The Spaniard's Surprise Love-Child / A Bride Fit For A Prince?
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‘And sleep,’ she added, ‘is really good, though she’s likely to be a bit grumpy when she wakes up.’ She really hoped this would be sorted and he’d be gone by the time Ellie woke up, but, being a realist, she could see that this might be optimistic, so it was best to prepare him for the worst. ‘Or then again, she might be chirpy. It’s not an exact science…’
‘But in general she is a healthy child?’
Gwen was relieved he sounded calmer. ‘She’s fine and, yes, she’s had no health problems beyond the usual.’
He nodded and she could see from the blank look on his face that he didn’t have a clue what the usual was. Perhaps he didn’t have much to do with his son?
‘Right, then, is there anything else you’d like to know?’ She paused, wondering if she should tell him straight off that she wasn’t going to make any financial demands on him. Just cut the polite and painfully awkward chit-chat and get to the point?
‘This must have been a shock for you,’ she said, remembering how much of a shock it had been to her to discover she was pregnant.
She’d run home—that had been her first mistake.
Ironic really that her parents, who had never really believed in her five-year plan and her career, had suddenly been absolutely emphatic that she not give it up. Her father, they’d said, had already told everyone at the golf club about her success, and they were impressed—as if this clinched the argument. Except she wasn’t arguing, she was just letting them talk at her, feeling her heart freeze over as she listened to them in increasing horror.
‘So you want me to “get rid of it”?’ She remembered hearing her father’s hiss of exasperation as she sketched sarcastic inverted commas in the air and finished, ‘Just so that you can continue to have bragging rights at the golf club?’
‘Well, you’ve finally done something for us to be proud of.’
Ironically, once her parents’ pride in her would have mattered so much; it was what she’d been striving for all her life.
‘Gwen, dear, you must see your life will be ruined. All your plans will come to nothing—and what will people say?’
‘And that’s what really matters, isn’t it? What people think! The only thing that matters to you is appearances. There is no disgrace, no shame involved, in having a baby alone these days, Mam.’ Gwen’s glance flickered towards the towering presence of disapproval that was her father. ‘But there is plenty of shame in living a lie.’
Unable to meet her eyes, her mother looked away and whispered, ‘I only want what’s best for you, cariad.’
‘I know, Mam, but—’
‘How dare you talk to your mother like that? And don’t call her Mam—it’s common!’
As he planted a beefy arm around his wife’s shoulders Gwen found herself wondering when she’d last seen any display of physical affection between them.
‘If you keep it, we want nothing to do with you.’
Gwen looked at her mother, who just shook her head and looked away.
It was the exact point when Gwen knew she was totally on her own.
Her mum looked small, like someone who’d had the life sucked out of her. Gwen knew that at one time her mother would have been strong enough to resist her father’s demands that Gwen get rid of her baby…and her mother was probably paying a silent price ever since for not standing up to him, but she’d had no more fight left.
Gwen shook off the heavy empty feeling that came with the unhappy memories and forced a smile.
‘Do you want to sit down? Oh, not that one,’ she added quickly, gesturing at the overstuffed armchair he was standing next to. ‘The legs are a bit wobbly.’
He probably thought the whole place was a bit wobbly. After all, he had just been escorted on a tour around the school, including state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, where no expense had been spared. Despite this, the employees lived in accommodation that could only be called basic.
He shook his head and walked across to the second armchair but, instead of sitting, stood behind it and placed his hands on the back rest. ‘I’m fine.’
Gwen assumed his dark brooding scowl was directed at his surroundings and lifted her chin. Ah, well, it would do him good to slum it, she decided, struggling to hold onto her angry contempt as an image of his cottage on the Cape Cod island off Martha’s Vineyard flashed into her head. When he’d first asked her to dinner, she’d assumed he was staying in a hotel, but she had learnt that it was never a good idea to assume with Rio.
His version of a cottage was the incredible sprawling seafront property set in the middle of lush, beautifully tended acres. The fact they had arrived in a private plane that he’d piloted himself should have been a clue to how ridiculously wealthy he was, but the sight of his house—or, more correctly, his estate—had brought it home to her for the first time that she was dealing with someone who lived in a completely different world.
A world where wonky had no place, just as she’d had no place in his.
She absently smoothed a throw that she had positioned to hide the worn patch on the arm of a chair. This was her world, hers and Ellie’s, and she was not ashamed of it, she was proud of what she had achieved with no help from anyone and she wouldn’t allow him to make her feel any different about it.
For years she’d watched her father blame her mother, or even sometimes her, every time he’d strayed—which had been often. But it had always been their fault for not understanding him, for not being enough for him.
The moment Ellie was born Gwen had vowed that she’d be a good role model. That her daughter would never have to feel ashamed of her the way Gwen had eventually become ashamed of her mother, who had been unable to break free of the cycle of emotional abuse doled out by her father.
Ellie would never feel that she was not enough!
CHAPTER FIVE
RIO WATCHED GWEN STRAIGHTEN, the cushion she had picked up still pressed to her chest protectively, her expression distant but wary as she focused on him. The idea that she felt she needed to protect herself from him made the muscles along his jaw quiver.
He admired the way she’d made this small house into a home, despite its worn appearance. He thought less of the school’s headmaster, not Gwen. The employer in him considered this bad working practice. Loyalty was a two-way street; you treated staff well and they in turn were willing to go the extra mile.
The newly discovered father in him found the idea of his child not enjoying the luxuries that he took for granted felt wrong on so many levels. His child, but except for today’s chance encounter he might have walked past her in the street and not known her!
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Gwen?’
Thrown by the directness of the question, she blinked. ‘It was my decision to go ahead with the pregnancy, my body, my baby,’ she intoned solemnly. ‘What would have been the point telling you? What were you going to do, after, of course, I’d submitted to a lie detector and the prescribed range of DNA tests? Marry me?’
He winced but she didn’t notice.
‘People marry for less,’ he observed carefully.
‘Love, you mean?’
‘You think a transitory chemical attraction is more important than having a child together?’
‘You make love sound like a selfish indulgence,’ she said.
He arched a strongly delineated brow. ‘I wasn’t talking about maternal love.’
‘You asked what I think, well, I think that Ellie and what is best for her are the most important things to me,’ she told him fiercely.
‘Until you meet a man?’ His broad shoulders tensed as a flash freeze image formed in his head of a faceless male in Gwen’s bed and being a father to his child. The constant tug of sexual attraction he was fighting paled beside this raw and primal response to what was only an imaginary scenario.
She released a scornful laugh. ‘Because I feel incomplete without a man in my life? Hardly! I have Ellie, and my work, so I already have everything I need.’
But did she have enough money? he wondered.
‘I suppose that contacting you to keep you in the loop was an option, but not one that filled me with joy and positivity after our affair ended the way it did. And quite honestly I was too busy throwing up for several months to worry about it that much.’
He felt a kick of guilt that was totally irrational because he hadn’t known she’d suffered that badly, but, as they said in every courtroom drama, ignorance was no defence. Something twisted inside him at the thought of her being alone and suffering.
But she wouldn’t have been alone, he realised with a sense of relief. Not all families were as dysfunctional as his.
‘You went home?’ As his glance drifted over her sinuous curves, it was hard for him to imagine her heavily pregnant.
Gwen’s eyes lowered. ‘For a time,’ she said, moistening her lips. ‘I had some savings.’
‘You packed in your job right off? I’m sure they had a very generous healthcare plan.’
‘I was living in America and I was still on a probationary period, so there was no way they were going to give me a permanent contract if I was pregnant.’
He cleared his throat and gave a thoughtful nod. ‘So not good timing, then.’
She gave a sudden laugh. ‘There’s never a good time to have a baby and yet people still do.’
He would have found this conversation more comfortable if he’d been the target of her resentment and anger, but she appeared remarkably calm about having her life thrown upside down. ‘This was hardly a planned pregnancy.’
‘The statistics on that make interesting reading—fewer than you’d think are planned.’
‘At least you had a support network back home.’
Gwen said nothing. The less said about her support network, the better. She smoothed back her hair and gave a casual shrug.
‘I have friends and I like to be independent. Also, as luck would have it, I had a small win on a premium bond my late godmother bought me years ago, so money wasn’t a problem.’ It was important to her not to come across as a victim—not of anything. ‘Look, I’m sure you’re not really interested in my finances, so let’s just get to the real reason you’re here.’
Something flickered at the backs of his eyes as he arched a sardonic brow. ‘And that would be?’ he prompted with a display of gentle interest, though there was nothing anyone would describe as gentle in the headlight stare that she found uncomfortably intent.
‘I am not going to make any demands on you. I don’t expect any involvement from you at all.’
A nerve in Rio’s cheek clenched. She said it as though he needed reassurance, while her attitude strongly suggested that the news that she didn’t expect him to be any part of his own child’s life was meant to make him happy! Dios! He would have been the first to concede that he might have given her reason to think he was not exactly a saint, but did she really think he was such a rat as to walk away from his own child?
‘What sort of demands are we talking?’ He kept his face locked in a mask of polite indifference that became increasingly hard to maintain as an image of her making some very pleasant demands of him floated through his head, her soft, husky laugh, her long, extremely flexible legs, her lips. His gaze sank to her mouth, which he assumed was about to say something far less pleasing than, Again, please, Rio!
His indolent drawl had nothing to do with the flames flickering in his mesmeric eyes, and for a moment Gwen lost her verbal footing as waves of distracting heat thrummed through her body.
She stammered out, ‘I-I’ll put it in writing if you want…? I expect you have lawyers on speed dial?’ She faltered, her voice drying up as she encountered his furious glare. She could literally feel the anger vibrating off him.
‘You think that’s why I’m here? To have you sign some sort of nondisclosure agreement and pay you off!’
‘I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you!’ she exclaimed in horror, pushing aside a small voice in the back of her head that asked if she was allowing her pride to get in the way of Ellie’s best interests.
But she was getting ahead of herself. Rio hadn’t offered her anything yet, with strings or otherwise.
He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair, his eyes flicking to the half-closed bedroom door. ‘It appears as if you’re coping.’
As he gave the grudging concession—perhaps it was even a compliment?—her shocked, widened eyes flew to his face. But the expression in his own hooded gaze as he continued talking had her quickly back-pedalling on the compliment idea.
‘But why should my daughter have to just cope? I realise it can’t have been easy for you.’
Not even slightly mollified by the acknowledgement, Gwen ground her even white teeth. ‘I’m not a victim.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest that you are.’
She looked at him sideways and thought, Yeah, not much?
‘I have a job I love, a daughter I adore—I consider myself extremely lucky.’
Rio’s slender grip on diplomacy slipped through his fingers as he ground out a frustrated imprecation. This woman really was the most aggravating and touchy female he had ever encountered.
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you, because you’re too damned stubborn and independent to admit you needed help, even if your life depended on it, but this isn’t just your life, is it? It’s Ellie’s, my daughter’s…’ He caught the flare in her eyes but ignored a stab of guilt for his below-the-belt blow. He still had a point to make. ‘Our daughter does not even have a room of her own and she is left in the care of those who, although I am sure they are admirable, are little more than strangers…’
‘Not to me!’ she countered. ‘And sometimes a child is better off with a stranger than a real parent.’
‘You think my daughter would be better off with a stranger than me,’ Rio said flatly.
Her blue eyes flew wide. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ She heaved out a sigh and lifted her hands, palm up, as she admitted, ‘I didn’t have the best relationship with my father.’
His clenched air of tension relaxed somewhat at her admission. ‘And now?’
‘There is no relationship at all.’
He tipped his head but to her obvious relief didn’t push it, instead murmuring a soft, expressionless, ‘It happens.’
‘Look, this could get very complicated. You already have a child and—’ Something flashed in his eyes and she stumbled to a halt. ‘Obviously your relationships are none of my business, and if you wanted to put something to one side for Ellie when she’s older, for her university education, that might be a nice gesture.’
His head reared back, his high cheekbones standing out on a face that was rigid with offence, which she clearly found bewildering if the confused look on her face was anything to go by.
‘You think I make a habit of impregnating women and walking away?’ And why shouldn’t she? he thought bitterly. After all, that was exactly what he had done, even if he’d only done it the once, rather than twice, as she believed.
Rio was not a person who had ever felt the need for the good opinion of others and he rarely, if ever, explained himself to anyone. Some people called him arrogant and he was fine with that—people took him at his word or they didn’t, and it was not something he ever lost sleep over.
So it came as a shock to have to fight the impulse to tell Gwen the truth about his brother’s child, but it was not his secret to share and he had given his word to Marisa. It was a promise he couldn’t break, even if he had regretted making it many times.
He sometimes wondered if the agreement with Marisa and his guilt over that had been partly responsible for the intangible distance that had grown between him and his twin. There was no question in his mind that, despite the kick in the gut that it had been at the time, he still hadn’t accepted his brother’s out-of-the-blue decision to walk away from the responsibilities they’d shared controlling the Bardales empire.
‘I have no idea what sort of arrangement you have with—’
Rio cut across her, choosing his words with care. ‘That child you speak of is not in my life.’
‘I suppose fatherhood is not for everyone,’ she muttered, looking at her feet.
‘Your efforts to be non-judgemental could do with some work,’ he said drily.
Her eyes flew to his face. ‘I’m not judgemental,’ she said huffily.
His eyes narrowed on her flushed, angry and quite heart-stoppingly beautiful face and he felt his blood heat with inconvenient but inevitable lust. ‘I’m sure you’re the epitome of tact and political correctness.’
‘Things nobody is going to accuse you of!’ she fired back.
His sensual lips twisted into a smile. ‘Well, at least we’ve stopped being painfully polite to one another.’
‘I am polite.’
‘I’m starting to get the idea that you’d be happier if I wanted to escape my responsibilities.’
‘I…we are not anyone’s responsibility—’ She stopped mid angry flow, her eyes widening to their fullest extent as she stared at him in dawning horror. ‘You mean you’re not?’
‘What do you think I’ve been trying to say?’
‘I won’t know until you say it.’
‘I want to co-parent Ellie. I want to be fully involved in her life.’
‘Co-parent?’ she parroted as though the word made no sense to her. ‘You want to be involved?’
‘Why are you so shocked? I may not have given birth to her, but half that child’s make-up is mine.’
Gwen’s bubble of laughter was half a sob. ‘That’s hard to miss.’ She shook her head. ‘But you have said that you don’t have contact with your son so I assumed—’
‘You mean you hoped?’ he said cynically.
Her eyes slid away from his.
‘Look, I’m not going to force you into anything. I just want to get to know my daughter and I think you owe me that at least.’
Any brownie points his placatory manner might have won was clearly cancelled out by that owe and he could see Gwen’s temper fizz. ‘Owe? So are you keeping some sort of score card? You know, you might think I’m dim, but I can’t for the life of me think what I could possibly owe you!’
‘Ellie’s first steps?’
He watched an arrested expression steal across her face. She was so easy to read that he wondered how she’d got this far without someone taking advantage of her.
She hadn’t. Because you did.
‘First smile,’ he ground out, pushing away the guilt. ‘First word… In fact, you owe me for all the things I have already missed, all the milestone moments that I will never experience!’
The emotion that thickened his normally slight Spanish accent obviously shocked her deeply.
‘I didn’t think you’d want to experience them.’ Honesty rang out in her voice.
‘I have told you I want to be a part of her life. I meant it.’
Rio paused, tilting his head to shield the expression that flashed into his dark eyes as the dark irony struck home. He was fighting for a role that he had colluded with another to deprive his twin of.
He tensed, ready to quash the guilt and nagging doubts that inevitably accompanied the acknowledgement of his role in the deception, given an added knife twist now that he had discovered he was a secret father too.
But the two situations were different, he reasoned. Roman’s relationship with the mother of his child had been over long before she had come to Rio asking for his help.
You never had a relationship with Gwen, though, the voice in his head contributed unhelpfully. You just had sex.
His jaw clenched. He did not need reminding about the sex. He remembered every touch, every gasp, every soft sigh… With an effort he dragged his thoughts away from the warm distractions filling it and focused on the facts that had influenced his decision.
The mother of his brother’s child had approached Rio at a time when every media outlet had been delivering a new image of Roman, a now famous bestselling author who was as daring and handsome as his fictional hero on an almost daily basis. In every image the same woman was with him, frequently gazing lovingly up at him. His twin was happy, or appeared to be, with another woman. His life had clearly moved on.
Had Rio’s own ever really moved on from the short torrid affair with Gwen?
The furrow between his ebony brows deepened as he closed down the inner dialogue. Not being in a relationship didn’t meant that he hadn’t moved on from Gwen; not being in a relationship meant he was doing something right. Living his life the way he always did.
A fleeting image of his brother’s ex-lover floated into his head. Despite his initial natural inclination to side with his twin, Marisa’s story and her genuine desperation had touched him, and brought home how far he and his twin had grown apart. There had been a time when they discussed everything.
He asked himself what would be achieved by telling Roman now. At the time, he couldn’t for the life of him see anything positive in doing so. But his eyes drifted to the half-open door behind which his own child lay asleep and he realised that now his reaction might have been very different. But that had been then, he told himself, once more squashing down his guilt. Marisa’s child had got the bone marrow he’d so desperately needed to save his life and that was what mattered the most.
‘And every child deserves a father?’
He arched a brow, wondering if he had imagined the tense undercurrent in her question. ‘You don’t think so?’
‘It depends on the father. If I think that you’re not good for Ellie, I will cut off all access and I don’t care if you have a tribe of lawyers throwing money at it.’ Her eyes shot blue warning fire at him.
His lips twitched at her ferocious tigress act, except of course it wasn’t an act. He was pretty sure she’d make anyone who hurt her child regret living. ‘That seems reasonable.’
Suspicious of Rio’s sudden, easy capitulation, Gwen folded her arms across her heaving breasts. ‘So how do you envisage this working?’ She was pleased she sounded calm and businesslike, and glad he couldn’t hear the panicked thud of her heart. Although maybe he could—it was pretty much all she could hear.
Gwen couldn’t help wondering if Rio was secretly regretting having no contact with his son and whether Ellie was going to be some sort of consolation prize. But as much as she hated the idea, Gwen knew that he was right to ask for the opportunity to get to know his daughter. She owed him a chance, at least, to establish some sort of paternal relationship with Ellie.
‘I understand there is a week left of term and then you have a long summer vacation?’
She nodded cautiously. Even the most devoted staff were counting down the days.
‘You have any plans?’
Gwen was not fooled for a moment by the seeming casualness of the question. ‘I thought we might take a few trips to the beach. I might even buy a tent when Ellie is a bit older and try camping.’ She had always wanted to camp when she was a child but her father had been too busy for family holidays and her mother came out in a rash at the idea of being that close to nature.
‘That sounds enjoyable, but I have another idea, although I’m afraid it does not involve canvas. Come to Spain with me. I have a place with a private beach where you can relax and I can get to know my…our daughter,’ he swiftly corrected in response to the warning flash from her eyes. ‘And you can get used to me being part of your life.’
‘You can’t be a part of my life!’ she snapped.
He arched a brow. ‘Isn’t that inevitable when we have a child together? Don’t make me fight you on this, Gwen.’
She found the absence of anything in his expression or voice more intimidating than if he’d yelled at her.
She swallowed, but her chin stayed lifted to a defiant angle. ‘Are you threatening me?’