The Man Behind the Mask by Maggie Cox

I gather that he was much older than you?’
    â€˜Yes. He was fifty-nine when we met.’
    Moving away from the fire, Marianne turned her back on Eduardo for a moment. He saw the slender shoulders lift and then drop again, as though she was resigned to the fact that now she’d begun her story she would have to see it through to the end. As she turned back to face him, he detected the tiniest quiver of her lush top lip.
    â€˜He was a good man, and a kind one…a genuinely caring soul. Over a fairly short period of time we became great friends. After a while he asked me to marry him, and I agreed. When he left me the house in his will his children con tested it, insisting that because he had beenill he couldn’t have been in his right mind to do such a thing.’ Her expression was anguished for a moment.
    â€˜I never asked Donal—my husband—to leave me anything. I’d made my own way before I met him and I would again. But he made me promise that I would hold onto the house so I would have some sense of security. Life was very difficult for a while after he went…dealing with grief and loss, I mean. The legal wrangles over the house made it even more challenging. I finally decided that I didn’t want to be in a battle any more. More than anything I wanted peace. So I wrote to Michael and Victoria, his children, and told them they could have the house and the money. In the same letter I returned the keys. So you see…when I told you I needed a job and a home…it was perfectly true. I wanted to tell you before, but somehow it never seemed to be the appropriate time.’
    Rubbing at his temples, Eduardo frowned. Not one in ten women would have done what Marianne had done—given away the house that was legally hers, leaving herself with nothing. He was sure of it. What would her husband have made of such a gesture? he mused, more disturbed than he cared to be at the thought of her being married to a man more than twice her age. More startling still was the idea that they had both lost their spouses. Both had experienced the numbing dark realm of bereavement. Although perhaps the expected loss of Marianne’s husband due to his illness had been a little less hard to take than the shattering blow Eduardo had been dealt.
    Not wanting to revisit such sombre recollections any more tonight, he suddenly realised that the woman in front of him displayed all the signs of being dead on her feet from fatigue—and he was the cause.
    â€˜Go to bed,’ he told her curtly. ‘You have an early start in the morning.’
    â€˜Please don’t think I came here under false pretences…I would hate that. I’m not a liar. When you left me your card and told me if I ever changed my mind about needing a job and a home I should ring you, I took you at your word.’
    â€˜And I honoured my word, did I not? Now…you have done quite enough for one night, playing both nurse and house maid, and you clearly need your sleep.’
    â€˜What about you?’
    As Marianne stepped towards Eduardo her question was suspended on air that was subtly but exquisitely charged with an awareness that made his breath slow inside his chest and his mouth dry. He could not take his eyes off her. Her loveliness mesmerised him. With her long hair spilling over her shoulders like dark molten honey, her waist impossibly small, and her form so slender even in the unflattering dressing gown she was a sight that would make most men long to possess her. Silently he echoed that longing. But instead of surrendering to his great desire to hold her, instinctively Eduardo tensed. Desperately he wanted her to come closer, but at the same time the polar extremes of honour and self-loathing were causing him to contain his yearning and pray for it to dissipate.
    â€˜What about me?’ he echoed, gravel-voiced.
    â€˜You need your sleep too. Please let me go and get you that hot drink or some