The Paternity Claim

‘Shouldn’t I tell her myself?’

He thought how naive and innocent she could look and sound—despite the very physical evidence to the contrary. He shook his head impatiently. ‘She’s going to be angry, isn’t she?’

Isabella pushed a dark strand of hair away from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Furious.’

‘Well, then—you can do without her fury. Let her take it out on me instead. Go on, querida. Go now.’

The familiar word made her heart clench and she had to put her hand onto the back of a chair to steady herself. She had not heard her mother-tongue spoken for months, and it penetrated a chink in the protective armour she had attempted to build around herself. She nodded, then did as he asked, lumbering up to her room at the top of the house with as much speed as she could manage.

She did not have many things to pack. She’d brought few clothes with her to England, and what few she had no longer fitted her. Instead, she’d bought garments which were suitable for this cold, new climate and the ungainly new shape of her body.

Big, sloppy jumpers, two dresses and a couple of pairs of trousers with huge, elasticated waists which she was currently stretching to just about as far as they could go.

She had been forced to buy new underwear, too—and had felt like an outcast in the shop. As if everyone knew she was all alone with her pregnancy. And that no man would ever feast his eyes with love and pride on the huge, pendulous breasts which strained against the functional bra she’d been forced to purchase.

She swept the clothes and her few toiletries into the suitcase and located her passport. On the windowsill stood a wedding-day photo of her parents and, with a heavy heart, she added it to the rest of her possessions.

And then, with a final glance round at the box-room which had been her home for the last five months, she quietly shut the door behind her.

At the foot of the stairs, a deputation was awaiting her. Towering over the small group was Paulo, his hair as black as ebony, when viewed from above. Next to him stood Rosemary Stafford, her fury almost palpable as she attempted to control the two boys.

‘Will you keep still?’ she was yelling, but they were taking no notice of her.

Charlie and Richie were buzzing around the hallway like demented flies—whipped up by the unexpected excitement of what was happening, and yet looking vaguely uncertain. As if they could anticipate that changes would shortly be made to their young lives. And correctly guessing that they would not like those changes at all.

Isabella reached the bottom of the stairs and Paulo took the suitcase from her hand. ‘I’ll put this in the car for you.’

She felt like calling after him, Please don’t leave me! but that would be weak and cowardly. Instead, she turned to Rosemary Stafford and forced herself to remember just how many times she had helped the older woman out. All the occasions when she had agreed to babysit with little more than a moment’s notice. And never complained. Not once. ‘I’m sorry to have to leave so suddenly—’

‘Oh, spare me your lies!’ hissed Rosemary Stafford venomously.

‘But they’re not lies!’ Isabella protested. ‘It isn’t practical to carry on like this. Honestly. The truth is that I have been getting awfully tired—’

‘Oh? And what about other, earlier so-called “truths”?’ Rosemary Stafford’s glossy pink lips gaped uglily. ‘Like your assurance that the father of your baby wasn’t going to turn up out of the blue and start creating havoc with my routine?’

Isabella was about to explain that Paulo was not the father of her baby—but what was the point? What could she say? The boys were standing there, wide-eyed and listening to every word. Trying to make two seven-year-old boys understand the reality of the whole bizarre situation was more than she felt prepared to take on right then.

Instead, she reached out an unsteady hand and ruffled Richie’s blond hair. Of the two boys, he’d been the one who had crept the furthest into her heart, and she didn’t want to hurt him. ‘I’ll write,’ she began uncertainly.

‘Take your hands away from him, and don’t be so stupid!’ spat out Mrs Stafford. ‘What will you write to a seven-year-old boy about? The birth? Or the conception?’

Isabella shuddered, wondering how Mrs Stafford could possibly say things like that in front of her children.

‘It’s time to leave, Isabella,’ came a low voice from behind them, and Isabella turned to see Paulo framed in the neo-Georgian doorway. His face was shadowed, the features so still that they might have been carved from some rare, pitch-dark marble. Only the eyes glittered—hard and black and icy-cold.

She wondered how long he had been standing there, listening, whether he had heard Mrs Stafford’s assumption that he was the father of her baby.

And her own refusal to deny it.

‘Isabella,’ prompted Paulo softly. ‘Come.’

Impulsively she bent and briefly put her arms round both boys. Richie was crying, and it took every bit of Isabella’s willpower not to join in with his tears, knowing that it would be self-indulgent to break down and confuse them even more. Instead, she contented herself with a swift and fierce kiss on the top of each sweet, blond head.

‘I will write!’ she reaffirmed in an urgent whisper, as Paulo took her elbow like an invalid, and guided her out to the car.

CHAPTER THREE (#udba95c75-b5a0-5baa-99a9-fcc1b1649662)

AS SOON as the front door had shut behind them, Paulo let go of Isabella’s elbow and she found herself missing its warmth and support immediately.

‘The car is a little way up the street,’ he said, still in that same flat tone which she’d never heard him use before.

He’d parked it there deliberately. Just in case. He had not known what he expected to find. Or who. He hadn’t known if she would come willingly. And how he would’ve coped, had she refused. Because some instinct had told him even then, that he would not be leaving without her.

Isabella walked beside him towards the car, suspecting that he’d slowed his normal pace down in order for her to keep pace with him. She got out of breath so easily these days. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Taking implies force,’ he corrected, looking down at her dark head, which only reached up to his shoulder. She seemed much too tiny to be bursting ripe with pregnancy. ‘And you seem to be accompanying me willingly enough.’

What woman wouldn’t? she thought, with another wistful pang. ‘Where?’ she repeated huskily.

A plane droned overhead, and he briefly lifted his face to stare at it. ‘For now, you will have to come home with me—’ He sent her a searing glance as if he anticipated her objection. ‘Think about it before you say anything, Bella. It makes the most sense.’

If anything could be said to make sense at that precise moment, then yes, she supposed that it did. And hadn’t that been her first choice? Before she’d seen him prowling half-naked around his own territory—like some sleek and beautiful cat? Gato. Before she’d seen the beautiful woman who’d frozen her out so effectively. Before she’d decided that she could not face him with her terrible secret.

‘Doesn’t it?’

Isabella nodded, wondering what Judy was going to say this time. ‘I suppose so.’

‘As to what happens after that…’ A silky pause. ‘There are a number of options open to you.’

‘I’m not going back to Brazil!’ she declared quietly. ‘And you can’t make me!’

He let that one go. For the moment. ‘Here’s my car.’

A midnight-blue sports car was parked with precision close to the kerb, and Isabella stared at the low, gleaming bodywork in dismay.

‘What’s the matter?’

She glanced up to find that the black eyes were fixed intently on her face. He must have noticed her hesitation. She gestured to her stomach, placing her hands on either side of her bump, to draw his attention to it. ‘Look—’

‘I’m looking,’ he replied, taken aback by the sudden hurl of his heart as one of her hands strayed dangerously close to the heavy swell of her breast.

‘I’m so big and so bulky, and your car is so streamlined.’

He held the door open for her. ‘You think you won’t fit?’

‘Look away,’ she said. ‘It won’t be a graceful sight.’

She began to ease her legs inside and his face grew grim as he turned back to look at the house they had just left—where two small boys forlornly watched them from an upstairs window. He did not know what lay ahead, beyond offering her temporary refuge, but already he suspected that his loyalties might be torn. How could they not be?