Page 23 of The Spanish Daughter (The Lost Daughters #5)

22

PRESENT DAY

Rose couldn’t have visualised a more perfect day. She’d lain in the grass and watched Benjamin work his horses, smiling and waving whenever he looked over at her, and now the man in question was striding towards her, no horse in sight. She propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look at him.

‘I think you’re missing something,’ she said, dropping the book she’d been reading and holding up her hand to block the sun from her eyes. ‘You don’t have a horse.’

‘I’ve finished for the day.’

She grinned. ‘Does that mean I now have your undivided attention?’

He grinned straight back at her. ‘I’m hot and sweaty, and I could really do with a shower, but if you want my attention now…’

Rose lay back in the grass as Benjamin lowered himself over her, propped up on his elbows as he dropped a sweet kiss to her lips. She couldn’t resist, kissing him back, but when his damp hair touched her skin, she laughed and wriggled away.

‘I’ve changed my mind! You do need a shower!’

He groaned and rolled to the side, catching her hand as they lay in the shade, staring up at the tree. Rose was relaxed in a way she’d never been before, her mind quiet where it was usually busy. The past couple of months since she’d arrived, she’d been almost scared of the quiet, determined to keep herself endlessly occupied rather than succumb to her own thoughts and worries, but it was as if she had nothing to fear in Argentina. It had been the reset she’d needed, and she knew she’d be forever grateful for the break it had given her from her life.

‘Did watching me train tempt you to pick up a mallet?’ Benjamin asked, turning to her and propping himself up on one elbow.

‘A mallet?’ she laughed. ‘Most definitely not. But I think I could easily become a regular spectator. It’s far more interesting than any other sport I’ve ever watched before.’ Not that she’d ever really watched any sport previously, but she was fairly certain that gorgeous humans on gleaming ponies trumped everything else.

He sighed. ‘Well, I suppose that’s a start. And given you’ve never been around horses, perhaps my expectations were too high.’

She smiled back at him, rolling to her side and studying his face. His jaw was strong and angular, his cheeks covered in barely there stubble that she imagined he’d shaved the evening prior, after he’d finished riding for the day. And he had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, that were somehow still soft enough to be inviting.

‘I can see why you love it here so much,’ she said. ‘I still feel like an outsider, but I’m starting to feel a connection to the land. It’s just so different to where I’ve always lived.’

‘How so?’ he asked, reaching out to stroke his fingers through her hair.

‘Have you ever lived in a city?’

‘I’ve stayed in the city, but I’ve never lived there, no.’

‘But you’ve spent long enough there to understand that it is constantly living and breathing, with a noise that never ends? That this type of silence doesn’t exist, where you can just escape from the world?’

‘It sounds like the opposite of life here.’

She smiled. ‘It is. Being here is the break from life that I needed. It was somehow what I was craving without even knowing it.’

Benjamin lay back down then, and she reached out her hand to touch his, intertwining her fingers over his as she breathed slowly and stared up at the green leaves waving above her, with glimpses of blue sky as the branches softly parted back and forth. Rose couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like for her mother if she’d spent her last months somewhere like this, in a part of the world that might have made her final weeks and days on earth so peaceful. If she’d passed away experiencing how beautiful the world truly was.

‘Rose?’ Benjamin asked, his voice barely a murmur. ‘Are you okay?’

She realised then that her cheeks were damp, that he’d heard her crying. But instead of saying anything, she just squeezed her fingers around his and bless him, he didn’t ask her again. That was the thing about a man who was used to spending his day with horses—he didn’t seem to expect anything from her other than her quiet presence. He was easy to talk to, but he never filled the silences with unnecessary conversation.

Which was another reason she was falling so hard for Argentina.

‘Do you want to lie here a while longer, or shall I go and take that shower so I can kiss you again?’

Rose laughed despite her tears. ‘Let’s just stay a little longer, if you don’t mind. Just like this.’

‘I don’t mind a bit,’ he replied, keeping hold of her hand, his fingers squeezing ever so gently against hers as if to remind her that he had hold of her.

And when she looked over at him, turning her head so that her cheek was against the grass, she saw that he’d closed his eyes, not in a hurry to go anywhere, and seemingly as content as could be lying on the ground beneath the tree and holding her hand for as long as she needed him.

‘Benjamin?’ Rose called a few hours later, curious as to where he’d got to with her glass of water. Rose padded barefoot through the house, shivering a little and wishing she’d slipped her robe on. He’d left her in bed, promising to return with water and something for them to eat, but it had been more than ten minutes and she was starting to think he’d either forgotten about her or left the house entirely.

She found him standing in the kitchen and went up behind him, slipping her arms around his bare torso and pressing her lips to his back. But he didn’t move.

‘Are you coming back to bed?’ Rose whispered.

‘Were you going to tell me?’ he asked, his voice husky with anger as he turned, holding a piece of paper in one hand.

‘Tell you what?’ she asked, looking past him and seeing that he’d been looking at the letters and the most recent documentation she’d received from the lawyer. Heat rose inside of her as she realised what he was accusing her of. ‘If I had something to hide, I wouldn’t have left everything sprawled across the kitchen table for you to find.’

Anger flared inside her that he’d had the nerve to read her personal correspondence and then act as if she was the one in the wrong. She would have happily shown it all to him and had a conversation about it, but he seemed intent on accusing her of some terrible wrongdoing. When had she ever not been open with him about how she was feeling or her intentions?

‘Were you ever going to stay here? Or did you just come to view your inheritance and find out how much it was worth?’ he asked, his voice cold in a way she’d never heard him use before.

‘Benjamin, please?—’

‘Just tell me, Rose. Were you even considering staying here? On keeping this place? Or were you just telling me what you thought I wanted to hear?’

She shook her head as she stared back at him. ‘No, I was never intending on staying here forever,’ she said, quietly, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘My home is in London. I can’t change the fact that Argentina isn’t home for me or that I’m not Spanish. I’ve always told you that I was extending my trip rather than staying.’

‘So you’re going to sell this place to the highest bidder? Is that why you asked for this valuation?’ Benjamin asked, holding up a piece of paper. ‘You’re going to walk away from your family’s history, from everything that was created here?’ He shook his head. ‘I thought this was the start of something special, but you’re just going to…’ Benjamin didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to.

She knew what else he wasn’t saying—the unsaid words hung between them. Walk away from me . She would be walking away from him, too, not just the property. Rose felt tears welling up but refused to acknowledge them.

‘You have valuations for all the horses on the property, on the land in Mendoza…’

‘You really made sure to read all the paperwork in a short time,’ Rose said, only half joking.

‘So, it’s true? You asked for all of this? These are the documents you’ve been waiting for?’

She felt as if she was going to explode, but she forced herself to at least try to sound calm. ‘Benjamin, I don’t know what I’m going to do. A few months ago, I couldn’t have even shown you Argentina on a map, and I’d never even dreamed of coming here. And now, here I am with a property in my name and ancestors who I never knew existed. So please excuse me if I don’t have a plan for what I’m going to do next, but what you’re accusing me of is unfair.’

Rose glanced at his bare chest, his golden skin that only moments earlier she’d been running her fingertips across as he’d held her close, his mouth trailing across her body and making her question if she wasn’t exactly where she was supposed to be. He’d emerged from her bathroom after his shower, following their afternoon outside, and she’d taken one look at his damp hair curling around his neck, water still glistening on his skin, and she’d known exactly what their evening was going to entail. They hadn’t left her quarters since, until he’d come down to the kitchen under the guise of getting supplies.

‘This property, the legacy of what has been created here, it needs a Santiago at the helm,’ he said, and Rose could see the pain in his eyes. She’d unintentionally hurt him, but what he didn’t realise was that he was hurting her, too. ‘You can’t just leave, Rose.’

‘But I’m not a Santiago,’ she whispered. ‘I know you think I am, but I’m not, and I won’t ever be.’

‘It’s not just a name, Rose,’ he said, stepping forward and brushing his hand gently across her chest. ‘It’s in here. We are who our ancestors are, whether we want to be or not.’

‘You’re acting as if I’ve deceived you, as if I’ve done something terrible when all I did was accept the information that the lawyer had prepared for me,’ she said. ‘I want to believe that this could be my home, but it doesn’t feel real. I’d always be a visitor here, Benjamin.’

He was shaking his head, as if he didn’t believe her. Or maybe he didn’t want to. ‘You made me believe that you were falling in love with this place, with what you could have here, for what…’

She stared up at him, waiting for him to say the missing words, but instead his jaw hardened, his eyes cold as he looked at her. For what we could have had . Rose wished he’d said them, to tell her that what they’d had was real, that she hadn’t imagined what had grown between them. That he hadn’t been romancing her just to make her stay. But it seemed that he was intent on punishing her for something she hadn’t done.

‘I did fall in love, I have,’ she whispered. ‘But that doesn’t change?—’

‘I think I should go,’ he said, still standing there in front of her as if he was waiting for her to say something. But what could she say? He was right in the fact that she’d never truly seen herself staying there. In her dreams, if she’d dreamed of a life with him, then sure. But she had been dealt enough real life recently to know that lives weren’t made of dreams. They were made up of reality, hard decisions and punches in the gut like cancer, and for her to think that she could have some magical, perfect new life here with Benjamin was nothing short of a fantasy.

‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Rose eventually said. ‘I’ve enjoyed every moment of my time here with you, truly I have, and you’ve shown me the beauty of this place, of what it means to you and your family.’ She paused, searching his eyes. ‘For what it meant to my family.’

‘But?’

Rose felt a catch in her throat. ‘But I don’t know if that’s enough for me to uproot my entire life, everything I know, to move here and start over. Surely you can understand that? Put yourself in my position and truly ask yourself the question.’ She took a breath. ‘We barely know each other.’ Her words stung, she could see that, and she immediately regretted them.

‘I thought that was what we were doing, getting to know each other.’

Rose stepped towards him and reached up a hand, touching his face, gently pressing her palm to his skin, needing to touch him and know that what they had was real. But Benjamin pulled away, and her hand fell back to her side, leaving her cold.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not knowing what else she could say. ‘The time I’ve had here with you, it’s been nothing short of magical, but…’ Rose swallowed. ‘I really am sorry.’

He turned his gaze back to her, those eyes that had been so soft earlier now as cold as stone. ‘So am I.’

‘You can have the property,’ Rose said. ‘I don’t need it, Benjamin. It was meant for you, not me. I’ll book the next flight home and leave the keys on the table for you when I go.’

Benjamin gave her the saddest expression she’d ever seen. ‘Rose, don’t you see? If I was supposed to have this property, Valentina would have left it to me. But she didn’t.’ He seemed to search her face, as if waiting for her to understand. ‘She left it to you. This property is supposed to be owned by a Santiago. By a Santiago daughter . That’s not something you can just give away.’

His words hung over them, because she knew he was right. Her great-grandmother had fought to retain ownership of this property, and she couldn’t be the one to give it away, not when she’d gone to such efforts to leave it to her biological family. It had meant something to her, and Rose couldn’t ignore that.

‘Then be the caretaker for now,’ she said. ‘For as long as you want to live here, it’s yours. Whatever you say about her intentions, you can’t deny that you belong here more than I do.’

‘That’s not what she wanted.’

Rose shook her head, her resolve hardening as she saw the way Benjamin was looking at her, trying to tell her how she should feel or what she should do. ‘No, but it’s what I want, and I need you to respect my decision.’

Benjamin paused a moment longer, as if expecting her to say something else, but she just waited for him to drop the paper he was holding, standing still as he finally walked past her and went upstairs to retrieve his things. And she hadn’t moved when he came back down, fully clothed, coming up behind her and pressing a slow kiss to the back of her head, his lips lingering for one long, painful moment.

‘For what it’s worth, it might have only been a couple of months, but it was long enough for me to know how I felt about you,’ he murmured. ‘I’m only sorry you don’t feel the same way.’

And then he walked out through the door and left her there, as tears streamed down her cheeks, wondering how she’d managed to end up so completely, utterly alone.

Rose had barely slept. She’d spent half the night either pacing or sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, replaying over and over in her mind what had happened between them, and then she’d tried to sleep before getting out of bed and packing up all her belongings. She’d found a flight out of Buenos Aires for New York later that day, and as much as she’d have liked to walk the property one last time or go and say goodbye to Benjamin’s family, she had no intention of doing either. It would be easier to slip away without any fuss, without anyone seeing her or questioning why she was turning her back on what had been left for her. Or anyone trying to convince her to stay.

She’d also been waiting, hoping that Benjamin had come to see her, wishing she didn’t have to leave like this; but no matter how hard she listened out for a knock at the door, none ever came.

Rose checked her watch for the hundredth time, then, seeing that she only had fifteen minutes until her taxi arrived, knew what she had to do. She took out her key ring and slid off the key to the front door of the house, placing it on the table, and then sat down with paper and pen. She’d been trying to compose the letter in her mind all morning, but in the end, she decided to keep it as short as possible.

Benjamin,

I’m sorry. I wish things could have been different.

She picked up the piece of paper and screwed it up into a tight ball, before starting again on a fresh piece.

Benjamin,

The house and grounds are yours for as long as you want to enjoy them. Please advise the family lawyer if your needs change.

Rose

Rose pushed the key onto the letter and stood, taking the screwed-up paper with her and throwing it into the rubbish. There was so much more she could have said, so much more in her heart that she might have said if he was standing in front of her, but he wasn’t, and she wasn’t about to go searching for him. Not after everything that had been said the night before.

She looked around one final time, before closing her eyes, the pain of it all almost too much to bear. First losing her mum, then coming here; trying to hold her head up, trying to protect her heart. And she’d failed at both.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry, Valentina.’

She wished they could all have met, that she could have discovered Argentina and the Santiago estate with her mum when she was still alive; that she could have heard Valentina’s story from her own mouth. That she could have started a new chapter of her life without feeling like she was just an imposter in someone else’s. Or feeling like a failure.

But none of that was meant to be.

Rose heard the sound of the taxi pulling up outside, the tyres crunching over the gravel, and she wiped her tears away and picked up her bags, rolling her suitcase beside her and opening the door. The hardest part was shutting it behind her, though, and she found that she did it without looking back into the house, not wanting to admit that she might never set foot in there again.

She smiled at the driver when he got out of the car, thanking him for helping her with her case as she followed with her bags. Rose had taken some things with her that had belonged to Valentina, a few photos and a beautiful scarf that she’d found over the back of a chair, feeling a connection to it when Clara had mentioned that it had been one of Valentina’s favourites.

‘That’s all?’ the driver asked.

Rose nodded, but as she opened her handbag to slide her phone inside, she saw the little box she’d carried with her since she’d left London. The wooden box that Valentina had left for her daughter all those years ago.

‘Can you give me one moment?’ she asked, not waiting for a response before running back to the house and opening the door.

Rose took the box out of her bag and removed the horse figurine, staring down at it before placing it on the letter, beside the key. It had never belonged to her, and if it belonged to anyone, it was to Benjamin and his family.

She didn’t give herself time to overthink it, but she did turn around and look back at the house one last time before getting into the taxi. She committed the architecture to memory, and as she did so, she gave herself permission to glance at the stables, too.

Benjamin was standing there, at the entrance, facing her. But as she stood and stared back at him, he remained immobile, and so she turned and got into the taxi, wishing she’d been braver.

Because if she had been, she would have run into his arms for one final embrace, and to tell him that even though it was over, she loved him. That despite the fact that they might not see each other again, she would never forget the time they’d spent together.

And that she was sorry. So painfully, horribly sorry for the way things had ended between them.

But instead, she let the taxi drive her away from the property that should have been her destiny, and from the man she wished she could have loved enough to stay.