Rags To Riches: His Wish, Her Command: The Last Summer of Being Single / An Enticing Debt to Pay / A Navy SEAL's Surprise Baby

‘Actually there was only ever one tenant. A retired couple from Marseilles who only ever used the house during August. The house had been empty for over a year when Nicole and I moved in. Didn’t you know? ‘

He stared at her hard, the words resonating inside his head before words burst out of his mouth from a place of anger and resentment. ‘That can’t be right. There was a family living here right until the day the divorce papers were signed.’

The hard words echoed around the small space, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees.

Ella licked her lips, squeezed them hard together, crossed her arms and stretched up almost onto tiptoe so that she could stare Seb straight in the eye.

‘Mr Castellano,’ she said in a calm low voice, and her chin lifted another couple of inches. ‘I may only be the housekeeper here, but I do not appreciate being called a liar.’ She paused, took a breath then carried on, her shoulders lifting and falling as she spoke. ‘So. Make your mind up. Do you want me to help you? Or not? Because if you do, you’re going to have to change your tone. And fast. Have I made myself perfectly clear?’

Her lips formed a single line, her arms wrapped tighter across her chest and she just stood there, covered in dust and grubby marks, holding her ground and waiting for him to say something.

Seb responded by sitting down on the next box. Not caring about the damage to the fine fabric of his trousers or the indentations being poked into his skin.

It had been a very long time since anyone had dared to confront him face to face and ask—no, demand—that he change his tone.

His tone! His tone was just fine. It was his temper that was the problem.

She did not know what he had gone through. How could she? How could anyone understand when the only person who knew the truth was his dad? Luc Castellano was the person he should be challenging.

As for Ella Martinez? Ella Martinez was simply magnificent.

He had misjudged her. She had clearly been upset about a letter he had seen when he came into the attic, and perhaps that had made her oversensitive. The laid-back serene woman he had seen singing that morning had her own issues to deal with and he had no right to make them any worse by shifting his hot temper onto her shoulders.

Seb inhaled a deep breath, formed a thin-lipped and restrained smile and saw the tension in her jaw relax just a little.

‘Quite right. You have made yourself very clear and I can assure you that I won’t use that tone with you again.’ He gave her a closed-mouth smile. ‘I am pond scum. Please accept my sincere apology.’

Her lips twitched slightly, but he had already guessed that she was not going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘What kind of pond scum?’ ‘Green slime.’

‘Um. Okay.’ She released her arms and leant back on one of the chairs so that she was at about the same height as Seb. ‘But I’ll only accept your apology if you tell me why it was so hard for you to accept that this house had been standing empty. Because it really was. I know because I had to clean it!’

The power of her simple words combined with a steady and trusting gaze bored into his skull. She was telling the truth and he was the biggest idiot in the world. He had believed his dad. Suddenly he was tired of all the lies.

She deserved an explanation. No. More than that. She deserved the truth.

It had been years since he had felt the need to explain himself to anyone and Seb sniffed away the apprehension that came with finding himself in such an unusual position. Perhaps it was this house? The challenges just kept coming.

He had two choices. Stand up, walk out and jump into his car. Or stay and see it through.

Which was probably why he stretched out his long arms in front of him, hands palms together.

‘I will tell you what I do know. I know that a few years ago I offered my dad a very large sum of money in exchange for this house at a time when he needed the cash to pay for his divorce and early retirement. I know that he refused to sell it to me at any price. When I asked him why, he told me that he had a sitting tenant who he had no intention of throwing out onto the street.’

Hot anger flushed at the back of his neck and his breathing raced. Pulling himself back, he added, ‘So you can see that I was rather confused when Nicole was given the Mas as part of the divorce settlement a few weeks later. So, yes, I am somewhat annoyed.’

Then he twisted his mouth into a quirky grin. ‘But that is my personal problem and I have to live with it. You do not. Hence my apology, Mrs Martinez.’

‘Oh. Well, I find the direct approach works best.’ Then her face brightened. ‘Why don’t you just call him up and ask him?’

Ask him? Ask him what? Ask him why he had lied about the fact that Seb’s parents were not his real parents? Or perhaps ask him why he had married the first Frenchwoman he met in Sydney and expected Seb to make Nicole his new mother? And now this.

No, thanks. He had stopped asking and started making his own choices a long time ago.

‘Maybe another time. Right now I’m far more interested in collecting together as much of my family history as I can before I leave today.’

‘Well, in that case, you had better start with these photos of your parents’ wedding.’

Ella pressed a leather photo album into his hands. ‘Your mother looked so beautiful. She obviously loved being pregnant.’

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_7420a422-8f35-5a76-8cb5-31704443f22e)

TWO hours later Seb was pacing the length of his bedroom and in danger of wearing a track on the surface of the fine wool rug.

He had not left the Mas Tournesol. He couldn’t. He was far too agitated to drive anywhere except into the nearest solid brick wall or large tree.

The only good news was that he now had the answers to two of his questions.

He had not been adopted after all.

There was no doubt now that his mother had been pregnant when she married his dad. The wedding photographs Ella had found in the attic were wonderful—it was a delight to see his mother laughing and happy, surrounded by family and friends she loved. And without the huge bouquet of flowers to hide her baby bump, she was very definitely pregnant.

Ella had recognised the fact instantly when she had seen those photographs.

While he had been kept in the dark all of these years!

Okay. He could deal with that and stomping around his old bedroom was not going to help. It had always been a possibility that his mother had been in a previous relationship and it certainly did not change his deep connection to her.

Which left the missing piece of the puzzle. Who was his father?

And now he had a possible answer.

Because he had a name. André Sebastien Morel. Only this André was not a friend or some relative. André Morel had been his mother’s fiancé.

Clutched in his left hand was a crinkled and faded clipping from a Montpellier newspaper he had unearthed from the second box of Castellano family records he had hauled down from the attic.

The edges of the clipping were torn because whoever had cut the announcement had used pinking shears from a young woman’s sewing box.

The photograph in the living room had been taken at his mother’s engagement party to celebrate her engagement to André Sebastien Morel some fourteen months before she married Luc Castellano.

There was no doubt. Both the date and the year on the newspaper clipping matched those on the photograph from the living room.

His mother had been engaged to André Sebastien Morel.

It did not mean that André was his father, of course, but it was a start.

Screwing up the ragged scrap of faded newsprint, he pushed it deep into his pocket, marched over to the window and clenched his hand over the narrow ledge, his fingers and knuckles white with the effort, desperate to breathe in some cool air.

He felt totally bewildered at the fury of questions and implications that showered out of this discovery.