The Spaniard's Surprise Love-Child / A Bride Fit For A Prince?

His eyes were on the poorly child who had settled a little now, and the expression in those dark depths was almost hungry. Gwen experienced a spasm of gut-clenching fear. Suddenly, for the very first time she encountered the possibility that he might want Ellie. He might actually want to take Ellie away from her.

‘I think explanations are the least you owe me,’ he intoned grimly, equally quietly.

She closed her eyes and gave her head a tiny shake of disbelief, the anger spilling through her pushing away the last vestiges of guilt. ‘I owe you nothing and you owe me nothing. We are simply two people who…who…collided.’

Rio’s eyes lifted to hers. ‘Several times,’ he murmured, the brief wicked gleam in his eyes fading as he struggled to clear the sound of a child crying that was still echoing in his head. It was disconcerting as the echo was playing in sync with the real thing.

The child…his child—and would that ever seem real to him?—had begun to sob and squirm in her mother’s arms. As his focus widened beyond his own private drama involving the three of them, he became aware for the first time that they were beginning to attract attention. Some of the pupils and staff filing out of the hall had slowed to stare at them curiously.

‘I can’t believe that we are having this conversation.’

‘What did you think would happen?’ he bit out.

Colour stinging her cheeks, Gwen rebutted, ‘What I mean is this was not supposed to happen.’

‘What, getting pregnant, or me finding out I had a child?’

‘Both,’ she admitted removing a hank of her hair from his daughter’s—Ellie’s—tenacious grip.

‘I’m no expert, but shouldn’t you be taking her to the hospital?’ He knew nothing about children but this one was…his daughter. He gave his dark head a shake, but, no, he was actually awake and this was really happening. It wasn’t a dream. The shock he was experiencing was momentarily blanked out by a fresh wave of anger as he thought of all the moments he had missed with his child that he would never get back.

‘That’s right, you’re not an expert,’ Gwen pointed out. When had he last had a sleepless night? she thought, her contempt almost immediately vanishing to be replaced by a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she recalled some of the things Rio usually thought preferable to sleep.

It was a measure of how completely he took over her mind that this thought led seamlessly into an image imprinted and preserved in her head in perfect detail, the moment captured for ever, along with the nameless ache she had felt deep inside as she’d stared at him lying asleep on his back early one morning, one arm above his head, his face in repose. The lines that might one day be permanent had been ironed out, looking, not softer, exactly, but younger beneath the piratical stubble that emphasised the angles of his jaw and the hollow of his carved cheeks.

In the soft dappled early morning light that had filtered through the blinds on the open window, his skin had shone like dull gold against the crumpled white sheet that was bunched across his narrow hips, the shadows emphasising the muscular definition of his chest and ridged belly.

She remembered desperately wanting to touch him and so she had, her fingers moving along the line of dark hair that ran down his belly until her hand was caught and she found herself staring into black, wickedly gleaming and not at all sleepy eyes that were still looking at her as he pulled her down on top of him.

Breaking free of the vivid memories drew a tiny grunt of effort from her parted lips.

‘This is neither the time nor the place for this conversation,’ she said, a shade of desperation creeping into her voice because there was no time and no place where she wanted to have this conversation.

He glanced towards their growing audience. Clearly, it was the first thing they had agreed on. ‘So where, and when?’

She looked at him in horror, the recognition dawning in her brain that there was going to be no escape route, no secret door, no alternative to them having a face-to-face discussion.

She tipped her head in acknowledgement and defeat. ‘All right, my cottage.’

‘Cottage?’ His slightly confused expression cleared. ‘The one in the grounds you mentioned? Right, I will find it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Shall we say five o’clock?’

Gwen shook her head. ‘No, six.’ By that time she ought to have been able to pacify Ellie and if not he’d just have to wait. She lifted her chin. Her daughter would always come first with her and the sooner he caught onto that fact, the better. The world might work around Rio Bardales’s schedule but she had moved on.

CHAPTER FOUR

GWEN NOTICED ABSENTLY that her hand was shaking as she tried to coax her daughter to take the temperature-lowering medicine. When the toddler turned her head away for the fourth time and it spilled down her front Gwen felt the tears she’d so far held back begin to spill down her cheeks.

Taking a deep breath, she squeezed her eyes tight shut and told herself, Self-pity, Gwen, is really not attractive.

A moment later as she choked back a sob and forced a smile, perhaps her change of attitude communicated itself to her child, who stopped crying to watch her mother with big eyes.

Gwen took advantage of the moment of calm to spoon the mixture between her lips. ‘Excellent, good girl…’

She sat back with a sigh as a wave of love so strong that it made her breathless washed over her. Before Ellie had been born she had worried about bonding with her, not able to imagine this swell of instinctive parental love. Suddenly, an image of Rio’s face, the shock of recognition in his eyes when he’d seen Ellie, surfaced in her head.

What would it feel like to be hit by the reality you were a father that way? The truth was she could not imagine that scenario any more than she could imagine how he was feeling now he’d had time to take it on board.

Or maybe he was wondering how to break the news to the mother of his son—his partner…his wife? Her life had moved on and it was only reasonable to assume that his had too.

Which Rio would arrive? Would he be angry? Cold? Businesslike?

Would he even arrive?

Another image flashed in front of her, of the expression in his dark eyes as he had stared at Ellie, and she shivered. It was definitely not the look of a man who had any intention of walking away.

Trying to shake the feeling of impending doom that weighed her down, she told herself her time would be better spent preparing a plan of action for a scenario that was never meant to happen.

She tried to reawaken the feeling of optimism, of liberation almost, that she’d felt the day Ellie was born and she had come to her decision not to tell Rio, a decision that had nothing to do with the months of arguing with herself and playing devil’s advocate. The decision had been made because it felt right, and she could finally move on as a mother. It was a new, exciting and scary chapter in her life, but she could do it. Alone.

She didn’t need Rio’s help, and she was not going to beg or humiliate herself by submitting to DNA testing. She had mentally wiped him out of her life. Well, to be completely truthful, it had been a work in progress but she’d been getting there.

Sadly he didn’t get the same memo!

With Ellie on her shoulder, she began to pace up and down the small cosy living room humming softly, and after a few grumpy kicks and moans Ellie settled, soothed by the rhythmic motion. Gwen carried on humming, glancing at the clock on the mantle occasionally until she felt the toddler go limp in her arms and the baby breaths become deep and even.

She pushed open the only bedroom door with her foot. The lack of a second bedroom was one of those problems that she had left for the future, as for the moment the cot at the bottom of her bed worked and there was room for a small bed later on.

Pulling back the sheet, she laid her sleeping daughter down. Her cheeks were rosy but no longer feverish as the medicine was doing its job. Switching on the baby monitor even though there wasn’t anywhere in the tiny cottage where she wouldn’t hear her cry, Gwen drew the curtains and crept from the room, leaving the door ajar behind her.

Back in the living room, she glanced at the clock again, silently counting the minutes until Rio would appear. It was hard to rehearse what she was going to say when she didn’t have a clue what he was going to ask, or demand or… She sighed and began to chew her plump bottom lip distractedly, fighting her way free of another wave of despair.

‘For goodness’ sake, Gwen, stop feeling sorry for yourself!’

Her eyes narrowed with determination as she began to whisk around the room, plumping the odd cushion, picking up a toy and lobbing it in the toy box beside the window. Yesterday she had been wishing she had the space for a playroom; today she loved everything exactly the way it was. Perhaps you had to have your little world threatened to appreciate a worn carpet or a shower that was only a frustrating trickle.

It was a struggle to visualise Rio in these surroundings; it really was not his natural environment. He was sleek and exclusive and—she released a quivering sigh—just the thought of him being here had the power to make her insides quiver. Shameful though it was, it hardly seemed worth the energy it cost pretending she wasn’t still as vulnerable as she had ever been to his lethal sexuality.

It just proved that sexual chemistry was utterly indiscriminate. Ignoring the butterfly kicks still making their presence known in her stomach, she walked into her diminutive galley kitchen to get a glass of water to moisten her suddenly dry mouth.

It was the uncertainty, she told herself, that was really testing her. If Rio had gone into denial mode she could have dealt with it, or at least dealt with it more easily. Of course, he might still go that way once he had got over the initial shock.

He might just want confirmation that she was not going to make any future demands on him. Well, she could happily give him that—she’d sign anything if it meant he’d leave them in peace.

Gwen tiptoed back into the bedroom, checked on Ellie, who was sleeping peacefully still, and jumped at the sound of a rose branch scratching the window as the freshening breeze caught it.

You need to relax, Gwennie girl, she told herself, before grinning at the sheer impossibility of this. Absently fishing a lip gloss from her pocket, she smeared it over her lips before closing the door behind her.

By the time she had sat down and then jumped up again she had chewed the strawberry moisture off.

Would he be on time?

Should she have contacted a lawyer?

As if she had one on speed dial! She gave a small snort of self-mocking laughter and tried not to think of the access to top legal experts that Rio had.

Discovering a stray brightly coloured building block behind a cushion that had escaped her whirlwind round of frenzied tidying, she headed for the overflowing toy box when the knock on the door made her leap like a startled deer.

She took a deep breath and schooled her features into neutrality, or as close as she was going to get to that, and opened the door. Her eyes travelled upwards as she took a half-step outside, her elbow brushing the roses around the door.

His jacket had gone and the fabric of his tailored shirt was fine enough to suggest the drifts of body hair on his torso. Or maybe she was just seeing them because she knew they were there. Her cheeks heated guiltily at the thought.

‘You live here?’

She didn’t pause to think of a sarcastic response, just nodded.

He didn’t respond to the social cue so, after an awkward pause, she added, ‘It’s convenient.’ Less convenient was noticing for the first time the coiled tension in his lean body. It wasn’t just his masculinity that sent a fresh shudder through her body, it was the predator barely disguised by the perfect tailoring.

One dark brow lifted but he still didn’t say anything. Gwen tried to ignore the grab of some emotion that felt like a hand in her chest as their eyes finally connected, the moment she had been avoiding.

She wanted to look away but the moment dragged, hampered by the mind-fogging hormonal flare she felt. She resorted to stiff formality as she finally managed to slide her eyes to some point over his left shoulder. Sexual chemistry had no place here; she owed it to Ellie to keep a clear head. She had learnt from her mistakes and it was more important than ever not to repeat them.

Chance would be a fine thing!

Ignoring the shame-inducing reaction of her inner voice, she gave a faint smile. ‘Come in.’ She stood to one side and, after an equally stilted and blank-faced pause, he stepped past her directly into her sitting room.

In the confined space his sheer physicality took on an extra resonance, as did the predatory undercurrents that had made her hormones leap.

Rio discovered that the cottage, which looked like a chocolate box outside, was more like a doll’s house inside. He supposed it was charming if you liked low beams and leaded windows, but he didn’t; he preferred light and space. His eyes moved over the toys spilling out of a box in the corner and they darkened. He was still desperately struggling to assimilate the knowledge he was a father, but the emotions were so complex and intertwined that the anger kept colliding with the shock and the sheer gut-wrenching wonder of it all.

It was a situation that he’d not asked for but one he was certainly responsible for, which equated to this combined anger and guilt. Being a father was one thing, but having the fact hidden from him, leaving him an outsider in a process he had been so intimately involved with, left him feeling…what, exactly?

Of course, the irony and the massive degree of hypocrisy his reaction generated was impossible to duck. How could he blame Gwen when he had done the very same thing to his brother? His twin, his other half, who still didn’t know he had fathered a son… The guilt Rio had lived with every day since he’d agreed to the deception hadn’t gone away, but it had been easier to bear because he had been so sure that he’d made the right decision.

Today’s events made him feel far less secure about that. Had Gwen thought she’d made the right decision too?

Had she thought his daughter was better off not knowing her father? And could he really blame her? This degree of reluctant understanding of her possible motives didn’t lessen his determination to be an ongoing part of this child’s life, to be the best father he could, but the next step was convincing Gwen of this. Of course, his advantage in all this was that he suspected she had a strongly developed sense of fair play whereas he was quite flexible about such things, especially when the stakes were this high.

He had no intention of taking no for an answer.

He looked around the room again and glanced at her, wondering if she thought he considered it to be shabby and cramped. She was clearly bracing her shoulders in a defensive attitude and when he suddenly turned, she jumped, taking a nervy involuntary step backwards. She bit down, her white teeth sinking into her plump lower lip, distracting him for a moment. Then she cleared her throat loudly, and he wondered if she’d noticed.

Rio frowned. He could see that the blue-veined pulse at the base of her slender throat was throbbing nervously, and the possibility that she was scared of him made him feel like a monster.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked when she lowered her hand from her mouth.

She nodded. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ she offered.

‘It sounds like you need a drink,’ he said, wondering if that would relax her a little.

She shook her head.

‘I’m okay, thanks.’

‘Is she… Ellie…?’ He paused after pushing out her name slowly as if he was still trying it out for fit. ‘Is she feeling better now?’ he asked, grimacing faintly as he heard the accusatory note edge into his tone. He could tell by the stiffening of her posture that Gwen had too.

She nodded.

‘Can I see her?’ His jaw clenched, the fine muscles quivering, as the request brought home just how wrong this situation was. He was asking permission to see his own child.

The look of alarm that flickered across her face as she desperately tried to think of an excuse to say no only added to the feeling of wrongness.

‘I’m not going to snatch her, you know,’ he said with impatient irony.

He saw a guilty flush rise up her neck until her face looked as if it were burning. ‘I never thought you were,’ she protested defensively.

His expressive mouth twisted. ‘But you are now.’ She was as easy to read as a neon headline.

‘She’s sleeping.’

For a guilty moment he acknowledged a flash of relief. How did you talk to a person who was little more than a baby? What did you say to your own child? But the hunger to see her again remained stronger than his self-doubt.

It made him think again of Roman, his twin, who had a child he would never know, and the guilt he lived with every day tightened as he promised huskily, ‘I won’t wake her.’

For a split second he thought she was going to refuse and the hell of it was there was not a thing he could do about it. He had fathered a child and yet he had no rights… His taut jaw clenched, dragging the skin tight across his slashing cheekbones at the prospect of having to beg to see his own child.

Gwen kick-started her brain, ashamed that for a few vital moments she had allowed herself to get sidetracked by the small jagged scar she had noticed on his forehead, white against his golden-toned skin.

‘Fine,’ she mumbled, except of course it wasn’t. ‘This way.’

She didn’t look at him but she was very conscious of his physical presence as he followed her through the door she pushed open. She wondered where she drew the line—when did she say no? There had to be guidelines, limits…didn’t there?

Gwen turned and saw straight away that his attention was almost immediately riveted by the cot that stood at the foot of the small old-fashioned brass double bed in the bright-yellow-painted room. She wondered if he could feel the quivering tension coming off her but she said nothing, just stood to one side as he walked towards the cot cautiously.

Gwen hung back, hands clenched, not wanting him here and particularly not wanting to see the conflict in his face as he looked down into the cot. Yet it was the wonder that flickered into his eyes, and something close to longing there too, that she really didn’t want to see the most.

She looked away. She couldn’t let this situation be all about him and his feelings. This was about her and Ellie; they were a unit of two. Rio had to stay on the outside of that unit—she’d be fair but firm and if necessary selfish in order to protect Ellie.

‘I’ll be just through there.’ She nodded her head to indicate the other room and left, but she didn’t think he noticed.

It was five minutes before he joined her. Gwen was staring out of the window blindly and didn’t hear his soft-footed approach. It was only the prickling on the back of her neck that alerted her to his presence.

She turned and saw him standing just inside the doorway, but his expression told her nothing. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear—’

‘I didn’t wake her…’ he said at the same time, and hesitated. Then, as she stayed silent, he added, ‘Is she well?’ He dragged a hand through his dark hair and moved further into the room. ‘What did the doctor say?’

‘She hasn’t seen a doctor.’ Before he could express the outrage she could see tauten his face she quickly explained, ‘The next appointment the surgery has is not for several days.’

Rio snarled out his opinion of this situation in a flood of blistering angry Spanish.

‘Do you mind translating that?’ she asked, bewildered.

His jaw clenched. ‘That’s outrageous!’

She accepted the more polite, shortened version, noticing with a shiver that he suddenly seemed even taller and more physically intimidating in the small room.

‘What’s the doctor’s number?’

Her eyes flew wide in alarm. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

He flashed her a look as he pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘What do you think? Should I call him out? Or, better still, I’ll tell him you need a second opinion—except you haven’t even had a first—’

Feeling her temper spurt at the implied criticism, she cut him off, her voice cold but controlled. ‘For the record he is a she and this isn’t your call to make in any sense of the word.’

She could see him almost literally bite back a sharp retort as her words sank in. Instead he threw her a look that simply seethed with frustration.

She struggled not to empathise with how he must be feeling, but she couldn’t afford to allow herself to soften towards him or show him any weakness, or very soon it could be Rio telling her when she could see her daughter.

This horrifying image hardened her resolve.

Rio already had a child, she just had Ellie.

‘You may have been a parent longer than me.’ She saw his blank expression and tacked on sarcastically, ‘Or had you already forgotten?’

He didn’t respond verbally to that barb, but at least she’d got some reaction. She supposed it was something that he could clearly feel guilt, always supposing she wasn’t misreading the reason for the dark bands of colour across his high cheekbones.

‘But I’ve been doing this for two years now,’ she added with quiet dignity. No point explaining that sometimes she still didn’t feel as though she knew what she was doing. She was not about to tell him about her insecurities; it would feel a lot like handing more ammunition to someone who already had a gun aimed at your head.

A frown flickered across her face at the over-dramatic analogy—she really had to lower the levels of paranoia. On the other hand she really couldn’t see a downside to Rio thinking she was an expert in child-rearing.

The seething silence lengthened while their eyes clashed, black on iridescent blue. The dark bands of colour scoring his cheekbones deepened and his eyes dropped as he finally slid the phone slowly back into his pocket, tacitly admitting a defeat she could see was alien to his nature and life experience.

‘And that is my fault, I suppose,’ he said bitterly.

Gwen recognised that this could easily escalate into some sort of war of attrition. One of them had to keep their temper, so she took hers tightly in hand and shook her head. If she lost it she might say things that she would undoubtedly later regret.

‘I didn’t say that. I’m simply saying that being a mum is a learning process and this isn’t the first time Ellie has been unwell. Babies do sometimes become unwell and they can’t exactly tell you what’s wrong!’ Belatedly aware that her voice had climbed shrilly and started to wobble, she took a deep, calming breath.

He didn’t need to know about her doubts, about the nights she longed for someone to share the responsibility that came with being the parent of a baby, but there hadn’t been anyone so she had made the unilateral decision that she no longer needed any help.

‘Her temperature has already come back down. She had a cold last week and it’s left her a little stuffed up. She’s been pulling at her ear…she seems a bit prone to ear problems.’ She pushed out the information quickly before explaining something no new parent, or indeed anyone who had never been ill, would know. ‘They are reluctant to give antibiotics these days for something that is probably viral, and sitting in a crowded waiting room was not going to make her feel any better. They’d just tell me to take her home and do what I am already doing.’

‘Which is?’

He listened in silence as she explained that she’d given Ellie medicine to lower her temperature and made sure she had plenty of fluids.