Fierce Love (29 page)

“No, not really. I read the letters. Augustín was a champion in the bullring, but he closed out the world here at home. That still doesn’t give our father the right to use women as though they were video games.”

She wished she could have argued Miguel wasn’t that bad, but she’d learned to trust Santos’s insights and thought he probably was. “Did he make you feel loved?”

He slumped back in his chair. “He liked the fact I wanted to be a matador and taught me everything I know, but I don’t remember him every saying that he loved me. I can’t say that, though, can I?”

“How about saying this: all of Spain loved him as a brave matador, while we loved him as the heart of our family. Thank you for all your love and prayers at this sad time, and for keeping Miguel Aragon alive in your prayers and memory.”

Santos wiped away a fresh burst of tears. “That’s good. Now if I can just say it without crying like a little girl.”

“You’ll do fine.” She waited while he wrote down what she’d suggested. “I thought I’d stay here until the will is read. Do you know when that might be?”

“Thursday. I should have told you. Sergio Calderon, the family attorney, has an office in Zaragoza. We’re all supposed to meet there at ten o’clock. He came to the beach house several times in the last month, but I don’t know if he was simply visiting Father or helping him revise his will.”

“I doubt I’m even in the will, but I’m worried about Fox.”

“Don’t be. Father won’t have forgotten him. If Margaret hadn’t died, Father would probably still have been married to her. Fox looks like her. She was slender, blonde and had huge green eyes. She was the best of the lot. I’m sorry, I don’t know your mother. Maybe she was the best.”

Maggie laughed. “She seems to have divorced him the fastest, so I don’t believe she’d be in the running for that distinction. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” She went outside to join Rafael and Fox. “What did you want to say at the funeral?”

Rafael leaned back in his chair. “Your father was very kind to me when I was an obnoxious kid who pestered him with silly questions. Maybe he would only smile at me as he walked out of the arena, but he always noticed me, and it meant the world. I wouldn’t have become a matador if not for him. He remembered me when I got out of prison. I should have thanked him for his kindness more often.”

“Don’t look at me,” Fox interjected. “I’m just a leftover kid from his last marriage.”

“I like you, Fox,” Maggie assured him. “We’ll have to wait until the will is read on Thursday, but if you don’t like whatever arrangements Father made for you, I want you to think about coming to live with me.”

He gaped at her. “You’re not a real sister. Why would you want me around?”

“You’ve grown on me.” She considered telling him about Arizona, but it would hurt Rafael, so she bit her tongue, and she was relieved when Fox got up to carry their plates into the house.

“Where were you when I was sixteen?” Rafael asked, his smile teasing.

“I don’t know. How old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty-eight in November.”

“I’m twenty-six, and wouldn’t have been much help to you when I was fourteen.”

Had they met then, he would have walked right by her, and she would have given a dark, handsome youth a wide berth.

He reached for her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

Fox leaned out the front door. “Perry tried to seduce me last night. Could you do something about her?”

“Was Connie going to watch?” Rafael asked.

“No, she looked horrified. I thought I could pretend it didn’t happen, but I keep thinking about it. The next guy they proposition might not walk away.”

“I knew it,” Maggie sighed. “There’s simply no end of problems here.”

Rafael’s smile grew wide. “When you’re needed so badly, you ought to stay.”

She’d done all right with him, but the whole Aragon family was something else entirely and far too great a challenge for any one person to meet. “I don’t have an extra lifetime to devote to it.” She remained comfortably seated on his lap, as though they had nothing better to do other than to enjoy the afternoon together, until she recalled the photo albums.

She sat up. “I didn’t have time to look at all the family albums. Are you interested in seeing them too?”

He took her hand to help her stand and then stood. “I’d rather look around the ranch. Maybe I could learn how to shoe a horse if Fox did. I’ll see you later.”

She gave him a quick kiss and went inside to get an album and brought it outside where the light was soft and warm. She hoped to find at least one photo where Augustín was smiling, but if he ever had, it hadn’t been documented there.

The next morning, Santos pounded on Maggie’s door. It was only a few minutes before she and Rafael had planned to wake, but a troubled mind had interrupted her sleep so often, she was slow to respond. “I’m coming.”

“Why don’t we let him stay in here with us?” Rafael asked. “Then we might get more sleep.”

“Don’t suggest it.” Her short nightgown was transparent, and she pulled Rafael’s black T-shirt over her head and smoothed it down before opening the door. Santos looked near tears. What disaster had befallen them now? “What’s wrong?”

“Cirilda just called me. Grandmother moved up the time of the funeral to seven this morning so we’d miss it. Cirilda swears her mother woke her with barely enough time to get there herself or she’d have called us. They’re back at the hotel for the reception. All of our father’s friends were there at seven o’clock, so while Carmen was supposedly too grief-stricken to leave her bed, she must have been undoing everything Cirilda and I had arranged for today.”

“Son of a bitch!” Rafael cried.

Maggie reached for Santos’s arm and pulled him into her room. “I can understand why she dislikes me, but why would she want to leave you and Fox out of our father’s funeral?”

“I’m a bastard, remember, and Fox isn’t her blood. I hope she chokes on her own spit before the day’s over.”

Rafael left the bed to pull on his jeans. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll help.”

“I’m too mad to think,” Santos swore.

“Well, I’m not,” Maggie offered. “Let’s get dressed and crash the reception. We can walk in as though we were expected, and the guests won’t know the difference. While we’re there, I’ll have a quiet chat with Grandma Carmen. We’ll have the funeral you planned for eleven with as much of the public as we can invite into the basilica. We won’t need a coffin for a memorial service, and don’t they have mass every hour anyway?”

Santos straightened up. “Yes, I believe they do.”

She opened the door. “We can’t wait for the limo. Would you cancel it, please, and we’ll go in your car. We’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes. Don’t forget to wake Fox.”

Santos leaned down her kiss her cheek and murmured, “I’m so glad Father got to meet you.”

Maggie shut the door after he left and leaned back against it. “I’m going to use one of the bathrooms across the hall and leave this one for you. We can curse Carmen the whole way into Zaragoza, but I don’t understand how she could be so mean that she’d change the time of the funeral to cut us out. How could she have done that to Santos?”

“Something must have eaten her soul.”

Carmen might have found her husband’s letters and poems for Simone, but it was no excuse for hurting Santos. Maggie used the borrowed bathroom and showered and dressed before Rafael had finished tying his tie. His dark gray suit fit him as handsomely as his traje de luces, and with a white dress shirt and maroon tie, he was the image of a prosperous businessman. He even had the Italian loafers.

“You look so good,” she told him.

“Thank you. Couldn’t we go in my car?”

“Santos knows the way, and we don’t want to get separated. Do you carry a knife?”

“Not usually. Will you need one?”

“No, I wanted to make certain I wouldn’t be tempted to borrow yours. I know swear words in Spanish Carmen has probably never heard, and I hope to use them all. Very softly, so no one will hear me but that selfish bitch.”

He placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Have I said I love you?”

“Yes.” She led the way down the stairs. “But we’ll have to make time for romance later.”

Anita Lujan was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. She was dressed in her best dress and riding to the funeral with Refugio. “You look so lovely, Magdalena. Do you have a hat or
mantilla
?”

“No, I’m not Catholic and forgot I’d need one.”

Anita handed her a beautiful, black lace mantilla. “I thought not. Here, take this one. It’s new, and I have others.”

“Thank you so much. I’ll take good care of it. I’ll see you later.”

Santos came limping down the stairs with Fox trailing. They were dressed in dark suits they often wore to dinner at the beach house. With their shirts barely tucked in and their ties loosely knotted, they looked as though they’d dressed in the dark. Maggie didn’t say a word.

Santos’s white SUV was parked in front, and Rafael held out his hand for the keys. “You shouldn’t be driving. Fox, get into the backseat with him.”

“I can make it into Zaragoza,” Santos insisted. “I drove all the way here.”

“Fine, but you’re not driving today,” Rafael insisted. “Did you remember to change the dressing on your leg?”

“Yes, do you want to check?”

Maggie raised her hand to shade her eyes and watched a car approach. It was low and sky blue. “It looks as though Ana is joining us.”

Ana bounded out of the Porsche and handed Maggie a large manila envelope. “I’m glad I caught you. Here are the photographs I promised. Hi, Fox. You want to ride with me?”

Santos swore softly under his breath. “We’re on our way to the reception at the Tibur. Drop him off there.”

Ana’s eyes widened. “Isn’t it too early for the reception?”

“Don’t ask. Now let’s go,” Santos urged. Ana and Fox got into her car, and she drove away as quickly as she’d arrived.

Rafael dropped Santos’s keys into his pocket. “If I’m driving, we might as well go in my car.”

“Stop it!” Maggie shouted. “We don’t have time for a pissing contest. Let’s go. People will expect us to arrive in a limo. They won’t notice a SUV. Besides, the SUV will give us a higher view of the road and crowd, and we’ll be less likely to run over anyone.”

“A valid concern,” Santos agreed. “I’m sure Rafael would rather not go to prison a second time.”

Rafael flashed a wicked grin. “Not unless it were worth it.”

Maggie opened the backseat door for Santos and urged him in. “Let’s go, or we won’t even make the eleven o’clock service, let alone the early reception.”

He hung on to the door. “I should have brought my crutches. Will you go up to my room and get them?”

Maggie glared at him. “So you can punch Rafael just for the fun of it? No. Rafael, would you please fetch the damn crutches?”

He laughed. “It’s looks as though I’m the fox, Santos is the chicken, and you’re farmer.”

“I’m the farmer, all right. Now get going.”

“Someone has to tell me that joke,” Santos complained.

Maggie checked her watch and was surprised it wasn’t quite nine a.m. She waited for Santos to ease himself into the backseat, closed his door and got into the front seat. “We should probably leave while he’s upstairs,” she murmured under her breath.

“We can’t, he took the keys.”

“True.” She opened the envelope and found the promised photographs Ana had taken there at the ranch, plus several of Rafael and Santos strutting into the bullring in all their magnificent splendor. “These are amazing photos.”

“Great, but she shouldn’t have shared them with the press. She won’t be the only one with a camera today. I should have asked Anita for another mantilla for myself.”

She turned to face him. “Don’t worry; I doubt you’ll be criticized for shedding a few tears at your father’s funeral.”

“I’ll keep reminding myself that we missed the first one. That’ll help.”

Rafael opened the SUV’s rear door to store Santos’s crutches. “Anything else you need before go?”

“No,” Santos assured him. “I’ll direct you along the back roads to avoid the freeway, and we’ll reach the Tibur in plenty of time to strangle Carmen before the eleven o’clock mass.”

“Absolutely no violence!” Maggie cautioned, then realized these were men who dressed in embroidered suits to slaughter bulls for a living. She’d wasted her breath.

People hoping to attend Miguel Aragon’s funeral overflowed the Plaza del Pilar, but Rafael was able to slowly thread his way through the crowd to reach the hotel. He handed the car keys to the valet. “We’ll be here until early afternoon. Charge it to Carmen Aragon’s room.”

“Yes, sir.” He recognized Santos if not Rafael and elbowed the other valet. “Good to see you here today, Señor Aragon.”

Santos nodded rather than explain it wasn’t a good day at all. He used his crutches to reach the front desk, and they were again greeted warmly and directed to the Tibur’s ballroom. Deep red silk wallpaper and tall mirrors lined the room, and crystal chandeliers made it bright. Long tables held breakfast entrees, and there was a separate bar for drinks. There were perhaps a hundred people there, most of them men. All spoke in hushed tones.