Orange Blossom Days Read online

  There had been ructions when she’d come home from a working holiday in Ibiza to tell her parents that she was leaving college to go to southern Spain with her new boyfriend. She couldn’t quite believe it herself and had wondered once or twice if she was living in a fantasy.

  Oskar had been most put out in her second year of university when she’d spent a mere two weeks of her long summer break in Dornburg. ‘I’m going to Spain with Lise for the rest of the summer. We’re getting work there and I’m going to practise my Spanish and—’

  ‘But what about us? I have work for you to do here,’ Oskar demanded angrily.

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa. I spent all last summer at home. I need a holiday and to spread my wings a little—’

  ‘Nonsense. This is not what I’m paying for you to go to university for, to fritter your time away in Spain. Speak to her, Klara,’ he instructed his wife.

  ‘I think Jutta is right,’ declared Klara, much to her husband’s dismay. ‘If I had the chances young women have today I would take them,’ she continued, brushing paste onto the roll of new paper for the walls of the dining room, which Jutta was helping her to decorate.

  Jutta couldn’t hide her pleasure in her mother’s words, remembering how pleased Klara had been for her when she’d got her place at university – the first member of her family to do so. Her mother had told Jutta to use the opportunity to see the world, and have a life, before settling down and getting married. Marriage, she informed her daughter, should not be the holy grail in her life, because sometimes it was simply another form of servitude.

  With her mother’s words ringing in her ears, and her father’s disapproval preventing him from wishing her well, Jutta had taken the train to Frankfurt Main, where she had met up with Lise, and escaped to Ibiza.

  She’d been waitressing in a restaurant on the seafront when Felipe and some friends had taken a table on the terrace. She stood patiently waiting for them to choose their food, wishing her shift was over so she could go for a swim. A while later as she reached over to give Felipe his beer, one of his friends placed his hands on her bottom and groped her. ‘Nice ass, Blondie,’ he leered.

  Jutta straightened up, looked down at him, picked the jug of water from the table and poured it over him. ‘Arschloch!’ she said coldly and walked away.

  The Spaniard had jumped to his feet yelling, but Felipe had pushed him back in his chair and in rapid Spanish said something that shut him up.

  Jutta had told her boss that she was not serving the Spanish pigs at table seven and he knew there was no point in arguing with her. She was a great worker; one of his best, but when she got stubborn there was no changing her mind. He sent Domingo to serve them instead.

  When the group was leaving, Felipe had come over to her, introduced himself and apologized, in English, before handing her a large tip.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said coolly, refusing it. ‘But thank you for apologizing for your lowlife friend, seeing as he has not got the decency to do it himself.’

  The next morning, Felipe came to the restaurant, alone. ‘Coffee, por favor,’ he said, the expression in his brown eyes unashamedly sensual as he studied her languidly. How it happened, Jutta would never know, but a long forgotten memory of her sexual awakening at Gunther’s kiss enveloped her and a surge of desire throbbed between her legs and she stared at the dark-haired, handsome man in front of her and almost gasped.

  Felipe never took his eyes off her as she brought him his coffee and she had to struggle hard not to let him see how thrown she was by his attention. When she handed him his bill on the little silver salver his fingers lightly touched hers. ‘Gracias,’ he said in his sexy voice.

  He came every morning for a week and every morning she wore an air of studied detachment as she served him his coffee as though he were a mere tourist unworthy of her attention.

  ‘What time do you finish work at?’ he asked later that week in his broken English when she’d brought his bill as usual.

  ‘Different times,’ she said off handedly, wishing she felt as cool as she sounded.

  ‘Let me bring you for a drink tonight. It’s my last night on the island,’ he invited, his brown eyes – as dark as the coffee she’d served him – softly seductive.

  How she longed to say ‘yes’. How she longed to say in a wildly spontaneous moment of madness, ‘Forget the drink, just bring me to bed.’ For a moment she hesitated, but her pride came to her rescue. She wasn’t that easy. Last night on the island, a drink and a shag – even though it would probably be the shag of her life – and then goodbye. No thank you. ‘Gracias. I’m busy after work,’ she said coolly and walked away without looking back.

  The sun lost some of its sparkle in the following weeks, and Jutta veered between cursing herself and congratulating herself over her rejection of the sexy Spaniard. She partied with Lise after work, and lay on a towel in a secluded cove she’d discovered – after one of her cycling explorations of the island – toasting herself in the sun, her body turning golden, her hair becoming more blonde from the sun’s rays. She’d even slept with a younger, amusing Italian waiter she’d met at a club, but all the while her thoughts were on a dark-haired man with brown eyes who’d created a hotbed of desire in her with just one look.

  Ten days before she left the island, as she was finishing her shift, he came back. Her heart thumped in her chest when she saw him sit at his favourite table. ‘A San Miguel, por favor,’ he said lazily, his eyes twinkling. She couldn’t help the broad grin that crossed her face as they stared at each other.

  ‘I came back for you,’ he said. ‘You haunt me.’

  Jutta laughed. ‘I think you are a practised seducer. I’ll not be a notch on your bedpost,’ she said lightly.

  ‘I don’t possess a bedpost, Fraulein.’ He studied her intently. ‘What time do you finish work?’

  ‘Now,’ she said removing her white apron.

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Tomorrow, meet me at Mateo’s tapas bar at ten a.m. for coffee,’ Jutta threw over her shoulder and walked back into the bar to get her bag and slip out through the kitchen entrance.

  She would end up in his arms, she knew it, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him tonight, reeking of food and alcohol and perspiration. She needed to wash her hair, shave her legs, manicure her nails and moisturize her skin until it gleamed. She needed to know that she looked her absolute best. She needed to be in control.

  She walked along the side of the building towards the archway that led to the cobbled side street where she lived.

  ‘Jutta!’ She heard her name and turned to see him striding towards her. Before she could stop him he’d placed a hand on either side of her, trapping her against the wall. ‘I can’t wait until ten a.m. tomorrow!’ He stared into her eyes and she could hardly breathe.

  ‘Jutta, Jutta, Jutta,’ he said huskily, lowering his mouth to hers, kissing her hungrily then tenderly, pausing to look at her for a moment before kissing her again, his tongue igniting her to respond with equal passion.

  ‘So?’ he said, drawing away and smiling at her in the dark, with just the orange glow of a street lamp pooling around them. ‘I can woo you and be a gentleman if that’s what you want, or we can forget the wooing and go and make love right now because I know you want to as much as I do.’

  That he’d come back from the mainland for her was wooing enough, Jutta decided there and then. ‘My apartment is down that street over there,’ she murmured. ‘But I want to shower, it’s been a long day.’

  ‘That’s allowed only if I’m permitted to assist.’ He took her hand and walked in the direction she’d indicated. Jutta swallowed hard. The idea of Felipe in the shower with her was so erotic she was almost ready to come right there on the spot.

  With shaking hands she opened the heavy wooden door to the compact apartment she shared with Lise who, fortunately, had taken a trip to Majorca for the weekend. Felipe slipped his hands around her waist and up under her blouse, cupping her br
easts as he kicked the door shut behind them. They never made it up the stairs. Pulling the clothes off each other, they sank into one another’s embrace, leaning up against the door and moaning their pleasure as they came, in hot, wet, shuddering spasms. They rested against each other silently, spent. Then he took her to the shower and they ravished each other all over again.

  Jutta sighed remembering the passion of those early days. It had been Nirvana. Taking the biggest leap of faith of her life, she’d abandoned her university degree in Germany to go and live with Felipe on the Costa del Sol, and never regretted it for a moment

  ‘Have you lost your mind as well as your morals?’ Oskar had yelled, incandescent that the daughter he’d had the highest hopes for had betrayed him for a Spanish lothario. It didn’t matter to him that Felipe was a college graduate with a business degree and had his own property development company.

  ‘Stop that, Oskar,’ Klara ordered with a look that silenced her husband. ‘If you must go and live with this man, make sure you are protected and make sure you always have a bank account of your own,’ was all she said, but it was enough for Jutta. She’d left Dornburg with her mother’s advice ringing in her ears and her father’s back turned firmly against her.

  But she’d flourished in her new homeland. The constant sunshine and heat, the relaxed ambiance of her environs, the cosmopolitan set that Felipe ran with, all eager to grab life by the throat and get rich with this venture or that, eased what little guilt she felt about leaving Germany and within a year she’d earned enough to pay back her father for the college fees he’d spent on her now defunct education. It had given her some amount of satisfaction to lodge that money in his bank account secure in the knowledge that she was, for the first time ever, independent, financially and in every other way.

  When her mother had died suddenly during Jutta’s second year in Spain she’d been devastated, but relieved that she was no longer living at home. She’d gone back to Germany for the funeral and to stay awhile with her father, who in his grief had thawed towards her. She’d struggled against Oskar’s desire for her to stay and become the woman of the house. He expected her to cook his meals as her mother had done, and even do his laundry and shopping. Her older sisters, Anka and Inga, with children of their own, would have been very happy for her to step into a housekeeping role had they been able to guilt-trip her into doing so. It was Felipe who had come to her rescue. He’d flown to Germany and booked return tickets for them both to Malaga, telling Oskar and the family that he and Jutta would eventually marry and that her place was at his side as they built up their business ventures together.

  The two men had stared at each other and it was Oskar who had dropped his gaze first, his shoulders drooping in disappointment. When, a year later, she’d asked him if he wished to walk her up the aisle in a traditional church wedding he’d told her it would be an act of hypocrisy to get married in a church when she’d been living as man and wife with Felipe for years. That had suited Jutta fine; she hadn’t wanted a church wedding and had only considered it for her father’s sake. They had held a civil wedding in Marbella, with Lise and Agathe as her bridesmaids, and her sisters, her brother and their families reluctant guests.

  It had taken a long time for her father to become reconciled with what he saw as her ‘rejection and betrayal’ of her family. Even now, she thought, looking at him sitting on her balcony sipping his drink in the flamingo-hued sunset, he never lost a chance to make some pointed remark about how good her sisters were to him, how dedicated they were to his wellbeing. Unlike you, the words not spoken but very much implied.

  When his holiday was over, she’d been glad to put Oskar on a plane to Frankfurt, and return him to the bosom of her ever-disapproving family. She was no longer the daughter he remembered: she would never be that girl again.

  Now, looking at the sophisticated image reflected back at her from her mirror, dressed in a grey, superbly cut designer suit – one of three she called her ‘working’ wardrobe – Jutta took a deep breath and lifted her chin. One day she and Felipe would indeed buy their luxury villa with their own pool and meticulously manicured grounds, or a penthouse in the likes of La Joya, and she would invite her father and brother, and sisters and aunts to a housewarming party to show them what a successful man she’d married, and how far she’d come from the reserved, gangly, country girl they had known.

  Today she would concentrate on her new clients. An Irish couple who had bought a penthouse in La Joya. She should call into the office, she supposed, but Christine and Olga, her assistants, would have a dozen queries for her, and long stories about clients who needed their community taxes paid or their air conditioners serviced, or whinge about damage done by careless tenants or some such. Jutta hated that side of the job and escaped from the office as much as she could. Perhaps today she would give it a miss. Once the new clients in La Joya were sorted she would turn her attention to her office and spend an entire week there, she told herself, picking up her Chanel briefcase and setting off for work.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ANNA / AUSTEN

  Anna had watched the tall, blonde, immaculately dressed woman stride across the foyer area of their new apartment complex the previous afternoon and known immediately that she was Jutta Sauer, who would be assisting her and Austen in the decorating of the penthouse. She’d found herself automatically tucking in her stomach and sitting straighter in her chair, relieved she’d only had the one glass of bubbly. She and Austen had agreed that he would come and look at the furniture with them the following day but that she would choose the kitchenware and other household necessities while he went to play golf.

  The blonde woman gazed around the seating area and Anna had stood up and given a wave. ‘Ms Sauer?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Mrs MacDonald?’ the woman answered, walking over to her. Anna held out her hand. ‘Yes, I’m Anna and this is my husband, Austen.’

  ‘How do you do, please call me Jutta.’ She shook hands briskly and motioned for them to sit down.

  Bossy thought Anna, not sure if she quite liked her. No small talk.

  Jutta had immediately got down to business. ‘Now, you have many choices where to shop to furnish your penthouse. I have the plans and have already seen one similar to yours with the same vista. You have been to Spain before?’ She’d arched an eyebrow at them, her cool, green-eyed stare raking them up and down, studying them both.

  ‘Yes, often,’ Anna affirmed.

  ‘You know then, El Cortes Ingles, La Canada, Leroy Merlin? And of course in La Canada we have Marks & Spencer’s and Habitat and further up the coast, Dunnes – she’d pronounced it Dunnez – in Fuengirola, if you want an Irish homeware store. I also have a list of furniture shops with whom I do business. If you want an excellent choice of furniture I’d recommend Mobile & Diseño which is on the Autovía A–7, less than twenty minutes drive from here. It all really depends on what you are looking for, and how long you have to spend shopping. As you know my fee is ten per cent of whatever you purchase with me, and a hundred euros per day for my time. I would suggest drapes and furniture shopping first. Accessories and kitchenware after that.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Austen remarked, stifling a yawn. ‘When do we start?’

  ‘Tomorrow! I shall collect you at nine a.m. sharp in the foyer of the Don Carlos. I have many clients. My time is precious. I don’t like to be kept waiting.’ Jutta picked up her briefcase, stood up and held out her hand to Austen, and then Anna. ‘It’s very nice to meet you. Until tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day.’ She marched off towards her Merc without a backward glance.

  ‘That’s us told then,’ Anna said drily, taken aback by Jutta’s imperious manner. ‘I don’t think I like her.’

  ‘She’s businesslike. She knows her stuff. She doesn’t hang around. That’s fine with me.’ Austen wasn’t perturbed. ‘Let’s go and do as she suggests and enjoy our day.’ Lunch in El Capricho helped Anna put the bossy German to the back of her mind, but she made
sure to set her alarm that night to be up and ready on time.

  They’d taken a taxi to the plush hotel where Jutta wanted to meet and had enough time to sit and have coffee in the foyer before her arrival.

  Anna glanced at her watch as she drained her cup. A minute to nine. She hoped that bossyboots would be five minutes late. Childish, she knew, but it would take the wind out of Jutta’s superior sails. On the stroke of the hour, the blonde strode into the foyer, immaculate, with not a hair out of place, looking like she’d stepped from the pages of Vogue.

  ‘Good morning, Anna, Austen. Let’s go and view some furniture and make a start. I’m parked in the car park; stay at the entrance and I’ll pick you up,’ she commanded.

  ‘I feel like a child of ten being bossed around by her,’ Anna grumbled, watching the younger woman walk purposefully out the door, a fuchsa pink Longchamps tote swinging from her shoulder.

  ‘Look, if you really don’t like her after today we can go to someone else, but the Dalys said she’s terrific at her job,’ Austen soothed. ‘Give her a chance.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Anna scowled, walking through the swing doors. Moments later Jutta’s silver Merc cruised to a stop beside them. ‘You get in the front if you want, I’m sitting in the back,’ Anna muttered. The woman’s attitude rankled. Her time was ‘precious’ indeed. So was theirs, she thought indignantly.

  ‘So,’ said Jutta crisply as Austen got in beside her, ‘I’ll bring you to Mobile & Diseño first? It’s very close by, that’s why I suggested we meet here. It’s what I generally do.’

  ‘Fine,’ Austen said authoritatively. ‘We’re anxious to make a start. We want to have this all wrapped up a.s.a.p.’

  ‘How long are you staying?’ Jutta enquired, leaving the grounds and driving onto the slip road to join the A–7.

  ‘Another four days, and then we’ll be back in June for a month,’ Austen said chattily.