Page 30 of Their One-Night Rio Reunion
Caio poured the egg mixture into a hot pan and looked at Ana. His mother was the only member of his family who had ever acknowledged his achievement. It felt strange, hearing it told to him by someone who wasn’t a potential investor or a woman trying to feign interest.
There was no need for games with Ana—apart from the stunt she’d pulled just a few hours ago, which had led to the most mind-blowing sex of his life...
He shook his head, as if he could dislodge that assertion. He’d had sex like that before...he was sure he had. Even if he couldn’t quite remember where or with whom...
In a bid to divert his mind and his libido from dangerous territory, Caio put the cooked omelette under the grill for a couple of minutes and commented, ‘I know your mother wasn’t a part of your family for long...why did she leave?’
Ana put down her wine glass and it clattered a little against the marble of the countertop. She avoided Caio’s eye. When she spoke her voice was clipped, unsentimental. ‘She’d had enough of my father’s controlling ways. She figured she’d done her duty and so she left. She’s married again now, with no children to complicate things.’
Caio noted that she’d echoed his words from earlier. ‘Do you ever see her?’ he asked.
Ana shook her head and took a sip of wine. Caio noted the slight tremble in her hand and his insides clenched.
‘That’s why Francisco and I are so close,’ she said. ‘We only had each other. And then, once he revealed he was gay, I became even more protective of him.’
‘You were his mother?’
Ana shrugged minutely. She glanced at Caio. ‘I guess...in a way.’
Caio flicked off the grill and got some bread. He said, ‘That’s rough, not having your mother, but I admire her for doing what my mother didn’t have the guts to do.’
Ana frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Caio put his hands on the countertop. He’d never told anyone about this. He suspected not even his brothers knew. He looked at Ana. ‘My father is a tyrant, not unlike yours. He’s also violent.’
Ana sucked in a breath. ‘Earlier, when you tended my finger, you said something and I thought... Was he violent with you?’
‘Casual stuff when me and my brothers were small—a clip around the ear, stuff like that. But once we got big enough he knew he had to curb his urges to lash out. But my mother...she was an easier target.’
Ana looked shocked.
Caio said, ‘The day your father brought you to meet me, to discuss our marriage—’
Ana made a sound. ‘That’s a diplomatic way of putting it.’
Caio’s mouth quirked, and then he grew serious again. ‘I thought he was going to hit you when you stood up to him.’
‘My father was never violent, but there was always the threat of it in the air. Especially once he found out about Francisco. But he never touched him.’
Caio said, ‘The threat of violence can be almost as bad as the act... I managed to persuade my mother to leave with me after one incident. A bad one. She refused to go to the police. But at least she left. We went to a hotel. For one night. When I woke in the morning she was packed to go home. She said she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t walk away from the only life she knew. That she’d grown to love him in spite of their marriage being arranged and his behaviour. So she went back. But I never did.’
Ana said carefully, ‘I think it took huge guts for her to leave, and maybe to go back too. Being a woman in that world is not the same as being a man. Maybe she really felt she had no other option.’
‘Perhaps,’ Caio conceded. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘Because you’re a man,’ Ana pointed out dryly.
He made a face. Then, ‘Whatever her reasoning, if that’s what love is—something born out of something so dysfunctional—then I want no part of it.’
Ana went very still inside, watching as Caio took the omelette out from under the grill and divvied it up onto two plates with some crusty bread.
‘If that’s what love is...then I want no part of it.’
Suddenly, as if the last piece of a jigsaw was slotting into place, Ana saw Caio as if for the first time. She truly understood him now. Understood his willingness to enter into a marriage of convenience. All to avoid any emotional connection or entanglement.
And she got it. She came from the same cynical, emotionally barren world. Her own mother had walked out on her sons and daughter to pursue her own happiness. Ana knew she would never get over the awful sense of abandonment, confusion and loss she’d felt watching her mother get into a car and drive away.
And yet a small part of her had stubbornly refused to wither and die. Her relationship with Francisco had proved to her that there was such a thing as unconditional love. Deep inside was still a tiny seed of hope that one day she would find a way to heal from that awful sense of loss by finding a love to prove that all was not cynical and barren. To prove that she wasn’t worth abandoning.
