Brazilian Escape: Playing the Dutiful Wife / Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child

He looked at her for a long time before answering, because she was right. Why would he do that? Niklas had had many relationships, many less than emotional encounters, and there had been a couple of long high-maintenance ones. Yet not once in his life had he considered marriage before. Not once had he wanted another person close. He had actually feared that another person might depend on a man who had come from nothing, but as he looked at her for the first time he wasn’t daunted by the prospect at all.

Around her—again for the first time—he trusted in himself.

‘I like you.’

‘But what would you get out of it?’

‘You,’ he replied, and suddenly it seemed imperative that he marry her—that he make her his even if just for a little while. ‘I like sorting things out … and I like you. And …’ He gestured to the condoms on the bedside table. ‘And I don’t like them. So,’ he said, reaching for the hotel phone, ‘will you marry me?’

There was nothing about him she understood, but more than that there was nothing about herself she understood any more, for in that moment his proposal seemed rather logical.

A solution, in fact.

‘Yes.’

He spoke on the phone for just a few moments and then turned and smiled at his bride-to-be.

‘Done.’

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS THE quickest of quick weddings.

Or maybe not.

They were in Vegas, after all.

Niklas rang down to the concierge and informed them of their plans, telling him how they wanted them executed.

‘Do you want them to bring up a selection of dresses?’ he asked Meg. ‘It’s your day; you can have whatever you want.’

‘No dress.’ Meg smiled.

But there were some traditional elements.

He ordered lots of flowers, and they arrived in the room along with champagne, and there was even a wedding cake. Meg sat at a table trying on rings as the celebrant went through the paperwork.

He’d arranged music too, but Niklas chose from a selection already on his phone, and Meg found herself walking at his side to music she didn’t know and a man she badly wanted to.

The bride and groom wore white bathrobes, and she stood watching as the titanium ring dotted with diamonds she had chosen was slipped onto her finger. Perhaps bizarrely, there was not a flicker of doubt in her mind as she said yes.

And neither was there a flicker of doubt in Niklas’s mind as he kissed his virgin bride and told her that he was happy to be married to a woman he had only met yesterday.

‘Today,’ Meg corrected and, yes, because of the time difference between Vegas and Australia it was still the day they’d first met.

‘Sorry to rush you.’ He grinned.

There was a mixture of nerves and heady relief when everyone had left.

He undid her robe and took off his, and then he pulled her onto the bed.

‘Soon,’ Niklas promised as his hands roamed over her, ‘you will be wondering how you got through your life without this.’

‘I’m wondering now,’ Meg admitted, and she wasn’t just talking about the sex. She was talking about him too. She had never opened up more fully with another person, had never felt more like herself.

Niklas’s kiss was incredibly tender—a kiss she would never have expected from him. He kissed her till she almost relaxed, and then his mouth became more consuming. He needed to shave, but she liked the roughness, liked his naked body wrapped around hers.

She was on her back, and he was on top as he had so badly wanted to be on the plane. He could not wait—not for a moment longer. His knees nudged hers apart and he slipped his fingers briefly in, checking she was ready for him, finding that she was.

And now there was nothing between them.

And he was no longer patient.

He warned her it would hurt.

He watched her face as she blanched in pain, then kissed her hard on the mouth.

As he drove into her she screamed into his mouth, because that first thrust seemed to go on for ever, and every part of her felt as if it was tearing just to accommodate his long, thick length. He tried to be gentle, but he was too large for that. But once he had ripped off that Band-Aid he kept moving within her, kept on kissing her mouth, her face, giving her no choice but to grow accustomed to the new sensations she was feeling. He moved within her as his tongue had earlier described that he would, moving deep till he had driven her wild. He wasn’t kissing her now, and she looked up to see his face etched with concentration, his eyes closed, his body moving rapidly as hers rose to meet him.

Now it was Meg’s hands urging him on, digging her fingers into his tight buttocks, whimpering as she sought relief, and then he opened his eyes and let her have it, spilled every last drop deep into her. Her orgasm followed quickly after, and she was frenzied as she came, almost scared at the power of her body’s response, at the things he had taught her to do.

And then he collapsed on top of her, his breathing heavy, and although it felt like a dream somehow it was real. Meg realised that he had been right—she had no idea how she’d got through her life without this.

Without him.

‘Shouldn’t we be regretting this by now?’ Meg asked.

They were lying in a very rumpled bed and it was morning. Her body ached with the most delicious hurt, but Niklas had assured her for this morning’s lesson she would need only her mouth.

‘What’s to regret?’ He turned on the bed and looked over to her.

He didn’t do happiness, but he felt the first rays of it today. He liked waking up to her, and the rest was mere detail that he would soon sort out.

‘You live in Brazil and I live in Australia …’

‘As we both know, there are planes …’ He looked across the pillow. ‘Do you worry about everything?’

‘No.’

‘I think you do.’

‘I don’t.’

‘So how shall we tell your parents?’

He saw her slight grimace.

‘They might be pleased for you.’

As the real world invaded so too did confusion. ‘I doubt it. It will be a terrible shock.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I think once they get used to the idea they’ll be pleased.’ And then she swallowed nervously. ‘I think.’

He smiled at her worried face. ‘First of all you need to get used to the idea.’

‘I don’t know much about you.’

‘There isn’t much to know,’ Niklas said.

She rather doubted that.

‘I don’t have family, as I said, so you have avoided having a mother-in-law. I hear from friends they can sometimes be a problem, so that’s an unexpected bonus for you!’

He could be so flippant about things that were important, Meg thought, and there was so much she wanted to find out about him. She wondered how he had survived without a family, for a start, how he had made such a success of himself from nothing—because clearly he had. But unlike their wedding some things, Meg guessed, had to be taken more slowly—she couldn’t just sit up and fire a thousand questions at him. Somehow she knew it wasn’t something he would talk about easily, but she tried. ‘What was it like, though?’ Meg asked. ‘Growing up in an orphanage?’

‘There were many orphanages,’ he said. ‘I was moved around a lot.’ Perhaps he realised he wasn’t answering her question, because he added, ‘I don’t know, really. I try not to think about it.’

‘But …’

He halted her. ‘We’re married Meg. But that doesn’t mean we need every piece of each other. Let’s just enjoy what we have, huh?’

So if he didn’t want to talk about himself she’d start with the easier stuff instead. ‘You live in São Paulo?’

‘I have an apartment there,’ Niklas said. ‘If I am working in Europe I tend to stay at my house in Villefranche-sur-Mer. And now I guess I’ll have to look for somewhere in Sydney …’ His smile was wicked. ‘If your father gets really cross, maybe I can ask if he knows any good houses—if he would be able to help …’

Meg started to laugh, because it sounded as if he did understand where she was coming from. Niklas was right—a nice big commission would certainly go a long way towards appeasing her father. She realised that the shock would wear off eventually, and that her rather shallow parents would be delighted to find somewhere for their rich new son-in-law to live.

As Meg lay there, and the sun started to work its way through the chink in the curtains, she started to realise that this was the happiest she had been in her life. But even with that knowledge there was one part about last night that had been unjustifiably reckless.

‘I’ll go on the pill …’ she said. ‘If it isn’t already too late.’

He had said this wasn’t for ever, and the wedding ring that had seemed a solution yesterday was less than one now.

‘If last night brings far-reaching consequences you will both be taken care of.’

‘For a while?’

He looked over and knew that, unlike most women, Meg wasn’t talking about money. But his bank account was the only thing not tainted by his past.

‘For a while,’ Niklas said. ‘I promise you—we’ll be arguing within weeks, we’ll be driving each other insane—and not with lust …’ He smiled in all the wrong places, but he made her smile back. ‘You’ll be glad to see the back of me.’

She doubted it.

‘I’m hard work,’ he warned.

But worth it.

Though she was going on the pill.

And then he looked over to her again, and for as long as it was like this she could adore him.

‘I am going to write to the airline tomorrow and thank them for not having a first-class seat,’ he said.

‘I might write and thank them too.’

‘It will be okay,’ he told her. ‘Soon I will ring Carla and I will have her re-schedule things. Then we will meet with your parents and I will tell them.’ He grinned at her horrified expression.

‘I’ll speak to my parents.’

‘No,’ Niklas said. ‘Because you will start apologising and doubting and I am a better negotiator.’

‘Negotiator?’

‘How long do you want off for our honeymoon?’ Niklas said. ‘Of course you will want to give them notice—you don’t want to just walk out—but for now we should have some time together. Maybe I’ll take you to the mountains …’ There was no gap between them now, so he pulled her across. ‘And I will also tell them that we will have a big wedding in a few weeks.’

‘I’m happy with the wedding we had.’

‘Don’t you want a big one?’

Her hand slid down beneath the sheet and she loved it that he laughed, not understanding that laughter was actually rare for him. Then her mouth followed her hands, and he lay there as she inexpertly woke another part of him.

‘Don’t you want a proper wedding, with family and dancing?’

‘I hate dancing …’ She kissed all the way down his length and she felt his hand in her hair, gently lifting her to where he wanted more attention.

‘I do too.’

‘I thought all Brazilians could dance?’

‘Stop talking,’ Niklas said. ‘And I never said I couldn’t. I just don’t.’

She looked up at the most stunning, complicated man who had ever graced her vision and thought of his prowess and the movement of his body. All of it had been for her, and she shivered at the thought of the days and nights to come, of getting to know more and more of him. Already she knew that she was starting to want for ever, but that wasn’t what this was about.

And then she tasted him again.

His hands moved her head as he promised she would not hurt him and told her exactly what to do with her mouth. She was lost in his scent, the feel of him in her mouth, and the shock of his rapid come was a most pleasant surprise. It was a surprise for Niklas too, but this was how she moved him.

He did not want to get out of bed—did not want to get back to the world. Except no doubt it was screaming for him by now—he had never had his phone turned off for so long.

He climbed out of bed and she lay there, just staring at the ceiling, lost in thoughts of him and the time they would take to get to know the other properly.

And Niklas was thinking the same. He had been looking forward to some time off, had been aware that he needed some, now he could not wait to take it.

He showered quickly and considered shaving, and then he picked up his phone, impatient to speak to Carla, to change his plans yet again. He grimaced when he saw how many missed calls he’d had, how many texts, and then he frowned—because there were hundreds. From Carla, from Miguel, from just about everyone he knew …

It was his first inkling that something was wrong.

Niklas had no family, and the only person he had ever really cared about was in bed in the next room, so he didn’t have any flare of panic, but there was clearly a problem. Problems he was used to, and was very good at sorting them out.

It just might take a little time, that was all, when really he would far rather be heading back to bed. He dialled Carla’s number, wondering if he should tell Meg to order some breakfast. He would just as soon as he made this call.

She could hear him in the lounge, speaking in his own language into his phone. She lay there for ages, twisting her new ring around her finger. Then, as he still spoke on the phone, she realised she wasn’t actually terrified at the prospect of telling her parents, and even if this wasn’t the most conventional of marriages, even if he had warned her it would end some day, she was completely at peace with what had occurred.

The only thing she was right now, Meg realised, was starving.

‘I’m going to ring for breakfast,’ she said as he walked back into the room, and then she looked over and frowned, because even though he had been gone ages she was surprised to see that he was dressed.

‘I have to return to Brazil.’

‘Oh.’ She sat up in the bed. ‘Now?’

‘Now.’

He was not looking at her, Meg realised. What she did not realise was that precisely two seconds from now he was going to break her heart.

‘We made a mistake.’

As easily as that he did it.

‘Sorry?’

‘The party’s over.’

‘Hold on …’ She was completely sideswiped. ‘What happened between there and here?’ She pointed to the lounge he had come from. ‘Who changed your mind?’

‘I did.’

‘What? Did you suddenly remember you had a fiancée?’ Meg shouted. ‘Or a girlfriend …?’ She was starting to cry. ‘Or five kids and a wife …?’ It was starting to hit home how little she knew about him.

‘There’s no wife …’ he shrugged ‘… except you. I will speak with my legal team as soon as I return to Brazil, see if we can get it annulled. But I doubt it …’

He didn’t even sit on the bed to tell her it was over, and she realised what a fool she had been, how easily he had taken her in.

‘If it cannot be annulled they will contact you for a divorce. I’ll make a one-off settlement,’ he said.

‘Settlement?’

‘My people will sort it. You can fight me for more if you choose, but I strongly suggest that you quickly accept. Of course if you are pregnant …’

He stood there with the sun streaming through the curtains behind him, and all she could see was the dark outline of a man she didn’t know.

‘It might be a good idea to think about the morning-after pill.’

And then there was a knock on the door and it was a bellboy to take his case.

‘I’ve asked for a late check-out for you, if you want to reschedule your flight. Have breakfast …’ he offered, as if this was normal, and then he tipped the bellboy, who left with his luggage.

‘I don’t understand …’ She was turning into some hysterical female, sitting screaming on a bed as her one-night stand walked off.

‘This is the type of thing people do in Vegas. We had fun …’

‘Fun!’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘It’s no big deal.’

‘But it is for me.’

‘It’s about time that you grew up, then.’

She had never expected him to be cruel, but she had no idea what she was dealing with. Niklas could be cruel when necessary, and today it was.

Very necessary.

He could not look at her. She was sitting on the bed in tears, pleading with him, and also, he noted, growing increasingly angry. Her voice rose as she told him that he was the one who needed to grow up, that he was the one who needed to sort out his life, and her hands were waving. Any minute now he thought she would rise and attack him. He wanted to catch her wrists and kiss the fear away, wanted to feel just for a moment her body writhing in anger and to reassure her—except he had nothing he could reassure her with. He knew how bad things would be shortly, so he had to be cruel to be kind.

‘What did you have to marry me for?’ she shouted. ‘I was clearly already going to sleep with you …’

She was about to lunge at him, Niklas knew. She was kneeling on the bed, still grabbing the sheet around her for now, but in a moment it would be off. Her green eyes were flashing, her teeth bared and with his next words he knew he would end this.

‘I told you yesterday.’ He went to the bedside and flicked a few foil packets to the floor. ‘I don’t like condoms.’

He took the clawing to his cheek, stood there as she sprang towards him, then caught and held her naked fury by the arms for a moment. And then he pushed her back on the bed.

And as simply as that he was gone.

A minute ago the only things on her mind had been breakfast and making love with her new husband.

Now they were talking annulments and settlements.

Or rather they weren’t talking.

He was gone.

He had left with cruel words and livid scratches on his cheek and she just lay there, reeling, her anger like a weight that did not propel her, but instead seemed to pin her down to the bed. It was actually an achievement to breathe.

A few minutes later Meg realised she was breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, as she had done on the plane during take-off. Her own body was rallying to bring her out from the panic she now found herself in. Still she lay there and tried to make sense of something there was no sense to be made of.

He had played her.

Right from the start it had all been just a game to him.

Except this was her life.

Maybe he was right. Maybe she did need to grow up. If a man like Niklas could so easily manipulate her, could have her believing in love at first sight, then maybe she did need to sort herself out. She curled into herself for a moment, breathed for a bit, cried for a bit, and then, because she had to, Meg stood.

She didn’t have breakfast.

She ordered coffee instead, and gulped on the hot sweet liquid in the hope that it would warm her, would wean her brain out of its shock. It did not.

She showered, blasting her bruised, tender body with water, for she could not bear to step into the bath where they had kissed and so nearly made love.

Sex, Meg reminded herself. Because as it turned out love at first sight had had nothing to do with it.

She dressed quickly, unable to bear being in a room that smelt of them, and then she looked at the rumpled and bloodstained sheet on the bed where he had taken her and thought she might throw up.

Within an hour she was at the airport.

And just a little while later she was sitting on a plane and trying to work out how to get her life back to where it had been yesterday.

Except her heart felt as bruised and aching as the most intimate parts of her body, and her eyes, swollen from crying, felt the same.

Meg ordered a cool eye mask from the attendant. Before putting it on she slid off her wedding ring and put it on a chain around her neck, trying to fathom what had happened.

She couldn’t.

She did her best with make-up in the toilet cubicle just before they came in for landing. She lifted her hair and saw the bruise his mouth had left on her neck and felt a scream building that somehow she had to contain. She covered her eyes with sunglasses and wondered how she would ever get through the next few hours, days, weeks.

‘Thank God …’ Her mum met her at the baggage carousel. ‘The car’s waiting. I’ll bring you up to speed on the way.’ She peered at her daughter. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Just tired,’ Meg answered, and then she looked at her mum and knew she could never, ever tell her, so instead she forced a smile. ‘But I’m fine.’

‘Good,’ said her mum as they grabbed her case and headed for the car. ‘How was Vegas?’

CHAPTER SIX

MEG STOOD IN her office, looking out of the window, her fingers, as they so often did, idly turning the ring that still, almost a year later, lived on a chain around her neck.

She wasn’t looking forward to tonight, given what she had to tell her parents.

It had nothing to do with Niklas. There had been eleven months of no contact now. Eleven months for Meg to start healing. Yet still she didn’t know how to start.

She couldn’t bear to think about him, let alone tell anyone what had happened.

And even though she could not bear to think about him, even though it actually hurt to do so, of course all too often Meg did.

It hurt to remember the good bits.

The bad bits almost killed her.

Surprisingly, she couldn’t quite work out if she regretted it.

Niklas Dos Santos, for the brief time he had appeared in it, had actually changed her life. Meeting him had changed her. Hell did make you stronger. This was her life and she must live it, and Meg had decided that she was finally going to follow her dreams and study to be a chef. Now she just had to tell her parents. So in a way tonight did in fact have something to do with him.

The strange thing was, she wanted to tell Niklas about her decision too—was fighting with herself not to contact him.

As painful as it was to remember, as brutal as his departure had been, still a part of her was grateful for the biggest mistake of her life and, fiddling with his ring as she so often did, Meg felt tears sting her eyes.

That was the only thing that was different today.

She hadn’t cried for him since that morning. Actually, she had, but it had only been the once—the morning a couple of weeks later when she had got her period. Meg had sunk to her knees and wept on the toilet floor, not with relief, but because there was nothing left of them.

Nothing to tell him.

No reason for contact.

Apart from the paperwork it was as over as it could be.

So for the best part of a year she had completely avoided it. Had tried not to think of him while finding it impossible not to.

Every day had her waiting for a thick legal letter with a Brazilian postmark and yet it had never arrived.

Every night was just a fight not to think.

Sometimes Meg was tempted to look him up on the internet and find out more about the man who she could not forget—yet she was scared to, scared that even a glimpse of his face on her computer screen would have her picking up the phone to beg.

That was how much she still missed him.

Sometimes she grew angry, and wanted to contact him so that they could initiate the divorce, but that would be just an excuse to ring him. Meg knew she didn’t need to speak with him to divorce him, yet she had not even started the simple process, because once she started down that path it would stop being a dream—which sometimes she thought it must have been …

Then her fingers would move to the cool metal of his ring and she’d find out again it was real.

She looked up at the clock and saw that it was time for lunch. Grateful for the chance of some fresh air while she worked out exactly how to tell her parents she was leaving the family business, Meg was tempted to ignore the ringing phone.

She wished she had when she answered it, because some new clients had arrived and were insisting that they be seen immediately.