messy histories, or weep all over him after making love.
She was glad Cesar was gone because she knew all her bravado was very shaky and that if she saw him again her heart would splinter into a million pieces.
* * *
Over a week later Cesar returned to the castillo. It was as if there had never been a film unit on the estate. Apart from the flattened bit of grass where the extras’ marquee had stood everything had been restored to its pristine state—and, perversely, it annoyed Cesar intensely.
For the past week he’d put in long days at board meetings he’d been neglecting. Because of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed temptress. Damn her. Those were his favourite words at the moment, and they beat a constant refrain in his head.
Damn her for coming into his life. Damn her for making him want her so badly that he seemed to have a constant ache in his gut. Damn her for being so light in spite of the horrific things she’d endured.
Just...damn her.
For making him think of things like his brother Alexio’s wedding and how happy both his half-brothers had looked with their wives. And damn her for making him come to the uncomfortable realisation that he had to stop blaming his brothers for living their lives oblivious of his presence.
That realisation had hit him as he’d looked blearily into the bottom of an empty bottle of whiskey in a dingy bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan about two days ago.
Cesar stopped at the entrance of the castillo. It sat there, as forbidding and dark as it ever had been. But for the first time in his life it didn’t feel quite so...oppressive.
It was quiet, though. And that quiet, which had never really bothered him before, seemed to reach around him and squeeze, bringing with it restlessness. Dissatisfaction.
Without even being aware of making the decision, Cesar found himself walking up the main staircase to the first-floor landing. He went and stood at the window where his grandmother had found him waiting, looking for his mother.
He felt the old pain like a bruise that would never fade. But it didn’t bring with it that futile sense of anger. It only brought a sense of melancholy and a growing sense of something else. Loss. Acute, aching loss. Worse than anything he’d ever felt before—worse even the loss he could remember feeling as a child for his mother.