Alistair was sitting on Gabriela’s bed watching Sophia zip up her daughter’s dress and sit her on the light pink plush chair of her vanity table.

He could see she was tense, but she was fighting it as she bit her lower lip with so much force that he worried she was going to split it. This was the only sign that her nerves were wound tight.

For Gabriela’s sake, she was behaving extremely well since they had arrived in London at twenty past twelve in the afternoon.

She didn’t say or do much on their nine hour flight back.

He didn’t try to push her either. He held her in his arms on the stateroom bed and comforted her as best as he could until she fell into a serene slumber for the last few hours.

Now she was recounting to Gabriela every story she could remember about their trip.

“The capitals we visited, Bangkok, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Min are like ants nests, with millions of people moving around; on motorbikes, bicycles and cars, and they don’t seem to follow any traffic rules.”

“Really, Mama? Why? Are they crazy?” Gabriela asked, stretching one tiny foot for Sophia to slip on a short frilled cotton sock and then a lovely white shoe with white gauze roses on the cap.

“Oh, no,” Sophia said, repeating the process on the other foot. “It’s as if the streets are alive. With people literally living there—eating, sleeping, and chatting with their neighbors.”

Gabriela’s eyes widened. “They live in the streets? They don’t have houses?!”

Alistair laughed at that. “Nae, Fairy. They have houses from where particular and delicious smells come out—like your mother’s spicy and hot peppers. More like the unknown powders she puts in her cauldron when she’s doing magic in her kitchen, understand?”

“I don’t have a cauldron.” Sophia made a face at Alistair.

He looked at Gabriela and whispered, “Careful, she’s a witch.”

Gabriela’s giggles filled the room. She asked, “Does she fly on a broom, too?”

“There,” Sophia said, smiling, after she tied a silk ribbon on her daughter’s blonde ponytail. “What do you think, Alistair Connor?”

“My fairy princess is enchanting,” he answered.

Gabriela did look cute in her sleeveless Dior bluish-gray and pink striped printed dress. But no dress, shoes, or ribbon could mask the fear that suddenly reappeared in the little girl’s sky-blue eyes.

He knelt beside Sophia and picked up Gabriela by the waist, lowering her from the chair to stand face to face with them. She seemed so little and afraid that he could relate to Sophia’s wish to spare the child from the visit.

He grabbed her small hands in his, fixing her with a soft gaze. “It’s just a visit. Your grandparents miss you.”

“I don’t miss them, Daddy. I hate them.” Her mouth transformed in a lovely pout.

“Now, now, my angel,” Sophia said firmly. “This is not what we have agreed to. Maria will be with you and they will behave because she understands Portuguese and English.”

“And if they talk French? She won’t understand.”

Sophia sighed. “They won’t speak French in front of her and you don’t know French enough to keep a steady conversation.”

Gabriela had been concocting all possible excuses not to see her grandparents. From a stomach ache to feeling feverish; from not remembering them anymore to feigning sleep.

Sophia almost gave up the whole thing when her daughter started crying and sobbing under the shower, gripping her neck and babbling that they would take her away again.

“Gabriela, you don’t need to be afraid. Maria, Zareb, and Devon will be at the garden, your mother will be in the kitchen baking our favorite chocolate cake,” Alistair raised his eyebrows playfully at her, “and I’ll be just inside the home office, by the glass window. Anything at all, you just signal to any of us, all right?”

But not even the mention of the chocolate cake made a smile appear on her face. She stretched her arms to Sophia and hugged her neck fiercely. “I don’t understand. Why can’t Mama be with me?”

Sophia sighed for the umpteenth time that long morning, rising from the floor with Gabriela in her arms. Because they don’t like me and I don’t like them.

“Because they want to have all their time only with you,” Alistair answered.

“My angel, they are your father’s parents. Gabriela…do it for him. He’ll be happy.”

The little girl looked at her mother with confusion in her eyes. “Do you think Father will know? That he will be happy?”

“I’m sure,” Sophia nodded. “Your father will be very happy if you like his mother, Grandma Rose.”

Alistair cleared his throat and discreetly shook his head at his wife.

Sophia unwillingly completed, “And your grandfather, Alberto.”

* * *

“I don’t like manipulating her,” Sophia said as she watched Gabriela through the window of the home office.

Christ, Sophia! “Manipulating?! You didn’t manipulate her.”

“I told her Gabriel would be glad to see her with his parents. Do you have another name for it?”

“I call it love.” His hand squeezed her shoulder with so much affection that she leaned on him and wound her arm around his waist. “You smoothed what was hard for her and kept Gabriel’s memory alive. She’ll be okay. She’s an intelligent girl. And Alberto, he’s more like a tree that falls.”

What? She looked up at him quizzically.

“A tree that falls makes a lot of noise. But a woodland that grows and spreads its roots, does it quietly.” He slowly turned his face to look into her eyes. “He’s the tree, Sophia. You’re the woodland.”

A faint breath came out of her mouth as she turned fully and embraced him. As she put her head on his chest she could hear the steady and strong beat of his heart. “It’s a beautiful and powerful image, Alistair Connor. I wish I believed you.”

“This is what my mother taught me. Anyone making too much noise has no strength and is trying only to mask one’s fear.” I had forgotten this lesson for such a long time.

His arms went around her as he eyed Gabriela and Rose playing with her dolls in the garden as Alberto just sat and watched from a bench. “I have learned to read your signs. Your strength and your love are quiet but they are inside you. Don’t doubt it. Gabriela has the same resilience; the same easy, loving manner. Every time you need your strength, look inside your heart. It’s there you are going to find the will to keep going.”

She didn’t say anything, but she wondered, when Alberto fell, how many would he take with him.