The Alcolar Family. Kate Walker

be left behind.

      Joaquin’s eyes had drifted shut again. Perhaps he was asleep. Perhaps he had slipped into unconsciousness again. She shouldn’t disturb him, but the unanswered question was nagging at her brain, fretting in her heart.

      She had to know the answer!

      Had Joaquin meant that smile for her? If he woke again, properly this time, would he welcome her presence at his side as he had seemed to do a moment ago? Or had she been totally mistaken, and he had in fact been looking at Ramón? Would the anger and the bitterness of the time in his brother’s apartment resurface? Or had he actually decided to forgive her?

      ‘Joaquin?’ she tried again softly. ‘Joaquin, are you awake?’

      ‘Tired…’

      His response was a vaguely formed murmur, but at least he had heard her, was still listening.

      ‘Shall—?’ She had to force herself to ask the question. ‘Shall I go?’

      The jet-black brows twitched together sharply in a frown, his eyes still staying closed. Apart from that one tiny reaction, he didn’t speak, but lay silent and still as before.

      The bubble of hope that had formed inside Cassie’s heart disintegrated in a rush. Perhaps that smile had been for Ramón.

      ‘Shall I go?’

      Still no answer.

      She studied Joaquin’s still face, seeing the way that the long, lush black lashes lay fanned out above the high slanting cheekbones, illuminated by the light from a lamp at the side of the bed. The ebony sheen of his hair was stark against the crisp white of the pillowcases, his skin looking a darker bronze.

      Her gaze was drawn to the beautifully sensual shape of his mouth. The need to lean forward and press her own lips to that mouth was like a hard kick in her guts, one she had to fight so hard to resist. But she was relieved to see that his features were more relaxed, the total unconsciousness of earlier, outside the apartment building, easing away.

      Seen like this, with the jet-hard darkness of his eyes hidden behind the closed lids, he looked younger, gentler, less dangerous somehow. Even though she knew she was probably deceiving herself, Cassie was tempted to let herself believe that this Joaquin, this quiet, peaceful man, would have smiled at her. That he would be able to accept that she wasn’t living with Ramón in the way that he had originally believed, and that maybe—maybe they could have more?

      But that was just a dream, and she knew it. If he opened his eyes then she was afraid that all would change. She would see the cold light in those deep dark eyes, his face would resume its hard, aloof expression, and she would know her present mood for the fantasy that it was.

      ‘I’ll leave you to rest,’ she murmured, reluctantly loosening her grip on his fingers.

      But as she slowly eased away a sudden movement of Joaquin’s hand startled her into stillness once more.

      ‘No!’

      Still with his eyes closed, he reached out and grabbed at her fingers, closing his around them, firm and tight. And as Cassie gasped in sudden shock he forced his heavy eyelids open again, looking straight into her face.

      ‘No!’ he said again, more forcefully this time.

      ‘What is it?’

      Try as she might, she couldn’t erase the tremor from her voice. Was this the time when he remembered? When everything became clear to him again? She fought to contain the panic that was rising up inside her, struggled to ensure that the hand he held didn’t shake in his grasp.

      ‘Cassandra—queda, por favor…’

      He was tiring even as he spoke. She could see the blurring of his gaze, sense the loosening of his focus as his eyelids drooped again.

      ‘Queda…’

      His grip on her hand loosened as he drifted into sleep. But Cassie didn’t need any restraining grip to hold her there. If the hospital had been on fire, the room filling with smoke, she would have stayed right where she was, as long as Joaquin was there. Nothing would have forced her to move, unless he went with her.

      Queda, he had said.

      Stay.

      And he had added por favor.

      Queda, por favor…Stay—please!

      Her heart felt as if it would burst with happiness, in a way that was such a stunning contrast to the fear and apprehension with which she had begun the evening that it made her head swim in sheer delight.

      Stay. Joaquin had said. Stay—please. He wanted her with him, didn’t want her to go. And that was all she needed, holding as it did the promise of so much more. Of reconciliation and a hope for the future that she had thought she had lost for good.

      Even though she knew that Joaquin was asleep, or very nearly so, and that he wouldn’t hear her, she knew she had to answer him out loud, the words too important to keep to herself.

      ‘Of course I’ll stay,’ she said in a voice that was thick and rough with emotion. ‘For as long as you want—as long as you need me.’

      And now, at last, she could no longer find the strength to hold back her tears but simply let them fall, cascading down her cheeks in a show of open emotion. But this time she didn’t care, because these tears were tears of happiness, the outward expression of the joy she felt inside.

      Joaquin had spent an uncomfortable couple of days in which he hadn’t known quite what was real, and what was part of the weird, heightened dreams that had haunted the sleep into which he fell with a disturbing regularity. They were so vivid, so confusing, that he would have described them as delirium, even though he had been assured that he was not running a temperature.

      People came and went and he never quite knew when or why. Sometimes he would open his eyes and his father was there, or Ramón, and then another time it would be Mercedes who was sitting in the chair by the bed—and occasionally Alex. He seemed to recall that Alex had said something about a baby, but it had blurred into the haze in his head and he couldn’t recall any details.

      Sometimes it would be bright day, with the warm sunshine pouring in through the windows; at other times, clearly night had fallen without him noticing and the world beyond the glass was dark, the room lit softly by the bedside lamp. He’d eaten sometimes, just a bit, not tasting anything, and he’d drunk the water people kept offering him and found that that tasted surprisingly good.

      But every time his eyes opened, it was always Cassandra that he saw. Day or night. Early or late. She was there. Sitting by the bed, or on the bed. Silent and watchful or talking about something that he couldn’t always take in. She was a calm, reassuring presence in a world that seemed to be always out of focus. And she was always there.

      That was fine with him.

      More than fine.

      He knew that he had spoken to the other visitors, murmuring something that they had seemed to accept as the answer to whatever they had asked, but he couldn’t really recall just what he had said. The one thing he actually registered, the one thing he remembered saying, was that he had asked Cassandra to stay.

      He had asked her to stay, and she had stayed.

      And that was fine too.

      In the end, after three hazy days, the fog that had clouded his brain finally started to clear. He no longer drifted asleep at totally unexpected moments, his eyes focused much better, and he could actually understand what people were saying to him. To his intense relief, he was also let out of the damn bed, and felt decidedly more human once he was sitting in a chair, wearing proper clothes and with his jaw shaved free of the impossibly luxuriant growth of beard that had resulted from three days’ lack of attention.

      He would feel even better if the doctors would only let him go home.

      If he went