The Paternity Claim

‘Isa-bella!’

Resisting the urge to yell back at her boss to go away, Isabella levered herself off the bed and slipped her stockinged feet into a pair of comfortable slippers. If there was one thing she enjoyed about being pregnant—and so far it was the only thing she had enjoyed—it was allowing herself the freedom to dress purely for comfort. Elasticated waists and thick socks may have made her resemble an enormous sack of rice, but she felt too cumbersome to care.

‘Coming!’ she called, as she carefully made her way downstairs.

The twins came running out of the sitting room, their faces working with excitement. Charlie and Richie were seven year-old twins whose mission in life seemed to be to make their au pair’s life as difficult as possible. But she’d grown fond of these two boys, with their big eyes and mischievous grins and excessively high energy levels.

Rosemary Stafford’s methods of childcare had not been the ones Isabella would have chosen, but at least she was able to have a little influence on their lives.

She had tried to steer them away from the video games and television shows which had been their daily entertainment diet. At first, they’d protested loudly when she had insisted on sitting down and reading with them each evening, but they had grown to accept the ritual—even, she suspected, to secretly enjoy it.

‘You’ve gotta vis’tor, Bella!’ said Richie.

‘Oh? Who is it?’ asked Isabella.

‘It’s a man!’

Isabella blinked. Like who? ‘But I don’t know any men!’ she protested.

Richie’s mother appeared at the sitting room door. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely!’ she said in a low voice, looking pointedly at Isabella’s swollen belly. ‘You must have known at least one.’

Isabella refused to rise to the remark—but then she’d had a lot of practice at ignoring her boss’s barbed comments.

Ever since she’d first moved in, Rosemary Stafford had made constant references to Isabella’s pregnant and unmarried state, slipping easily into the role of some kind of moral guardian.

Isabella thought this was rather surprising, considering that Mrs Stafford had become pregnant with the twins while her husband was still living with his first wife!

She gave a thin smile. ‘Who is it?’

Mrs. Stafford was trying hard not to look impressed. ‘He says he’s a friend of the family.’

She could see Charlie and Richie staring up at her, but Isabella’s smile didn’t slip. Even though a thousand warning notes were playing a symphony in her subconscious. ‘Did he give his name?’

‘He did.’

‘And?’

‘It’s Paulo somebody-or-other.’

Isabella’s mouth froze. ‘Paulo D-Dantas?’ she managed.

‘That’s the one,’ said Mrs Stafford briskly. ‘He’s in the drawing room. You’d better come along and speak to him—he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who likes to be kept waiting.’

Isabella’s hand strayed anxiously to her hair. What was he doing here? And what must she look like? Her eyes flickered over to where the hall mirror told its own story.

Her thick dark-brown hair had been carelessly heaped on top of her head, secured by a tortoiseshell comb. Her face was pale, thanks to the English winter—a pallor made more intense by the fact that she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ hissed Mrs Stafford.

‘Tell you what?’

‘That a man like that was the father of your child?’

Isabella opened her mouth to protest, but by then her employer was throwing open the door to the sitting room and it was too late to do anything other than go in and face the music.

The room seemed darker than usual and Isabella wondered why, until she saw that Paulo was standing staring out of the window and seemed to be blocking out much of the light.

He turned slowly as she came into the room and she saw his relaxed pose stiffen into one of complete disbelief as he took in her physical condition. The exaggerated bulge of her stomach. The heavy weight of her breasts.

She saw his black eyes glitter as they hovered on the unfamiliar swell, and she tried to read what was written in them. Shock. Horror. Disdain. Yes, all of those. And she found herself wishing that she could turn around and run out of the room again or, better still, turn back the clock completely. Something—anything—other than have to face that bitter look in this sorry and vulnerable state.

‘Isabella.’ He inclined his head in formal greeting, but the low-pitched voice sounded oddly flat.

He was wearing a dark suit—as if he had come straight from some high-powered business meeting without bothering to change first. The sleekly cut trousers made the most of lean, long legs and the double-breasted jacket hugged the broad shoulders and chest. Against the brilliant whiteness of his shirt, his skin gleamed softly olive. She had never seen him so formally dressed before, and the conventional clothes seemed to add to the distance between them.

Isabella felt the first flutterings of apprehension.

‘Hello, Paulo,’ she said steadily. ‘You should have warned me you were coming.’

‘And if I had?’ His voice was deadly soft. ‘Would you still have received me like this?’

She saw from the dark stare which lanced through her like a laser that it was not a rhetorical question. ‘No. Probably not,’ she admitted.

Mrs Stafford, who had been gazing up at Paulo like a star-struck schoolgirl, now turned to Isabella with a look of reprimand. ‘Isabella—where are your manners? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ She gave Paulo the benefit of a sickly smile.

Isabella swallowed. ‘Paulo, this is Rosemary Stafford—my boss. Paulo is—’

‘Very welcome,’ purred Mrs Stafford. ‘Very welcome indeed. Perhaps we can offer you a little refreshment after your journey? Isabella, why don’t you go and make Mr Dantas a drink?’

Paulo said, in Portuguese. ‘Get rid of her.’

Isabella felt inexplicably nervous. And certainly not up to defying him. ‘I wonder if you’d mind leaving us, Mrs Stafford? It’s just that I’d like to talk to my…friend—’ she hesitated over a word which did not seem appropriate ‘—in private.’

Rosemary Stafford’s pretty, painted mouth became a petulant-looking pout. ‘Yes, I expect you do. I expect you have many issues to resolve,’ she said, with stiff emphasis, and swept out of the sitting room, past where Charlie and Richie were hovering by the door, trying to listen to the conversation inside.

Paulo walked over to the door and gave the boys a slight, almost apologetic shrug of his shoulders, before quietly closing the door on them. And when he turned to face Isabella—she almost recoiled from the look of fury which burned from his eyes.

As though she were some insect he had just found squashed beneath his heel and he wished she would crawl right back where she had come from. But what right did he have to judge her? She thought of all she’d endured since arriving in England, and suddenly Paulo’s anger seemed little to bear, in comparison. She drew her shoulders back to meet his gaze without flinching.

‘You’d better start explaining,’ he said flatly.

‘I owe you no explanation.’

A pulse began a slow beat in his temple. ‘You don’t think so?’ he said quietly.

‘My pregnancy has nothing whatsoever to do with you, Paulo.’

He gave a hollow, bitter laugh. ‘Maybe in the conventional sense it doesn’t—but you involved me the moment you told your father that you were going to pay me a visit.’