The Paternity Claim

‘Then why?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you know how important qualifications are in an insecure world? What are you planning to do that’s so important that it can’t wait until the end of your course?’

She opened her mouth to tell him about her dreams of travelling, of seeing a world outside the one she had grown up in—and then she remembered, and hastily shut it again. Because that would never happen now. She had forfeited her right to do any of that. ‘I had to…get away.’

Paulo frowned. Her anxiety was almost palpable, and he leaned forward to study her, finding his nostrils suddenly filled with the warm, musky note of her perfume. He moved out of its seductive and dangerous range. ‘What’s the matter with you, Bella?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s happened?’

Now was the time to tell him everything. But one look at the disquiet on his face, and the words stuck in her throat. ‘Nothing has happened,’ she floundered. ‘Other than the fact I’ve left.’

‘So you said.’ He felt another flicker of irritation and made sure that it showed. ‘But you still haven’t come up with a good reason why—’ A pause, while the black eyes bored into her. ‘Mainly, I suspect, because you don’t have one.’ Normally, he wouldn’t have been so rude to her—but then this was not a normal situation. ‘So, Isabella,’ he said silkily. ‘I’m still waiting for some kind of explanation.’

Tell him. But, faced with the iron disapproval in the black eyes, she found that her nerve had crumbled again. ‘I was bored.’

‘You were bored.’ He tapped the arm of his hair with a furious finger.

‘OK, stressed then.’

‘Stressed?’ He looked at her with disbelief. ‘What the hell has a beautiful young woman of twenty got to be stressed about? Is it a man?’

‘No. There is no man.’ And that was the truth.

‘For God’s sake, Bella—it isn’t like you to be so fickle! I can’t believe that an intelligent girl—woman—’ he corrected immediately and a pulse began a slow, rhythmical dance at his temple, ‘like you should throw everything away because you’re “bored’! So what? Stick it out for a few months more—because believe me, querida,’ he added grimly, ‘There’s nothing quite so “boring” as a dead-end job—which is all you’ll get if you drop out of college!’

And suddenly she knew that she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Not in ten minutes’ time—maybe not ever. How could she risk the contempt which would follow as surely as night followed day? Not from Paulo, whom she’d adored as long as she could remember.

‘I wasn’t looking for your approval,’ she said woodenly.

‘You don’t seem to be looking further than the end of your nose!’ he snapped. ‘And just how are you planning to support yourself? Expecting Daddy to chip in, I suppose?’

She glared at him. ‘Of course not! I’ll take whatever I can get—I’m young and fit. I can cook. I’m good with children. Fluent in English and Portuguese.’

‘A very commendable CV,’ he remarked drily.

‘So you’d recommend me for a job, would you, Paulo?’

‘No, I damned well wouldn’t!’ His voice deepened into a husky caress. ‘But I would do everything in my power to make you change your mind.’ There was a pause, and then he spoke to her with the ease and affection which had always existed between them, until temptation had reared its ugly head.

‘Go home, Bella. Complete your studies. Come back in a couple of years.’ His eyes glittered as he imagined what two years would do to her. ‘And then I’ll find a job for you—on that I give you my word.’

She glanced down at her hands, unable to meet his eyes as his voice gentled. In a couple of years her world would have altered out of all recognition, in a way that she still found utterly unimaginable. ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ she lied.

‘So you’ll go back to college?’

‘I’ll…think about it.’ She made a pantomime of looking at her watch, affecting a look of surprise. ‘Oh, look—it’s time I was going.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he protested. ‘You’ve only just arrived. Stay and see Eddie—he’ll be back soon.’

‘No, I don’t think I will.’ She rose to her feet, anxious now to get away. Before he guessed. ‘Maybe another day.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Just down the road,’ she said evasively.

‘Where?’

‘At the Merton.’

‘At the Merton,’ he repeated thoughtfully.

He walked her to the front door just as they heard the sound of a key being slotted into the lock, and for some reason Paulo felt extraordinarily guilty as the door opened and there stood Judy—so cool and so blonde, wearing something soft and clinging in pale-blue cashmere, and a faint look of irritation on her face. Next to her stood his son, and the moment the boy saw Isabella his dark eyes lit up like lanterns.

‘Bella!’ he exclaimed, and immediately started speaking in Portuguese as he hurled himself into her arms. ‘What are you doing here? Papa didn’t tell me you were coming!’

‘That’s because Papa didn’t know himself,’ said Paulo, in the same language. ‘Bella just turned up unannounced while you were out!’

‘Are you coming to stay with us?’ demanded Eddie. ‘Please, Bella! Please!’

‘Eduardo, I can’t,’ answered Bella, her smile one of genuine regret. She had bonded with Eduardo from the word go—maybe because they had both had motherless childhoods. She had helped him with his riding and with his Portuguese and seen him grow from toddlerhood to a healthy young boy. And before very long, he would be towering above her as much as his father did. ‘I’m going to be travelling around. I want to see as much of the country as I can.’

‘Is this a private conversation,’ asked the woman in blue, ‘or can anyone join in?’

Paulo gave an apologetic smile and immediately switched to English. ‘Judy! Forgive me! This is Isabella Fernandes. She’s visiting England from Brazil. Isabella, this is Judy Jacob. She’s—’

‘I’m his girlfriend,’ put in Judy helpfully.

Isabella prayed that her smile wouldn’t crumple. ‘Hello. It’s nice to meet you.’

Paulo shot Judy a look which demanded co-operation. ‘Isabella is a very old friend of the family—’

‘Not that old,’ corrected Judy softly, as she chose to ignore his silent request. ‘In fact, she looks incredibly young to me.’

‘Our fathers were at school together,’ explained Paulo smoothly. ‘And I’ve known Isabella all my life.’

‘How very sweet.’ Judy flashed a brief smile at Isabella and then leaned forward to plant a light kiss on Paulo’s lips. ‘Well, I hate to break the party up, sweetheart, but the show starts at—’

‘And I really must go,’ said Isabella hastily, because the sight of that proprietorial kiss was making her feel ill. ‘Goodbye, Paulo. Goodbye, Judy—nice to have met you.’ Her voice barely faltered over the insincere words. ‘Goodbye, Eduardo.’ She ruffled the boy’s dark head and smiled down at him.

‘But when will we see you?’ Eduardo demanded.

‘Oh, I’ll be in touch,’ she lied, but as she looked into the black glitter of Paulo’s eyes she suspected that he knew as well as she did that she would not come back again. Because there was no place for her in his life here. No convenient slot she could fill—pregnant or otherwise. And if there had been the tiniest, most pathetic hope that she meant something more to him than just friendship…Well, that hope had been extinguished by a girlfriend who was the image of his late wife. A girlfriend who called him ‘sweetheart’ and who owned a key to his flat.

But then, what had she honestly expected? That she could turn up unannounced and tell him she’d run away from home—pregnant and alone—and that he would give that slow, lazy smile and solve all her problems for her?

She didn’t stop for the traditional kissing of the cheeks—she didn’t want to annoy Judy more than she already seemed to have done. Instead, she wrapped her coat tightly around her as she stepped out into the early evening and wondered just where she went from here.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ISABELLA!’ screamed a female voice from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Can you get down here straight away?’

In her room at the top of the ugly, mock-Georgian house which stood in an ‘upmarket estate’, Isabella sighed. She was supposed to be off duty. Getting the rest which her body craved, and the doctor had demanded on her last visit to him. But that was easier said than done.

What did they want from her now, this noisy and dysfunctional family? she wondered tiredly. A pound of her flesh—would that be enough to keep them off her back for more than five minutes?

Wasn’t it enough that she worked from dawn to dusk, looking after the lively twins who belonged to the Stafford family? Au pairs were supposed to help look after the children and engage in a little light housework, weren’t they? And to have enough time for their own studies and recreation. They weren’t supposed to cook and clean and iron and sew and babysit night after night for no extra money.

Sometimes Isabella found herself wondering just why she put up with treatment which clearly broke every employment law in the book. Was she weak? Or simply a fool?

But it didn’t take long for her to realise exactly why she was willing to put up with such shoddy behaviour—one look in the mirror reassured her that she was not in any position to be choosy. The curve of her belly was as ripe as a watermelon about to burst, and Mrs Stafford—for all her faults—was the only prospective employer who’d agreed to take her baby on, as well.

Of course, there’d always been the option of going home to Brazil, or returning to the ranch. But how could she face her father like this?

When her furtively conducted pregnancy test had turned out to be positive, she’d been so stunned by disbelief that she hadn’t felt strong enough to present her father with the unwelcome news.

And the longer she put off telling him—the more difficult the task had seemed. So that in the end it had seemed easier to run to England. To Paulo. Never dreaming that her life-long infatuation with the man would render her too proud to tell him, either.

Coming to the Staffords had seemed the only decision which made any sense at the time, but she’d lived to regret it since.

Or maybe the regret had something to do with letting down the two men who she knew adored her.

‘Isa-bella!’

Resisting the urge to yell back at her boss to go away, Isabella levered herself off the bed and slipped her stockinged feet into a pair of comfortable slippers. If there was one thing she enjoyed about being pregnant—and so far it was the only thing she had enjoyed—it was allowing herself the freedom to dress purely for comfort. Elasticated waists and thick socks may have made her resemble an enormous sack of rice, but she felt too cumbersome to care.

‘Coming!’ she called, as she carefully made her way downstairs.

The twins came running out of the sitting room, their faces working with excitement. Charlie and Richie were seven year-old twins whose mission in life seemed to be to make their au pair’s life as difficult as possible. But she’d grown fond of these two boys, with their big eyes and mischievous grins and excessively high energy levels.

Rosemary Stafford’s methods of childcare had not been the ones Isabella would have chosen, but at least she was able to have a little influence on their lives.

She had tried to steer them away from the video games and television shows which had been their daily entertainment diet. At first, they’d protested loudly when she had insisted on sitting down and reading with them each evening, but they had grown to accept the ritual—even, she suspected, to secretly enjoy it.

‘You’ve gotta vis’tor, Bella!’ said Richie.

‘Oh? Who is it?’ asked Isabella.

‘It’s a man!’

Isabella blinked. Like who? ‘But I don’t know any men!’ she protested.

Richie’s mother appeared at the sitting room door. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely!’ she said in a low voice, looking pointedly at Isabella’s swollen belly. ‘You must have known at least one.’

Isabella refused to rise to the remark—but then she’d had a lot of practice at ignoring her boss’s barbed comments.

Ever since she’d first moved in, Rosemary Stafford had made constant references to Isabella’s pregnant and unmarried state, slipping easily into the role of some kind of moral guardian.

Isabella thought this was rather surprising, considering that Mrs Stafford had become pregnant with the twins while her husband was still living with his first wife!

She gave a thin smile. ‘Who is it?’

Mrs. Stafford was trying hard not to look impressed. ‘He says he’s a friend of the family.’

She could see Charlie and Richie staring up at her, but Isabella’s smile didn’t slip. Even though a thousand warning notes were playing a symphony in her subconscious. ‘Did he give his name?’

‘He did.’

‘And?’

‘It’s Paulo somebody-or-other.’

Isabella’s mouth froze. ‘Paulo D-Dantas?’ she managed.

‘That’s the one,’ said Mrs Stafford briskly. ‘He’s in the drawing room. You’d better come along and speak to him—he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who likes to be kept waiting.’

Isabella’s hand strayed anxiously to her hair. What was he doing here? And what must she look like? Her eyes flickered over to where the hall mirror told its own story.

Her thick dark-brown hair had been carelessly heaped on top of her head, secured by a tortoiseshell comb. Her face was pale, thanks to the English winter—a pallor made more intense by the fact that she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ hissed Mrs Stafford.

‘Tell you what?’

‘That a man like that was the father of your child?’

Isabella opened her mouth to protest, but by then her employer was throwing open the door to the sitting room and it was too late to do anything other than go in and face the music.

The room seemed darker than usual and Isabella wondered why, until she saw that Paulo was standing staring out of the window and seemed to be blocking out much of the light.

He turned slowly as she came into the room and she saw his relaxed pose stiffen into one of complete disbelief as he took in her physical condition. The exaggerated bulge of her stomach. The heavy weight of her breasts.

She saw his black eyes glitter as they hovered on the unfamiliar swell, and she tried to read what was written in them. Shock. Horror. Disdain. Yes, all of those. And she found herself wishing that she could turn around and run out of the room again or, better still, turn back the clock completely. Something—anything—other than have to face that bitter look in this sorry and vulnerable state.

‘Isabella.’ He inclined his head in formal greeting, but the low-pitched voice sounded oddly flat.

He was wearing a dark suit—as if he had come straight from some high-powered business meeting without bothering to change first. The sleekly cut trousers made the most of lean, long legs and the double-breasted jacket hugged the broad shoulders and chest. Against the brilliant whiteness of his shirt, his skin gleamed softly olive. She had never seen him so formally dressed before, and the conventional clothes seemed to add to the distance between them.

Isabella felt the first flutterings of apprehension.

‘Hello, Paulo,’ she said steadily. ‘You should have warned me you were coming.’

‘And if I had?’ His voice was deadly soft. ‘Would you still have received me like this?’

She saw from the dark stare which lanced through her like a laser that it was not a rhetorical question. ‘No. Probably not,’ she admitted.

Mrs Stafford, who had been gazing up at Paulo like a star-struck schoolgirl, now turned to Isabella with a look of reprimand. ‘Isabella—where are your manners? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ She gave Paulo the benefit of a sickly smile.

Isabella swallowed. ‘Paulo, this is Rosemary Stafford—my boss. Paulo is—’

‘Very welcome,’ purred Mrs Stafford. ‘Very welcome indeed. Perhaps we can offer you a little refreshment after your journey? Isabella, why don’t you go and make Mr Dantas a drink?’

Paulo said, in Portuguese. ‘Get rid of her.’

Isabella felt inexplicably nervous. And certainly not up to defying him. ‘I wonder if you’d mind leaving us, Mrs Stafford? It’s just that I’d like to talk to my…friend—’ she hesitated over a word which did not seem appropriate ‘—in private.’

Rosemary Stafford’s pretty, painted mouth became a petulant-looking pout. ‘Yes, I expect you do. I expect you have many issues to resolve,’ she said, with stiff emphasis, and swept out of the sitting room, past where Charlie and Richie were hovering by the door, trying to listen to the conversation inside.

Paulo walked over to the door and gave the boys a slight, almost apologetic shrug of his shoulders, before quietly closing the door on them. And when he turned to face Isabella—she almost recoiled from the look of fury which burned from his eyes.

As though she were some insect he had just found squashed beneath his heel and he wished she would crawl right back where she had come from. But what right did he have to judge her? She thought of all she’d endured since arriving in England, and suddenly Paulo’s anger seemed little to bear, in comparison. She drew her shoulders back to meet his gaze without flinching.

‘You’d better start explaining,’ he said flatly.

‘I owe you no explanation.’

A pulse began a slow beat in his temple. ‘You don’t think so?’ he said quietly.

‘My pregnancy has nothing whatsoever to do with you, Paulo.’

He gave a hollow, bitter laugh. ‘Maybe in the conventional sense it doesn’t—but you involved me the moment you told your father that you were going to pay me a visit.’

She screwed her eyes up and stared at him in confusion. ‘But that was months ago! Before I left Brazil. And I did visit you. Remember? That day I came to see you in your flat?’

‘Oh, I most certainly do,’ he said, grimly resurrecting the memory he had spent months trying to forget. ‘I wondered then why you seemed so anxious. So jumpy.’ He had been intensely aroused by her that day, and had thought that the feeling was mutual—it had seemed the only rational explanation for the incredible tension between them. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Not now. ‘I also sensed that you were holding back—something you weren’t telling me. And so you were.’ He shook his head. ‘My God!’ he said slowly.

‘And now you know!’

‘Yes, now I know,’ he agreed acidly. ‘I put your tired-ness down to jet-lag—when all the time…’ He looked down over at her swollen stomach with renewed amazement. ‘All the time you were pregnant. Pregnant! Carrying a baby.’ The word came out on a breath of disbelief. ‘How can this have happened, Bella?’

She met his accusing gaze and then she did flinch. ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

‘No. You’re right. I don’t!’ He sucked in a hot, angry breath. ‘Don’t you realise that your father is worried sick about you?’

‘How can you know that?’

‘Because he rang me yesterday from Brazil.’

‘W-why should he ring you?’ she stumbled in confusion.

‘Think about it,’ he grated. ‘He asked me to come and see you, to find out what the problem is. Why your letters have been so vague, your phone-calls so infrequent.’ He shook his head and the black eyes lanced through her with withering contempt. ‘I certainly don’t relish telling him the reason why.’

‘So he still doesn’t know?’ she questioned urgently. ‘About the baby?’

‘It would seem not,’ he answered coldly. ‘Unless he’s a very good actor indeed. His main anxiety seemed to stem from the fact that he could not understand why you had chosen to flunk university to become an au pair.’

‘But he knew all that! I wrote to him—and told him that living in England was an education in itself!’ she protested.

She’d kept her father supplied with regular and fairly chatty letters—though carefully omitting to mention her momentous piece of news. As far as he knew, she would probably go back and repeat her final year at college. She hadn’t mentioned when she was going home and he hadn’t asked. And she thought that she’d convinced him that she was sophisticated enough to want to see the world. ‘I’ve been writing to him every single week!’

The chill did not leave his voice. ‘So he said. But unfortunately letters sent from abroad are read and reread and scoured for hidden meanings. Your father suspected that you were not happy, though he couldn’t put his finger on why that was. He asked me to come to see whether all was well.’ Another cold, hollow laugh. ‘And here I am.’

‘You needn’t have bothered!’

‘No, you’re right. I needn’t.’ His mouth curved with disdain as he gazed around the bland room, with its unadorned walls and rows of videos where there should have been books. Littered on the thick, cream carpet were empty chocolate wrappers. ‘My, my, my—this is certainly some classy hide-out you’ve chosen, Isabella!’ he drawled sarcastically.

His criticism was valid, but no less infuriating because of that. She struggled to find something positive to say about it. ‘I like the boys,’ she came up with finally. ‘I’ve grown very fond of them.’

‘You mean the two hooligans who nearly rode their skateboards straight into the path of my car?’

Isabella went white. ‘But they aren’t supposed to play with them in the road!’ How was she supposed to watch them twenty-four hours a day? ‘They know that!’

Paulo narrowed his eyes as he took a look at her pale, thin face, which seemed so at odds with her bloated body and felt adrenaline rush to fire his blood. He’d felt a powerful sense of injustice once before in his life, when his wife had died, but the feeling which enveloped him now came a pretty close second.

And this time he was not powerless to act.

‘Answer me one question,’ he commanded.

Isabella shook her head. This one she’d been anticipating. ‘I’m not telling you the name of the baby’s father, if that’s your question.’

‘It’s not.’ He almost smiled. Almost. He had somehow known that she would proudly deny him that. But he was glad. Knowledge could be a dangerous thing—and if he knew, then he might just be tempted to find the bastard responsible, and to…to…‘Is there anything special keeping you in this house, this particular area?’

‘Not really. Just…the twins.’

Which told him more than she probably intended. That the father of her baby did not live locally. Nor live in this house. It wasn’t probable—but it was possible. His mouth tightened. Thank God. ‘Then go upstairs and get your things together,’ he ordered curtly. ‘We’re going.’

It was one more bizarre experience in a long line of bizarre experiences. She stared at him blankly. ‘Going where?’

‘Anywhere,’ he gritted. ‘Just so long as it’s out of here!’

Automatically, Isabella shook her head, as practical difficulties momentarily obscured the fact that he was being so high-handed with her. ‘I can’t leave—’

‘Oh, yes, you can!’

‘But the boys need me!’

‘Maybe they do,’ he agreed. ‘But your baby needs you more. And right at this moment you look as if you could do with a decent meal and a good night’s sleep!’ He steadied his breath with difficulty. ‘So just go and get your things together.’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ she said, with a stubbornness which smacked of raging hormones.

Paulo gave a faint, regretful smile. He had hoped that it would not come to this, but he could be as ruthless as the next man when he believed in what he was fighting for. ‘I’m afraid that you are,’ he disagreed grimly.

Suddenly she wondered why she was tolerating that clipped, flat command. She lifted her chin in a defiant thrust. ‘You can’t make me, Paulo!’

‘I agree that it might not be wise to be seen carrying a heavily pregnant woman out to my car—though I am quite prepared to, if that’s what it takes,’ he told her, a soft threat underpinning his words. ‘You can fight me every inch of the way if you want, Isabella, but I hope it won’t come to that. Because whatever happens, I will win. I always do.’