‘Yes, of course I have. Practically every woman on the planet has an Estilo piece in her wardrobe.’
‘He owned it,’ he said and saw her eyes widen in shock. ‘He was married, of course. He had any number of lovers—my mother being just one of them.’
‘And was she...content with that?’
His narrowed his eyes. ‘No woman is ever truly content with being a mistress, Hollie. Maybe that’s why she became pregnant.’
‘With you?’
He nodded. ‘Sí. With me. He had told her from the very start that he wanted no children, for he already had two daughters—and although he desperately wanted a son, he planned to conceive one with his similarly aristocratic wife. Outwardly, his life was a model of respectability and he had no intention of altering that state. When my mother went to him with news I was on the way, I think she was expecting him to change his mind and divorce his wife, but he didn’t. He didn’t want the scandal or the damage to his reputation as a family man. So he ordered her from the house and gave her nothing, not even after I was born.’ His mouth thinned. ‘There was no acknowledgement that I was his child and certainly no maintenance.’
‘But...if he was so rich—’
‘To have compensated her would have been an admission of liability and that was something he wasn’t prepared to do.’
‘She didn’t go to the papers?’
‘Like I said, it was a different world back then and he had most of the media in his pocket anyway.’ His mouth hardened. ‘So I lived from hand to mouth with a mother who was increasingly resentful that I had ruined her chances of having a “normal” life. Because where we lived, a woman who had a child out of wedlock was shunned.’
Her grey gaze was steady as she flicked her tongue over her lips. ‘What happened?’ she whispered.
He shrugged. ‘My father had no other son and then his wife died and, behind the scenes, my mother was concocting a plan. I only learned afterwards that she had gone to his home and confronted him. Told him I looked exactly like him—which was true—and that I had his mannerisms. In the extremely macho world in which he operated, she appealed to both his ego and his pride. She asked would he not prefer his only son to inherit his valuable business, rather than his daughters—two women who would be bound to go off and have families of their own. So he agreed to give me a home in his enormous mansion in the centre of Madrid.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I guess you might describe it as a trial run. Like taking on an apprentice on a temporary basis, to see whether or not they fit in. To see if I was suitable to be recognised as his son.’
‘And what did you do?’ she questioned, when the silence which followed his disclosure became elongated. ‘Did you go?’
‘Life at home wasn’t exactly wonderful and I can’t pretend that the thought of inheriting one of Spain’s most profitable companies didn’t appeal to a boy who had known nothing but hardship. So I went to my father’s house...’ He shrugged as his voice tailed off. ‘And quickly realised that the situation I found myself in was untenable.’
‘How so?’ she whispered.
He was lost now. Lost in the dark memories of the past. He remembered being bemused by the amount of cutlery beside his plate, and cramming food in his mouth as if he were a street urchin. Which was exactly how he had felt. Like a poor boy who had wandered into a parallel universe. He remembered being amazed at marble-decked bathrooms the size of ballrooms and lavish dinners which could have fed a whole village. His stepsisters laughing because he didn’t know which knife to use. The servants looking at him with a scorn they hadn’t bothered to hide, as if recognising that he was an outsider. Un bastardo. And that was never going to change—he’d recognised that instantly. He’d stuck it out for as long as he could but it had felt as if he were trapped inside his own private hell.
‘I wasn’t made to feel welcome,’ he summarised acidly and although she looked as if she wanted him to elaborate, he was damned if he was going to do that, for any frailties he possessed, he showed to no one. Nobody would ever see him vulnerable—not even the mother of his child. ‘As dawn broke on Christmas Eve, I left to return to my mother and managed to hitch rides from Madrid to A Coruña. I arrived not long before midnight when the night was bitterly cold and the snow was falling. I remember seeing the Belen in the town square...the traditional nativity scene,’ he elaborated, when he saw her frown. ‘I thought my mother might be out—although I certainly didn’t think she’d be on her way to Mass. She was more likely to be drinking in a bar.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘But she’d gone.’
‘Gone?’ she echoed. ‘Gone where?’
‘I never found out. She had cleared out all her stuff the month before and left no word or forwarding address.’ It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. Because deep down he had always believed that she loved him, because she was his mother. But she did not love him. She never had. He had fallen to his knees in the icy snow and wept and that was the last time he had ever wept. At least he’d had food in his rucksack—the only thing he had taken from his father’s house. And then he had begun to walk, though he didn’t know where. He had walked on through the night and on Christmas morning he had stumbled across the construction site and waited there for workers to return after the Christmas break. And he had vowed there and then that he would never let anyone close enough to hurt him again.
‘She wiped me from her life as if I had never existed,’ he continued, the words falling from his mouth like stones. ‘It was only much later, when I had started to make money, that she contacted me again.’
‘And were you ever...reconciled?’
‘We met,’ he said tersely, staring down at his fingernails. ‘But her main focus was on what I could buy for her, rather than making up for all those lost years. I provided for her throughout the rest of her life but I never saw her again until a couple of months ago.’
‘She...died?’
He looked up at her, feeling himself tense up. ‘How the hell did you know that?’ he demanded.
‘Something in your face as you said it. I could see your pain.’ Her voice was soft again. How did she make it so damned soft? ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Maximo. I know she was cruel to you, but she was still your mother.’
He wanted to deny that he felt anything but she was getting up from the table and walking round to where he sat, sliding onto his lap to face him, one bare leg on either side of his. She looked at him for a long moment before resting her head on his in an age-old gesture which had never come his way before. Maybe he’d never needed it before. It had nothing to do with sex—and everything to do with comfort. And it was powerful, he realised. Unbelievably...powerful.