“I promise to pay you only compliments. Whatever you wish to wear will be fine with me. If you’d like, I’ll give you money before we leave, so it will look as though you’re paying for your purchases.”
“Absolutely not. You’re already paying me an exaggerated sum, and I won’t take another penny more. I’m not your mistress.” He raised a brow, and she shook her head. “A personal trainer is not a sex worker.”
He reached for her hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
She leaned toward him. “I’m not insulted. Can you get me one of the posters the Ortiz boys had?”
“I have some in my closet. I’ll give you your choice, or you can have one of each, and I’ll sign them all so they’ll be worth more fifty years from now.”
“You’re expecting me to keep them?” She licked her lips. “I might.”
“You will. Do you want to watch a video tonight? I have Almodovar’s Live Flesh. It’s in Spanish with English subtitles, but you can easily follow the action. It has everything—love, jealousy and revenge.”
“How about murder?”
“Yes, there’s murder too.”
“I can’t wait.” She finished her dinner slowly, which she constantly had to remind herself to do, and then played with the peach tart served for dessert. Santos moaned when she licked the whipped cream from her lips. “I really want to see the movie. It will be a real treat to see someone who’s in more trouble than we are.”
“That’s exactly why I chose it.”
Libby became so involved in the film, she didn’t take her eyes off the wide screen when Santos turned down the sound to answer his phone. As usual, all the good conversations were in Spanish she couldn’t follow, but he didn’t interrupt the film to explain the call.
“You were right,” she said when the credits began to roll. “That was a great story with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. We should be keeping notes for a screenplay ourselves.”
“Begin tomorrow while I’m at the doctor’s. That was Juan. One of the most prestigious of the Spanish publishers is offering me an impressive advance for a book about my father. He got the call after we’d left his office and wanted to work out the initial details before he talked to me.”
She was amazed at the way lucrative opportunities fell into his lap. She knew him as an appealing man, and he didn’t seem particularly impressed with his fame, but it was still a large part of his life. “You must know a side of your father his fans didn’t see. Are you going to do it?”
He frowned as he considered it. “I don’t know. I told you there was a darkness to the Aragon family, and there are things I’d rather not remember. Unless I’m honest, though, there would be no point in doing it. I can already hear Cirilda screaming. She’ll be deeply insulted she wasn’t asked to be part of it and insist upon a share in the royalties anyway.”
She rested her hand on his thigh. “Maggie would help you without expecting anything in return. Why don’t you wait until she comes home and talk it over with her?”
He was quiet a long moment. “Maggie will have her own perspective. She and I have been left out of the bestselling biographies, so it would be something new if we wrote one together. Apparently that’s what the publisher wants, the real story of Miguel Aragon from inside his family.”
“How soon do they want it?”
“By the end of September so they can rush it into the schedule for the Christmas market. Juan pointed out that while I have to stay out of the bullring, I might as well write the book.”
“If you don’t write it, someone else will, and no one will learn anything about your father they didn’t already know.”
“That’s sure to happen regardless of what I do,” he mused thoughtfully. “But if I did it, I’d want to write a real book, not some hastily scribbled memoir that wouldn’t do him justice. Do you suppose your mother would want to contribute?”
She never thought of her mother as one of Miguel’s wives, and the question jarred her. “Probably not, but Maggie might convince her to briefly describe their marriage. They were college sweethearts and really too young to marry. Unfortunately, they did. I see what you mean, though. If you don’t tell the truth about your father’s life and marriages and divorces, the book will be a hollow shell.”
“And worthless, but I don’t want to include rants from his ex-wives. Not that your mother would rant.”
“No, she wouldn’t, but if you included only what you saw yourself, you wouldn’t need the ex-wives’ comments, or you could include them at the end of the book after your story is finished.
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Margaret Hyde-Fox is dead, and I wouldn’t even have to speak to Vida and Marina. I could send them to Juan’s office and have them tell their story to Sylvia. Maybe I’ll give them a form to fill out—what was your best memory, and what was your worst.”
“It sounds as though you’ve already decided to do it.”
He drew in a deep breath. “I loved him.”
She rested in his arms and marveled at how public his life truly was, and it extended far beyond the tabloid coverage. “How much of yourself would you put in the book? If you cover your father’s personal life, can you omit your own responses to his decisions?”
“Make the book about me, is that what you’re saying?”