Duarte's Child

‘I have no wish to part you from our son,’ Duarte stated in a grim undertone. ‘He needs you very much.’

‘Do you really think that?’ she whispered shakily.

‘I say nothing that I don’t mean. Give me Jamie now that he is asleep,’ Duarte urged moving forward. ‘Mrs Barker followed my security team here. She has offered to take care of our son until you are released from hospital. I understand she is familiar to him.’

Taut with suspicion, Emily held fast to Jamie’s precious weight, but then she saw Alice appearing in the doorway with a look of discomfiture on her face. The older woman was carrying Jamie’s baby bag. ‘I’ll look after Jamie, Emily. It’s the least that I can do.’

‘I will leave you both and deal with the police,’ Duarte delivered coolly.

Alice grimaced and sank down at the foot of the bed. ‘How was I to know he was your husband? I thought Mafia hitmen were descending on us and I was really frantic when they took off after you!’

‘You didn’t know what was happening…and I was totally stupid,’ Emily groaned in remorse. ‘I made things even worse by trying to run again. I just panicked and then I got stung—’

‘And your husband, whom I thought was a dead ringer for the Godfather at his most glamorous, saved your life.’ Alice winced. ‘I feel so awful now for calling in the police and now they won’t go away until everyone’s explained themselves about twenty times over.’

‘It’s OK… It’s all my fault. I always do the wrong thing,’ Emily mumbled heavily. ‘Particularly around Duarte—’

‘Not much of a husband if he makes you feel like that. Maybe, to make me feel a little more relaxed about all this, you could tell me that he is really wonderful.’

‘He is… I was the one who wrecked everything.’ Emily sighed.

By wanting more than Duarte had ever offered, she’d made herself unhappy. She’d had a hunger to be loved and, if not loved, at least needed. But Duarte had not needed her either. She had just felt like another one of his many possessions with no true existence or purpose without him. She had never had much confidence but, flung in at the deep end of a world so very different from her own, she had sunk like a stone, becoming even more shy and awkward. By the time of their separation, she’d gone from having low self-esteem to having no self-esteem at all.

Alice left with Jamie. Then a very weary-looking police sergeant made a brief visit to Emily’s bedside to confirm that she had no complaint to make against her husband. Having made that assurance while cringing at the thought of what Duarte must have undergone, Emily fell asleep and did not awaken until lunch arrived on a noisy trolley. The doctor called in to have a brief word with her and tell her that she was free to leave. As she had no appetite for food, she slid straight out of bed. Removing her clothes from the cabinet, she got dressed again.

Mateus Santos was waiting at Reception to escort her out to the limousine.

Duarte was seated in the back of the limo. Emily climbed in and sat down at the furthest point from Duarte that she could contrive. ‘What now?’ she asked tightly.

‘We’ll pick up Jamie and then we’re going home.’

The silence lay between them, deep as a swamp and twice as treacherous.

Emily swallowed hard. Going home? She had not yet given him a direct look. Now she turned her head, her throat tight, her sea-green eyes strained. ‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ Duarte confirmed, skimming her a veiled glance from his dark, deep-set eyes. ‘I had your possessions cleared from the car and the caravan and packed. I also told Mateus to dispose of both vehicles as you will have no further use for them.’

That was the moment that Emily appreciated that she now possessed only the clothes she stood up in. Her fingers closed over the ragged cuffs of her old sweater in an effort to contain an almost overwhelming sense of being trapped. ‘It would have been nice if you had asked me what I wanted to do with them.’

‘But then, all that concerned me was what I wanted,’ Duarte murmured with velvet soft cool, reaching forward to sweep up the car phone as it buzzed.

Going home? He was taking them straight back to Portugal. From below her lashes, she studied him, nervous as a cat on hot bricks. The hard smooth line of his high cheekbones in profile, the classic perfection of his arrogant nose, the tough angular jawline slightly blue-shadowed by the hint of returning stubble. He was incredibly good-looking and sexy and she found it very difficult to resist the urge to stare when his attention was distracted from her. She listened to him talk in Portuguese, as smooth and cool as if he had not just dramatically reclaimed his runaway wife and child. No, indeed, it might have been any ordinary day and she might have been any woman.

‘Duarte…’ she framed jerkily as soon as he had replaced the phone. ‘I’d like to stay in England—’

‘That’s not possible unless you insist on a divorce.’

Emily did not feel that she was in a position to insist on anything. Duarte had slaughtered all the protest in her the very instant he had threatened to fight her for custody of Jamie. She’d already spent far too many months fretting about how poor a parent she might seem in comparison to him in any courtroom. Her evident lapse in fidelity, her flight to England, her fear-inspired failure to deal with matters like an adult which had forced Duarte to mount a search. Nothing that she had so far done would impress a judge. Nor would her case be helped when it came out that she had been raising Jamie in a caravan while she roved around taking casual employment. In a Portuguese court, she had not the slightest doubt that Duarte would win custody of their child.

She curved her trembling hands together to steady them. ‘I thought you would want a divorce.’

‘Not at present.’

Emily wanted to scream. He was shutting her out. He had always done that, depersonalising every encounter, holding her at a distance…except in bed. Her fair complexion reddened to ferocious heat at that inadvertent thought. Just then, she could not bear to recall the physical intimacy which she had once cherished as evidence that he must care for her to some degree. Now it pained her to recall her own humiliating naivety. They had had separate bedrooms from the start. Sex had always seemed to have a faint aura of the forbidden. But it also had been wildly exciting…for her. The only time she had dared to touch him had been in the privacy of her own bed. In daylight, Duarte had been way too intimidating.

In a fierce struggle to control her wayward mind, Emily made herself focus on the child’s car seat anchored opposite. Jamie’s seat. Duarte was taking them both back to Portugal. Duarte was not thinking of a divorce. Duarte was not currently planning to deprive her of her son. Those facts were the only facts that mattered right now, she told herself urgently. She was tired of running and exhausted by living on her nerves. All these months, she had had no real life. What lay ahead could surely be little worse than what she had experienced in the past…

‘Are you going to have other women…again?’ Emily heard herself ask and almost died on the spot because that dreadful question had just come out of nowhere and leapt on to her unguarded tongue.

The silence seemed to flex like a stranglehold ready to tighten round her slender throat.

Slowly, Emily looked up, aquamarine eyes aghast.

Duarte gazed back at her as if she had just dropped down through the car roof, a fully fledged alien with two heads. ‘What do you mean by…again?’ he prompted very softly.

Emily connected with electrifying dark golden eyes and gulped. ‘I didn’t mean anything…I…I just wondered.’

‘You made an accusation,’ Duarte contradicted with razor-edged cool. ‘A specious feminine attempt to justify your own behaviour by implying that I played away—’

Emily was backtracking so fast she was literally into full-throttle reverse. Not because she was a coward but because she could not afford to antagonise Duarte, lest he change his mind and decide that Jamie did not need his mother as much as he believed he did. ‘No, I didn’t…I didn’t—’

‘Don’t try it again,’ Duarte warned steadily, shimmering eyes resting on her like a slowly uncoiling whip lash.

Turning away in turmoil to stare fixedly into the middle distance, Emily only then appreciated that the car had already pulled up outside Alice’s farmhouse. The chauffeur opened the passenger door and she leapt out like a rabbit with a fox on her tail. The older woman was already coming outside with Jamie clasped in her arms. ‘Will you and Duarte join me for coffee?’

Emily reclaimed Jamie, her heart beating very fast. She didn’t want to get back into the limo. She wanted to run again and she knew that this time there was no place to run. ‘I’ll ask Duarte if we’ve got time—’

But Duarte was right behind her. He greeted Alice with a courteous charm which Emily had only got to enjoy briefly during their even more brief courtship. Emily stared at her husband, marvelling at the tone of regret he contrived to employ as he refused an invitation he could not have had the slightest desire to accept. She said goodbye in a dulled little voice and got back into the car to fix Jamie into his seat.

‘Stop cringing around me,’ Duarte instructed grittily as the chauffeur closed the door on them again.

At least the previous unfortunate subject which she had opened was forgotten. But she noted that he had given her no answer. Not that she cared any more, she told herself. They would hardly be living together again but wasn’t it peculiar that he wasn’t talking about what they were going to be doing? Or was exerting that kind of power over her part of the punishment?

Becoming only slowly aware of the silence, Emily turned her head. Only then did she recall that Duarte was really only now having his first meeting with his son. Duarte was studying Jamie with an intensity she could feel. Jamie was kicking his feet, smiling and in the mood to be admired. Emily watched Duarte. The tension etched in his bold bronzed features, the movement of the lean brown hand he semi-raised and then settled back on a long powerful thigh again.

He wanted to touch Jamie. He wanted to connect; naturally he did. Her throat thickened in the weighted quiet. She slid Jamie’s little blue teddy towards Duarte, nudging his braced fingers with the toy. ‘You could give him that—’

‘When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it.’ Lean strong face clenching hard, Duarte dealt her a flaring glance of bitter hostility. ‘It’s not a lot of fun wondering whether my own child will scream if I try to touch him.’

Emily paled. ‘I know…I’m sorry—’

A tiny muscle pulling tight at the corner of his hard jawline, Duarte thrust his broad shoulders back against the seat. ‘I’ve got plenty of time to get to know him. I’ll do it without an audience.’

He was so incredibly proud. Had she not seen the yearning in Duarte’s body language as he contemplated his infant son, she might have believed that he felt nothing.

‘I was scared to get in contact with you…I was scared of losing him—’

‘I’m not about to discuss your behaviour in front of him. You’re his mother. You sound distressed. Look at your son…he’s listening to your voice and watching your every move and you’re scaring him,’ Duarte condemned.