He woke slowly, basking in sensations of complete satisfaction from the previous night. Reaching for Rose, he found her side of the bed cold. Instantly alert, he sat up to see the sheets had been straightened. The entire suite was silent. Was she back in her stateroom, swotting for that morning’s interrogation, as Rose liked to describe his probing into her experience with horses? No one was more dedicated to her work than Rose, and he had yet to find a gap in her knowledge.
Rolling over on the bed, he picked up the phone to call her room. It rang out. His next call was to the purser. It shot him out of bed. Add resourceful to Rose’s list of accomplishments, but in this instance, she’d taken things too far, leaving thePegasusby motor launch some time shortly after dawn. His first response was stone-cold anger. How could she leave him without a word after all they’d shared? Was it possible he’d misread her character so badly? He’d told Rose things he’d never told another soul. And she’d trusted him. He had believed the confidences they’d shared had connected them on a deeper level. Obviously, he was wrong.
Had she thrown away the chance to work on his ranch? Was that all it meant to her?‘Gran Dios en el cielo!’If this was what it meant to have feelings, feelings could go to hell!
He showered and dressed, and only then saw the note. Snatching it up, he read it quickly, then brought it to his face.
What the hell am I doing?Do I think it might contain a trace of her scent?
He gave a bitter laugh at his foolishness.
Trouble at home? What did that mean? Rose had cut him out when he could have helped her. Obviously, she didn’t agree. Was this anger the result of a blow to his pride? If Rose was in trouble, she needed him. As a concerned employer he had a duty of care to his employees.
To hell with that! Rose came first, employee or not.
Whatever nightmares the past had held, Rose would never abandon her responsibilities without good reason. She had put her family first, which was exactly what he would have done in her place. Making a call, he filed a flight plan to Ireland.
How would Raffa feel when he read her note? Hurt? Puzzled? Angry?
Rose ground her jaw as the cab took her to the Garda station where her father was being held, knowing it would likely be all of the above. He’d trusted her, and confided in her, and she’d walked out on him, as if the things they’d shared had meant nothing to her. She’d tried texting him, but for some reason the texts wouldn’t send. Was Raffa blocking them? Who could blame him? He could only think the worst of her.
She had to put those thoughts aside as the cab slowed and parked up. She’d promised her mother to look after the family, and that was exactly what she’d do.
Spain seemed like a distant dream when Rose learned how bad things were. The officer in charge explained that her father, who was currently sleeping it off in a cell, had assaulted his carers during a drunken rage, and it had taken two strapping members of the Garda to subdue him.
‘You can’t expect anyone to take care of him outside of a hospital facility,’ the officer insisted. ‘It’s not safe to be around him.’
‘I’ll take care of him.’
How?How?
The question banged in her brain. This was so much worse than she had imagined. She’d been thinking she’d have to find new carers, now it seemed she might have to take their place, which meant giving up her career—never seeing Raffa again. But, what else could she do, when family was everything?
Lifting her chin, she stared into the officer’s eyes. ‘He’s my father. I love him, and I’m here to take him home.’ The how, when and where would have to wait. The deathbed promise Rose had made to her mother would always come first.
She would sort this out, whatever it took, although the bank manager she’d called from the cab had said there was no money in the farm’s account. There were no magic wands, either, so she’d begged him for a couple of weeks to sort things out. Thankfully, he’d agreed, but she had two weeks and no longer.
The irony was that Rose had left Ireland in the first place in order to earn enough to keep the farm afloat and pay for her father’s care, but now—Her heart lurched with pity and love as her father shambled along the corridor towards her. Everything would have to change, she realised. ‘Come on, Dad. Let’s take you home.’
Piloting an aircraft calmed Raffa. Learning to fly as a teenager had been a revelation. He’d become a better planner because of it, thorough and more meticulous. Logical decisions became instinctive, when patience was vital, rather than a virtue. The circumstances of his parents’ death had brought out the worst in him. Flying had improved his angry resentful clay, fashioning it into something close to a decent human being. Forgiving himself for leaving them that day would never happen, but becoming a pilot had given him the calm he needed to go on. He’d need those qualities in Ireland. His team had supplied more information about her father, which made him even more concerned about Rose.
His jet sliced through the brightening sky on autopilot, giving him the chance to reflect on their time together. Not just the sex, but the quiet times in between, when they’d talked and shared and listened. That was new to him. Zany, beautiful, unique and caring, Rose was a completely new experience for him. She’d willingly sacrifice everything she’d worked so hard for to take charge of her father’s care, and she had opened a window on the part of him that had been shuttered for years. Far from regretting the feelings she’d stirred up inside him, he understood why she was racing back to save her father. Family was everything to him too. What that meant for his ranch, and Rose’s unparalleled work as his head groom, was something he’d soon discover.
Love was a strange and indelible curse, but overall it was a blessing, Rose concluded, feeling the warm glow of familiarity, with all its upsides and downsides, as the cab splashed through the mud in the yard to pull up outside the familiar ramshackle farmhouse. It had taken all her powers of persuasion to get the driver to take them anywhere with her father still marinated in booze.
Love didn’t rely on being fed with regularity, or even handled with care, Rose concluded as she glanced at her father slumped in the corner of the cab. Love just was, and she loved her father. He wasn’t a bad man. He was a weak man. What made it easier to face the future ahead of them was remembering the man who’d cried in her arms when her mother died, the man who knew full well how sick he was. That was the man she’d come home for, the man she’d search heaven and earth for to find him a treatment.
Not that a moment of panic didn’t grab her as the taxi driver helped her to manhandle her father out of the cab. But then she remembered Raffa’s words.You don’t know how strong you are until you’re tested.
‘Come on, Dad. We’re home.’
Rose opened the farmhouse door with her father trailing behind. It was hard to know whether to follow his bleary stare and discover where he was hiding the bottles, or go straight on in. Feed him first, she decided, and then go and hunt the bottles.
There could have been no bigger shock when she opened the door. Far from the neglected, cold stone hearth she’d been expecting, a fire was roaring, and the ancient scrubbed table in the centre of the room was loaded with food.
The noise that greeted them was tumultuous. Half the village seemed to have turned up to welcome them home. The warmth of good neighbours embraced her, her father too, and not as the local drunk but as someone in need of compassion and love.
‘Ah, you didn’t think we’d leave you on your own,’ Máire, the warm-hearted owner of the local bakery, exclaimed as she wafted away Rose’s thanks. ‘I knew your father when we were at school together, before the drink turned him bad. I’ll be taking him to live with me and my boys when you go back to Spain.’
