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in with the university crowd in Barcelona. But she’d done it.
    She’d dropped most of her accent, studied twice as hard as anyone else, and perfected an expression of boredom that carried her through posh events and busy cities without ever looking like the country mouse she was.
    It was only when she was alone that she gave herself freedom to luxuriate in comfortable sheets and room service, and all of the other things her new life had opened up to her.
    “And you’re never modest, which, I confess, I quite like,” he said. “Why should you be? You’ve achieved a great a deal. And you’ve done it on your own.”
    “Is this the part where you try and make friends with me?” she asked.
    He laughed, a sort of strained, forced sound, nothing like the laugh he’d once had. It had been joyous, easy. Now he sounded out of practice. “Don’t be silly, why would I do that?”
    “No reason, I suppose. You never did try to be my friend. Just my fake husband.”
    “Your real husband,” he corrected. “Ours just hasn’t been a traditional marriage.”
    “Uh, no. Starting with you calling me into your office one day and telling me you knew all my secrets and that, unless I wanted them spilled, I would do just as you asked me.”
    A waiter came by and Eduardo ordered a
pre fixe
meal. Hannah read the description in the gilded menu and her stomach cramped with hunger. She was thin—she always had been—but it had more to do with her metabolism than watching her diet. Food was very important to her.
    When the waiter had gone, she studied Eduardo’s face again. “Why did you do that? Why did you think it would be so … funny to marry me?”
    He shook his head. “Very hard to say at this point in time. Everything was a joke to me. And I felt manipulated. I resented my father’s heavy hand in my life 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,