LITMIR.BIZ

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you see much of them?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I’m too busy.’

      ‘Too busy to see your own mother?’

      ‘I visit her whenever I can. The rest I was never close to so it’s no loss.’

      ‘No siblings?’

      ‘I’m an only child.’

      ‘Spoilt?’

      He laughed harshly. Chance would have been a fine thing. ‘No.’

      ‘A father?’

      ‘He died five years ago.’

      The inquisitiveness on her features softened. ‘I’m sorry. I lost my father last year. It’s hard, I know.’

      ‘It wasn’t much of a loss. I hardly knew him.’

      Seeing her open her mouth to ask another question, he leaned forward. ‘My mother raised me as a single parent. They were married but my father was rarely there and rarely gave her money. She worked so many different jobs to put a roof over my head and food on the table that she was hardly there either, but she wasn’t absent by choice as my father was. She didn’t have the time or money to take me to Madrid to visit her family. We lived in Alicante, hundreds of miles from them. If my father hadn’t been such a selfish chancer our lives would have been very different so, no, I didn’t find his death hard. I went to his funeral out of respect but I am not going to pretend I grieved for him. I barely knew the man.’

      His father had been unsuited to family life, a man always on the road searching for the next big thing, which had never turned into anything, but that next big thing had always been more important to him than his wife and child.

      So unimportant was his father to his life that he rarely thought about him, never mind talked about him, but with Francesca seemingly keen to interrogate him about his life, it was simpler to give her the full impartial facts and be done with it.

      ‘That must have been hard for you. And your mamma,’ she said, her eyes full of sympathy.

      Thankfully their food was brought over to them by the cheerful waitress, T-bone steak for him and seared tuna pasta salad for Francesca.

      She dived into hers and for a while he thought he’d escaped further interrogation.

      Wrong.

      ‘How often do you see your mother?’

      ‘I try and visit over Christmas and for her birthday.’

      ‘Is that it? Two visits a year?’

      He took a large bite of his steak and ignored the implied rebuke. He didn’t need to justify himself to her.

      ‘If I only saw my mother twice a year she’d kill me,’ Francesca mused. ‘She thinks I live too far from her as it is and I’m only a twenty-minute walk away.’

      ‘You’re her daughter. It’s a different relationship.’

      ‘Tell that to my brothers,’ she said with a roll of her eyes that immediately dimmed, the vibrancy in them muting.

      With a pang, he knew she was thinking of Pieta.

      ‘Pieta was a good son to her,’ she said quietly. ‘He travelled all around the world but always remembered to call her every night. Daniele’s the opposite—I’m always annoying him by sending reminders for him to call. She worries about us. Pieta’s death has devastated her.’

      ‘You’re a close family,’ he observed.

      She nodded. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’

      Lucky until the brother she’d adored had been so tragically killed.

      ‘Your life and background are very different from mine.’

      ‘My life and background are different from most peoples. But, then, everyone’s is. None of us are the same. We all have our worries.’

      ‘You grew up rich and with a loving family. What worries did you have?’

      ‘Me, personally? None that were serious. I was lucky and privileged but I know I’m one of the fortunate ones and it’s why I want to go into human rights law.’

      ‘You want to spread some of your good luck?’

      ‘You may mock me but I’m serious. I could have settled down with a husband and babies by now but I want my life to mean something.’

      He could only guess how hard she’d had to work to prove herself. He knew how old money worked—he’d protected enough of the people who lived in that world to know it was still male dominated. It couldn’t have been easy for her to go against her family’s expectations and wishes.

      ‘You could run Pieta’s foundation.’

      Her pretty brow rose. ‘Are you mocking me again?’

      ‘Not at all. You were the consummate professional today. Pieta would have been proud of you.’

      Her face flushed with pleasure. ‘You think?’

      ‘I’m sure of it, and I’m sure Alberto will be back at work soon. He could help and guide you. And keep you out of trouble,’ he couldn’t resist adding.

      She half grinned and half scowled then shrugged ruefully. ‘It isn’t for me. I want to get the hospital on Caballeros built for Pieta’s memory but his philanthropy isn’t the route I want to go. That was his and once things have settled we’ll work as a family to make sure the foundation continues, but it won’t be me running it. Maybe Natasha will.’

      She fell silent after that, eating her food quietly, her thoughts obviously thousands of miles away with her family.

      He watched her carefully. Underneath the front she put on she was grieving. He’d caught snatches of it during their time together, moments when she’d be talking to someone and, just like that, her eyes would lose their focus and her brow crease as if in confusion. And then, just as quickly, she would pull herself together and snap her focus back to the person before her.

      She did it now. ‘When was the last time you spoke to your mother?’

      He could laugh at her single-mindedness. ‘A couple of months ago.’ At her exaggerated incredulity, he felt compelled to add, ‘We’ve never been close in the way you are with your mother. Her whole life revolved around me and making sure all my needs were met but to get that she had to work fifteen hour days. I hardly knew her.’ He hardly knew her now.

      He took a long breath.

      He really needed a beer.

      Felipe raised his palm before she could ask anything else and said, ‘It was a long time ago. I haven’t lived with her for almost twenty years. We respect each other but she’s not like your mother. She’s not the clinging sort.’

      ‘My mother doesn’t cling,’ she said defensively, then covered her mouth to hide a snort of laughter. ‘Yes, she does cling. But I don’t mind. I like it.’

      ‘And I like the relationship my mother and I have. It suits us both.’

      She cast him with a look of pure disbelief then shrugged as if to say it was a point she couldn’t bother arguing. ‘Is her life easier now?’

      ‘Much easier. I’ve bought her a house and a car, I send her regular money. She doesn’t need to work. She has friends and goes on dates. She has a life now, which she never had before.’

      That perked her up. ‘You bought her a house?’

      He groaned, sensing a new thread of his life for her to delve into. ‘Can we not talk of something else?’

      ‘Okay, tell me why you joined the army.’

      ‘Because I was turning

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