Kept at the Argentine's Command

‘Sí.’

‘So every time you play I’ll have to be secreted away?’

He released a gusty sigh. ‘Once we get you into a routine it won’t be a big deal, but until then you need to be careful.’

‘Why? Because I’ll embarrass you?’

‘Because, mi chica loca, I can’t keep my mind on the match if I’m worrying about you.’

Lulu flinched. She knew enough Spanish now to know he’d called her his crazy girl. She tried not to let that get its teeth into her. ‘You’re right,’ she said heavily. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

His expression softened and he framed her face with his hands, stroked her hair as if he needed to touch her.

‘It will get better, Lulu. You will get better.’

She knew then, even if he hadn’t faced it, that she couldn’t fit into his lifestyle. Alejandro was operating on a timescale that ended with her getting better. She was never going to get better. Even if she hadn’t discussed this with her therapist she would have known it on a gut le

vel herself. Some things you just had to learn to live with and, where you could, embrace them.

Alejandro had made her comfortable within her limitations, but he was waiting for her to ‘get better’.

Suddenly her path became terrifyingly clear. ‘I’m going back to Paris. Tonight.’

‘Hang on—what?’ He looked genuinely thrown.

‘The new season for our show starts up next week, I’d have to go by Monday anyway. You know I have a job.’

‘I don’t want you to go.’ He spoke as if this were a fact. Not a request. He seemed to realise this, because he exhaled a breath and said more reasonably, ‘Listen, I don’t know where all this has come from, but I think you’re having a reaction to the stress of the day—’

‘No!’ She exploded in a low roar, yanking herself free of him. ‘You do not speak to me like that, Alejandro. I am not crazy—do you understand me? I came here with you to Buenos Aires because I was scared and I thought it was the right thing to do.’

She frowned, because that wasn’t entirely true. She’d come because she’d wanted something with him, and for the last couple of weeks she’d thought she’d found it. Had it all been a fantasy? Cooked up by a combination of her tendency to cling to people who offered her support and her inexperience with men so she hadn’t understood she was fooling herself?

‘I thought it was the right thing to do,’ she repeated. ‘Instead we’ve just confused the issue.’

‘I’m not confused, Lulu.’

‘Well, I am! Do you know what a baby would mean for me? It would mean dismantling all the new stuff I’ve been putting in place to try and make my own life. It would mean no downsizing to a flat I can afford to pay for, no starting college, no career that I’ve been dreaming of. All the things I’ve been working so hard towards—to make myself independent—would be taken away.’

It all came pouring out, and that was when Lulu realised what she feared was not her ability to rise to this very grown-up challenge, but that she was going to lose her options.

That she would be handing over responsibility for her life to Alejandro and nothing about her would have changed.

‘If feels like all my life I’ve been losing ground, inch by inch. I want my life to open up, Alejandro, not close down.’

She shut her eyes, because she knew how she sounded. Selfish. Self-centred. All the horrible things he’d once said she was.

‘But I know one thing,’ she whispered. ‘If I’m pregnant I don’t want to be making choices out of fear. Part of me wants you to wave a wand and make it all work—absolve me from being a bad person who feels angry and resentful that her life choices are being taken away from her. Again.’

It was the ‘again’ that silenced Alejandro when he would have argued with her.

He couldn’t do it to her. If she felt trapped the last thing he should do was clang those bars shut.

A dark tide of bitterness came, moving up through him. He’d been blind. Again.

She gave him a sorrowful look. ‘You’re thirty-two. You’ve been married and divorced, you’ve carved out a successful career and you run a working estancia. There’s nothing you can’t do, Alejandro. And I’ve done what? Held down a chorus role in the Bluebirds. I’m not ready to have a baby,’ she choked.

It was a relief to say it. It was also incredibly painful, because she knew now she was going home without him.