Taken the Spaniard's Virgin

“Why are you asking her?” Amber inquired, feeling genuinely confused. Miguel might be arrogant, but he wasn’t the type to treat her like her opinion didn’t matter.

“I learned last night that she was your direct supervisor. I do not want to interrupt your work schedule, but I do want to talk.”

“Oh.” Brilliant. As conversational gambits went, that was stellar.Not . But she wasn’t sure whatto say.

She’d been adamant the night before that she didn’t want to see him anymore, but in the light of morning, she realized he was giving her an opportunity to have closure on a painful part of her life and she should take it.

“There’s no problem on my end with Amber taking the morning off,” her mom said, a quaver in her voice Amber didn’t understand.

She turned to look her mom full in the face and saw grief in the blue eyes that she did not understand. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me. Or maybe I do. I suppose you decided you couldn’t trust me after finding out what I did. I…” Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.”

It clicked in Amber’s brain and she turned to Miguel. “You told them?”

“I did not realize you had not. I am very sorry,querida . I would not have done so had I known, but I was unaware things had changed so drastically between you and your mother.”

“They didn’t.” Amber felt like things were cracking open inside her and she was scared to deal with them, but from the pain-filled expression in her mother’s drenched eyes, she knew she had to.

She jumped up and hugged her mom tight. “They didn’t, Mom. Believe me. I just…I was so ashamed of what I’d done. I couldn’t tell anyone. Not even you.”

“But you didn’t do anything.”

“I killed my baby.”

Miguel made a hoarse sound of protest, but it was her father’s foul curse that caught her attention. He was on his feet and coming around the table to put his arms around both her and her mom. “You didn’t kill your baby, Amber. The accident happened and you have to learn to live with it, but it’s called an accident because it wasn’t deliberate.”

Amber shook her head.

“Honey, I understand guilt, but you’ve got to let it go. I almost lost both you and your sister because of mine. I should have been driving the night your mother died. But I was working and she went to dinner with friends without me. I should have been protecting you and Ellie in the nursery, but I was too busy grieving to be there when Helen took you. I could have saved her, you…all of us so much pain. But I have to move on from that knowledge. We all do.”

“But, Daddy…I stopped eating. I fell asleep because I wasn’t sleeping at night, trying to hide from my pain.”

“Baby, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were trying to cope and it was too much. We’ll all miss the baby, but losing you, too, like we have for the past few months…that’s even worse. We all need you. And you needed us and none of us realized it until it was almost too late. We could apportion blame from now to eternity, but the only way to heal is to let it go. Let the guilt go and let us help you deal with the pain.”

The words were so healing, but she was still scared. “Mom?” Amber asked, afraid of what her mom would think of her now that she knew the truth.

But Helen Taylor looked at her with wisdom born of her own experience. “Sweetheart, if anyone understands guilt and pain, it’s me. We do the best we can and sometimes it just isn’t enough. If you’d realized you were pregnant, you would never have done anything to put your baby at risk.”

“But it’s gone…”

“I know, baby, I know.”

And then all three of them were crying together and Miguel was there on the outer edges. His granitelike presence giving her comfort. Why that should be, she did not know, but it did. And then he was there, pushing into the midst of them, pulling her against him and she melted into his embrace as if he was her rock. With her parents’ arms around them both, they cried together for the loss of their baby.

When the tears had finally abated, her mom and dad were no longer holding her and Miguel, but were sitting together, watching them with matching expressions of hope on their faces. She didn’t know what they hoped for, but she could guess.

Why didn’t anyone understand that it was over between her and Miguel? Maybe because in expressing her deepest pain she had clung most strongly to him, her mind whispered. She ignored the small voice and allowed Miguel to mop her face while she tried to collect the emotions spilling like an overflowing river all around her.

Emotions she had genuinely believed were gone.

He kissed her forehead and it felt like a benediction. “We need to talk.”

“Yes.” There was more to say, though she wasn’t exactly sure what. It just felt like things were not quite finished between them.

“First we eat.”

“Both of us,” she said with a small smile.