The Holiday Escapes Collection. Sandra Marton

and I thought I would play his game against him.”

      “And you used me.”

      He met her eyes, unflinching. “I did.”

      “Why?”

      He looked down, a strange expression on his face. “Because I could. Because I was Eduardo Vega. Everything, and everyone, in my life existed to please me. My father wanted to see me be a man. He wanted to see me assume control. Find a wife, a family to care for. To give of myself instead of just take. I thought him a foolish, backward old man.”

      “So you married someone you knew he would find unsuitable.”

      “I did.” He looked up at her. “I would not do so now.”

      She studied him more closely, the hardened lines on his face, the weariness in his eyes. “You seem different,” she said, finally voicing it.

      “How so?” he asked.

      “Older.”

      “I am older.”

      “But more than five years older,” she said, looking at the lines around his mouth. Mostly though, it was the endless darkness in his eyes.

      “You flatter me.”

      “You know I would never flatter you, Eduardo. I would never flatter anyone.”

      A strange expression crossed his face. “No, you wouldn’t. But I suppose, ironically, that proves you an honest person in your way.”

      “I suppose.” She looked down at the table. “Has your father’s death been hard on you?”

      “Of course. And for my mother it has been…nearly unendurable. She has loved him, only him, since she was a teenager. She’s heartbroken.”

      Hannah frowned, picturing Carmela Vega. She had been such a sweet, solid presence. She’d invited Eduardo and Hannah to dinner every Sunday night during their marriage. She’d forced Hannah to know them. To love them.

      More people that Hannah had hurt in order to protect herself.

      “I’m very sorry about that.”

      “As am I.” He hesitated a moment. “I am doing my best to take care of things. To take care of her. There is something you should know. Something you will know if you’re going to spend any amount of time around me.”

      Anticipation, trepidation, crept over her. He sounded grave, intense, two things Eduardo had never been when she’d known him. “And that is?” she asked, trying to keep her tone casual.

      Eduardo wished the waiter had poured them wine. He would have a word with the manager about the server after their meal.

      Before he could answer Hannah’s question, their waiter appeared, with wine and mussels in clarified butter. He set them on the table and Eduardo picked up the glass, taking a long drink.

      When the waiter left again, he set it on the table, his focus back on Hannah, his resolve strengthened.

      “I was involved in an accident, very soon after you left.”

      “An accident?”

      “At my family’s stables. I was jumping my horse in a course I had ridden hundreds of times. The horse came to a jump he’d done before, but he balked. I was thrown.” That much, he had been told by others later. It was strange how vividly he remembered the moments leading up to the accident. The smell of the dirt, grass and the sweat of the horses. He could remember mounting his horse and coaxing him into a trot, then a canter. He could remember nothing after that. Nothing for days and days after. They were gone. “I wasn’t wearing a helmet. My head hit the edge of the jump, then the ground.” The regret of that burned in him still. It had been a simple thing, a commonplace activity, and it had changed his life forever. “It’s funny, because you see, I did forget to file the divorce papers.”

      Hannah looked pale, her cheeks the color of wax, her lips holding barely a blush of rose. For the first time since he’d known her, she looked truly shaken. “It doesn’t sound funny.”

      “You can laugh at it, querida. I don’t mind.”

      “I do. I mind, Eduardo. How badly were you hurt?”

      He shook his head. “Badly enough. There has been…damage.” He hated to speak of it. Hated to voice the lasting problems the accident had caused. It made them seem real. Final. He didn’t want them. Five years later and he couldn’t believe he was trapped with a mind that betrayed him as his did.

      “I have issues with my memory,” he said. “My attention span. Frequent migraines. And I have had some changes in my personality. At least I’ve been told so. It’s hard for me to truly…remember or understand the man I was before.”

      He looked at her face, stricken, pained. Strange to see her that way. She had always been as cool and steady as a block of ice. Even when he’d called her into his office all those years ago to tell her he’d discovered she’d faked her paperwork to get into college, she’d been stoic. Angry, but poised.

      With a calm that women twice her age couldn’t have affected, she’d agreed to his foolish marriage scheme. It seemed foolish to him now, anyway. He’d been such a stupid boy, full of his own importance, laughing at life.

      Yes, he certainly had changed.

      Even now, sitting across from Hannah, as he had done that day he’d coerced her into marriage, he couldn’t understand the man that he’d been. Couldn’t understand why it had been so amusing. Why he had felt entitled to drag her into his game.

      He had been convinced that being near her would…

      “I noticed,” she said, her voice soft.

      “I suppose you did.” He lifted his wineglass to his lips again, trying to ignore the defeat that came when the crisp flavor hit his tongue. Wine didn’t even make him feel the same. It used to make him feel lighter, a bit happier. Now it just made him tired. “It is of no consequence. With the changes came no desire for me to change back.” It wasn’t true, not entirely, but he was hardly going to give her reason to pity him. He could take a great many things, but not pity.

      “Is this why you’re having problems with Vega?” she asked.

      “Essentially.” The word burned. “I had someone hired to…” He chose his words carefully. He disliked the word help almost as much as he disliked saying he couldn’t do something. Of course, the verbal avoidance game was empty, because it didn’t change reality. “To oversee the duties of managing finances and budgets. Someone else to do taxes. Neither did an adequate job, and now I find myself with some issues to work out, and no one that I trust to handle it.”

      “And you trust me?” Her tone was incredulous, blue eyes round.

      “I don’t know that I trust you, but I do know your deepest and darkest secrets. In the absence of trust, I consider it a fairly hefty insurance policy.”

      She took another sip of her wine. “There are some things about you that are still the same,” she said.

      “What things?” he asked, desperate to know.

      For a moment, she felt like the lifeline he’d built her up to be. No one else seemed to see anything in him from before. They saw him as either diminished in some way, or frightening. His mother and sister, loving as ever, seemed to pity him. He felt smothered in it.

      “You’re still incredibly amused by what you perceive to be your own brilliance.”

      Unbidden, a laugh escaped his lips. “If a man can’t find amusement with himself, life could become boring.”

      “A double entendre?” She arched her brow.

      “No, I’m afraid not. Further evidence of the changes in me, I suppose.” And yet with Hannah, sometimes he felt normal. Something akin to what and who he had been. It felt good to exchange