The Paternity Claim

‘And if I refuse?’

Her eyes asked him a question, a question he had no desire to answer—but maybe it was the only way to make her see that he was deadly serious.

‘Then I could threaten to tell your father the truth about why you left Brazil. But the truth might set in motion all kinds of repercussions which you may prefer not to have to deal with at the moment. Am I right?’

‘You wouldn’t do that?’ she breathed.

‘Oh, yes. Be assured that I would!’

She stared back at him with helpless rage. ‘Bastard!’ she hissed.

‘Please do not use that particular term as an insult!’ he snapped. ‘It is entirely inappropriate, given your current condition.’ His eyes flickered coldly over her bare fingers. ‘Unless you have an undisclosed wedding to add to your list of secrets?’ He read her answer in the proud tremble of her lips. ‘No? Well, then my dear Isabella—that leaves you little option other than to come away with me, doesn’t it?’

It was far too easy. Far too tempting. But what use would it serve? Could she bear to grow used to that cold judgement which had hardened his face so that he didn’t look like Paulo any more, but some dark and disapproving stranger? ‘I can’t just leave without notice! What will the boys do?’

He refrained from telling her that her priorities were in shockingly bad order. ‘They have their mother, don’t they? And she will just have to look after them for a change. Does she work?’

Isabella shook her head. ‘Not outside the home,’ she answered automatically, as her employer had taught her to. In fact, Mrs Stafford had made leisure into an Olympic sport. She shopped. She had coffee. She lunched. And very occasionally she lay in bed all day, making telephone calls to her friends…

‘Run upstairs—’

She turned on him then, moving her bulky body awkwardly as the emotion of having borne her secret alone for so long finally took its toll. She blinked back the tears which welled up saltily in her eyes. ‘I can’t run anywhere at the moment!’ She swallowed.

He resisted the urge to draw her into his arms and to give her the physical comfort he suspected that she badly needed. It was not his place to give it. Not now and certainly not here. ‘I know you can’t—that’s why I’m offering to help you. If you go and pack, I will deal with your employer for you.’

‘Shouldn’t I tell her myself?’

He thought how naive and innocent she could look and sound—despite the very physical evidence to the contrary. He shook his head impatiently. ‘She’s going to be angry, isn’t she?’

Isabella pushed a dark strand of hair away from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Furious.’

‘Well, then—you can do without her fury. Let her take it out on me instead. Go on, querida. Go now.’

The familiar word made her heart clench and she had to put her hand onto the back of a chair to steady herself. She had not heard her mother-tongue spoken for months, and it penetrated a chink in the protective armour she had attempted to build around herself. She nodded, then did as he asked, lumbering up to her room at the top of the house with as much speed as she could manage.

She did not have many things to pack. She’d brought few clothes with her to England, and what few she had no longer fitted her. Instead, she’d bought garments which were suitable for this cold, new climate and the ungainly new shape of her body.

Big, sloppy jumpers, two dresses and a couple of pairs of trousers with huge, elasticated waists which she was currently stretching to just about as far as they could go.

She had been forced to buy new underwear, too—and had felt like an outcast in the shop. As if everyone knew she was all alone with her pregnancy. And that no man would ever feast his eyes with love and pride on the huge, pendulous breasts which strained against the functional bra she’d been forced to purchase.

She swept the clothes and her few toiletries into the suitcase and located her passport. On the windowsill stood a wedding-day photo of her parents and, with a heavy heart, she added it to the rest of her possessions.

And then, with a final glance round at the box-room which had been her home for the last five months, she quietly shut the door behind her.

At the foot of the stairs, a deputation was awaiting her. Towering over the small group was Paulo, his hair as black as ebony, when viewed from above. Next to him stood Rosemary Stafford, her fury almost palpable as she attempted to control the two boys.

‘Will you keep still?’ she was yelling, but they were taking no notice of her.

Charlie and Richie were buzzing around the hallway like demented flies—whipped up by the unexpected excitement of what was happening, and yet looking vaguely uncertain. As if they could anticipate that changes would shortly be made to their young lives. And correctly guessing that they would not like those changes at all.

Isabella reached the bottom of the stairs and Paulo took the suitcase from her hand. ‘I’ll put this in the car for you.’

She felt like calling after him, Please don’t leave me! but that would be weak and cowardly. Instead, she turned to Rosemary Stafford and forced herself to remember just how many times she had helped the older woman out. All the occasions when she had agreed to babysit with little more than a moment’s notice. And never complained. Not once. ‘I’m sorry to have to leave so suddenly—’

‘Oh, spare me your lies!’ hissed Rosemary Stafford venomously.

‘But they’re not lies!’ Isabella protested. ‘It isn’t practical to carry on like this. Honestly. The truth is that I have been getting awfully tired—’

‘Oh? And what about other, earlier so-called “truths”?’ Rosemary Stafford’s glossy pink lips gaped uglily. ‘Like your assurance that the father of your baby wasn’t going to turn up out of the blue and start creating havoc with my routine?’

Isabella was about to explain that Paulo was not the father of her baby—but what was the point? What could she say? The boys were standing there, wide-eyed and listening to every word. Trying to make two seven-year-old boys understand the reality of the whole bizarre situation was more than she felt prepared to take on right then.

Instead, she reached out an unsteady hand and ruffled Richie’s blond hair. Of the two boys, he’d been the one who had crept the furthest into her heart, and she didn’t want to hurt him. ‘I’ll write,’ she began uncertainly.

‘Take your hands away from him, and don’t be so stupid!’ spat out Mrs Stafford. ‘What will you write to a seven-year-old boy about? The birth? Or the conception?’

Isabella shuddered, wondering how Mrs Stafford could possibly say things like that in front of her children.

‘It’s time to leave, Isabella,’ came a low voice from behind them, and Isabella turned to see Paulo framed in the neo-Georgian doorway. His face was shadowed, the features so still that they might have been carved from some rare, pitch-dark marble. Only the eyes glittered—hard and black and icy-cold.

She wondered how long he had been standing there, listening, whether he had heard Mrs Stafford’s assumption that he was the father of her baby.

And her own refusal to deny it.

‘Isabella,’ prompted Paulo softly. ‘Come.’

Impulsively she bent and briefly put her arms round both boys. Richie was crying, and it took every bit of Isabella’s willpower not to join in with his tears, knowing that it would be self-indulgent to break down and confuse them even more. Instead, she contented herself with a swift and fierce kiss on the top of each sweet, blond head.

‘I will write!’ she reaffirmed in an urgent whisper, as Paulo took her elbow like an invalid, and guided her out to the car.

CHAPTER THREE

AS SOON as the front door had shut behind them, Paulo let go of Isabella’s elbow and she found herself missing its warmth and support immediately.

‘The car is a little way up the street,’ he said, still in that same flat tone which she’d never heard him use before.

He’d parked it there deliberately. Just in case. He had not known what he expected to find. Or who. He hadn’t known if she would come willingly. And how he would’ve coped, had she refused. Because some instinct had told him even then, that he would not be leaving without her.

Isabella walked beside him towards the car, suspecting that he’d slowed his normal pace down in order for her to keep pace with him. She got out of breath so easily these days. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Taking implies force,’ he corrected, looking down at her dark head, which only reached up to his shoulder. She seemed much too tiny to be bursting ripe with pregnancy. ‘And you seem to be accompanying me willingly enough.’

What woman wouldn’t? she thought, with another wistful pang. ‘Where?’ she repeated huskily.

A plane droned overhead, and he briefly lifted his face to stare at it. ‘For now, you will have to come home with me—’ He sent her a searing glance as if he anticipated her objection. ‘Think about it before you say anything, Bella. It makes the most sense.’

If anything could be said to make sense at that precise moment, then yes, she supposed that it did. And hadn’t that been her first choice? Before she’d seen him prowling half-naked around his own territory—like some sleek and beautiful cat? Gato. Before she’d seen the beautiful woman who’d frozen her out so effectively. Before she’d decided that she could not face him with her terrible secret.

‘Doesn’t it?’

Isabella nodded, wondering what Judy was going to say this time. ‘I suppose so.’

‘As to what happens after that…’ A silky pause. ‘There are a number of options open to you.’

‘I’m not going back to Brazil!’ she declared quietly. ‘And you can’t make me!’

He let that one go. For the moment. ‘Here’s my car.’

A midnight-blue sports car was parked with precision close to the kerb, and Isabella stared at the low, gleaming bodywork in dismay.

‘What’s the matter?’

She glanced up to find that the black eyes were fixed intently on her face. He must have noticed her hesitation. She gestured to her stomach, placing her hands on either side of her bump, to draw his attention to it. ‘Look—’

‘I’m looking,’ he replied, taken aback by the sudden hurl of his heart as one of her hands strayed dangerously close to the heavy swell of her breast.

‘I’m so big and so bulky, and your car is so streamlined.’

He held the door open for her. ‘You think you won’t fit?’

‘Look away,’ she said. ‘It won’t be a graceful sight.’

She began to ease her legs inside and his face grew grim as he turned back to look at the house they had just left—where two small boys forlornly watched them from an upstairs window. He did not know what lay ahead, beyond offering her temporary refuge, but already he suspected that his loyalties might be torn. How could they not be?

He’d known Isabella’s father for years—ever since he was a boy himself. And for the last ten summers since his wife’s death had accepted Luis’s hospitality for both himself and his son.

Eddie had been just a baby when his mother had died so needlessly and so tragically in a hit-and-run accident that had produced national revulsion, but no conviction. The man—or woman—who had killed Elizabeth remained free to this day. In the lonely and insecure days following her death, it had seemed vital to Paulo that Eddie should know something of his South American roots.

As a father himself, Paulo felt duty-bound to inform Luis Fernandes what was happening to his daughter. But Isabella was not a child. Far from it. Would she expect him to collude with her? To keep quiet about the baby? And for how long?

He waited until they’d eased away from the kerb, before jerking his head back in the direction of the house.

‘How long were you planning to stay there?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stared at the road ahead. ‘I just took it day by day. Mrs Stafford said that I could work the baby into my routine.’

Paulo’s long fingers dug into the steering wheel. ‘But you must have some idea, Isabella! Until the baby was…what…how old? Six months? A year? Would you then have returned to Brazil with a grandchild for your father to see? Or were you planning to keep it hidden from him forever?’

‘I told you,’ she answered tiredly, wishing that he wouldn’t keep asking her these questions—though she noted that he’d refrained from asking the most fundamental question of all. ‘I honestly don’t know. And not because I hadn’t thought about it, either. Believe me, I’d thought about it so much that the thoughts seemed to just go round and round inside my head, until sometimes I felt like I would burst—’

Paulo’s mouth hardened. Hadn’t he felt exactly like that after Elizabeth’s death? When the world seemed to make no sense at all? He stole a glance at her strained, white face and felt an unwilling surge of compassion. ‘But the more you thought about it, the more confused you got—so that you were still no closer to deciding what to do? Is that right?’

His perception disarmed her, just as the warmth and comfort of the car soothed her more than she’d expected to be soothed. Isabella felt her mouth begin to tremble, and she turned to look out of the window at the city speeding by, so that he wouldn’t see. ‘Yes. How could I be?’ She kept her voice low. ‘Because whatever decision I reach—is bound to hurt someone, somewhere.’

Her words were so quiet that he could barely hear, but Paulo could sense that she was close to tears. A deep vein of disquiet ran through him. Now was not the time to fire questions at her—not when she looked so little and pale and vulnerable.

He thought how spare the flesh looked on her bones—all her old voluptuousness gone. As if, despite the absurdly swollen bump of her pregnancy, a puff of wind could blow her away.

‘You haven’t been eating properly,’ he accused.

‘There isn’t a lot of room for food these days.’

‘Have you had supper?’

‘Well, no,’ she admitted. She’d been seeking refuge in her room: too tired to bother going downstairs to hunt through the junk food in the Staffords’ fridge for something which looked vaguely nutritional.

‘Your baby needs sustenance,’ he growled. ‘And so, for that matter, do you. I’m taking you for something to eat.’

Nausea welled up in her throat. She shook her head. ‘I can’t face the thought of food at the moment. Too much has happened—surely you can understand that?’

‘You can try.’ His mouth twisted into a mocking smile. ‘For me.’

She knotted her fingers together in her lap. ‘I suppose I’m not going to get any peace unless I agree?’

‘No, you’re not,’ he agreed. ‘Just console yourself with the thought that I’m doing it for your own good.’

‘You’re so kind, Paulo.’

He heard the tentative attempt at sarcasm and oddly enough it made him smile. At least her spirit hadn’t been entirely extinguished. ‘More practical than kind,’ he murmured. ‘We need to talk and you need to decide your future. And we can’t do that in private at my house.’

‘Because of Eduardo?’

‘That’s right.’ He wondered how he could possibly explain away her pregnancy to the son who idolised the ground she walked on. ‘He’ll be curious to know why you’re here—and we can’t give him any answers if we don’t know what they are ourselves. And it might just come as a shock for him to see you so—’ the words tasted bitter on his lips ‘—so heavily pregnant.’

She remembered the cool, blonde beauty who had let herself in and forced herself to ask the question. ‘What about Judy? Won’t she mind me landing myself on you?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

There was an odd kind of pause and she turned her head to stare at the darkened profile.

‘I’m not seeing her any more,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ Isabella was unprepared for the sudden warm rush of relief, but she tried not to let it show in her voice. ‘Oh, dear. What happened?’

Paulo compressed his lips, resisting the urge to tell her that it was none of her business. Because it was. Because somehow—unknowingly and unwittingly—Isabella had exposed him to doubts about his relationship with Judy which had led to its eventual demise.

He’d thought that shared interests and a mutually satisfactory sex-life were all that he needed from a relationship. But Isabella’s visit had made him aware that there was no real spark between him and Judy. And something which he’d thought suited him suddenly seemed like an awful waste of time. ‘We kind of drifted apart,’ he said.

‘But you’re still friends?’

‘I suppose so,’ he answered reluctantly. Because that was what Judy had wanted. She’d settled for ‘friendship’ once she realised he’d meant it when he told her it was over. But he knew deep down that they could never be true friends—she still wanted him too badly for that. ‘We’re not supposed to be discussing my love-life, Isabella.’

‘Well, I don’t want to discuss mine,’ she said quietly.

‘Does that mean you aren’t going to tell who who the father of your baby is?’

Isabella flinched. ‘That’s right.’

‘Do I know him?’

‘What makes you think I would tell you, if even you did?’

He found her misplaced loyalty both exasperating and admirable. ‘And what if I made you tell me?’ he challenged.

The streetlights flickered strange shadows over his face and Isabella felt suddenly uncertain. ‘You couldn’t.’

‘Want to bet?’

‘I n-never bet.’

‘I’m not sure that I believe you,’ he said softly. ‘When you are living, walking proof that you took a huge gamble.’ And lost, he thought—though he didn’t say it. The look on her face told him he didn’t have to. The car came to stop at some traffic lights and he shifted in his seat to get a better look at her.

And Isabella forgot the baby. Forgot everything. Through the dim light, all she could see in that moment were his eyes. Dark, like chocolate, and rich like chocolate, and sexy like chocolate. And chocolate was what Isabella had been craving for the past eight months. ‘Paulo—’

But he’d turned his attention back to the road ahead. ‘We’re here,’ he said grimly.

She heaved a sigh of relief as he pulled up outside an Italian pasta bar. Heaven only knew what she’d been about to blurt out when she had whispered his name like that. At least the activity of eating might distract him from his interrogation—and maybe she was hungrier than she had previously thought. It would certainly make a change to have a meal cooked for her.

The restaurant was small and lit by candles, and almost full—and Isabella was certain that they would be turned away. But no. It seemed that here they knew him well. Paulo asked for, and got, a table in one of the recesses of the room—well away from the other customers.

She glanced down at the menu she’d been given, at the meaningless swirl of words there. And when she looked up again, it was to find him studying her intently.

‘Do you know what you want?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

He jabbed a finger halfway down his menu. ‘Why don’t you try some spinach lasagne?’ he suggested. ‘Lots of nutrients to build you up. And you, querida, could certainly do with some building up.’

She nodded obediently. ‘All right.’

He wasn’t used to such passivity—not from Isabella—and thought how wan her face looked as the waiter came over to their table. ‘Drink some tomato juice,’ he instructed, almost roughly. ‘You like that, don’t you?’