He blew out a breath that was amused yet exasperated. “No. Although I fear for our lives on a nightly basis.”
“Please don’t make jokes, Rico. I need to understand. You’re the one who said I should keep my expectations realistic. Tell me what realistic looks like because I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, either,” he admitted after a moment. “That’s why I’m not processing this any better than you are. I thought our first time was an anomaly. It wasn’t. It’s shocking to me how powerfully we affect each other. It doesn’t matter that you just spent an hour wringing me out. I want you again. This isn’t normal.”
“I don’t like it, either! I hate that you can snap your fingers and I fall onto my back.”
He threw his arm over his eyes and released a ragged, self-deprecating laugh. “I’m the one who was on his back tonight, corazón. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“It’s not very comforting to hear that when you’re clearly annoyed by it. Why does it bother you so much that we react this strongly?”
Another silence where she thought he might ignore her question. Finally he admitted, “Passion is dangerous. You know that Cesar was in a car crash some years ago?”
“I only know what’s online about it.”
“Mmm. Well, it happened after he slept with Sorcha. Directly after. I’d always been aware he had a physical infatuation with her. He didn’t give in to base urges any more than I ever thought I would, but that day he did. And he decided the passion they shared was worth blowing up his life for. Mother was pushing him toward an arranged marriage. He went to Diega and told her he wouldn’t be asking her to marry him. We don’t know if he was overwrought or what, but he skidded off the road after he left her and nearly died.”
Part of her panged with empathy. For all his habitual detachment and his recent disagreement with Cesar, Rico was as close to his brother as he was capable of being with anyone. It must have been a terribly worrisome time for him.
But what she also heard was that he really did think the passion between them posed a mortal danger—which equally told her he would hold her at arm’s length because of it.
“It’s not like I’m doing this on purpose, you know.” She rolled away. “I
’m a victim, too.”
“I know.” He followed her, dragging her into the spoon of his body. His voice tickled hotly through her hair. “I’m realizing that uncontrollable passion isn’t only a crazed act in a quiet solarium. It’s a hunger that refuses to be ignored. I’m not a dependent person, Poppy. I don’t like being unable to suppress a craving that isn’t a need. But I don’t see the sense in hurting you, making your assimilation here more difficult because I’m displeased with myself.”
It was hardly a declaration of love, but he didn’t want to hurt her. It was something. She relaxed deeper into the bend of his body.
“You are trying to kill me,” he accused, aroused flesh pressed to her backside.
She rolled to face him, stretching against him in a full-body caress.
“Maybe this is our normal.”
“Maybe it is. Let’s hope we survive it.”
* * *
Over the next few weeks, Poppy tried to think of this new life as something she could do, rather than something that was being done to her. It helped to take the wheel, even if she wasn’t sure where she was going. She began reviewing the week’s menu with the housekeeper and making additions to the shopping list. She toured several properties and told Rico why she felt some of them wouldn’t suit—one had a distinct perfume in the air from the fertilized fields next door, another had rooms that were very closed off from one another.
Rico was dead set on getting a vineyard again and wanted a pool. Poppy mentioned she’d prefer to be close to Sorcha and Lily’s new cousins, to which he said, “Of course. That’s the area I’d prefer as well.”
She even sat down with the nanny and cleared the air. Poppy admitted this was all new to her and she sometimes felt threatened. Ingrid confessed to feeling she wasn’t working hard enough and that’s why she kept stepping up, trying to take Lily off her hands. By the time they finished their coffee and cake, they’d worked out the fine points of a long-term contract, both of them relaxed and smiling.
Rico continued dragging her to dinners and networking events, but they went more smoothly after she began taking Sorcha’s advice and asking the other wives for recommendations on things like shoe boutiques and hair stylists. Their responses went in one ear and out the other, but at least they seemed to warm to her.
“Let me know when you need an interior designer,” one said at one point.
“We have to find a house first. That’s proving a challenge,” Poppy admitted with genuine frustration.
Twenty minutes of sharing her wish list later, the woman offered a lead on a property that was farther up the coast from Cesar’s villa. It wasn’t officially on the market, but rumor had it the family needed the money and would accept the right offer.
Rico made a few discreet inquiries and they viewed it the next day.
“I asked Mother if she knew anything about it. She said to be careful when we open the closets,” Rico told her as they stepped from the car.
“Skeletons?” Poppy asked, but her smile wasn’t only amusement. Despite the clear signs of age and neglect, a covetous joy rang through her as she took in the stone house, instantly falling in love with the tiled roof and cobbled walkway and darling gated courtyard where she imagined Lily safely playing for hours.